Adeline swallowed. “Okay.”
“If you think about it too much, it’ll only make you nervous. Put it out of your mind until the time comes.”
Adeline nodded, but she didn’t feel any less nervous. She wasn’t a secret agent. She wondered if she could really do this.
Daniele gripped her shoulders. “Relax. You can do this. And if there isn’t an opportunity to deploy the devices this time, we’ll figure out another way.”
“You said the timing was important.”
“It is. But so is your safety.”
“If she catches me—if she is the killer—”
“I’ll be listening,” Daniele said. “If something happens, I’ll come. I promise you.”
She reached into the box and unwrapped a handheld electroshock weapon.
“And just in case, I want you to carry this.”
Adeline took the weapon, held it up, and depressed the button on the handle. An electric arc crackled between the two electrodes, causing Adeline to jump.
“This is crazy.”
“It is. But we have no choice.”
Daniele took the weapon and placed it in a backpack. “We can’t be too careful. We can’t take anything for granted, Adeline. What we’re working on here is extremely complex. It’s a mystery of past, present, and future. And you and I are going to solve it. No matter what it takes.”
NINETEEN
Through the night, the storm raged, and Sam floated on the sea and waited, hoping morning would bring salvation.
On his back, he rode the waves, staring at the moon, his mind wandering through the past.
The first memory that the night and the sea dredged up was from college. In it, he was standing in his dorm room shaking his head.
“It’s not mine,” Sam said.
Their sophomore year, he and Elliott lived with two suitemates on a substance-free hall. The floor’s resident advisor was nosy, annoying, and fanatical about the rules. He never missed an opportunity to exercise his authority, and at that moment he was holding up a half-gallon of Jack Daniels whiskey he had found under Sam’s bed.
“I don’t make the rules, Anderson. But I have to enforce them.”
Sam wondered how many times he had recited that line.
The door opened, and Elliott strode in and glanced between Sam and the bottle the RA was holding in the air.
Sam opened his mouth to speak, but Elliott beat him to it. “Give it back.”
He reached for the bottle, but the RA dodged him, taking a step toward the door. “It’s yours?”
“Of course it’s mine.”
The RA pointed at Sam. “I found it under his bed.”
“Of course you did.”
The RA squinted, confused.
“I figured hiding it under the honor roll kid’s bed would be safer than mine. Congrats. You found it. Now what do you want?”
“I’m turning it in, and I’m writing both of you up.”
And he had. When Sam asked Elliott why he had falsely confessed, his friend smiled. “It was the obvious solution. My grandfather went broke a few years ago, but for decades before that, he gave millions to this school. I figure those deposits will square this. Mom and Dad will come down, and we’ll meet with the school, and it will be tense, but it’ll be fine. I’ll catch hell at home and probably have to go to some alcohol abuse awareness class—and we will probably have to change dorms, but it will all be fine. But you wouldn’t be, Sam. Not by yourself. You’d lose your scholarship at the very least.”
It was probably the kindest, most self-sacrificing thing anyone had ever done for him.
“We’re not just friends,” Elliott had said. “We’re brothers.”
It was a good thing he had. A week later, after finals, Sam was standing in the kitchen at a house party, holding a red cup full of warm beer, staring out past the bar into the family room at a girl from his calculus class. She wore a striped sweater, a shy smile, and shoulder-length blonde hair. Her name was Sarah Reynolds, and that night Sam walked over to her and said, “Hi,” and after that, and until her death, she was the center of his life.
*
A tall wave flowed over Sam, sloshing saltwater into his mouth. He flailed and coughed and fought with his arms and legs as another wave slammed into him.
When he finally caught his breath, the rain had slowed. He was thankful for that. But a thought occurred to him—the rain was his only source of fresh water. If it stopped, he’d die of thirst before he starved to death. That was all from Daniele’s crash course in survival: generally, a person could survive for three minutes without oxygen, three days without water, and three weeks without food. Every person’s body was different, but those were a good rough estimate.