The Oracle Year(37)
Sanibel was a tourist preserve. A few signs of year-round inhabitants popped up from time to time as Will drove along the road through the island—a school, what looked like a little suburban neighborhood—but they were the exceptions. Most of the real estate was covered by low-rise hotels, seafood restaurants, and tennis courts, with the balance covered by overdesigned strip malls filled with interchangeable tchotchke shops selling T-shirts and seashell-based art.
And on top of all that: Christmas decorations. Palm trees wrapped with blinking lights, the big plateglass windows at the grocery store still painted with evergreens and snowflakes.
How many lives did I save? he thought. I’ll probably never know. Not an exact number. But it’s a lot.
He’d already seen a few articles online talking through this exact question—How many people would avoid death or injury because the Oracle put warnings up of future disasters on the Site? He shook his head, a smile coming to his face.
Thousands? Maybe. Probably.
The GPS on Will’s phone ordered him to turn right—he saw a sign with an arrow pointing in that direction marked captiva—his ultimate destination, still several miles down the road.
His mistake, he was beginning to realize, had been waiting for the predictions to tell him what they meant. They were never going to do that. They meant what he decided they meant. Superman didn’t wait to be told what to do with his powers. He just used them.
Will caught his eyes in the rearview mirror. Yes. Superman. And that was just fine.
The tone of the road under the car’s tires changed briefly as it crossed another bridge, much shorter than the causeway from the mainland, leading to a second island—Captiva. The way narrowed. To Will’s left, across an expanse of white beach, was the sea, shining blue and bright. On the other side of the road was a mangrove swamp, lush and impenetrable.
He thought about his plan, and about the predictions he hadn’t released yet in one way or another. Between the ones he’d used at the start to understand the rules—the Lucky Corner prediction and other, less tragic events—the original set released to the Site, those he and Hamza had sold and now the warnings, most had been used. He still had some left, just a set of oddities he hadn’t been able to figure out how to use, but none would find their way into the world—not unless he was sure they could help somehow.
The dates on all of them would pass eventually. After that, he wouldn’t know anything more than anyone else. He’d be done. The Oracle wouldn’t—couldn’t—exist.
The road turned away from the beach and cut inland, running beneath a canopy of palm leaves that blocked out much of the sunlight, turning the road into a green cave.
Will scanned the mailboxes beside the driveways poking out from the jungle on either side of the road. Each had a cutesy name painted on it—things like seabreezes or marlin’s rest.
About two miles into the island, Will finally found the address he was looking for. The mailbox for this house read just beachy.
A gravel driveway wound a little way back into the trees, leading to a pleasantly sized house, white with light blue trim, set up about twenty feet off the ground on a wooden stilt framework. A white Lexus—almost all the cars down here were white—sat in a carport built into the space beneath the house.
Will parked, got out, and walked up the stairs to the front door of the house. He rang the bell. Through the cut glass panels on either side of the door, he could see a shape moving, resolving into a figure walking toward him.
He stepped back. He wiped his palms on the front of his jeans. He was sweating—he wished he had dressed for the weather a little better, but had somehow stupidly not expected Florida to be so warm. Not at Christmas.
“John, John, John, John,” he muttered to himself.
The door opened.
A woman stood there. She was probably north of fifty, but she had either the resolve or the cash to take care of herself, because she just looked like an aged echo of a young woman—certainly older, but not old. Her hair was short and mostly white, but her face looked younger than the color, a Steve Martin sort of look. It was styled in a sort of upswung do that Will associated with suburban moms. Actually, that was her look: well-off mom.
“John Bianco,” the woman said.
“Hi, Cathy,” Will said. “How are you?”
“Surprised to see you,” Cathy answered. “It was my understanding that we had a deal. Safer for everyone if we kept all contact online only.”
“You’ll be happy I came down.”
Cathy smiled.
“Well, of course, John. I already am.”
Cathy stepped aside and ushered him into her home.
The entrance hall opened into a spacious living room with enormous floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on a spectacular view of the beach and the Gulf of Mexico beyond. Ceiling fans set at least twenty feet off the floor spun lazily. The decor relied heavily on wicker. It was all very tasteful and expensive-looking.
Cathy pointed at a couch set in the middle of the room, and Will sat.
“Something to drink?”
Will shook his head. He’d had drinks with Cathy Jenkins before, and he wanted to keep a clear head. He could get drunk later, back at the hotel, if he felt like it—which he absolutely would. He had celebrating to do.
“Well, I’m going to have something,” Cathy said. “It’s past noon, right?”