“Thank you. See?”
Mia blinked in addled stupor, her mind filled with images of apocalyptic carnage. “You’re talking about deliberately causing a paradox!”
“Your notes are already paradoxes,” Hannah attested. “Just because you write the same words with the same pen color doesn’t mean you’ve created a perfect duplicate of the message you got. There’d be dozens of tiny inconsistencies. Apparently the universe doesn’t mind.”
“That’s what you say! For all we know, that’s what killed our world!”
David shook his head. “It wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong, Mia, I don’t believe this trick will work. But you’re not going to tear the fabric of time just by changing a message.”
Hannah gripped Mia’s shoulder. “Sweetie, if there’s a chance to save Amanda and Theo without throwing us in the path of a thousand bullets, don’t you think it’s worth a try?”
Mia scratched her cheek in hot dilemma. She could feel the portal slipping away.
“Shit. Shit.”
She tore a scrap from her pad and scrawled a frantic message.
Tell Amanda not to take Theo to the health fair! The Deps will get them! Please trust me!
“God. I can’t believe I’m doing this . . .”
Hannah squeezed Zack’s arm. “If this changes the timeline, you think we’ll remember?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “If it works, I don’t care.”
Mia spun to face him. “And if this kills us all?”
“It’ll be fine,” David assured her. “Do it.”
Mia winced and looked away as she placed the note in the breach. The portal swallowed the paper, then vanished.
The Silvers stood rooted in place for thirty taut seconds. Zack and Hannah threw their wide gazes around the living room, nervously scanning for signs of change.
Soon Mia opened an eye and peeked at David. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, his expression dancing a fine line between annoyance and amusement.
“And here we still are.”
Hannah tossed up her hands. “Goddamn it. How does Evan do it then?”
“Obviously not through notes.”
“How did you know it wouldn’t work?” Zack asked him.
“Because multiple chronologies exist. This whole world is proof of that. The best I can figure is that Mia created a fork in time, a branching chain of events that runs parallel to ours. If that timeline’s Amanda chose to heed the warning, then I imagine these alternate versions of us are having a much better day than we are. They’re the ones who benefited from Hannah’s idea. Not us.”
The actress scowled at her feet. “Great. So they get a happy ending and we still get shot to death.”
Mia remained firmly unsettled. Between all her thoughts and apprehensions, she experienced a strange new sensation, as if someone tapped an undiscovered third shoulder.
Zack held her wrist. “You okay?”
“No. Something’s not right.”
“What, like some kind of—”
“Zack, move!”
She pulled him aside as a new portal arrived where he was standing. The shimmering gateway was the size of a dinner plate. It had a windy pull that was strong enough to ripple all drapes and garments.
The Silvers shielded their eyes at the blinding glow. For a maddening moment, Hannah feared Mia was right after all. This was the paradox apocalypse. It was the Rupture.
“Mia, what’s happening?!”
“I don’t know! It’s a portal but I don’t think it’s mine!”
“Past or future?”
“I don’t know! It’s not mine!”
A brown cloth bag suddenly popped through the surface, hitting the rug with the faint sound of clanking metal. A flat manila envelope fluttered out after it. Before anyone could process the new items, the portal shrank away.
Half-blind and teetering on lunacy, Zack reached for the envelope. A line of angular scribble stretched across the front.
To the damn fool Trillinger and his mad boy accomplice.
“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?”
Mia scanned the cover. “I don’t know. That looks like Peter’s handwriting.”
Zack opened the envelope and emptied the contents. Among an assortment of maps and sketches was a hand-scrawled message on notebook paper.
You know, for two allegedly clever men, you don’t have enough common sense to fill a bee’s rubber. You cannot waltz into a building full of armed federal agents and expect to come out again. Hannah knows this. You should listen to her more often.
There’s a better way to save Theo and Amanda. At 4 A.M., a group of five agents will leave the building in a Tug-a-Lug truck, heading east toward Washington, D.C. Three Deps will be riding in the trailer, along with your friends. If you position yourselves at the stretch of highway I’ve marked, you’ll be able to intercept the truck at 4:45.