THE MILITARY BASE SEEMS QUIET AND ORDERLY, AT LEAST our section of it. As soon as we run from that room to begin our escape to the Quinteros, however, we are plunged into chaos.
Military vehicles crowd every roadway. Soldiers and sailors carry huge boxes of equipment if they’re assigned to help with evacuation of war materials; if they aren’t, they mostly run for their designated escape vehicles. I sit on the back of a jeep between my parents, Firebird around my neck swaying with every pothole and bump in the road. Paul’s behind the wheel, driving with what I first see as a cold-blooded indifference to the safety of anyone around us. Then I realize everyone else is driving or running the same way.
Low-hanging gray clouds mask the sunlight—hardly unusual in San Francisco. But not all of the sky’s darkness is due to the clouds. Smoke hovers at the horizon in several directions, sometimes many miles away, sometimes closer. The smoke doesn’t look like the product of a currently raging fire; instead, it reminds me of the smoldering aftermath of a wildfire. As bad as it is to see the fires consuming hundreds of acres of countryside, it’s worse to see that smoke coming from downtown, and maybe even Berkeley, too. How many hundreds or thousands of people must have died?
After the destruction of the Romeverse, though, I can’t work up enough energy to panic. Instead, I feel numb to everything but my astonishment that I am still alive—and that this world’s Paul came to save me.
The gargantuan scale of aircraft carriers is familiar to me because of the USS Midway, which is permanently docked in my version of San Francisco Bay. That doesn’t make the J.A. Quinteros any less intimidating. It towers overhead, stretches into the distance. Boarding it is going to feel a little like climbing a mountain. My parents begin commandeering some sailors to help tote equipment and files across the boarding ramp as Paul leads me onward.
“Shouldn’t you be helping haul top-secret stuff?” I nod at the guys laboring under heavy boxes.
Paul gives me a sidelong look. His grip tightens on my elbow. “I am.”
He didn’t say it to be funny, but any break in the tension is too precious to waste. When I start laughing, his stern expression cracks—just a little—enough for the light to get in.
Another one who loves you, he said to me in Rome. . . .
From the crowd of soldiers just beneath me, someone shouts, “Marguerite!” I turn, and in the middle of the frenzy, I see Theo—this dimension’s Private Theodore Beck—waving his cloth uniform hat back and forth overhead, desperately signaling me.
And I can no longer breathe.
In a flash, it feels as if I’m back in Egypt, pinned on the floor of a tomb, eyes filling with tears and neck crushing in the viselike grip of my own scarf, Theo crying as he strangles me to death.
“Marguerite?” Paul steps closer, and his hand on my arm becomes less possessive, more protective. “You look terrible.”
Blunt in every universe: That’s Paul. I whisper, “Theo. I saw Theo.”
Frowning, Paul looks from me to Theo—still waving, apparently unaware I’ve seen—and then back at me again. “Then why aren’t you happy?”
“They must have told you I died in the Egyptverse. But I guess they didn’t tell you how.”
“No, but what—”
“Theo killed me.” The words haven’t gotten any easier to say. The reality remains almost too horrible to believe. I know it’s true—I could never forget that terror and pain, not as long as I live—and yet nothing will ever make that feel entirely real. “Not my Theo. Not your Theo. The one from the Triadverse. He wrapped my lace scarf around my neck and choked me until I was strangled to death.” I catch myself. As terrible as that was for me, I wasn’t Theo’s main victim. “I mean, I leaped out just before losing consciousness. But that world’s Marguerite would’ve died only seconds later.”
Paul staggers back a step, as though he were the one who had been attacked. When he looks down at Theo again, raw anger darkens his gray eyes. “How could he ever . . .” Then he swears in Russian and turns his head so he doesn’t even have to see Theo.
Meanwhile, poor Theo waves with both hands, broad arcs, desperate to get my attention. Although the sight of him fills me with terror, I know that fear should be directed at the Triadverse’s Theo Beck. Not this world’s, and not mine.
My Theo deserved better, just like this Theo deserves a chance to tell his girl goodbye, if I can bear it.
Determined, I turn to Paul. “I should go to him. Do we have five minutes?”
Paul stares at me in disbelief. “You can’t want to be with your murderer.”
