But I was terrified. It was no accident—it was deliberate!” Margaret’s voice still had the tense, quivering note of fear and anger that verged on tears. “Are you all right? The children?” “Yes, we’re all fine, thank God. We had our seatbelts on, and Austin and Shauna were in the back seat. I still don’t know how we got out of it.” “You’re at the police station now?” “Yes. The officer said someone would give us a ride home.” “Stay there—I’ll be right over.” Margaret’s call had caught up with me in the Healy and I angled across the lanes crowded with six o’clock traffic and turned south. What she told me had been fragmented and disjointed, but I pieced it together to understand that a van had forced her car across the road toward incoming traffic on one of the high-speed arteries that sliced through the southeast corner of the city. Somehow she had managed to avoid the cars screaming toward her and skidded across both lanes to spin to a halt on the edge of the road, sitting in almost numb shock and trying to calm the now terrified children.
