Seth watched her walk toward the hall, dressed in her new carpenter's jeans and white shirt, and could not deny the strange feelings that had overtaken him during their drive south. He was attracted to her, but beyond her obvious beauty, why? In an uncommon way they were the same, Miriam and he. They were both misfits in their own worlds, rebels with their causes. In other ways they were differentâfrom separate planets altogether. He had no business feeling anything toward her beyond what a good Samaritan might feel.
Yet here he sat, his belly light and his pulse on edge. He couldn't remember ever feeling so taken by any woman in his entire life.
She disappeared into the hall and Seth picked up his coffee cup. The notion that she was a princess on the run from some sinister characters seemed like something he might read in a book. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. But the events of last evening were nothing out of a book. He would deliver her to safety in a few hours and then . . .
And then he didn't quite know what.
Seth took another sip of coffee and looked out into the parking lot.
A black Mercedes had parked at the far end of the building. He yawned. The lack of sleep was starting to catch up to him. Before he did anything, he would have to sleep. Deliver Miriam to safety and thenâ
A man with black hair was shooting Miriam in the bathroom. The image struck Seth and he jerked upright. It deposited itself in his mind, like a foregone conclusion, without reasoning.
The scenario immobilized Seth. Had this just happened? Or was he seeing into the future again?
A second scene popped into his mind next to the first one. Now there was a man in the bathroom standing over two bodies. One of the bodies was Miriam's and one was his. Both were dead. The twin realities lodged in his mind, static. He saw the waitress approach in his peripheral image, slow motion. She was saying something.
A third image. He was in the bathroom standing next to Miriam, facing the Arab. A policeman stood in the doorway. He blinked.
In the first scene he wasn't present and Miriam was dead. In the second he was present but the police officer wasn't, and they were both dead.
In the third . . .
Seth scrambled from the table and tore for the hall. The waitress backpedaled to avoid a collision. He had to get into the bathroom. What he'd just seen wasn't
the
future, but three
possible
futures! He couldn't explain it any other way. And the only future in which Miriam lived was the one in which he was in the bathroom with the officer.
Of course, the only future in which he ended up dead was the one in which he was in the bathroom. If he didn't enter the bathroom, he would live. He knew that like he knew the theory of relativity.
He was seeing possible futures. More than one. Three different outcomes, depending on who entered that bathroom. Could he influence which future became the real future? Or was that power in the hands of others?
For the second time in less than a day, Seth slammed his way into the ladies' room. He pulled up, panting and sweating. Miriam stood to his left, her face white and stricken. A skinny Arab with sharp features stood opposite her, gun in hand.
For a brief moment, neither of them moved. Seth couldn't go after the Arab, of course. The man had a gun. Without seeing it move, Seth found the gun pointed in his face.
“Lock the door,” the man said.
Seth wasn't sure he could turn to lock the door. His muscles had frozen.
“Lock it!”
The crack of the man's voice jerked Seth back to reality. He turned, twisted the dead bolt, and faced them again.
The Arab shifted the gun back to Miriam and spoke in Arabic. “Tell me whom you were to marry? If you think I won't kill you because this man has stumbled in here, you're as big a fool as he. Tell me.”
“You're the head of security. Hilal. I recognizeâ”
“Tell me!” the man screamed.
Miriam jumped.
Hilal's nose was sharp enough to pass for an ax, and his cheekbones pressed against his skin like knives.
“You are frightened, Miriam? I can understand. You are a Saudi Arabian citizen, and your actions in this plot threaten the life of our king. For that you will die. You cannot run from me. You've been gone for only three days and already I've found you.”
Miriam wilted against the stalls, no longer the self-assured woman Seth had come to know during their flight from the Bay. She believed this man.
“If you tell me who is behind this, the king might find it in his heart to overlook your flight.”
“I'm running from the marriage,” she said softly. “Not from the king.”
