15 Seconds. Andrew Gross

assume it was me.

      I drove out the driveway and backtracked along the same route I had taken earlier, toward the highway. I had no idea where I was going, or whom I could turn to now.

      In a few minutes I hit I-10 again. I knew I was safe in Mike’s car, at least for a while. But that was going to cave in fast.

      I looked in the rearview mirror, just to make sure there weren’t any cops behind me, and, for the first time, actually focused on the Jag’s rear window.

      Suddenly my eyes tripled in size.

      The window had a decal on it—an image I was sure I had seen before. What the hell is happening, Henry …?

      I pulled over to the side of the highway and spun around, frozen in shock.

      It was the identical image I’d seen on the back plate of the blue car as it pulled away.

      Not a dragon, as I had originally thought. But a kind of bird. With a sharp beak and bright red wings. A long tail.

      A gamecock.

      A mascot. From the University of South Carolina.

      I remembered, Mike’s oldest son was a sophomore there.

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      The squat, stub-necked man stepped up to the officer behind the glass, his pink face framed by a felt of orange hair around the sides of his balding head.

      “Amanda Hofer,” he said, and pushed his ID through the opening while the officer took a good look at him. “I’m her father.”

      The duty guard at the Lowndes County Jail inspected it and pushed it back to him. “You can head down to Booth Two.”

      Vance Hofer put his license back in the thick, tattered wallet and stepped through a security checkpoint, taking out his keys and loose change. Then he continued down to the visiting room. It had been a long time, he thought to himself, a very long time since he’d felt at home in a place like this. A lot of things had happened and not many of them good. He eased himself into a chair in the small booth, stared at his reflection in the glass.

      He’d lost Joycie to cancer about a year and a half ago. Lost his job at the mill a year before that. Medical insurance too. Then he’d fallen behind on the house. Not to mention how he’d been forced to come up here in the first place, thrown to the wolves down south on trumped-up charges he couldn’t defend.

      Life was bleeding him, Vance reflected, one cut at a time.

      But this last one—what had happened to Amanda. Well, that was one more cut than he could bear.

      They brought her out in an orange jumpsuit, hands cuffed in front of her. She looked a little overwhelmed and scared. Who wouldn’t be? Maybe a little afraid of seeing him too. Her hair was all straggly and unkempt. Cheeks sunken and pale. And when she saw him, who it was who had come to visit, she had this cautious look that he took as both worried and even a little shamed. Like a proud animal not used to being caged. She sat down across from him with a wary smile and shrugged her shoulders slightly.

      “How ya doin’, Daddy?”

      He nodded back, not knowing what to say. “Amanda.”

      Truth be told, Vance hadn’t known what to say to his daughter in years. He saw her as little more than a whining, pathetic child who never owned up to anything she’d done. Who’d always blamed every bit of what went wrong in her life on someone or something else. Which made Vance sick to his soul, since, if he stood on one thing, it was that each of us had to be accountable for what we had done in life.

      No matter how bad.

      Still, she was his daughter. He’d tried to raise her as best he could, knowing he had always had a paucity in the way of softness or understanding, until things started to go downhill in the past year. And he hated that—that he’d let things get away from him. That someone with as clear a ledger when it came to right from wrong had to look through the glass and see his own seed, his wife’s baby, and say, in a corner of his bruised, unforgiving heart, That’s my daughter there.

      “How’s Benji, Daddy?” Amanda asked. Her stupid cat. Not even her cat, just a mangy, scrawny stray who lived in the woods outside and only came around ’cause Amanda was stupid enough to feed it. “Are you leaving a little something out for him? He likes a little raw chop meat maybe. Or maybe some tuna fish.”

      “He’s doing just fine, Amanda, just fine,” Vance said, though he was plainly lying. He’d heard a couple of hopeful purrs a few days back, but now the critter must have wised up and was no longer coming around. “He stops by every couple of nights or so. Been asking for you, ’Manda.”

      That made her smile.

      “I talked to my lawyer,” she said, the momentary lightness in her soft eyes darkening. “They want me to plead, Daddy, to what they’re calling ‘aggravated vehicular manslaughter.’ Otherwise he says they’re going to go for second-degree murder.”

      Vance nodded.

      The whole thing had been played out all over the news, so much that he couldn’t even watch TV anymore. Such a nice, young thing that gal had been, and married to someone serving our country, a Marine in Afghanistan. Not to mention that baby … Only eight weeks old. The poor guy hadn’t even seen his son yet. The D.A. wouldn’t let up. Not with Amanda so juiced up and not even knowing what she had done and all. It was clear he was pushing for the max. Vance couldn’t even blame him.

      It was an election year.

      “Sounds like something you ought to weigh carefully, honey.”

      “Aggravated manslaughter’s punishable by twenty years, Daddy!” Her eyes grew scared and wide. “I didn’t mean to hurt no one. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I wasn’t myself. Those things …” She wiped her eyes and pushed back her hair. “We’re talking my whole life, Daddy! I don’t deserve this. I’m scared. You have to help me. You do …”

      “I know you’re scared, Amanda,” Vance said, looking at her. “But you’re gonna have to take responsibility for what you’ve done. You killed a woman, honey. And her baby …”

      And after, how she’d just walked around in a big daze crying how she was hurt too. Those animals … Her so-called friends. Look what they’d done to her. Vance had fought for right from wrong his whole life, and this was what it had left him. “No one can make that go away, darlin’. There just ain’t much I can do.”

      “Twenty years, Daddy! That’s my whole life! You know people. I know you can help me.” She was crying, his little girl. Thick, childlike tears. But crying for whom? Herself. “You have to!”

      “I can’t help you, honey.” Vance lowered his head. “At least, not in that way.”

      “Then how?” Amanda stared back at him. “How can you help me, Daddy? You were a cop, all those years …” Her tone was helpless and desperate, fragile as thin glass, but also with that edge that dug into him with recollections he didn’t want to hear. “You were a cop! That has to mean something.”

      A fire began to light up in Vance’s belly. First, like a match to kindling. Then catching, fueled by the anger he always carried, and his shame. The people demanded justice. She’d killed two perfectly innocent people. He understood that better than anyone. His daughter had to pay the price. They’d been bleeding him, one cut at a time, over the years, one at a time … And deeper …

      “How you gonna help me, Daddy?”

      It got to the point you couldn’t take no more …

      Someone had to pay.

      Vance leaned forward and said in barely more than a whisper, “Who gave you the pills, ’Manda?”

      “No one gave me the pills, Daddy. You don’t understand. You just get them, that’s all. I needed them.”

      “Someone