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A car pulled out of a parking slot and headed down the aisle straight toward them. Karen stopped listening to Piper rattling on and watched the car. A man, probably one of the maintenance workers, was driving. There wasn't anything unusual about the car; it was a beige Pontiac, several years old. But it was going too fast, and she edged Piper more to the side to give the car plenty of room to pass.
If she hadn't been attacked that day in her own home, she probably wouldn't have paid the car more than cursory attention, but she was on edge, something deep inside her still frightened and outraged that the sanctuary of her home had been violated. She didn't feel safe. And so she watched the car, watched it gaining speed as it came down the aisle of the parking lot.
The driver was wearing sunglasses. She saw him clearly through the windshield as the car bore down on them, and she had the impression he was looking at her.
Piper broke off her running list of Mexican restaurants and said, "He's going too fast."
The fine hairs on Karen's arms stood up. She stopped, staring at the driver. Closer, closer. He gunned the engine, and the car rocketed toward them. Karen turned and drove her shoulder into Piper, knocking her sideways into the space between two parked cars. There was a loud crash, and metal screamed as it tore and bent. They both hit the pavement hard, sprawling on the grit, Piper under her and the suitcase tangled between them. The car beside them rocked wildly on its suspension as it was hit, the rear end skidding around toward them. The front end of the car crashed into the car on the other side of it and bounced back, coming to rest with the rear tire only an inch from Piper's head.
Tires squealed in the parking lot. Someone shouted, and they heard running feet. Then tires squealed again, and there was the sound of a car engine roaring as it turned its maximum rpms, rapidly growing fainter with distance.
Gingerly, Karen sat up. She was already sore, and this latest insult to skin and muscle only aggravated the previous injuries. Now her hands were bleeding as well, from sliding on the pavement, and her right knee throbbed.
Piper sat up also, a hand on her head. She leaned against a tire and looked at Karen.
"Are you all right?" they both said together.
They stared at each other another second. "Yeah," Karen finally said. "How about you?"
"Oh, your standard contusions and abrasions. That car almost hit us!"
"Are you two all right?" Another nurse practically vaulted over the fender to reach them. "He didn't even stop!" She knelt down beside them, dragging things from the pockets of her tunic. Her name tag announced her name was Angela, and the tiny koala clinging to her stethoscope with Velcro paws announced she worked in pediatrics.
Most of the nurses on first shift had already left; Piper was running late because she had swung by emergency to collect Karen. But there were still a few people around, and they all came over. "Go get some gurneys from emergency," Angela said to an orderly, her voice cr
isp and calm.
"We're all right," Karen and Piper said in unison.
"Don't be silly. You both need to be checked out. You know, sometimes people can't tell if they're injured until several hours later, because of the shock." Angela would have made a good general; maybe it came from dealing with kids all day long.
"Here," another nurse said, tearing open a disposable package containing an antiseptic wipe and handing the package to Angela.
"Do you have any more of these?" Angela asked, taking Karen's hands and wiping her raw, bleeding palms.
"No, just that one. Let's see." The second nurse dug in her pocket again. "Here's a gauze pad, but that's it." She climbed over the bumper, since the car was now sitting at such an angle that its front end was almost touching the bumper of the car beside it. Karen and Piper were sitting in the slight V-shaped space between the two cars, with Piper in the wider part of the V. The nurse crouched beside Piper and pressed the pad to a cut on her forehead, which was sullenly oozing blood. "Someone needs to call the police," she said positively. "That creep not only almost hit you, he left the scene. The owners of these two cars will need an accident report for their insurance companies."
"I've got a cell phone," someone else said. "I'll go call."
Within minutes, the parking lot was swarming with emergency personnel, both the medics who happened to have been in the department at the time and one of the emergency department doctors as well as two of the nurses. Two gurneys were brought, despite Karen's and Piper's groaning objections. Piper tried to stand and sank back to the pavement with a startled exclamation. "I think I must have sprained my ankle," she said sheepishly. "I guess I'll need that gurney after all, unless someone wants to lend me a pair of crutches."
A patrol car pulled into the parking lot then, and they all got to tell their stories to the policemen. The orderly said, "Man, he didn't even have license plates on the car. I got a good look when he was leaving the parking lot, because by then it was obvious he wasn't going to stop."
No one recognized him, but it was a big hospital; it was impossible for everyone to know everyone else. And since there was no security at the parking lot, anyone who wanted to could park there regardless of whether or not they worked at the hospital. All the cars were supposed to have employee decals on them, but no one ever checked, so the decals were useless.
Angela said, "I was standing just over there. It looked to me as if he tried to hit them." She didn't speculate about what sort of chemicals might be zipping around the driver's bloodstream, but several others did.
Karen knew better. When she could, she said quietly to one of the police officers, "I'd appreciate it if you would notify Detective Suter about this."
He gave her a "Get real" look, and she added, "This is the second time today someone has tried to kill me. I'm sure you heard about what happened this morning, when two officers shot and killed the burglar. That was my apartment."
He got serious fast. "You think this was deliberate?"
"I know it was. He aimed for us." She managed to keep her voice even, but she was trembling inside with rage. The driver hadn't cared that Piper would have been seriously injured, possibly killed, too. Anyone with Karen was apparently as expendable as she was.
She couldn't say just when she had arrived at the conclusion that someone was trying to kill her—maybe while she had been airborne between the two cars, hearing the impact behind her. But she wasn't stupid, and she wasn't paranoid. As improbable as it seemed, someone really was trying to kill her.
Detective Suter thoughtfully tapped his notebook against his knee. Karen sat quietly, having finished what she had to say. She had outlined her father's murder and the burning of her old house. Added to both of that day's incidents, it was enough to make anyone thoughtful.
