Choke: A Thriller Read Free

marriage, Vince.”
    “You know what I meant.”
    Melahmed pauses and watches Vincent.  Vincent is momentarily uncomfortable.
    “We haven't been seeing eye to eye lately.  Plus, I've sort of started seeing someone else.  But I don't know...I don't want anything long-term, so I try not to give it much serious thought.”
    Melahmed nods, then looks up as if a sudden thought occurred to him.
    “You know, it occurs to me, how long have we known each other?”
    “A long time,” Vincent says.
    “I steered you through graduate school.”
    “Got me my first job.  You’re Annabel's godfather.”
    “You know what's odd?”
    “What?”
    “You never told me why you became a psychologist.”
    Vincent looks momentarily stunned.
    “It's true.”
    “Oh, come on, you know I've always been interested in–”
    “Yeah, yeah, I know all that bullshit.  You're interested in how the mind works.  What makes people tick.  Blah, blah, blah.  What I don't know, what you've never really told me, is the truth, why you really chose to do this for a living.”
    Vincent feels himself start to sweat.  He thinks back to how many times he’s encouraged his own clients to open up, to share with what’s bothering them.  All this time, he’s never told Melahmed the truth.  And he sure as hell wasn’t going to start now.
    “Why are you bringing this up, now?” he asks.
    “I'm curious, and to be honest, a little envious.”
    “What?”
    “You've got it made - you timed the market perfectly.”
    “What are you talking about?” Vincent says.
    “You have positioned yourself in the area of peak performance, right?”
    “Indeed I have.”
    “Well everyone, and I mean everyone, wants to be their best.  I was just thinking that you've got it made, your practice must be incredibly lucrative, you've attracted attention from the media, you're almost as famous as some of your patients.”
    “Your point?”
    “Why did you specialize in peak performance?  What was it about the field that attracted you to it?  You could've gone into any branch of psychology you wanted - you were the most heavily recruited grad student I'd ever seen.”
    Vincent closes his eyes for a moment, sees the nose of the car crashing into the bridge’s guardrail, the sensation of falling, then the cold of the water.  And Kristin. 
    “Vincent?”
    Vincent snaps his eyes open and focuses on Melahmed.  Suddenly, he feels angry.  “But why are you asking me now?”
    “Why not?”
    “Because you think this all has something to do with my panic attack, my choke, when my car went ballistic?”
    “Do you?”
    Vincent shakes his head and looks out the window.
    But he doesn’t answer the question.

9.
    A sign above a huge, modern building reads "McCardle National Ice Center."  Next to the letters are the intertwined rings signifying the building as an Olympic training facility.
    Vicki Lee, dressed in warm-up clothes, is skating alone on the rink.  She moves with precision, and looks incredibly graceful even in a sweat suit.  Her silky black hair is tied into a ponytail.
    Vicki gains speed as she skates the length of the rink.  She gathers herself and leaps high in the air, sending up a shower of ice as she spins in a blurred vision of grace.  She nails the triple Lutz and comes to a dramatic finish with her arms upraised toward the empty bleachers.
    Her coach, a burly man named Dave Brazer, applauds.
    “Do that and you'll be coming back with some hardware, Vicki,” he says.  “Some serious, yellowish colored hardware.”
    Vicki skates to a stop.
    “Yeah, if all the skaters from Germany have a mass aneurysm,” she replies.
    “That's not the kind of attitude I want to be hearing.”
    “I know, Coach, I was just kidding.  The fact is, I've never felt better or stronger.  I feel like I've really turned the corner in the last few months.”
    She has a thin line of sweat along her forehead, and she’s breathing heavily, but overall she feels