cer

took th

ded in rain like this. But I'd driven the highway home four hundred times and my brain had started finishing the route without me, leaving my consci

oth hands and focus. That wa

the Job, usually with the specific energy of someone who had decided your life was her personal re

ns were medical, not emotional and I was good with medical options in a way I had proven expen

present with strangers dy

gue, that had b

mountain curves into dangerous suggestions. I'd seen what happened when people forgot that, I'd

moving faster than the conditions needed, I eased off the accelerator and watched. I fe

that feeling. Then I

car with a purpose that had nothing casual in it. It closed the distance

force into her rear bumper, and I said somethin

et the car at the weak join and gave like it was made of something cheaper than metal, and then the car was gone, over the edge, into

and what I'd seen, the deliberate impact, hit and run, vehicle heading back toward the city and t

going. The car had hit the river forty feet below, I could see the shape of it, headlights still cutting weakly through the mur

perature when I hit the wate

ced, found the car and swam against the current with everything I had

intact window, she was young, with brunette hair suspended in the water filing the cabin, she had a head wou

everything I had. The glass gave way. I reached in, ignored the edges, found the

CPR, thirty compressions, I'd done this enough times th

remembered at the last possible second that it wasn't done yet. I

ooked up at the road, the vehicle t

woman breathing shallowly

from here, if she was in a hosp

just driven away at a measured,

he screen because of course it was, beca

up, got her weight distributed across

ife because I'd had occasion to test that trust and she hadn't failed it. The woman in my arms was breathing, she had

to kill her tonight and driven aw

rt. They could have the guardrail and the

coming