Second Opinion (23 page)

CHAPTER 42

Thea said nothing to the police about her father's condition or the information he had passed on to her earlier in the night. At this point there were no reasons to do so, and many reasons not to, most important among them, the constant, heightened jeopardy he would be in should word get out that he was awake and communicating what he knew. Dan would know what she should do, and whom she should trust.

He would know.

And after they talked, if he felt they could be of help to the police in their search for Hayley, and that heightening the threat to Petros was a price worth paying, they would pick a detective, maybe Dan's friend Lockwood, and tell him everything.

Lydia Thibideau had been as difficult to read as a sphinx. She seemed appropriately concerned about Hayley's sudden decision to stop her chemotherapy when she had been doing so well, but she also sounded like a seasoned clinician, who had encountered just about everything there was to experience from her patients, including many miracles.

Thea had listened closely for any hint of discomfort or guilt from the woman, but to the extent her Asperger's allowed her to make such a call, she found none. Still, whether or not Thibideau was involved, something deceitful, greedy, and potentially very dangerous was going on at the Beaumont.

Hartnett was a definite player in the scam, Thea reaffirmed as she left the hospital at almost three in the morning. And now, it seemed, Musgrave might be involved as well. But the real questions, at least for the moment, involved Hayley. Was there any way her disappearance could be connected with the questionable MRI that had brought her into the Beaumont in the first place? Doubtful, Thea decided. More likely, it was simply a matter of money. Hayley was worth a fortune. It had been a mistake to isolate her without protection in the Beaumont the way they had—a mistake for her not to have brought her own security people along with her. She was like a tapir in big cat country—nearly defenseless prey for any reasonably resourceful kidnappers.

Certainly, hostages had been taken for a lot less than might be demanded for her. In Africa, kidnapping was something of a sport, and might have actually been amusing had not so many of the episodes ended in bloodshed and death.

Eyes gritty with fatigue, and thoughts totally engrossed in her concern for Hayley and what might have happened, Thea left the parking lot headed, in no particular hurry, for Wellesley. Moments after she left, a pickup truck swung away from the curb and followed at a respectful distance. The truck was large and powerful—a Dodge Ram, black with a second set of doors and a full-sized cab in the rear. Attached in front of the grille was a thick steel and wood frame, the width of the truck and four feet high, used for attaching heavy-duty equipment. The driver of the truck had pulled a black ski mask down over his face.

Thea weaved through the back streets of the city until she reached Route 9. Then she slipped in one of Petros's albums of traditional Greek music and settled back, cruising west along with fairly light early-morning traffic. In addition to her concerns for Hayley, she found herself thinking about her experiences since her return to the United States.

At the Doctors Without Borders hospitals where she had worked, she had never once felt unaccepted or like an outsider. Back here in Boston, as it had been in her earlier life, she was an oddity—totally uncool in a world where cool was everything; more than two standard deviations from the mean in almost every measurement of fitting in. Yet in those weeks, she had managed to find a true friend in Hayley, and a lover who wore tight white underwear and kissed her like no man ever had before.

Not bad.

And now she was on the verge of helping her father gain some measure of vengeance against the killer who had harmed him more, perhaps, than could death itself. She just had to be patient—be patient and make sound decisions, searching her heart and mind, and incorporating the advice of those she trusted. Following that path, one day at a time, things would become clear to her. If she believed anything, she believed that.

Cruising into the Chestnut Hill section of Newton, with her father's favorite music enveloping her, Thea took down the evil eye— the
mati
—hanging from his mirror, and rubbed it. Then she made the sign of the cross three times, and spit into the air. It was as out of character for her to do so as it was absolutely in character for most of her many Aunt Marys. Fervently, she prayed that Hayley was safe and unharmed. Frustrating as it felt, there was simply nothing else she could do.

Just past the mall, traffic began to slow,
WORKMEN AHEAD,
a sign announced,
ALL FINES DOUBLED.
No surprise for Route 9. It seemed the busy thoroughfare was always under some sort of reconstruction, most of it done between midnight and dawn. At a rise in the road, Thea peered ahead. The double lanes of stationary brake lights seemed to extend to the horizon—far beyond Route 128. No detours that she could tell… no policemen directing the flow… just cars.

Thea was fine driving with her thoughts and the music for as long as it took to get home, but this traffic wasn't moving at all. Impulsively, she swung off onto a secondary road and turned left—toward Needham, she guessed, although it was a road she could never remember having been on. If her sense of direction didn't fail her, she could take the next right and be headed west again. Based on the complete lack of cars, it appeared that no one else had chosen this alternate route. Thea was pondering the significance of that fact when she felt the first contact from behind—a firm bump on her left side that snapped her head back and spun the steering wheel to the right, out of her hands.

