The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(178)

“I don’t like this.”

“If Peter wanted to hurt us, he would have done it already,” Zack insisted. “He could’ve killed us all in our sleep at that old man’s house.”

Amanda eyed him cynically. “The Pelletiers don’t want us dead either. Doesn’t mean they have good intentions.”

Zack looked to David. “This is the part where you say something smart and assuring.”

The boy had little to offer at the moment. A bad bump of the arm had set his wounds on fire. Between the agony in his hand and the area’s screaming history, David could barely hold a thought. He cast a blank stare down the hallway.

“We came a very long way to meet this man. Might as well finish what we started.”

The hallway soon opened up to a gargantuan lobby of polished green marble. Four towering ghostboxes swirled with abstract holograms while a bubbling stone fountain filled the area with serene white noise. Above the four balcony levels, a giant lumic projection of clear blue sky turned the chamber into a synthetic courtyard.

Mia looked around with discomfort. This stony paradise reminded her too much of the Pelletier lobby in Terra Vista. What if Peter was merely another Sterling Quint in waiting? What if they’d traveled 2,500 miles just to come full circle?

“Hello at last.”

The Silvers threw their busy stares around the lobby, and soon discovered a brown-haired man sitting alone among the many sofa clusters. He propped his feet on a coffee table and shined them a guarded smile.

“You’ve been through stitch and strain, my friends, but you did it. You’re here. Now the hard part’s over and you get some well-deserved rest.”

He motioned them over. “Come. Sit.”

He was dressed in a simple blue button-down over jeans, with white running shoes that were faded at the soles. His feathered hair was peppered with hints of gray and his steel-blue eyes were marked with gentle crow’s-feet. Even while lounging, the man radiated a coarse virility. He was a Hollywood gumshoe in color, an Indiana Jones between sequels. Hannah figured he was the type of man she’d go wobbly for in ten to fifteen years, when she was finally done with moody creatives.

Amanda looked at his handsome face and saw a hint of something that bothered her, the same artificial cheer that Derek had always carried around terminal patients.

“You’re Peter Pendergen.”

“That I am,” he replied, in the same curt voice that had ruffled Mia over the phone. “Which pretty sister are you?”

“Amanda.”

“Ah yes. The formerly incarcerated. Glad to see you guys got out of that fix in one piece.” His gaze wandered to Theo, still lost in a harrowed daze. “Mostly.”

Mia took the farthest easy chair in the cluster. “So . . . what happens now?”

“Now we talk of a great many things. If you like what I have to say, then we move on together. If not . . .” He forced a nonchalant shrug. “We go our separate ways with no hard feelings.”

Zack perched on the arm of Mia’s chair. “You sure it’s safe to talk here?”

“Normally it wouldn’t be, but you did a good thing by coming on Commemoration. I paid off the few security guards on duty. We have the whole building to ourselves.”

He looked to David, shuffling restlessly behind a love seat. “Have a seat, lad. I don’t bite.”

“It’s okay. I’d rather stand.”

Theo moaned with pain and bedlam as the sisters walked him to the sofas. His consciousness had become a rapid-fire montage of premonitions, all as vivid and real as the present. He dodged falling debris in San Francisco and lay dying on a street in Washington, D.C. He danced at Zack’s wedding and cried at Mia’s funeral. He shouted with joy as he watched Amanda soar above him on butterfly wings of aeris. He saw Hannah in more iterations than he could count. She stood tall and proud over every corner of his future.

This man in front of him stood nowhere.

As Theo cast his bleary eyes on the brown-haired stranger, his foresight screamed at him. He fell to his knees and screamed back.

Hannah and Amanda dropped to his side. “Theo!”

“What happened?”

He gritted his teeth, curling his fists. “Not him . . .”

The man rose to his feet, peering at Theo over the cushions. “What’s the matter with him?”

“We were hoping you knew,” Zack said.

“That’s why I asked you for painkillers,” Mia complained.

He threw a quick and helpless glance at the upper railings, then turned back to Theo. “Look, why don’t we get him to the sofa, all right?”

Amanda felt his sweaty forehead. “He’s burning up.”

“Just get him to the sofa and stay here. I’ll find a first aid kit.”

“Not him,” Theo wheezed. “That’s not Peter.”

Now the other five Silvers eyed their host in wide alarm. He stopped and turned around, his hands raised defensively.

“Look, I don’t know what your friend is suffering, but I assure you I’m Peter Pendergen. I can prove it. Just let me . . .”

David caught a reflective glint on the balcony. His eyes popped wide.

“GET DOWN!”

“Hannah!”

Theo pulled her down just as a hissing bullet struck the floor beyond her. A second shot shattered the lamp next to Zack. He fell off the chair.