Nightmare’s Edge (31 page)
“Oh, yeah! MacKinnon.”
Victor slid his headset back on. “Is it important?”
“Well,” Daryl said, “it’s a matter of life and death.” She looked back at the lavatory. “Or I guess it’s just a matter of death.”
Victor nodded at Barker. “I think you’d better see to that.”
“Agreed.”
As Barker took off his headset, Nathan and Daryl backed out of the way, joining Clara and Kelly in the aisle.
Daryl pointed at the lavatory. “Uh . . . he’s in there. But he’s no longer with us, if you get my meaning.”
“Not unexpected.” Barker opened the door, peered inside, then closed it again. “Dobbins has likely suffered a similar fate.”
Nathan spread his arms in front of the ladies and backed them away. “You knew he was dead?”
“No, but I knew he would die.” Barker pulled the box of mints from his pocket and shook it. “They’re slow-release, but they always work.”
“You killed your own partners?” Nathan asked. “Why?”
“Working with them was the only way to get this flight off the ground.” He withdrew a wallet from his jacket and flipped it open, revealing an FBI badge. “It’s phony, but it looks real enough to the unpracticed eye.”
Clara pushed Nathan aside and stood toe to toe with Barker, her hands firmly planted on her hips. “Enough of this twaddle. Exactly who are you?”
He smiled as he rubbed his cheeks and chin with his hand. “It’s quite convenient to wear a beard most of the time. All I have to do is shave to get a quick disguise.”
“Better cool it, Clara,” Nathan said, pulling her back. “I know who he is now, and he’s not afraid to use his gun.” As he glared at Barker, a million questions stormed through Nathan’s mind, but one stayed at the forefront. How could this be the bearded gunman? He had died in the observatory. Unless . . .
He pointed at Barker. “You’re the Earth Red version, aren’t you? It was your Earth Blue twin who died. You were the crazy gunman who chased me in Chicago and at the observatory.”
“Good thinking, but not exactly correct. I was the gunman in Chicago who tried to shoot you from the drawbridge, but, unfortunately, I was arrested. It took my people some time to get me out of jail, so my twin, as you call him, was responsible for the other encounters.”
Nathan bit his tongue. It would do no good to retaliate now, but he also couldn’t be too soft. He had to keep his voice firm. “So what’s this all about? Why did you try to kill Clara and me, but now you’re killing FBI agents to help me get to London?”
“If you knew what was going on behind the scenes, you would understand. This isn’t about you at all, and it never has been. My goal has been to protect Sarah’s foundation from an assault by Mictar or anyone else. Since you were one of the few who could contact the supplicants through the mirrors, we wanted to eliminate you. If Mictar obtained one of the mirrors you used, he would have reached through it to one of the supplicants, and the power he would have gained would have made him unstoppable. But since you have successfully eluded him, and since interfinity is at hand, it’s crucial that we help you get the job done.”
“But why kill the agents?” Nathan asked. “Weren’t they helping, too?”
“I cannot allow anyone to know where the foundation points are.” He withdrew his gun. “Understand?”
Nathan stared and the barrel and nodded. After they stopped interfinity, Barker was going to kill them all. But what could he do? He had to cooperate. Otherwise billions of people would die. “There’s one problem,” he said. “Mictar probably does know the coordinates. I took your twin’s encoded card and a page from the Interfinity Labs report that had the points. I’m sure he’ll figure it all out.”
Barker seemed unmoved. “That is problematic but not insurmountable.” He waved his gun toward the passenger seats. “Strap in. We’ll be arriving soon.”
Nathan picked up the violin and laid it on his lap as he sat down, while the others settled into the same seats they had chosen before. As he buckled his seat belt, he glared at the gunman, reliving the trial of floundering in the river while this assassin tried to shoot him and Clara in the cold, murky water.
As Barker turned to go, Nathan called out, “Wait. I have one more question.”
Barker pivoted. “What?”
“How did you find out about the supplicants and foundation points in the first place?”
