After bidding farewell to the eight TV producers they’d flown on a multi-city charter to Seattle, Vancouver and San Francisco, Bowen collected his bag and signed off on the flight. Heading for his SUV in the parking lot, he turned on his phone to text Claire, to let her know he’d returned.

A text from her was waiting for him.

Wishing you a safe landing. Dr. LaRoy’s office called me in this am. No appt—wouldn’t say why. Have to scramble. Good news maybe??? Talk later.

Love C.

Bowen responded.

Good landing. Good trip. Good luck with doc—any word?

He waited several minutes.

When no response came he figured Claire was driving, or with the doctor.

After placing his bag in the rear he got into his SUV. Nothing was out of place. No disturbed maps, take-out wrappers or filthy commuter cups. It was spotless, showroom clean and still smelled new. Bowen insisted on order. The leather seats squeaked as he buckled up. He flipped on the radio and listened to traffic conditions, then decided to take Ventura to the 101, rather than swinging over to the 5.

Joining the freeway traffic, he considered Claire’s text to him. He was hopeful her sudden call to see Dr. LaRoy would result in good news. How many times had they had their hopes raised only to be disappointed? It was not fair to Claire. It hurt him to see her anguish. She ached to have a baby, he wanted one, too, for her. It had cost them thousands, but he didn’t care. He loved her and would do anything for her. He didn’t want to lose what he had with her, the way he’d lost what he’d had with his first wife.

Cynthia.

Like Claire, Cynthia was beautiful and so giving. In his quieter moments he still thought of her. They had been so in love. At that time he was flying commercial, his schedule was brutal and he was rarely home. Cynthia began to change. She complained, grew jealous and started imagining terrible things.

It shouldn’t have ended the way it did, but they couldn’t continue and that was that. Why dwell on it? Sometimes, even after all these years, he’d felt something was unresolved and wished he could talk to Cynthia, to tell her he was sorry about the way it had turned out for them. But he had a new life now, a good life, and you can’t go back in time.

Bowen left Ventura and got on the 101 southbound. There was more traffic, but it was moving at a good speed. He’d gone less than half a mile when something blue rocketed by in the left lane, startling him.

He cursed.

The thing must’ve been doing one-thirty. Looked like a pickup truck. He couldn’t tell the model as it knifed through the lanes ahead, leaving a wake of brake lights and angry horns.

That idiot’s going to kill somebody.

The distraction passed, and with it, Cynthia faded from his mind.

He repositioned his grip on the wheel, maintained a safe speed as his thoughts had drifted back to the first time he’d met Claire. The scene with her and her husband. Bowen shook his head slowly until the images of that day dissipated. Since that time all he’d wanted to do was protect Claire, let nothing hurt her again. But how do I protect her from heartbreak—from forces that are beyond my control?

He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. He was forty-five, and some days he couldn’t see what Claire told him she’d seen and liked: The small crinkles around his eyes, his chiseled jaw, his thick salt-and-pepper hair. He was six-one, about one-eighty. His workouts gave him an athletic build. But he didn’t see the strong, decisive, capable, kind man that Claire saw. He saw a man who’d failed too many times, a man constantly at war with himself, a man unworthy of her.

At times he would steal glimpses of her when they were at home, or while he waited for her at her office. He liked how her hair curtained over her eyes when she studied her notes, or the way she slid her small silver cross back and forth on her necklace chain when she was on the phone with a patient. She was devoted to them—compassionate and caring, never allowing her own heartache to interfere.

He didn’t deserve her.

As he drove, Bowen massaged his temple. A million things rushed through his head. He was tired from the flight and stressed over those rumors of looming cutbacks at the company.

He couldn’t go back to commercial. He couldn’t face those hours again and that kind of strain at home. He just couldn’t. Look at the toll it had taken with Cynthia. He couldn’t go through that with Claire.

But that was the least of his worries.

There was more, much more.

The darkness is back, stirring again.

It had been triggered by Claire when she started taking serious steps to have a baby, because in a corner of his heart he knew that would change everything.

The darkness is taking over. Sometimes at night, I feel I—

The chaos of horns and screeching tires jerked his concentration to the freeway where traffic ahead had come to a standstill.

Los Angeles, California

Robert stopped and got out of his SUV, joining other drivers craning their necks at the heaps of mangled metal several car lengths away.

