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Maren Kane could barely make out the yellow dividing line a few feet in front of her through the thick gray valley fog. She felt her shoulders tense as she gripped the steering wheel, unsure which direction the narrow country highway would take next. The speed limit sign at “50” in reflective paint seemed a cruel joke.
Maren was in her fourth year as chief lobbyist at Ecobabe Inc., a start-up specializing in modern, environmentally friendly toys and games without screens—child-size entertainment that didn’t need to be plugged in. She was late to a breakfast fundraiser with a local legislator in Clarksburg, fourteen miles south of her home in Sacramento.
A headache was building behind her eyes. Heavy mist wrapped the windshield like layers of gauze, rendering the wipers useless. Then she saw two glowing red spots ahead of her in the gloom—brake lights. Relieved at having someone else to rely upon to navigate, Maren released one hand from the wheel and cranked up the heat. It was forty-eight degrees outside and her old VW Beetle lacked insulation.
She had just begun to relax when the red lights that had briefly been her guide rose vertically in the air and vanished. No screeching, no crashing sounds. Just floating lights in space, then nothing. Maren braked, straining to see where the lead car might have gone.
Able to make out a yellow mile marker on the far side of the road—clear evidence of solid ground—she headed toward it, her Beetle coming to rest crookedly on the opposite shoulder. Heart pumping, she pulled on her coat, pushed the door open, and stepped out onto the blank landscape. Her long skirt already felt damp, her dark thick hair heavy against her neck. But her boots provided steady purchase on the slippery concrete.
Crossing, she could see the sudden turn the driver had missed, continuing instead straight off the unguarded edge of the road. The white sedan lay upside down in a deep drainage ditch full from recent rains. Only the tires and bottom half were visible above the waterline, like an albino turtle stuck on its back.
Her chest constricted as she imagined what the driver must be feeling trapped inside—assuming he or she could feel anything. She stretched her neck side to side, quickly, as though preparing for a race. Maren was on her school swim team as a kid and could still beat the clock at the pool.
Removing her boots and jacket, she sat down on the edge of the ditch and lowered herself feet first into the freezing, dirty water. It smelled agricultural and industrial at the same time, of horses, cows, and solvent. She couldn’t quite touch bottom. Stroking head-up until even with the car, she inhaled deeply and went under.
Maren could see three figures: the driver in front and two small children in back. All suspended, inverted—feet up, heads down—held in by their seat belts as water slowly filled the vehicle through gaps in the metal, the windows tightly closed. A toddler, her fine brown hair in pink-ribboned pigtails, kicked and struggled against the restraints, crying frantically. A boy next to her, no more than five or six, was surprisingly stoic, reaching out his hand to pat his baby sister’s arm.
The elderly woman behind the wheel appeared unconscious, eyes closed and mouth slack. Her arms hung loosely in midair, the tips of her fingers submerged an inch deep in water pooling on the car’s ceiling, which now served as its floor.
Maren tried both front and back door handles. They were locked. The boy’s eyes widened and his mouth opened at the mermaid-like apparition, Maren’s face close to the glass, her dark curly hair flowing with the current.
Gasping for air, she surfaced in time to see a man striding across the road, out of the fog. Tall, with short dark hair and black-framed glasses, he wore a white dress shirt, red tie, and charcoal-gray suit pants—a lawyer or accountant who had also stopped to help. Then she noticed the large handgun he was holding by his side.
Breaking into a jog, the man pulled off his glasses and dropped them to the pavement, then jumped into the overflowing drainage ditch, splashing gritty water in her face.
Is he planning to kill the car?
Maren submerged to find he had the gun flush against the front side window, angled up toward the floor. He pulled the trigger, the sound muffled, then repeated the process on the back window, aiming carefully above the young passengers’ feet. The toddler’s cries escalated to shrieks, audible even underwater.
On the plus side, the man had opened an escape route by blasting out the glass. But the benefits were sure to be short-lived as water rushed into the car, threatening to envelop the occupants, helpless in their seats.
Maren surfaced, filled her lungs with air, and dove down hard, swimming into the hull of the vehicle. She ignored the needlelike jabs on her right arm as she scraped across broken glass atop the door.
She focused on working the booster seat clasp open for the older child as water rose rapidly around them. On the other side, the man wielded a large bowie knife to cut the webbed straps on the girl’s car seat.
Maren mimed to the boy to take a deep breath. He complied as she pulled him to her, kicking against the current. As they broke the surface, he coughed violently. She retrieved her coat from below the fog and wrapped it around the shaking child. Although pale, he stopped coughing and seemed to be breathing regularly.
The man, his dress shoes sloshing and water dripping from his hair and clothes, appeared with the toddler. A muscular chest and well-defined arms clearly visible through his soaked shirt caused Maren to revise her earlier assessment of his profession—this was no desk jockey. She wondered if he might be an off-duty police officer or firefighter.
The girl was bawling loudly. When she saw her brother she tried to wriggle out of the man’s arms, her round face getting redder as she gathered steam.
Maren scooped up the man’s glasses as he was about to step on them. He freed one hand to accept them, then gestured with his chin toward the fog-shrouded image of a large blue Ranger ahead by the side of the road, engine rumbling, lights on, and heater blasting.
“Please, get in the truck,” he said. “We have to take the kids into town for medical care.” His voice was calm despite the writhing girl in his charge.
He doesn’t sound like a weapons dealer, Maren thought. Although traveling with a handgun and bowie knife does raise questions.
She remembered the woman.
“What about the driver?” she mouthed, not wanting the children to hear.
He shook his head.
She folded her lips tightly at the realization the woman hadn’t made it.
The older child sensed something in the wordless exchange.
“I want Grandma,” he said, looking up at Maren with clear brown eyes and a deep frown, still shivering despite the jacket.
“We’ll come back for her,” Maren said, hating what that really meant, offering what she hoped would be true to soften it. “She would want us to get you somewhere warm.” As she spoke she became aware of a sensation of light-headedness and weakness, the aftermath of the excess adrenaline she’d fired off in the rescue. Her arms threatened to give way under the weight of the boy.
The man was already at the truck, the toddler wailing loudly.
Maren adjusted the boy more firmly against her hip, ignoring the resulting strain, and willed her legs to carry them across the road.
As she opened the passenger door, the little girl let out a sob of relief at the sight of her brother. Maren set him on the bench seat of the truck. His sister crawled onto his lap, her thumb in her mouth as she laid her head against his small chest.
The interior of the truck smelled like mint and something sweeter. Although it didn’t look new, it was spotless—not a speck of dust in the nooks and crannies of the dashboard. The only thing out of place was a donut box askew on the floor. Maren lifted and opened it to give the girl a chocolate-covered donut. The child’s crying slowed as she took a tentative bite, then another, alternately whimpering and chewing. The boy refused the treat. With his arms wrapped tightly around his sister, he focused his eyes on the water in the distance. Maren felt a chill as she wondered whether the intensity of the young boy’s stare meant he was waiting for his grandma, or saying good-bye.
As she climbed in next to the children, she noticed in the extended cab on the floor behind the driver’s side a new-looking briefcase. It was emblazoned in gold with the initials “AJ” above an imprint of the official California State seal.