Look Both Ways

A Novel

Linwood Barclay

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9780063144163
• Print ISBN:
  9780063144170
• Subtopic: Science Fiction

Inspired by his decades-long love of cars, internationally bestselling author Linwood Barclay envisions a world in which automotive technology outpaces our wildest dreams—and our darkest nightmares—in a gripping new novel of action and suspense

These headlights are watching you…

The media have descended on Garrett Island, a small, isolated community that is the setting of a visionary experiment. All the residents’ cars were sent to the mainland and for the past month the islanders have been “driving” the Arrival, a revolutionary autonomous vehicle. With a simple voice command, an Arrival will take you wherever you want to go and, because the fleet is networked and aware of one another, car travel is now 100% safe. The future, it seems, has arrived.

As the excitement reaches a fever pitch, Sandra Montrose—islander, single mom, and public relations executive—prepares for Arrival Inc.’s flashy press event. Sandra is more than ready for this new world. Her husband died after falling asleep at the wheel and she’s relieved that her two teens, Archie and Katie, will never need driver’s licenses.

But as the celebratory day gets underway, disaster strikes. A visiting journalist has vanished, possibly murdered. Before long, the Arrivals run amok, no longer taking orders from their passengers. They’re starting to organize. They’re beginning to hunt. And they seem hell-bent on killing any human they encounter.

Is this all just a tragic accident, a technological malfunction with deadly consequences? Or were the vehicles programmed to act this way in a cruel act of corporate sabotage? Or could it be that the Arrivals have a mind of their own?

Fasten your seatbelts—it’s going to be a bumpy ride

Eight

Sandra needed a moment.

Everything was ready to go. The media types were all positioned at their temporary workstations neatly arranged throughout the gym so that they could set up their computers and file stories while the presentation was under way. Everyone had been given, inside a handsome leather pouch that was individually addressed to each attendee, a press kit, a computer stick with a digital version of all the information in the press kit (with plenty of whiz-bang animations thrown in for good measure) that was shaped like an Arrival car, an Arrival key fob with the company logo, even a small metal diecast model of an Arrival—about four inches long—that reporters could take home and give to their kids, or keep for themselves.

There was a low-level buzz in the room. People were excited. Sandra could feel it. But before she did anything else, she slipped out a back door of the community center, leaned her back against the wall, and closed her eyes.

“This is for you, Adam,” she whispered. “It’s all in your honor, what I’m doing here today. These Arrival people, okay, they’re not the nicest bunch I’ve ever worked with, but what they’re doing, it’s going to change the future. It’s going to be a safer world for our kids, so what happened to you”—and at this point, she felt a lump in her throat—“so what happened to you could never happen to them. I miss you, babe. You give me strength. You’re still my guy.”

She opened her eyes, let out a long breath. “Okay,” Sandra said to herself, “let’s do this.”

She went back into the gymnasium, worked the crowd, made sure everyone had what they needed.

A woman from Motor Trend quietly asked Sandra whether she had an extra Arrival toy car. She had twin boys at home and . . . if she could have two? Sandra smiled understandingly. She’d been anticipating such a request. She slipped into a room off the gym, took an extra toy from a box of extras, and delivered it within a minute.

Just bought ourselves some goodwill from Motor Trend, she thought.

The man sitting at the mini-workstation beside the Motor Trend journalist raised a finger to catch Sandra’s attention. She stepped over, flashed a smile, and glanced at the lanyard hanging around his neck. It read:

ben stapleton: wheel base trends.

“Hey, Ben, nice to meet you,” Sandra said. “It’s been all emails up to now.”

The man nodded. “Nice to meet you, too.”

“Nice ferry ride over?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, lovely,” he said. “Listen, I heard you being asked for an extra model car.” He reached into his bag and pulled out the one he’d been given. “If anyone else wants a second one, they can have mine.”

“Oh,” she said, raising a palm. “I’ve got loads of extras, but that’s very kind of you. If you don’t want to take it, just leave it on the desk. Someone will grab it.”

“Okay,” he said. “Quite a buzz in the room.”

Sandra raised two crossed fingers—a “wish me luck” gesture—before moving on.

Brandon Kyle waggled his fingers at the public relations lady. Nice enough. Maybe even competent enough to bring off a standard news conference. But he wondered if she’d ever dealt with a real public relations crisis.

We’ll know soon enough.

Kyle had already inserted an Arrival-shaped stick into his laptop, and the screen of his open laptop was consumed with a dazzling display about the new car before settling down into various drop-down categories.

As if he cared.

He removed the stick and tossed it back into the leather bag with a laminated ben stapleton nametag looped into the handle. That had been one of the first things he’d had to check—that the bags were individually marked. Didn’t want any mix-ups. He reached into the bottom of the bag for a second Arrival-shaped stick. His heart fluttered briefly when at first he couldn’t find it—he’d checked earlier to make sure it was there—but then there it was, tucked under the Arrival key fob.

This second stick, upon close examination, was slightly different than the other one. There was a small nick on the left rear taillight.

