Rearview

Dellosso Novels [6]

Mike Dellosso

Tyndale House Publishers (2012)

Tags:

Christian Fiction

Christian Fictionttt

In each installment of 7 Hours, a character is visited by the enigmatic Thomas Constant, who makes a heart-stopping statement: “You are about to die. But you may choose from one of three options: Live seven more hours, travel back in time and relive seven hours, or accept the inevitable and die now.”

Professor Dan Blakely has it all . . . until a false accusation leaves him in financial ruin with nothing to fall back on and little hope.

In a moment of desperation, he decides to do the unthinkable. But when he loses control of his SUV and careens down the side of a mountain, his plans take another turn.

Trapped beneath the frame of his mangled vehicle, Dan is visited by a mysterious stranger who offers him three choices. Filled with regret, Dan makes a decision . . . but little does he know that his troubles have only just begun.

The clock is ticking. What will you do with the time you have left?

Visit Tyndale online at www.tyndale.com.

Visit Mike Dellosso’s website at www.mikedellosso.wordpress.com.

TYNDALE and Tyndale’s quill logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Rearview: A 7 Hours Novella

Copyright © 2012 by Michael William Dellosso. All rights reserved.

Cover photograph copyright © Maximilian Zimmermann, Germany/Getty Images. All rights reserved.

Designed by Dean H. Renninger

Edited by Kathryn S. Olson

Published in association with the literary agency of Les Stobbe, 300 Doubleday Road, Tryon, NC 28782.

Rearview is a work of fiction. Where real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales appear, they are used fictitiously. All other elements of the novel are drawn from the author’s imagination.

ISBN 978-1-4143-7480-2 (Apple); ISBN 978-1-4143-7481-9 (ePub); ISBN 978-1-4143-7482-6 (Mobi)

For Jen and our girls …

You’re reason enough to get up every day.

Acknowledgments

This is one of my favorite parts of every book because it’s a chance to recognize all the folks who have played a part in the making of this story and who never receive any recognition for it.

First, all thanks go to my God and Savior, Jesus. Without him none of this would be possible. I would be living an empty life full of self-fulfilling endeavors and getting nowhere.

Thanks to my wife, Jen, and our four daughters, for giving me such joy and making our home a happy place to be.

Thanks to Kathy Olson and the rest of the team at Tyndale for their work on making this story the best it could be. All accolades go to them; eggs and tomatoes should be aimed at me.

Thanks to my agent, Les Stobbe, for his guidance and leadership.

Thanks to James Wilson for getting a team of authors together with this crazy idea for a project called 7 Hours. And to my fellow writers on the journey: Rene Gutteridge, Ronie Kendig, Tom Pawlik, Robin Parrish, Travis Thrasher, and James.

Thanks to my readers, who make what I do thrilling and suspenseful every time!

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

A Note from the Author

About the Author

1

The alarm sounded the same time it did every morning, pulling Dan Blakely from London’s nineteenth century industrial district. The steady beeping gradually grew louder, like an approaching train in the middle of the night, rousing the residents of a small rural town from their sleep, until he reached over and groped for the Off button.

7 a.m.

Lying on his back, he shut his eyes and almost drifted back to the squalid orphanages and workhouses that so often populated his dreams, but he had to stay awake, had to get up, shower, dress, grab some breakfast. The day awaited him and he had office hours at eight, then his first class, English lit, at nine. All fifteen students would be waiting anxiously for him to convey some deep meaning about the purpose of life behind the character of Mr. Bumble in Dickens’s Oliver Twist.

A night owl who preferred to do his work by the light of the midnight oil, Dan didn’t need a lot of prep time in the morning. He was the definition of low maintenance.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, ran his hands over his stubbled jaw, and stretched his mouth in a lionlike yawn. Narrow rods of muted light peeked through the blinds, dusting the room in a moody morning glow. He stretched, stood, adjusted his boxers, and headed for the master bathroom.

Fifteen minutes later Dan emerged, shaved and showered, with only a towel around his waist. He had no need to comb his hair (he kept it cropped at a half-inch) and no need to iron his clothes. (Sue had ironed them the night before.). Low maintenance, indeed.

In the kitchen he fixed himself a quick breakfast of coffee and a plain bagel. He’d passed on the blueberry one because Sue had dressed him in a white shirt today and Dan wanted to take no chances of getting a blue stain on it.

A yellow sticky note waited for him on the toaster. It read: I love you, babe. You’re the best (husband, dad—you know!) Love, Sue. After kissing it, he folded it once and put it in his shirt pocket.

With his coffee in one hand, the bagel in the other, and his attaché slung over his shoulder, he left the house and walked the mile to the Boone College campus. The air was chilly and damp and still, the sky overcast with a thick cover of gunmetal clouds. The meteorologist had said there was a chance of snow and it felt like it, even smelled like it. Tall oaks and maples reached their barren arms heavenward, hands open, fingers splayed, as if begging the sky for sun, for warmth.

On campus, Dan was greeted by bundled students milling around, looking more like prisoners in a Soviet-era Russian labor camp than future teachers and engineers and hamburger flippers, some heading to their first class of the day, some returning from the cafeteria. The semester would soon be over, everyone gone home for Christmas break, and then the place would be a frozen ghost town. He enjoyed it like that. The quiet, the peace of a deserted campus … there was something calming about it after the rush and stress of finals week and Christmas preparations.

On the other side of the campus, he entered Buchanan Hall, a three-story Federal-style brick building dating back to the early 1800s. It had been fully restored and updated several times over the past two hundred years, the most recent job adding security cameras at every entrance and a new key-card door lock system. His office was on the second floor.

Dan loved the smell of his office in the morning. The cleaning crew went through at night, vacuumed, dusted, emptied the waste cans, washed the windows, and tidied up the place. By morning only a hint of the piney odor of cleaning fluid was left and it mingled nicely with the aroma of old wood and furniture polish.

Sitting behind his desk, Dan pulled a stack of papers from his attaché and placed them on the desktop. He’d graded the last of them the night before and some of the students wouldn’t be happy with the outcome; in fact they’d be downright disappointed, some even disturbingly upset. And this was the second time around. Their first attempt was so dismal that he’d given them a week to go over their papers again, edit and revise them and, in some cases, wholly rewrite them, then turn them in for another look. Unfortunately, the second go-around was not much better.

He pushed away from the desk and stood, crossed the room, and leaned against the wide molding that framed the window. The six-over-six panes were the original leaded glass and gave a wavy, distorted, almost-undulating view of the outside world. From up here, he could see most of the campus. The grounds were beautiful, dotted with buildings dating back two centuries, trees nearly as old, and large stretches of manicured lawn where students gathered in the spring to sun and study and frolic their stress away. In the center of campus, an area called the commons, stood a thick-trunked, gnarled oak (named Old Oaky by some bygone senior class), its branches twisted and knotty, bark scaly and scarred. No one knew exactly how old it was, but the botanists on faculty all agreed it had seen at least three centuries. The campus was built around it, a circle with the tree in the middle. A wheel and its hub. Old Oaky was the grandfather of Boone College.

Returning to his chair, Dan lifted the phone and checked his messages. He had one from Gary Packard, the chair of the English department.

Gary’s voice sounded strained and nervous. “Dan, I need to see you in my office first thing in the morning. It’s urgent.” There was a pause so long Dan thought the message had ended and Gary had forgotten to hang up the phone. Then his voice was there again, quiet. “As soon as you get in, okay?”

Dan placed the phone in its cradle, a knot forming in his stomach. He knew what it was about; of course he did. Gary wanted to talk to him about Erin Schriver. Suddenly Dan’s palms were slick with sweat. But he’d done nothing wrong. If anything he’d been lenient. He could have brought the hammer down on Erin, had her expelled.

Walking over to the window again, Dan leaned on the sill and watched the methodical movement of students along the walkways below. From up here, the outside world appeared so isolated, so uncomplicated and innocent. But he knew better. It was anything but innocent. He was sure Gary just wanted to get the facts, hear it from Dan’s own mouth. Dan had completed all the proper forms and sent Gary both an e-mail and a hard-copy letter explaining what had happened in class, but he’d left some parts out, parts he now wished he’d included. Parts Gary must have somehow found out about.

Below, the student traffic moved in a steady fashion, as if the whole scene had been choreographed for a movie set. Something was out of place, though, and threw the odd dance off rhythm. A man stood in the grass at the corner of Bradley Hall, hands clasped in front of him. Dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and dark tie, he had the lean athletic build and stoic posture of a Secret Service agent. Dan didn’t remember any dignitaries on the schedule to visit the campus. They usually let faculty know about that. The man lifted his eyes and found Dan in the window. Slowly, as if to make a point, he reached into his jacket and pulled out something small, a pocket watch maybe. He glanced at it, then returned his gaze to Dan. For some reason beyond his immediate understanding, the way the man looked, the movement of his arms, the tilt of his head, sent a sliver of ice down Dan’s spine, and an involuntary shiver rippled through his muscles.

Dan pushed away from the window. He needed to calm himself before seeing Gary. He couldn’t walk in there beaded with cold sweat, nervous, shaky, looking pathetic. He wished now that he had told Sue about the whole thing, but he rarely, if ever, talked about his day with her. He never had. For a moment he thought of calling her and confessing everything before his meeting with Gary, like a child admitting he’d broken the vase before his brother could tattle on him. Except he’d done nothing wrong. He had nothing to confess and there was nothing for anyone to tattle about. In fact, until now his teaching experience had been clear of any kind of controversy. He’d never even flunked a student.

After a brief visit to the bathroom, where he splashed water on his face and dried it with a paper towel, Dan Blakely headed down to the first floor and the office of Gary Packard.

2

Gary Packard’s office was a reflection of the man: orderly, neat, and predictable. It even smelled like Gary’s Old Spice cologne. Two walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookcases, neatly trimmed and polished to a perfect satiny sheen. Volumes indexed and arranged alphabetically by subject and author occupied shelf space. One wall consisted of novels, classic to contemporary, Alcott to Zola. The other was neatly packed with nonfiction titles ranging from classroom textbooks and writing craft how-tos to memoirs and biographies.

Against the far wall sat a polished cherry drop-leaf Pembroke table dating back to the late 1700s. Its top was decorated with antique glass inkwells, some over three hundred years old. This was Gary Packard’s prized collection and he dusted it every morning upon arriving at his office. Dan had seen him perform the ritual only once and was both amazed and alarmed at the care Gary took to discard every fleck of dust from every glass container. Above the Pembroke table with the assortment of inkwells hung a large, three-by-four-foot original painting by an unknown student of the renowned nineteenth century Hudson River School. Gary liked to surmise that the painting was by none other than the school’s founder, Thomas Cole.

On the other side of the office, taking up most of the wall, was Gary’s stout, Georgian mahogany partner’s desk. The chair of the English department sat behind it, elbows resting on the desktop, fingers laced, wire-rimmed glasses perched so precariously close to the tip of his nose a muffled sneeze might knock them off.

Gary Packard was not an ugly man, but neither would Dan have considered him attractive. Tall and thin, he had an angular face and balding head that reminded one of a bust of some long-dead Roman dignitary. In his midsixties, Gary looked younger than his age but not by much. As far as Dan knew, his immediate superior lived a rather private life and mostly kept to himself. Despite some eccentricities and an odd obsession with inkwells, Gary was likable, and Dan enjoyed wandering into his office between classes to talk about American literature or contemporary fiction or who would win the Eagles-Giants game on Sunday.

Normally a confident, poised man who held his head erect and kept his shoulders back, this morning Gary appeared anything but that. When Dan entered the office, Gary slid his elbows off the desk and dropped his hands into his lap. He motioned to the single leather-upholstered chair across the desk from him. “Dan, please, have a seat.”

A flutter of butterflies took flight in Dan’s stomach.

Gary fidgeted, adjusted his tie, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He tried to smile but it came off as more of a grimace. “And how are Sue and the boys these days? Fine, I suppose?”

“Yes, they’re fine. They went to New York for the day.”

“New York. How nice. Carla and I go every year to see a musical.” Carla was Gary’s wife, a dear woman with a gift for hospitality. She made a tremendous hot crab dip. “This year we saw Les Mis, a wonderful story. Yes, just wonderful. The man who played Valjean was tremendous. And Victor Hugo, what a genius of a man. Such a wonderful author. Did you ever read the novel?”

“Of course.”

“Then you’d very much enjoy the musical. You and Sue should go see it sometime.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Gary paused to rub his chin. “I suppose you know why I needed to see you this morning?”

“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t to talk about Broadway musicals.”

Gary did not smile, did not even try to force one. “No.”

“Erin Schriver then.”

Again, Gary shifted in his chair, then reached for a blue cut-glass inkwell on his desk and adjusted it a centimeter to the right. Next, he slid a framed picture of him and Carla in Williamsburg, Virginia, the same distance in the same direction. He nodded. “It is.” He sat back in his chair and sighed. Beads of sweat dotted his upper lip. Gary Packard was not a man known to perspire easily. “Dan, what did you do? What have you brought upon yourself?”

Dan leaned forward in the chair. “Look, I have proof she cheated. I sent it all to you. I documented everything so if there was any controversy, I’d be covered.” And he had. He was careful to photocopy the test, Erin’s papers, his e-mails, notes, everything. Accusing someone of cheating and giving them a failing grade for the course was a big deal, especially when that someone was Erin Schriver, 4.0 student and daughter of U.S. Senator Rick Schriver.

“Dan, this isn’t about the cheating. It’s not about documenting or not documenting. And it isn’t about covering your posterior.” Gary sat there chewing his lower lip, looking like he knew something Dan didn’t. “It isn’t about any of that. Not really.”

“So what is it about?” He knew, of course, but had no idea how Gary had found out. He’d told no one, partly because he was embarrassed, partly because he saw no need to. Erin would be humiliated enough by the cheating scandal; the last thing she needed was word to get out about her poor, desperate conduct. And besides, Dan liked her dad—he was a good politician, a straight shooter—and he didn’t want the senator’s reputation or chance at reelection marred because of the indiscretion and immaturity of his daughter.

Gary sighed again and rubbed his chin nervously. He pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose and loosened his tie. It was neither hot nor stuffy in the office. “Ms. Schriver has come forward with an accusation.” He cleared his throat, rotated the pen on his desk a quarter turn so it was parallel with the straight line of the desk’s edge. Dan noticed the tremor in Gary’s hand. “She claims she met with you a couple days ago to discuss the cheating allegations, to deny them.”

“She did. It’s all in my documentation.”

“Yes, yes. Yes, I know. That was good. But she claims you left something out. That you … well, that you—”

“For crying out loud, Gary, that I what? That I refused to hear her excuses? That I didn’t want to play her game?”

Gary sat back in his chair hard, as if he’d been punched in the chest by some phantom intruder. “That you assaulted her. Sexually.”

The words fell from Gary Packard’s mouth like a guillotine, decapitating any argument Dan might have hoped to use. The office fell as silent as a crypt, the only sound being the ticking of the mantel clock on the Pembroke table. Each tick grew louder and louder until it sounded like a succession of rifle shots. Dan’s mouth suddenly went as dry as sand, and he could no longer feel his feet resting on the floor, his hands gripping the arms of the chair. What he did feel was a steady heat, growing, spreading from his neck, down his back, over his shoulders, across his chest. The words reverberated through his head, bouncing around in there like a bullet ricocheting in a metal box.

When he finally found his voice, the only thing he could say was “Rubbish.” He’d been reading too much English fiction.

Gary picked up the pen and turned it over in his hand. He released a shuddered breath. “It’s quite serious.”

Hot anger flared in Dan. He couldn’t believe Erin would accuse him of such a thing, that she’d be so bold, so conscienceless. The heat intensified and brought out a sweat on his forehead. “Quite serious? What are you talking about? She’s lying, Gary. Obviously lying. She’s upset about the whole cheating thing.”

Gary arched his eyebrows and sighed. “She has bruises, a detailed account.”

“So it’s my word against hers?”

“It’s not that easy. She also has a handful of witnesses willing to come forward and say she told them about the whole thing the night it happened. Did you happen to tell anyone? Sue? She might be able to corroborate your version.”

His version. So it had come to that. Erin’s version and his version. Dan sat back in the chair. The sweat on his forehead had turned cold and now made him shiver. “She’s lying. I can’t believe this.”

“Did you tell Sue?”

Dan shook his head. “No. I didn’t feel a need to. If I’d known my head would be on the chopping block, I would have.”

“Erin reports she approached you about the cheating incident and you offered her an alternative solution. For certain—” he cleared his throat and shifted his eyes about his desk as if looking for the correct word—“favors you would forget the incident. She says when she refused, you became angry and tried to force yourself on her.”

It was a preposterous, incredible story and a total mess of lies. Dan felt as though some unseen hand, maybe that same fist that had punched Gary in the chest just moments ago, had wrapped its bony fingers around his throat and squeezed. He hitched in a breath and said, “So why didn’t she call the police?”

“She says she was scared, embarrassed.”

“She wasn’t scared!” Dan jumped out of the chair. “She came onto me. I told her I’d caught her cheating and that I had no choice but to give her a failing grade for the class. She practically threw herself at me, told me I did have a choice and she wanted to change my mind. She’s lucky I didn’t have her expelled.”

