February 12, 2019
There’s so much warmth. Agnes’s head lolls on the car seat. She’s sitting sideways in the back, her torn hand gripping a towel, left leg stretched out in front of her, useless and throbbing, and she just wants to sleep, to fall back into oblivion, but they won’t let her.
“Keep your hand above your heart,” Ingvar reminds her.
She tries to get it up higher, but her body isn’t cooperating, and they’re rocketing so fast down the slick highway, the truck won’t stop swerving, rattling her, that she can’t quite raise the arm. She settles for resting the hand against her chest.
A thick line of wind and sleet crashes against the side of the truck and Ingvar, swearing with the effort, his bandaged hand grappling at the wheel, fights against the current pushing them side to side. “Where,” Agnes says, her tongue swollen in her mouth, making her sound like someone completely new, “are we going?”
“Reykjavík,” Ingvar says. “Hospital.”
Agnes tries to keep her eyes open. To watch as the world outside, tumultuous and terrifying, attacks the truck and as Ingvar attacks back. As though observing it will help, will keep the dangers at bay. But she’s so tired.
Her eyes close. Her head rocks forward, dangling in the air. She hears, distantly, Ingvar’s voice commanding her to stay awake.
It’s an effort, more than she thought herself capable of, more demanding than stabbing a man, to bring her head back up.
There’s a pressure on her good leg. It’s a hand. Ása’s hand. Agnes would know it anywhere. Those swollen fingers will haunt her forever. She follows the thin arm upward to the hollow eyes. Ása’s twisted around in the passenger seat, body swaying with the movements of the truck.
“It won’t be long,” Ása tells her. “But you can’t sleep. It helps to talk.” Her voice breaks. “That’s what I did.”
The truck fishtails around a curve, but Ingvar doesn’t slow down. There’s only moving forward.
“What about Thor?” Agnes asks. She had caught a glimpse of the man’s inert body on the floor, moaning, but then Ingvar had gathered her up in his arms and she’d blacked out. Had woken up here, tucked in the backseat. “Did you leave him alone?”
There’s a flash of blue eyes in the rearview mirror, then they’re gone. “I called the police. They’ll get him.”
Ása’s hand snakes its way into Agnes’s free one. She squeezes. Agnes returns the pressure.
The truck bounces over a rise. Pebbles spray over its metal shell. Then they’re tilting downward, skating the edges of the coast. She doesn’t know how long they’ve been driving for, or how much longer it’ll take them to get to the hospital. She can think only of the present moment, of time passing by in nearly imperceptible increments. Or—that’s what she’d like to think. But there’s the man. The man who took everything from her family. Who kidnapped Ása. Who tried to kill her.
While they race through the storm, Agnes starts to speak. She tells them everything, about finding the phone, finding Ása, about Thor and Marie and the baby. And it feels like bleeding.