The Flight of the Silvers (35 page)

His last thought before blacking out was of Peter Pendergen, a man who’d worked so tirelessly to keep the public cynical about chronokinetics. Zack cast him a weary apology for the unwitting countereffort. All the minds they changed today. All the new believers.

TWENTY-THREE

Evan woke up in a sour mood on Saturday, haunted by the memories of his multiple pasts. They leapt at him from his cutting room floor—scenes deleted but not forgotten, words unsaid but not unheard, all the hurtful actions of a woman he’d cherished but now despised. They always hit him worst in the morning.

With a drowsy yawn, he crossed the floor of his hotel suite. He showered and shaved, dressed himself in a sleek charcoal business suit, then tucked his hair beneath a wavy brown wig. Once he applied his putty nose and chin, Evan chuckled at his reflection. He could have passed for Zack’s dapper young brother.

After a hearty breakfast in the grotto café, Evan rented a room on the tenth floor of Tower Five, just a few doors down from his fellow Silvers. He ordered six mimosas from room service and then called the front desk to launch an incoherent complaint about his new accommodations.

Soon a manager knocked on his door. He was bald and barrel-chested, with a strong lantern jaw that unpleasantly reminded Evan of his father. The manager did a double take at Evan’s suit, a nearly exact replica of his own.

“Good morning, Mr. Freeman. I’m Lloyd Lundrum. What seems to be the problem?”

Evan tapped the square brass pin on the man’s blazer. “Lloyd Lundrum. Good name. I like it. Listen, the room’s fine. I’m just hoping to play a gag on some friends down the hall. I’ll give you a thousand dollars to lend me your name tag for an hour.”

The manager’s eyes narrowed to frosty slits. Evan laughed.

“Okay. Wow. You even glare like my dad. I guess there’s no point in raising my offer.”

“No, sir. There’s not. And I don’t appreciate you calling me here under—”

Evan’s skin tingled with tiny bubbles as he reversed his life fifty-eight seconds. He straightened his sleeves, then answered the knock at the door.

“Good morning, Mr. Freeman. I’m Lloyd Lundrum. What seems to be the problem?”

“Well, Lloyd, there’s an ugly red stain on the carpet and frankly, I’m not happy about it.”

Sixty seconds later, the manager lay crumpled at the foot of the bed, a trickling bullet hole between his frozen white eyes.

Evan stashed his silenced .22, then stooped to remove Lloyd’s ID pin. He could only imagine that Luke Rander was shaking his head from the great beyond. His father never understood him in the old world and sure as hell wouldn’t get it now. In Evan’s Etch A Sketch life, nothing mattered. All that was done was inevitably undone. The screen would wipe clean for Round 56, and Lloyd Lundrum would live again to scoff at wealthy pranksters.

Evan whistled a chipper tune as he stirred a vial of crushed pergnesticin into the mimosas. Soon he heard Amanda in his earpiece, placing the room service order. He waited in the hallway until a freckly young porter emerged from the elevator. Fortunately the kid was more flexible than Lloyd, and was happy to relinquish the food cart for a thousand dollars. Evan dawdled in his room for another half hour before wheeling the cart down the hall.

He stashed his hatred behind a genial grin when Amanda greeted him at the door. Evan couldn’t look at her without recalling the trauma from his last life, the cold and rainy night she jammed a tempic sword through his chest. That Amanda had died before Evan could get his revenge. But this one was standing right here, just ripe for the plucking.

“Good morning, ma’am. I’m Lloyd Lundrum. I sincerely apologize for the delay.”

“What happened?”

“We’re short on bellhops today. It’s a madhouse. I’ve been delivering food all morning.”

Amanda looked over the cart. “Are you sure this is our order? Those drinks—”

“I threw in the complimentary mimosas as our way of saying sorry. If you don’t want them—”

“No, that’s fine. My sister loves those.”

Evan smiled. “Well then I hope you and your sister have a wonderful brunch.”

As Amanda processed him with her sharp green gaze, he fought the urge to rewind and start over. But soon she passed him a twenty-dollar tip and then pulled the cart inside. Evan grinned all the way to the elevator until he realized the bitch never once looked at his name tag.

Twelve minutes later, he sat on the balcony of his Tower Five rental, listening to Zack and Amanda’s giddy banter in his earpiece. When Evan first discovered they were staying in the Baronessa Suite, he rewound two days and became its previous occupant. Tiny listening devices were concealed in various parts of the living room, the balcony, and of course Hannah’s bedroom.