Gary held up a hand. “Dan—”

“No, let me finish, Gary. She was relentless until I had to practically throw her out of my office. She was crying, cursing, very upset.” He’d used minimal force, though, nothing that could have caused bruises.

“Was anyone else around?”

“No, it was after five o’clock. I was getting ready to go home for the evening and everyone else on the floor had already gone for the day.” He’d left the door of his office open and she’d invited herself in.

“And why didn’t you report any of this?”

“I thought it was just the panicked behavior of a girl caught cheating. C’mon, look who she is, a senator’s daughter and all. She knows what it would mean for word to get out that she flunked a class for cheating. I wanted to cut her a break and not blow this whole thing up in her face. That’s the last thing she needed. Am I on trial here?”

Gary shook his head. “No. Not here.”

“Is she pressing charges?”

“As far as I know. But the police haven’t been notified yet.” He put the pen down, moved it an inch to the right, then to the left, then picked it up again. Clicked it twice. “The thing is, the board, they’re taking this very seriously. They have to. And, well, they want to be decisive and take action before any of it goes public. They can’t afford the negative publicity. The school can’t. Daniel Boone has a long, proud history—”

“Cut the PR garbage, Gary. What’s going on here? They’re not backing me on this?” Dan’s heart pounded in his chest like a racehorse knocking against the starting gate, growing more anxious with each passing second. Without the support of the board of trustees, he’d have a difficult, and most likely impossible, uphill climb to shake an allegation like that.

Gary dropped the pen on his desk and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped the sweat from his brow and chin. “No, they’re not. They, in fact, have decided to let you go. I’m sorry.”

Dan stepped back and knocked the chair to the floor. “What? They’re firing me?” The room began to spin around him as if there were an axis running through the middle of it, floor to ceiling, and the whole building revolved around it like an amusement park ride.

The silence was there again save for the gunfire ticking of the clock, each shot directed at Dan’s heart. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “It’s not true. None of it.”

“I’m sorry, Dan,” Gary said. “The board doesn’t want to wait around and find out and meanwhile have the school dragged through the mud by the media.”

Dan ran his hand over his head, smoothing his hair. “So they’re sacrificing me to save the reputation of the school.”

“It wasn’t my decision. I had nothing to do with it. They just wanted me to be the one to tell you.”

“And you just went along with it?”

“Dan—”

“They didn’t even have the backbone to do it themselves?”

“Dan—”

“Don’t, Gary. Don’t defend them. I can’t believe this is happening.”

Gary loosened his tie even more. “They want your office cleared out by the end of the day. Pete Wilkins will be covering your classes today and for the rest of the week.”

“And after that?”

“They haven’t found anyone yet.”

Dan walked to the door of the office, placed his hand on the knob, and turned to face Gary. “Do you believe me?”

“What I believe doesn’t—”

“Do you believe me?”

Gary removed his glasses, set them on the desk, and rubbed his eyes. He then placed the glasses on his nose and ran the wire frame around his ears. “She has bruises, Dan, and friends willing to testify. What does it look like to you?”

“Anyone could have given her those bruises.”

“Then who?”

“Anyone.”

“Who?” Gary’s voice rose in volume. “And why would her friends be willing to lie for her? To risk so much for a lie? Tell me that.”

Dan opened the door and stumbled into the hallway like a drunk doing what he did best. He felt as though he were moving in slow motion, like he was playing the part of a character in some Alfred Hitchcock movie and the reel had been slowed to half speed while he groped for balance, worked to steady himself. Even the dramatic music played in his head. He caught himself on the far wall and drew in a deep breath.

Alicia Copper, the English department’s secretary, came out of the central office. “Are you okay, Dan?”

Dan waved her off. “I’m fine.” He ran a hand over his face and headed for the main exit. Alicia had always been kind to him. She’d think differently in a few days. They all would.

Pushing through the door, he stood on the building’s stoop and reached for the twisted iron railing. The sky hung dark and foreboding. The low-slung clouds did not move but threatened snow. The air was heavy and moist. A chill swept through him, penetrated clothes and skin and rattled his bones.

He’d been fired. He couldn’t believe it. They weren’t even going to give him a chance to explain, to state his side of the story. Just like that, dismissed, and worse: he’d been ruined.

Dan scanned the campus. Only a few students padded along the concrete walkways now, huddled together and engaged in some intense conversation, no doubt solving the problem of world hunger or touting the benefits of the latest social networking craze. Across the commons, near a young dogwood, he spotted the man in the black suit checking his pocket watch again. He seemed to be watching Buchanan Hall, waiting for something to happen. Maybe the board had acted without notifying Gary and had already reported the incident to the police, who had, in turn, dispatched a detective to make the arrest.

Leaving the stoop, Dan headed for home. He looked back over his shoulder but didn’t see the man following him. Pulling his coat collar high so it partially hid his face, Dan kept walking. He’d come back later and clear out his office, after hours when everyone had left for the day and darkness settled over the campus, providing a cloak of cover.

3

Back at his house, Dan stripped down to nothing and stepped into the shower for the second time that day. He adjusted the water so it was as hot as he could stand it and stood under the heavy stream, letting it hit him in the chest and splash up onto his face. He didn’t need a shower; he’d done nothing to dirty himself. He was hoping the steam and hot water would relax not only his tense muscles but his mind and allow him to think through this, to plan his defense, his next move. Some of his best ideas and most ingenious plans were birthed in the shower under a flow of nearly scalding water.

But this was more than just concocting some intangible concept or notion; he had a lot of damage control to do. These kinds of issues rarely cleaned up nicely. He’d seen it happen too many times on TV, even to some colleagues. Whether the accused was eventually found innocent or not was a moot point. The damage was in the accusation itself and was devastating both personally and professionally. Everything that happened after that was just details. And with this involving a high-profile senator’s daughter, it would be shoved into the spotlight and become a media hot button. Every news outlet and daily talk show would be discussing it, dissecting it, and analyzing it. Experts would chime in and give their nickel’s worth of insight into how such a thing could happen and how we could best protect our students from such menacing predators.

Yes, Dan needed more than an idea. He needed a plan of action. Or better yet, a miracle.

First, there was Susan. She had no reason to doubt him; he’d been a faithful, loyal husband. Not once in their sixteen years of marriage did she have cause to question his fidelity or accuse him of betraying their sacred vows. But things changed, and though she’d stand by his side, there would always be that seed of doubt, the question in her eyes when she looked at him. She was a strong woman, but when this thing went public, the pressure on her would be incredible, weightier than bearing the load of that famed Titan Atlas. Doubt would scratch its way into her fatigued mind and start poking away with questions. She’d support him on the outside, stand by him in court, defend her man when asked about the circumstance, but inside she’d wrestle with her thoughts and feelings.

Then there were the boys, Jack and Murphy, just seven and six. Dan and Sue would try to shelter them from the news stories, the gossip, the criticism, the tabloids, but it would be impossible in this information-saturated world to keep it from them forever. It was unavoidable. Sooner or later they’d find out that their dad had been accused of something horrific and disgusting, and it would tarnish their image of Dan, their image of what it was to be a man, a husband. Eventually they’d grow into the teen years, then adulthood, and have their own questions, wondering if it was true or not, if their dad had stooped to the lowest level and betrayed their mother. If he had used his power and influence to manipulate and force himself onto a vulnerable young woman.

Dan turned around in the shower and let the water hit the back of his head and neck, releasing the tension in his shoulders. He shut his eyes and imagined the look on Sue’s face when he told her, the questions she’d have, the disappointment he’d find in her eyes, the accusation and anger, the hurt …

“Stop it!” He said the words out loud as if hearing them would somehow give them more impact. But it did nothing. Even with his eyes open, he saw her face and wanted to hide from it.

And then there was his position at the college. He was one month away from earning his second PhD and then the promotion would come—he’d be a full-fledged professor—and with it a hefty pay increase and tenure. It was what he’d dreamed of since graduating from Daniel Boone nearly twenty years ago. He was so close. Close enough, in fact, that he’d gone ahead and bought this new home only a mile from campus and bought Sue a new car, a Volvo Cross Country. On his current paycheck, they couldn’t afford either, but the promotion was only four weeks away. It was a done deal. Gary had already approved it, as had the president and the trustees. He was in the home stretch of living the life of his dreams. Everything was going as he planned … until this train wreck threatened to put it all in flames.

He could hire a lawyer and fight the accusations, but he’d need a good lawyer and they usually came with a fee equal to the GDP of a small island country. Dan couldn’t afford either. And besides, the senator would hire a better lawyer, one who would make Dan look as guilty as a cat caught with its paw in the fishbowl.

He could go to the board and beg them to reconsider, to listen to him, but from what Gary said, it sounded like they had their minds made up.

Suddenly Dan felt dizzy and needed to sit. He nearly fell to the tiled floor of the shower and sat under the flow of hot water. It ran down his face, into his eyes, his mouth, over his shoulders, and down his back and chest.

His case was hopeless—that was it. He was ruined. He’d lost his job and any prospect of making professor. He might even lose his PhD. All the work he’d done and money he’d spent would be for nothing. Professionally, he’d never teach again, never stand before a classroom of students and discuss Chesterton or Austen or Mr. Bumble. His reputation would be tarnished forever; the accusation would follow him around like a dark shadow, clinging to his every move, his every attempt to hide from it or shake it.

Financially, they’d never recover. The loans he’d taken out for his PhD were enough to keep them so far in debt they’d never see the light of day again. And then there was the house and car. He’d lose them both, maybe claim bankruptcy; maybe they’d be out on the street. He knew he was thinking irrationally, but it was all quite possible. More successful men than he had been taken from the highest levels of society to the lowest and found themselves and their families on the street, homeless, nowhere to go.

Dan pulled his knees to his chest and began to cry. He was not weepy by nature, he never cried during movies, and as a child, he didn’t shed a tear when Old Yeller died, but the futility of his future, the bleakness that extended from the present and ended in nothing but emptiness, was just too much for him to bear. It was a long corridor shrouded in darkness and haunted by menacing, unseen things that clawed and screeched at him. A corridor that he knew would suddenly drop off and send him and his family plummeting into an abyss of hopelessness and dread. All was lost. His life, once so promising and well-lived, had been reduced to a heap of smoldering rubbish someone would find and toss away without a second thought.

His mind went back to that encounter with Erin. Methodically, he replayed the scene, but so much of it was now a blur. She’d gone from begging and crying to playing the part of a seductress, offering to do vile things, to hollering and cursing at him. If ever there was a Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde transformation, it was realized in Erin Schriver on that fateful evening. Finally he’d had to force her from his office because she’d simply refused to leave. He’d done nothing inappropriate, made sure to keep his hands where they belonged, and spoke only as harshly as the situation warranted. Her advances had both angered and repulsed him. Erin was an attractive girl, but what she had done and said was so outlandish, so unseemly, so wrong, that it had turned his stomach.

Thinking back to that evening and that encounter brought bile to the back of Dan’s throat and put a squirming eel in his gut. He stumbled from the shower, pulling the curtain from its rod, slipped his way to the toilet, and—soaking wet and dripping water—retched violently. He needed to get out of the house, needed to get out of town, away from the campus and the accusations and the nightmare that had rammed its way into his life.

4

The Volvo handled the corners of the winding road without so much as a hiccup from the tires and took the steep inclines with the ease of a jet fighter climbing into the sky, eating airspace as if it were something to use up and throw away. It had been a good purchase even if they could no longer afford it. Dan gripped the steering wheel with sweaty hands and pressed the accelerator to the floor. The engine whined but did not seem to strain as it pulled the heavy vehicle up yet another hill.

As he navigated the twisting road, his mind wandered to Sue and the kids. They’d taken the train to New York City for the day to see the sights and do a little Christmas shopping. They’d left early in the morning and wouldn’t be back until well after dark. But she’d most likely receive some terrible news before then. He’d resisted the urge to leave a note, knowing it would reveal his true intent and foil any benefit for Sue and the boys. The less she knew the better.

The cracked-asphalt road wove through miles of pine forest as it climbed steadily upward toward the summit. The trees were tall and thick with heavy, drooping boughs that blocked most of the sunlight from reaching the ground. Like the hairy arms of giants from an alternate earth, they leaned over the road and reached for the car, wanting to snatch it from the roadway and cast it off the mountain.

Sue would be okay with the boys. She was a loving mother, a strong woman. She would make things right in their world and, in time, would learn to move on, maybe begin anew, move closer to her parents, find a job.

He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t second-guessed himself. He’d be a hypocrite if he said he didn’t care. But this was the only way, the only solution to a problem with no resolution, questions with no answers.

Eventually the trees thinned and parted their branches and more gray light filtered through to the ground below. The cloud-darkened sky began to show here and there, and the incline of the road leveled a little. A mile more and he’d be at the top. Dan’s heart began to bang. His pulse thumped in his neck and temples as if some little man were behind his skull knocking away with a tiny hammer. A knot formed in his throat making it impossible to swallow.

He told himself he didn’t have to do this—there had to be another way, but there wasn’t. For the second time in his life, God had abandoned him, left him backed into a corner with no hope of escaping the sorrow and shame that lurked there. This was the only way; he was convinced of it and wouldn’t change his mind. He had to stay the course, finish the job. It was only about Sue, Jack, and Murphy now. He pictured Sue’s face in his mind, her brown hair hanging loosely over her shoulders. She smiled at him and her eyes bent into crescents. He’d always loved her smile; it was the first thing about her that drew him. He then pictured Jack and Murphy, so close in age most people thought they were twins. Their little mop heads of dirty blond hair, their blue eyes, their freckles. They looked so much like he had at their age.

Again, he tried to tell himself there were other options. They could flee the country, go to a remote island, and spend the rest of their lives engaging in spectacular bird-watching. Only they couldn’t run forever. This was a stalker none of them would shake. No matter where they hid, Dan’s infamy would find them and he’d be dragged through the mud by the media and the court system. He’d be demonized, found guilty in the court of public opinion before the trial even started. He’d be the man who assaulted the senator’s daughter. It would get very ugly for all of them. If he thought any differently, he’d be a fool. They’d done it to others, to politicians, to CEOs, to athletes, and they’d do it to him. This was the only way, the only escape.

Finally the summit was upon him. The trees cleared and rocky outcroppings populated the road’s edge, forming a natural guardrail. Beyond the rocks, the terrain dropped off in a sharp decline that went on for a couple hundred feet. A light snow fell at this higher altitude and already covered the roadway with a dusting of what could have passed for confectioner’s sugar if it were a make-believe mountain. But this was no fairy-tale road and would lead to no castle with a good king who would save the day.

For the second time in one day, tears formed in Dan’s eyes, blurring the path before him. He dashed them away, but more came and spilled down his cheeks. He didn’t want to spend too much time up here lest he change his mind. This was what had to happen. He was doing the right thing.

To the steering wheel and the dashboard and the snow outside, he said, “I’m doing the right thing. I am.” And when no answer came, no words of confirmation or gentle commiserations, he said to the man in the mirror, “I am. For Sue and the boys. Because I love them too much.”

Then he was there, in the middle of the lane, the man in the black suit, the man with the pocket watch.

Before Dan had time to think or reason, he yanked the wheel to the left to avoid the idiot and swerved into the other lane. The tires slipped along the asphalt, spinning madly, until they finally found some purchase and gripped the road, pushing the heavy vehicle to the right.

Instinctively Dan hit the brakes and jerked the wheel to the left to avoid the embankment, but the tires lost traction again and spun on the freshly fallen snow. The front end pointed at the rocks along the side of the road. The car’s tires hit a small boulder and bumped the vehicle up and over it. The undercarriage scraped violently and groaned. The back wheels caught on the boulder, slowing the vehicle’s momentum but not enough to stop it completely.

Reflexively, Dan hit the gas, sending all four wheels spinning. The rear tires found what they were looking for, lifted the car up and over the rock and down the side of the mountain. For a second the vehicle remained on its wheels, aimed straight down the hill, picking up speed as it careened toward a stand of pines in the distance.

But Dan wasn’t done. His survival meter was maxed out and his will to live erased any other plans he had. Pressing the brake to the floor, he spun the steering wheel left, hoping to counteract the indefatigable power of gravity.

Instead, it caused the vehicle to pitch and roll. The world then went into chaos. Sounds of breaking glass and crunching metal surrounded Dan, pushed in on him, jerked him about. He was in the mouth of a tornado and the tempest was confined to the cabin of the Volvo.

At some point the seat belt snapped loose, and he was tossed around inside the cabin like a rock in a tumbler. This was the end of Dan Blakely; this was what it was like to die, and here, at the end of it all, he regretted what he’d done.

5

The outside world seemed a million miles away, maybe in another solar system, another galaxy. Or maybe it was a fantastical world, that mythological place where the roads were covered with sugar as fine as powder. In the distance a hawk screeched, a terrible sound that pierced the atmosphere like nails on a chalkboard and dashed any hope Dan had of being rescued by a hospitable troupe of dwarves. The car’s engine ticked arrhythmically, and a low irregular wheeze came from somewhere near. Dan Blakely slowly peeled open his eyes and stared at the washboard clouds and falling snow. The hawk circled above him, just a silhouette carving wide, knifelike arcs against the textured, scarred sky.

