Blink of an Eye (12 page)

It occurred to him that what he was about to do represented its own kind of narrowness. A cold sweat broke out on his neck and he took a sip of water. Maybe he should call off Marisa after all. It wasn't too late—he could skip their entrance cue.

“So, without further boring you with the details of our institution's educational prowess, I present to you the man we've all gathered to honor.” Baaron turned his way. “Seth Border.”

Applause filled the room and Seth stood.
Here we go
. The applause died, and complete silence settled for the first time.

The girls were to come out when he said
Baaron
. It would be in the middle of his speech, he told Marisa, and he would say it with great hoopla. Like a Johnny Carson introduction.

Seth stepped behind the podium and looked out at the eager faces. The Middle Eastern studies professor stood near the back and slipped into the hall with the Arabic woman. Odd time for a bathroom break, he thought.

The words of his speech sat in his mind like crows on a telephone line. “Thank you for those kind—”

A door banged open to his right.

“Give me a
B
!”

Seth jerked, honestly startled. Marisa stood with one fist over her head, scantily clad in black. She looked at him and winked.

“
B!”
a chorus of voices rang from his left. He turned. Five girls swirled from three doorways, dressed as a cross between cheerleaders and burlesque dancers. Seth had suggested racy; they were indeed racy. A few nervous chuckles rolled through the auditorium. A few stunned gasps.

“Give me an
A
!”

“A!”

They swung their hips and flashed coy smiles and honed in on the table to Seth's right where Baaron sat, tomato-red.

The chant continued, but Seth shut it out. For the first time in a long while, he was at a total loss. He should do something—encourage them, discourage them, swing his hips with them, stop them in outrage. Anything. But he couldn't. He looked over at Samuel Harland's table and saw the man shaking his head. The girls had formed a line in front of Baaron and were definitely looking more Las Vegas than Lawrence Welk. The place fell silent except for the girls' chant.

He should do something.

He should definitely do something.

His mind went blank.

The image hit him then, like the pigeon at Harland's office hit the window.

A gun. A brown hand with white knuckles. A face twisted in rage. Another face screaming in pain, with viselike fingers squeezing its cheeks together.

Seth gasped.

He was aware that some of the faculty were staring at him, but what was happening here, in this room, felt distant to him.

His field of vision broadened, and he saw that the face belonged to a woman. To the Arabic woman he'd seen with Hillary. She was in the women's bathroom—he knew that because of the stick figure on the door. She was in the women's bathroom, and a man clenched her face with one hand and waved a gun at her with the other.

And then the image was gone.

A dancer was climbing onto Baaron's table in a way that might have turned Seth himself red a few seconds ago, but the sideshow played in his peripheral vision. His heart was hammering, but from the images that had just played through his mind, not the brunette's sultry moves.

For one lost moment Seth stood dumb. Was it possible that the Arabic woman really was in the bathroom with a man who held a gun? Was it possible that the other two incidents hadn't been strange tricks played by his mind but actual precognition?

The images crashed through his mind again. This time the man's hand hit the woman's face.

Seth whirled from the podium, took two long steps to his right, vaulted the head table, and ran for the hall, leaving the penguins gawking. He sprinted for the women's bathroom, slid to a stop in front of the door with the skirted stick figure, paused for one last moment, and then slammed through.

“Hey!”

His voice echoed back at him. A long mirror showed a man dressed in black and white with slick blond hair, hands spread like a gunslinger. That would be him. He glanced around. No urinals—stalls only. The bathroom was empty. The swinging door hissed shut behind him.

“May I help you?”

Seth's head snapped to his right. The Arabic woman stood in the doorway of the last stall, eyes wide.

Seth just stared at her, confused.

“This is the ladies' toilet,” the woman said.

He looked to his left and slowly relaxed.

“Hillary?” the woman yelled. She was calling for the professor.

Seth looked at her again. “No one's out there.”

The woman stepped out of the stall tentatively. “Hillary!”

