“Choking,” Charlie said without looking at the page. “It’s the reason you’ve got me on a liquid diet, remember?”
“Can you just read it, please?”
Charlie chugged a sip of melted Frosty and put the cup into the cup holder, shifting his position as if he were about to crack openWar and Peace. He cleared his throat and skimmed down the page with his finger.
“Cause of death,” he said, scanning. “Cause of death. Ah. Oh.”
“ ‘Oh’? What ‘oh’?”
“This doesn’t make any sense.”
“What ‘oh,’ Charlie?” Nora demanded, a familiar rush of adrenaline coursing through her.
“You’re not gonna like this.”
“Charlie.”
“ ‘Cause of death: car accident, ’ ” Charlie read.
Nora slammed on the brakes.
“As for example,” Charlie said in a shout, a protective arm flung across the Frosty.
“Heavens,” Jessica squawked from the back seat.
Nora fell back into herself, realizing in horror what she had done. There were no other cars on this rural stretch of highway, but even still, if a car accident was Charlie’s new cause of death, she couldn’t be too careful. Hell, even under regular circumstances, there was no such thing. An error like this wasn’t in her usual repertoire. An error like this could cost Charlie his life. She drove on.
“Sorry. Jesus. Sorry.”
“No harm done,” Charlie said.
“Not yet, anyway,” Nora said. “The time,” she added, frantic. “What’s the collection time?”
“Uhhhhhhh,” Charlie read back over his file. “There isn’t one.”
“What?”
“Yeah, it just says ‘Collection time,’ and then it’s blank.”
“Okay.” Nora sucked in a shuddering breath. “Okay. What’s the location? I need to know where to avoid driving.”
“Highway 286.”
“Whereon Highway 286, Charlie?”
But Charlie just shrugged. “That’s all it says.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Again. Why doesn’t anything make any sense?” Nora steadied herself with a deep breath. “All right. Well. We broke Death, I guess. So, what do we do now? We get off the road is what we do now. We get off the road and go somewhere safe. A safe house. But not a house. So what? A motel, maybe. There’s got to be a motel somewhere around here.”
“Do you do this a lot?” Charlie asked.
“Do what?”
“Have entire conversations with yourself.”
Nora’s mind traveled back to her little apartment and all the lively debates about what to have for dinner or which movie to curl up with that took place therein. To her teens and the crushes she talked herself into or out of. To her hermit’s cave of an office at S.C.Y.T.H.E., where all her most complex decisions were puzzled out with only her desk and a dusty filing cabinet there to hear. To the days and years after her parents died, when she would tell herself that this kind of thing happened, but that it would never, ever happen to someone she loved again.
“No.”