At first, disorientation clouded Dan’s mind. He didn’t know where he was or how he’d been transported there, but slowly and painfully, like the thawing of frostbitten fingers, reality materialized. He was on his back in the dirt; a rock dug into his right kidney.

Warm, thick liquid oozed into Dan’s eye and colored the world red. He lifted his right hand and wiped the blood away. A nasty gash had split the flesh above his eye. He tried moving his left arm, but it sent searing pain up into his shoulder, as if someone had shoved a white-hot poker along the shaft of the bone. The humerus was bent at a sickening angle just above the elbow, and his forearm and hand had already swelled to twice their normal size.

He tried to pull in a deep breath and discovered the wheezing he’d heard was the sound of his own lungs struggling to fill with air. Pain was there too, stabbing him in the sides with each inhalation. Broken ribs had most likely punctured a lung.

As the cobwebs in Dan’s head cleared, he noticed two things that sent his heart rate into a tailspin bound for doom and destruction. One, the twisted bulk of the Volvo sat squarely on his legs; in fact, the lower half of his body was not even visible. The windows were busted out, the dashboard cracked right in half. One of the tires still turned silently. And two, he had no voluntary control of nor feeling in either of his lower extremities. It was as if they’d been broken clean off and he was now only half the man he’d been at the start of the day. He was trapped and dying with the odor of fuel wafting into his nostrils. He tried to sit but couldn’t, tried to pull his legs but it was futile. There wasn’t a thing he could do but lie there and wait for his body to empty itself of blood or be burned to death in an angry inferno. If given a choice, bleeding to death seemed the less painful way to go.

Dan dropped his head to the hard ground and shut his eyes. Memories reeled through his mind like an old movie clip at double speed. The first time he kissed Sue. They were on the porch swing that hung from the old sycamore in her parents’ backyard. He hadn’t planned to kiss her—he wasn’t that smooth. It just happened. He could still feel her lips on his, taste the salt on them. Man, he loved kissing her, never grew tired of it. She was the first woman he loved … and the last.

An image of the boys was there too, standing by the bank of the creek that passed through the field behind their old home, fishing rods in hand. Murphy had caught his first fish there, a little sunny. His eyes got so wide, Dan thought they’d pop out of his head.

“Daddy, look, look, it’s huge!” Murphy held up the line with the sunny dangling on the end, no bigger than a dollar bill and twisting and flipping itself around.

He’d never see his boys again, never hold them or stroke their hair. Never play catch or chase. He’d never kiss Sue again, never feel her body pressed against his. Her laugh would never touch his ears and lighten his mood. Would she ever laugh again? For anyone?

What had he done?

Then he remembered the guy on the road, the man in the suit. Dan had swerved to avoid hitting him, slipped on the snow, careered off the embankment. How he’d gotten there so fast was a mystery but one Dan didn’t want to bother trying to solve right now. He had more important things to think about—like getting help. Like staying alive.

“Hey!” With his damaged lungs and ribs, Dan’s voice was little more than a strained whisper. There was no way anyone would hear him. His only hope was that the man would either call for help or descend the mountain himself and rescue him. But the incline was steep, and black suits and wing tips weren’t exactly anyone’s climbing clothes of choice.

Dan reached for a nearby stick and used it to strike the frame of the car. The sound was not much more than a dead, hollow thump, but it was something and hopefully would alert the man on the road that Dan was still alive, that he’d miraculously survived the wreck. Each effort sent shocks of pain up his right side all the way to his neck, but he had to keep going, keep hitting. Eventually, he stopped to listen and catch his breath, his lungs wheezing like air escaping a balloon.

“Hey! Help.”

The man in the suit would be crazy to not call for help. He had to have witnessed the wreck—he was right there, right in the middle of the road. Unless … No, the thought was ridiculous yet demanded to at least be fully formed and considered. Unless he was a hit man of some sort and had been planted there to cause this exact effect. Maybe the senator had even arranged things; maybe he wasn’t the straight shooter Dan had thought he was. Everyone had dirty secrets they kept tucked away in the closet of the soul. He certainly had the clout and money to pull something like this off.

The more he thought about it, the clearer the senator’s evil plot became. Of course, the man was at the campus watching Dan, stalking him, biding his time. When Dan stormed from Gary’s office and headed home, the hit man followed at a safe distance, then followed him to the mountain’s summit. No, he couldn’t have gotten ahead of him that way. He led him to the summit! Dan had always been a very conscientious driver and never failed to use his turn signals with plenty of warning for drivers behind him. The hit man had driven in front of him, watching his signals and making turns before Dan did. Now that he thought about it, he was sure the same black Lincoln was in front of him until … until Skyview Drive. He couldn’t be certain of it, of course, because his mind was on so many other things, but he was almost certain, at least 50 percent certain. Once on Skyview, there were no turnoffs, so the man simply drove ahead and waited at the summit for his mark to happen upon him. Whether he planned for the car to do a Bode Miller down the side of the mountain or not was beside the point. He had intended violence and mayhem; he had intended to get rid of Dan in a way that would never implicate Erin or the senator.

More blood leaked into Dan’s eye, and he dropped the stick to smear it away. He cursed himself now for attempting to draw the man’s attention, to make it known he had survived the wreck, and now hoped the hit man’s wing tips found no traction at all in the freshly fallen snow on the hill.

And that’s when he heard the whistling. Faint and distant but a familiar tune, familiar enough that he couldn’t place it, like running into someone you knew but whose name could not be recalled. Gradually, the whistling grew louder as its source approached. Now he could hear footsteps, slipping in the snow and dirt, knocking small stones loose. He couldn’t see up the hill because he was pinned on the downhill side of the car but it was definitely footsteps. Someone was coming. It had to be the man in the suit. The hit man come to finish the job.

Dan said nothing and momentarily thought of making like an opossum and playing dead. But if the hired gun was worth what the senator was paying him—which, no doubt, was a hefty sum—he would finish the job regardless of Dan’s present state. At the very least he would check for a pulse, and when he found one, he would then finish the job in a manner that appeared as though death had been brought on by the crash. He would not quicken death with a slug to the brain; it would be slow and painful for Dan.

The whistling increased until it sounded like it was just on the other side of the twisted pile of metal sitting atop Dan’s legs. The footsteps stopped and all grew silent except the persistent tune, so familiar yet just out of reach, like a nagging, unreachable itch.

Then it came to him. Of course.

The Rolling Stones.

“Time Is on My Side.”

6

The footsteps rounded the vehicle and finally brought the man into view. The man who killed for money and maimed for kicks. Still whistling, he casually approached Dan and squatted next to him. The look on his face was one of indifference, of carefree apathy. Not even a shadow of alarm, of pity or urgency. It was the look of a stone-hearted professional killer if Dan ever saw one, though he’d never seen one before.

The man withdrew from his pocket the watch he’d been looking at on campus. It was silver and ornately engraved with the number 7 on the back of it. Nonchalantly, as casually as if he’d just pulled up to the drive-through of his favorite fast-food joint, he replaced the watch and stopped whistling. His suit was well-pressed and classic in its cut. Expensive, maybe Italian. He wore a white shirt with a thin black tie. On his feet were the polished black wing tips Dan had envisioned, now wet and muddy from his trip down the hill.

The man surveyed the scene, the wreckage, Dan’s broken legs, his mangled arm, the gash above his eye. His face remained expressionless, as if seeing this type of carnage—violence, suffering, death—every day no longer fazed him even the slightest. “Didn’t quite turn out the way you thought it would, huh?”

“Who are you? Who hired you?” Dan knew who’d hired him, of course: one of the Schrivers. The man had no doubt been paid half up front, half upon confirmation of Dan’s most unfortunate and untimely death. He probably had the cash in his pocket now, burning a hole through the silk lining of his expensive suit.

The man pushed a lock of dark hair from his forehead. His eyes were a strikingly bright shade of blue set against skin as pale as milk. “Hired? I work for no one.”

“What do you mean?” Dan’s muscles spasmed, tightened his rib cage, and sent a shock of pain the whole way around his trunk.

“I mean I am employed by no one. I work alone.”

“I thought—”

“Forget what you thought. You’re dying, Dan. I think you know that. What you don’t know is that under all that metal on your legs, your femoral artery is severed and you’re bleeding out.”

But somehow Dan had known it. He could feel his life slipping from his body like air from a punctured tire. If his visitor was a hit man, he’d have to do nothing to dirty his manicured hands; he’d only need to stand by and wait for the last of Dan’s blood to flow from his body.

“You have less than ten minutes to live,” the man continued.

“Help me,” Dan said. “Please.” He thought that maybe he could appeal to the stranger’s sense of pity. Surely he had to have a soul, a heart. He was after all human, and unless he’d been raised by maniacal and abusive parents who had kept him locked in a room and let out only long enough to both verbally and physically beat him, he had experienced some happiness in his lifetime, had cared for something, had felt for someone. There had to be a shred of humanness left in him.

The man patted Dan’s shoulder. “You’re in luck, my friend.” He smiled wide and it was a genuine smile. “Because time is on my side.”

“What do you mean?” The man made no sense.

“I have a gift for you, Daniel Blakely, a second chance, if you wish. I’m going to give you the opportunity to live a little longer.” He looked at his fingers as if inspecting his carefully trimmed nails. “Funny how everything changes when your time is up, isn’t it? When you’re this close—” he held his thumb and index finger a half inch apart—“to the end and can feel the life slipping from your body, fading like vapor disappearing into the atmosphere. Things change, don’t they? It’s as if the veil has been thrown back and you can finally see clearly.”

“What are you getting at?”

“My gift, Danny. My gift. I’m getting to it. I’m going to extend your life seven more hours. You can relive any seven hours from your past or spend the next seven hours right here, waiting for help to come. But either way, at the end you’ll be forwarded through time—” he drew an arc in the air with his index finger—“to the moment of your death.”

Either the man was a hired gun and was just having some last-minute fun with his mark, the kind of amusement only heartless killers could enjoy, or he was plumb nuts and was no hit man at all but rather a narcissistic maniac who believed himself a god.

“You’re crazy.” Dan’s only other thought was that he was hallucinating, that the trauma his body had suffered, the stress it was under, had caused the synapses in his brain to misfire and concoct an image of this man, the man he’d seen on campus.

“Oh, I’m not crazy. Quite the opposite actually. I’m probably the most sane thing in your life right now.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Thomas Constant.” The man stuck out his hand, looked at Dan’s bloody and dirty hand, then withdrew the offer of geniality. “So what’ll it be?”

“What if I don’t want to play your game?”

Constant shrugged. “That’s your choice. But please know, this is no game. It’s quite serious actually. Of course, you can choose to do nothing and die. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

It was what Dan wanted, or at least what he thought he wanted. He had enough life insurance that Sue and the boys could stay in the house and get out of debt. She would be okay and wouldn’t have to worry about money for a very long time.

Constant slipped the watch from his pocket and glanced at it. “Time keeps ticking forward, Danny. It waits for no one. And your time is almost up. I need an answer.”

The way Dan saw it, he had two choices: lie there and die a slow, lonely death or take this Constant fellow up on his ridiculous offer. He was now convinced Thomas Constant was nothing more than a raving lunatic, but he had nothing to lose by playing along.

A bolt of pain shot up Dan’s back and landed in his skull. A pounding headache set in, throbbing out a steady rhythm like a primal war drum calling the demons of death. Like a ceiling breaking free from its support beams, the sky suddenly grew darker and loomed closer. Snow landed lightly on Dan’s face; he licked the wetness from his lips. He was so thirsty. The sound of his own breath, that raspy, labored breathing, faded to a whisper.

The time was upon him. In desperation he said, “Fine. Okay. Let me … I want to start this day again. If I can make it turn out better a second time around …”

Constant stood and looked down on Dan. Against the gray-and-white backdrop his face all but disappeared. Only his black suit and those radiant blue eyes were visible. “Very well. Interesting choice. But you’ll only have seven hours. Remember that. Time is a respecter of no one. Seven hours.” And with that, he turned and walked away, disappearing behind the twisted remains of the Volvo.

Dan tried to prop himself on his one good elbow, but the pain coursing through his body was too crippling. A surge of panic ran through his nerves. He didn’t want to die, not like this, not alone. “Hey, wait. Don’t leave me like this.”

But Constant was gone, out of view, humming that tune again as it grew more and more distant.

Finally Dan relaxed and stared up into the falling snow. It had picked up some and now appeared to swirl and throb in time with the beating in his head. Slowly, darkness pushed back the snow, the steely sky, and encroached upon him, surrounded him. He heard nothing, felt nothing. He was dying. With his final breaths he did something he hadn’t done in years, since the last time God had left him alone with his hopelessness; he whispered a prayer. It was really just a plea: “God, help me. Take care of Sue and Jack and Murphy.” He wanted to say their names aloud one more time.

His life was almost gone. Constant was a liar, a lunatic, like he thought.

Then, for Dan Blakely, everything went to black.

7

The alarm sounded the same time it did every morning, pulling Dan Blakely from London’s nineteenth century. The steady beeping gradually grew louder until he reached over and, groping about like a man in pitch-blackness looking for his lost flashlight, found the Off button.

7 a.m.

Slowly, as if to do it too quickly would land him back on the mountainside pinned beneath a hulk of mangled metal, Dan opened his eyes and oriented himself. The ceiling fan above the bed turned slowly, not making even a whisper of sound. He was in his room, safely tucked into his bed, and it was seven in the morning. The blinds were turned down but still some murky light slipped through the slats. Beside him, the bed was empty, the indentation of Sue’s head still on her pillow. The house was quiet. One by one he moved his limbs—arms first, working from the fingers to the wrists, then elbows and shoulders; then he moved to his hips, knees, ankles. He drew in a deep breath, filling his lungs with the warm air of the bedroom. No pain. Everything seemed to be working properly.

Thinking, hoping he had dreamed the whole thing, from Erin’s accusation and the meeting with Gary to the trip up Bender’s Mountain and the odd interaction with Thomas Constant, Dan smiled. Constant must have been merely a figment of his imagination, a dream character pieced together by a montage of memories and images tucked away in the recesses of Dan’s mind. He rubbed his face, wiped the sleep from his eyes. It had to have been a dream. Constant’s crazy proposition went against everything true and real, as irrational as a slick illusionist claiming the ability to walk on water. No one could turn back the clock.

Dan pushed away the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. The dream had been so real, though—the panic, the pain, the encounter with Constant. He’d never had a dream so vivid and detailed before. He remembered everything, down to the intense thirst and the snowflakes landing on his lips, the texture of the ground beneath him, the striations of varying shades of blue in Constant’s eyes. It was incredible, unbelievable. If it wasn’t so absurd, he’d have to reconsider whether it was a dream at all.

And yet, despite his attempts to convince himself that what he’d seen and heard and felt (oh, man, what he’d felt—the pain and fear), Dan couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by a notion of urgency. Like a sixth sense warning him of some impending danger, his pulse rate rose, muscles tensed. He could practically feel the steady surge of adrenaline infusing his blood. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end and walked spidery legs down his spine.

But Dan shook the sudden involuntary reaction off as nothing more than the remnants of an overly detailed dream. His mind was still in some kind of nebulous state, unable to differentiate between reality and fantasy.

He stood, pulled the covers back up to the pillows, and padded into the bathroom, where he shaved and showered. The hot water failed to relax him. His state of heightened awareness persisted. He had the feeling something grave was going to happen, something of such magnitude that it would forever change the way he looked at the world.

Dan shut off the water and stood in the shower, naked and cold. The vent fan hummed quietly, sucking the moisture and warm air from the small room. The feeling of urgency that had gripped him while he sat on the bed, then stood under the stream of hot water, had only elevated. He had a powerful sense that he needed to do something and do it quickly. Resting his forehead against the tiled wall, he drew in a series of deep breaths, trying to calm himself, settle his blood pressure, relax his muscles. But it was a futile attempt and served only to increase his tension and restlessness.

When the steam had cleared from the bathroom mirror, Dan stepped out of the shower and stared at himself, studied his face. He had his father’s sharp nose and smallish chin; his mother’s heavy eyelids and broad forehead. His was not the face of someone afflicted with insanity, but one never knew, did they? If he was aware of his own insanity, then he couldn’t really be insane. Crazy people didn’t know they were crazy. They saw themselves as perfectly balanced, having all their marbles in the right place.

Maybe the stress of his job and the encounter with Erin had triggered some psychosis, some deep-seated paranoia that had long ago planted itself in his psyche when his father had been taken from them, so suddenly and unexpectedly that Dan never had the chance to say good-bye, to tell his dad he was loved, appreciated. That had been a lot for a twelve-year-old to absorb and deal with and he wasn’t sure the process had ever completed itself. Maybe now it was rearing its head as this irrational fear.

