by Daniel Price
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 futur
e! Why haven’t you figured that out yet?”
Mia looked to David with wide-eyed hurt. He lowered his head.
“Let’s just go there,” Zack said, through a pained wince. “At least until Hannah wakes up.”
They scanned the hall for witnesses, then made a run for Suite 1255. In Zack’s impaired condition, it took him four tries to reverse the door lock.
Their new hideout was just a quarter the size of the Baronessa Suite, with only two beds and one bathroom. Half the furniture had been stowed in a bedroom while the other half was covered in spattered sheets.
The smell of new paint made Amanda light-headed. She wobbled toward Theo.
“Put her down on the couch. I need to check her head. Mia, get me some hand towels from the bathroom. Soak one in cold water.”
David held her arm. “I think you need to rest.”
“Someone has to sneak out to a pharmacy. I’ll make a list. We need bandages . . . We need . . .”
Amanda’s eyelids fluttered. Her legs turned to jelly. David caught her in mid-faint.
—
She woke up in bed, grimacing. An awful taste filled her mouth, like cardboard dipped in sour milk. She touched her forehead, surprised to feel adhesive bandages over her cuts.
Hannah lay unconscious on the other side of the bed. Someone had wrapped a long gauze strip around her skull, securing a folded towel to the back of her head.
Mia watched her from the doorway. “You all right?”
Amanda dazedly blinked at her. “How long was I out?”
“A while. It’s almost four o’clock now.”
“Did you do the bandages?”
“Yeah. I hope they’re okay.”
“They’re fine. Who got the supplies?”
“David. He was careful. He brought back a little food too, if you feel like eating.”
The thought made Amanda queasy. She tested Hannah’s vitals. “If she doesn’t wake up soon, I’m taking her to a hospital.”
“You know you can’t do that.”
“I’m not going to lose her.”
“You’ll lose her to the Deps if you take her to a hospital. You’ll never see her again.”
Amanda pressed her palms to her bleary face. Mia hesitated before throwing the next issue at her.
“Listen, I only gave Zack an epallay. I wasn’t sure how to do the rest.”
“What do you mean? I thought he was okay.”
Mia sighed, focusing hard on the Amanda who saved Zack and not the one who hurt him.
“I think you should go see him.”
—
The second bedroom was a miniature labyrinth of stacked wooden furniture. In the center of the maze was a full-size bed, in the center of the bed was a stretched-out man, and in the center of the man was a cruel and jagged problem.
Zack bit his lower lip, swallowing his cries while Amanda tested each rib for damage.
“This one?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Hold still.”
Mia sat on a dresser, feeling more and more like a voyeur as she watched Amanda place adhesive tape on Zack’s chest. There was something uncomfortably sensual about the way Amanda touched Zack’s shoulder whenever she reached for a new strand, the way he stared at her neck as she worked on him. Once Mia felt sufficiently educated about the treatment process, she left the bedroom and closed the door behind her.
Amanda ran a taut finger along another rib. “This one?”
“No.”
“You sure it doesn’t hurt?”
“I have no reason to lie about it.”
“You also have no reason to act macho around me.”
“I think the last thing either of us needs today—”
He sucked a sharp breath when she found the next cracked rib. Amanda peeled a new strip of tape. Her mouth quivered in tight suppression.
“Can you please just yell at me a little bit so I feel less awful?”
“I told you—”
“I know. I was drugged. I wasn’t responsible. Everyone keeps saying that. But be honest. Would you accept that excuse if you had rifted me today?”
“Probably not,” Zack admitted. “But if I had unrifted you immediately afterward, I’d go a lot easier on myself.”
She shot a sardonic grunt at his bandages. “Right. No harm done.”
“I still can’t believe you caught me.”
“Me neither. It was insane. I didn’t have a single thought in my head. It’s like the tempis just took over.”
“Well, I’m glad the tempis likes me.”
“It likes you,” she sighed. “There’s no question of that.”
In the center of Zack’s cruel and jagged problem was a hot new urge. He wanted to run his hands all over Amanda, explore her with his fingers like a blind man would. He assumed whatever drug Evan had slipped him was still floating around in his veins, eating away at his formidable inhibitions.
Amanda finished mending him, then helped him slide his shirt back on. She told him that he’d have to take it easy for the next few weeks. Zack humored her as if such a thing were possible.
After clearing away the bandage debris, she finally met his stare with deep green sadness.