A boy, about twelve, staggered between the stopped cars toward him. The kid’s face glistened with crimson scrapes. His T-shirt with a T-Rex on it was torn, smeared with blood. Somewhere a woman was screaming.

“Por favor ayuda!” The boy’s eyes, wide with shock, found Bowen’s and he switched to English. “My mother, my sister, please, mister, they will die. Please save them!”

Robert’s mind raced.

“Por favor ayuda!” the boy pleaded again before he collapsed into the arms of a well-dressed woman who’d stepped from a Mercedes. She wrapped her Realtor’s jacket around him as he sobbed, “Please! My mother...my sister...they’ll die. Please, mister!”

Bowen tore off his tie and ran to the carnage.

Some motorists were calling 9-1-1 while others, uncertain what to do, stood helpless. Black smoke now curled from the wreckage.

Bowen counted three vehicles: a pickup that appeared to be a landscaper’s truck was turned around, its front smashed and air bags depleted. Mowers, tillers, tools and supplies were scattered. He saw a small green car that had flipped onto its roof. Then he saw a van; it was on its side with its hood folded open and its engine on fire. A man was climbing out of the van’s driver’s side. Blood oozed from his mouth as he gritted in pain. Bowen got hold of his arm and got him to the ground.

“I’ve got a first aid kit,” said a motorist wearing a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt who’d stepped forward to help.

When Bowen turned to the inverted car, something splashed at his feet. He looked down to a widening puddle with the telltale rainbow film and smelled the fumes. Fuel cans from the landscaper’s truck had ruptured, spilling gasoline everywhere around the overturned car, pooling in spots. Bowen glanced at the flames licking from the van’s engine a few feet from the car.

The fire was growing.

His stomach lurched. He saw a hand reaching from the car and heard a woman crying softly as someone shouted at him, “Get out of there, man! There’s too much gas, it’s going to blow! Back off! Get out!”

He ignored the warning and hurried to the driver’s side of the car. He dropped to his hands and knees. Everything had been unfolding with dizzying speed, but it slowed the instant he saw the woman.

She was upside down. Her hands and arms hung to the ground. The air bags had deployed. She was still belted to her seat and pleading weakly.

“Please, save my baby.”

Bowen’s attention moved beyond the woman to the back. He saw the child, about a-year-and-a-half-old, upside down, strapped in its car seat, little arms hanging down.

“Please,” the woman cried.

In a surreal moment Bowen saw how the gasoline now seeped into areas of the car. Then he noticed among bags of clothes, boxes of cereal and cans of soup, a leather-bound bible. It had splayed open, a light wind lifting the pages.

The blood rush in his ears pounded him into a trancelike state.

He found himself looking into the woman’s terrified eyes.

He swelled with pleasure, his ears rang and an ancient, familiar, evil erupted inside him.

Let her die.

I hold this woman’s life, and that of her child, in my hands, the power over life and death, the power to rise above everything on earth.

Go ahead and plead.

I love it.

I am the beginning and I am the end.

I’m going to let you die. Your baby, too. I’ll watch you die.

“I’m sorry,” Bowen said. “I can’t reach you. I’m sorry.”

Her eyes bulged. Her fear excited him, pushing his sensual gratification to a new level.

“Please!” she gasped.

Keep begging. Beg me for your life.

She coughed. Her voice was fading.

“Please, I beg you, please! God, someone, please save us!”

The break in her voice connected with Bowen, telling him he could not let this happen. He closed his eyes, battling himself for control as the woman’s cries slowly pulled him out of his trance and back into the chaos.

“Okay,” Bowen said. “Okay, ma’am, I’m going to get you out.”

He maneuvered his upper body deeper into the car and, while on his knees, reached up, feeling for and finding the woman’s seat belt buckle.

“Can you get your arms around my neck?” he said.

He felt her lock her arms around him, felt her trembling, she smelled of soap and sweat and was nearly choking him as he tried to depress the button to release the belt. The woman’s full downward weight had created pressure and the button refused to depress.

Bowen tried but it wouldn’t move.

Panicked motorists were shouting.

“Get out now!”

“It’s going to go up—get out!”

