sleep had evaded Seth for two days, and when it finally came at 2:08 a.m., it swallowed him whole, a welcome reprieve from the onslaught of impressions that made up his strange new sight.
They’d retired at ten after buying the clothes in the truck stop down the street. He’d discovered with surprise and relief that the moment he entered his room, all future possibilities related to Miriam faded.
The enigma had swelled like a tide through the day, flooding his mind with more images each passing minute than the minute before. His understanding of the future had begun with glimpses of major events, like the threat to Miriam’s life at Berkeley. But the precognition had steadily broadened in scope. Now he could see hundreds, if not thousands, of possibilities extending farther into the future with each passing hour, simple possibilities that had no bearing on anything of substance.
Entering Denny’s for dinner, he’d seen that the hostess might have seated them at any one of eleven tables—it was a slow night. Which table she would select depended on dozens of other possibilities held in the balance. How they responded to her questions; which direction she was facing when they approached her; whether she decided to turn to her right to scratch an itch on her hip; whether the busboy with the overloaded tray took the first exit to the kitchen or the second; whether the man seated in the first booth coughed into the aisle, prompting her to avoid his spew, or whether he coughed into his hands, diffusing his germs over his own table. These possibilities, among a couple dozen others, flashed through his mind in the space of half a step.
But with them came several hundred other possibilities yet to be realized in the ten minutes that followed. Possibilities of what they might eat, or what they might say, or what the waitress might suggest to them—all dependent on what preceded the moment. He was a prophet on steroids. The labyrinths of the future had been opened up to him; the gauze that kept man from seeing beyond time had been ripped from his eyes.
Seth’s eyes opened. He really was thirsty. Amazing how that worked. He should get up and—
The images crashed in on his mind then, like a full load of bricks dropped off the end of a dump truck. He jerked up in bed, heart thumping against the walls of his chest. They’d found the car!
A hundred futures streamed through his mind, and in all of them his door broke down under the kick of a boot within the next five minutes.
He twisted to the clock radio—2:51 a.m.
Seth threw the covers back, rolled out of bed, and grabbed his pants. He had no clue what was happening to Miriam. As far as he knew, they already had her. He cursed himself under his breath and pulled on his cords, arms trembling. Think. Think!
He ran to the window and was about to pull back the shade for a peek when it occurred to him that he would be seen by an officer in the lot. He’d seen that. He was still seeing the future.
Seth stepped back, breathing hard. Control yourself, Seth. Find a future in which you get out before they kick the doors in.
His mind flashed through dozens of scenarios.
He paused on a single scenario—one in which the door was kicked into an empty room. Hope flooded his veins. He had to find the thread of possibilities that led to that scenario! He had to get out of the room. Focus! Start at the beginning.
Still shaking, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Focus. Swirling in a frothing sea of futures, an action popped to the surface. It was the only one he could find in which he got out of the room unseen.
It occurred in precisely ten seconds, when all the officers in the courtyard below had their eyes averted for a span of three seconds, allowing him just enough time to slip out and into the shadows beside the door.
Seven seconds now . . .
Beyond that . . .
Six seconds.
Seth ran for the door, shirtless and shoeless. He slipped back the chain, unlocked the door, and counted. Three, two, one . . .
He twisted the knob, eased out onto the second-floor concrete walkway, closed the door, and sidestepped into the shadows beside an ice machine. He pressed himself against the wall and held his breath.
Silence hovered over the cool morning. No sign of the threat below. What if he was wrong? He exhaled slowly through his nose and squinted.
Three black-and-whites cordoned off the motel lot. A group of officers gathered around a fourth car parked kitty-corner behind them. Seth scanned the walkway on which he stood. A cop stood at the top of each stairwell, awaiting orders. Streetlights cast pale light on the door next to his—Miriam’s door. No room for shadow tricks there.
Panic tickled Seth’s spine. He may have gotten out of the room, but escaping was an impossibility. Something else flashed through his mind—a full-fledged firefight with the officers below. But he didn’t have a gun.
