I’m calling 911 with a voice that doesn’t sound like mine—too calm, too clinical, giving coordinates and mile markers because that’s what I do. I’m the Road Captain, I know every highway in this county by heart.
I plotted the route she’s on a hundred times.
I knowexactlywhere she is.
Shadow drives ninety miles an hour down rain-slicked back roads and neither of us says a word.
The phone is still connected. The line is still open.
I hold it against my ear the entire drive, listening to rain fall on what’s left of her car, and I don’t hear another breath.
Twenty-six minutes.
That’s how long the drive takes at ninety on roads meant for fifty-five.
I know because I watch every second tick on the dashboard clock. I count them the way a man on the gallows counts steps.
Each one a chance—she could cough, she could moan, she could whisper my name and I’d know she was still in there, still holding on.
Each second of silence another nail.
We see the lights before we see the wreck.
Red and blue strobing through the rain, turning the wet highway into a kaleidoscope of emergency.
Sheriff’s department. Fire truck. Ambulance with its back doors open, but no one moving fast.
That’s the thing that hits me first. No one’s rushing. When someone can still be saved, people rush.
Shadow pulls the truck onto the shoulder.
I’m out before he’s fully stopped, boots hitting wet gravel, and I’m running toward the barrier where they’ve set up flares.
A deputy steps in front of me.
Young kid, barely old enough to grow the mustache he’s attempting.
He puts his hand on my chest.
“Sir, you can’t?—”
“That’s my wife.”
The kid’s face changes.
That’s the moment I know for certain, because his eyes go soft with a pity so practiced it must be something they teach at the academy.
How to look at the husband. How to arrange your features into the shape of bad news.
I push past him.
Shadow’s behind me—I hear him say something to the deputy, low and authoritative, but I’m past hearing words.
I see the Honda, or rather what’s left of it.
The driver’s side is caved in where she went off the road and hit the concrete support of an overpass.
The impact was on her side. All on her side.