“I don’t, but he’s not my murderer. This isn’t about me, okay? It’s about this world’s Marguerite, and it’s about him.” I point to Theo, who, encouraged, begins struggling through the crowd toward us. “If we’re evacuating the entire city of San Francisco, I’m guessing the situation is beyond scary. This might be the last time he ever gets to see the girl he loves, and he should get a chance to say goodbye. So that’s what I’m going to give him. Could you get over yourself long enough to show some grace?” The anger I’ve felt toward my own Paul’s fatalism has begun to bubble over, but that’s not fair—this is another man, with another fate. “I love you in so many worlds, Paul. Maybe now you can actually see how many there are, and you’ll finally believe me. But this world belongs to Theo.”
With that, I start down the boarding ramp, and Paul lets me go.
“Marguerite!” Theo disappears from my view for a moment, because now I’m too low down to see him through the crowd. He’s lost amid uniforms and shoving and the smells of sweat and salt water. So I push myself toward the sound of his voice until finally I see his face. He pulls me into his arms so tightly—
—and again I remember the lace scarf, the agony of one of my infinite deaths—
—but I don’t forget the lesson I learned on my last journey through the worlds. Each universe’s version is an individual. Triadverse Theo is a deceitful, homicidal son of a bitch. My Theo is one of the kindest, most selfless friends I’ll ever have. As for the Theo holding me close at this moment, all I know is my other self loves him tremendously. That’s what I’m honoring now.
“Where have you been?” Theo kisses my throat, my cheek. “Ever since that weird episode we had at the base—they haven’t let me see you, you haven’t been home, not even once, because God knows I went there every chance I could.”
“It’s classified.” My parents didn’t have to tell me that; it’s obvious. “I’m sorry, Theo. You know I’d explain everything if they’d let me.”
He frames my face with his hands. Theo’s soulful brown eyes drink me in. “Just tell me it’s not dangerous. If you’re safe, the rest doesn’t matter.”
“I’m safe.” For me, actually, that’s far from the truth. But I’m speaking for the Warverse Marguerite, who is now being protected as a key asset in the Firebird project. That’s probably as secure as anyone in this dimension gets. “What about you? Where are they sending you?”
“We’re being sent east, into the Rockies. That’s all I know so far. I’ll write as soon as I can, care of your parents, and tell you everything except the name of the camp. I swear.”
“You better.”
When Theo pulls me in for a kiss, I kiss him back with all the love in my heart. If this Marguerite feels for him what I feel for Paul, this is how she would kiss him goodbye. I embrace him tightly, open my mouth, as the sea breeze ruffles my hair and his warm hands stroke my back. After I leave this dimension, Warverse Marguerite will remember this moment. For her sake, and for his, I want it to be beautiful.
A whistle pierces the air, making Theo break our kiss. Already several of the soldiers around us have begun to surge in another direction, a wave that will carry Theo away. He gives me his lopsided smile, charming as ever. “If you think this was good—just wait till I tell you hello again.”
“I hope it’s soon.” Though the way this war is going, I can’t imagine how long it will be before they see each other. Months? Even years?
Or longer. During a desperate war, every time you say goodbye, you know it could be forever.
Theo kisses me once more and whispers, against my lips, “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
I’m using her voice to say it, using her body and mind and heart. That makes it true.
He gives me one last heartbreaking look, then turns to follow his orders and march into a war that may kill him. I watch Theo go for as long as I can make out his shape among the hordes of soldiers around me, then as long as I can convince myself that maybe I’d glimpse him again. Only when I know he’s truly, finally gone do I turn around and board the Quinteros.
I have said goodbye to this Theo forever. What will I do when I’m reunited with my own?
But I don’t doubt for one second what I’m going to do when I see Triadverse’s Theo again.
I can’t feel the ocean bobbing and swelling beneath me. The enormous scale of an aircraft carrier allows it to remain steady against the waves. But as vast as this ship is—big enough to house dozens of fighter planes and a basketball court on its broad deck—once I go down inside it, claustrophobia closes in. Hallways are narrow, stairs are skinny and steep. Paul takes me to my parents and walks off without a word. I can’t worry too much about his reaction because I’m too busy trying to acclimate to my new surroundings.
The quarters my parents lead me to are about the size of my closet at home, barely big enough for the fold-down bed and the small table and chair bolted to the floor. “I think this room is even tinier than the one on the space station,” I say as I set down the small cardboard suitcase they brought for me.
“Space station?” Mom says, frowning.
“You know. From the Spaceverse. You guys heard of that one, I know you did.”
