Chapter 8 - The Race Through the Dark
The storm was a wall of black water sweeping across the state. Wind whipped off the Catskill Mountains, tearing branches from ancient oaks and hurling sheets of rain against the windshield of Grant's Mercedes SUV.
Every flight had been grounded out of Westchester County Airport due to severe low-altitude wind shear. The state police had issued high-wind warnings across the New York State Thruway.
Grant drove like a man possessed.
He did not look at the speedometer as it climbed past ninety miles an hour. His knuckles were bone-white on the steering wheel, his jaw clenched so hard a muscle twitched violently in his cheek. Tears blurred his vision, but he wiped them away furiously with the back of his hand.
"Please," he prayed out loud, a man who had never believed in anything beyond his own will, begging the darkness of the highway. "Take the buildings. Take the money. Take my life, take everything I own, but let them live. God, let them live."
For three and a half hours, he battled the storm through the winding mountain roads. The wipers slapped frantically against the glass. Twice, the heavy vehicle hydroplaned across the asphalt, but Grant corrected the slide with desperate precision, refusing to slow down.
Every memory of his marriage flashed before him like a reel of indictments. He remembered Hannah standing at the stove, humming while she cooked dinner for his parents. He remembered her rubbing her swollen belly in the middle of the night, smiling in the moonlight while he pretended to be asleep so he wouldn't have to talk about taking paternity leave. He remembered her soft, wounded eyes on the night she discovered the reservation.
Take her on our honeymoon.
She hadn't said it with spite. She had said it with the infinite exhaustion of a woman who had given up on being saved.
At 2:15 AM, the glowing green signs for Cooperstown emerged through the torrential mist. Grant tore down the exit ramp, his brakes screaming as he rounded the sharp curve into the rural hospital’s emergency parking bay.
May you like
He abandoned the car with the engine running and the driver's door swinging wide in the wind. He sprinted through the automatic sliding doors into the brightly lit hospital corridor, drenched to the skin, his waterlogged coat trailing water across the sterile vinyl floor.
"Hannah Whitmore!" he bellowed, startling the triage receptionist. "Where is Hannah Whitmore?"
Related Stories
