Twitch? You told him your nickname was Twitch?”
Shannon seems either disbelieving or disturbed. Tara—fighting for patience because Shannon doesn’t understand how hard it is to keep battling this current, to keep the channel open, commanding her eyes to answer properly even while her own mind races with unanswered questions that she can’t voice—gives one flick of the eyes. Yes, Twitch.
“If the facial recognition worked,” Shannon says, “maybe this will too.”
Her voice is doubtful but she turns her attention to the phone and taps the name into the display. She’s holding her breath.
“It worked,” Shannon says, and Tara adds this to her growing collection of points of light. Everything is progress right now. Everything is trending the right way.
Tara and Shannon are so focused on each other that neither one notices she’s no longer alone in the room.
Then Andrea Carter says, “I’ll need to see that.”
How long she’s been standing there, Tara has no idea, but it can’t have been long. Shannon has her back to the door, but Tara thinks she would have glanced right eventually. Carter’s face is a hostile mask. Apparently she feels Shannon has held her at bay long enough. Dr. Pine isn’t with her.
Shannon rises from the stool, lowering Oltamu’s phone and pressing it against her leg.
“Do you mind?” Shannon says. “I’d asked for just a little bit of privacy. If you could just give me a few more…”
Tara is watching Shannon, so she doesn’t understand why her voice trails off, why her eyes go wide. Then Tara looks back at Andrea Carter and sees the knife.
It’s a small knife but it seems to be all blade, a curved piece of metal with a razor edge, a crescent-moon-shaped killing tool. She’s holding it in her right hand, down against her leg, in a posture that mirrors Shannon’s with the phone.
“You need to be very quiet,” Carter says, “and you need to give me that.”
She advances with her eyes on Shannon, her movements sleek as a panther. Tara wants to scream but can’t; Shannon could and won’t. In fact, Shannon’s face seems oddly unsurprised, as if she’s been anticipating something like this. “What’s your real name?” she says.
Carter is only a stride from her now, and she moves the knife out and to the side, the curved blade glistening, and extends her left hand, palm up. “The phone.”
Shannon doesn’t hesitate, and Tara is relieved. There’s something in this woman’s eyes that promises violence. Her eyes remind Tara of the eyes of the boy in the black hat. The hat that is now on Shannon’s head. They must belong together, this woman and the boy. But why, oh, why is Shannon wearing the hat?