The Accident by Chris Pavone

Author:Chris Pavone [Pavone, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers, Suspense, General, Espionage
ISBN: 9780385348461
Google: 9SXbAAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00F1W0DKE
Barnesnoble: B00F1W0DKE
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2014-03-11T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 30

Across-continental flight provides ample reading time, especially headed west, into the wind. But The Accident is on the long side, as submissions go. So even though the plane is inexplicably delayed, and the trade winds fierce, when the seat belt light extinguishes and the passengers stand and Camilla slips the manuscript back into her MCNALLY & SONS tote, she’s still a hundred pages shy of the end.

She shuffles down the aisle, casting the leads in her imagination. She’s partial to relatively young actors for The Accident, so they’ll be appropriate for the college-age scenes, which will take disproportionate time in the adaptation; there’s a lot of visual drama in the beginning of the story. And she imagines that it’s easier to age younger actors than to reverse-age older ones.

This will be a brilliant film.

She should rent a convertible, a nice one, and spend the week zipping around Los Angeles with her sunglasses on, her long red hair whipping in the wind, trying, like everyone here, to attract attention. She finally has something worth the attention.

And to hell with the limits of her expense account. This is probably the last trip she’ll be taking on the McNally tab, and she’ll never even have to justify the charges. Gone by the time the credit-card statement arrives. Waiting curbside for the rental van, Camilla calls and asks for an upgrade. But they’re all out of convertibles. The almost unbearably stupid clerk can offer her a variety of SUVs, but that’s not what she wants, not at all. “Right,” she says, “I’ll take the midsize then.”

“No worries.”

As Camilla listens to this unapologetic dimwit, she worries that maybe California isn’t exactly Shangri-La. “On second thought, no thank you.” She hangs up, calls another agency, who sure enough has multiple convertible options. If there’s one place that’s never short on rental cars, it’s LAX.

The other shuttle bus deposits her in the lot, across an access road and a quarter-mile from the lot where she’s expected.

She doesn’t have sufficient time to check into the hotel before her appointment, as planned. She’ll just freshen up here, in the rental-lot restroom, a wardrobe swap and a makeup application. Staring at herself in the mirror, painting her lips under the harsh glare of public-bathroom fluorescence, dehydrated from the flight, she catches a foreshadow of her face in twenty years, maybe ten, eyes downturned at the corners, a bit like a cocker spaniel, and cheeks sagging, a spot of wattle. She’ll look exactly like her mum. Not being her mum has been one of Camilla’s main goals in life. The primary goal, in fact. But there’s no avoiding one’s genes.

She tosses her luggage into the boot, shimmies into the driver’s side, adjusts all the things that need adjusting. She turns the ignition, and steals a glance at the car’s clock. She’s cutting it close.

Camilla shifts into gear and pulls out of the numbered space, past a security check, accelerating down the surface street, driving like a maniac in the rich

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