He glimpsed the flames horribly large and nearing the gas pools that patched their way to the car. He reached deep into himself and with every bit of strength he had in him he lifted the woman’s weight upward, taking pressure off of the belt while depressing the button with every fiber of strength he had until he heard: click.

The belt released.

The woman slid down onto him and he immediately dragged her out of the car where helping hands seized both of them.

“My baby!”

Bowen shook off the people pulling him to safety and crawled back into the car for the child.

“No, don’t do it!” Someone shouted. “It’s too late!”

The fire had now grown large enough for Bowen to hear its roar as he scrambled inside to the baby’s seat. He shifted his body, relieved to hear the child crying. He reached up, fumbled for the buckle and button, and lifted the child to ease weight from the buckle.

Click.

He got it.

Taking a deep breath, he disentangled the baby from the car seat. He started snaking backward with the child at his chest. He’d just gotten his legs out the window when someone screamed—

“Oh, my God!”

He turned to see the flames lapping the gasoline pools, felt the air spasm as the pools ignited in a chain reaction creating a blinding, churning wall of fire that swallowed them.

Los Angeles, California

Claire Bowen was unsure her feet even touched the ground as she left the building and got into her car. She cupped her hands to her face.

I have to tell Robert.

Glancing at the time, she reached for her cell phone and read his response to her earlier text to him.

Good landing. Good trip. Good luck with doc—any word?

Great, he’s back, she thought, her fingers blurring as she texted him.

Can you call me now!!!

As the minutes passed, she scanned the literature about ovulation. Not much there she didn’t already know. She glanced at her phone. Unless Robert was stuck in traffic or couldn’t pull over, he was usually pretty quick at getting back to her. Two minutes passed, then three.

While waiting, Claire revisited a small concern. Over the past few weeks he seemed to have become a little withdrawn, as if wrestling with something. Whenever she’d asked him about it, he’d tell her that he was merely lost in his thoughts, leaving her to wonder if everything really was okay with him.

Claire checked the time. Too excited to wait, she pressed her cell’s keypad for his number. The phone rang twice before a woman answered.

“I’m sorry,” Claire said. “I’ve misdialed.”

“This is Robert Bowen’s phone,” a woman said. “Who’s calling?”

What the heck?

“I’m Claire Bowen, his wife. And who are you?”

“Mrs. Bowen, I’m a nurse at Pacific Breeze Memorial Hospital. I just called your office. Your husband’s just been brought in—”

“Brought in? What for? What happened?”

“He’s been involved in a car accident—he’s—”

“A car accident? Is he hurt? Can you put him on the phone now, please?”

Claire could hear the hospital’s loudspeaker system echoing in the background.

“I can’t. He’s with the E.R. doctor, Mrs. Bowen—” Claire fished out her keys and turned the ignition as the nurse continued. “All I can tell you at this point is that he does not appear to have any serious injuries.”

“You’ve seen him? You’re certain?”

“Yes, I’m in the E.R. He’s been brought in for observation. It’s just happened now. We’ve got a number of trauma patients.”

Claire keyed the hospital’s name into her GPS. She could be there in twenty-five minutes, less if the traffic was good.

“Please tell him I’m on my way.”

“Certainly, Mrs. Bowen.”

“Wait, what’s your name?”

“Lilly Springer.”

“I’ll ask for you at the desk.”

When Claire ended the call, her phone rang.

“Claire, it’s Alice.” Alarm sounded in her voice. “The Pacific Breeze hospital just called about Robert and a car accident.”

“I know. I just spoke with the E.R. nurse. She said he’s okay.”

“Oh, thank heaven.”

“I’m on my way to the hospital.”

“Okay, want me to clear your schedule for the rest of the day? You have a couple of hours until your next patient.”

“Don’t move anything yet. I’ll have a better idea after I get to the hospital. I’ll call.”

Driving through the city, Claire took a few deep breaths to keep calm, never letting go of the nurse’s assurance that Robert was not hurt. But it ran counter to human nature not to worry and Claire would not be assured until she saw him, until she held him.

She thought of their last moment together a few days ago and remembered his cologne, the rustle of his crisp shirt and the brush of his lips on hers. She was still in bed and he’d bent down, lifted her hair and kissed her goodbye in the early morning before he’d left for this trip.

“I love you,” he’d whispered.

And now this.

