CHAPTER NINETEEN
By the time Tara Brennan stepped out of County General, the hospital had worked itself into her bones.
The cold lighting had a way of doing that.
Twelve hours under it left her feeling used up and flimsy, as if one more question from a patient or one more call light from a room at the end of the hall might have finished her off completely.
The parking lot beyond the sliding doors was thinly lit and mostly empty, rows of cars sitting under sodium lamps that buzzed faintly in the dark.
A security guard in a windbreaker stood near the entrance with a paper cup in one hand.
“Night, Tara,” he said.
“Morning, technically,” she replied.
That got a tired smile from him. “Get home safe.”
The words caught more than they should have.
Tara adjusted the strap of her bag and kept walking.
Tired rubber soles padded on the pavement.
Her feet ached. One shoulder ached, too, from leaning over beds all night.
A smear of something dark marked the side of her scrub top near the hem.
Coffee maybe. Maybe worse. She looked at it once, then let it go.
At home there were leftovers in the fridge, a shower, and a bed with clean sheets if she had the energy to pull the blanket back far enough to get into it.
On the way to her car, she fished her keys from her bag and found the folded revival flyer wedged beside them.
ONE MORE NIGHT OF MERCY
The red and gold ink looked too bright under the parking lot light.
She shoved it back down quickly and closed the zipper.
No reason for that to embarrass her, but lately it had.
Maybe because she could already hear her sister laughing if she ever found out Tara had spent two evenings sitting under a tent listening to a preacher tell crowds there was still hope for broken people.
Then again, the world had not exactly been overflowing with hope.
Two women dead in less than a week. Both found at night in Harlan County. Both staged in places people used to hold dear. The details had spread fast, half rumor and half fact, until everybody in the county seemed to know enough to be frightened and not enough to feel safe.
Tara unlocked her car and got in.
For a moment she just sat there with both hands on the wheel, looking at her own face dimly reflected in the windshield.
Tired eyes. Hair flattened from the shift.
Exhaustion and strain where there should have been a person.
She had meant to call her sister back yesterday and had not.
Meant to buy groceries. Meant to stop looking at herself in harsh light and thinking she had started to look older all at once.
Men had always looked at her. Desired her.
But now she could see that slipping, and she wondered what would be left when it finally all evaporated like stale milk.
The engine turned over.
Headlights washed across the far edge of the lot as another car moved toward the exit. Tara backed out, nodded once at the guard without being sure he saw, and drove out onto the county road.
Town disappeared fast at that hour.
One minute there were closed storefronts, the all-night gas station, and the weak promise of civilization.
A few turns later the road opened into black fields and drainage ditches and stretches of fence where nothing moved.
This was her drive every night. Left at the old feed mill.
Straight through the low bend near the creek.
Past the house with the broken porch swing.
Past two mailboxes standing close together where the road narrowed and the shoulder fell away.
Familiarity had always made it easy.
Tonight it sharpened things instead.
A few miles out, Tara glanced in the rearview mirror and saw headlights behind her.
Nothing strange there. Somebody else heading home. Another shift worker. A farmer out early. A delivery van taking the long way around. The county was sparse, not empty.
She looked forward again and rolled her neck once.
Another mile passed. The same headlights remained there.
Still nothing, she told herself.
A mailbox reflector flashed in her lights and vanished. Trees leaned over one stretch of road and threw bars of shadow across the hood. Off to her right, a field lay flat and black all the way to a fence line she could no longer see. The car behind her neither gained nor fell back.
Tara checked the mirror again.
Same distance.
Her hands shifted on the wheel.
“Get a grip,” she murmured, though the sound of her own voice did not help.
At the next bend she thought about the sermon she had heard two nights earlier, Elias Croft standing under warm lights telling a tent full of people that fear lied to them, that despair liked to pretend it was final, that the king always had one more move.
At the time she had felt foolish for finding comfort in it.
Driving home now, with those headlights still there, she felt more foolish for remembering.
The road dipped.
The concrete surface bobbled under one tire when she edged too far right, and the sound startled her enough that she jerked the wheel slightly back. Heat climbed her throat. Embarrassment more than fear. At least that was what she called it.