“She’ll wake up,” Zack assured her. “I know it.”
“How? How can you be sure about anything? It seems like no matter what we do—”
“Amanda . . .”
“It’s just going to get worse.”
“Hey.” He reached for her golden cross necklace and squeezed it between his fingers. “Whatever happened to the woman of faith?”
“Today happened. Now where’s the agnostic with no answers?”
“He was saved,” Zack replied, with a dark and feeble smirk.
Amanda placed a soft hand on his cheek. Her sister’s angry words still stuck in her thoughts like a bee’s broken stinger. You’ve been a widow for eight weeks! Eight weeks, and this is how you act!
She pulled away. “Don’t sleep on your side. And force a few coughs to break up the fluid in your lungs.”
“Amanda . . .”
“I’ll check on you later.”
She fled the room without looking back. Zack watched her depart, then groaned his way back to the mattress. Though he folded his hands over his chest like a serene cadaver, his eyes danced with life and uncertainty.
—
While Hannah and Zack convalesced, the others passed the time in the small living area. Amanda and Theo sat on the couch like waiting room strangers—staring at walls, avoiding each other’s gaze. They both had Hannah on their minds, a hanging mobile of worries that would only spin faster if they acknowledged each other.
At seven o’clock, David made everything worse by turning on the lumivision.
“Sorry, Amanda. We need to know.”
As they feared, their awful brunch had become a top story nationwide. More than a hundred photographs had been snapped during the eighty-eight seconds Zack dangled in a great tempic arm. Most of the pictures were worm’s-eye shots from the grotto, distant enough to obscure his features. Mia balked at the most damning photo—a crystal-clear image of Zack that had been shot through a telephoto lens. One reporter remarked that he looked like a mouse being crushed by a python, an observation that sent the python to tears.
Mia rubbed Amanda’s back. “This isn’t your fault. It’s Evan’s.”
“It doesn’t matter. Everyone’s going to recognize Zack now.”
David tilted his head at the image. “No they won’t. Unless he finds another way to float horizontally with a contorted expression of pain, no one will make the connection.”
Soon the news report transitioned to a live Q&A with the lead Dep on scene, shot downstairs in the lobby. Andy Cahill was a leathery codger who delivered curt words thro
ugh a bushy mustache and a sandy baritone. His whiskers curled in a patient smile as he indulged the reporter’s questions. Are the people involved still at large? Yes. Do you believe they’re foreign terrorists? Doesn’t seem likely. Do you think the shooting death of the hotel manager is somehow connected? That does seem likely. Anything you can tell us about the tempic device that was used today? Nope.
When teasingly asked if he considered the possibility of Gothams, Cahill chuckled softly and told the reporter she watched too many movies.
All throughout the interview, Theo sat forward in rapt attention, fixing his gaze on a female agent in the background. Though she moved too fast to provide a decent look, her dark skin and flowing dreadlocks were enough to ring every bell in Theo’s head. His thoughts screamed with recognition, as if she’d been a crucial part of his life from the moment he first drew breath.
Once the scene changed, he snapped out of his trance and flipped his mirrored senses. It wasn’t the past he knew her from. She was a towering presence to come. That dark and faceless woman loomed over every corner of his future.
—
Propriety went out the window at bedtime, when Mia crawled under the covers with Zack, and David asked Amanda for permission to sleep with her sister.
“I’m not a beagle,” the boy declared. “I can’t just doze on some couch or rug. I need a bed. I promise I’ll be a perfect gentleman. And I’ll wake you right away if Hannah’s condition changes.”
Amanda traded a dim look with Theo, then gave David an acquiescent shrug. She raised a worried eyebrow when he closed the door behind him.
“Did I just make an awful mistake?”
Theo smirked. “Even if she was conscious, Hannah wouldn’t mind.”
“You mean if he shares a bed with her or if he tries something?”
“Yes.”
She covered her laugh with a hand, feeling guilty to be glib under the circumstances. She slipped out of her sweaty T-shirt and into a tank top, stunning Theo with her sudden lack of inhibition. What a strange unit the six of them had become. He already felt more at home with the Silvers than he ever did with the Maranans.
Amanda turned off the light and stretched out on the long sofa. Theo had curled up in the love seat, his bandaged thigh dangling awkwardly over the edge. She asked him if he’d be okay like that. He assured her he was quite the beagle.