Dad pushes his glasses up his nose, the way he does when his curiosity is going into overdrive. “Yes, but we weren’t certain how that world got its moniker. Is it, well, more spacious in some way?”
“Or perhaps livable areas are rare in that universe,” Mom hypothesizes. “And a ‘space station’ could then be a place where people are able to dwell in great comfort.”
After the strange whirlwind of emotions that came from kissing Theo goodbye, it’s a relief to smile. “No, it’s nothing like that. Space as in outer space. You know, outside Earth’s atmosphere.” I point skyward.
Mom and Dad light up, and Dad is breathless as he says, “As in traveling to another planet?”
“Orbiting this one, actually.” As creeped out as I felt being up above the Earth, I can see how the idea fills them with wonder. “Mom was the commander.”
Their bedazzled expressions last only for a moment, fading so quickly that I wonder whether I’ve said something wrong. Then my mother says, “If we weren’t fighting this stupid, futile war—think of the things we could be doing, Henry. The discoveries we could have made. Instead we’re only allowed to look at other dimensions so they can teach us new weapons to build.”
“I know, Sophie.” Dad hugs her from behind, a gesture startlingly familiar despite their military uniforms and these stark, blank, gray metal surroundings. “I know.”
They’re so sad, so lost. My parents find a way to be discoverers and innovators in every world, but I never thought I’d see one where their love of invention had been even slightly soured by the uses for their creations.
“So,” I say as I hang on to my suitcase, trying to move us along. “Do I get a ship’s map or floor plan—or whatever you call it on a ship? I’d like to find the cafeteria eventually.”
That was supposed to be a joke, but my mom and dad give each other a look that clearly means, You tell her. Dad’s the one who finally says, “Well, sweetheart, you’ve got your bed and your table, a few books in your suitcase, plus a door to a private head right here—quite a luxury, by the way—and we’ll bring you your meals personally. So no worries about getting lost, no need to go wandering about.”
I remember the room I appeared in, the half-bedroom, half-office with locks on the door. At the time I was too shaken to analyze it, but now its purpose is clear. “You’re keeping me under guard, in case Wicked decides to drop by.”
“Once the Berkeleyverse warned us of the danger,” Mom says, “you volunteered. I mean, our you, not you you.”
“Got it. Good. That was the right thing to do.” What damage could Wicked possibly do to an aircraft carrier? I don’t want to find out. “It’s okay. I won’t leave this area, no matter what.”
“Of course you understand.” Dad looks at me the same way he did when he realized I’d grown an inch taller than Mom—proud but wistful. “To tell you the truth, Marguerite, when we first learned what was going on, I didn’t understand why Josie hadn’t been the perfect traveler. She’s the one who can’t wait to plunge into the fray.” Josie has dragged me onto countless roller coasters and zip lines; the first time I learned she was the Home Office’s choice as perfect traveler, I knew that made perfect sense. Before I can agree with my dad, however, he continues, “But this role doesn’t need an adventurer as much as it needs someone who can . . . look at each world with fresh eyes. Who can perceive things deeply. Not an adventurer—an artist. You were the one we needed all along.”
It’s like the moment in Egypt when I realized that, in their dimension, I got to be a meaningful part of my parents’ work, but even better. Times a thousand. “Thanks,” I manage to say, despite the catch in my throat.
Mom sighs, both in satisfaction and as a signal that they have to go. “We’ll bring your dinner in a couple of hours, sweetheart. If you need more books, let us know—or I could bring a pack of cards.”
“Actually, could you send Paul down with dinner?” Maybe he’s not ready to talk with me again yet, but who knows how much time we’ll have? I can’t afford to waste a single chance. “We need to talk.”
Within five minutes, I have explored every inch of my Spartan new surroundings. The bathroom, or “head” as they call it here, is clean but tiny, and weird, too—instead of a real shower, there’s just this handheld nozzle and a drain in the floor; basically the whole bathroom is your shower. Instead of glass, the mirror is polished metal, providing a blurry view of myself in the vaguely old-fashioned style I remember: my curly hair cropped to chin-length and pulled to one side with bobby pins, very little makeup besides the dark red lipstick that even Theo’s kiss couldn’t smear.
For once, I don’t have to try leaping out of this universe in every quiet moment. Instead, I get to curl up on the bed. While I’m too on edge to truly relax, it’s a luxury just to lie there. Just to be, for a while. Thanks to the new interdimensional tracking, my parents will be able to tell me when Wicked’s finally moved along.
