Vancouver, East Side
Two hours after driving her overnight bag through the glass door, Linda Patterson was part of a slow-moving crowd on Hastings Street. People, some injured and bloody-faced, made their way around the abandoned vehicles and ruptures in the road. Many moved like they were hypnotized, following the crowd listlessly, not speaking. A crew from a solitary fire engine waged war on flames engulfing a low-rise building. An elderly couple on the third floor clung to the railing of a deck that listed at a precarious angle. Their pleas for help barely registered as Linda walked past.
She stared at the two teenaged girls in front of her. They wore tiny halter-tops, brief shorts, and flip-flops. As they sauntered along, flaunting their taut young bodies, they passed a joint back and forth. They laughed and pointed at things as if they were at a sideshow. The sticky smell of marijuana trailed on the air behind them. One girl pushed a bicycle.
Linda walked a little faster. “May I borrow your bike?” she asked.
The bike owner tossed back her light brown bangs, the same way Rowan Morgan did. Linda tried to conceal her dislike of the gesture, of teenaged girls in general. The girl looked at her friend and smirked. “Borrow?” she said with heavy sarcasm. “Like you’re going to give it back to me in five minutes?”
Linda could only think of one thing, getting to Jacob. Cars couldn’t travel these congested streets. It would take hours to walk home. She needed that bike. “Do you want to sell it?” she asked.
“I might,” the girl said. “How much you got?”
Linda rifled through her wallet. “One hundred and twenty dollars?”
“You’re joking, right?” The girl rolled her eyes. She and her friend turned to go, the same way Rowan had walked away the day before when Linda had tried to explain the reasons Jacob shouldn’t go into the forest. Stifling her rising temper, Linda studied her hands, at the gifts from her husband.
“How about my watch? It’s a Cartier. Worth thousands.” She hoped she didn’t sound as desperate as she felt.
The girl’s friend pushed the long black hair off her face and lifted Linda’s wrist. “Watches are for oldsters. But that rock looks fine.” She grinned slyly and passed Linda’s hand to Bicycle Girl for closer inspection. Linda cringed. The two-carat diamond was the most valuable thing she owned.
“Are you kidding? It’s a zircon and probably not worth as much as your flip-flops. What about my necklace? These are real diamonds and worth a fortune. Or my bracelets?” Linda yanked the gold bangles off her wrists. “Eighteen-carat, worth as much as the necklace. Take the necklace and the bracelets?”
Bicycle Girl scowled. “Nope. The ring. That or I keep the bike.”
Linda’s chest pounded as she wrestled the ring off her finger. She dropped it in the girl’s hand and snatched the bike away. When she jumped on it, BMX skills from her childhood erupted deep in her brain. She navigated the mangled streets and dense crowds with fierce concentration, ignoring the misery around her. She couldn’t help anyone; her job was to get home, to find Jacob.
As the crowd turned the corner to the last approach to the Ironworkers’ Memorial Bridge, it came to a near standstill. Linda dismounted and nudged the bike forward, around the stragglers and the family groups. People surged and shifted in front of four police officers who stood on the hoods and roofs or their cruisers. One young cop spoke into a megaphone. “Stay back. The bridge isn’t safe.” Even from a distance, Linda heard the worry in his voice. He shouted into his bullhorn. “Engineers have to certify the soundness of the bridge before anyone crosses.”
The ground started to shake again. A single howl rose from a thousand throats. The policeman fell from his perch. The tremor stopped and the mob roared. The crowd boiled forward and in the next second Linda saw two lightweight traffic barriers being thrown over the side of the bridge. She pushed forward, past a father with two distraught toddlers, past an old woman with a cane, past a troop of office workers wearing dust masks.
With energy she hadn’t felt since adolescence, she forced her way to the front of the shoving horde. She swung her leg over the bike and rode with the fury of a woman possessed.