The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(122)

With a drowsy yawn, he crossed the floor of his hotel suite. He showered and shaved, dressed himself in a sleek charcoal business suit, then tucked his hair beneath a wavy brown wig. Once he applied his putty nose and chin, Evan chuckled at his reflection. He could have passed for Zack’s dapper young brother.

After a hearty breakfast in the grotto café, Evan rented a room on the tenth floor of Tower Five, just a few doors down from his fellow Silvers. He ordered six mimosas from room service and then called the front desk to launch an incoherent complaint about his new accommodations.

Soon a manager knocked on his door. He was bald and barrel-chested, with a strong lantern jaw that unpleasantly reminded Evan of his father. The manager did a double take at Evan’s suit, a nearly exact replica of his own.

“Good morning, Mr. Freeman. I’m Lloyd Lundrum. What seems to be the problem?”

Evan tapped the square brass pin on the man’s blazer. “Lloyd Lundrum. Good name. I like it. Listen, the room’s fine. I’m just hoping to play a gag on some friends down the hall. I’ll give you a thousand dollars to lend me your name tag for an hour.”

The manager’s eyes narrowed to frosty slits. Evan laughed.

“Okay. Wow. You even glare like my dad. I guess there’s no point in raising my offer.”

“No, sir. There’s not. And I don’t appreciate you calling me here under—”

Evan’s skin tingled with tiny bubbles as he reversed his life fifty-eight seconds. He straightened his sleeves, then answered the knock at the door.

“Good morning, Mr. Freeman. I’m Lloyd Lundrum. What seems to be the problem?”

“Well, Lloyd, there’s an ugly red stain on the carpet and frankly, I’m not happy about it.”

Sixty seconds later, the manager lay crumpled at the foot of the bed, a trickling bullet hole between his frozen white eyes.

Evan stashed his silenced .22, then stooped to remove Lloyd’s ID pin. He could only imagine that Luke Rander was shaking his head from the great beyond. His father never understood him in the old world and sure as hell wouldn’t get it now. In Evan’s Etch A Sketch life, nothing mattered. All that was done was inevitably undone. The screen would wipe clean for Round 56, and Lloyd Lundrum would live again to scoff at wealthy pranksters.

Evan whistled a chipper tune as he stirred a vial of crushed pergnesticin into the mimosas. Soon he heard Amanda in his earpiece, placing the room service order. He waited in the hallway until a freckly young porter emerged from the elevator. Fortunately the kid was more flexible than Lloyd, and was happy to relinquish the food cart for a thousand dollars. Evan dawdled in his room for another half hour before wheeling the cart down the hall.

He stashed his hatred behind a genial grin when Amanda greeted him at the door. Evan couldn’t look at her without recalling the trauma from his last life, the cold and rainy night she jammed a tempic sword through his chest. That Amanda had died before Evan could get his revenge. But this one was standing right here, just ripe for the plucking.

“Good morning, ma’am. I’m Lloyd Lundrum. I sincerely apologize for the delay.”

“What happened?”

“We’re short on bellhops today. It’s a madhouse. I’ve been delivering food all morning.”

Amanda looked over the cart. “Are you sure this is our order? Those drinks—”

“I threw in the complimentary mimosas as our way of saying sorry. If you don’t want them—”

“No, that’s fine. My sister loves those.”

Evan smiled. “Well then I hope you and your sister have a wonderful brunch.”

As Amanda processed him with her sharp green gaze, he fought the urge to rewind and start over. But soon she passed him a twenty-dollar tip and then pulled the cart inside. Evan grinned all the way to the elevator until he realized the bitch never once looked at his name tag.

Twelve minutes later, he sat on the balcony of his Tower Five rental, listening to Zack and Amanda’s giddy banter in his earpiece. When Evan first discovered they were staying in the Baronessa Suite, he rewound two days and became its previous occupant. Tiny listening devices were concealed in various parts of the living room, the balcony, and of course Hannah’s bedroom.

The hardest part of Evan’s week was having to once again hear her dulcet moans of pleasure, each one a pinch of salt in a very old wound. But he knew her fling with Theo never lasted long or ended well. Evan had only seen two men pierce the formidable shell around Hannah’s heart. He’d already killed one of them. The other would crash her life next year, with deliciously tragic consequences.

Evan had been wiping the makeup off the back of his hand, scrubbing his “55” tattoo back into visibility, when Hannah smashed her first flute glass. He launched forward with the binoculars, hoo-hooing and oohing as the sisters traded angry barbs. When the second glass cracked across Amanda’s forehead, Evan squealed with delight. This was a thing of beauty, a moment so perfect that he had to watch it six times.

His smile vanished when Amanda’s tempic hand knocked Zack off the balcony. Evan shot to his feet now, staring in alarm as Zack lost his grip and fell. Screaming, Amanda threw herself against the railing and launched a tempic arm at Zack. She caught him at the fifth floor.

Evan closed his eyes and moaned with hot relief. He didn’t want to reverse such a beautiful chain of events, but he would have done it to save Zack. The cartoonist was the focus of Evan’s next mission. More than that, he was a friend.