The hardest part of Evan’s week was having to once again hear her dulcet moans of pleasure, each one a pinch of salt in a very old wound. But he knew her fling with Theo never lasted long or ended well. Evan had only seen two men pierce the formidable shell around Hannah’s heart. He’d already killed one of them. The other would crash her life next year, with deliciously tragic consequences.

Evan had been wiping the makeup off the back of his hand, scrubbing his “55” tattoo back into visibility, when Hannah smashed her first flute glass. He launched forward with the binoculars, hoo-hooing and oohing as the sisters traded angry barbs. When the second glass cracked across Amanda’s forehead, Evan squealed with delight. This was a thing of beauty, a moment so perfect that he had to watch it six times.

His smile vanished when Amanda’s tempic hand knocked Zack off the balcony. Evan shot to his feet now, staring in alarm as Zack lost his grip and fell. Screaming, Amanda threw herself against the railing and launched a tempic arm at Zack. She caught him at the fifth floor.

Evan closed his eyes and moaned with hot relief. He didn’t want to reverse such a beautiful chain of events, but he would have done it to save Zack. The cartoonist was the focus of Evan’s next mission. More than that, he was a friend.

—

Amanda’s mind howled with chaos, a fire in a crowded theater. Panicked thoughts trampled each other on the way to her mouth as her body twisted painfully over the railing. Her hands were submerged in an enormous white arm, fifty feet long and as thick as a manhole cover. She could feel Zack’s body in her thoughts, resting limp and unconscious in her titan grip.

“I got him. I got him. Oh my God.”

David pressed up against her backside, holding her in place. “Okay. Good. Good, Amanda. Now you have to bring him back.”

“It’s not working! I can’t control it!”

“Yes you can,” said David. “Concentrate.”

Six weeks ago, Sterling Quint’s physicists had attempted to gauge the limits of Amanda’s tempic talent. Her creations took an increasing amount of willpower to maintain. At sixty seconds, it felt like squeezing a tight fist. At two minutes, it felt like squeezing a tight fist around thumbtacks. Czerny had stopped the endurance test at 148 seconds, when Amanda began to cry and bleed from her nose.

David laid his hands on Amanda’s wrists. She could feel the giant arm contract.

“What are you doing? David, how are you doing that?”

“I’m not doing anything,” he said. “It’s all you. Just keep focusing.”

Theo fumbled his way up the side of the hot tub, throbbing with pain. He yanked a small shard of glass from his thigh, then looked to Hannah. The actress lay motionless on the floor.

Amanda turned her head as much as she could. “Theo! Are you okay? Is Hannah okay?”

“Concentrate on Zack!” David yelled.

Theo took an anxious reading of Hannah’s pulse and future, then exhaled at the presence of both.

“She’s all right. She’s okay.”

“Don’t move her. She could have a broken—”

Amanda screamed when Zack slipped in her grasp. David seethed at her.

“Goddamn it, Amanda! If you care about him . . .”

“I do! I’m sorry!”

Theo looked to the patio doorway, where Mia stood frozen in dread. Her inner voice chanted Zack’s name over and over.

“Mia . . .”

The urgent note from the future still dangled from her fingertips, warning her of Evan’s drugged cocktails. If only she’d seen it sooner . . .

“Mia!”

She snapped out of her daze. Theo jerked his head at the living room.

“Security’s coming. We need to go fast. Gather as many bags as you can carry. Leave the stuff we don’t need. Can you do that?”

She gave him a trembling nod, then disappeared inside.

Theo scooped Hannah in his arms, praying she didn’t have a spinal injury. He saw a thick stream of blood trickle down her hair.
Goddamn you, Evan.

By the time Zack reached the ninth floor, Amanda’s brain felt like it was wrapped in barbed wire. David wiped sweat and blood from her forehead.

“Hold on. Just a few more seconds.”

“I can’t hold it . . .”

“You can, Amanda. You have to. You’ll never forgive yourself if you let him drop.”

With a final scream, she raised Zack to eye level. David grabbed his arms just as the tempis vanished. He pulled Zack over the railing, then checked his vitals.

“He’s okay, Amanda. You did it.”

Amanda fell back onto the one chair that was left standing, her face drenched and white.

Theo turned around in the doorway and looked to David. “You think you can carry him?”