“Then you have nothing to fear. Tell me who's plotting with Sheik Al-Asamm.”
Hilal would kill them both. Seth had already seen that much, and the knowledge turned his muscles to lead. The only future he'd seen in which they both survived was the one with the policeman in the doorway. But what control did he have over the police arriving?
And then another future dropped into his mind like a piece of the sky, falling: A police cruiser. An officer slumped over the wheel of his cruiser, dead. Miriam toppled in the rear seat, dead. “What?” he stammered. Both Miriam and Hilal looked at him.
It was an involuntary note of surprise, not a question, but he continued because it seemed that they expected him to. He spoke in English.
“If there's no Miriam, there is no marriage, regardless of who's behind it. As long as she has information you want, she's more valuable alive than dead. So she won't tell you who's plotting with the sheik, right?”
The man stared at him. “He speaks Arabic?” he asked Miriam, still speaking Arabic.
She didn't respond.
Hilal switched to English. “So you are as intelligent as they say you are. And quite perceptive. But like so many Americans, too brave for your own good. What do you suppose I'm going to do with you now? Hmm? Do you know who is behind this marriage?”
A small idea came to Seth. A very small one, like the light seeping past the hinges of a locked door.
“You're planning to kill me,” he said. “I know too much. And I would be a witness to your murder of Miriam. But you have three problems. The first is that Miriam's death will come back to haunt you. There's more to this story than you know. If she dies, Sheik Abu Ali al-Asamm will be freed from his bond with the monarchy. That may not seem like an insurmountable problem in your mind, but it will be, I can promise you that.”
He let that drop and watched the man's blank stare. There was no truth to his words, but they had their intended effect of confusing the man. Seth continued before he had the time to lose his nerve.
“The second problem you have is that the police are on the way. Even if you pulled the trigger now, I'm not sure you'd have the time to get your big black Mercedes down the road before they cut you off. And your third problem is that neither Miriam nor I am in a hurry to die. In fact, you have us pretty much terrified here. See? So we're going to use every trick you've ever thought of and a few you haven't to throw you off. You're already having difficulty deciding what is a trick and what is not a trick. Am I right?”
The man still had not moved.
“You'reâ”
“Mostly you are a trick.” The man reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small black cylinder. A silencer. He began to screw it onto the barrel of his pistol. “There are many things you clearly don't know, or you wouldn't waste your breath with empty threats. I have diplomatic immunity, and I'm dealing with a fugitive subject to our justice system. The police are powerless to arrest me, you fool.”
True. This guy could kill Miriam and walk out untouched. Seth had to stall the man. He'd seen a future in which both he and Miriam survived, at least up until the point the police showed up. He had to assume that the futures were possible futures and that he could influence which one actually happened.
“I can see the future, Hilal,” Seth said.
The man tightened the barrel. “Very good.” He faced Miriam. “I'll give you one last chance to tell me. If it's true that you have no argument against your king, then you will reveal his enemies. Your silence only proves your guilt.”
“Please, stop being an idiot and put that thing down,” Seth said. What on earth was he saying? “I've seen the future and you don't kill us here. You're not that stupid. You may be able to walk into restrooms with a bazooka and blow people away at will in your country, but this is the United States, my friend. Now lay the iron down and let's negotiate terms of surrender here. How much money will you give me?”
“I'm offering you your life, not money, you imbecile!”
“Exactly. But as I said, neither of us is eager to
give
our life. Maybe for some dough we would be willing to spill the beans. All we really want is to live together happily ever after. Miriam came to the land of the free to find herself a real man, and God has smiled on her. Let us go with a million dollars each, and I personally will tell you exactly who's plotting against your king and how he plans to do it.”
The gun wavered in the killer's hand. Hilal's right eye twitched and Seth knew he was going to pull the trigger. The exchange had bought them a few minutes, but Seth had made one true remark: This man with the sharp nose was far from stupid.