Instinctively, she slammed on the brakes and looked up at the rearview. The truck that was forcing her off the road filled the mirror. Its windshield was so far above her that she could just see the bottom edge of it. An accident? A purposeful attack? A random thrill ride? All Thea could think of was the bone-breaking sensation her father must have experienced when a car sped out of the early-morning gloom and struck him.

Under the best of circumstances, Thea would never have been placed in anyone's driver's hall of fame. Her hand-eye coordination was below average, as were most of her other athletic abilities. She had waited until she was well past eighteen to go for her license, read every book she could get her hands on dealing with the dangers of driving and how to avoid or combat them, and then had barely managed to pass on the second try. On field trips from the hospital in the DRC, she seldom volunteered to drive one of the Toyotas or Land Rovers, and after experiencing the slow speeds that were comfortable for her, no one asked her to do so again. Now she couldn't begin to know what her response to this situation should be.

The truck accelerated, forcing her to skid to her right, over a low curb and across a grassy field, straight toward a massive tree—a gray ghost in the bouncing headlights of her Volvo. She managed to grip the wheel and swung it to the left as best she could. For a moment, some space opened up between her and her attacker, then the truck rammed her again.

This was no chance accident. The driver behind her was either terribly drunk or completely committed to destroying her.

There was no way she was going to miss hitting the tree, which, she realized in an absurd moment of clarity, was a maple.

Pulling even harder to her left, fearing that her forearms were about to snap, Thea did all she could. The Volvo was lurching and skidding across the field, which was soaked from an earlier thunderstorm. At the last moment she managed to turn the wheel just enough to keep from a head-on crash with the maple. Instead, the jolting impact was against her right front, tearing off the headlight, fender, and mirror with a sickening crunch, and cracking much of the right third of the windshield. Instantly, the driver's and passenger's airbags snapped open. Then, as they were meant to do, they just as quickly emptied.

Actually, Thea thought, in another uncontrollable flash of knowledge, the bags didn't deploy instantly, but in one-twenty-fifth of a second. She had read about the device and the subsequent chemical reaction when she was studying for her road test, and again, years later, when she bought her first car, an orange Volkswagen Beetle. As the airbags were unleashed from their containers inside the steering wheel on the driver's side and in the top of the dashboard on the passenger side, pellets of sodium azide combined with potassium nitrite and silicon dioxide to produce the nitrogen gas that inflated them, and also beads of common glass, which served to neutralize the highly toxic intermediate, sodium nitrite.

Smoke filled the car a moment after the bags deflated. Talc, Thea knew, used to keep the airbags pliable. While the talc was dissipating, she was virtually helpless, unable to see ahead or behind, skidding almost sideways across the field toward what she could vaguely tell was a forest of some sort. The passenger-side airbag had slammed upward against the windshield, as it was programmed to do, further dislodging it from the frame of the car. Meanwhile, the truck, its engine screeching like a monstrous bird of prey, was continuing its merciless onslaught.

To protect her arms and hands, Thea had taken them off the wheel. Now, worried about hitting another tree and not having air-bags to protect her, she brought her hands up to her face and peered between her fingers. That was when the fog of talc cleared enough for her to see water ahead of her and maybe eight feet below—a pond of some sort, approaching fast through an opening in the woods.

An instant later, the Volvo was airborne. Parallel to the ground, it sailed through the opening in the trees and off the bank, turning upside down in what seemed to Thea to be excruciating slow motion.

Its wheels and chassis were pointing directly skyward when it slammed against the black mirror surface of the pond, jolting Thea forward and snapping her forehead against the steering wheel with numbing force.

For a time, she was barely conscious—unable to connect her thoughts in any useful order. Then, she became aware of an intense, unfathomable darkness, and of a dreadful pounding behind her eyes. Finally, her situation came into focus. The lights and all other electrical capabilities of the car had ceased to work. It was upside down, bobbing in some sort of murky pond, and steadily filling with water, which was pooling below her head and approaching her eyes. Her buckled seatbelt was holding her in place. There was still air to breathe.

Then, the Volvo began to sink.

CHAPTER 43

Thea's first thought as her consciousness returned was not that she was going to die—it was that she was going to find a way out. She fought the encroaching panic the way she had fought it during countless medical emergencies over her years as a doctor, by focusing on details and relying on system and logic. As a physician dealing with a life-and-death crisis, process was everything. In the eternal debate among docs about whether it was better to do the right thing for the wrong reason, or the reverse, she was nearly always on the side of process over gut instinct… except when she wasn't.

As her thoughts cleared, despite the need for action, she found it difficult to keep from wondering who had done this to her. How had he (she envisioned the driver as a he) known that she would be at the hospital at such an hour? Finally, like moving a giant boulder from her path, she was able to shove the speculation aside and concentrate on the situation.