“I told you, she's gone.”

“Where is Hillary? What have you done?”

“Nothing.” Something was gnawing at the back of Seth's mind.

“I . . . I thought something was wrong, that's all.” He looked around one last time. “I guess I was wrong.”

“Hillary was just here.”

He heard the light sound of feet, and it occurred to him that Hillary's absence might be a problem. He spun around and pulled the bathroom door open a crack.

He saw two things at once. The first was Hillary, disappearing around the corner at the far end of the hall. The second was a dark-skinned man walking in Seth's direction, head down, now just twenty feet away.

This man was going to beat the snot out of the woman behind him. That's what he'd seen.

Seth didn't have time to analyze what had happened.

He moved with an instinct bred through a decade of beatings at home.

He released the door, leaped for the woman, grabbed her arm, and pulled her toward one of the stalls. It never occurred to him that she might not understand the urgency.

She screamed, and he ducked, startled. He recovered, though, and threw his free hand over her mouth. “Please! I'm helping you here! Shut up or you'll get us both hurt!”

Not exactly the most comforting words in the middle of a mugging. She tried to scream again, through his fingers, but he managed to muffle her voice. Time was running out. He tried to drag her, but she was having none of it.

“Stop it!” he whispered. “Someone's coming for you!” He glanced at the door. A brief question skipped through her eyes. Seth lifted her from her feet and crashed through the stall door. The toilet lid was open. He hefted the woman onto the toilet bowl and let her go—all but her mouth.

She teetered, unbalanced on the narrow ceramic ring.

He snatched a finger to his lips. “
Sh
!
Please, you have to trust me,” he whispered. “There's someone coming . . .”

The door to the bathroom opened.

It occurred to Seth that he'd accomplished nothing by dragging her in here. They were sitting ducks, for heaven's sake! One look under the doors and the gunman would see his feet!

Breathing hard, Seth let her mouth go, grabbed the toilet-paper holder for balance, and eased up onto the seat, pushing her toward the wall. Now they both stood on the toilet with a bowl of blue water between their feet. She kept her mouth shut.

Still, only a deaf person could have missed the thumping that had come from the fourth booth. This fact was not lost on Seth.

He pressed against the woman, mind scrambling. Solving mind-boggling mathematical equations was one thing; being stuck with a pretty female on a toilet seat was another.

Her hair was in his mouth. The booth smelled like perfume. She was breathing hard and her breath was hitting his neck. These abstract distractions skipped through his mind in the space of a heartbeat. He had to get her out of here.

Seth's back was to the door. He shifted his feet to turn around. The woman tilted. Her left hand thumped loudly on the stall. A loud
plop
sounded in the toilet water.

Seth looked down. A white shoe bobbed in the blue water. Her white shoe. He'd knocked her foot off its perch, and her shoe had fallen into the water.

But it was the sound, not the shoe, that raced through his head. He looked into her eyes, wide and white. Somewhere between horror and fury.

That was it. They had to get out of this deathtrap now.

Seth turned and jumped to the floor. He slammed into the stall door, and the whole structure shook. The woman landed behind him, but as he straightened, she fell backward, the toilet at her knees. She instinctively grabbed his waist and together they toppled onto the bowl. Into the bowl.

It was time to abandon secrecy. “Let go!” Seth said.

“Get off me! What are you doing?”

“I'm trying to . . .”

He shoved himself up and was rewarded with a grunt from her. “Sorry.”

He pulled her up. The shoe floated in the blue water like a sailboat. Without thinking, he snatched it up. Clutching the dripping sandal, he jerked the stall door open and stumbled out.

They spilled into the bathroom three feet from an Arabic man, who took a step backward at the sight of Seth. Seth knew beyond a doubt now—this was the man he'd seen in his mind. And if this man was indeed real, then his intention to hurt the girl must also be real.
Make no mistake about it, Seth. This is one bad dude.

