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When the glass from the car window had sliced her open.
She shuddered, shaking her head.
No, she wasn't going to do this. She wasn't going to allow her fears to get in the way yet again. Every week, she had the same fears, the same anxieties. She'd been working with the therapist on getting over it, and she remembered now what she'd been told. Think about the likelihood. Think about the severity. How many times had she driven a car in the past without anything bad happening at all? Hundreds of times, surely. Being in one car accident one time, well, that left a several hundred to one chance of anything like that ever happening again.
Of course, her traitor brain reminded her, the likelihood was even lower if she didn't get back in the car at all.
But she had to. She had to get back to normal life. She pulled her head away from the memory of the sound of twisting metal and breaking glass, and moved towards the doorway, her motion a little off-balance.
The physiotherapy was going well, at least.
Jenny took her car keys from the peg by the door and stepped outside, moving towards the vehicle. She kept it parked under a little overhang beside the house, not really a full garage but still something that provided shelter. That was one more consolation: the fact that her neighb
ors couldn't see her having this same freak-out every single time she tried to get in the car to go to her appointment. At least none of them knew how fragile she was, how weak she could be sometimes. It was pathetic, she told herself.
And then she heard the voice of her therapist in her head reminding her that she was doing great and taking things one step at a time, and not to let negative self-thoughts get in the way of things. And she sighed again.
It was always like this. The constant battle between her head and the things that she knew she was supposed to think.
Jenny paused, patting her pockets. She'd forgotten her purse and everything in it. She moved back inside the house, grabbing it, and then finally made her way back to the car again. She had to walk all the way around it from this part of the house, slipping around the front of the car in order to get to the drivers’ side door. She was looking into her purse, rummaging around inside it to see if she'd remembered to pick up any breath mints, when it happened.
Something hit her in the back of the head.
Her first thought was that she was having a stroke or something. That the injury she sustained in the crash was finally catching up with her. She had done a lot of reading about head injuries ever since it happened, working herself up into a frenzy of terror. She knew that sometimes there could be no symptoms at all, and everything could seem as though it was fine, and then one day you would just drop dead from a blood clot or something like that. Her first thought was that it was finally happening.
But she staggered forward, catching herself on the car, and when she was able to focus on her own reflection in the window glass, she could see that there was someone behind her.
She turned, managing to get the strength to push herself against the car, using it as leverage so that she could stay standing up.
“Sorry,” the man said, his tone actually apologetic. “I'm usually a lot more precise. I meant to hit your neck, knock you out cold.”
“What?” Jenny said, not quite comprehending what he was saying. Her head was muddy, confused. Something was ringing a distant alarm bell. She frowned. “Do I know you?”
He didn't answer, but she was sure of it. She knew him. Where did she know him from?
He moved closer to her, and Jenny shrank back, but she was unable to go anywhere. The car was the only thing supporting her weight, her legs seemingly turned to jelly. The right leg, the one that had been injured in the accident, was threatening to give way at any moment. She wasn't far enough along in her physiotherapy for it to handle this kind of stress.
“It's okay,” he said, his voice calm and gentle. She remembered it, remembered him speaking to her before. “Don't worry. I'm not going to hit you again. I just need to make sure that you stay asleep for a little bit longer.”
And when his hand flashed out, holding a needle, she remembered where she knew him from. She was still reeling from the realization when he plunged it into her neck, holding her steady with the other hand. It was like there was nothing she could do to resist him, so dizzy and groggy and out of control of her body. Her eyes fluttered closed, as whatever it was that he injected into her neck slowly began to filter its way into her system, and all she could think of was how beautiful it would be to sleep now instead of having to worry about any of this anymore.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Laura rested her head on the leather of the car's steering wheel, as if it could bolster her brain and give her the strength that she needed to get through this thought process. She hardly had anything to work on, but that didn't mean she couldn't do it. She'd solved cases before with less, she knew. Sometimes, all it required was a bit of faith in your own abilities and a reminder that this was your job. The thing you'd been training for your whole adult life to do.
She reviewed everything in her head as much as possible, trying to put herself inside the shoes of the killer. The first thing was that they knew he was obsessed with time. That had to be a huge part of it, just like Nate had pointed out. The clocks, the timers, they had to mean something. It had to be something to do with the way he chose his victims, too.
The victims had died and then been resuscitated. Now he was killing them. It was like he was enacting some kind of cosmic justice, like he thought that no one should be given a second chance.
Was that it? Was it linked, somehow, to how long the victims had been given in the world after almost losing their lives?
No, that didn't quite make sense. Stephanie Marchall's accident had happened a couple of years ago, while Veronica Rowse had been in the car crash one year ago. They had both been suspended on the platform for the same length of time, twelve hours. While Lincoln Ware, who had had an extra six months of life, had been standing up there for only ten hours. The difference didn’t make sense. There had to be some kind of math that explained all of this.
Laura opened the file again, going through the EMT reports with a closer look, trying to spot anything that related to time. There was one thing: in each of the reports, the EMT specifically noted how long the person had been clinically dead for.
And that was very interesting indeed.
According to what Paul Payne had written, Veronica and Stephanie were each dead for an approximated full minute, or sixty seconds. Both of them had been in serious conditions when he arrived, but he had been able to note the moment that their hearts stopped beating due to the quick actions of others in calling for help. Stephanie Marchall's heart attack had only really gotten into full swing after the ambulance had arrived, with a concerned coworker recognizing the signs that it was about to happen from having witnessed the same thing in her father.
