by Patrick Lee
Even at the edge of her vision, she could see Cullen staring at her. She felt the dynamic of the room change. Felt Cullen suddenly transformed into something all too human: a man whose libido had suddenly perked up, like a dog to the sound of the treat drawer sliding open.
While she waited for him to say something, she took in the silence of the cabin. The other two men were still upstairs somewhere. To her right—she compelled herself not to turn her head—was the window. The deep forest outside. The thin pane of glass separating her from it.
“Nobody’s around,” she said softly. “I can be quiet.”
She felt his stare even as she kept her eyes cast down. Another long stretch of time went by. Ten or fifteen seconds. Then Cullen stood and slid back his chair—quietly. He crossed to her and knelt to her eye level. He looked cold again. A taxidermied human face brought to life.
She watched him take stock of the chair and her bonds. Watched him mentally working out the mechanics of trying to have sex with her while she was tied up this way. It wasn’t going to work. It was obvious he could see it for himself.
Claire kept her eyes down and waited for him to give up on it. To shake his head and go back to his card game.
Instead he took a knife from his pocket and clicked it open. “You want to remember something,” he said. “I weigh three of you, and I’m meaner than three of you, too. Understand?”
She bit her lower lip, allowed herself to shudder. “Yeah.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Dryden had expected Eversman to be a hard sell. Harder than Marnie had been. Harder than he himself had been, when Claire had first shown him the machine. He and Marnie had both encountered it only after witnessing things that would have been impossible without it. The trailer in the desert, in his own case; the predicted earthquake, in Marnie’s. Events that demanded an outsized explanation, and laid the foundation for believing the machine was real. It was different with Eversman, just as it had been different with Cal Brennan: There had been no such impossible experience.
They made the most of the earthquake, the coverage of which was now getting much of CNN’s airtime. There was a video clip running every few minutes, in which one of the workers from the construction site spoke of the stranger with the fake bomb threat—the man who had saved them all. The chyron text at the bottom of the screen read: SURVIVOR: “HOW DID HE KNOW?” Between that evidence and the machine itself, open and running on the big granite island in Eversman’s kitchen, they at least seemed to have the man’s full attention. That the news was coming from an FBI agent probably helped.
He listened as they explained the system. He paced, and sometimes sat, while they showed him the e-mails and the newspaper articles: his election, his murders.
When they’d finished, Eversman turned away from the island. He crossed the dining area to a huge set of sliding doors overlooking the rear yard. The grounds rolled away to the brick wall at the back, and the dense evergreens of the Carmel Highlands beyond. In the living room, CNN was now muted.
“Fenway,” Eversman said, almost to himself.
Marnie glanced at Dryden, then returned her gaze to Eversman.
The man turned from the glass doors and came back to the island. He picked up the printed article that detailed his election night victory. His speech to the crowd at Fenway Park in November 2024.
“FDR gave his final campaign speech there,” Eversman said. “Not a lot of people know that, but I read about it somewhere, years ago.” He was quiet for a moment, his eyes drifting over the page in his hands. Then: “I bet almost every president we’ve ever had spent his life dreaming about that job before he got it. Even the ones that seemed humble. I bet they pictured what kind of carpet they’d put down in the Oval Office, years before they ever ran. What color drapes they’d hang.”
He let the printout fall to the granite slab.
“I’ve had the thought of running for president in my head since my early thirties,” he said. “For the record, I’d go with beige carpet with dark blue stars around the edges, and blue and white drapes. And I’ve known for probably ten years that if I ever really did it, I’d make my victory speech at Fenway Park. I’ve pictured it every time I’ve watched a Sox home game on TV.”
Somewhere else in the giant house, Dryden heard a phone ringing. He heard a small dog barking in response to it. Heard a woman answer the call, too far away for her words to be discernible.
“A thing like that,” Eversman said, “I guess you can’t stop yourself from thinking about it, even if you know it makes you an egomaniacal prick. What you can stop yourself from doing is ever talking about it. And I have. I’ve never mentioned the Fenway thing to another soul, and I’ve never written it down anywhere. So either this is real, or else you know someone who can read minds.”
Dryden made no reply to that.
“So you believe it,” Marnie said.
His eyes still on the printout, Eversman nodded slowly. Then he looked up, his gaze going back and forth between the two of them.
“Who else have you shown this to?” he asked.
“No one who’s still alive,” Dryden said. “Right now, you’re it.”
Eversman seemed about to say something more when footsteps came clicking down the hallway that led into the dining area. A woman, maybe his wife, came to the stone arch at the hallway’s end.
“Someone from corporate on the phone,” she said.
“I’ll have to get back to them,” Eversman said.
“It sounds important.”
Eversman exhaled softly, then looked at Dryden and Marnie again. “It’ll just be a minute.”
“It’s fine,” Dryden said.
Eversman followed the woman back down the hall, leaving the two of them alone at the island.
“Did I look that mindfucked when you told me about all this?” Marnie asked.
Dryden nodded. “I’m sure I did too, when Claire told me.”
For a while, neither spoke. Dryden could hear Eversman down the hall, talking, his words dulled out to nothing by the distance.
