Since the separation, Molly’s was the closest thing to home Matt Caidin had, so he didn’t think it odd or even pathetic how much he looked forward to it at the end of his shift.
After midnight, he could always find a booth in the front window. Only a handful of other customers were scattered through the place, and none of them were other cops, so that was good. Arlington, Virginia, was small enough as it was.
Kris, or Jan, or whoever else was on shift, would bring him his coffee, ask if he needed a menu. He never did. A few minutes later, a Molly’s Special Breakfast Scramble with toasted bagel and extra hot sauce would appear.
A few years back when he’d been in uniform, he’d check the newspapers while he ate, starting with sports. Now, he scanned the scores on his phone, but only by habit. He never remembered them. Never remembered the headlines, either. Most news was bad. He had enough of that in his own life right now.
“Need a top-up, hon?”
It was Jan. Matt looked up, remembering just in time to smile. However battered he felt these days, the gray-haired waitress had seen worse. It showed in her too-thin frame, too-bright makeup, and tired eyes that looked as haunted as his likely were. He guessed that’s why she always kept his coffee mug full, and why he always tipped a bit more than he should, when he could. Mutual survivors, going through the motions, barely holding on.
“Sure thing.” He slid the heavy mug across the scarred tabletop. “Slow night?”
Jan thumbed the lid of her coffee carafe, started to pour. One of her long fake nails had broken off, revealing the yellowed one underneath, rough with cement. “Too slow. Busy’s better.”
“Always.” Distraction was always better, Matt knew. That was the secret he and Jan shared: The more distraction, the less time to think.
“Whoa!” The mug of coffee overflowed, hot liquid spilling onto the table. Matt reached to the carafe to change its angle, looked up at Jan’s stricken face at the same time he heard the crash outside. Jan’s vivid orange lipstick grew even brighter, as if lit by flame.
She stared out the window. “Ohmygod ohmygod.”
Then everything happened at once, as bad things usually do.
Headlights. That was the light shining on Jan’s face.
Matt shifted in the booth to look out in time to see a car flying through the air, a traffic light pole collapsing behind it.
In the flash of a streetlight through the windshield as the car flipped over, Matt saw the driver’s face white with horror. The passenger beside her was only a shadow in free fall, arms reaching for her.
Sparks then, a huge spray of them as the car spectacularly landed on its side, skipped along the road past Molly’s Café, and rose again, flipping over, sliding on its roof to hit a parked taxi. The noise of grinding, grating metal was hellish.
Matt was already up, passing Jan his phone. “Nine-one-one!” He shoved through the door, raced to the car. No other vehicles on the street this late on a Sunday night, early Monday morning. He heard electrical crackling coming from the totaled traffic light.
The silver car was midsize, two-door, something Korean. Its roof was flattened, its pillars twisted, crystals from the missing windshield flung about like scattered diamonds. If the driver and her passenger weren’t wearing seatbelts …
Matt crouched by the driver’s-side window, peered inside. Now he became aware of the hissing and creaking of fractured metal. White vapor streaming from the direction of the engine. The smell of gasoline.
The driver was upside down, wedged tightly in her seat’s warped frame, everything dusted in powder from the slowly deflating airbag. Her eyes were open, their whites stark within the face-obscuring sea of red pulsing from her blood-soaked hair and the deep gash in her cheek.
He heard her wheeze. Alive.
“Can you hear me?” Matt called in to her.
The bloody face turned his way. Her eyes blinked, struggled to focus.
“Daniel…?”
The smell of gasoline was getting stronger. Matt grabbed at the door handle, pulled. The door was battered and bent, wouldn’t budge. He registered the howl of approaching sirens as he turned to see other people on the sidewalk. Saw the stunned taxi driver, hands clasped atop his head as he stared at his ruined cab.
“Get over here! Check the passenger!” Matt yelled to him.
He changed position so his shoulder holster wouldn’t dig into his side as he tried to see if there was any way he could free the driver. He reached in through the broken window, urged the taxi driver to action. “C’mon, buddy. Other side!”
The taxi driver remained locked in disbelief. Someone else shouted that the police were here. More sirens and squealing tires converging on the street.
“You can help me…,” the driver whispered.
Matt’s fingers found her blood-slicked hand. Squeezed hard. Felt her squeeze back. Good sign. “Police are here. Ambulance coming.” The driver’s hand was cold. Not so good. “What’s your name?! What’s your name?!”
A moment passed, then clarity came to the woman’s eyes, as if she suddenly realized where she was, and what had happened.
“You’re not Daniel.…”
“Clear the area!”
Matt felt a strong hand on his shoulder, pulling him away. “Clear the area!”
Matt was pushed to the side, the woman’s hand sliding from his as he heard the whoosh of spraying foam, saw the flash of blue and white and red emergency lights, and two firefighters attacked the car with the Jaws of Life to pry open the door.
