Heart-Shaped Hack(65)
Kate pounded the steering wheel and threw open her door. She pushed through the crowd, elbowing her way closer to the fence where she hoped to find a policeman who would tell everyone to get back in their cars and clear the way so she could leave.
Bystanders were pointing at something, and Kate craned her neck to get a better view. Her knees buckled when she saw the blue car with white racing stripes, its raised bumper attached to the chain of a tow truck that was parked at the edge of the riverbank.
The voices became a roar in her head as she caught snippets of their conversations:
—“Truck slid on the ice and hit him from behind.”
—“Crashed through the fence and disappeared under the water.”
—“Road conditions were horrible. No reason to be out driving in that.”
—“It must have happened fast, caught him off guard.”
—“Someone said they found him downstream.”
Kate zeroed in on the man who had made the last comment, her heart soaring. He had crashed but someone had found him! He was hurt. That’s why he hadn’t called.
“Where? Where is he now?” Kate screamed, yanking on his sleeve.
“The morgue, probably. Not much they could do for him at that point.”
An anguished cry tore from her throat, and she fled.
The man shouted after her. “Miss? Are you okay?”
There had never been a time in all her years on earth when she’d felt such visceral pain. It was as if the loss was physical, her heart torn in half, beyond repair. The beat itself seemed irregular, and Kate thought she might be going into shock. When she reached her car, she slid behind the wheel and closed the door as sobs wracked her body.
The man was wrong. Someone had found Ian. Taken him to their home and given him a blanket. Warmed him up and called him a cab. He was probably on his way home to her right now. He would walk through the door and say, “Gotcha, Katie Long Legs! Boy, did that suck.”
It’s twenty-two degrees outside, and even colder in the water. If he was okay, he would have called.
The crowd had dissipated and traffic was moving freely by the time she felt capable of driving. Numb, Kate put the car in gear and shivered uncontrollably all the way home. When she entered her apartment, she looked around expectantly, praying desperately that she’d find Ian on the couch with his laptop and a cup of coffee.
Silence greeted her.
She sat on the couch, rocking back and forth, running her hands up and down her arms because she couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t get warm. She turned on the TV. Channel 5 was covering the story, and just before nine the newscaster announced that a body had been recovered and the victim identified as thirty-two-year-old Ian Merrick.
His last name is Bradshaw. It’s not him!
But Kate knew it was him. She ran to the bathroom where she emptied the paltry contents of her stomach, the bitter taste of bile coating her mouth. She flushed and wiped her face with the back of her hand.
For as much as she’d worried about the things Ian was involved in and those who might want to find him, she’d never once worried about the one thing she should have: that he was not actually a superhero and was no less mortal than she or anyone else. In Kate’s mind, Ian was invincible. Larger than life. To lose him in something as ordinary as a car accident was perhaps the most unexpected blow of all. Feeling hollow and empty, she laid her head on the floor and wished she could disappear. Just wither up and float away.
But floating made her think of water, and it was then she realized that the reason Ian hadn’t called and the app said Offline was because his phone had likely been carried away by the current of the cold and muddy Mississippi River.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
After sitting on the floor of the bathroom for an indeterminable amount of time, Kate called her mom. She needed Diane’s comfort more than anything, but she knew the minute she made the call everything would become real.
“Ian’s dead,” she said when her mother answered. She was crying so hard she wasn’t sure Diane could understand her.
But she must have, because Diane choked back a gasp and said, “Ian? What happened? Were you with him? Are you okay?”
Kate interrupted her, the words tumbling out in one long sentence. “Mom, I don’t know anything other than someone hit him and it was icy and his car went over the embankment into the river and I need you to come right now please please come okay?”
“Honey, listen to me. I’m going to hang up and call the airline. Is there someone who can stay with you until I arrive?”
She hadn’t contacted any of her friends because she knew the last name of Merrick would not tie Ian back to her, so there was no reason to start making calls quite yet. Although she barely remembered doing it, she had called Helena and was overjoyed when she got her voice mail. Kate had marshaled her strength and managed to leave a message about being sick and asked Helena to take over until she felt better.
“I don’t want anyone but you,” Kate said.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
When Kate hung up, she reached for the phone Ian had given her. She had been waiting for it to ring. Surely someone would call her, would deliver the news personally. It wasn’t fair that she’d had to drive by the aftermath, see it on the news.
But no one would know to call her because she was not linked to Ian in any way.