“But she didn’t,” Michael said.
“She argued. Then she connected me to Liam’s death. I had to take action.”
My face went numb as I struggled against the nausea rising in my throat. “It was you. She didn’t try to commit suicide, or Kaleb would have felt it coming. He felt nothing. You tried to kill her.”
“I did not,” he protested politely. “I simply used my ability.”
“Your ability?” Michael asked. “Do you even have one?”
Jack laughed, a doubled-over, out-loud belly laugh. “Not an ability you’ve ever seen me use. Or rather, not one that you remember. I’ve not been allowed to use it since an unfortunate choice many moons ago. But I carry the same time-related ability gene as the two of you. Just not the travel gene.”
“Which one do you carry?” I asked, hating the weakness I heard when my voice shook. “What can you do?”
His answering smile was wide, and the creases in his face were deeper than I remembered.
“I can steal time.”
Chapter 54
How?” Michael asked. “How do you ‘steal’ time?”
“By stealing memories.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It was so easy to take Grace on a walk down memory lane. As she thought them, I took them, but only the ones keeping her alive. When she had nothing left to live for, there was a handful of prescription sleeping pills right there.” He laughed. “It’s been rather easy to keep her incapacitated. Such a waste of ability to end her life.”
“You stole Grace’s good memories. Did you steal Ava’s memories, too?” Michael pointed at Landers. “Her blackouts. You were responsible for those.”
“Yes.” He looked pleased, as if his star pupil had solved a particularly difficult problem. “I stole Grace’s memories, and Ava’s memories. And yours, Emerson.”
My nausea turned to cold dread and coated my throat.
“Mine? What do my memories have to do with this?”
“Everything, really. Grace was out of commission. I needed someone else who could travel to the past. My search for information led me to the files. The files led me to you.”
I looked up at him in disbelief. I didn’t speak. I couldn’t.
“My love, you were quite a different girl when I first found you. You mainly existed to drool and breathe, and you relived each moment of those terrible experiences every night in your dreams.” His expression took on a gracious quality, as if he was ready to accept praise. Or worship. “I took the memories of what really happened and I kept them as collateral.”
“I don’t—what do you mean, what really happened?”
“Not only were you on the shuttle bus that killed your parents and all those other people; you were the sole survivor of the accident.”
The room seemed to tilt, and the dread in my throat slid down to my gut.
“The grief and the guilt, your multitude of serious physical injuries—it almost ruined you.” Jack shook his head. “You never fully recovered.”
“No, that’s not true.” I backed up, hitting the edge of Liam’s desk.
“You were institutionalized for a while, and then you went to live with your brother and sister-in-law. They felt guilty, you see. It put quite a damper on their lives.” He looked down at me with false pity. “Such a waste for everyone involved. I knew I could change it, so I did. I found you, and I took all those terrible memories. You weren’t lucid enough for anyone to notice, and I knew they’d come in handy.
“Then I changed your history. Thanks to that one bottle of pills, Cat and her exotic matter, and a couple of other key elements, I traveled back in time. I ran into you in the hotel lobby, stopped you from getting on the bus. Then I raced up the mountain to make sure it went off the road in just the right place. It needed to be submerged in the lake to slow any rescue efforts. Everyone had to perish.” He said the words so casually, dismissing countless human lives. “I knew I was taking a chance, but I believed if I spared you the trauma of your physical injuries and the memory of the accident—and it was truly horrific—you’d recover from that black dog of depression that claimed you so fully.”
Michael’s breathing sped up. But I couldn’t look at him. My eyes were glued to Jack.
“Then I made sure to guide your path through the next few years. I even created a scholarship to your boarding school for someone with your specific needs when life in Ivy Springs became too difficult. When you’d recovered to my satisfaction, the scholarship went away.” He beamed and clapped his hands together like a child. I could almost smell the madness. “You came back. To think that thanks to Cat, I did all that work, changed all those years, in just one day.”
“No, no, no, no.” Black spots formed in front of my eyes as my lungs threatened to explode with the effort of holding back sobs. “You’re saying … my parents are dead because of you.”
“Not at all. I’m saying you are alive—truly alive—because of me. You aren’t looking at this logically. Fate claimed your parents, not me. You lived because I chose for you to live. I simply intervened in your circumstances. I saved you.” He took a step toward me, reaching out. “This ties us together.”
“I’m not tied to you. My whole life is a lie because of you.”
“But Emerson, love—”
“Stop calling me that.” A moan started in my throat, low but persistent. I clamped my hand over my mouth.
“I was so very close to convincing you to trust me. Then I could have shared our history with you under much different circumstances. But I was traveling too often, using too much of the compound too fast. I ran out before I got what I wanted. I ended up stuck in the bridge.”
Cat finally spoke up, her voice wrecked with anger. “That’s what did it? That’s why you ended up stuck in that hole? Making sure some little girl’s life was … sunshine and kittens, just so you could convince her to do what you wanted?”
“I’d hardly say her life was sunshine and kittens—”
“But taking the risk was needless. You don’t need her. I have information about another alternative,” Cat said pointedly. “I was planning to tell you yesterday, until Kaleb burst through the door and told us you were missing. Until I thought you were dead.”
He stared at Cat for a long moment. I noticed that he no longer stood straight, but slightly hunched over, as if he needed support. “Another alternative?”
She nodded, and the satisfaction on his face chilled me to my soul.