With the towel wrapped around his waist, Dan walked back into the bedroom, opened the closet, and pulled out a solid gray button-down shirt and a pair of khaki slacks. He didn’t know how long he’d stood in the bathroom, gazing at his face in the mirror, how long he’d studied the lines, the creases, the blemishes, trying to find some assurance that he was indeed still holding a full deck of cards. Turning, he glanced at the clock.

His pants slipped from his hand and dropped to the floor. It read 6:37. He was sure he’d set the alarm for seven. It was the same every morning and he never changed it, not even on weekends. Dan was not only low maintenance, but he was a creature of habit. Sue might have changed it to six, but that meant he’d just spent thirty-seven minutes in the bathroom. He doubted that.

He stood there dumbly watching the clock as if expecting it to suddenly speak and explain itself and its unexpected reading. The minute digit changed but did not advance to thirty-eight. Rather, the clock now read 6:36.

It was counting backward.

A chill blew up Dan’s back, over his shoulders, and down his arms. He crossed the room to the bedside table and picked up his watch. It too showed the unexplainable time.

Dan sat on the bed and watched the clock, hoping beyond hope that what he’d seen had a simple explanation, maybe a brain blink, his mind tricking his eyes. He waited, his palms going wet with sweat and his breath shallow and quick. A minute passed and the clock changed again. 6:35.

Thomas Constant’s voice was in Dan’s head then: “Very well … but you’ll only have seven hours. Remember that. Time is a respecter of no one. Seven hours.”

The clock was ticking away his seven hours. Yesterday, or today, or whenever it was had been no dream at all. It was real. Constant was real, and so was his silver, ornate pocket watch with the number 7 engraved on the back.

Constant said Dan would be given only seven hours and then Death would come calling. His time would be up. Now he only had six and half left.

Six and half hours until he died.

8

Dan Blakely sat on the edge of his bed in his empty bedroom, head in his hands, feeling like he’d just run a mile at top speed. Only this had been no run for pure enjoyment and not even for victory and bragging rights; it had been a run of urgency, a run not to any place special but from someone or something. Cold sweat dotted his forehead, his mouth was dry, and his pulse tapped a staccato rhythm in his ears. This couldn’t be happening. It was impossible, ridiculous, totally preposterous … and yet, there it was—the clock didn’t lie. The remaining minutes and hours of his life were ticking away, fading into eternity past like ebb tide water sifting through sand, receding into the vast ocean.

He’d briefly entertained the idea that all this might be one complex, hilarious joke but dismissed it as unfeasible. While there might be a way to make a digital clock count backward, he expected neither Jack nor Murphy was aware of it, nor Sue. And no one he knew—not family, no colleague, not the pastor—possessed the power to plant dreams in someone’s head. Sue could be persuasive when she was determined to win an argument or steer Dan to see things her way but not that persuasive. She did not possess the power of mind manipulation and control.

Just to be sure he was still planted in reality and hadn’t engaged in a brief layover in the land of Loco, Dan picked up the phone and dialed the number for his school voice mail account. It rang once before a woman’s automated voice asked for his ID. Though he hadn’t the faintest idea whose voice was used for the voice mail options, he’d named her Gretchen.

“Good morning, Gretchen,” he said before punching in the numbers. She did not reciprocate his well-wishing but instead asked for his password. His thumb shook.

“I’m sorry,” Gretchen said, “the number you entered is invalid. Please enter your password again.”

“Oh, Gretchen, c’mon. We do this every morning.” He tried again.

Two rings signaled he’d entered the correct numbers. Gretchen notified him of one waiting message.

Gary’s voice came on: “Dan, I need to see you in my office first thing in the morning. It’s urgent.” The pause was there again, the same pause Dan had heard before. It was the same message. “As soon as you get in, okay?”

Without wasting another moment, another minute of his life, another backward tick of the clock, Dan quickly dressed and headed downstairs. In the kitchen, the sticky note from Sue was there. I love you, babe. You’re the best (husband, dad—you know!) Love, Sue. Like before, he folded it in half and stuffed it into his shirt pocket, but this time he skipped the bagel and coffee. Grabbing the car keys off the hook above the counter, he headed for the garage. When he pushed through the door from kitchen to garage, he half expected to find a twisted ball of mashed metal, broken plastic, and shattered glass, but the Volvo was in one piece, shiny from the washing he’d given it the other day, sitting quietly as if it had never known the violence inflicted upon it from the roll down the mountainside. Of course, it had never known that violence. As far as reality was concerned—this reality—it had never happened.

The vehicle started without hesitation as the garage door lifted. Dan sat behind the wheel, gripping it with both hands, and settled his breathing. He had to think. Sue was in New York with the boys. New York was almost two hours away. He hit the wheel and cursed, two activities he rarely engaged in. If he had believed the deal Constant offered was for real, he could have replayed the confrontation with Erin, handled it totally differently, then gone home and immediately told Sue what had happened, somehow provided an alibi for himself. Or at the very least, he could have chosen to go back to last night so he could see Sue and the boys and spend the whole evening with them. He could have played Uno and Skip-Bo with the boys, could have stayed up late with Sue, until his final second ticked away. But pinned beneath the car, he had been under such stress, his body had gone through so much trauma, so much pain, and Constant’s proposition had seemed so absurd … it was so absurd. Dan had no idea his strange visitor could really control time. Now here he was, wanting to see his family one last time, and he would have to waste two hours of his final moments sitting in a car.

Unless … He fished for his cell phone. Sue could meet him halfway, cut the driving time in half, and he’d have an extra hour to spend with his family. He quickly dialed her number and waited. It went right to voice mail. She was forever forgetting to recharge the battery. He didn’t leave a message; she wouldn’t get it until he was long gone anyway. He’d just have to drive there. With rush hour nearly passed, the roads would be mostly clear and he could make good time. The Volvo had an engine full of horses and would get him to New York quickly.

First there was something he had to do, business he had to take care of. He hated to because of the time it would take, but for Sue and the boys’ sake, for their ongoing peace of mind, for their future without him, he had to. If he was going to leave this earth, he didn’t want them having to deal with the fallout of the whole Erin thing. It was too late to prevent her accusations, but there still might be a way to make it right.

Dan pressed the accelerator, and the tires chirped on the concrete as the vehicle left the garage. The campus was only a couple short minutes away by car, but weaving through the curvy roads, slowing for students in crosswalks, and stopping at intersections all ate up precious time. Finally Dan stopped in front of Rebecca Residence, a large two-story dormitory named after Daniel Boone’s wife. The residence was fairly new, having been built just a few years before Dan joined the faculty. It had been carefully designed to blend in with the rest of the centuries-old architecture of the college. The builder had done a good job, too. To the untrained eye, it appeared to have been sitting in its same location for over two hundred years.

He glanced at his watch—6:03. 7:57 a.m. Erin should be up and getting ready for her first class, and if she wasn’t, he’d do the job. He needed to talk some sense into her, convince her to recant the ridiculous accusations she’d leveled against him. She had to understand the damage they would do, the damage they’d already done.

Stepping out of the vehicle, Dan drew in a deep breath. The air felt the same as it had before—cold and moist. Thousands of feet above, snow pushed on the clouds, weighed them down, and threatened to break loose.

Feeling a lot like Lucy Pevensie about to enter that magical wardrobe for the first time, he crossed the sidewalk and climbed the steps to the dormitory, not knowing what to expect but hoping Erin would listen to reason. He wouldn’t leave until she heard what he had to say.

But he had to make it quick.

Time was not on his side.

9

A picture of Lady Gaga, torn from a magazine, was taped to the door of room 216. Beside it hung a wooden Santa Claus with a string attached to a small brass bell. When the string was pulled, Santa danced a festive jig and rang his bell. Written on the jolly elf’s stomach were the words “Ring for Service.”

Dan made a fist and knocked on the door.

A girl’s voice came from inside the room. “Door’s open.”

Dan Blakely was not confrontational by nature. Rather, he preferred to keep the peace whenever possible. Only when poked and prodded, when pushed to the point of anger and then some, would he confront head-on. Normally he opted to sidestep opposition and find an alternative route.

This was not one of those times. With sweaty hands and his heart in his throat, he turned the knob and pushed open the door. From the doorway, Dan could see only half of the dimly lit room, one bed, and a cluttered desk. The walls were nearly covered with posters of music and movie stars and half-dressed men. Warm air wafted out, carrying a flowery aroma, but neither Erin nor her roommate, Rachel Fissel, were in view.

Dan stood at the threshold and forced himself to swallow. “Hello?”

“Yeah, come on—” Rachel stepped out from around the corner, looked at Dan, and said, “Oh.” She glanced toward the bathroom. “Erin, it’s, uh, for you.”

Erin came out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around her head. She wore tight jeans and a thick wool sweater. “What … ?” When she saw Dan, her eyes widened and the color drained from her face. A faded, blue-green bruise darkened her right eye and another shadowed the corner of her mouth.

Composing herself as one might when pleading the Fifth Amendment at the advice of her attorney, she clamped her lips tight and set her jaw.

“We need to talk, Erin.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you.” She tried to shut the door on him, but he held it open with his hand.

“No,” Dan said, panic now climbing into his chest. “You need to listen to me. Please, you can’t do this.”

“I have nothing to say to you.” She tried again to shut the door, but this time he stepped forward and blocked it with his foot.

“Get out,” she hollered. Rachel backed up a few steps. In the hallway a couple students stopped to gawk, mumbled among themselves, then kept moving.

Dan shoved his way into the room. “Erin, listen—”

“Call the cops, Rachel.” She kept her eyes on Dan as she spoke.

To Rachel, Dan said, “No. Don’t do it. I’m not here for trouble. Just to talk.”

He raised both hands, palms out, and said to Erin, “Listen to me. Think about what you’re doing.” He spoke fast, running his words together. He didn’t have much time and had to say what he’d come to say before this unwanted confrontation attracted too much attention. “Think about how it affects everyone. My wife, my two little boys, Jack and Murphy—you’ve met them.” Dan had brought the boys to class a couple times and Erin in particular had shown them special attention.

Erin crossed her arms and dropped her eyes to the floor.

Dan lowered his voice. “Please, Erin. You have to take it back. Come clean. Do the right thing here. You have no idea the damage you’re causing.”

She lifted her head and glared at him. “The damage I’m causing? What about the damage you’ve caused already?”

He knew she was referring to his decision to give her a failing grade for the semester. It was school policy for anyone caught cheating, written in stone, had been for nearly two centuries. Daniel Boone was no cheater and it would not be tolerated in his namesake school. “You cheated, Erin. You know you did. And you know the policy. You sign off on it at the beginning of every year. This is bigger than just you. Take responsibility for your actions. Think of someone beside yourself.”

“I want you out of my room or I’ll call the police myself.”

More students had gathered in the hallway. Their murmuring and whispering grew louder as if they anticipated a WWE event to spontaneously break out. Dan had to get out of there soon. He knew nothing of piledrivers and tomahawk chops.

He pointed at the bruises on Erin’s face. “Who did this to you?”

She raised her voice. “Like you don’t know.”

“You know I didn’t do it. You know it, Erin.”

Dan looked around the room, found a framed photo of Erin with Justin Rodgers, a linebacker on the school’s football team. Dan had never had him in any classes but had seen him around campus. Big guy, heavy on muscle, scarce on personality. A bulldozer with a brain. He motioned toward the picture. “Did he do it? Did Rodgers hit you?”

Dan had always been gifted in reading people, in noticing the slightest changes in their expressions, the shadows in their eyes, the tonal adjustments in their voice. He didn’t miss the subtle shift of Erin’s eyes.

“Get out of my room.” Her face reddened and tears built in her eyes. She reached for her cell phone on the dresser and held it up as if it were a hand grenade. “Get out!”

Dan was about to leave when he heard a commotion in the hallway. Someone said Justin’s name. The small gathering of students shifted and parted as if allowing the world champion wrestler to make his way to the ring. Dan was in no mood for taunting and trash-talking.

Justin appeared in the doorway, his shoulders almost touching each jamb. He stood well over six feet tall and was as thick and muscled as a side of beef. Looking from Erin to Dan and back to Erin, he furrowed his brow, stuck out his chest, and said, “What’s goin’ on?”

Erin didn’t run to him, nor did she cry out for help.

Despite his aversion to confrontation and against his better judgment, Dan pointed at Erin’s face and said to Justin, “Did you do this to her? Did you hit her?”

Justin glanced at Erin, then stared double daggers at Dan. In his eyes were malice and a wild lust for violence. He was a bull eyeing the matador, snorting and chuffing and pawing at the ground. “What is this?” He took two steps forward and grabbed a handful of Dan’s shirt, yanked him close.

Dan had never been in a fight before, had never even come close to that kind of physical confrontation. He was as nonviolent as a nonpacifist could be. But when Justin snatched at his shirt and Dan saw the flames of cruelty in the brute’s eyes, something broke loose. Adrenaline flooded into his bloodstream.

Before Justin could act on the clear threat he’d issued, Dan decided to get in a punch of his own, a blow that hit Justin square in the abdomen. The big guy exhaled loudly, a gust of wind that wafted over Dan’s face, and loosened his grip. Dan pulled away and yielded to the primal urges that put his previous inhibitions on hold. He charged Justin headfirst and shoved him out into the hallway. Bodies scattered; a girl screamed. Someone shouted, “That’s Dr. Blakely!”

Justin slammed into the wall and grunted. Dan tried to pull away, but the beast had ahold of his shirt and yanked him forward, driving a knee into his chest. Air was forced from Dan’s lungs like a bellows. Stumbling back, he tried to steady his footing, but the floor seemed to undulate under him, churning and rolling like an angry sea.

Justin was quick for his size, and before Dan was able to orient himself, he came under an explosion of fists, pummeling his head, back, ribs. He was shoved against the wall and pinned there. Another blow landed in his abdomen, robbing him of breath and doubling him over. He dropped to his knees. Students hollered, screamed; some laughed. Watching a professor get the stuffing knocked out of him was unexpected entertainment before their first classes of the day.

With one quick motion, Dan found strength buried deep within the sinews of his aching muscles and took a powerful, compact swing at Justin’s groin. His fist landed squarely and hit its mark. Justin moaned and stumbled back, taking short, choppy steps. He bent at the waist and grabbed at his crotch with both hands.

Dizzy from the barrage of punches he’d suffered, Dan climbed to his feet and charged the wounded monster. With both legs, he launched himself at Justin. One hand landed on the big man’s chest, the other on his face. Following Justin’s backward momentum, Dan drove him into the far wall, bringing his head up and back and slamming it into the cinder block. The back of Justin’s skull impacted the wall with a sickening thud. His eyes rolled back and his thick legs buckled like broken sticks. He went to his knees and shook his head, grimacing.

Dan cocked his arm and landed a punch to the side of Justin’s face. The tough guy went down hard, crumpling to the floor like he was made of paper.

The hallway fell quiet. Dan, heaving, pulling air into his lungs in rapid bursts, stood erect and looked around. At least twenty students were there, ogling him, mouths agape, eyes wide. Some of them were his students. He lifted his hand and wiped it across his eyebrow. It came away red. He was bleeding. He glanced at his watch—5:37. He’d wasted too much time in there.

Justin lay on his side on the floor, motionless, a small pool of blood soaking into the carpet behind his head. Erin stood in the doorway of her room, both hands to her mouth, tears wetting her cheeks. She looked at Dan, then at Justin, then back at Dan. There was fear in her eyes but also relief.

Nausea bit into Dan’s stomach and twisted it like a dishrag.

He pointed at Justin on the floor. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore, Erin. Please, do what’s right. For me and my family. For you.”

Craving space and fresh air, Dan pushed through the crowd. Behind him, he thought he heard a familiar voice say, “Time’s ticking.” But when he turned, he found no black-suited visitor dangling a silver pocket watch, only a gaggle of students looking dumbly at him with wide eyes and open mouths.

Outside, the sky promised snow. Pain joined the nausea in his ribs, his back, his head. He had to get out of there before the police came. He’d done nothing wrong; it was self-defense. There were plenty of witnesses to confirm that. But he didn’t have time for questions and reports. He didn’t have time for anything.

He ran for the car and got in, started the engine, and gripped the wheel with clammy palms. The knuckles of his right hand were red and swollen. He shifted into drive and stepped on the accelerator. The vehicle lurched forward.

Tears came then, flooding Dan’s eyes and blurring the campus roads. The confrontation, first with Erin, then with Justin, had been too much for him. He needed to settle himself, regroup, clean up. But he couldn’t go home. That would be the first place anyone looking for him would go. He had to head for New York and would stop at a gas station along the way, well out of town and somewhere off the highway.

10

Twenty miles down the road, Dan pulled into a Shop ’n’ Gas, up to a pump, and shut off the car’s engine. A light snow fell, swirling on the cracked asphalt and dotting the windshield with pinpoints of water.

He sat behind the wheel like a kid who’d just completed his first roller coaster and hated every second of it, swearing he’d never get on one again. But somehow he knew this ride wasn’t over yet. He could feel it—something was creeping up on him, stalking him, something relentless and unyielding. And it was gaining ground quickly.

His hands still trembled and the gash above his eye had taken to aching. His head throbbed like it had a heartbeat of its own. As he stepped out of the car, a gust of arctic air swept the breath from his lungs. The temperature had dropped dramatically in the past half hour. A storm was brewing, inching closer with each beat of his heart.

