Tara hasn’t seen the image yet, but she has an idea of what the woman with the knife is looking at. In fact, she’s pretty sure she knows exactly what it is.
Andrea Carter is moving toward her, and Shannon steps protectively between them, and then the knife is nearly at her throat, the movement so swift and sudden that Tara scarcely registers the fact that her hand twitches again.
Carter speaks with the blade pressed against Shannon’s neck.
“There’s a way to do this without your sister dying,” Carter says. “But you need to cooperate.”
Shannon gives a strange, high laugh that surprises Tara as much as it apparently surprises Carter.
“Step back,” Carter says, “and shut up.”
Please listen, Tara urges silently. Do what she says, because I can answer her next question, I already did, I told you what he took pictures of, and then he was dead, so I know he didn’t take any more. I can answer her questions, and she will leave.
But will she leave? As Shannon moves away, taking two steps toward the foot of the bed, Tara watches Carter and is not so sure. If Tara doesn’t answer her questions, then they both have to die. But if she does…what changes? Is there really any way this woman is leaving them alive?
“Show Tara the phone,” Shannon says, and she looks at Tara for the first time, and there’s a knowingness to the gaze. Tara thinks, I am right about what’s there, and Shannon remembers what I said.
The woman turns the phone display to her then, and, sure enough, there he is: Hobo.
“What is the dog’s name?” the woman asks.
Tara looks at Shannon. Flicks her eyes up once. Yes, tell her. What is the point in protecting this? Saving our lives, that’s the point. But Tara’s instinct says that talking is better. It’s a strange instinct for a woman who can’t speak, and yet there it is.
“What does that mean?” Carter asks. “The way she looked at you. Her eyes moved up. That’s a yes. What is she saying yes to?”
Her voice tightens with anger, and Tara is terrified of what will happen if Shannon lies or resists, but for once, she doesn’t.
“She’s saying yes to me because she wants me to tell you who the dog is,” Shannon says.
“You know?”
Shannon nods.
“Say it.”
“Hobo,” Shannon says, once again in a loud voice, but this time the woman doesn’t tell her to lower it. She just stares at her as if she’s making a very dangerous joke.
“Hobo.”
Shannon nods again.
“How do you know that?”
“Because she told me. Earlier. When the doctor and I were asking her about her memories of the accident. Before it happened, Oltamu took a picture of her and a picture of Hobo.”
Andrea Carter eyes Shannon, then Tara. She sees either no indication of a lie or no reason for them to lie. She flips the phone over in her hand, and taps on it with her thumb.
“Doesn’t work,” she says, but her voice is troubled and she keeps staring at the screen.
“I think,” Shannon says cautiously, “that’s because you’ll need the dog’s eyes.”
The woman looks at Shannon as if she wouldn’t mind gutting her with that knife right here. Suddenly, Tara has a terrible fear for Dr. Pine. Surely she wouldn’t have killed him in a hospital.
But where is he?
Dead, she thinks. The fear turns into a certainty, and that grows into a certainty over how this will end. She and Shannon will die too. All for something Tara will never understand, all for whatever is on this stranger’s phone. Damn it, don’t they at least deserve to know what they’re dying for?
“That’s how it worked with her,” Shannon says. “Facial recognition first, then name.”
The woman looks at the display again, and Tara thinks she must be seeing a message that confirms this, because she seems even more frustrated by the device than by Shannon.
“That’s insane,” she says. “For a dog? It won’t work. The technology doesn’t exist.”
“Actually,” Shannon says, “they use it on pet doors. I saw an ad for one.”
“I don’t have time for this bullshit. You don’t have time to do this.”
“Google it,” Shannon says. “You can buy pet doors that open with facial recognition. I don’t know why. To keep out raccoons or whatever, I have no idea. But I am telling you, the way it worked with her was to get the facial-recognition lock first, then put in the name. The dog is named Hobo. I am positive.”
They stare each other down for a moment. Finally Andrea Carter says, “Where is the dog?”
