The sedan stayed in the right lane. The truck stayed behind her. Traffic compressed.
4:45.
Two minutes.
In two minutes, a soul would separate from its body and need guidance, and Greg would be there, steady and present and?—
The truck driver's brake lights came on.
Too late.
The sound hit Greg like a blow to the head. Metal shrieked against metal in a deep concussive crunch that vibrated through his bones and left him dazed for a second. The truck slammed into the car behind Jessica's sedan and that car launched forward into hers, and theneverything happened at once. A van in the left lane swerved and clipped another vehicle and the whole thing cascaded outward like dominoes toppling in every direction, and the air filled with the stench of burning rubber and something chemical and sharp.
Dustin ran.
He vaulted off the shoulder and sprinted into the wreckage —intoit — scrambling over the buckled hood of a van, heading for the silver sedan crumpled against the median as if he had no concern for his own safety at all.
“DUSTIN—”
A dark SUV skidded sideways out of the pileup.
Greg saw it before Dustin did. The vehicle spinning wide, its rear quarter panel swinging out in a lazy, inevitable arc. He opened his mouth but there was no time for the warning to travel the distance between them.
The SUV caught Dustin across the hip and flung him sideways. His body briefly left the ground and then hit the asphalt and rolled and stopped.
He didn't get up.
The world went very quiet inside Greg's head.
And then he was running.
One second he was standing on the highway shoulder and the next he was on his knees on the asphalt with his hands on Dustin's shoulders.
“Dustin! Dustin! Can you hear me?”
His hands were shaking. He was touching Dustin's face, his neck, feeling for — what? A pulse? He didn't even know how to find a pulse. He'd never needed to. He dealt in endings, not in checking whether someone was still?—
Dustin groaned.
The sound made every fiber in Greg unclench. His relief was so violent it almost knocked him sideways.
“Don't move,” Greg said. “You might be… things might be broken, I don't know how human bodies… just don't move.”
“Ow,” Dustin said into the asphalt.
“Is that, are you…?”
“I'mfine.” Dustin's voice was strained and muffled andalive. “Fuck. That was a car.”
“Yes. It was a car. And it hit you.” Greg's voice was doing something strange; pitching up, going thin and frayed at the edges. “I told you. I told you this would happen.”
Dustin tried to push himself up and made a sound that Greg never wanted to hear again. A short, involuntary cry that he bit down on too late. His left arm gave out underneath him and he collapsed back to the asphalt, breathing hard.
“Don'tmove!” Greg admonished him.
“Is Jessica okay?” The words came out through gritted teeth, half-gasped.
Jessica.