The woman cried out. The man's attention shifted to her, and Seth saw his eyes darken.

Seth moved. He tossed the toilet-watered shoe at the man, grabbed the woman's hand, and ran for the door. The man cursed in Arabic when the shoe hit his face.

Seth shoved the door open. It thudded into flesh and bone, and someone yelped. Seth yanked the girl through the door and sprinted down the hall toward the back exit. At the corner he glanced back and saw another Arabic man climbing to his feet.

“Hurry!” Seth said, the woman's hand held tightly in his own. Back around the corner the sound of running feet pounded on the carpet.

Seth leaned into the exit bar. Then they were out the back, breathing hard and facing the cool night.

“This way,” he said, cutting to his right. She seemed eager enough to follow now. She pulled him to a stop, reached for her foot, and yanked off the remaining shoe.

He released her hand and they ran full tilt, past Wurster, past the Hearst Museum, across Bancroft Way, and onto College Avenue.

“Stop!”

It was the woman, doubled over just behind him. He slowed to a side skip and then to a halt. She was heaving, hands on knees. Seth looked past her to the street they'd crossed. Nothing.

“Where are you taking me?” she panted.

Good question. The sounds of a commotion drifted from the direction of the Faculty Club. More likely Marisa and company than the two Arabic intruders. Either way, he felt exposed out here on the street.

“We have to get off the street. My car's over here.”

She stood and wobbled toward him. Her white dress was torn along one thigh. Now that he thought about it, he had heard the sound of ripping cloth on their exit.

“Your car?” She glanced back. “Please, I have a friend. I have to find her. We have to—”

“Hillary? Trust me, Hillary isn't your friend.”

The woman faced him, eyes round in the streetlight. “Why?”

“I think she led those men to you.”

“How do you know this?”

“Well, they weren't planning on dancing with you.” He looked past her again. Still nothing. “We got lucky, but if they find us debating here in the street, I doubt it will go so smoothly.”

“And I suppose you think dragging me through a bathroom is smooth?”

He glanced over her shoulder. Still clear. “Please, let's get off the street.” He started for the parking lot and she followed, glancing back.

They cut across the parking lot and came to a brown '83 Cougar, rust conveniently hidden by the shadows. His hands shook as he twisted the key for his door. He looked at the parking lot entrance one last time. Still no sign of pursuit. He opened the door and slid in.

What are you doing, Seth?
He gripped the wheel and shook his head. The passenger door wasn't opening. He looked out the windshield and saw the woman standing by the hood, arms crossed, chewing on a nail. He cranked his window down and stuck his head out.

“Get in.”

He pulled his head back in and rolled the window up.

She wasn't moving.

Please, lady, I'm not your enemy here
.

This time he climbed out. “Look, I'm just trying to help. You think I understand this?”

“No, I don't think you understand this. And you'll forgive me if it gives me some concern. A man who has shoved me into the toilet and then dragged me down the street is now asking me into his car. How do you know about Hillary?”

“You're from Saudi Arabia?”

She hesitated. “How did you know?”

“Lucky guess.”

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply through her nose.

“You're on the run,” he said. “You've fled Saudi Arabia and now someone in your country wants you back.” Her eyes flashed. “Which means you're someone important. But since no woman is important in Saudi Arabia, you must be royalty. A princess on the run. I'm surprised you made it out of the country.”

“How could you know so much about Saudi Arabia?”

He shrugged. “Those guys didn't fly halfway around the world to give up. You're in a world of hurt.”

“A world of hurt? If you would speak proper English, it would be better for me.”

Her demand took him off guard. “Sorry. It's slang, and it means your world must hurt. Or something similar. Not exactly your
world
—”

“I'm not an imbecile,” she said. “I get the picture.”

“Get the picture?” he said with a grin. “Where did you learn that?”

“You think I've never been to America?”

“So. A Saudi princess who has fled her country, speaks perfect English, understands a few colloquialisms, and is in a world of hurt.”