Dryden looked at his watch. 5:40. Twenty minutes to go before the chopper would arrive to pick him up in a high school parking lot five minutes’ drive from here.
“Do you love her?” Marnie asked.
Dryden looked up. “What?”
“Claire.”
Dryden shook his head. “It was never like that with us.”
He thought of asking why that mattered to her, but she spoke up again before he could say anything.
“I’d really like to know what you’re planning to do in the Mojave.”
“It’s better if you don’t,” Dryden said. “Better if no one does.”
“But these people, the resources they’ve got—for Christ’s sake, they know the future—”
“They know some of the future,” Dryden said. “They can get the answers to questions, if they can think of the questions.”
“That’s a pretty good advantage.”
“There are ways around it.” Dryden thought about it a few seconds longer, then said, “Can you stay with Eversman? After you take me to the chopper, I mean. Keep the machine here; what happens with it after that point is up to the two of you. Whatever you decide, about going after these people.”
“You’re not planning a suicide mission, are you?”
Her gaze was intense. Drilling into him, unblinking.
“If it works like I hope,” Dryden said, “then Claire lives for sure. Possibly me, too.”
Her eyes stayed on him for another moment, and then a door opened in the hallway and Eversman’s footsteps came toward them over the stone tiles.
“Sorry for that,” Eversman said. He crossed back to the island and the arrayed printouts.
“Does any of this stuff hit a nerve with you?” Dryden asked. “It’s one thing if they don’t want you to be president—there could be lots of reasons for that. But why are they not killing you right now? Does that part tell you anything?”
Eversman thought about it a long time. He sighed, half smiling. “Maybe they’re big investors in one of my companies. Maybe they’re worried about the stock price crashing if I die tomorrow.”
“That’s actually not a bad thought,” Marnie said. “How small of a suspect pool would it give us?”
Eversman offered the almost-smile again. “Hundreds of people. And now that I think about it, it’s not much of a theory.” He waved a hand at the printed documents. “People with the kind of system you’re talking about wouldn’t be worried about money at all. They could play Wall Street like a video game.”
“What else, then?” Dryden asked. “Why else would these people be scared to make a move against you in the present, but not later on?”
Eversman’s focus stayed on the printed pages. The articles. The headlines. His death, by gunshot and plane crash and gunshot again, over and over. Finally he just shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t.”
For a passing instant, Dryden found himself wondering if that was true. If the guy really didn’t know, or if he was keeping something to himself. Something in his tone gave Dryden that impression, but it was there and gone so quickly he wasn’t sure he’d really seen it.
“I intend to find out, though,” Eversman said, looking up at both of them. “I’ve sure as hell got a vested interest in it.”
The hissing static from the tablet’s speakers broke. Mama Cass’s voice came through, singing about night breezes and what they seemed to whisper.
Marnie turned to Dryden. “We should go.”
Dryden nodded. “I need a disposable phone. We can get one in town.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later he was standing in the deserted parking lot of Pacific Grove High School, Marnie beside him and the FBI chopper coming in low over the city. The air-hammer clatter of its rotors shook the space over the lot, and then the ground beneath it. In the last moment before it touched down, Marnie turned to him. She looked like she wanted to say something, but knew he’d never hear her. Instead she just grabbed his hand. Not exactly a handshake—she simply held on tight for two or three seconds and looked into his eyes.
She mouthed, Don’t die.
He nodded. Then she let go, and Dryden turned and jogged to the chopper as its skids settled on the blacktop.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The helicopter landed an hour and fifty minutes later in Palmdale, in the southwestern Mojave, half an hour’s drive from the place where Dryden had last seen Claire Dunham. He had seventy minutes to get there, which gave him forty minutes to do what he needed to do in town.
He walked into the lot of a used car dealership and found the cheapest thing that looked capable of surviving the short trip: a 1991 Ford Ranger, its bed full of rust holes big enough that he could see its rear axle through them. It turned over on the first try, though, and ran steadily enough. The dealer wanted three hundred dollars for it. Dryden offered two hundred and didn’t budge, and drove it off the lot at a quarter past eight, forty-five minutes from the deadline. He filled the tank halfway up at a station in town and headed out into the desert, where the shadows of Joshua trees stretched out in the long evening light. He had a Beretta tucked into his waistband, but didn’t expect to use it. If it came to that, he would probably be in very big trouble.
* * *
Ten minutes before nine, northbound on 395, he passed the blank ground-level billboard he’d last seen in the predawn darkness, when he’d followed Claire along this road. A quarter mile past it he found the place where she’d led him off the pavement. Where they had parked and she had shown him the machine. Where the patrol officer had been killed.
There was little sign now that any such things had happened here. No yellow police tape. The shot-up cruiser was gone, as was Claire’s wrecked Land Rover. Dryden parked and killed the Ranger’s engine and got out, pausing to wipe his prints from the steering wheel and door handles.
He found the scoured earth where the Land Rover had skidded and flipped. The ground was discolored, and when he scraped it with his foot he smelled gasoline. He saw the drag marks where Claire herself had been pulled out of the vehicle.