Barker slid the gun back into his holster. As he leaned against a partition between the passenger’s cabin and the exit door, an odd expression passed across his face — winsome, dreamy, maybe even childlike. “As a teenager, I often dreamed about a girl dressed in red. She said she was seeking her beloved and thought I might be him. She told me about a land of mist and white-haired beings, about Sarah and how her Womb separates the three worlds, and about how beautiful music strengthens the fabric of the cosmos. She told me she would pray for me and sing songs of supplication to her heavenly father if only I would repent of my wicked ways and follow the faith of my parents.
“Since I was firmly entrenched in my rebellious years, I turned her down more times than I can count. Then, she stopped visiting my dreams. She had told me many times that I would forget the details of her world when I awakened, but I didn’t forget. I remember every word to this day. Although I never learned her name, I knew she was real, and I had to find her.”
The plane dipped, signaling its descent. Victor’s voice sounded over the PA system. “We’ll be landing in about ten minutes, and we might hit some bumps. Make sure your seat belts are good and tight.”
Nathan checked his belt again, as did Kelly, who was once again at his side. He watched as her hand gripped the strap and pulled. She seemed tired, lethargic. Ever since they had returned to Earth Red, she had stayed pretty quiet, lacking her usual pluck. The loss of her vision must have drained her energy.
Barker picked up the phone and pressed a button. “Markey, I’ll be there in a minute . . . Yeah. I’ll hurry.”
After hanging up, he stood at the front of the aisle, like a flight attendant giving safety instructions, and spoke quickly, barely pausing between sentences.
“I talked to hundreds of people about my dreams. Most of them thought I was crazy, but I eventually located two others who had similar experiences, and we formed Sarah’s Covenant, based on the only name the girl in red ever mentioned. I have since learned that my counterpart on Earth Blue had dreamt about a boy in blue, so he traveled the same path and was seeking the same goals.
“Not long ago, we placed an Internet ad in both worlds promising financial aid for interdimensional research, which is how we learned of the two Dr. Simons. They answered our ads when they lost their government grant money and were forced to seek financial help from outside sources.
“Since we funded Interfinity Labs, my cohorts joined the board of directors, and when we needed to keep secrets from the other members, we communicated with each other by code. You see, we believed in the fourth world, the Quattro world, long before anyone else discovered it. We borrowed a device that Dr. Gordon was working on that allowed us to locate and transport to that world. That’s when your father entered the picture. Gordon hired his firm to track us down, and when he discovered us, he traveled to the Quattro world himself. He actually helped us learn the foundation points of Sarah’s Womb, but that story would take too long to tell.”
Barker took a deep breath and reached for the cockpit door. “We were going to confess everything and cooperate with Dr. >Gordon, but when Mictar and Patar showed up, that threw our plans into turmoil. The cosmic wounds flourished, and we had to save the worlds and once again conceal the secrets we had learned. We decided the best way to do that would be to kill everyone who could contribute to the coming of interfinity, including Mictar once we were finished using him, and dispose of everyone who knows about Sarah’s foundations.”
“Including yourself and your cronies?” Nathan asked.
He lifted his box of orange candies again and gave it a gentle shake, his features sagging as he looked at it. “Even us.” Turning abruptly, he ducked into the cockpit and closed the door.
Kelly grasped Nathan’s wrist. “So after we save the worlds, he’s planning to kill us all.”
“Sounds like it.”
The plane tipped down into a steep descent. It dropped suddenly, then caught the air again and bounced heavily. Nathan looked out the window. The other Earth had dimmed somewhat in the brightening dawn, but it had grown larger, now four times the size of the moon. Below, roads and highways were jammed with cars and trucks, barely moving at all. But where could they go? Did they think the countryside would provide protection from this looming planet in the sky?
Clara opened her purse and pulled out a nail file. “It’s not much, but there’s only one of him and five of us.”
“True,” Kelly said, “but he’s not stupid. He’s got to know he’s outnumbered.”
Nathan looked at the cockpit door. Barker had to have something up his sleeve, some card he hadn’t played yet.
The plane began bucking wildly. It banked to one side, then the other, as if slapped by a furious hand.
“Where’s the barf bag?” Daryl yelled. “I’m going to be sick!”
Nathan reached around his seat and yanked one from the pocket in back. “Got it!” He threw it into her lap and grabbed his armrests. “Hang on!”
Victor’s voice pierced the roar and rattle. “We have opposing weather patterns, and they’re stirring up some violent clouds that seem to be converging on London. Odds are it’s only going to get rougher.”