Dan pushed his card into the reader and punched the right numbers. He half expected the digital display to taunt him by revealing his remaining time but it did nothing. Shivering against the cold, he turned and searched the grimy window of the convenience store for the cashier. The inside switch needed to be flipped to reset the numbers. A young man came into view, hurried behind the counter, and gave him a thumbs-up. The display showed a line of zeroes.

Dan unscrewed the fuel cap and placed the nozzle into the receptacle. Small flakes of snow descended from their birthplace above and whipped around him, stinging his face and hands.

The station was on a mostly uninhabited stretch of local highway that saw little traffic during working hours. No homes stood nearby, no schools, no shopping centers. A salvage yard sat about two hundred yards away; a high, piecemeal fence lined its perimeter. Farther down the road, a half mile or so, a couple other deteriorating buildings lined the road: a machine shop and a warehouse outlet that sold freight damaged in transit.

The nozzle clicked off and he replaced it on the pump. He’d filled the tank out of habit, but if Constant was correct, Dan wouldn’t be driving the vehicle home again and would only need half as much gas as he’d purchased.

Inside, the store was filled with warm, humid air and smelled of mildew and cheap plastic.

The cashier, a twentysomething with shoulder-length hair and a spotty goatee, nodded at Dan. “Sorry ’bout that, man. I was stocking the shelves when you pulled up.”

Waving him off, Dan headed for the wall of refrigerators in the back of the store. He needed something to drink and some food. After getting a soda and two packets of snack cakes, he grabbed a bottle of aspirin and a box of bandages and headed to the front counter.

The cashier scanned the items, then eyed Dan suspiciously. “Dude, you okay?”

Dan nodded and reached for his wallet. “Yeah, I’m fine. How much?”

“How much?”

“For the stuff.”

“Oh, uh, $12.52.”

He handed his card to the cashier, who studied the front, turned it over, and checked the back.

“’Cause that cut over your eye, man, that don’t look too good.” He ran the card through the machine and flipped hair out of his face while he waited.

Dan didn’t respond. He wanted to leave as little an impression on the kid as possible, be forgettable, uninteresting. At the end of the day he wanted to be just another customer in a long line of them, a faceless man purchasing gas and a few items.

The cashier handed him his card and receipt. “You get in some kind of accident or something?”

“Some kind. Where’s the restroom?”

“Somebody else do that?” He glanced out the window and scanned the station’s lot. “’Cause I got a phone here if you need to call the cops or something. Got a gun too. The manager keeps it behind the counter. You know, just in case.”

Dan forced a polite smile. “I’m fine. Where’s the restroom?”

The kid paused. Clearly Dan’s behavior had aroused suspicion. So much for remaining forgettable. After sighing loudly as if disappointed that he would not be a part of any perilous chase or heroic rescue, the cashier reached for a key and handed it to Dan. “Around the side of the building. Just remember to bring it back. It’s the only one we got right now. The other got lost when …”

But Dan had already grabbed his bag from the counter and was heading for the bathroom. Outside, the snow had picked up some and blanketed the parking lot and road with a thin layer of white that moved in an almost-hypnotic fashion as it swirled to the rhythm of the wind.

The bathroom was nothing more than Dan expected: a tiny room with an unflushed toilet, a stained sink, faded mirror, and an old fluorescent bulb that cast a cold, dirty light. He pulled a paper towel from the dispenser, wet it, and wiped the dirt from the mirror. His face looked bad. Dark, dried blood crusted the cut above his eye. Some of it smeared across his forehead. A deep abrasion discolored his swollen cheekbone. His left ear was boxed and thick; his cheeks appeared hollowed, and his jawline more pronounced. This was not the same Dan Blakely who had looked back at him from the mirror in the bathroom off his bedroom just a short while ago. This was a man running from Death but apparently not running fast enough.

He had the strange feeling again that he was being followed, pursued. That some gruesome thing was hot on his tail and gaining quickly. Above the sink was a vent blowing warm air into the small room. An easy entrance point for any airborne instrument of Death. Dan tore several long sections from the roll of toilet paper and quickly stuffed them between the wide slats of the vent.

When he finished, he stood back and studied his work, then quickly removed all the paper and tossed it into the toilet. That was something a crazy person would do, and he wasn’t crazy. He began to shake and quiver and felt the urge to scream. Panic clutched at his chest and throat and made breathing a chore. Gripping the edge of the sink, Dan said aloud, “Pull yourself together.”

Tearing off another paper towel, he ran it under the cold water, then dabbed at his eye. The clot softened and wiped away. He then cleaned the dried blood from his forehead and the abrasion on his cheek. The water stung and made him wince. But his head hurt worst, as though someone had forced it into a vise and tightened until his skull cracked. Fishing two aspirin from the bottle, he popped them into his mouth, cupped his hands under the water, and washed the pills down. Lastly, he applied two bandages to the cut above his eye.

Dan stared at himself again in the mirror. His education had taught him the difference between possibility and probability. Just because something was possible didn’t mean it was probable. He concluded that it was entirely possible that all of this was a dream, that he was still pinned beneath the Volvo on the side of Bender’s Mountain, unconscious, his life slowly draining from him, almost gone now. That everything he’d experienced since then—Thomas Constant, the clocks, the confrontation with Erin and Justin, even the cashier and this bathroom—were all part of a coma-induced dream, the final synaptic firings of a brain about to shut down for good.

It was possible but not probable.

He’d been beaten and cut, felt the snow on his hands and face, the wind in his lungs. It was all too detailed, too vivid, to be a dream.

But none of that mattered anyway. What mattered was that he’d been given another chance to see Sue and the boys, to hug them and tell them he loved them, to say good-bye. He didn’t care if was a dream or not. He didn’t give a hoot about probability versus possibility.

After relieving himself and washing his hands, he left the bathroom.

The snow fell steadily now and blew sideways. Sticking close to the building for protection from the storm, Dan made his way back to the front door and inside the small store. He slid the keys across the counter to the cashier.

The kid caught them easily. “Hey, thanks, man,” he said. “Hey, listen, I didn’t mean to get all personal in your business before. I just couldn’t help but see—”

As the kid talked, Dan glanced outside at the Volvo and thought he saw someone crouched on the other side of it, near the front tire.

“—and thought maybe you needed—”

“Thanks,” Dan said as he left the counter.

Pushing through the door and into the cold, he saw a man move from the front tire to the rear of the vehicle. There was no mistaking the black suit.

“Hey!” He stepped off the curb and onto the parking lot, slipped on some loose snow, and almost went down. Regaining his balance, Dan hurried to the car and rounded the rear bumper. But no one was there. He checked both tires but found no sign of tampering.

“Everything okay?” It was the kid, standing at the door, wind whipping his hair across his face.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Dan checked the area again and rubbed his head. He knew he saw someone. He wasn’t going crazy.

After inspecting the tires one more time, he climbed into the car and started the engine. At once, the hair on the back of his neck bristled; he had the sudden feeling that something had followed him into the vehicle. He checked the rearview mirror, but there was no one, only the empty backseats and the snow-covered windows.

11

Dan had the Volvo back on the road and pointed northwest in a matter of seconds. Gusts of wind sliced across the roadway but did not find a chink in the vehicle’s exterior. The clock on the dash read 4:56. It, too, was counting down, like a time bomb clicking off the minutes until the final explosion, that fireworks display that would signal the end of Dan Blakely’s life.

If he wanted any kind of quality time with his family before the big finale, Dan needed to make good time getting to New York. And as if the forces of nature knew that and were determined to deter him, to slow his progress, to thwart his plans, the snow increased both in the size of the flakes and the intensity with which they fell. Visibility was cut in half. Drifts started to form. Fortunately the car was equipped with four-wheel drive and brand-new tires that found traction in spite of the deteriorating conditions.

A few miles up the road, though, visibility worsened further and Dan had to slow to thirty miles an hour.

He hit the steering wheel and grunted. At this speed it would take him three hours to get to New York. He cursed himself again for telling Constant to take him back to the morning. He’d been a fool and chosen the wrong time, and now he was bogged down in the middle of a snowstorm a hundred miles from Sue and the boys.

Outside, the snow continued to fall, whiting out the roadway and anything beyond the windshield. The world had been whitewashed and blown clean. Dan tuned the radio to the local AM channel. A meteorologist went on about the misplaced snowstorm. Apparently, it was supposed to track farther north into upstate New York, across into Vermont and New Hampshire, then on into Maine. Northern Pennsylvania was only to get a dusting from the fast-moving front. In two to three hours it would all be over.

But Dan didn’t have two or three hours. He needed to make time now. He should be traveling at twice his current speed.

Slowly he pressed the accelerator. The car handled the increase in speed easily, taking turns without even the slightest slippage. Dan continued to accelerate, testing the responsiveness of the vehicle and traction of the tires. Thirty-five. Forty. Wind blew snowflakes directly at the windshield as if it were under heavy fire from an army of snow devils. A sharp right turn approached. Dan eased on the brake and turned the wheel hard. The tires slipped but quickly regained traction and pushed forward.

Again, he eased the accelerator toward the floor. The engine responded; tires turned faster. Forty-five. Fifty. The radio went back to its regular programming, some morning call-in jock going on about the president’s new border defense bill. Dan turned it off. He hated that stuff and couldn’t have cared less about whether or not to build a fence between Texas and Mexico. Anyone with murder in their belly would find a way to fulfill its hunger; no fence would stop them.

Another turn, this one to the left, took Dan by surprise. He braked hard and jerked the wheel. The car hit a snowdrift, the rear wheels lost traction, and it spun counterclockwise a complete 180-degree rotation. Wind swept by on the other side of the glass and threw snow at the window in cloudy gusts. The tires lost all traction and the vehicle slipped off the road and down an embankment. Dan stood on the brake, but thirty-seven hundred pounds wouldn’t stop without friction. Newton’s observation of bodies in motion was flawless. The weight of the vehicle pulled it nose-first down the hill until it slammed into a tree. With a burst, the air bag deployed, then deflated. The car had come to a stop, tipped at a sharp angle, nose down, front fender bent around the trunk of a young pine.

Dan’s heart beat like a rabbit running for its life, and he’d broken out in a cold sweat. He gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles, frozen to his seat. The engine now hummed with a rhythmic chirp every other beat, but all the readouts on the dash were normal. Whatever damage the Volvo had suffered was minor and mostly external, which meant it was still drivable and could possibly get Dan out of this mess.

He shifted into reverse and stepped on the gas. The wheels spun with a high-pitched whine and rocked the vehicle side to side, but it got nowhere. Dan unhooked his seat belt and stepped out into the cold and snow and wind. The swirling flakes nearly blinded him. Holding on to the vehicle’s panels, he climbed through the two-inch deep snow to the back of the car and saw that the roadway was only another five feet beyond it. And the embankment wasn’t as steep as he’d thought. He still had a chance.

Entering the vehicle again, he shifted into reverse and stepped on the gas pedal, pumping it to give the tires a chance to either grab fresh snow or work their way down to the grass beneath it. The tires whined and the car pistoned back and forth as if it were tethered to a spring.

Eventually the tires gained some traction and the vehicle climbed the bank, swerving as the tread dug into the wet grass beneath the snow. But just before the rear tires crested the hill, the tail end slipped sideways, pushing the tires into fresh snow. They lost their grip and drifted to the right. Dan hit the brake but it did no good. Gravity had taken over. The corner of the front bumper bounced off the pine, pushing the car farther to the right.

Clutching the steering wheel like it was a serpent that would unwind itself and bite him, Dan leaned on the brake pedal and grunted. But the momentum of the vehicle pulled it more to the right and down the hill. Arms rigid, Dan braced himself against the back of the seat. Snow beat at the vehicle’s windows like a white angel of death demanding entrance. But his time wasn’t up yet. He’d been promised seven hours.

The car accelerated down the hill and Dan continued mashing the brake pedal to the floorboard, hoping in a fit of panic that somehow, someway, the tires would find purchase in the loose snow.

The world came to a jarring stop with a terrible crunch of metal and breaking glass. Dan’s arms buckled at the elbows, and he hit the steering wheel with enough force that for an instant everything went bright white—the black dash and control panel, the clock and radio and disc player, the interior cloth and molded plastic all disappeared. Then an inky blackness surrounded and finally overcame him.

12

The alarm sounded the same time it did every morning, pulling Dan Blakely from his dream. Slowly he lifted his head and immediately groaned. It hadn’t been a dream. He wasn’t in his bedroom, and the sound he heard was not the alarm clock obnoxiously signaling 7 a.m. His head throbbed and jaw ached. He was in his car, pointed downhill. The engine had cut out but the radio had somehow been turned on and retuned and now played “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash. Outside the cabin, snow spiraled and accumulated on the windshield.

The beeping, not unlike that of a car’s horn, continued, not as steady as his alarm clock but just as annoying.

Dan rubbed his eyes and checked his watch—3:59. An hour had passed since leaving the gas station.

He pushed back in the seat and stared at the windshield. A crack, like a fault line dividing two tectonic plates on the earth’s crust, ran from roof to hood and parted the glass into two equal halves. Snow accumulated quickly, forming a white, glistening wall that blocked out the rest of the world. Dan nearly expected a hand to swish it away and the face of Death, all snaggleteeth and greasy hair, to appear on the other side, peering in at him, lips pulled back in a grim smile. When the snow remained undisturbed, he relaxed a bit and rubbed his jaw.

The beeping stopped momentarily, then started up again. It came from somewhere outside the vehicle, in the land of snow and cold. Dan pushed open the driver’s door and stepped out into the storm. The frigid air went through him and stung his bones, froze his marrow. The front of the car sat squarely against a mature pine.

A man’s voice called to him from up the hill. “Hey, you there.”

Dan squinted into the wall of snow and could just make out the faint outline of a man, lean build, black suit. Thomas Constant. No doubt come to taunt Dan about his driving ability and remind him of his waning time.

“What do you want with me?” Dan hollered. He wiped snow from his eyelashes and looked again. Only this time he saw more clearly that the man forty feet above him on the hill was not Constant at all but an elderly man in a thick coat standing beside a pickup.

The stranger waved an arm. “Hey, you okay?” His voice grew faint as a gust of wind swept it away and buried it somewhere in the falling snow.

Dan waved back. “Okay here.”

After retrieving the keys from the ignition, he shut the door and made his way up the hill. It wasn’t tremendously steep but finding traction in the freshly fallen snow was as difficult as climbing a ladder with both feet tied together. Slowly he advanced, using his feet and hands to pull himself forward. At the midway point a rope landed in front of him, a lifeline from above. Looking up and through the snow, he could see his rescuer more clearly now, standing beside a green pickup.

“Grab hold. I’ll pull you up.”

Dan took the rope in both hands and got to his feet. Inch by inch, step by step, the stranger pulled him along, as if he were scaling the walls of a snowy grave. Wind buffeted his face, and snow blinded his eyes. Unseen hands grabbed at his ankles and feet, refusing them traction. His hands quickly took to aching, then went numb. Then his lungs burned as if the air contained not harmless microscopic crystals of ice but jagged shards of glass. Finally the terrain leveled and Dan went to his knees, gasping for breath and rubbing his oxygen-starved muscles.

An old pickup was there—an early eighties model Ford with peeling paint, rust around the wheel wells and bumper—and an older man bundled in a red plaid wool coat, gloves, a scarf, and a heavy skullcap. A wiry, white beard covered the lower half of his face. Dan had long ago stopped believing in Santa Claus, but the kind, aged eyes looking at him could have changed his mind.

“You okay, mister? You look like you just fell off a ten-story building.”

Dan waved his hand, caught his breath. “I’m fine.”

The stranger grabbed Dan under the arm and lifted. “Well, let’s get you up and in the warm truck. Gotta get you to a hospital.”

Dan stood and shook his head. “No. I don’t need a hospital.” He pushed back his sleeve and glanced at his watch—3:50. “I need to get to New York.”

“City?”

“Yes.”

The man looked up the road, then turned his face skyward. Snow landed on his beard, rested for a second, then melted. “In this storm?”

“Please, I have to get to New York. It’s … it’s an emergency.”

He looked Dan over top to feet. “Looks like it.”

“Please.”

“Well …” He paused, eyed the storm again, and moved his lips like he was chewing a thought. “I can take you as far as Sloatsburg but that’s it. I’m headin’ that way, then goin’ north. You can get the train from there.”

“Good enough. Thank you.”

13

The interior of the truck smelled of oil and grease. But it was warm, and the contrast between it and the outside winter wonderland was so stark it could have passed as an alternate world altogether. The vinyl seats were torn, revealing slivers of the foam core. The dash was faded and warped. Dan pulled the seat belt tight and put his hands near the vents, letting the warm air bring circulation back to his fingers. Despite the balminess in the cab and the tropical air exiting the vents, he still shivered as if he were standing outside in the middle of the storm with nothing but his boxers to keep him warm.

The Santa impersonator got in the driver’s side, shut the door, and extended his gloved hand to Dan. “Name’s Pete.”

Dan was surprised his name wasn’t Nicholas. He shook Pete’s hand. “Dan. Thanks for doing this.”

