I SEE YOU an unputdownable psychological thriller with a breathtaking twist by PATRICIA MACDONALD (fb2 epub reader .TXT) 📕

multiple-use ticket, which she used to get through the turnstile. Once inside, she held her breath against the heavy, malodorous air, and made her way through the cluster of people nearest the entrance. The far end of the platform was usually the most sparsely populated. She avoided going all the way there. It was never a good idea to be too isolated. But she separated herself from the other riders and began to look down at her folded-up paper, avoiding the gaze of the other people waiting on the platform, while she kept one hand firmly clutched on her pocketbook.

She was bemused by her own precautions. A girl who grew up in semi-rural Franklin County, and thought that Nashville, Tennessee, was a giant metropolis, she had had a crash course in street smarts during this last year in Philadelphia. She had learned not to smile and say hello. She knew to avert her eyes. To keep her wits about her, to hang on like grim death to any and all bags she had with her. Unless of course, someone brandished a weapon. Then, she knew you had to let go without an argument. Your bag wasn’t worth your life.

She kept her eyes lowered, ostensibly on her paper, but her gaze was distracted by movement on the tracks below. She squinted at the moving shape against the dark tracks, and realized, with a sickening thud in her stomach, that she was looking at a rat about the size of a cat, scuttling across the gravel in between the rails until he got to the metal handrails of the emergency ladder at the far end of the platform.

Hannah was repulsed by the sight. Was he coming up those rungs to the platform? Were rats able to climb a ladder? She would not put anything past those vermin who were so adaptive to the city life. Hannah was the farthest person from the entrance, and closest to the end of the platform. Suddenly, she no longer wanted to be that far from her fellow subway riders. If the rat came up that ladder and onto the platform, she did not want to be the first human he encountered. She edged her way closer to the others. At least it was not an especially unruly lot. On the contrary, there were several tired-looking women who were probably heading to work. A few noisy girls in Catholic-school uniforms were teasing one another and laughing at their own insults. A guy with a bushy beard in a black shirt with a large green, gold and red Frisbee-shaped tam covering his dreadlocks was rocking slightly on the balls of his feet. Stoned, she thought. One guy in a hoody and shades was slumped to the ground against the tiles of the wall, his chin against his chest, his hands in the pockets. The usual suspects, she thought.

From the distance she heard the train’s whistle and saw the light coming closer as it approached the station. Good, she thought. Time to go. She thought about Dominga and what she was going to say to her. She had to reassure the lonely veteran that there was help, and a life worth living out there.

The roaring, shrieking train came barreling towards them. Hannah tucked her paper under her arm and renewed her grip on her bag. Along with her fellow passengers, she stepped closer to the platform edge, trying to judge where the doors would open. Suddenly, even over the deafening noise of the approaching train, she heard human voices yelping.

‘Hey!’

‘No!’

She started to turn to look, and then she felt it. Something powerful at her back shoved her forward and she stumbled, losing her footing. All she could see was the yellow light looming. Otherwise, despite the cacophony of the speeding train on the tracks, everything was silent. The only sound she heard, as her feet left the platform and she sailed out and over the tracks, was the frantic thudding of her heart.

She landed on all fours, on the jagged little stones between the rails. For a moment she was too stunned to move. She scrambled up to her feet but she couldn’t breathe. The train, its yellow light blinding, was bearing down on her.

I’m going to die, she thought. She could hear sounds again. The roar of the train, and people screaming on the platform. Hannah stood, frozen, staring at the oncoming train. A heavyset black woman, holding a shopping bag, leaned out over the edge of the platform. She extended her hand to Hannah and shook it, as if to say, take it. Take my hand. I’ll pull you up. Hannah reached up frantically but she was not even close to touching the woman’s hand. Hannah saw the blur of people on the platform. Some were shouting for help, and trying to wave down the engineer, to get him to brake. One schoolgirl was sobbing.

A portly black man in a SEPTA uniform shook his head and roughly pulled the woman with the shopping bag back and away from the edge of the platform.

He’s gonna let me die, Hannah thought.

Then the man looked Hannah in the eyes. Through the deafening cacophony he was speaking to her. What was he saying? It was impossible to hear his words above the din. He pointed toward the ladder at the far end of the platform. Hannah stared at him, her eyes wide with terror.

‘Run,’ he said.

Somehow, despite the terror, the noise and her own confusion, she heard it. Run? she thought. She must have mouthed the question. The SEPTA conductor held her gaze calmly, and nodded emphatically, pointing again, toward the end of the platform. Run? Outrun the train? That was ridiculous. Impossible.

For a second she could not move. Would not. And then, in a flash, she understood. He was telling her that this was her only chance. And he would know. There was no