Let’s start with an easy one.” Caity Sherman stared at Lind from the passenger seat of the Mustang. “What’s your name?”
They were parked outside a deserted Jiffy Lube off the interstate. Traffic blew past in the distance; night was starting to fall. The air was noisy and unsettled outside. Lind shifted in his seat and looked out the window. “I need you to talk to me,” Caity said. “I’m afraid, Andrew.”
Lind couldn’t look at her without the panic welling up. He shook his head. “My boss is coming,” he said. “Everything will be fine.”
“I don’t care about your boss,” Caity said. “If you don’t talk to me right now, I’m going to get out of this car and flag somebody down and tell the police the whole story. Understand? You need to start talking to me, Andrew. Right now.”
Lind felt his stomach churn. “No police,” he said.
“No?” Caity looked at him. “Then you’d better start talking. You said you failed an assignment. Right?”
Lind looked at her. Tried to shake off the buzzing in his head. “Yeah,” he said.
“Good. What kind of assignment?”
The buzzing intensified. Lind shook his head again. Couldn’t clear his thoughts. You can’t tell her, he thought. The man won’t approve. The man won’t be happy if you tell her what you’ve done. He’ll kill her. He’ll kill her, and he’ll kill you. He’ll never make the visions go away.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t remember.”
Caity shook her head. “Come on. You fly all over the place. You were flying to Houston the last time I saw you. What did you do there?”
The blackness was starting, behind his eyes. Caity’s voice was like razor blades to his eardrums. His brain swelled until his skull wanted to burst. Lind closed his eyes and squirmed in his seat.
“No?” Caity said. “What about Miami, then? I checked you in to that flight, remember? What did you do in Miami?”
Miami. Lind closed his eyes. Saw the target on the yacht. Felt the kick from the rifle as his finger pulled the trigger. Watched the man’s head explode.
You had to do it, he thought. The man promised he’d make the visions go away. You had to do what he told you.
Lind heard the screams in his ears. The crack from the gun. He saw the target stagger backward and drop to the deck.
“What did you do in Miami?” the girl said.
Lind saw the man in Duluth, scrabbling and clawing. Saw the bottle of liquor tipping onto the floor. He saw the white-haired man in Saint Paul, the shouts and screams as he fell onto the cobblestoned driveway. He saw the adulteress in Manhattan and the movie executive in L.A. The terrified kid in the man’s basement. He saw the blood, everywhere.
“What did you do, Andrew?” The girl wouldn’t stop talking. “Who the hell are you?”
The man won’t like this. The man will kill her. He’ll kill you, too. You’ll never be free from the visions. Never. The man will make sure you suffer forever.
The man was wrong, though.
Lind opened his eyes. Looked across the car and fought to keep his eyes on her face. Fought the blackness behind his eyes, the panic. The visions that threatened to engulf him. Caity. Caity Sherman. He focused every last ounce of strength on her eyes. “I can’t do this anymore,” he told her. “I just can’t.”