Page 58 of Killing Time

Maybe that was mostly true. For now, though, I couldn’t let myself worry about it.

Lana began to walk away from us, up the short flight of stairs that led into the corridor where Ruby’s room was located. We hadn’t told her where it was, but it seemed her work undoing the wards had given her all the information she needed. Seth followed with me right behind, while Adam brought up the rear.

Doors on either side of us, and one at the end of the equally truncated corridor. Lana laid her hand on the doorknob, and it turned, opening inward.

A woman around my age, maybe a little younger, with strawberry blonde hair and big blue eyes, stared out at us. I didn’t have much chance to gather more of an impression than that, because Lana said in a voice like a knife, “Now,Seth,” andhe leaped forward, grabbed the young woman — who I assumed must be Ruby — around the waist, and promptly disappeared.

“So much for that,” Adam remarked.

“Almost,” Lana said. “We need to get out of here. Devynn, follow Adam. He’ll lead you to the highway and then double back.”

While she, I assumed, would get in her own car and head straight for Flagstaff, although I didn’t ask.

No, the important thing was to get on the move.

We couldn’t run down the stairs and out of there without inviting way too much notice, so the three of us walked as calmly as we could out of the hallway — after Lana had closed the door to Ruby’s room — and then through the lobby and into the parking lot. Once we emerged into the chilly night air, I didn’t exactly let out a breath of relief, although it felt better to be outside for some reason.

“Good luck,” Lana said briefly before walking over to a pale blue convertible with the top up.

I allowed myself a moment of inner triumph at correctly guessing the kind of vehicle she drove, then hurried over to the two-tone Chevy, key already in my hand. Adam had parked next to me, so it was easy enough to wait while he backed out and then follow him from the parking lot and onto Winslow’s dark streets.

Even at the best of times, I couldn’t have said I knew the town well except for the route to and from La Posada to Route 66, and now, with full dark fallen and not even a sliver of a moon overhead to light my way, I had to trust his guidance completely as we turned onto one street and then another, and another.

But then I spotted a reassuring sign that said “Highway 87,” with “Payson - 90 miles” listed right underneath, so I knew he’d brought me to the correct spot. I turned onto the highway, andhe peeled off, heading in the opposite direction, presumably so he could pick up Route 66 and make his way back to Flagstaff.

I wished him godspeed and pressed down on the accelerator. The big engine picked up speed immediately, and again, I thought of how powerful it felt, how alive it seemed compared to the motors of the silky and seamless electric vehicles of my own time. Sure, they had decent torque, but they weren’t anywhere near the same as the rumbling beast beneath the Chevy’s hood.

However, I wasn’t about to floor it and end up shooting the car over the edge of the highway and into a ravine, something I knew would be a distinct possibility once it began to climb into the forests along the Mogollon Rim.

No, I made myself go at a steady sixty miles per hour, which was still ten over the posted speed limit. In addition to the utter blackness out here — very different from my own time, when solar-powered street lamps helped illuminate the highway — strange eddies of mist had begun to drift across the road, and I took my foot off the accelerator just a little. Although mist and fog were both rarities in this arid, high-desert region, we’d still get them from time to time, depending on how rapidly the day had cooled and how much actual moisture there was in the air.

I really wished they weren’t here now, though. There might not have been a single sign of pursuit, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to get the hell out of Wilcox territory just as quickly as I could.

Something appeared up ahead in the mist, something that looked large and solid and black, completely blocking the highway.

Another car.

My foot immediately lifted from the accelerator, and I jammed on the brakes. Although the roadway was dry as a bone, the vehicle began to skid and then spin, threatening to send me over the side, just as I’d feared.

And then it was as if an invisible hand took hold of the out-of-control car, grabbing it so the spinning stopped and the Chevy came to a halt in the middle of the highway.

Breathing hard, adrenaline screaming along every nerve ending, I clutched the wheel for a moment longer so my brain could catch up with reality and realize I wasn’t going to die out here after all.

Very slowly, I unwrapped my fingers from the steering wheel and made myself get out of the Stylemaster, wondering what the hell was going on with that other car. Had it died in the middle of the highway?

But then a tall shape emerged from behind the other car, a shape that resolved itself once it stood in the illumination from the Chevy’s headlights, a shape that became a tall man with black hair and a mocking smile, one that seemed all too clear...and sent a shiver of ice down my spine.

Something about the scene seemed oddly familiar, as if I’d been here before.

And then it clicked — the moonless sky overhead…the black car…the mist swirling around so nothing about the landscape had any detail or definition, was not much more than a black void.

Those prophetic dreams hadn’t shown me Ruby’s kidnapping.

They’d shown me mine.

14

THE HARDEST PART

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