Failure Point by Doug Williams

Author:Doug Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Koehler Books
Published: 2024-09-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 51

Sitting at his desk, Nick had to admit that Wendell’s lecture had thrown him. The whole discussion of his marriage and the affair with Julia brought back some hard-truth memories and caused him to take a step back and rethink everything he was doing, especially the why.

Wendell’s argument about repentance, and Nick’s inability—or refusal—to recognize whether he needed to do it, had struck a nerve. The idea had never occurred to him. He honestly believed that Lexi needed to be rescued, for whatever reason, and that he had an obligation as a husband to save her. It hadn’t crossed his mind that doing it was more about him than it was about her. But if Wendell was right, there was a lot floating around in Nick’s head that even he couldn’t put an emotional or rational finger on. The repentance thing could well be just one corner of a subconscious that had either walled-off his guilt or twisted his reality.

He shut down that line of thinking. This was no time for self-therapy. Instead, he started reconsidering something else Wendell had said—the may or may nots—and how he needed to get his mind around them in a way that shed more light than confusion on what was going on.

Whatever that was.

Was Lexi having an affair? He had no proof, other than what Alden at the inn had said, and that was thin, pure speculation.

Lexi getting phone calls before she vanished? It happened, but there was no way to know who had made them or why.

Somebody trying to kill him in Florida? It happened, too, but there was little chance he could find out who—

Wait.

It was the kind of accident, a car going over the side of a high-rise bridge, that the media usually craved.

He shifted over to the computer, called up a search engine, and typed in accident and Sunshine Skyway. A lot of historical information popped up, including multiple items about a 1980 tragedy in which a freighter crashed into one of the supports, sending twelve hundred feet of the bridge into the water, as well as six cars, a truck, and a Greyhound bus. Nick flew through them quickly. Midway through the second page, he saw a small headline from the Tampa Bay Times that read, “Driver perishes when car plunges off Skyway.”

He clicked on the link.

It was little more than a just-the-facts brief. Authorities believed the driver had lost control when changing lanes at a high rate of speed, the vehicle spun and then rolled over and over, eventually flying over the restraining wall and into the water below. The body was not recovered.

The whole thing seemed too neat, too cut-and-dried, to Nick.

A guy seat-belted into his car doesn’t sink to the bottom of a bay. Then again, maybe he had enough time to unclasp and get out before going under. But Nick knew that opening the door had to be done almost immediately on impact, and he doubted that after tumbling around on the highway the driver was probably in any shape to force it, and the side of the car was probably mangled.

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