One step at a time. He closed his eyes. Just concentrate.
He still couldn’t see any of Miriam’s futures. He had to get to her. He saw a myriad of attempts to do so that ended in the same two words: “Stop! Police!” In another scenario he managed to reach her back window from the roof. A muzzle flash momentarily lit the back lot. A bullet took him in the head.
And he saw one future in which he dropped into her room from the return vent above her bed.
But how? He started to sweat again. He was concentrating on events too far down the road—several minutes out. He had to find a way to get out of this nook unseen first.
He saw it immediately.
Miriam’s door was to his right. There was a linen closet to his left, on the other side of the ice machine. Attic access was through the closet’s ceiling. From the ceiling he could wrench free a portion of the two-foot-square ducting, slide through, and drop into Miriam’s room.
Because he saw futures in which he did that, there had to be at least one in which he got into the closet unseen. He saw it. A faint groan of relief cleared his throat.
Blink.
Seth caught his breath. Something had just changed. Everything had just changed! The images of his entry into Miriam’s room vanished. Someone had heard him. One groan had changed his future. He’d drawn attention that cut off the possibility of his unseen entry into the closet. Someone who wouldn’t have been watching the ice machine now scanned its shadows.
But couldn’t he change that?
He searched his mind for another thread—another future.
Cough. Yes, cough.
If he turned his head just so and coughed, he could get into the closet. Because the cough would sound as if it had come from the far corner, momentarily distracting them while he slipped around the ice machine.
The rest of the thread popped back into his mind. It had probably been there all along, hidden among a hundred others, but he’d been too focused on the other option to see this one.
Time was running out. Seth faced the far corner, took one last breath in a futile attempt to soothe his twitching muscles, and coughed softly.
Without waiting, he slipped out into the open, expecting a cry of alarm. Trust yourself, Seth. Walk.
He walked around the ice machine, opened the closet door, and slipped inside. In the darkness, he shuddered. He could see the faint outline of the attic access above. In less than a minute he climbed over the boxes of toilet paper, pulled himself into the attic, and found the duct. He couldn’t see a blasted thing up here, but in his mind’s eye he saw all he needed a fraction of a second into the future, like a movie playing in his mind. The hardest part was trusting this new sense of his, trusting that if he put his hand right here, he would find the loose piece of duct tape that he could tear free because he’d seen it as part of the future just a heartbeat ago.
He made a ruckus banging through the duct—unavoidable. It only encouraged him to move faster, which made even more noise. If they could hear him, they might think an elephant was stampeding through the place. He dropped onto the grate above Miriam’s bed without giving full thought to how his entrance might affect her. With a screech, the grate tore loose, and, together, he and the grate crashed down on the sleeping woman.
His world exploded in a flash of new futures.
Miriam’s futures.
Miriam dreamed that the roof had collapsed on her, but she knew it wasn’t a dream. She grunted and tried to sit up, but a heavy mass pressed her into the mattress.
A moving mass. Breathing hard.
An animal!
She shrieked and tried to get away. The animal flailed, startled by her sudden movement. Miriam swung her elbows and the covers flew. The animal hadn’t managed to bite her yet, but it was still there, on her calves, waiting to pounce. She twisted to her back, jerked her legs from under the beast, and kicked furiously, groaning in horror.
It tumbled off the end of the bed, hissing. She snatched her pillow and hurled it at the mass. The door! I have to get to the door!
It bounded to its feet, tall like a ghost, draped in the blanket.
“Stop it! It’s me!”
She froze. The thing was speaking!
The figure tore the blanket from its head. It stood there in the dim light, a bare-chested man with disheveled hair, panting.
Seth!
What was he doing in her bedroom? She wore only an oversized T-shirt she’d purchased at the truck stop. A black cotton shirt with an eagle soaring over a shimmering ocean.
“Are you mad?” she demanded.
