“Ruben! I know about the VLIC! I know about the instructions!”
A foot scraped on concrete, maybe stopping fast and turning, far away in the dark. Fifty or sixty feet.
Silence.
“I’m supposed to help you!” Travis said.
For a moment nothing happened. Then Ward called out: “Who the hell are you?”
Travis thought about his reply. Saw no reason to be inventive.
“Travis Chase! Let me help!”
He heard a fast exhalation. It sounded like confusion, though it was hard to tell. More likely it was just a physical response to the past minute’s stress.
“You’re only a kid!” Ward yelled.
Travis started moving again. Homing in on the voice’s location: not just far ahead but all the way against the alley’s left side.
“I’m old enough to be useful,” Travis said, letting his own voice relax.
“The instructions didn’t say anything about this,” Ward said. Still unnerved. Still on the brink of fleeing.
“What, there’s a rule against someone giving you a hand?”
The points of the conversation didn’t matter. Keeping Ward talking mattered. And closing in on his voice.
But the seconds drew out, and Ward didn’t reply.
Travis continued moving forward. Slowly. Silently.
Then the man said, “Is it already happening?”
Travis started to ask what he meant, but stopped. Asking for clarification might clash with what he’d told Ward a moment earlier: that he knew what was going on. While Travis didn’t need to make sense, he did need to avoid scaring the guy away.
“The filter,” Ward said. “Is it starting now?”
The filter?
Travis hesitated, still advancing, then decided to wing it. “It’s possible,” he said.
Ward breathed out audibly again. Same location: ahead and to the left.
“It’s not supposed to happen yet,” Ward said. “Not for years and years.”
Travis kept moving. Forty feet to go. He’d have to speak more softly now to hide the fact that he was getting closer.
“Whoever it affects,” Ward said, “it’s not their fault. Not really. Under the wrong conditions, anyone could end up the worst person on Earth.”
Travis’s leading foot touched down and froze. So did the rest of his body.
Are you wondering if there’s a connection? Paige had said. Between whatever’s going on right now and . . . the thing about you?
Travis stared at the blackness where Ward had just spoken, and found his thoughts suddenly vacant. The question came out before he realized he was asking it: “What are you talking about?”
He noticed only halfway through—too late for it to matter—that he hadn’t tempered his voice at all.
There was another quick scuff of shoes on asphalt—Ward flinching, maybe—and then a sustained burst of movement as the man took off running through the cluttered dark. Crashing past whatever lay in his path. Stumbling and staggering, but moving fast.
Travis pushed away the confusion and sprinted after him. Following the sound. Gaining now.
All at once he caught a glimpse of Ward, in the vague pool of light below a curtained window. Bald head and T-shirt and jeans—he was still wearing them.
The man had almost passed beyond the light when he sprawled. Caught his foot on something and went all the way down. The notebook flew free again.
Travis doubled his speed and yanked the .38 from his pocket—enough fucking around.
He leveled it as Ward pushed up to a crouch.
But he didn’t fire.
He didn’t need to.
Ward made one desperate grab for the notebook, almost collapsing again as he did, then heard Travis’s running footsteps and threw himself sideways out of the light. The book stayed right where it’d fallen.
Travis pulled up short beneath the window. Stood there catching his breath and listening. He heard Ward staggering in the dark twenty feet off, and then silence again. Had he stopped? Was he weighing his chances of fighting for the notebook?
Travis kept the pistol leveled, aimed toward the last place he’d heard movement. He kept his eyes in that direction too, as he knelt and scooped up the book.
He stared another five seconds, the gun shaking in his small hand.
Then he tucked the notebook against himself like a football, turned back the way he’d come from, and ran.
Travis emerged into the light on Broadway. He heard sirens nearby in the night, coming from several directions and getting louder by the second. He remembered the gunshot inside Garret’s place. There’d be a dozen police cars on this block within minutes.
He sprinted across both wide sections of Broadway and went north toward Ashland, the first street free of construction.