BILL REDIGER, who’d been called Billy before he received black eyes and a new name, stepped from the passenger ramp at the Denver International Airport, snugged his dark glasses to his forehead, and turned right, toward the trains that would take him to the street. To any ordinary passerby, he would look like a successful businessman with a taste for fine, dark suits and expensive watches, in this case Armani and Rolex. His red hair was neatly combed back, and a good tan softened the freckles on his cheeks.
None could possibly know who really walked past them on this otherwise plain summer day in middle America. They couldn’t know that he had black eyeballs and could read minds.
It was a very good day to be alive, because in so many ways Bill was already dead. But now, having fully accepted his death, he could get on with the business at hand. He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened to him, though he suspected that there was another man like him somewhere, living many years in the future.
Yes, that was right. To his recollection, he’d been in Bangkok in search of the Books of History, where he’d met Janae. They’d fallen into a trance of some kind. Gone somewhere he couldn’t quite recall. It had left the taste of bile in his mouth.
Then he’d awakened in Washington, D.C., thirty-some-odd years in the past, which was technically before he’d been born. He’d been sent back for only one purpose: To stop Thomas Hunter. And the devil had given him the eyes to follow Thomas wherever he went, even into his dreams.
And once he stopped Thomas, then what? He would probably die some terrible death, because there couldn’t be two of him running around.
Maybe he would become a monk, dye his hair black, find his way into a monastery somewhere, and wreak a little havoc. Help things along.
Or maybe not.
Getting the money he needed for his task had been easy. He’d simply walked into a Wells Fargo bank and taken what he needed from the manager’s mind to make an unexpected visit to the vault before the bank opened the next morning.
He thought it a good idea to create an identity, so he got the necessary documents with some of his hard-earned dollars, bought a ticket under the name Bill Smith, and boarded a plane to Denver.
And here he was, in Denver. This is where he would change history.
This is where he would find and kill Thomas before he could do whatever he was meant to do that made all hell scream with rage.
Bill sighed and adjusted his glasses as he entered the train. Yes, it was good to be alive. Because really . . . most definitely, he was already dead.