He threw his index finger to his lips, shoved a hand out to silence her, then gestured toward the drawn curtains.
“What?” Half of her mind was on his inexplicable entry, the other half on her exposure. He was gesticulating and whispering urgently, but she couldn’t understand a word of it.
“I can’t understand a word—”
“They’re outside!” he said, aloud this time.
“Outside . . .” Suddenly she understood it all.
Seth jumped up on the bed. “Hurry! We have to get back up into the vent.”
“I’m nearly naked!” she said.
He towered over her on the end of the bed. “Where are your pants?”
If the authorities were outside, they had very little time. She glanced at the chair where her jeans were draped. A bag on the floor held the rest of the clothes she’d purchased.
Before she could move for them, Seth bounded off the bed, grabbed the jeans from the chair, and ran back. He didn’t see the tennis shoes in the middle of the floor and tripped on them. He crashed into the bed, face planting into the mattress beside her leg, holding the jeans outstretched to her like a warrior who’d just barely managed to return with the magic elixir.
Miriam snatched up her pants and quickly pulled them on.
“These too,” he whispered, shoving the shoes toward her.
She yanked them on without bothering to tie them. “My bag.”
“Too slow. Where’s the money?”
“In my pocket.” She grabbed at her jeans and felt the lump. Seth jumped back up next to her, panting from his efforts. He looked up and she followed his gaze. The vent opening looked like a black hole.
“I’ll shove you up first,” he said.
“Are you crazy? We can’t go through that!”
“I just did. Trust me! I know what happens here.” He put his hands on her waist and she smacked them away.
“Stop it! I can’t fit—”
“We don’t have time for this!” he snapped.
“I don’t care—”
His lips were on hers, smothering her words.
Seth pulled back, leaving her in shock.
“Sorry, I had to. I’ll explain later.”
He grabbed her waist and shoved her up before she knew he was doing it. Limited on options and horrified by his kiss, she grabbed the duct’s lip and pulled herself in. Utter blackness paralyzed her, legs still dangling out of the duct. Below he was pushing at her legs, whispering urgently. She scrambled forward.
Behind her, the tin crashed with the sound of his hands, slapping for purchase. He slipped and fell out, and then tried again. He’d never get up! She’d come to America to climb through air vents in the dead of night, pushed by a maniac who had kissed her and . . .
“Miriam. Back up! I need your legs!”
She scooted back so that her feet touched the lip. His hands grabbed her ankles and he hauled himself up. Smart man.
Her right tennis shoe came off in his hand. With a mighty crash that she could only guess was his head on the tin, he fell back to the bed.
Miriam was left with the echoes of her breathing.
Thud, bang. Here he came again. This time he made it by grabbing her jeans, although he nearly pulled them off in the process.
“Go, go!”
She went. Scrambling into the darkness. She stopped.
“Where?”
“To the end! Hurry!”
Omar crouched on the hotel roof, eyeing the police through the rifle’s scope. They had reached the hotel at breakneck speed, but not before the others took up their positions in front of the Super 8. Cursing under his breath, he left Sa’id and Assir in the rental car behind a grove of trees, withdrew the AK-47 from the trunk, and quickly scouted the perimeter. With so many police, his chances of taking Miriam here were minimal.
The authorities had abandoned the rear of the motel for the exits in the front. In doing so, they left the roof access unguarded. He climbed the two stories and eased into position here, behind a large air-conditioning unit near the crown of the roof.
Omar had never killed in the United States. Tonight that would change. If he did this right, they would conclude that Seth was the shooter.
Omar steadied the scope on an officer bent over the hood of his squad car, pistol trained on the front of the hotel. “In my country you do not interfere in another man’s business, my friend. She is mine.”
He squeezed the trigger.
The night exploded. Omar shifted the rifle before the man hit the ground. He took down two more officers standing to the rear of the cars before they could find cover, one through the head, the other in the shoulder, judging by the way he spun.
Omar pulled back and slid down the roof to the ladder.