Through the drowsy haze of my not-quite-a-nap, I think that she seems to be taking her time. Is that because the Home Office thinks I died with the Romeverse? Or is that because Wicked’s figuring out an even deadlier trap? Though I have no idea how anything could ever top that.
A knock jolts me back to the here and now. From the other side of the door Paul says, “Dinner.”
I roll off the bed, take one deep breath, and then I open the door with a smile. Paul remains so stiff he might as well be at attention before the captain, a tray of food in his hands. “Hey,” I say. “Thanks. Please come in.”
He does, setting the tray down on my table as quickly as possible. When I close the door behind him, though, he tenses. Obviously he was hoping for a very brief visit.
“Didn’t my parents tell you I was hoping to talk?” I ask.
“Yes. But I couldn’t imagine what we would have to talk about. Aside from the Firebird project, of course, but you can have those conversations with your parents. That would no doubt be more productive.” Each word is clipped, and his posture is formal. I’ve got my work cut out for me.
“I don’t want to talk about the Firebird. I want to talk about Paul. My Paul.” How can I get through to him? “I love him, but he’s in trouble—so much trouble—and I don’t know how to help. I thought, if anyone could help me understand, it would have to be you, right? You’re so closed off sometimes. So hard to read. Only another you could ever really understand.”
“We’re not the same,” Paul replies.
“No. But you’re not totally different, either.” Not everything from that night in Chinatown was fake, I want to say, but I know better. “Please. He needs us.”
Paul’s stoic face betrays nothing, but he sits on the edge of my bed. His posture remains so stiff that he might as well be seated in a church pew.
I’m nearly as ravenous as I am curious, so I sit at the table to eat the sandwich he brought me. Hungry as I am, though, I can only manage a couple of bites. Warverse bread tastes like cardboard. Given the severity of the rations here, it may actually be cardboard. “Okay,” I say, setting the sandwich down. “You remember how Paul was splintered before. How part of his soul was hidden inside you.”
“I assume you were able to find and reunite all four splinters of his soul. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Yes, but that wasn’t enough.” I ought to have taken an image of that terrible brain scan from the Spaceverse. If I could point to that now, the damage would be undeniable. “Paul’s messed up. All these darker impulses—violent impulses, even—it’s like he can only barely control them. He doesn’t trust himself around me or around anyone, and he doesn’t believe he’ll get any better.”
“He won’t heal from the injury.” Paul’s tone is so cool, he could be discussing a stranger instead of another version of himself. “If the splinters didn’t synthesize correctly while being spliced back together, they never will.”
I sag back in the chair. “You can’t know that.”
“Injuries to the soul aren’t like injuries to the body. Splintering isn’t the same as cutting through skin. It’s more like—shattering porcelain.” Paul’s hands trace an indistinct shape in the air, some broken thing he has imagined. “You can put it back together again, even glue it so well the cracks barely show. But the cracks will always be there. They won’t heal.”
Then Paul and I will never be together again. I lean my elbows on the table and rest my face in my hands. Every other emotion I could feel is drowned in terrible, final loss.
After a moment, however, Paul says, “But just because something’s been damaged doesn’t mean it’s ruined.” When I look up at him, he continues, “I, uh, manage violent impulses of my own. I’ve never lost control. That’s a choice I’ve made. Discipline I’ve learned. Your Paul could learn that too.”
Could he? I don’t know. But we’ll never find out if my Paul won’t even try. In order for him to try, he has to believe.
“The violent impulses,” I begin. “Those come from your parents, don’t they?”
He always goes so rigid when anyone even mentions them. “That’s obvious. But I don’t have to be the man my father is.”
“No, you don’t. But the cracks still linger, don’t they?”
Paul breathes out heavily. “If this conversation isn’t going to be constructive, then—”
“Wait. No. It’s just that I think something about how you grew up convinced you—made you doubt—” At last I find the right words. “It made you think nobody could ever love you for yourself alone.”
As badly as I needed to say it, I almost wish I hadn’t, because Paul’s flinch tells me that hit him like a bullet.
He doesn’t reply right away, but I let the silence linger. There’s no time for anything but the truth between us from now on.
Finally Paul says, “My parents . . . you know that they’re corrupt people.”
“In my world and a few others, they’re mobsters. Gangsters? Whatever word you’d use here.”