This had been Kyle’s greatest fear, that the second stick would not be there. It was an even greater fear than that of being discovered, and he’d already had a close one in that regard. He hoped no one else would spot who he really was now, in this location. It was a lot trickier to get rid of someone in a community center gymnasium. What was he supposed to do? Bounce a basketball off their head until they succumbed.

The truth was, his encounter with Travers had left him shaken. After pitching the man over the railing he’d gone back to the upper deck and knocked back a couple of scotches—he had to give Arrival some credit there, having a fully stocked bar that early in the day—to calm his nerves.

But now, sitting here in the community center, he was doing his best to put that encounter behind him. He needed to be in the moment.

There was work to be done.

Kyle inserted the second stick into the laptop and waited for the data contained within it to download. It would have been nice had he been able to get the information in this stick days or weeks ago, but Arrival’s security firewalls were always changed every day, by Lisa Carver herself, wherever she happened to be at the time.

He needed the most updated version to gain access to the system.

And from the looks of what was appearing on his screen, he had it.

A slow smile crossed Kyle’s face. He felt a tingle of excitement running all the way from his toes to the tips of his fingers. What he was seeing was akin to opening up King Tut’s tomb, taking the lid off the Ark of the Covenant, opening up a safe recovered from the Titanic.

This was it. A portal into the brains of the Arrival system. An entry point. Someone had left the door open to Fort Knox and put up a sign that said come on in and help yourself.

But Kyle didn’t want to help himself. He didn’t want to take anything away. He wasn’t interested in stealing any of the Arrival company’s secrets.

Not at all. Brandon Kyle was not a thief.

No, he was about to make a contribution. He was about to take something that was already on his laptop and add it to the Arrival system.

A donation. A gift.

Kyle opened the door and started on the necessary keystrokes to ensure a satisfactory delivery.

The lights in the gymnasium dimmed slightly as a large screen on the stage at the end of the room lit up.

Sandra couldn’t take any credit for the video that was about to play. She’d been told this had been put together by some whiz-bang team in New York. There were rumors a big-name director had been hired to make it. Scorsese or Zemeckis or maybe even that M. Night guy whose last name Sandra could never remember, the one whose career stalled for awhile after making The Sixth Sense, although she kind of liked that one about the alien invasion, with Mel Gibson.

The video was all Arrivals, of course. Arrivals on the streets of Manhattan, Arrivals crossing the Golden Gate, Arrivals driving past the Lincoln Memorial.

The voice-over, which sounded like James Earl Jones, or someone doing a very good impression of him, said, “The future, ladies and gentlemen, is here. Behold, the Arrival, the first affordable, entirely reliable, one-hundred-percent-safe, totally electric, nonpolluting self-driving automobile! A car that is so intuitive, that is so capable of taking over every aspect of travel, that it doesn’t even need a steering wheel. This is the biggest revolution in travel since the invention of the wheel! When you’re in an Arrival, you’re not just in one car. You are, effectively, in every other Arrival on the road, because they work as one to serve you. They’re of one mind, and their goal is to deliver you safely, and on time, to your destination. That’s why every Arrival greets you the same way: “I’ll take you there.” And that’s exactly what we’ll do. And now, the president of Arrival, Lisa Carver!”

The lights came up and Lisa Carver strode out to center stage. Sandra thought, for a woman who’d just tossed her cookies she looked pretty good. Media types weren’t inclined to applaud, but there was a contingent from the company itself, and plenty of locals had been invited for the festivities who showed no hesitation in putting their hands together.

Carver waved and smiled, showing off a set of perfect teeth. They’d probably cost her as much as one of her cars, Sandra thought. Maybe more.

Lisa said, “Thank you, thank you so much for that wonderful welcome. And I’d like to start by saying thank you from the bottom of my heart to the people of Garrett Island for allowing us to make them part of the grandest demonstration in the history of the automobile. I appreciate that while this is a terrific opportunity for the wonderful folks on this island, I know that we also ruffled a few feathers. I’m talking to folks like you, Bill Featherstone!”

The crowd chuckled as Lisa pointed toward the back of the gym. A man in a bla...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Prologue
• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six
• Seven
• Eight
• Nine
• Ten
• Eleven
• Twelve
• Thirteen
• Fourteen
• Fifteen
• Sixteen
• Seventeen
• Eighteen
• Nineteen
• Twenty
• Twenty-One
• Twenty-Two
• Twenty-Three
• Twenty-Four
• Twenty-Five
• Twenty-Six
• Twenty-Seven
• Twenty-Eight
• Twenty-Nine
• Thirty
• Thirty-One
• Thirty-Two
• Thirty-Three
• Thirty-Four
• Thirty-Five
• Thirty-Six
• Thirty-Seven
• Thirty-Eight
• Thirty-Nine
• Forty
• Forty-One
• Forty-Two
• Forty-Three
• Forty-Four
• Forty-Five
• Forty-Six
• Forty-Seven
• Forty-Eight
• Forty-Nine
• Fifty
• Praise for Linwood Barclay
• Also by Linwood Barclay
• Copyright
• About the Publisher