“Shots on the roof!” a voice yelled from the front. “He’s on the roof!”
Omar shouldered the weapon and scrambled down the ladder. He ran for the grove of trees behind the hotel. The car door opened for him and he slid in, weapon first.
Assir fired the engine.
“Shut it off!” Omar said.
The car died.
“Are you begging for their attention?” He turned to see the motel through the trees.
“We’re sitting—”
“Shut up. We don’t move until I say we move.”
Miriam and Seth had just dropped into what appeared to be a closet when the muffled explosions sounded.
“What was that?”
“Shots,” Seth said. “An Arab is shooting from the roof.”
She faced him, two inches from his face in the cramped quarters. “Shooting at whom?”
“The police.” His voice sounded strained. “I think one of them is dead.”
She was too stunned to respond.
“I . . . I didn’t see any way to stop it.” He turned from her and gripped his skull. “They think we did it. I. They think I did it.”
It had to be Hilal. Who else could possibly be shooting at the police? But why would Hilal . . .
Miriam gasped.
Seth spun back. “What?”
“Who is the Arab?”
“I don’t know, but not your bathroom friends. I see events, and that includes faces sometimes, but not names, and it’s hard to tell—”
“Omar!” she said.
He said nothing.
“Or Omar’s people. At the very least someone who doesn’t want the Americans to turn me over to Hilal.”
“Your father?” Seth asked.
“No. No, he would never send this kind of man!”
Seth turned from her and leaned his forehead against the wall. Voices yelled outside. Boots thumped on the cement walkway. Wood splintered and doors crashed. Miriam swallowed at a dry throat.
A man’s muffled voice reached them from the walkway, only feet away. “Rooms are empty. They’re gone, sir. A vent cover is torn loose; looks like they escaped to the roof.”
“Copy that,” a walkie-talkie rasped. “Clear the vent.”
The officer’s muffled voice carried from the room. “Okay, clear the vent, Danny. And watch for fire. This guy’s armed.”
“What now?” Miriam whispered.
“Now we wait. We have a window in a minute. Then we run to the side alley and down the back stairs. We can’t take the Sable.”
“So you’re still seeing all this. This is madness. Why did you . . . kiss me?”
“Because. I’m sorry about that. Look, a police officer was just killed out there and you’re worried about a kiss? It was the only future I saw in which you moved quickly, and we needed to move quickly.”
The vents creaked above them.
“I’m saving your life,” Seth said. “Time to go. Follow me. Ready?”
“I suppose.”
He gripped the knob.
“They won’t see us?” she asked.
“Trust me. Three, two, one.”
He opened the door and ran to his left. She followed him, glancing at the open courtyard to their right. An ambulance had arrived, lights flashing. Several men were scurrying around the cars. She and Seth ran unnoticed.
They flew down a flight of concrete steps and spilled into an alley separating the hotel from an abandoned garage. Seth led her across the alley around the rear corner of the garage, glancing each way for danger, although she suspected he knew the route was safe.
“Wait here,” he said, turning. “Don’t move until I tell you to.”
“You’re leaving me here?”
“I won’t be out of sight. But I’ve got to do this. Trust me.”
To her surprise, she trusted him implicitly. She wrapped her arms around herself and backed into the dark shadow.
Seth walked into the alley and gazed out at the street, thirty meters off. A siren burped from the far side of the hotel. Several more sounded from far away. More police. Shouts carried on the air. Surely Seth realized that the place would be crawling with . . .
A figure stepped into the alley, at the far end, backlit by the glow of streetlights. Miriam caught her breath and pulled back.
Seth spread his arms. “Good evening, Officer.”
The man stopped.
“Hello, Clive. As you can see, I’m unarmed.”
The man lifted a gun with both hands. He scanned the alley. “What did you do with the gun, Seth?” the man said coolly.
“I never had a gun. But I think you know that, don’t you?”
The man approached Seth, ten meters off. A shaft of soft light fell across his pale face. The redhead looked more amused than concerned.