Another look in the mirror.
Still there.
“It’s nothing,” she said under her breath.
Without deciding to, Tara slowed a little.
The headlights behind her slowed, too.
Her mouth went dry.
No, that meant nothing. People adjusted speed all the time on country roads. Maybe the driver was cautious. Maybe they were watching for deer. Maybe they were tired, too.
At the next intersection she took the right turn she always took.
For one second, she watched the mirror and told herself this proved nothing either, because three houses sat off this road before it reached her place.
The headlights turned after her.
A thin laugh escaped her, the sound brittle enough to make her wish she had kept quiet.
“This is stupid,” she said.
It did not feel stupid.
Fields pressed close here. No houses for a while.
Just fence posts, dark tree lines, and the occasional pale ribbon of road leading off into land she could not see.
Tara thought about calling someone. The sheriff’s department maybe.
Or her sister. The idea was ridiculous the second it formed.
What would she say? A car is behind me on a public road?
She pictured the dispatcher’s silence and felt ashamed already.
She was tired. Spooked. Letting news stories get into her head. If she drove past home because another car had happened to be on the same road, what did that make her? One of those people who let fear govern the shape of ordinary life. One of those people who saw menace in every shadow.
The world was still mostly ordinary. It had to be.
Up ahead, her driveway came into view.
The mailbox. The leaning fence post beside it. The gravel lane running up toward the house with the porch light glowing warm and familiar through the dark.
Tara turned in.
In the mirror, the headlights behind her did not follow.
They kept going.
Relief hit so fast it made her bark out a laugh. Half shaky, half disgusted with herself.
“Oh, nice one, Tara.”
Her car rolled to a stop near the house. Scattered small stones crackled under the tires. She left the engine idling and sat there for a second, forehead almost touching the wheel.
Adrenaline drained out and left her feeling foolish.
“Unbelievable, Tara,” she muttered. “Get your shit together.”
The porch light was still on. Good. She had forgotten to switch it off before work and had been annoyed at herself halfway through the shift.
Now the soft yellow square spilling over the steps looked like the kindest thing in the world.
Bed waited inside. A shower. Maybe not the leftovers after all. Maybe just sleep.
Her bag came off the passenger seat. She checked for her keys. Thought about peeling out of her scrubs the second she got in. Thought, with mild irritation, that she had forgotten groceries again and would have to deal with that tomorrow.
Then the driver’s side door flew open.
Cold air slammed into her.
A hand caught her upper arm and yanked so hard pain shot clear to her shoulder. Tara screamed and twisted in the seat, but all she saw at first was a shape and a sleeve and a gloved hand clamped on her.
“Please, no!”
The words tore out of her raw and thin.
She grabbed for the steering wheel with one hand and the edge of the seat with the other. The man hauled again. The seat belt locked against her chest. For one wild second she thought it might save her. Then his hand fumbled low, found the release, and the belt snapped free.
Tara hit the horn.
The sound blared once into the open night.
A fist drove into her side. Not a punch exactly. More like brutal force meant to fold her up and stop the noise. Breath vanished from her lungs. Her bag slipped from her grasp and spilled, pens and receipts and lip balm and her hospital badge scattering onto the ground.
She kicked.
One shoe connected with something hard and drew a grunt. Hope flared and died almost at once. The man dragged her half out of the seat. A stone bit through the thin sole of her other shoe when her foot found the ground wrong and slid.
“No,” she gasped. “No, no, no.”
The porch light shone over the driveway. Beyond it the road lay empty and dark. No passing car. No neighbor at a window. No one.
Tara clawed for the open door, caught the inside handle, and held on with both hands. The man tore her free finger by finger. Her badge lay face up in the dirt, white and blue under the car’s interior light, her own photograph staring back at her from the ground.
Another scream left her, smaller now.
The open night swallowed it.
Then he hauled her away from the car, into the dark beyond the reach of the porch light, while the engine kept idling and the driver’s door hung wide, spilling pale light over the scattered contents of her life.