Pete wrinkled his nose and said, “Nah, don’t you mention it again. I’m just glad I came along when I did and saw your taillights. Who knows how long you’d’ve been stranded out here.” He motioned toward the embankment and the snow-covered Volvo. “What do you wanta do with your car?”

“Leave it. I’ll get a tow truck to come back later for it.” He knew he’d be doing no such thing.

“I guess it ain’t goin’ nowhere, huh?”

“Not in this storm.”

Pete shifted the truck into gear and pulled out onto the road. “They say it ain’t supposed to last long.”

“It’s a fast-moving one.”

“Yep, from what I hear, it got kinda lost on its way to Maine. Crazy thing, ain’t it?”

“Moronic, even.”

Pete settled into a steady speed of just over thirty miles an hour while Dan rested his head against the back of the seat and closed his eyes. Images of Sue and the boys were there again, smiling at him, laughing, playing games, and horsing around. Sue in the kitchen with her apron on, her nose and forehead dusted with flour. The boys in bed, covers pulled to their chins, sleeping peacefully. He thought about how quickly they’d grown, how the time had slipped past him unnoticed. It seemed like just weeks ago that they were both toddlers, waddling around and acting silly, playing peekaboo and hide-and-seek. His thoughts then turned to the future and what he’d miss. High school, sports, girlfriends, college, weddings, grandkids. No one would teach his boys how to become men, to change the oil in a car, replace a broken light switch, cut wood in a straight line. No one would teach them how to love their wife and nurture their own children. They would be journeymen without a guide, lost and alone in a strange world full of hate and violence and Santa Claus imposters.

Sue would go it alone too. He doubted she’d remarry—they’d had that talk before and she was adamant about remaining alone the rest of her life, embracing widowhood as the burden she must carry. She’d said giving her heart to one man was enough to last her a lifetime; only if she were a cat with multiple lives would she consider remarrying. She’d enjoy retirement by herself, travel the country, spoil their grandkids, and never go a day without telling them how wonderful their granddad was. The fact of the matter was that time stopped for no one and would continue marching onward. And when Dan was gone from this life and passed on to the next, time would still march on without him. Over the years the memory of him would fade until all that was left were a few fond moments, like strands of thread holding together torn fabric, and a stack of old photos no one looked at.

He regretted not spending more time with Jack and Murphy, not concerning himself more with the things Sue cared about. She loved photographing the boys and organizing the pictures into ornately designed and decorated scrapbooks. She had a knack for visual beauty and symmetry but only ever succeeded in capturing Dan’s halfhearted interest.

A lifetime would not be enough to make up for the time he’d squandered; seven hours didn’t touch it.

Dan shut his eyes tight to dam the tears threatening to break loose. Time trickled away while he sat in a stranger’s truck.

“A penny for your thoughts?” Pete’s voice was an uninvited hook pulling Dan back to reality.

Dan opened his eyes and looked around, squinted into the light. The snow had slowed some, making the roadway a little more visible.

Pete had taken off his gloves and turned down the heat in the cab. He’d removed his hat, too, revealing a crown of wispy white hair. He looked at Dan and smiled. “You looked like you were lost in some thought.”

Dan rubbed his eyes, massaged the thudding behind his temples. “Yeah, I guess I was.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the bottle of aspirin, emptied two in his hand, and swallowed them without water.

“You ain’t runnin’ from the cops, are ya?”

“Do I look like a man on the run from the police?”

Pete glanced at Dan’s lip, cheek, eyebrow. “Never can tell these days.”

“I guess you can’t.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Are you on the run?”

“Not from the cops. Nothing like that.”

“Then you’re runnin’ from your memories.”

Dan wondered if his white-bearded, rosy-cheeked savior possessed the same innate knowledge of boys and girls, men and women, that the real Claus did. “I was just thinking about time and how fast it goes.”

“And thinkin’ hurts your face that much?”

Dan tenderly touched the gash above his eye, then the lump on his forehead. “Oh, this. It’s a long story.”

“We got a long trip.”

“Not nearly long enough.”

Pete shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He motioned toward the dash and the AM/FM radio. “Radio don’t work and I hate drivin’ in silence, just the sound of the engine and tires on the road. Drives me nutty. I usually provide my own music but I’ll spare you the torment of hearin’ my warblin’ and talk instead. That okay with you?”

It wasn’t. Dan craved silence. He wanted to be left alone with his thoughts; he wanted to get to New York. He massaged his temples some more and said, “Sure. It’s your truck.”

Pete chuckled. “I guess it is, ain’t it?”

A big rig silently passed by going the opposite direction, kicking up a feathery plume of snow in its wake.

“Time’s a funny thing, ain’t it? Sometimes it flies by like a freight train blowin’ by a hobo. Other times it moves along in slow motion. Lookin’ back, my life’s been full of long days and short years, you know?”

“All too well.”

Pete paused and rubbed a hand over his beard. “In ’53 I was in Korea. Ever hear of Pork Chop Hill?”

“I saw the movie as a kid. Does that count?”

“Well, I guess that’ll do. I was in the 31st Infantry, a twenty-two-year-old kid, corporal, already with a wife and baby girl at home. We were told to take that hill ’cause the Chinese had it. Fought most of the night. There was no moon—I remember that—how dark it was ’cept for the muzzle fire of the rifles and fire from the flamethrowers. And the screams of men … sometimes at night I still hear ’em. It’s why I hate the silence so much. So many times I was sure I was gonna die. When we finally got to the summit and the trenches, I huddled down and covered my head and just cried. And that’s when it happened.”

“What happened?”

“Time. Only time in my life it stood still, as if the world had stopped turnin’. I had to look at my watch every couple minutes to make sure we were still movin’ forward. I thought that night would last forever, that maybe I had died and that was hell, stuck in some trench on top a Korean hill nobody really cared about, dodging bullets and shrapnel as time refused to move on.”

Pete massaged the steering wheel with both hands and slowed to navigate a bend in the road. The snow had lightened even more and it appeared the winds had died some. Finally the storm had lost its fury and retracted its claws. Rounding the turn, the truck accelerated again to almost forty miles an hour.

“But it did,” Pete said.

“It did what?”

“Move on. Time moved on. It always does. It’s constant. I huddled there in that trench counting down the minutes until it was safe to lift my head, and you know how long I sat there until we got the all clear?”

Dan shrugged.

“Seven hours. But I could have sworn it felt like seven days.”

Insect legs tickled the back of Dan’s neck and stood the hair on end.

“Yes, sir, time is relentless. No matter what’s happenin’ in your world or in the whole world, it don’t care. It keeps marchin’ on, steady like, one foot in front of the other, maintaining the same cadence throughout. We finally got off that hill and out of that blasted war. I went home a drunk and had four more children with my wife. I loved Mabelle, loved her with everything I had, but I was usually too drunk or too angry to tell her, let alone show her. We were married fifty-two years and raised five kids. I s’pose for her it was fifty-two years of hell.” He turned the heat a notch lower and ran a finger under his eye. “Went by like that,” he said, snapping his fingers. “And I got nothin’ to show for it. Mabelle and my oldest are both gone, taken by cancer, and my four boys live here and there—they want nothin’ to do with me.” The man’s voice was taut with pain.

“Do you have grandchildren?”

Pete nodded. “Eight. And two great-grandkids.”

“Do you ever see them?”

A Dodge pickup passed, heading west, its oversize knobby tires chewing through the snow like a chain saw.

“Nope. Never seen the babies and haven’t seen the grandkids since Mabelle passed eight years ago. She held the family together. Did until her last breath.”

They rode without talking for a few minutes, only the hum of the engine and the muted rumble of the tires in the snow to break the silence. Pete kept checking the rearview and side mirrors as if expecting some phantom vehicle to race up and rear-end his old pickup. Finally he reached for the mirror and flipped it toward the ceiling of the cab. “I spend too much time lookin’ in that thing.”

His words were cryptic but easily deciphered. He’d spent too much time staring in the rearview mirror of his life and beating himself up over what he found there.

Pete glanced at Dan. “You have any regrets?”

14

The pickup pressed on, ever closer to the New York state line, as if this entire scenario were being played out in a work of fiction, Pete and Dan characters, Constant the author, and the truck merely a prop used to follow the narrative and take Dan closer to the grand finale. But this was stranger even than Dickens’s fiction, and the idea of someone orchestrating these events was too much for him to think about. Surprisingly the truck handled the poor driving conditions quite well, and Pete appeared to be relaxed behind the wheel, as if navigating snow-covered roads in the middle of a temperamental storm were an everyday event for him. Snow still fell and blew into the truck’s windshield but without the fury that it had when Dan was driving the car.

Another big rig crawled by like a mammoth making its way across a barren tundra.

Pete’s question sat in Dan’s mind like a rock. He’d asked if there were regrets. Dan turned his head toward the window and said, “Sure. I have regrets.” His admission seemed trite compared to the agony he suffered inside.

Pete shrugged. “Most of us do, I s’pose. You ever wonder what your life would be like without those regrets?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, take me for instance. What if I’d never picked up the bottle? Become a drunk? What if I’d been a husband who loved his wife, who showed his kids he loved their mother? What if I’d been a father who didn’t beat on his kids when he was loaded? What kind of a life would I have now? I wouldn’t be alone, I tell you that. You ever think about that?”

Since he awoke this morning, Dan had thought of little else. “I guess that’s what a regret is. A poor decision you made that you now wish like crazy you could go back and change because you know if you’d chosen another path, your life would be different. Better.”

If hope was good medicine, regrets were a disease, a viral infection that invaded every cell of the body and spread its poison, not at once but over time, gradually building toxicity until the whole of the life affected was consumed. For Dan Blakely, the incubation of the virus began years ago when, as a teen, he’d driven his father from their home with his anger, his hurtful words, his stubborn rebellion, and he blamed himself when a tragic, single-vehicle accident then took his father’s life. The past week had brought the maturation of the infection.

Pete glanced at Dan, then adjusted the heat in the cab, turning it up a notch. “Sounds like you speak from experience.”

“Plenty of it.” He told Pete about Erin and the cheating and argument and her inappropriate advances. He told him about the harassment and assault charges, about the firing, and how he was ruined. But he mentioned nothing of the drive up the mountain and the encounter with Constant. That would only plant seeds of doubt about his sanity, and Santa or not, Pete would likely stop the truck in the middle of nowhere and dump him out on his posterior.

When he’d finished, Dan leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and sighed. He hadn’t given Pete all the details—to do so would take much longer than he wanted to spend recounting it all—but he’d hopefully said enough to make his new friend understand the urgency of the situation. And with his telling came a brief recess from the weight he carried, as if to share even a fraction of his burden with Pete brought some relief that someone else knew of his plight, of his toil, his regrets. He would not go out wholly misunderstood. His headache subsided; it was now only a dull throb tapping behind his eyes.

Pete did not reply at first; he watched the road with a strange indifference, chewing again. When he spoke, his voice was strained and hoarse. “Don’t know why, lookin’ like you do and all, but I believe you.”

“That’s why I have to get to New York. My wife and kids are there visiting for the day and I have to see them. I have to tell her in person what happened. I have to tell them I love them and always will.”

“And you want to hear them say the same thing.”

“Yeah, I guess. But more than that, I just want them to know I love them. No matter what.”

“And it can’t wait till they get home?”

Dan checked his watch. Pete knew nothing of Constant and his gift of seven hours, of the monster on Dan’s tail, gaining ground, growing closer with each tick of the second hand. Another thirty minutes had disappeared. “No. It can’t wait. I’m tired of regrets.”

Pete’s deep-set gray eyes shifted back and forth along the roadway as if tracking a thought and waiting for the opportune time to reach out and grab it. “New York’s a big city. How do you s’pose you’ll find ’em?”

“They’re spending the morning at Macy’s, then walking to FAO Schwarz. I know that much.”

“Narrows it down some.”

“Not enough, though. Can we go faster?” Sue’s plan was to take the boys to FAO Schwarz for lunch in the café, then spend some time looking at the toys, but Dan knew he’d need time to find them once he got there.

As if it were drawn along on a track and its speed regulated by a transformer, the truck held steady at forty miles an hour. The road here was straight and the snow well-packed, providing a clean, hard surface for the tires. Snow still fell but not nearly as hard or thick as it had. The storm was dying a slow death, losing its will to fight, and moving on to more northerly victims.

Without an argument, Pete dipped his chin and pressed the accelerator. The speedometer needle went to forty-five, then hovered around fifty.

The next thirty minutes passed as slowly as the tide receding into the vast open sea. Dan checked his watch often and repeatedly asked Pete to get the truck going faster. Each time, Pete complied and each time inched the speedometer’s needle closer to sixty. Snow still fell outside, but the farther east they traveled, the smaller the flakes appeared and the lighter they fell. Their time was mostly occupied by small talk now, mottled with patches of silence. Pete said no more of his family, of his past, of his regrets. He talked about the weather and politics and even touched a bit on the upcoming holiday and his abhorrence of the commercialism that had overtaken it.

Dan listened but said little. His mind was elsewhere, on his family and finding them once he got to the city. He planned to head straight to FAO Schwarz and have Sue and the boys paged on the public address system. That would save him precious time.

The highway in New York had been plowed and salted, clearing a path of stained asphalt all the way to Sloatsburg. Pete was able to push the truck to sixty-five and make good time.

Finally they arrived at the metro station. The town of Sloatsburg wasn’t more than a handful of streets nestled next to the Ramapo River and Interstate 87. The train station sat a block off State Route 17 as it exited the northern end of town. It consisted of just one automated ticket machine and a glass enclosure.

Pete steered the truck into the small parking lot, shifted into park, and let it idle. “Well, this is it. Sloatsburg station.”

The lot was full of unattended commuter cars, quietly waiting for the end of the day when weary workers would return from the big city and drive them home to suburban driveways and garages. No one occupied the platform or the glass enclosure.

“Train should be pullin’ in soon,” Pete said. “Takes about an hour to get to the city from here.”

Dan stuck out his hand and shook Pete’s. “I can’t thank you enough for the ride.”

“Sure you can,” Pete said. “You just did. I hope you find your family. And for what it’s worth, I think you’re doin’ the right thing. Somethin’ I shoulda done a long time ago.”

“You still can, you know.”

“Nah.” Pete shook his head and glanced at the rearview mirror. “It’s too late for me.”

Dan opened the door and slipped out of the truck. He faced Pete, hands resting on the frame. “It’s never too late, Pete. As long as there’s breath in your lungs, there’s still time. Regrets don’t have to die with you. You can still make it right.” He nodded toward the mirror. “And then you can stop looking at that thing and get on with your life.”

Pete chewed his lip and winked. “You ever consider bein’ a preacher?”

“Nope. Never have.”

Pete shifted the truck into drive. “Well, you oughta.”

Dan shut the door and the truck pulled away, turned right, and disappeared around a bend in the road.

He looked at his watch—2:35.

15

The train arrived at the station ten minutes later, stopping with a hiss of air and a screech of metal on metal. As it passed, Dan noticed that every car was empty and wondered if this train was from the future and, after having dumped its payload of passengers in the afterlife, had returned for one more straggler. But this time of day all the commuters from Sloatsburg would have already done their traveling and clocked in to their jobs in the city.

Dan sat in a seat next to the doors, an uneasy anticipation quickening his breath. The interior was brightly lit by a double row of covered fluorescent bulbs running along the ceiling. Cushioned orange plastic seats lined each wall—some decorated with hastily sprayed, indecipherable graffiti, some littered with discarded newspapers and gum wrappers.

The overhead lights blinked once, twice, but before the doors closed, a man stepped through them. He glanced at Dan, brushed past, and headed for the rear of the train. Dan watched as he parked himself a few rows back, slouched forward, and bounced his head to whatever tune his iPod was pumping into his ears. He appeared to be young, early twenties, and had narrow, deep-set eyes, a short bulbous nose, and a round face full of old acne scars. He wore an oversize field coat, a plaid scarf wrapped tightly around his neck, and a black skullcap. As the beat of the music intensified and the bouncing of his head became more pronounced, his entire body began to rock.

Dan faced the front of the car, shut his eyes, and let his mind wander to the edge of peacefulness. It was a boundary that was impassable for him, though. There was no peace, not with Death on his tail and time running out.

The train’s brakes disengaged and it began to roll forward, accelerating at a gradual pace.

Suddenly the car felt like a crypt and Dan had to open his eyes. The leafless trees moving by outside appeared to be bony specters ushering in the end of life. His chest tightened and a steady ringing started in his ears, bringing with it a throbbing headache.

From behind him, Dan heard the words “Time is ticking away.”

He spun around and stared at the passenger four rows back. The man’s dark eyes met Dan’s and blinked once, twice. His head continued to bob, keeping an even cadence. He lifted his chin at Dan, then turned his face to the window.

Slowly Dan faced forward again.

Seconds later, the voice was there a second time. “You’re running out of time.”

Without hesitation, Dan looked and found the man still lost in his music, rocking back and forth.