“Never tell me the odds!” Daryl shouted.
Nathan looked at her. The fear in her eyes said she hoped for her father to answer with another
Star Wars
quote, but he didn’t respond.
His teeth clacking with every word, Nathan spat out, “You said you wanted to be around when I made a mistake. Well, this could be it, sweetheart.”
Daryl forced a trembling smile. “I take it back.”
Kelly’s fingers tightened on Nathan’s arm. “We made it through a worse flight,” she said, her voice calmer than her grip. “We can make it through this one.”
Nathan stared into her eyes. Although still glazed, they seemed at peace. He then looked at the violin as it bounced on his lap. “You’re right,” he said, stretching out his thumb to hold it down. “But I can’t play ‘Amazing Grace’ this time.”
“Maybe not, but I can sing it.” She tilted her head up and began to sing, “Amazing gr — ”
The plane bucked hard to the right, thrusting her body against Nathan’s. She gasped. Nathan pushed against her, trying to get upright again, but the force was too strong.
Then, as if recoiling, the plane rocked back, angling just as far to the other side. Daryl coughed into her bag.
“I think I’ll sing it in my head,” Kelly whispered.
“Great.” Nathan grunted out his words. “We’ll need it.”
He again looked out the window. Dark clouds swirled above the airplane, eerie and unearthly, almost alive in their frenzied dance. The ground drew close. The airport runway raced underneath the wings, but at this angle, a wingtip would surely strike the pavement before the wheels would. Was Victor really qualified to fly this jet? Was Barker? Maybe the conditions were just too much for them. If only —
A jolt rocked the plane. The wing scraped the runway, shooting sparks into the air. The wheels banged down. Everyone bounced violently then jerked forward as the plane decelerated abruptly. Nathan clutched the violin with one hand and his stomach with the other, thankful that he never got a chance to eat anything.
When the plane had slowed to a gentle taxi, Kelly flopped back in her seat, while Daryl crumpled her barf bag. “Don’t ever talk me into one of these adventures again,” Daryl said. “If we survive, I’m taking up Scrabble. That’s all the excitement I need.”
Clara reached across the aisle, holding the nail file. “Take it. You’d use it better than I could.”
Opening his hands, Nathan shook his head. “Not with these. I already hurt them again hanging on to the seat.”
As the plane rolled toward the terminal, rain pelted the windows. Barker stalked out of the cockpit, fishing for something in his pocket. “Word is that all roads are too jammed for travel. We’ll have to go by chopper.”
Nathan glanced at the IWART clipped to his belt. Now would be a good time to check on his parents and Francesca, but not while this crazy assassin was listening.
A gust pushed the plane to the right, lifting the wing slightly. Barker braced against the lavatory, still digging in his pocket. Finally, he withdrew a small chip and pulled his cell phone from his other pocket.
“This chip,” he said as he slid the back panel off his phone, “contains the code for the latest foundation coordinates for all three worlds. Although you will be quite close with the coordinates you have, without the new data, you won’t be close enough. And since only I know how to retrieve the codes, you’ll have to wait until we arrive at the palace before you get them.”
Nathan whispered to Kelly, “That’s his ace in the hole. He made sure he let us know that we need him.”
“Right,” she said, also keeping her voice low. “I picked that up.”
After inserting the chip, Barker put the phone back together and slid it into his pocket. When they rolled to a stop, the engines died away, but the plane rocked in place, pounded by the storm.
Barker opened the side door. Wind and rain swept inside, whistling and swirling. He backed away and retrieved a large blue-and-white umbrella from the cockpit. “Time to go.”
Nathan popped open the overhead luggage compartment, picked up a dark blue blanket, and peered out the window as he wrapped the violin. Two men rushed toward the plane, pushing a stairway. Nearby, a large helicopter sat on the tarmac, its blades slowly turning above its camouflage-coated frame. “C’mon,” he said, reaching for Kelly’s hand. “We’re in for another rough ride, but we don’t have much choice.”
Daryl grabbed two more bags from the backs of other seats. “I might need these.”
Barker handed Nathan the umbrella. “One at a time. The guy down there will bring it back when you get in the chopper.”