“Mobsters.” He slumps back against the wall, weariness replacing his formal rigidity. “That doesn’t surprise me. Here, they profit from the black market. They resell food, equipment, even medicines at exorbitant prices, all because they bribed the right people to make sure they received those shipments, while ration storehouses remain empty.”
“Did they want you to be a part of it?”
“It sickens me, and they always knew that. Always mocked me for it. Said I thought I was ‘too good’ to fight for my own place in the world. Mama and Papa don’t see this as a war against the Southern Alliance. To them, it’s every man for himself, always, forever.”
Maybe that’s their constant—the one thing that’s true for the Markovs in every world. I feel sure it’s true in mine. “In my world, Paul’s parents don’t even speak to him anymore. They don’t give him any money. All because he became a scientist.” I’d always known something was seriously messed up about a mother and father who were angry their kid got into college at age twelve.
“Mine are more understanding,” Paul says. “Because military service is mandatory, and because they hope that someday, I’ll achieve a high rank and be able to funnel stolen goods in their direction. They’re sure I’ll do it eventually. That I’ll ‘see sense.’ People like them understand the concepts of right and wrong. They just convince themselves that they’re in the right. It sounds like your Paul’s choices force his parents to know just how selfish and small they are.” His smile is as thin as the line of a scar. “People can forgive anything except being proved wrong.”
I think about my Paul’s bare dorm room, where he can’t afford anything but a single set of scratchy sheets he bought from Goodwill. He owns two pairs of equally battered blue jeans and a series of not-new T-shirts; even his one big indulgence, a pair of good boots for his rock-climbing adventures, he got secondhand. My parents bought him a new winter coat, and when they baked him a birthday cake he was so surprised. So grateful. I don’t think he’d had a birthday cake in years.
Maybe his father, Leonid, wasn’t merely being mean. Maybe he was trying to awaken something angry and cruel within Paul. If Paul had chafed at his poverty—if he’d thought at any point, This is ridiculous. I don’t have to live like this. It would be so easy to separate the idiots around me from their money—everything would have changed. If he’d turned his genius to identity theft or hacking into banks, he could have made himself a millionaire within weeks. Days, even. The Firebird project might’ve collapsed without him, while Paul would have turned into exactly the man his father wanted him to be.
But he never flinched. Not even once.
“It was hard for me to accept that Paul and I don’t wind up together in every world,” I say. “Still is. But I know I love him, and that something between us—in so many worlds—it goes beyond random chance. For Paul, it’s different. It’s like now that he’s been splintered, he assumes we’ll never wind up together.”
Paul considers that, his gaze turned deeply inward. Learning about another version of yourself—about the array of people you could be that would all still truly be you—it’s intoxicating. Despite my desperation, I’m fascinated to watch someone else go through it too. “You always seemed so out of reach,” he finally says. “Not only because of Theo. Because it’s so hard to believe anyone would love me back without wanting something in return.”
Although I already knew how badly my betrayal here must have hurt him, I realize now how much deeper the wound struck. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
But Paul isn’t listening. He doesn’t need an apology anymore. He wants to understand. “If it’s hard for me, it must be almost impossible for your Paul Markov. The idea of fate gave him hope. Then when that fate was torn away, he couldn’t believe any longer.”
“He knows my parents love him,” I say. “And my Theo, too. But he probably thinks it’s all about the science. About what he can help them do.”
“I don’t know. I’m not him. But . . . I could believe that was true.”
Paul and I sit in silence for a few moments. I take another couple of bites of the sandwich, but on autopilot, hardly tasting the bland food. How am I ever supposed to undo damage like that? How can I make Paul believe in us when his whole life, and all these other universes, tell him we’re impossible?
Once I thought of running from world to world, trying to find the one where Paul and I loved each other perfectly. Now I don’t know whether a world like that could ever exist.
“Why Theo?” Paul says, breaking the silence between us. “Why do you think you chose him and not me?”
“Probably he poured on the charm. At home he works with you guys, my parents are his thesis advisers, and so maybe he held back because he didn’t want to step on their toes. Then I fell for Paul, and Triadverse Theo came and screwed everything up for him, and that was that. In a world where he didn’t have any reason not to go for it . . . well, I guess that’s this one.”
“So there’s no real difference between us in terms of how you could feel.” Paul tries to make it sound reasonable, but I can hear the hurt he still hasn’t managed to bury.