Things are not always as they appear. This was a truth about life that Dan now knew better than ever before. Once again, he entertained questions about his sanity as he studied his fellow passenger. Hallucinations, bodiless voices, paranoia—all signs of psychosis. But he wasn’t crazy. He had heard the voice just as plain as day. And this man was the only other passenger. He must have spoken, possibly as some messenger of Death sent to torment, to harass and mock, to remind him of the relentless foe from which he fled but could never escape. And maybe, when the time came, to quicken death in a violent, tragic way.

Again, Dan turned around in his seat. Then he took one more glance at the stranger behind him. Still, the man appeared absorbed by the beat in his head and oblivious to the path Dan walked.

Dan looked at his watch. Only four minutes had passed since they left the Sloatsburg station. The conductor’s voice on the loudspeaker had mumbled how long it would take to get to the next stop in Suffern but Dan had missed it.

The train eased around a corner and the car tilted almost imperceptibly. Snow blew past the window outside, a white speckled blur. Dan’s chest continued to constrict. He glanced at his fellow passenger again, wondering if he had a knife hidden beneath that coat or maybe a handgun.

The man opened his mouth and licked his lips with a thick tongue.

Dan looked out the window and through the ghostly snow to the barren trees. He wondered what it would be like if the train derailed …

A man’s voice said, “Ticktock, ticktock.”

Dan sprang from his seat, reached the guy behind him in four quick steps, and grabbed the front of his coat with both hands. Lifting him off the seat, he said, “What did you say? How do you know? Who are you?”

Fear twisted the man’s face and widened his eyes. One of the earbuds came loose and dangled from its lead wire. The man raised both hands and stuttered, “I d-don’t know wha-what you’re t-talkin’ ’bout, mister.”

“What did you say?”

“N-nuthin’. I d-didn’t say nuthin’. You’re crazy.”

Dan saw honesty, even a childlike innocence, in the man’s eyes. He released his grip and the man scurried across the aisle to the far side of the train. He checked his watch and placed the bud back in his ear; then, eyeing Dan cautiously, he tapped the side of his head against the window as he began humming a disjointed tune.

Dan stumbled back to his seat, his mind turning tight circles, as the train slowed and the conductor announced that they’d arrived at the Suffern station.

The train stopped and the doors opened. Dan quickly exited and pushed through the small group of people on the platform. He had to find a secluded place. He needed to collect himself, settle his nerves, calm the trembling that had overtaken his muscles.

His watch said 2:15.

A block away, Dan found an employee bathroom in the rear of a box-making warehouse. He didn’t ask permission to use it. After locking the door, he leaned against it, put his head in his hands, and took a series of deep breaths. He could no more stop the shaking in his hands than he could stop the world from spinning and thereby halt time. Oddly, he could still hear the voice—“ticktock, ticktock”—taunting, reminding him of the time slipping through his fingers like sand.

He only had about two hours left and he still had over an hour of travel time to get to New York. Then he had to find Sue and the boys.

He turned the knob to run the cold water in the sink. The bathroom was small and in need of updating. The walls were missing a few tiles, the porcelain-coated sink was chipped and stained, but at least the toilet had been flushed and the floor appeared clean. Cupping his hands under the water, Dan splashed his face. His head continued to throb.

He ripped some paper towels from the dispenser, dried his face and hair, then dared to look in the mirror. The man who peered back at him through the dark side of the looking glass was not Dan Blakely, associate professor of English, scholar, gentleman, husband, daddy; it was a man beaten into desperation, a man in a frantic cat-and-mouse game with Death. The gash above his left eye had scabbed over but was still swollen. The left half of his lower lip was purple and swollen. Bruises and abrasions mottled his face in a calico pattern. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the bottle of aspirin, emptied three into his hand, and tossed them into his mouth.

Gripping the sink with both hands, Dan looked into his eyes and wondered if they were windows to the soul of a sane man. With the idea of him being stuck in a dream already debunked, the only other alternate explanation was to question his lucidity. It was entirely possible that in the real world, he was tethered to a gurney in some psych ward babbling on about how Death was just around the corner, about how he could hear its labored breathing, smell its rotten, putrefying flesh. Possible, but not probable. He doubted a man as far gone as that would have the mental acuity to analyze his own sanity, to objectively stand aside and determine what was real and what was fantasy.

He didn’t know which was worse: admitting all of this was real and he actually had cheated death and had—he glanced at his watch—two more hours until his time was up or admitting that he’d gone nuts and concocted an entire alternate life in his brain, one he felt and experienced as if it were as real as the teeth in his mouth.

As if he needed to convince himself one final time, he concluded he was sane. And to the dark-side Dan Blakely in the mirror, he said, “I am of sound mind. All the cards are in my deck. I am sharp as a knife.”

But still the doubts were there, doubts about his ability to discern what was real and what was fantasy, doubts about the chances of reaching Sue and the boys in time, doubts about his future, what was left of it. He didn’t want to die alone, abandoned; he’d had enough of abandonment.

He had to see his family and tell them one more time that he loved them. Nothing else mattered. He had to stay alive long enough.

He had to catch the next train out of Suffern.

16

Dan found a seat on the train where he could face the doors and keep a watch on who came and left. At every station the conductor’s muffled voice mumbled instructions over the intercom, the train shuddered to a stop, and the doors opened. And at every station more passengers piled into the car, found seats, and mostly minded their own business. Some read books or neatly folded newspapers, others closed their eyes while iPods pumped music into their ears, and still others stared blankly at nothing in particular, avoiding eye contact with anyone. But in every pair of eyes Dan found malice, ill-intent, and a potential agent of Death waiting for the opportune time to lash out and deliver that final devastating blow.

For fifty-eight minutes, from Suffern to Penn Station, he warily watched the movement of passengers and the game of musical chairs they played, looking for any pattern, any face that appeared out of place, any pair of eyes that continuously met his. And not until the train finally came to a stop in Penn Station and the doors opened did he relax the muscles in his neck and shoulders. Stepping out of the car and into the throng of chaos, he checked his watch. Fifty-four minutes left. That meant it was 1:06 in the afternoon. Sue and the boys had probably finished their lunch by now.

Less than an hour remained, and he still had to find the right subway to get him close to FAO Schwarz, then locate his family.

Pushing through the crowd, he found the concrete stairs descending to the subway terminal. The map on the wall indicated he needed the E train on the blue line en route to the Fifth Avenue station. The toy store was five blocks beyond that.

The train came within seconds and eased to a stop beside the platform. Dan stepped on and stayed close to the door, holding the grab bar that ran the length of the ceiling. His destination was more than a mile away.

At each stop, Dan avoided the migration of passengers and checked his watch, counting off the minutes. And with each tick of the clock, each passing moment, he felt as though that great and terrifying beast, that predator of doom, was approaching, closing in for the kill.

When the train arrived at his station, he stepped off, checked his watch, and said the time aloud: “Forty-six minutes left.”

Five city blocks in Manhattan equals almost three-tenths of a mile. Weaving in and out of pedestrians, dodging dogs on short leashes, and pausing at every intersection, Dan covered the distance as quickly as he could. A light snow fell, powdering the sidewalk and slowing the foot traffic around him. He arrived at the toy store slightly out of breath, his lungs numbed by the cold air.

A glance at his wrist reminded him he had only forty-two minutes. Even if he found Sue immediately, it would not be enough time; it would never be enough time.

Pushing through the double glass doors, he pressed his molars together and grunted in frustration as he entered the cavernous toy store and was greeted by herds and troops and flocks and schools of plush animals of every kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.

He grabbed the first clerk he ran into, a young girl wearing a green-and-red felted wool elf hat. “Where’s customer service?”

She looked him up and down, glanced at the security guard by the door, and pointed to a spacious desk along the right side of the store. “Um, over there.”

Dan picked his way through the crowd. There were so many people, all of them oblivious to the watch on his wrist counting off the final minutes of his life, oblivious to the monster tracking him, gaining ground, building speed and momentum, preparing to crash headlong into him and send him into another realm. Death was on his heels and no one noticed. No one cared.

The clerk behind the desk held a phone to his ear. No older than twenty-five, clean-cut, baby-faced, hair neatly parted to one side, he wore a red polo shirt with a green collar, emblazoned with the FAO Schwarz logo. When Dan approached the desk, the clerk smiled politely and held up a finger. A name tag pinned above the logo read Brandon.

“It’s an emergency,” Dan said.

Brandon arched his eyebrows and continued to hold his finger in the air as if to indicate that he was the number one employee in the FAO franchise and deserved a substantial raise for the aggravation he endured from impatient and unhappy customers.

Dan smacked the desk with an open palm. “I have an emergency.”

The clerk, Brandon, pointed to the guard by the front door and continued to speak into the phone.

“I need you to page someone,” Dan interrupted.

To the customer on the other end of the phone, Brandon said, “Can you please hold? I’m sorry.” He covered the receiver with his hand. “Sir,” he said to Dan, “can I finish this call?”

“No. Please, there’s been a family emergency. I need you to page my wife. Brandon, please.”

Brandon paused, stared at Dan’s face, eyeing his cuts and bruises, then said to the customer on the phone, “I’m going to have to put you on hold. I apologize.”

He set the phone in its cradle and picked up the microphone. “Her name?”

“Susan Blakely.”

Forty minutes.

Pressing the Talk button on the mic, Brandon spoke slowly and clearly. “Susan Blakely, please come to the customer service desk. Susan Blakely, you’re needed at the customer service desk, first floor.”

Dan tapped his hand on the desk while he scanned the crowd for the first glimpse of his wife and boys. Over by a giant plush giraffe, a young girl, no more than six or seven, made silly faces while her mother snapped pictures. Near the escalator to the second floor, two boys tossed a stuffed monkey back and forth while their little sister hollered for a chance. By the glass doors, the girl in the elf hat spoke to the security guard. Both of them looked at Dan.

A minute passed, raising his heart rate and dotting his forehead with a cold sweat.

Dan turned and found Brandon back on the phone. “Can you try it again?”

He tightened his mouth and covered the receiver with his hand. “Sir, it’s only been a minute. Give them some time.”

He was right. It was a big store. Three floors and a ton of square feet. Navigating a crowd like this would slow anyone down. Besides, Sue didn’t know it was an emergency; she had no reason to hurry.

“Try again, please.”

Brandon said good-bye to the customer on the phone, glanced at the guard again, and finally picked up the microphone. He kept his eyes on Dan as he said, “Susan Blakely, please come to the customer service desk immediately.”

Scanning the throng of shoppers, Dan again was acutely aware of the closeness of his pursuer. And again, as it did on the train from Suffern to Penn Station, a strange and foreboding paranoia overcame him. In every face in the sea of shoppers he found indifference and ignorance, and yet there was a method to the asymmetry by which they moved, a dark intent, as if they were all puppets, dangling from strings controlled by a greater force. A shadow of malevolence moved over the crowd, hovered in the room. Death loomed here, walking among the shoppers, tapping this one on the shoulder, nudging that one, seeking a tool, an instrument of disaster. It was near, so close Dan could feel its breath on the back of his neck, a rapid, hungry pant.

Death came for him in a full-on charge, eating up ground like …

… like there was no tomorrow. No morning, no kissing Sue good-bye, hugging the boys. No classroom time, no dinner with the family or evening rituals—baths, stories, prayers. This was it. The end of the line.

Another minute passed. Thirty-eight.

And no sign of Sue.

A forced sigh and audible groan escaped Dan’s mouth. He had the dreadful feeling they weren’t in the store, that they’d left and were somewhere else in this city of eight million.

Panic set in then, tightened his chest, restricting the amount of air making it to his lungs. His palms turned sweaty and vision blurred. He had to get out of the store. Pushing his way through the mass toward the front door, he noticed a man in a black suit making his way out of the store. He told himself it could be anyone, anyone at all. New York had millions of people in it and this store saw thousands of visitors every day. Surely it wasn’t uncommon for someone to shop in a black suit. But the man seemed to navigate the crowd effortlessly, as though he floated just above the floor and glided not around but through the shoppers. When he reached the door, he turned and scanned the first floor of the building and Dan caught a glimpse of his face. It was Constant. There was no mistaking it.

Dan shoved past a woman with bags in both arms, nearly knocking her over. Forcing his way through the swarm of holiday shoppers, he blew past the guard at the door and found himself outside in the falling snow, surrounded by more people. But no Constant.

Dan’s head began to throb again and his vision blurred briefly. Buildings towered above him in every direction and seemed to spin in a slow turn, as if the whole city had been built on a lazy Susan and he now stood at the axis.

Thirty-seven minutes.

Forgetting about Thomas Constant and his cursed watch, Dan turned in circles, searching the crowd of people around him, all of them going about their own business, paying no attention at all to the man who would die in a little more than half an hour. Gone was the sudden paranoia that had gripped him so violently in the confines of the store, but it had been replaced with a great desperation.

He needed more time to find Sue. Please, God, he needed more time to be with his family.

His chest constricted further. His heart beat like a piston at full throttle.

This was it. It was over. He’d die in New York City surrounded by millions of people yet totally alone. How sad. He’d been given seven more hours to live and had done nothing with it.

He’d come to the end of his own ability, that place on the precipice where to step out even one inch farther meant tumbling headlong into the great unknown. All he had now was threadbare faith and a desperate man’s hope. There, in the middle of a throng of strangers, Dan Blakely cried to God for help. He couldn’t do this on his own. He now realized that something had been missing in his life. Ever since he had blamed himself for his father’s death, he’d been too ashamed to seek God’s help, his mercy. If only he had come to this point while there had still been time to make a difference in his life, in the way he raised his sons. But it was no use lamenting what could not be changed. He was just a man on borrowed time, narrowly staying out of Death’s reach. Soon that grim repo man would come knocking to take back what was stolen.

Again he combed the crowd, hoping, praying, willing Sue and the boys to be among them, to materialize from the darkness that encroached upon him from every side and tell him it had all been a bad dream or a momentary slip into insanity, a hiccup in his brain.

And then there they were, as if they’d dropped from heaven, standing by the fountain not fifty feet away. Jack was squatting, rolling a toy truck around in the snow. Murphy was eating a big cookie, and Sue watched the multitudes shuffle by.

She turned his way and their eyes met. A confused look froze her face, a mixture of surprise and panic.

17

Without even a glance at his watch, Dan ran to her. He didn’t care how much time was left now; he wanted to make the most of every minute.

He reached her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, hugged her tight.

“Dan, what on earth are you doing here?”

Dan stepped back and pulled Jack and Murphy to him. “Hey, guys, how are ya? Are you having a good time?”

“It was awesome,” Murphy shouted.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “They have a huge castle made out of LEGOs.”

Sue turned Dan to her and cupped his face. “Honey, is everything okay? What happened to your face?”

Dan smiled and brushed away her concern. “I was in an accident but I’m fine. The car isn’t, but it doesn’t matter. I’m here. I found you. I can’t believe I found you.”

“Dan, honey, what’s wrong?”

The boys both looked at him, waiting for an answer too.

“Nothing. I just wanted to surprise you and tell you all I love you.”

She didn’t believe him. Her eyes had always offered a clear view into her soul. “You came all the way to New York City … How did you get here?”

“Train. Subway.”

“You came all the way here on a train and found us in all of this—” she waved her arm in the air—“just to tell us you love us.”

Dan kissed her on the mouth. “It’s not just to tell you I love you. I do love you. And I want to thank you for everything you do for this family, the sacrifices you’ve made and make every day. I admire you, Sue, more than you’ll ever know. You’re such a strong person. And I love you so much.”

She gently pushed him away and held him at arm’s length. “Dan, you’re scaring me. Something’s wrong.”

Dan hadn’t the heart to tell her, yes, there actually was something wrong; he was going to die in thirty minutes and leave her a widow and the boys fatherless. And now that he’d found them, they would get a front-row seat to his most unfortunate and untimely death.

“Babe, nothing is wrong,” he said and hoped she couldn’t read his lie. “I came here to surprise you and the boys.”

“And you didn’t let even a car accident stop you.”

“Right. Nothing was going to stop me.”

She touched the gash over his left eye, then the abrasion on his cheek. Her touch was soft and caring. “Did you get checked out by a doctor?”

Dan put his hand over hers and pressed it to his face. “I’m fine. No need for doctors to slow me down.”

He knelt in front of Jack and Murphy and pulled them into a hug. “I love you guys. You know that, don’t you?”

Jack kissed him on the cheek. “I’m glad you came, Dad.”

“Me, too,” Murphy said. “Didn’t you have to teach today?”

Dan glanced at Sue. “Nope. I took the day off, got someone to cover my classes for me. I’d rather be here with you bugaboos.” He ruffled Murphy’s hair. “The best sons I could ever want.” A lump made its way to his throat; tears pressed against his eyes. “You make me very happy and I’m so proud of both of you. I can’t wait to see the kind of men you grow up to be. Honest, strong, courageous. I bet you’ll both make great dads.”

Sue had her fist to her mouth and tears now puddled in her eyes. Dan stood and kissed her on the forehead, then pulled her hand away and kissed her on the lips. “I love you, Susan. Remember that always.”

“Dan … please—”

“Let me finish.” Time had to be getting close, but he refused to look at his watch. “We’ve been through a lot, made a lot of memories, had so many good times together and as a family. I want to remember them forever. But if everything else fails, please know one thing … that I love you more than life itself.”

