The Oracle Year(87)

“I noticed,” Leigh said. “Why did you?”

“I’m guilty about a lot of things. I didn’t want stiffing you on your interview to be one more.”

Leigh raised an eyebrow.

“Will, honestly . . . that’s stupid.”

“Guilty of that too,” he said.

Leigh was blocking the way out of the bedroom, standing with her arms at her sides, looking at him.

“Can I . . . get past?” Will said.

“I’m still going to write a story,” she said. “I’ll do my best to make your quotes from the hotel interview accurate—it’ll be from memory, but I think I’ve got it. Hell, I’ve got material from three Oracle interviews, including today. If I can’t put a story together by this point, I should quit.”

Three? Will thought. He gazed at Leigh for a long moment. She met his eyes without blinking.

“I didn’t think you remembered,” Will said.

“Union Square,” Leigh answered. “I recognized you right away when I saw you on the helicopter without the wig. Is that why you chose me? I’ve got to say, Will, I still don’t get it.”

Will felt his face flush.

“I, uh, used to read all the articles that came out about the Oracle,” he said. “Everyone speculating about who I was, if the whole thing was real. I stopped after everything started to get so dark. But back then, you wrote an article about me. It was different from the others—it talked about me like I was a person. Tried to get into what I was thinking and feeling, maybe how hard it would be to have to deal with all this.”

He shrugged.

“I never forgot it. It’s why I talked to you in Union Square. I recognized your name.”

They stared at each other for a long moment.

“I knew that piece was good,” Leigh said. “It almost got me fired, but I knew it was good.”

“Yeah,” Will said.

He turned and yelled into the living room.

“Hamza, how we doing?”

“Getting there,” Hamza called back. “You could have organized your files a little better, you know. You’ve got stuff all over the place here. I just want to make sure I get everything we need.”

Will looked back at Leigh, who was just watching him, waiting.

“Before I forget,” he said. “You’ll need that prediction, so that people believe you interviewed me. I’ll put something up on the Site about you, too, like I said I would.”

“Thank you, Will. That will make my life a lot easier.”

“Okay. Can you write this down?”

Leigh reached into the pocket of her hoodie and produced a small notepad and a pen. Will thought through the ever-shrinking set of predictions he hadn’t yet put out into the world in one way or another. It didn’t take long. He only had three left, and two—the ever-confounding 23–12–4 and a vague phrase about a Laundromat—weren’t anything Leigh would be able to use.

The third, though . . . it was perfect. Will found that he wasn’t even all that surprised. The Site had given him exactly what he’d need for every step along the way—no, not what he would need. What it would need.

The devil’s toolbox, almost all of which had been used. But not all—at this moment, when he needed a prediction, he had exactly one left that would suit the purpose. Of course.

“In about two weeks, on the fifth of July, a guy named Manuel Escobar will hook a two-hundred-and-twelve-pound tarpon while fishing off Santa Monica. It will happen at about half past three in the afternoon.”

He watched Leigh write that down, imagining the Site grinning fiendishly as he let another chunk of it loose. Leigh gave him a doubtful look. “Presidents getting cancer, and Manny Escobar catching a fish. Whoever sent you this stuff, they’ve got a weird sense of what’s important.”

“It’s all important, Leigh,” Will said. “If I didn’t get the Escobar prediction, which didn’t seem important enough to put up on the Site, I might not have had anything left for you to prove you met me.”

Leigh shivered involuntarily.

“What does that mean, Will?” she asked.

“If you figure it out, let me know. I stopped thinking about it a long time ago,” he lied.

“There was something else,” Leigh said. “Back at the Waldorf. You were about to tell me something important that you thought the world needed to know.”

Will looked at her for a long moment.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” he said.

Will hoisted his bag over his shoulder and stepped past Leigh into the living room.

“Miko, can you come in here for a second? I want to talk to you and Hamza.”

Miko stepped out of the bathroom, wiping her hands on her pants. Hamza looked up from the computer, his face frustrated.

“Come on, Will. We need to get this done and get the hell out of here. This is the one place people can connect to you. If we didn’t have so much Oracle-related stuff here, I’d never have let you come back to your apartment. We need to get it cleaned and get gone.”

“The safe house will be nice,” Miko said. “Almost a vacation. New York sucks in the summer, anyway.”

“No,” Will said.

Hamza gave Will a questioning look.