Chapter 12: The Whisper

Rain filled the phone's small speaker.

Then a young man's voice came through, warm and a little out of breath.

"Okay, I'm turning onto Route 9. Don't tell Mom yet, but I got the job. The real one. I'll tell you everything when I get there."

I put my hand over my mouth.

"That's him," Knox said, without looking at me.

On the recording, Teddy laughed.

"You're going to hate it. You'll say I should have asked you first."

A pair of headlights must have crossed the dashboard, because his voice changed.

"What the hell is this guy doing?"

Then came a long ugly shriek of metal, and a thud.

I flinched so hard my chair rocked.

For a moment there was only the sound of the rain, and a hiss, and something dripping.

Knox's face did not move.

He had stood on this hill and listened to it every night.

On the recording, a woman groaned.

It was low and broken and wordless, and I knew the voice.

It was mine.

"I'm alive," I whispered.

"You were alive," Knox said.

A car door opened, close by.

Somebody's shoes crunched on broken glass.

The footsteps stopped near the phone.

Someone was breathing hard, in short gasping pulls.

A man's voice said, very softly, "Oh, God. Oh, God, no."

I frowned.

"That's the passenger," Knox said. "I always thought that was the passenger. Your husband, checking on the boy."

"He was checking on Teddy?"

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