“Where’s Miriam?”
“Safe,” Seth said. “I have to be leaving in just a second, but I knew you would be coming and I wanted to tell you something.”
“Just like that, huh? You just happened to know it would be me? And you knew I would check this alley? I don’t think so. I think I caught you with your shorts down. Or should I say with your shirt off? This is no way to win the Nobel, Seth.”
“I saw you coming just like I can see now exactly how I’m going to leave you in this alley. Like a lost puppy.”
The man’s face twisted to a grin and he waved his gun at Seth. “You may be smart, but I think you’re confusing intelligence with science fiction. I’m gonna have to take you in, son.”
“You ever hear of precognition? Well, it seems that I’ve been graced with it as of late. I see the future, my friend, and I see it in all of its possibilities. Or at least in bunches of them. Only a ways out, I’m afraid, but I see every possible outcome ahead of me. That makes me pretty hard to stop. That’s why I’m outrunning a thousand cops. Not because I’m a crook. Make sense, Clive?”
Clive quit smiling. “Okay, Seth. You’re going off the deep end here. You’re not even armed.”
“I don’t need a gun to leave you panting, Clive. I have precognition. And you should know that gunning down a police officer isn’t only stupid, it’s not my style. That wasn’t me on the roof. You make sure they know that.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe in precognition—”
“You will. I’m not the gambling kind unless I know the lay of the cards, if you know what I mean. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to discuss it with you. We’ve got fifty seconds before a uniformed officer comes running around that corner. I have to leave before he does. There are hundreds of things I could do in an attempt to escape you, and I’ve seen them all. All of them but two fail miserably. I could shout at you; I could walk up and punch you; I could run to the right, to the left, or straight past you. But I’ve seen all those possibilities among a hundred others, and I know exactly what you would do in each case. Unfortunately for you, I’m going to pick one of the two in which you make the wrong move. You can’t stop me.”
“You’re rambling. The girl’s a fugitive. You’re coming with me and you’re taking me to her. End of story.”
“You take her and I’m pretty sure she’ll end up in the wrong hands. The world isn’t ready for that. And frankly neither is she. Gotta go, Clive.”
The man’s face twitched. “Lift your hands slowly—”
“Step out, Miriam,” Seth said.
Step out? Miriam hesitated.
“Now, Miriam!”
She stepped out. Clive’s eyes jerked to her, and Seth sidestepped to Miriam. Clive swung his gun to cover her.
“You won’t shoot her, Clive, at least not in the next few minutes,”
Seth said. “I’ve already seen that it’s not one of the possible futures.”
He grabbed Miriam by the waist and pulled her behind the wall. No shot was fired.
Another man’s voice echoed up the alley. “Sir?” The officer Seth had predicted.
“Hurry!” Seth whispered. “Run for the end of the building!” She ran.
She could hear Clive’s feet running in the alley. A thump. She spun to see that Seth had tipped over a barrel. He sprinted after her.
“Run!”
She ran, then heard a hollow crash, followed by a grunt and a curse. A shot went off, booming around her ears.
Miriam tore around the far corner of the abandoned building. Seth ran past, grabbing her elbow. “Follow me!”
He chose the most unlikely path, she thought—right under a blazing streetlight, out into the middle of the street. To their left, colored lights turned lazily in the night. Six or seven vehicles flashed red and blue. She couldn’t bear to look. They would be seen!
But they wouldn’t, would they? Seth knew.
Seth vaulted a hedge and disappeared. She leaped blindly after him.
Miriam dropped to her knees and slammed into him.
“Sh! They’re coming!” He didn’t move.
Clive roared around the corner of the garage across the street and pulled up. She could hear him panting.
“Over here!” Clive yelled. “You head up the street. I’m cutting back.”
The sound of running shoes followed. Then silence.
Seth pulled at her arm. “Come on.”
They ran around a house, passed through a back gate, and wove through the neighborhood, away from the hotel.