The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,59

no traffic on a Tuesday after midnight. It takes mere seconds to shatter a car window, disable the driver. And I had no weapon. It didn’t matter that I was licensed in fugitive recovery and had a permit to carry. Unless I had a fugitive in custody, I couldn’t have a weapon on an airplane, and even then it took some doing since 9/11.

“Would the fat guy with the bat be there too?” I asked Rauser. “Or are we just talking Tonya skating out by herself?”

I make jokes when I’m nervous. It was one of the things my ex-husband hated. Dan believed that I used humor as a way to cut off any real dialogue, anything that might lead to a deeper understanding of my core issues. Jesus. Dan doesn’t have the depth to recognize a core issue. Rauser doesn’t always appreciate the timing or flavor of my jokes either. He didn’t laugh this time.

“What if the fat guy shook it for me?” I asked. “Do I stop for that?”

Rauser chuckled finally. “There’s something really wrong with you, Street, you know that, right? I’ll call you back in a couple minutes,” Rauser told me, and disconnected.

In my rearview mirror, headlights looked back at me like cat eyes in the dark. Every car behind me, every car that passed, sent my heart racing. What was it, this feeling, this terrible feeling? God, how I wanted to floor it, get away from this menace, this thing I felt at the back of my neck, burning my skin. I didn’t want to be this close. But maybe that was a lie. Maybe the life I had lived, the thoughts I’d let occupy my mind, the things I’d read and studied and talked about and talked about and talked about, had created some kind of magnetic field that drew it to me—violence, the thing that frightens me so profoundly it sets my teeth on edge and intrigues me so deeply I cannot run from it.

I considered taking the next exit, killing my lights, making a quick turn into the first side street, and trying to figure if I was really being followed. But I stuck with Rauser’s plan. The benefits of teamwork had been drilled into me at the Bureau, and for good reason. Any individual action might risk an offender avoiding apprehension, and when the offender was killing people, risky rogue behaviors were unpardonable.

A couple of miles ahead, the downtown skyline looked like a jagged checkerboard turned upright. Another hot August evening, the stink of jet fuel still fresh in my nostrils. On a normal evening, I would have lowered the top, cranked up 102.5, but this wasn’t a normal—

A sound as hollow and unmistakable as a rifle shot ripped through the quiet night and interrupted that thought, sliced up my nerves and spit them out again. The front end of my car swerved toward the pavement. I fought to keep control. I saw my tire and wheel bouncing off the road without me. I was skidding at sixty miles an hour on three wheels and a fender. My telephone started to ring as I screeched across white lines, bumped hard on and off the shoulder.

I remember sliding sideways toward the metal bridge railing ahead, remember not being able to get control of the wheel, remember the headlights behind me creeping ever nearer.

I don’t remember hitting the windshield.

19

It may or may not surprise you to know that I am a very good patient. I’m not one of those people who complain about lying still and gripe about wanting to get right back to work. Nope. Not me. I have absolutely zero problem with sleeping, watching TV, and eating dinner off a tray. I would have appreciated a side order of Demerol in one of those little paper shot glasses, but apparently they don’t give drugs for concussions. Oh no. They like to keep you up. A couple days of immobility and someone peering into your pupils every half hour or so, that’s what you get. When Rauser told me how lucky I was because the patient in the room next door had twenty broken bones from a car accident and had to take heavy painkillers, I fantasized about lifting a few Dilaudids off her bed table while she slept. It seemed like such a waste to be here and not get at least a little messed up. It’s the hospital. It’s guilt-free drug use.

Neil, who had spent most of his adult life testing