At 6:32 and 58 seconds, an invisible swarm spread across the globe, a breed of subatomic particle that modern science had yet to name or even notice. The energy was undetectable to all but one species of beetle and harmless to all but twenty-one unfortunate souls in the state of South California.
Charlie Merchant was showering at home, thinking how nice it would be to rub soapy lather on Hannah’s naked body. While his imagination flourished, a thin trickle of blood escaped his nose. His eyelids fluttered. His muscles clenched. And then Quint’s youngest employee fell to the drain. Dead.
Martin and Gerry Salgado were speeding toward the office in their Royal Condor. Beatrice had phoned them nine minutes ago with shrill cries of deadly intruders. Now while Martin floored the aerovan’s accelerator, Gerry desperately tried to hail his siblings on the radio. Martin didn’t care about Czerny or Beatrice or any of the freakish guests. All he wanted were his two youngest children. He prayed that Erin and Eric were okay, even as dark instincts told him otherwise.
Suddenly both father and son slumped forward in their seats. The aerovan lulled into a drifting spin, languishing twenty feet in the air like a half-filled balloon. For the next hundred yards, the Condor twirled a lazy path over Terra Vista. Dead.
In a fraction of a moment, twenty-one people came to an end. Everyone who worked for Sterling Quint. Everyone who’d met Azral Pelletier on the night of the Silvers’ arrival.
Of the staff, only Beatrice Caudell had noticed the strangely gritty texture of Azral’s handshake. She’d considered pouring rubbing alcohol on her palm, a move that would have saved her life. But red wine and romantic thoughts had overtaken her that night. She resolved to stop being a germaphobe for once.
Now she wrapped her arms around her knees, crying tears of relief from the underside of Czerny’s desk. The intruders were gone. The crisis was over. Oh thank God. Thank God. Thank God.
She then felt a warm trail under her nostril. She touched the blood on her lip. Her eyes rolled back and she collapsed to the floor. Dead.
—
Five miles away, Sterling Quint continued to sleep in good health, blissfully unaware that his staff had been let go. Safe and snug beneath his Asian silk blanket, he dreamed of time travel and Nobel Prize medallions.
—
The van was still a mile from the hospital when Constantin Czerny reached the end of his string. He turned his head to the window, thought of Beatrice, and then moved on.
Amanda rushed to the head of the stretcher and checked his pulse.
“No, no, no, no. Don’t do this.”
Hannah turned around and watched with dread as her sister began resuscitation measures. With each chest compression, little rivers of blood oozed from the edges of Czerny’s stomach bandage.
David watched with dark discomfort. “You seem to be aggravating his injury.”
“I don’t have a choice,” said Amanda. “If I don’t do this, he has no chance at all.”
“At the risk of upsetting you . . .”
Theo cut him off with a sharp, grim look. Don’t.
Amanda pinched Czerny’s nose and forced two breaths down his throat. She resumed compressions.
“Cardiac arrest is not the same as death,” she said. “If we can get him to a defibrillator in the next five minutes . . . Goddamn it, Zack! Why are you slowing down?”
Hannah followed Zack’s nervous line of sight. Two vehicles approached in single file from the opposite lane. They were both dark blue and sneaker shaped, as if some mad mechanic had slapped a minivan rump onto a sports car. Bright white letters on the hood and roof advertised the cruisers’ affiliation with the Terra Vista Police Department.
The actress looked to Zack. “What’s the problem? We didn’t do anything.”
He eyed her cynically. “We’re riding in a van that’s not even remotely ours, with a dying man in the back and a two-foot spatter of Erin’s blood on the driver’s side. We do not want their attention.”
The cruisers met the van. Zack fixed his gaze ahead with as much aloofness as he could muster. Once the police cars disappeared over the hill, Zack stomped the gas pedal. Hannah ran a shaky hand through her hair.
“God. I can’t take this.”
Amanda was on her fifth round of chest compressions when she noticed that the Silvers in the back were looking at her, not Czerny. Even Mia’s young face teemed with fatalism. Amanda wanted to scream at them. Did they think she was deluded? That she didn’t know death when she saw it? She was a cancer nurse. She knew.
“This doesn’t . . .” She shook her head at Czerny. “It doesn’t make sense. A person with his injuries usually goes through four stages of shock. They progress to tachycardia. Tachypnea. They don’t jump straight to . . .”
She looked at the blood on her hands. Her lips quivered. “He’s already cold. He shouldn’t be cold already.”