“I know this world’s Marguerite loves this Theo. But when Paul and I have been together—in Russia, in Rome—” My voice breaks. “I didn’t even know you could love someone like that, until I loved you. I mean . . . him.”
“I know what you meant.” This time Paul’s voice is gentle. He believes me now.
“Maybe, if I’ve finally been to enough worlds to put all the pieces together, then maybe I can make it right. Maybe I’ll finally really understand him.”
“It wouldn’t matter if you visited a million worlds. You never know everything about another person—not even someone you love. You can’t, and you wouldn’t want to.” To my surprise, Paul smiles, his expression as warm and adoring as it was that night in Chinatown. “You have to love the mystery. You have to take a chance.”
A speaker’s squeal startles us both. Only now do I see the small, perforated screen in one corner with a toggle that must be my communication with the rest of the ship. Dad’s tinny voice says, “Marguerite, we have confirmation on, um, Wicked’s movements. She’s shifted universes again.”
I rise from the table and hit the toggle that lets me reply. “I have to go, right away. The Marguerite she just left is in danger.”
“Understood,” Dad says. “Safe journeys, and know that we’re watching you. We’ll help if we can.”
“Thank you. Love you, love to Mom.” Which is sort of stupid, when their own Marguerite is about to reclaim control of her own existence. But it feels right, especially when the reply comes back: “Love you too.”
Paul stands, and we’re face to face. Only a short week or so ago, I hoped I’d never have to confront him again. And now it’s so hard to say goodbye.
“I’d like to kiss you,” I said. “Bad idea?”
“Probably. This Marguerite wasn’t thrilled with what happened,” he says, referring to our makeout session on a Chinatown sidewalk. “She didn’t blame me. After we learned the full truth, she didn’t even blame you. But I’m not going to take advantage of the situation.”
“I knew she’d remember that. But I hope she also remembers how much you helped me. How good you can be.”
His eyes drink me in. This may be the last time he sees me gazing back at him with love. “I hope so too. And good luck.”
“Thanks.” I’ll need it. What will Wicked have planned for me this time? All I know is, it’s going to be bad. I look up at Paul again, take courage from his face, hit the Firebird’s controls—
—and slam back into my airplane seat, hard enough that it rocks. Behind me I hear someone grumble. I think I knocked their drink off their tray table.
The stewardess is standing in the aisle next to me, a quizzical expression denting her prefab smile. “Miss? Are you all right?”
“Good. Yeah. Definitely.”
“Can I get you anything else to drink? This is our final service of the flight.” Her voice has a faint accent—she’s Latina, I think. “Coffee, tea, water?”
“I’m okay. Thank you.”
As the stewardess moves on, I think, Wicked put me on a plane. My mind fills with nightmare images of jetliners being blown up, fiery crashes into the runway, or some terrible oceanic disappearance that doesn’t get solved until a year later. I clutch the armrests, because if that’s what Wicked has done, then I have no chance to save myself, none at all.
But could Wicked get this theoretical bomb past security? And where would she buy explosives? I don’t have any idea, and she’s from a world so different from my own that I doubt she’d have a clue here. This world is pretty obviously close to mine; everything about the plane and the passengers looks totally normal, plus I’m wearing leggings and a lacy top from Anthropologie that I’d been coveting but—back at home, at least—never managed to save up enough allowance money for. Also, if this is the final service of the flight, Wicked rode this plane for at least an hour or two, possibly much longer. She wouldn’t wait so long if a bomb were going to go off midflight anyway. I’d have been trapped here just the same.
Maybe the danger isn’t on board this plane. Maybe the danger waits at my destination.
My inner ears tighten. I swallow hard and feel them pop just as the pilot’s voice says, “We are now beginning our final descent into Quito, Ecuador—”
Ecuador? I know now what universe I’m in, and who will be waiting for me on the other side. This was where Triadverse Paul escaped to, after he turned against Triad in an effort to protect me. This is where he must still be living in hiding from Wyatt Conley’s goons.
Why would Wicked travel to Ecuador? She hates Paul, or at any rate doesn’t mind causing him pain. But then I realize the one reason she could possibly have. If she made arrangements to meet Paul at the airport, then she could have told other people to meet him there too. Say, people who work for Wyatt Conley.
My heart sinks as I realize that Wicked set a trap for Paul . . . and I’m the bait.