His gaze, faraway, perhaps still looking upon another place, seemed to gradually return, slowly catching up with the rest of his body to arrive back in Chicago. His eyes focused on her — a gradual realization that he wasn’t alone, that someone was just on the other side of the wire mesh.

‘I …’ His mouth opened, dry and cracked lips. ‘I … I’ve s-seen … the end.’

Behind her she could hear someone making a call. Phoning an ambulance. Maybe some of them were hearing him. She noticed the sicko with the camera was still filming. Maybe he was disappointed not to have a smoking corpse to show his editor. Maybe this man’s insane babbling was going to be an even better story to file.

‘Waldstein?’ uttered Anna. ‘What do you mean … the end?’

She realized he was crying. A tear rolled down his cheek and soaked into the bristles of his beard. The lost faraway look was finally gone. His eyes were on her. He suddenly looked around the cage. ‘My God! This is … this has all got to go!’

‘What? You mean your machine?’

He slammed a palm into the wire cage and it rang and rattled, echoing around the warehouse. ‘THIS! Time travel! It’s … it’s going to destroy us!’

CHAPTER 1

2001, New York

Alone, Maddy watched a cluster of seagulls picking away at some rubbish tipped on to the low-tide silt of the East River. Overhead, traffic clunked rhythmically across the Williamsburg Bridge, the end-of-day mad-hour rush of city workers returning from Manhattan back to Brooklyn.

She tossed a small nugget of tarmac into the water, and watched the seagulls scatter at the sound of the splash.

My God. Her mind was still spinning with the idea. My God, Liam is Foster?

That’s what the old man had said, wasn’t it? That he and Liam were the same person; that he was once Liam. And now he’d said it, she could see he was right. She could see the likeness in their faces, in their mannerisms, even in the way they talked.