He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tight. It felt right, her in his arms, her hair against his face, the smell of her perfume. He didn’t want it to end. He needed more time. He needed his family and they needed him.

But his time was almost up. He could feel the clock ticking down, the end growing closer, as if he’d just awakened from a dream and knew he was only minutes from the alarm sounding.

Dan scanned the crowd. The agent of Death was there, somewhere, blending into the masses as they came and went, shuffled along. Maybe a gunman or a mugger or a suicide bomber.

Sue’s hand rested on his arm and she said, “Dan, what’s wrong? What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“Something. Tell me.”

“No. Nothing.”

He suddenly had the crushing intuition that he should not have come, not like this. He’d put Sue and the boys in harm’s way.

Jack tugged on his jacket. “Daddy?”

Eyes combing through the throng of pedestrians, searching for anything misplaced, anyone behaving oddly, Dan placed a hand on his son’s head. “Nothing. Nothing at all. Sue, take the boys and go inside the store.”

“Why?” Her voice was tight with panic. “What’s wrong? Tell me.”

“Just—”

There, not fifty yards away, a shrouded face.

Dan stepped forward for a better look, dodged to the left.

Sue grabbed his arm. “What do you see?”

He did not try to shake her loose. He took another step forward. The crowd parted and he came into full view.

Thomas Constant.

18

Constant stood on the other side of Fifth Avenue. Black suit, pale skin, dark hair. Even at that distance his eyes seemed to radiate, to glow electric blue. He smiled and reached into his coat pocket, retrieved something, and held it up to look at it. It was the pocket watch, the silver one with the number 7 engraved on the back. He tapped the watch two times, signifying time was up.

Dan stretched out his arm to slide up his sleeve and checked his watch. He still had twenty minutes.

This was wrong. Constant couldn’t steal twenty minutes from him. He’d been promised seven hours—that was the deal.

Pulling away from Sue’s grip and keeping his eyes on Constant, Dan said, “Wait here with the boys, okay? Don’t go anywhere.”

Constant placed the watch back into his coat pocket and took a step back into the moving crowd.

Panic prickled the hair on Dan’s arms. Constant couldn’t just leave. There was a problem. Dan needed more time. Even twenty minutes wasn’t enough, not nearly enough.

“Stay here, honey, okay?”

She took hold of Dan’s arm again. “Is someone there?”

Constant moved farther into the crowd and all but disappeared.

“Someone.”

“Who?”

“It’s nothing; just stay here.” His heart hammered. He couldn’t let Constant get away. “I’ll be right back.”

“Dan, stop this!”

But he had left, taken chase after Constant. If he could stop him, maybe they could strike another deal; maybe Dan could get more time. At the very least he had to get his final twenty minutes back.

Dan raced down the sidewalk, keeping his eyes on the black coat putting more distance between them. Behind him, Sue hollered something, but he couldn’t understand her. If he could just get more time, he’d explain everything to her.

Not waiting for the light to change or traffic to stop, he stepped off the curb and onto Fifth Avenue. He couldn’t wait; he had to keep moving or he’d lose Constant for good.

Tires screeched and Dan flinched.

He never saw the car coming.

Striking him midthigh, crushing muscle and breaking bone, the impact bent him in half. He flipped up and over the hood, hit the windshield hard enough to break it, then rolled off the side and landed on the pavement.

On his back, staring up at the gray sky, flakes falling, buildings towering over him, seemingly rising up to heaven, Dan heard nothing but a rhythmic ticking, thick and heavy like that of a grandfather clock.

Above him, the scarred sky darkened and roiled, heaved and billowed. The buildings shrank, retracted into the earth. And still the ticking was there—steady, monotonous, growing louder and louder.

Until there was nothing. Only blackness and the ticking, ticking … until it, too, faded.

19

The alarm sounded the same time it did every morning, pulling Dan Blakely from a dream. He lay in his bed, eyes shut, allowing the lingering remnants of that awful nightmare to wisp away like smoke in a stiff breeze. Tears puddled in the corners of his eyes and wet his lashes. The alarm continued to sound its steady call … but it didn’t sound like his clock at home, and the bed didn’t feel like his bed.

Slowly he peeled open his eyes and let them adjust to the light in the room.

It was no dream. The trip to New York, finding Sue and the boys, the impact with the car.

He was in a hospital room and the beeping came from the digital monitor beside his bed. His IV bag was empty.

Oddly, despite being nearly broken in two by the moving car, he felt no pain. Dan moved his wrists, flexed his fingers, lifted them to his face. An oxygen cannula rested against his nose, pumping cool air into his nostrils. An IV line ran into the back of his hand.

But this was not the hand he’d looked at every day. This hand appeared older than his by at least twenty or thirty years and more weathered. He curled the fingers into a fist, then extended them, wondering if he’d become the experimental patient of a strange and terrifying doctor who enjoyed transplanting body parts from one dying victim to another and if this, indeed, was a real hospital at all or a secret lab where gruesome things were done. But no scars circumscribed the wrist.

He moved his legs, pumped his ankles, bent his knees. They were stiff but the motions produced no pain.

The door to his room opened and a voice startled him. A familiar voice.

“Hey, you’re awake.” It was Sue. His Sue.

Turning his head, he found the woman was not the Sue he remembered, but more resembled her mother, Lois. Only it was Sue, for she possessed the same round eyes, the same smallish nose and full lips. She’d always had her mother’s mouth but not exactly; it was uniquely hers. This Sue’s face had aged, and her hair had turned a dusty gray. Deep creases radiated from the outside corners of her eyes. She reached for his hand and her touch felt the same—so loving, so caring.

“How are you feeling, sweetie?”

Dan tried to swallow but his mouth was too dry, throat too tight. Confusion clouded his brain like a fog that moved in overnight and shrouded the morning in mystery.

“Where am I?”

The look on her face told him this was not the first time he’d asked that question. She sat in the chair next to his bed and rubbed his hand. “Honey, you’re in St. Luke’s, remember? You’ve been here for a week.”

He remembered, vaguely, as if looking through a clouded window and seeing only shadows and silhouettes of the world outside.

“Wh-why?” He was suddenly very tired and blinked slowly.

Sue brushed a hand through his hair and studied him with sad eyes. She’d been through so much, he could tell. Fatigue etched her face, and sorrow was there too—deep sorrow, the kind that had acknowledged loss but not yet accepted it and would never embrace it. “The cancer, sweetie, remember? You have pancreatic cancer.”

Cancer. The pieces began to fall into place like a puzzle randomly assembling itself. He remembered Constant’s words—“You can relive any seven hours … But either way, at the end you’ll be forwarded through time to the moment of your death”—and the way he drew that arc in the air with his finger.

It couldn’t be real, though. Had he survived the accident in New York and missed so much of his life?

“How old am I?”

Tears formed in Sue’s eyes and in them he found pity and sadness as deep and lonely as any quarry stripped of its resources, then abandoned. But more than that, he found love—a love that endured and persisted and fought and gave until there was nothing more to give. A love that did not fail. “Honey, you’ll be sixty-eight tomorrow.”

Sixty-eight. He’d missed twenty-seven years of his life, skipped over it as easily as if he’d hopped a narrow but fast-moving stream.

“What … what time is it?” When the car’s bumper impacted his leg and spun him through time, he still had twenty minutes to live.

Sue checked her watch. “It’s morning. 7:05.”

Time was no longer counting down, no longer ticking off the final moments of his life. Still the end was very near; he felt it in the extreme fatigue that tugged on him, dragged him ever closer to the precipice. But strangely, he no longer feared it, no longer saw it as a dark abyss from which to fight and claw and recoil.

Dan closed his eyes and almost fell asleep. Pulling them open again, he swallowed hard. His breath hitched, caught in his throat, and he coughed violently. Composing himself, he said, “I’m tired.”

“I know, honey.”

“So tired.”

Sue blinked tears away. “You’ve had a long battle.”

“Did I fight well?”

More tears came, spilling down Sue’s cheeks. She did nothing to wipe them away. “You fought well. Yes. You were so strong. You’ve earned this.”

He knew she referenced his passing from this life to the next; he was on the threshold of glory.

“Where’re the boys?”

Sue sniffed and patted his hand. When she spoke, her voice was tight and strained. “They’re in the waiting room. I’ll get them.” She stood and left, closing the door behind her.

Quickly Dan muddled through the math in his head. Jack would be thirty-five and Murphy thirty-four. As the numbers formed in his mind, he discovered that he did have some fuzzy memories of them growing up, after all. Jack’s first date. Murphy’s high school graduation. And a wedding … He couldn’t quite remember whether he was a grandfather yet, but it seemed to strike a chord.

Moments later the door opened and the boys walked in with Sue. He recognized them immediately; they’d changed so little. Jack was tall and thin with a head of shaggy hair and a smile as crooked as it had always been. Beside him stood a woman, beautiful, with eyes the color of the sea at night and a belly the size of a basketball. Ah, yes, the grandson he and Sue anticipated with such delight. Murphy, shorter and stockier than Jack, stood beside Sue, his arm around her shoulders and his eyes alight with mischief.

“Hey, Dad,” Jack said. “Glad to see you’re awake.” He looked at Sue, and she nodded in approval.

Jack sat in the chair beside the bed and placed his hand on Dan’s arm. His wife—Amy, was it?—stood by his side, her hand on his shoulder. Her fingers were long and graceful, made for making heavenly music on a piano. He wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he did.

“Dad,” Jack said, “thanks for being such a great example to me, to us. You modeled what a godly husband and father should be. You don’t know it, but I’ve been watching you my whole life, trying to be just like you.” A tear slipped from his eye and tracked down his cheek. “I want you to know, Amy and I have decided to name our son Daniel. It’s a good name and we hope he grows up to be even half the man you are.”

He stood, leaned over, and kissed Dan on the cheek. “I love you, Dad.”

Tears spilled from Dan’s eyes and ran over his temples, pooling in his ears. “I love you, too, Jack. My boy.” A godly husband and father. So he’d had time to show them he’d changed, after all.

Amy stepped forward and gently rubbed Dan’s arm. “You know, Dad, I never told you this—I don’t know why I didn’t; I just never did—but my grandfather used to talk about you all the time. He said you changed his life. He sang your praises right up to his death, said that time he gave you a lift to Sloatsburg was one of those moments in life that everything else is referred to as being either before or after. He never mentioned what you two talked about, but whatever you told him, it stuck. I’m glad you two became friends. He loved you so much.”

Taking her hand in his, Dan squeezed it, then caressed her fingers. “I will miss hearing you play the piano.”

Pressing her lips together, fighting back tears, she nodded. “I’ll miss playing for you. You’ve always been one of my biggest fans.”

“I am. And your grandfather was a good man. A generous man.” Dan now knew how Rip Van Winkle felt, awaking after twenty years of slumber to a world that had passed him by, moved on and ahead. Only Dan hadn’t merely fallen asleep and gone missing for two decades. He’d lived a life, experienced love and joy and sorrow. Visited new places and been touched by beautiful music. Watched his oldest son fall in love and get married.

Murphy was next. He ran a fist over his eyes and sat in the chair. “I love you, Dad. You’ve always been my hero. You could do anything, handle everything.” He wiped at the tears again. “You remember when you came all the way to New York just to tell us you loved us, and you got hit by that car?”

Dan nodded. Of course he remembered.

“You were like a superhero to me. Better than any superhero. And you still are. You made a difference wherever you went. You lived life like it counted, like every moment meant something. I’ve always wanted to be like you.”

Dan reached over and put his hand on his younger son’s head, ruffled his hair. “Murphy, I love you, Son.”

Murphy dashed away more tears, sniffed. “Love you, too, Dad. Always.”

Sue came to the bed and combed her hand through Dan’s hair again. “Sweetie, there’s someone else who wants to see you. Is that okay?”

Dan nodded.

“She came all the way from Minnesota to be here. She wanted to see you one time before …” Her words trailed off.

Sue left and came back with a middle-aged woman. Though she’d aged and put on some weight since the last time Dan saw her, he recognized her immediately. Erin Shriver. Or no, that wasn’t right. Erin … Roberts? Senator Roberts?

Erin approached the bed and smiled. She had a kind face, soft edges, compassionate eyes. She was well-groomed and carried herself with confidence. Sitting in the chair, she took Dan’s hand. “I haven’t seen you in so long, but I’ve wanted to. I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner.”

Exhaustion tugged at Dan’s eyelids and he blinked slowly. “Erin.”

“I owe everything to you,” Erin said. “You taught me the meaning of personal responsibility. I learned it the hard way, but it was only because of you I learned it at all. I want you to know I’m partnering with the Boone alumni association to raise funds for a new fine arts building and we’re going to name it after you. Daniel Blakely Hall. How’s that sound?”

It sounded like a building named after a stranger. Dan forced a smile and nodded. Closed his eyes. His breath caught again and he coughed, tried to fill his lungs but couldn’t. His eyes flipped open and Sue leaned over him again.

She turned her head. “Jack, get the doctor.”

Jack hurried out of the room. This was it—Dan was dying. He knew it. His time had to be running out, just minutes, maybe seconds left.

His seven hours was up.

Sue took his hand in hers and kissed him on the forehead, the cheek, the lips. “I’ve loved our life together. You’ve made me very happy.” Tears ran from her eyes and dripped onto his sheets. “And you made such a difference in so many lives. You’re a good man and I’m proud—so proud—to call you my husband.”

The door of the room opened and a young doctor entered dressed in black pants and a white lab coat, whistling a tune. A tune Dan had heard before. “Time Is on My Side.”

The doctor rounded the bed and came into Dan’s full view. Thomas Constant.

“Mr. Blakely, how are you?”

It was definitely him. Same pale face, dark hair, blue eyes. He hadn’t aged a bit.

“Constant.”

“Excuse me?” The doctor looked at Sue, confused.

“He’s been fading in and out,” she said. “He’s been sleeping for a while, murmuring on about somebody named Thomas Constant.” She sat and took Dan’s hand, rubbed it with both of hers.

Constant nodded knowingly. “His dementia has been worsening?”

“Yes.”

Dan swallowed, coughed, and said, “Thomas Constant.”

The doctor smiled. “I’m Dr. Thomas, Mr. Blakely. Your oncologist. Do you remember me?”

“You’re—” Dan hacked again, tried to breathe in, but couldn’t. It was as if his lungs refused to inflate. He choked on his breath and wheezed loudly.

Sue squeezed his hand. Tears poured from her eyes and wet her cheeks.

Constant—Dr. Thomas—checked the monitors. He then walked to the foot of the bed, stuck his hand in the pocket of his lab coat, and pulled out a watch, a silver pocket watch with the number 7 engraved on the back. “He only has a few moments left. I’ll step out now.”

He nodded at Dan, patted his foot.

Struggling to breathe, Dan found Sue’s face and focused on it. The time had come. He’d grown so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open. But he had to. He had to see his wife. Her face.

She stood and leaned over him.

He stared into her eyes, those beautiful pools of green and brown.

The edges of the room darkened like a shadowy cloud encircling his bed. But Sue’s face was in the center of it, smiling, crying.

He focused on her face as the darkness grew thicker and nearer. His eyes closed, then opened. They were so heavy.

“I love you, Daniel,” she said.

He tried to tell her the same, but he was too weak to move his mouth.

Darker. Her face still in the center of it all. Darker still.

Her face … her face …

He had to watch her face.

The darkness made it to the edge of Sue’s face and threatened to overcome it, to blot it out. But Dan didn’t let it. He closed his eyes and remembered the love they shared.

A Note from the Author

Having conquered cancer, having looked death in the eyes and turned my back on it, I find myself frequently taking stock of life.

We live once. It’s a gift given us, and there’s no exchanging it or returning it. Once used, it’s in the realm of history, written into the pages of eternity. The focus of life is not only the tape at the finish line; it’s how we run the race. And I want to run with no regrets.

This has been on my mind a lot lately—no regrets. I work with people every day who are at the end of life, and some voice very openly the regrets they’ll carry to the grave. I can see the sorrow in the lines of their faces, the clouds in their eyes. They wish their lives had turned out differently. They wish they had loved more and hated less, listened to that advice they ignored, been more honest, paid more attention to their children.

But regrets don’t have to haunt us.

When I was on the track-and-field team in high school, I ran the 400-meter dash. At the end of each race, I was spent, exhausted, and ready to vomit. I had run my best and left everything on the track. Why not do the same with this race of life? Leave it all on the track. Live with no regrets. Spend less time looking in life’s rearview mirror and more time looking ahead at the road stretched before us and the opportunities that await. Why not, indeed?

About the Author

Mike Dellosso has written five novels of suspense. He writes not only to entertain but also to encourage and inspire. A husband, father, teacher, therapist, and cancer survivor, Mike often draws from his own experiences and emotional blueprint when crafting stories. He lives with his wife and four daughters and enjoys life every day, doing his best to live with no regrets. Visit him at www.mikedellosso.wordpress.com or www.facebook.com/mikedellosso.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

A Note from the Author

About the Author

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

A Note from the Author

About the Author