He heard the drone of engines and looked up, and saw two black SUVs coming in from the north. Cadillac Escalades. He took the disposable phone from his pocket and walked back to the Ranger. He stood next to the driver’s-side door, hands low at his sides, and simply waited.
The two vehicles rolled in and circled around and stopped directly west of him, twenty yards away. A pretty basic tactical move on their part: putting the glare of the sun at their backs, forcing him to stare into it when he looked at them.
Three men emerged from each vehicle. They looked more or less like the four who’d attacked him and Claire, and the two who’d abducted Curtis. Midpriced hired help, competent enough on a good day.
Five of the six held pistols, low and relaxed. The sixth man, the driver of one of the Escalades, stepped around his open door and walked ten paces toward Dryden, stopping midway between the SUVs and the Ranger. He wore a black V-neck T-shirt and jeans.
Dryden didn’t bother scrutinizing the Escalades for a sign of Claire inside. She wasn’t here. That had never been a possibility.
“You’re supposed to have something for us,” V-neck said.
“It’s not with me,” Dryden said.
“Where is it?”
Dryden ignored the question. “Give me a phone number for your employer.”
“It’s not supposed to work like that.”
“It’s going to,” Dryden said.
He turned away from the guy and leaned against the Ranger, staring off to the south. He studied the chaparral and the cool shadows growing beneath it, the rises and concavities of the desert landscape all picking up contrast. At the edge of his vision he saw V-neck stare at him a moment longer, then turn and walk back to the Escalade.
A minute passed. Then Dryden heard footsteps scrape, and caught movement at the corner of his eye again, and V-neck came back to his spot in the open space between the vehicles. He called out a phone number. Dryden punched it into the throwaway cell phone and waited.
On the third ring, a man answered. The voice was digitally scrambled to sound tinny and mechanical. For all that, a hint of an accent came through. French mostly, but maybe just a trace of something else mixed in. The man didn’t say hello. He came right to the point.
“Tell me where you put it.”
“I want proof of life,” Dryden said. “Put Claire on the phone.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Then we’ve got a problem.”
“You’ve got a problem. You’re alone, one on six.”
“I think we should talk about your problem,” Dryden said. “It’s a lot more interesting than mine.”
“Us losing track of that machine isn’t such a problem. Wherever it eventually turns up, it’ll make headlines. Or it’ll be detailed in some official record. All of which we can run searches for, with our system. Whether the machine surfaces next month or next year, we’ll know where it’s going to be, and when. We’ll get it back, sooner or later.”
“We’ll see,” Dryden said. “But that’s not the problem I was talking about. You have a bigger problem than that. And I wasn’t kidding when I said it’s interesting.”
“Tell me,” the man said. There was an edge of sarcasm in his tone, though it sounded just a bit forced. Like a front.
“I spent some time in the military,” Dryden said. “I ended up in a pretty unorthodox little unit. A lot of what we did was off the books, not all of it strictly legal. The nature of the work required us to have unusual ways to communicate. We had duress codes, and nonduress codes. We had a whole cobbled-together language only we knew. And we all still know it.”
The man on the phone waited.
“A lot of our codes were just people’s names we made up,” Dryden said. “So if I got a text message from
one of my guys saying, ‘Did you hear about Dennis Woods?’ it meant there was new intel expected soon. Or someone might send one saying, ‘I heard Aaron Newhouse was in town,’ which really meant, Drop everything and come talk to me, right now.”
“Okay.”
“One of the guys from my unit ended up with the state police out here in California,” Dryden said. “He oversees those alerts they plaster all over the TV and radio sometimes—flood warnings, emergency broadcast system notices, abducted kids.”
So far, every word of this was true. That was about to change, but the man on the phone would have no way of knowing.
Dryden said, “This friend of mine, if I asked him to—and I have—he could put an alert on the airwaves that wasn’t actually real. An abduction notice about a kid named Aaron Newhouse, for example. He could run it a few minutes from right now.”
From the other end of the phone call, Dryden heard a soft hiss of breath, alien-sounding in the digital distortion.
Dryden said, “You know what I was doing ten hours and twenty-four minutes ago? I was listening to your machine pulling in signals. Which means I was hearing radio traffic from right now. And if my friend sends out that alert in a couple minutes, there’s a very good chance I’d hear it, all those hours ago. Be on the lookout for Aaron Newhouse. You can bet your ass it would get my attention.”
There was a long silence that told Dryden a great deal, and when the man finally spoke there was no more sarcasm in his voice. No front. Just naked fear exposed by the collapse of those defenses. “You can’t do this,” the man said.
“Of course I can,” Dryden said. “And if ten-and-a-half-hours-ago me heard that name on a missing alert, I’d know for a fact it was my friend who sent that message. Then I’d do the math and know he sent it right now, around nine in the evening. I wouldn’t know why he sent it, but that doesn’t really matter, does it? What matters is that it would throw a wrench in the timeline. It would change the past, at least from our point of view right here and now. My past, and yours, too. Sending information back in time would change it, one way or another. And I could swear I heard somewhere that you guys are nervous about changing the past.”