A text from her was waiting for him.
Wishing you a safe landing. Dr. LaRoy’s office called me in this am. No appt-wouldn’t say why. Have to scramble. Good news maybe??? Talk later.
Love C.
Bowen responded.
Good landing. Good trip. Good luck with doc-any word?
He waited several minutes.
When no response came he figured Claire was driving, or with the doctor.
After placing his bag in the rear he got into his SUV. Nothing was out of place. No disturbed maps, take-out wrappers or filthy commuter cups. It was spotless, showroom clean and still smelled new. Bowen insisted on order. The leather seats squeaked as he buckled up. He flipped on the radio and listened to traffic conditions, then decided to take Ventura to the 101, rather than swinging over to the 5.
Joining the freeway traffic, he considered Claire’s text to him. He was hopeful her sudden call to see Dr. LaRoy would result in good news. How many times had they had their hopes raised only to be disappointed? It was not fair to Claire. It hurt him to see her anguish. She ached to have a baby, he wanted one, too, for her. It had cost them thousands, but he didn’t care. He loved her and would do anything for her. He didn’t want to lose what he had with her, the way he’d lost what he’d had with his first wife.
Cynthia.
Like Claire, Cynthia was beautiful and so giving. In his quieter moments he still thought of her. They had been so in love. At that time he was flying commercial, his schedule was brutal and he was rarely home. Cynthia began to change. She complained, grew jealous and started imagining terrible things.
It shouldn’t have ended the way it did, but they couldn’t continue and that was that. Why dwell on it? Sometimes, even after all these years, he’d felt something was unresolved and wished he could talk to Cynthia, to tell her he was sorry about the way it had turned out for them. But he had a new life now, a good life, and you can’t go back in time.
Bowen left Ventura and got on the 101 southbound. There was more traffic, but it was moving at a good speed. He’d gone less than half a mile when something blue rocketed by in the left lane, startling him.
He cursed.
The thing must’ve been doing one-thirty. Looked like a pickup truck. He couldn’t tell the model as it knifed through the lanes ahead, leaving a wake of brake lights and angry horns.
That idiot’s going to kill somebody.
The distraction passed, and with it, Cynthia faded from his mind.
He repositioned his grip on the wheel, maintained a safe speed as his thoughts had drifted back to the first time he’d met Claire. The scene with her and her husband. Bowen shook his head slowly until the images of that day dissipated. Since that time all he’d wanted to do was protect Claire, let nothing hurt her again. But how do I protect her from heartbreak-from forces that are beyond my control?
He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. He was forty-five, and some days he couldn’t see what Claire told him she’d seen and liked: The small crinkles around his eyes, his chiseled jaw, his thick salt-and-pepper hair. He was six-one, about one-eighty. His workouts gave him an athletic build. But he didn’t see the strong, decisive, capable, kind man that Claire saw. He saw a man who’d failed too many times, a man constantly at war with himself, a man unworthy of her.
At times he would steal glimpses of her when they were at home, or while he waited for her at her office. He liked how her hair curtained over her eyes when she studied her notes, or the way she slid her small silver cross back and forth on her necklace chain when she was on the phone with a patient. She was devoted to them-compassionate and caring, never allowing her own heartache to interfere.
He didn’t deserve her.
As he drove, Bowen massaged his temple. A million things rushed through his head. He was tired from the flight and stressed over those rumors of looming cutbacks at the company.
He couldn’t go back to commercial. He couldn’t face those hours again and that kind of strain at home. He just couldn’t. Look at the toll it had taken with Cynthia. He couldn’t go through that with Claire.
But that was the least of his worries.
There was more, much more.
The darkness is back, stirring again.
It had been triggered by Claire when she started taking serious steps to have a baby, because in a corner of his heart he knew that would change everything.
The darkness is taking over. Sometimes at night, I feel I-
The chaos of horns and screeching tires jerked his concentration to the freeway where traffic ahead had come to a standstill.
6
Los Angeles, California
Robert stopped and got out of his SUV, joining other drivers craning their necks at the heaps of mangled metal several car lengths away.
A boy, about twelve, staggered between the stopped cars toward him. The kid’s face glistened with crimson scrapes. His T-shirt with a T-Rex on it was torn, smeared with blood. Somewhere a woman was screaming.
“Por favor ayuda!” The boy’s eyes, wide with shock, found Bowen’s and he switched to English. “My mother, my sister, please, mister, they will die. Please save them!”
Robert’s mind raced.
“Por favor ayuda!” the boy pleaded again before he collapsed into the arms of a well-dressed woman who’d stepped from a Mercedes. She wrapped her Realtor’s jacket around him as he sobbed, “Please! My mother…my sister…they’ll die. Please, mister!”
Bowen tore off his tie and ran to the carnage.
Some motorists were calling 9-1-1 while others, uncertain what to do, stood helpless. Black smoke now curled from the wreckage.
Bowen counted three vehicles: a pickup that appeared to be a landscaper’s truck was turned around, its front smashed and air bags depleted. Mowers, tillers, tools and supplies were scattered. He saw a small green car that had flipped onto its roof. Then he saw a van; it was on its side with its hood folded open and its engine on fire. A man was climbing out of the van’s driver’s side. Blood oozed from his mouth as he gritted in pain. Bowen got hold of his arm and got him to the ground.
“I’ve got a first aid kit,” said a motorist wearing a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt who’d stepped forward to help.
When Bowen turned to the inverted car, something splashed at his feet. He looked down to a widening puddle with the telltale rainbow film and smelled the fumes. Fuel cans from the landscaper’s truck had ruptured, spilling gasoline everywhere around the overturned car, pooling in spots. Bowen glanced at the flames licking from the van’s engine a few feet from the car.
The fire was growing.
His stomach lurched. He saw a hand reaching from the car and heard a woman crying softly as someone shouted at him, “Get out of there, man! There’s too much gas, it’s going to blow! Back off! Get out!”
He ignored the warning and hurried to the driver’s side of the car. He dropped to his hands and knees. Everything had been unfolding with dizzying speed, but it slowed the instant he saw the woman.
She was upside down. Her hands and arms hung to the ground. The air bags had deployed. She was still belted to her seat and pleading weakly.
“Please, save my baby.”
Bowen’s attention moved beyond the woman to the back. He saw the child, about a-year-and-a-half-old, upside down, strapped in its car seat, little arms hanging down.
“Please,” the woman cried.
In a surreal moment Bowen saw how the gasoline now seeped into areas of the car. Then he noticed among bags of clothes, boxes of cereal and cans of soup, a leather-bound bible. It had splayed open, a light wind lifting the pages.