“He was up there by the bridge. Where Oltamu died. She says he is a stray.”
“You’re lying,” Carter says, but it’s more hopeful than forceful.
“Ask her,” Shannon says.
Carter turns to Tara. “Is she lying?”
Tara flicks her eyes twice. No, Shannon isn’t lying.
Carter pauses, seems to fight down building rage, and then says, “Will the dog be up there? Is he easy to find?”
Hobo is not particularly easy to find, and he certainly won’t be for a stranger, but Tara sees more hope for them in that lie than in the truth, so she gives one flick—yes.
“He took a picture of you and asked for a nickname,” Carter says. “And then he took a picture of the dog and asked for the dog’s name?”
One flick. Yes. Growing more certain with each answer that she’s sealing their fates, but not seeing any way out. The world is an extension of her body now—a trap with no escape.
“Was that the last picture he took?” Carter asks.
Tara’s thumb jerks. Carter and Shannon both see this.
“What does that mean?” Carter asks warily.
“Nothing. It’s a spasm.”
But Shannon is wrong. That thumb twitch means everything. It means the girl fighting against the current has found the green-gold waters again, the secret channel where the water rotates and then the current becomes friend and not foe. It is so much more than a spasm. It is Tara coming back. Finding her way through dark halls and riding dark waters, chasing thin bands of light.
“Just use your eyes this time. Was that the last picture he took?” Carter repeats.
Tara sees it then, as if the last twitch of her thumb were a courier arriving with critical news, a message Tara should have understood already: She has power here. She has control of the situation in a way none of them suspect she does.
Yes, she is motionless and mute, locked in. But now she recognizes the strength in this. The only move that can save them will come because of her condition. She can buy Shannon time, at least. She can do that much.
She flicks her eyes twice, telling this awful woman, No, it was not the last picture he took.
Tara can’t do many things, but she can still think, and she understands the dilemma she’s placing the woman with the knife in now—the lie is worth the risk, because Tara knows what’s coming.
Sure enough, the question arrives like a hanging curveball, belt-high.
“Did he take another one of you?” Carter says.
One flick, and Tara swats it out of the park.
Yes, she lies, he took one more of me. And you know what that means, bitch? You can’t kill me yet. You’ll need my eyes again. Think about it. Won’t work with a dead face. Or at least, you’re not sure that it will. And you can’t take me to Hammel with you, so that means you’ve got to come back to find me, dead or alive. I’ll be harder to find if I’m dead, and you’ll have to trust that the phone will recognize my face if I am. I don’t think it will.
There’s a pause that seems endless but that can’t be more than five seconds. Those seconds feel like the countdown before an explosion, though. The crescent-moon blade glimmers, Andrea Carter stands with every muscle taut, and Shannon looks as paralyzed as Tara.
“Here’s how we’re going to handle this,” Carter says at last. “Shannon and I are going for a ride. Together. We will find the dog and test your story, Tara. If it works, and no one follows us, then Shannon will drive back to you. If it doesn’t, or if you somehow send someone after us? Well, I suppose you’ll have plenty of time to think about that in the days to come.”
Shannon is looking at Tara with an expression that Tara remembers well—quiet and restrained, thoughtful. A quiet Shannon is something to worry about, because on the rare occasions that she swallows her anger and retreats, she is lost to thoughts of settling the score. This is good, because it means she knows that Tara lied and that the phone will prove that. Tara bought her time, but Shannon will be alone when the lie is discovered.
“All right,” Andrea Carter says, and the blade disappears into a black handle that vanishes into her hand. “Then we’ll ride, Shannon. You’d better hope your sister understands the stakes. People will ask her questions about me. Her answers are going to decide your life.”
Shannon doesn’t respond to that. She just looks at Tara.
“You know how much I love you?” she says.
Almost too late, Tara remembers to look upward once.
Shannon nods and turns away. She opens the door and steps out with Andrea Carter walking just behind her, the knife not visible but not far away.