Working in her favor, she wasn't badly injured, she was limber and reasonably strong, and she was smart. The loose sundress and light cardigan she had carefully chosen for the barbecue would in no way hinder her mobility, although she would take the sweater off as soon as she could. Operating against those advantages were the fact that the Volvo was now completely submerged, and settled on its roof on the bottom, tilted on an angle to her right; the darkness surrounding her was total; and the probable concussion from the blow she had taken to her forehead might be making her thought processes less agile than usual. The car's descent had taken only a few seconds— seven feet of water, she guessed, if that.

She could do this.

Her first step seemed simple: get out of the seatbelt and try opening the driver's-side door. As she had countless times, she reached below her for the belt release.

No,
the other way!
… The other way!

Her confidence slipped a notch.

She calmed herself with a breath, and keeping her eyes closed against the rising pond water, reached above her, toward her feet. The seatbelt release opened easily, and she allowed herself to tumble onto the roof over the passenger seat. The space was much more cramped than she would have expected. The water accumulating there was at least six inches deep and seemed to be flowing in rapidly. Then she remembered the front windshield first cracking from the collision with the tree, then being blown loose from a corner of its frame by the explosive force of the passenger-side airbag. That had to be the source of much of the water.

It took an endless minute to locate the driver's-side door handle. She pulled it and pushed against the door with all her strength, but there was no movement at all. Her leverage was poor. It took an exhausting amount of energy to swing around to use her feet.

What remained of her bravado vanished. With the auto tipped fifteen or twenty degrees toward the right, there was no way the doors on that side would open.

Twice her face became submerged, and she pulled up sputtering warm, stale water through her mouth and nose.

Eyes shut tight, she forced herself to slow down and think things through before expending time and energy getting into the rear seat.

Her chest was beginning to feel tight and hungry for air. Without working through the logic, she began taking shallower breaths. In spite of herself, fears and doubts began filling her mind, turning logic to panic. How much time did she have? How fast was the water coming in? Every breath was putting more carbon dioxide into the small chamber. How much useful air was left? What did it feel like to die like this? Would she lose consciousness before the water entered her lungs?

The darkness had become a force pressing in on her from all sides. And now, disorientation was becoming a factor as well. Up and down, forward and back, right and left had fused into one. Each time she failed to account for the water rapidly pooling above her, she inhaled enough to send her into prolonged spasms of racking cough. More carbon dioxide… less air.

In spite of her decision not to try it, she fumbled for the passenger-side handle, then gave up. It had to be the windows. Somehow, it had to be the windows. Front? Side? Where could she get the most leverage? She remembered from her reading that there was no way anyone but a very powerful man—yes,
a very powerful man,
they had written—could kick out a car window under water. A tool. Everyone was supposed to carry a glass-breaking tool in the glove compartment. Did Petros know to do that?

Jesus, I really am going to die!

Unable to believe her father would have paid attention to such a detail, Thea huddled head-down on the passenger seat and managed to open first the storage box between the front seats, then the glove compartment. Nothing. The chamber seemed to have filled at least a third. There was no room left to move. No room at all.

And very little time.

She tried the door once more, then braced herself and lashed at the windshield with both her feet.

…
only a very powerful man
…

So what do you mean by that
?… What am I supposed to do?… Just sit here and die?… I don't want to die…

Half the cab was filled now. The headrest and at least six or eight inches of the seat back were submerged. Thea could breathe only by curling herself into a ball on the passenger seat. She was wearing Mary Jane flats with leather soles. That should have been good for something, she thought, as she flailed out in the overpowering blackness like a child in a tantrum.

/
can't believe this
… I can't believe I'm going to drown…

She took a deep breath, pushed her head down into the water, and slammed her feet again and again against the windshield, until she was forced to duck back down, gasping and sputtering, to suck in what little air remained.

…
Dan Cotton,
I love you… Come and help me… Kiss me and then use your man-strength and kick this window out for me… I need to get out… I need to get out so I won't drown…

It was only then that she realized the windshield had moved. With one of the blows from her feet, the glass had moved—right in the lower corner—precisely where the tree branch and the airbag had separated it from the automobile's frame.

Time had run out.

Thea took as deep a breath as she could manage. Then, slouched on the seat, the water now over her mouth and nose, she braced herself against the backrest and pushed with all the strength she had left. What had been a small slit between the windshield and the frame became a gap. Water poured in and filled what had remained of her airspace. One push. That was all she had left. One last push and she would have to breathe. One last push and she was going to drown. Even if the space opened enough, she didn't have the strength or lung power to go out headfirst, and feetfirst would almost certainly leave her wedged between the windshield and the frame.

Hold it!

Hold on to y
our breath and try!

Push! Once more, push as hard as you can!

Dan, I'm sorry
… I'm sorry… I really tried…