Page 40 of The Undead

“No more exertion?” I repeated wistfully. She put the key in the ignition and blew me a kiss.

“Unnecessary exertion. I have to be on top.”

That opened up a catalogue of interesting topics that rapidly degenerated into laughter as Maggie backed out and led Carl down the street toward the restaurant.

Thank you, God. I was famished.

“I got a call from Nick this morning.”

“Yeah?” I asked neutrally. “What does he want?”

“You’re not dumb, Mike, you know what he wants. He told me you had something going with some other woman, but I wasn’t about to believe it. Relax, Mikey.” Her eyes flicked to me, and a frown narrowed them. “You’re pretty pissed about it, aren’t you?”

“Shouldn’t I be?” I asked. “Jesus, he said I was sleeping around? That asshole. Thatasshole!”

I was too mad to think about it. I stared out the window, clenching my jaw until the muscles ached. Maggie turned the Bronco the back way, which would take us over the overpass by the park. I liked to go this way, but today the scenery was red-tinted from my anger. The spillway was running high this time of year, maybe ten feet deep of hissing spray and runoff cascading over concrete blocks. The bike route ran over the spillway, just feet away from the violent crash of water; I hadn’t been biking in so long, since—since the last time Maggie and I had taken the time to do that together.

A long, long time.

“If he’s lying about you to me, what the hell is he saying about me?” Maggie asked. Her face was still and blank, her voice too even. She already knew, or suspected.

“He admitted—he said—” I floundered like a fish. “Maggie, I thoughtyouwere admitting it a little while ago! He said you and he had a thing going for two years—”

“What!” Maggie’s hands tightened whitely on the steering wheel, but her eyes were the worst, wide disbelieving blue eyes that for one long second flashed to me like the eyes of a betrayed child. “That fucking bastard. And youbelievedhim, didn’t you? Isn’t that why you’ve been such a lunatic? My God, Mike, I didn’t believe it about you!”

She was driving faster, spurred on by adrenaline and anger, radiating waves of pain and rage. I felt the chasm opening again beneath us and struggled to keep my hold on her.

“Baby, I love you. Why do you think I’ve been so damned jealous? The man came in my office and told me to my face he was fucking you, what am I supposed to think? Why would he say it?”

“Because he wanted me free. He thought—” Maggie shook her head. The rage drained out of her, suddenly, replaced with razor-edged sadness. “He thought I’d love him if I weren’t already married to you. Oh, God, I never thought he’d do this to us.”

“Then what were we talking about?” I asked curiously. Her dark blue eyes flashed over to meet mine.

“You remember what happened with Angelo in the hospital. When I got up to take a look at Angelo’s room that night, I saw Nick standing guard outside. And Nick took a walk, quite deliberately, just in time for a tall kid wearing a lab coat to go in unnoticed. I think he and some buddy of his got rid of Angelo before Angelo could spill the beans on Nick’s little side trips from the straight and narrow.”

“You mean he’s taking bribes?” I asked. She shrugged.

“I wish I knew what the hell he was doing. I just know bits and pieces, you know, like drugs that end up missing and cash that seems to vanish into thin air. And a bunch of dealers who never get caught because they always know what’s going on as soon as we do.” Maggie reached over and took my hand. “I can’t believe you thought I was screwing him. You idiot.”

The chasm shrank and closed. I touched her fingers to my Ups in silent salute. She curled them around my cheek and smiled, a warm embrace that was the Maggie I’d lost so many years ago. The hard defensive shell was gone, for these few precious seconds, and I could feel the stab of a joy so strong it was almost agony.

“I love you,” she whispered, velvet warm lips moving against my soul. I wanted to kiss her more badly than I’d wanted anything in a very long time.

“Screw dinner. Let’s go home,” I said. She smiled again, pulling my heart into my throat. I felt another absurd urge to weep, so I reached forward to fumble with the stereo controls.

The light ahead turned red. I heard a murmur like a fountain that quickly grew to a rushing roar, and realized that we were on the overpass above the spillway. The lake runoff cascaded into a waterfall there, breaking over a series of concrete spillbreaks, down into a deep gully. The gully was normally pretty shallow, but this time of year after an exceptionally wet summer it was running pretty deep. I turned casually—and carefully—to look at the spillway as Maggie hit the brakes to slow for the light.

I saw the oncoming black Jaguar out of the corner of my eye, way too late to say anything. Maggie had already seen it as it lazily drifted over the line on the other side of the light, sped up, and shot toward us like sleek black death on wheels. Christ, I thought frozenly, as I watched it settle in right on target. The guy behind the wheel was just a kid, mouth hanging stupidly open, one hand gripped around a bottle he was in the act of lowering from his mouth. He looked confused and harmless, just another goddamn drunk, except that this one was heading for us at forty-five miles an hour.

Maggie reacted faster than I could think. The brakes grabbed, then released with a wrench. The back wheels started a slide on the wet pavement; Maggie fought it with a practiced wrench of the wheel. I grabbed for the handhold above the door as momentum tried to shove me through the windshield and Maggie tried to do the impossible in that one slender click of a second that might save our lives. If he’d just react, veer just a little, we could still—

Maggie’s lips parted in a soundless gasp. It was one of those odd moments of knowledge, like when you look at the phone and know it’s going to ring, or you know that the man standing at the end of the hall is there to tell you the bad news—it came to me in a cold emotionless moment of utter clarity.

The Jag wasn’t going to veer. We were going to crash, and all of Maggie’s skill couldn’t stop it.

The world outside the truck turned as we spun, an adrenaline-slowed whirl that came in little dear freeze-frames of vision. I reached over to brace Maggie, and our fingers locked as the truck completed its lazy spiral. The impact was strangely painless, an overwhelmingly violent slap that turned my vision black as the sound of tearing metal fell around us.

This wasn’t real. I was absurdly reminded of the night at the fair, rides that had tossed me harmlessly from one side to the other to the delighted shrieks of teenagers.

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