Chapter 10

Chapter Ten: What the Rain Heard

Afterward, Lena would remember the crash only in pieces, like photographs dropped on a floor.

The white glare, flooding the windshield until the whole world was blank. The sound of the horn, impossibly long. Tomas's hands wrenching the wheel with a terrible, practiced strength, and the car's heavy body responding, swinging, sliding sideways on the wet road with a low grinding hiss. A scream, high and thin, which she thought at first was her own and later understood was Celeste's. The shriek of metal meeting stone. A slow, sickening lurch, as the world tilted and the wet green trees swung up past the window like the pages of a book being turned too fast.

Then a blow, enormous and dull and soundless, that seemed to come from inside her skull.

Then nothing.

She came back to the sound of rain.

It was the first thing, soft and steady, pattering on metal, close to her ear. Then a smell, wet earth and gasoline and something coppery. She lay quite still, with her cheek against something cold, and wondered, in a dreamy, detached way, why she was not in bed.

Open your eyes.

She did, with great effort. The world swam, doubled, and resolved into a strange sideways landscape. A wet gray sky. A tangle of pine branches. A long scrape of torn earth, and, beyond it, the black underside of a car resting at an impossible angle against a tree.

The car.

Memory came back all at once, with a cold shock, and she tried to sit up.

Pain exploded behind her eyes. White, bright, immense. She cried out and lay back, panting, and put a hand to the side of her head. It came away red. Not a little. Her palm was slick with it, warm and bright and shockingly vivid against the gray.

"Lena!" A voice, somewhere above her. "Lena, can you hear me?"

She turned her head, slowly. Tomas was crouched at the edge of her vision. His uniform jacket was torn. A thick red line ran from his eyebrow down his cheek, and he was holding his left arm against his chest at a strange angle, but his eyes were clear and frightened and fixed on hers.

"Don't move, miss. Please don't move."

"Where..." Her tongue felt thick. "Where's..."

"They got out. Mr. Cross and Miss Marlowe, they got out. I pulled you through the window. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, it was the only way. You were thrown against the door." His voice broke. "The truck drove right off. It never stopped."

"The... truck?"

"Gone. Down the road. I got half the plate." A long, shuddering breath. "Stay still. Help is coming. I called."

She lay back. The rain fell on her face, cool and light. She was lying, she realized, on the wet shoulder of the road, with a folded jacket tucked beneath her head, and not far away stood the ruined car, one wheel still turning slowly in the air. The guardrail stones were scattered like broken teeth. Beyond them, hardly ten feet from the car's crumpled bumper, the world simply ended.

An inch, she thought dimly. Another inch.

Something tugged at the edge of her mind. She moved her hand, with enormous care, to her jacket pocket. The recorder was still there. Its tiny red light was still lit.

She closed her eyes in relief.

She did not know how long she lay there. A few minutes, perhaps. The pain came in waves. Between them there were stretches of numb, dreamy quiet, and in those quiet places, the sounds of the world drifted in and out like radio signals.

A woman's voice, trembling and high. "My hand. Damian, my hand."

"I know. I'm here. Don't look at it."

"It hurts. It hurts so much. I can't feel my fingers."

Lena turned her head, slowly, against the wet stones.

They were standing some twenty feet away, by the other side of the car. Damian had his arm around Celeste's shoulders. His suit jacket was torn, and one side of his face was streaked with dirt, but he stood straight, whole and upright. Celeste was clinging to him. Her cream coat was spattered with mud, and she held her right hand cradled against her chest, wrapped in a wad of what looked like his folded shirt. Blood had soaked through it, bright red against the white.

It was a bad cut. Lena could see that even from where she lay. A long, ragged slash across the palm.

"Damian," she said.

Her voice was a thread. It did not carry over the rain.

"Damian."

He did not turn. Celeste was sobbing now, softly, her face pressed into his chest, and his hand moved over her hair in a slow, soothing circle. Somewhere in the distance, high and thin and rising, a siren began to wail.

"There," he murmured. "Do you hear that? They're coming. You're going to be fine."

"Don't leave me."

"I won't. Never."

Never. The word lodged in Lena's chest, small and bright as a splinter of glass.

"Damian," she said, louder, and this time something in her voice cracked through the rain.

He looked up. His eyes found her across the wet gravel, and for a heartbeat, one long, frozen heartbeat, she saw something move across his face. Shock. Fear. Something that might have been, in another lifetime, love.

Then the siren swelled, and the ambulance swung around the bend in a spray of red and white light, and the moment broke.

There were two paramedics. They moved fast and quiet, a broad, bearded man and a slight woman with a gray braid, and they came across the gravel at a run with their bags in their hands.

"How many injured?"

"Four in the vehicle," Tomas called, from his place at Lena's side. "Driver, me. Two passengers walking. This lady's the worst, she hit her head. She was unconscious at least five minutes. I don't know how long before that."

The woman paramedic was already kneeling beside Lena. She had cool hands and a calm voice. She tilted Lena's chin gently and shone a small light in each eye, and her mouth flattened.

"Pupils uneven," she said, over her shoulder. "Marcus. Head laceration, probable skull involvement. Possible bleed. She needs transport now."

"Copy." The bearded man was already unfolding a stretcher.

"Wait."

