Flashback by Michael Palmer Read Free Book Online Page B

few minutes.”
    The man, bewildered by the sudden change in his fortune, could only stare up at him and nod. But the corners of his eyes were glistening.
    Zack turned to Suzanne. “Come on,” he said, “I’ll walk you outside. I can use the fresh air.”
    They walked through the electronically opened doorway and out onto the ambulance platform. A steady, windblown rain swept across the coal-black pavement.
    “I guess I have a few adjustments to make if I’m to survive here,” he said, shivering momentarily against the chill.
    Suzanne flipped the hood of her trench coat over her head. “Do us all a favor,” she said, “and don’t make any ones you don’t absolutely have to. That was a very kind thing you did in there.”
    “Insurance or not, that old guys paid his dues.”
    “Perhaps,” Suzanne said. “Yes, perhaps he has. Well, I’ll see you in the morning.”
    “Yeah.”
    She turned and took several steps, then turned back. “Zack, about that dinner. How about Wednesday night? My place.”
    Zack felt his pulse skip. “I thought you didn’t date men you worked with?”
    “No policy should be without exceptions,” she said. “You just made that point in there yourself, didn’t you?”
    “Yes. Yes, I suppose I did. But how about your … other involvement?”
    She pushed her hood back from her forehead and smiled at him, first with her eyes, then with her lips.
    “I lied,” she said.

4
    Lisette Iverson stood by the glass doors of her bedroom balcony, wincing as half a dozen spears of lightning crackled through the jet sky over the Androscoggin River Valley. Far below and to the south, Sterling incandesced eerily beneath the strobe. A cannonade of thunder rumbled, then exploded, shaking the tall, hillside A-frame like a toy.
    She tightened her robe and then tiptoed down the hall to check on the girls. Mercifully, after two fitful hours battling the ghosts of the storm, both were asleep. Lisette had never done well with thunderstorms herself, and felt no small guilt at having passed those fears on to her children.
    God, how she wished Frank would come to bed, or at least talk to her. It was nearly one in the morning, and he was still downstairs in “his” den, staring, she knew, at the embers in “his” fireplace, and listening over and over to the album of morose, progressive jazz he favored when he was angry at her.
    And as usual, she also knew, he would take his own sweet time in telling her why.
    It was the job, the hospital, that kept him so tense. Lisette felt certain of it. For a year—no, much longer than that now, two at least—he had been a bear to live with. And with each passing week, each passing month, there seemed to be less and less she could do to please him. Silently, she cursed the day he had closed his business in Concord and moved back to Sterling, even if the little electronics firm was on the ropes.
    To be sure, his success with Ultramed had given them more than she could ever have imagined. But as she reflected on the dashing dreamer she had fallen in love with and married, Lisette told herself the price they were paying was far too high.
    For a time, she debated simply going to bed. If she did, of course, Frank would never come up. He would spend the night on the sofa in his den and would be in his office at the hospital by the time she and the twins awoke. With a sigh ofresignation, she stepped into her slippers and headed down the stairs. There was no way she could outlast him. She cared, and he, for the moment at least, did not.
    The situation was as simple as that.
GARFIELD MOUNTAIN
JUNIOR OLYMPIC TIME TRIALS
    Sparkling like neon against the sunlit snow, the crimson and white banner said it all.
    From his spot at the base of the main slope, Frankie Iverson squinted up at the giant slalom course—a rugged series of two-dozen gates marked with red and blue flags.
One more run
, he told himself. Just one more run like the last, and he would be on his way to