Seth's body felt as though it were on fire. He was trapped somewhere between full-fledged panic and a dead faint. But he had to move, and he had to move now. So he forced himself to do the only thing that came to mind in that moment.
He walked up to Hilal and slapped his face with an open palm.
“Stop this!” Seth said. “Don't be a fool!”
Hilal's eyes widened.
It occurred to Seth, sweating before the killer, that he had just signed his own death warrant. Hilal's gun was still trained on Miriam, but at any moment it would swing his way and a slug would smash through his chest.
“I can give you what you want,” Seth said, “but you have to stop pretending to be Rambo here.”
The color flooded back into Hilal's face, which twisted into fury. He swung his gun around.
“Police!”
Someone pounded on the door.
“Police, open up!”
With a practiced flip of his wrist, Hilal spun off the silencer and slipped both it and the gun into his breast pockets. “You will be sorry for this,” he said.
Then, as if this were an everyday event, he stepped behind Seth, twisted the lock, and opened the door. “Thank God, you are here,” he said. “I kept them as long as I could.”
A state trooper stood with one hand on the butt of his gun, taking visual inventory. “Is everything okay here?”
The fear that had gripped Seth only moments before turned to terror. He'd seen the trooper before. In his mind's eye. Dead. With Miriam dead behind him.
“You're Miriam and you're Seth?” the trooper asked.
“Yes,” Miriam said.
“You're going to have to come with me. There's a warrant out for your arrests.” The trooper looked at Hilal. “Who are you?”
Hilal pulled out a small wallet and flipped it open. “I'm the legal guardian of this woman, on assignment from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. I would be grateful if you would take her into custody immediately. We've wasted enough time.”
“I don't care how much time you think you've wasted. I wasn't told a thing about meeting you here . . .”
The trooper kept talking, but Seth heard nothing else. Another outcome to this scenario had dropped into his mind. Another possible future. Then two futures. Then six, all at once, like a string of posters, each one different.
Then a hundred possible outcomes, a barrage of the unseen, seen now by him.
Miriam survived the next ten minutes in only one of them.
Hilal was talking to the cop now, smooth and cooperative.
Seth shoved a shaking hand into his pocket, wrapped his fingers around the Super Ball he carried by habit, and stepped forward.
“Where do you think you're going?” the cop asked as Seth barged toward him.
“I'm coming to be arrested,” Seth said.
He stepped through the doorway and spun around to present his arms behind his back. Halfway through the spin he removed the ball from his pocket and released it. He wasn't sure how he knew precisely when to release it; he only knew that if he did, it would roll just so toward the diner.
And it did.
Seth now faced Miriam, whose wide eyes questioned Seth. Hilal smiled softly, just inside the door to his right.
“Just walk to the car peacefully,” the cop said. “I'm not gonna use cuffs. Ma'am, if you'll please come withâ”
A scream ripped through the air, followed by a hollow thud and the horrendous crash of shattering plates.
“Call an ambulance!” someone cried from the diner. “Hurry!”
The cop took a single step in the direction of the diner before stopping himself. But Seth was already on the move. Without warning he stepped into Hilal and gave him a hard shove. The Arab backpedaled and slammed into a stall door, which sprang open, accepting his flailing body.
Before Hilal hit the toilet, Seth had Miriam's hand in his. “Run!”
She let him lead her through the bathroom door, right past the cop, who was palming his gun.
“Stop!” the officer yelled.
“Run! He won't shoot us,” Seth said.
They crashed through the exit doors and sprinted for the Cougar. Thank goodness it wasn't valuable enough to lock. Seth threw Miriam's door open and managed to climb across the passenger seat before the cop made an appearance at the door, weapon trained on the Cougar.
“Stop!” he yelled again. He snatched up his radio, calling for backup. Seth knew he wouldn't shoot, not at a Saudi princess and a student whose only real crime was running out of a bathroom. Besides, the place was loaded with gas pumps.