“Yeah. I can get him to the van.”

With a loud grunt, David hoisted Zack into his arms. Amanda cast a shaky palm.

“Be careful! He could have a broken neck! They could both . . .”

Now the images in Amanda’s head turned melodramatic, a theater in a crowded fire. She pictured Zack and Hannah as paraplegics. Her fault. Her hands. Her tempis.

“Oh my God. I did this . . .”

David gritted his teeth. “Amanda, we don’t have time.”

“He’s right,” said Theo. “I know you’re drugged and I know you’re hurting, but you need to pull yourself together. We have to go right now.”

Wincing, she struggled to her feet. “Okay. Okay.”

They turned their gazes to the airy distance, at the sound of approaching sirens. Now Theo’s future howled. There was no way they’d make it to the van without being spotted. There was no hope of making it out of Evansville without another chase.

—

Zack came to life on the way to the elevator. Hot knives of pain stabbed his chest while his body bobbled and dangled in David’s arms. He raised a weak gaze.

“David . . . ?”

Amanda rushed to his side. “Zack! Are you all right? Can you feel my hand?”

He fought a cracked and addled laugh.
I think we all felt your hand, honey.

“I’m okay. Anyone else hurt?”

“Hannah. She’s unconscious. I don’t know how bad it is yet.”

As Mia jabbed the elevator call button, Theo checked the progress displays above all four doors. Two of the cars were on their way up, one from the first floor, the other from the fourth. His thoughts flashed with images of six security guards in the lower elevator.

He pointed to the north-side doors. “This is going to be close. We need to jump in that thing the second it opens.”

“Put me down,” Zack said. “I can walk.”

The moment he touched the ground, he winced at another painful chest stab. Amanda held his arm. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m all right.”

The elevator was two floors away. Theo shifted Hannah in his arms. “We’re never going to make it through the lobby. Not like this . . .”

“We have no choice,” David said. “We’ll have to fight our way through.”

Amanda eyed him with dark concern. “There has to be a better way.”

“Here it comes . . .”

As she lifted her knapsacks, Mia felt a familiar twinge in the back of her mind.
Oh no . . .

The doors opened to an empty elevator. “Come on!” Theo yelled. “Hurry!”

They rushed into the lift. Mia dropped her bags and propped a door.

“What the hell are you doing?” Theo asked.

“I’m getting a note!”

A small bead of light floated a foot above the carpet, an arm’s length outside the elevator. Theo looked to the display across the hall. The other elevator was at Floor 7.

“Forget it! We don’t have time!”

“It could be important!”

“Mia, I’m almost positive there are six security guards in that other elevator . . .”

“We wouldn’t be in this mess if I’d seen my other note! I’m not making that mistake again!”

David pressed the hold button. “I got this. Move your hand.”

Mia pulled her arm inside. David ghosted a pair of closed elevator doors just as a chime issued from across the hall. The Silvers stood frozen behind their illusive cover, listening to the gruff voices and heavy footsteps just ten feet away.

The clamor quickly moved down the hall. David breathed a whisper at Mia. “Be careful.”

She dropped to the ground and crawled through the ghost doors. Once she plucked the note from the carpet, she glanced down the hall. Theo was right. Six armed guards now stood outside the Baronessa Suite. They didn’t bother to knock before keying into the room.

With a deep exhale, she backed into the lift. The real doors closed over the ghosted ones. Mia read the note with bulging eyes, then pressed the emergency stop.

“What are you doing, Mia?”

“We can’t go down. We have to go up.”

David blinked at her. “Are you insane?”

“What’s the message?” Theo asked.

“‘You won’t make it to the garage without hitting cops. Go up to Suite 1255. It’s being repainted but nobody will touch it until Monday. Hide in there until things quiet down.’”

She pushed the cancel button until the lobby light went dark, then reset their course for the top floor.

David shook his head. “I don’t like this. In a matter of hours, this place will be crawling with Deps. They have ghost drills. They’ll track us.”

Amanda felt ill at the thought of federal agents watching a spectral reenactment of her balcony attack. If that didn’t put her on their Ten Most Wanted list, nothing would.

“They need warrants to use ghost drills on private property,” Mia told him. “We have at least forty-eight hours before they start.”

“Yes, I read the same book you did. The law could have changed since that was written.”

“David, why would I send that note from the future if the plan didn’t work?”

“Because there’s more than one future! Why haven’t you figured that out yet?”