a thousand pinprick cuts, the scrape of her skin across the tarmac, bone and blood and metal mixing. There would be fire, too—the sharp smell of gasoline followed by a plume of smoke rising blindly into the dark sky.
The man would get out of his pickup truck and stand over her while she died and his eyes—his dead black eyes—would be the last thing she saw in this world before the lights went out and she stopped existing, just like that rabbit she’d held in her hands as a child and her mother taking her last breath. She would become nothing. And deep inside of her, for a few seconds or maybe whole endless minutes, she didn’t know, her baby would keep on living, and the baby would know—even with her condition—she would know that her mother was gone. She would be all alone and scared and floating untethered in her mother’s body and then she would die, too, starved of all the things her mother’s body gave her to survive.
Or worse: Rebecca wouldn’t die, at least not right away. Her spinal cord would be severed and her brain starved of oxygen, but they would be able to save her body (not her mind, but her mind wouldn’t matter, not here) and they would hook her up to machines that would breathe for her and feed her and pump her heart for her and they would wait until the baby had grown inside her belly and then they would cut her open and bring that baby into this cruel world, and the cold would shock her thin skin and she would die, shivering and alone, surrounded by masked strangers and beeping machines and cold metal.
Rebecca braced for impact and waited, but the pickup truck just kept revving its engine and dropping back.
“What is he doing?” she gasped. The terror was making it hard to breathe. “Why is he doing this to us?”
Rebecca felt Cait’s hand in hers. “It’s going to be okay,” Cait said. Her voice was strangely calm. “We’re going to get through this.” She twined her fingers through Rebecca’s and squeezed, and something in Rebecca’s chest loosened, just a little, just for a moment.
The Jeep was solid. Rebecca touched the door with her free hand and felt its cold strength. She pictured herself inside it, a seed within its protective shell.
She closed her eyes and waited.
Cait’s training had not prepared her for this.
It had prepared her for some things, sure: extracting the women from the house if an abusive partner was there, guiding the women through the chanting crowds when they arrived at the clinic, knowing the post-op signs that a woman needed further medical treatment.
They hadn’t discussed this particular scenario over grayish cups of coffee and stale Pepperidge Farm cookies: that she might end up in the middle of goddamn nowhere with a terrified woman in her car and a lunatic trying to run them off the road.
The truck was idling behind them. She could see only the outline of the driver, but she could picture the smile on his face. He liked keeping them waiting.
She looked over at Rebecca, whose face was tilted away, toward the window, and all she could see were the tips of her mascaraed eyelashes and the soft curve of her cheek. Her hand was still resting on her stomach, cradling it. Cait wanted to reach out and place her hand on top of hers, tell her it would be okay, that they would make it to Albuquerque in time and that everything would go smoothly and that she would be back home in Lubbock before she knew it. The words were like sawdust in her mouth. She couldn’t promise anything. She had no idea what was waiting for them up ahead.
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I’m sorry if this is my fault,” she said quietly.
Rebecca nodded. “I’m sorry if it’s mine.”
They watched the headlights coming toward them again.
Cait fixed her eyes on the road and gripped the wheel tight. She heard the trainer’s voice in her head, clear as the night sky: “The patient’s safety is our first priority.” “I’m going to do my best to get us through this alive,” she said. “Now hold on tight.”
The pickup surged again, the headlights bright in the mirror, lighting up the inside of the Jeep a brilliant, blinding white.
“I can’t see him,” Cait said, squinting into the mirror. “Can you?”
Rebecca looked back. All she could see was the chrome grille