This reminder of how life can change in an instant.

The web of our existence is a fragile thing.

Claire knew that too well from her own life and the lives of her patients—how dreams could be taken away or shattered. We’re on the threshold of becoming parents—a dream they had long been denied.

Arriving at the hospital, Claire saw four ambulances at the emergency entrance. Nearby she saw a number of police vehicles and TV news trucks. She hurried through the automatic doors. Half a dozen media people had gathered around a hospital official at one side of the lobby and were pressing her for information. Claire continued to the woman seated at the reception window. Behind her, two staff members stood as they worked at computer terminals.

“May I help you?”

“I’m here to see my husband, Robert Bowen. I’m Claire Bowen, his wife. I spoke on the phone to an E.R. nurse, Lilly Springer.”

The receptionist’s face registered recognition and she turned to the women behind her.

“Lil?”

One of the women stepped from the counter. She was fresh-scrubbed, with a ponytail and an upturned nose.

“Hello, Mrs. Bowen, I’m Lilly.” She nodded at the door to the right of the window and it buzzed. “Come through here, please.”

Antiseptic smells hung heavy in the air as they moved down the polished hallway. The nurse’s soft-soled shoes squeaked when they stopped at a small waiting room.

“Please have a seat, Mrs. Bowen. The doctor will be with you shortly.”

“How long before I see my husband? You said he was okay?”

“Yes, it should only be a few more minutes.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“The doctor should have more information.” The nurse smiled before leaving.

Claire took stock of the room—of its brown faux leather sofas and outdated copies of Time and People on wicker tables. Still tense from the drive and worry, she sat down and inhaled slowly. On the sofa facing her, a woman with a wrinkled face bowed her head to the rosary in her gnarled fingers. The beads clicked softly and her lips moved as she prayed. Sitting beside the woman was a younger man. His T-shirt, blue jeans and work boots were stained with blotches of paint. He looked as if he’d rushed here from a work site. He stared into the worn ball cap in his lap as if it held his past and his future.

They were the only people still in the room with Claire when a man arrived, wearing a white lab coat over blue scrubs and carrying a chart.

“Mrs. Bowen, here for Robert Bowen?”

“Yes.” Claire stood.

“Dr. Shaw.” He shook Claire’s hand. “We’ll talk in the room across the hall.” The room was smaller; the doctor left the door open indicating their conversation would be brief. Claire stood while he tapped a pen on the chart as he reviewed it.

“Your husband’s fine.” He kept reading.

“Can you tell me about his car accident?”

“As I understand it, he was not involved, but came upon it and helped rescue people. He was pulled away just as the wreckage exploded.”

“Dear God.”

“He’s lucky. He and the people he saved are fine. He’s got some abrasions and very mild shock, but he can go home. We’ll give you sedatives so he can rest at home. I’ll take you to him, then you can sign some papers for discharge.” He smiled.

“Thank you, Dr. Shaw.”

“And we understand there are some press folks who are interested in talking to him out front. That’s entirely up to him of course.”

They turned to leave but the doorway was blocked by the man who had been in the waiting room with Claire. He was holding his ball cap with both hands, slipping its rim through his paint-flecked fingers.

“Can I help you?” Dr. Shaw said.

“Please forgive me, but I overheard—” he nodded to Claire “—about your husband.” Claire shot a questioning glance to Dr. Shaw, but the man continued. His accented English was strong. “I am Ruben Montero. My son, Alex, he is eleven and he was in the accident with my wife and daughter. They were delivering donations to our church.”

“Yes,” Dr. Shaw said, recognizing the name. “Alex. He’s with Anne, Dr. Feldstein. Would you like me to see about him?”

“No, I’ve spoken to him. We’re going to see my wife and daughter soon. But Alex told me what this lady’s husband did for my wife, Maria, and our baby, Bonita.”

“Oh, yes. He must have helped get them to safety,” Claire said, surprised when Ruben Montero suddenly took her hand.

“He saved the lives of my family,” Claire felt Montero’s callused hand tighten on hers and looked into his face, close enough to notice his stubble. “For that, I thank him with every beat of my heart. Tell him for me.”

“I will, Mr. Montero.”

“You are blessed for having such a man for your husband. You are blessed because a man like this...a man like this, is rare.”

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