Back on the sidewalk, Jan pushed beside him in the gathering crowd, thin arms wrapped around herself. “They going to make it?”
Matt had been a cop for twelve years. He’d seen enough accidents to know. He shook his head.
“God, life sucks,” Jan said. “And then you die.”
* * *
It took half an hour for the firefighters to extract the driver from the wreckage. Head and neck immobilized by a board and brace, her blood-smeared face blotched yellow from the coagulant powder they’d poured on her torn scalp, now covered in seeping bandages.
The paramedics quickly hoisted her onto a rolling gurney. Their faces were grim. Matt winced as he heard her sob with each slight movement.
“Daniel!” she cried, and Matt knew that whoever Daniel was, she’d never see him again.
As much as Jan was right—life did suck—and as awful as this moment was, Matt couldn’t take the easy way out, going back into Molly’s, to his coffee and his own life. He was a cop, and whatever had drawn him to that vocation—that need to help others, to make things right even as a child—it was still in him now, however crushed and useless he had allowed it to become.
He pushed past the paramedics, took the woman’s hand, lightly squeezing it.
“Daniel!”
“Shh,” Matt lied. “I’m here. You’re going to be okay.” He squeezed her hand again. This time her response felt weaker, life ebbing.
She looked up at him through blood-matted lashes, her face a frightening mask of drying red and yellow. Matt could only hope she was looking at the one person she needed to see. Daniel.
“You can help me…,” she whispered.
“Sir, you’ll have to follow the ambulance.”
The paramedics were rolling her toward their vehicle. Matt kept up, hand gripping hers.
“Daniel … please…,” she said, softer than a whisper now.
The gurney hit the back of the ambulance with a clang. The front wheels folded up.
“Sir, stand back.”
For a shocking instant the woman’s fingers suddenly tightened on his, so hard Matt could not let go. She raised her head, eyes boring into his.
“Help me!” Her voice rang out, startling in its desperation.
Then her head fell back as her hand slipped from his, her eyes staring up at nothing, and the ambulance doors slammed shut on the gurney.
Matt was left standing on the street, the blood on his hands the only physical evidence remaining of his contact with her. Emotionally, he felt the sting of failure, loss, and—
The ambulance pulled away, moving slowly toward two police cars that blocked the road, their blue and red flashing lights reflecting in lazy circles in the dark windows of shuttered storefronts. Matt recognized two of the cops on duty: Hickman and Bailey. They were from his division. Bailey caught him looking, turned away with a scowl, as if he’d seen something contemptible.
Matt was getting used to that reaction. His attention was on someone he didn’t recognize. A tall man in a dark suit standing by the police cars, waiting.
The police cars didn’t shift position. The ambulance had to stop. The man in the suit held up a badge case for the driver.
A moment later, the vehicle’s rear doors opened and the man jumped in. Only then did one of the police cars back up to let the ambulance proceed.
Matt watched as the ambulance disappeared from view. Something was different. What? Then he had it. No flashing lights or siren.
He sighed. He knew what that meant. No need to rush. No reason not to go back to his coffee and his own sorry existence, such as it was.
At least half of the café’s staff was out ferrying coffee, tea, and muffins to the remaining cops and emergency workers. Jan had a coffee waiting for him in a paper take-out cup, and gave him back his phone. Matt was surprised how much his hand shook as she gave it to him.
“You want to get yourself to home and wash up,” she said.
“Right.” Matt felt sluggish. The adrenaline of the night was beginning to leave him, but too slowly.
Only then did it dawn on him that there had been only one ambulance. He asked Jan about the other person in the car. Daniel, he supposed. “Was the passenger okay?”
Jan shrugged. “Wasn’t none. Driver was alone.”
Matt took a careful sip of coffee. His hands still shook. In the flash of light through the windshield, he was certain there’d been someone else beside the driver.
Jan cupped her hands around his and the coffee cup to steady them. “Hon, you really want to get yourself to home.”
“Yeah,” Matt said. But he didn’t move. His eyes tracked a driver from one of two tow trucks as she attached hooks to the pancaked car.
Jan understood what was stopping him. One survivor to another. “You can’t save them all.” Matt frowned, and Jan’s hand went to her mouth. “Oh, hon, I’m so so sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Understood.” How could she know the truth? He gave her the best smile he could muster. “See you tomorrow.”
Most of the bystanders had departed now. The cops on duty stayed down the street by their cars, drinking free coffee, diverting what little traffic there was away from the scene until the tow trucks could clear the wreckage.
Matt waited until the silver car was dragged from the deep dent it had made in the taxi, sheet metal harshly scraping pavement. Then, on impulse, following the cop’s instincts that usually served him so well, he circled the wreck to the passenger side.
He saw what he expected.
The passenger airbag had deployed.
Someone had been with the driver. Someone lucky enough to walk away from an accident no one could possibly walk away from.
Matt wondered what it would be like to be that lucky.