Invisible Woman

"Come on," she muttered as they hit a developing traffic backup north of Canal Street. But then an ambulance-a rattling old meat wagon, in fact-appeared. It was blasting on its siren to clear a path for itself in the morass ahead. She was punching Louis's number in again on her cell phone, to try to call her husband back, when she became aware that not only was the whole area howling with sirens, the cabbie didn't know how to trail an ambulance, and they were losing ground fast. Now, wait a minute, what was going on around here anyway? What was that huge blue-and-white van about? She'd never seen anything quite like the gigantic, bleating monster, honking the loudest horn she had heard in a lifetime of Manhattan horns. Ahead, conventional police cars were unloading cops who were rushing out into the street waving their arms. When she saw that they were stopping traffic, the fear came back and it hit her hard. She got out of the cab, paid the driver, slipped and slid her way among the steaming, honking trucks and raging taxis to a jammed sidewalk. People were pressing curiously toward the disturbance ahead. As she pushed past one person and then another, she cursed under her breath. Then she understood that the police activity was focused on Chambers Street where the restaurant was, and she began to run.Strieber, Anne is the author of 'Invisible Woman', published 2004 under ISBN 9780765310934 and ISBN 0765310937.