Lena had not heard Damian approach. He stood over them, with Celeste at his side, and his voice was quick and hard.

"This woman has a severe hand injury. She's lost a lot of blood. She needs to go first."

The female paramedic looked up. "Sir, we'll assess—"

"She can't feel her fingers. She may have severed a tendon. It could get infected. Look at it."

"Sir." The paramedic's voice stayed even. "I'm looking at a patient with an unequal pupil response and a head wound. This is a priority one. The other lady can be treated en route in the second unit."

"There's no second unit."

"There will be, in twelve minutes. Dispatch is sending one from Halbrook."

"Twelve minutes." Damian's voice sharpened. "Her hand will be ruined in twelve minutes."

"Her hand is bleeding. It is not threatening her life. This woman's brain might be." The paramedic did not raise her voice, but something in it hardened. "Sir, I understand. But I have to ask you to step back."

"Damian," Lena whispered.

She did not know if he heard. He was looking down at her now, and she saw his eyes, dark and conflicted, flicking between her face and Celeste's. For a moment, she thought she saw the man she knew, the man who had stood on a rooftop three years ago and shaken as he said her name.

"It's a head injury," he said slowly. "They always bleed. It looks worse than it is."

"Mr. Cross—"

"She's strong. She'll be fine." He turned toward the paramedic with the flat, decisive air he wore in boardrooms. "We're taking Miss Marlowe first. My employee. I'll cover whatever it costs."

"This is not a question of cost, sir."

"Then it's my decision. She's my responsibility. Lena," and his gaze dropped to her, level and cold, "you'll be all right. You can take care of yourself. It's just a knock on the head. I'll send someone for you."

Just a knock.

Lena stared up at him through a haze of rain and red. She wanted to speak. She wanted, with all the strength she had left, to say his name, to ask, Don't you see me? Do you not see me at all? But her mouth would not shape the words. They dissolved in her throat like salt.

"Sir," said the bearded paramedic, in a strange voice. "I strongly advise—"

"Then advise. And do it in the ambulance." Damian had already taken Celeste's good arm. "Come on, Celeste. Slowly. Lean on me."

"Damian, I can't leave her," Celeste said.

Her voice was soft and trembling, a lovely shaking whisper. She turned back, her wide wet eyes sweeping toward Lena on the ground, and for a moment, as the red lights flashed across her face, she looked the very picture of reluctant sorrow.

"Oh, Lena," she murmured. "I'm so sorry."

And beneath the sorrow, behind the shining tears, she smiled.

It was fast. It was small. It lasted perhaps one second, no longer than the beat of a bird's wing, and nobody saw it but Lena. The corner of that soft mouth lifted, and her eyes held a warm, bright, victorious satisfaction, and then the lashes lowered and the moment was gone.

Oh, Lena thought.

It was not a thought so much as a quiet clear understanding, like frost forming on a window. She planned this.

"Come," Damian said. "Quickly."

They went. The woman paramedic called after them, sharply, uselessly. The bearded man shook his head and said something in a low, furious tone. The doors of the ambulance opened, and Damian handed Celeste up the step as carefully as if she were made of glass, and climbed in after her, and did not look back.

The doors slammed shut.

The siren rose. The red lights swung across the wet pines, and the ambulance reversed in a wide, careful arc and pulled away down the road, its taillights shrinking, shrinking, until the bend swallowed them.

The rain went on falling.

"I'm so sorry, miss," Tomas was saying. His voice was cracked. "I should have refused. I should have turned around at the highway."

"It's all right," Lena tried to say. It came out as a breath.

The paramedic with the gray braid had taken her hand. "Stay with me," she was saying. "What's your name, love? Tell me your name."

"Lena."

"Lena what?"

She struggled. The word was there, just behind her teeth. It was a simple word. She knew it. She had written it on a thousand forms.

"Hartwell," she said.

"Good. Good girl. Do you know where you are?"

"Road."

"What road?"

"I don't..." The pain surged again, a great roaring black wave, and for a moment her vision narrowed to a pinprick of gray. "I don't know. Mountain. I'm cold."

"I know you are. We're going to get you warm."

"Where's... where's Damian?"

The paramedic's eyes flicked to her partner. Something unspoken passed between them, and Lena saw, with faint, distant clarity, the shape of a shared outrage.

"He's gone ahead," the woman said gently. "He'll meet you there."

He's gone ahead.

They were lifting her. The world lurched. A strap tightened over her chest. Rain fell across her face in cold bright beads, and above her, in a small ragged gap between the pines, the sky was the color of pewter, quite empty and quite calm. She thought, drowsily, that it was very beautiful.

Tomas was saying something, in a low voice, over and over. A prayer, or an apology.

The second ambulance was coming. She could hear it far below, a thin, sweet, climbing note. It was twelve minutes late. It had always been going to be twelve minutes late.

And in the last dim gap before her eyes slid shut, one more fact surfaced, small and exact, like a pebble floating up through deep water. The recorder. The little red light. She had not turned it off. She had not turned it off, and it had been lying against her ribs the whole time, in the pocket of her jacket, under the rain.

It had heard everything.

Good, she thought, and it was her last clear thought. Let it keep listening.

Then the dark came up, soft as wool, and took her under.

End of Chapter Ten