Black Out: A Novel by Lisa Unger

Author:Lisa Unger [Lisa Unger]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Library, Literary, Suspense, Psychological fiction, Thrillers, Florida, Psychological, Suspense fiction, Family Life, Fiction:Suspense
ISBN: 9780307338488
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2008-05-27T10:00:00+00:00

For some reason I’m thinking about this as I pull off at the rest stop. The air is charged with bad possibilities as I drive down the access road and the highway disappears from my rearview mirror. I see Harrison’s SUV parked beyond the restrooms, in the farthest corner of the lot. I wonder if there’s anyplace more desolate and menacing than an empty rest stop in the middle of the night.

I come to a halt at a distance from his vehicle. I’m not going to pull up to him. I’m not going to approach his car. I’m going to stay inside with the doors locked. If he wants to talk, he’ll have to come to me. I sit and wait, expecting him to call me on my cell phone. A minute passes, then five. Finally I find his number on my phone and call him. His voice mail picks up.

“Hi, you’ve reached Ray.” His voice is bright and chipper, like a high-school cheerleader’s. “Leave a message and I’ll get right back to you.”

I have a low opinion of Detective Harrison, and it’s getting lower. He’s taunting me, waiting to see what I’ll do. Eventually, I can’t take it anymore. I pull up alongside his vehicle. He’s sitting there, smoking a cigarette. He turns as I come to a stop. He rolls down his window.

“I wasn’t sure how desperate you were,” he says. “Now I am.”

“Spare me the foreplay,” I say. “Just get to the point.” The smell of his cigarette makes me want to smoke, even though I haven’t in years.

He gives me that neighborly, “I’m nobody” smile he seems to have perfected. I see that his whole nice-guy aura is a persona he cultivates to put people at ease, to relax them. Like his voice-mail message, for example—friendly, disarming, not stern and professional, not likely to scare away the skittish.

“I read that you watched while Marlowe Geary killed those girls. That witnesses saw you watching, doing nothing. What does that feel like?”

I don’t answer him, just take the blow. I did ask him to get to the point. I guess the point is that he knows everything.

“How do you live with yourself?” he wants to know. Now I hate him. I find myself wishing that it was him and not Simon Briggs under that bridge. Or maybe both of them. I hate the way anger causes a mutiny of the body, the dry mouth, the trembling hands.

“You’re awfully self-righteous for a dirty cop,” I say.

He pulls his face into a mock grimace. “Ouch.”

I rub my eyes hard, but it’s no use, the pain in my head is ratcheting up.

“So you go from Marlowe Geary to Gray Powers. From killer to cop, or whatever he is. Actually, they’re not so different, are they? They just kill for different reasons, kill different kinds of people. I wonder what this says about you.”

But I’m not listening to him. I’m watching a young girl approach us. She is emaciated and pale as death today.

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