Eleventh Hour

CHICAGO

Nick had never been so happy in her life. Well, maybe when she’d had her Ph.D. diploma placed reverently into her hand, but that was more a huge sense of relief than pure, unadulterated happiness. It was because of her fiancé, John Kennedy Rothman, senior senator from Illinois. “No relation,” he’d told her, a lowly new volunteer in his reelection campaign three years before. That was before his wife, Cleo Rothman, disappeared, just up and ran away with one of his senior aides, Tod Gambol. Because everyone knew he loved his wife dearly, her abandoning her husband had given him an incredible sympathy vote and he’d been swept back into office by a 58/42 margin over his opponent, who’d been portrayed as too liberal for the fiscal health of both Illinois and the country, though he really hadn’t been at all. Truth was, John’s overpowering charm, his ability to look straight at a person and have that person believe that he would be the best at whatever he tried, was the overriding reason he was voted in.

And now she was going to marry him. It was heady. There were nearly twenty years separating them, but she didn’t care. She had no parents to gainsay her decision, only two brothers, both Air Force pilots, both in Europe, both younger than she.

She knew all about campaigning now, what it would be like to live in a fishbowl. But the media really hadn’t come after her yet, and she prayed they wouldn’t, at least not until after they were married and she’d be able to simply step behind John as she smiled and waved.

It was a dark night, the wind whipping her hair back from her face, because it was, after all, Chicago. When you were walking the deep canyons, buildings soaring up on either side, and the wind swept off Lake Michigan, funneling through those buildings, whipping the temperature down, it could make your teeth chatter and your bones rattle. She ducked her head and walked faster. One more block and she’d be home. Why hadn’t she taken a taxi? No, ridiculous. When she got home, she’d sit in front of her small fireplace, pull over her legs the heavy red afghan that her mom had knitted eight years before, and read some essays from her senior medieval research class.

She looked both ways, didn’t see a single soul, and stepped into the street. It happened so fast, she wasn’t certain what had actually happened after she was safely back in her apartment. A black car, a big job, with four doors, swept up the street, lights off, and veered straight at her. She saw that it was accelerating, not slowing, not swerving out of the way. No, it was coming straight on, and it was going to hit her.

She hurled herself sideways. She hit a fire hydrant and went crashing down on her hip. She felt the hot air, smelled the sour rubber of the tires as the sedan sped by. She lay there, pain pulsing through her hip, wondering why no one was around. Not a single person was stupid enough to be out in this weather. Oh God. Would the car come back?

She got up, tried to run, but ended up hobbling back across the street. She saw a bum in the alley just next to her condo building. He’d seen everything.

“Crazy bugger,” the guy said, lifted a bottle to his mouth, and drank down a good pint.

She fumbled with her building door key, finally got it to turn, and almost fell into the lobby, so afraid that she just hung there, leaning against a huge palm, breathing hard. There was a neighbor, Mrs. Kranz, standing there. The old lady, the widow of a Chicago firefighter, helped her to her condo, stuffed aspirins down her throat, and sat her down as she built up the fire in the fireplace.

“What happened, dear?”

Dear God, it was hard to speak, hard to get enough saliva in her mouth. She finally got out, “Someone—someone tried to run me down.”

Mrs. Kranz patted her arm. “You’re all right, aren’t you?” At Nick’s nod, because she really couldn’t speak, Mrs. Kranz said, “A drunk, more like it. Right?”

Nick just shook her head. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.” A drunk? She’d felt all the way to her bones that it was someone who wanted to hurt her. Maybe even kill her. Was that unlikely? Sure it was, but it didn’t change how she felt. A drunk. That might be right. Damn.

She thanked Mrs. Kranz, forgot the papers she was going to grade, and went to bed. She shuddered beneath the covers, cold from the inside out.

When she finally slept, it was only to see that big dark car again, then another and another, all around her. She saw a man driving each car, and each man was wearing a ski mask pulled over his face. There was a kaleidoscope of madness in each man’s eyes, but she didn’t recognize any of them. There were so many, she didn’t know where to look. She was spinning around, with all the cars coming toward her. She woke up screaming, breathing hard, soaked with sweat. She jerked up in bed. As she sat there in the predawn gloom, she saw those eyes again with their stark light of madness and thought they looked somehow familiar. When she was breathing more easily, she got up, went to the bathroom, leaned over the sink, and drank from the faucet. No, that didn’t make any sense. There was no one who wanted to hurt her. She didn’t have any enemies except for maybe one of the ancient professors at the university who didn’t believe women should know anything about medieval history, much less teach it. Her hip throbbed with pain, and putting any weight at all on that leg made her groan. She took three aspirins and crawled back into bed.