Page 87 of Hate You Most

“Is this Oaklyn Jones?”

“Yeah… who’s asking?” A pause. “How did you get this number?” Through the phone Viktoriya almost couldn't hear Oaklyn's Russian accent. She had probably trained it away with speech therapy around the same time she exploded in popularity.

“My name is Viktoriya Sokolova. I’m a journalist. I’ve been looking into the crash that happened last November. The one you were involved in.”

Silence settled on the line. Viktoriya could hear the faint noise from a TV somewhere on the other end. The quiet background mutters.

Then she said quietly, “I already told the police everything.”

“I know,” she replied gently. Viktoriya had to make this work, it was her one shot at finding out if her crash was just another accident, or if she should be more worried and freaked out about it than she already was. “I was hoping you might remember something else. Anything from right before the crash?”

“It was just an accident.”

Viktoriya closed her eyes briefly. She pressed her face completely flat against the window, the sun having warmed it.

“Oaklyn,” she said. “I’m not calling to get you into trouble, but two other crashes have already happened. One before, and one after yours. Very similar ones.”

The noise of the TV stopped. Viktoriya heard the click of a remote, and shuffling on the other end.

“What kind of crashes?” Oaklyn asked.

Viktoriya glanced back at the notes scattered across her bed. “Celebrities driving late at night, and their cars losing control without explanation. They’ve all woken up with retrograde amnesia—memory loss.”

The quiet on the other end stretched for long enough that she wondered if Oaklyn had hung up.

Then she slowly spoke again. “…You said retrograde amnesia?”

“Yes.”

Viktoriya's pulse quickened. She closed her eyes and leaned against the window again.

“Oaklyn,” she asked, “what do you remember from the moments before the crash?”

For several seconds there was nothing. Just the faint static of the phone line.

Then she exhaled. “Not much,” she admitted. “But, there was something weird.”

Viktoriya leaned forward instinctively. “What?”

“I remembered a car behind me that had their headlights on for a long time. That kind of made it hard to follow the road.”

Viktoriya gripped the phone tighter. “What kind of car?”

“Black,” she said. "An SUV maybe. I couldn't look at it much due to the headlights being so bright.”

“Did it do anything?”

“It stayed behind me for a long time,” she said slowly. “Like… for way too long. It could have easily passed me, but it chose to stay behind.”

Viktoriya wasted no time asking the next question. “How long?”

“Ten minutes, maybe. Maybe more, I don't know.”

She moved away from the window. Took the notebook in her hand and began scribbling notes quickly.

“And then?”

Oaklyn hesitated on the other end of the line. “I started getting this… pressure in my head.”