“The question-and-answer session is over.” Cat kept the muzzle of the gun pointed at Michael and me. “You said you brought the computer disk back. Where is it?”
“I’m not sure,” I hedged. “A lot has happened since—”
“Don’t play with me.”
Cat took aim and pulled the trigger.
The glass doors to Liam’s bookcase exploded into shards as Michael turned to shield me. I wrapped my arms around his waist and braced for another shot, wishing my body were big enough to protect him instead of the other way around.
When the gun remained silent, I opened my eyes to assess the damage. I had to choke back a sob. The side of Michael’s neck was covered in tiny lacerations, blood dotting his skin.
“Surely you understand the gravity of the situation,” Cat said over the sound of the last pieces of tinkling glass hitting the floor. “I want the computer disk with the exotic matter formula and I want it now. Where is it?”
“Catherine. Be patient,” Jack said casually, as if he were discussing dinner plans. A beatific smile spread across his face like slow poison. “I’m sure I can convince Emerson to divulge that particular information.”
“How do you plan on doing that?” Cat demanded.
“Making Emerson whole again made life better for all of us. She knows that. Which is why she’ll cooperate now that she has a chance to do so.” Jack spoke to Cat, but his eyes were on me. His answer almost sounded sensual as it slipped off his tongue. “If she doesn’t, I
could always give her the pain back.”
I swallowed convulsively as the bile rose in my throat. He was talking about his collateral.
Michael reached out for my hand.
“No.” I struggled not to sound like I was pleading when I really just wanted to drop to my knees and beg. “I didn’t ask you to do what you did. You can’t make me help you … because of some … sick and twisted idea about what I owe you.”
Jack’s answering smile broadcast his tolerance, as if I were merely misbehaving instead of telling him no. “I did what I did because it was necessary. Consequences be damned.”
“Consequences,” Michael said under his breath. “All this traveling you’ve been doing—changing things. It’s had an effect, hasn’t it? The space-time con—”
“Is fine. We’re talking about the formula now.” Jack’s voice was dismissive. He stepped away from Cat, moving closer to me. “Are there memories you can’t live without, Emerson? Those of your parents, healthy and alive? Of who you are at all? Or do you want me to return some of the more … unpleasant ones? The time in the hospital? The agony, the grief? Did you really believe it was simply mind-numbing?”
The thought of more pain than I’d experienced already was almost too much to take. Then Michael squeezed my hand, reminding me that if pain came, I wouldn’t have to deal with it alone.
“It doesn’t matter what you say.” I took a deep breath and looked Jack dead in the eye. “I won’t give you the computer disk. I can’t hand you the power to hurt anyone else.”
As quickly as a lightning strike, Jack was beside me.
Michael tried to step between us, and Cat shoved the gun under his chin. He let go of my hand as he prepared to strike, his intent to fight for control clear. I cried out.
“Michael, don’t.” Tears escaped to journey down my cheeks. I looked into his eyes, begging. “I need you on the other side of this.”
If I survive it.
He stopped cold. The pain began.
I held Michael’s face in my mind’s eye as my ears filled with the same rush of air that overtook me when Kaleb tried to take my pain. This time the sound pushed its way into my brain. I cried out, my body sliding to the ground in bone-crushing agony as memories flooded my mind.
The slow slide of the shuttle bus, wrapping itself around a tree. Fire, calls for help, the smell of burning flesh and the metallic tinge of blood in my mouth. I knew I was screaming; I could hear myself. I couldn’t stop.
The visions kept coming. Squeaky metal wheels on a hospital distribution cart, bringing endless trays of food that went back untouched. My arms, looking as if someone had draped skin over my bones. My body, insignificant under the covers, as if it belonged to a small child.
Thomas, heartbreak written all over his face.
The rushing sound slowed, and I curled up into a ball. Freezing, I shoved my hands into the pocket of my jacket to wrap it around me. I heard Michael begging quietly, the sound more painful than if he’d been screaming directly in my ear. Bits and pieces, pictures of my life, kept coming at me. I had no hope of deflecting them.
Two caskets. A long black hearse. An endless array of pills, the clinical smell of a hospital. Staring at the same spot on the ceiling for days on end. Dru crying. Shock treatment. The feeling of hundreds of tiny needles grafting skin onto my back as the medication haze failed to cover the pain. Staring into the face of a counselor as he talked to me about survivor’s guilt. My screaming morphed into helpless whimpers.
“Stop.” Michael’s voice grew louder. “I’ll give you whatever you want. Please don’t do this to her. Please.”
The pictures disappeared. Except for the pounding in my head, the room went quiet.
Before the memories could take root, Jack’s face loomed over me, his expression charitable. I closed my eyes to block him out. The sound of air rushing past my eardrums returned, this time in a vacuum. I could feel the memories slipping away again, leaving nothing but static. I lay there shaking, my muscles as fatigued as if I’d been running for days.
“See, love,” I heard Jack say in a tender voice. “I can give. Or I can take away. The choice is yours.” His next words were a whisper. “Don’t ever forget what you owe me.”
My cheek lay flat against the wooden floor, tears the only thing between. My head felt too heavy to lift, my eyes too tired to keep open. Jack’s invasion of my mind left me wrecked in a ball on the ground. Broken.
“Now,” Cat said. “Tell us where the computer disk is.”
I shifted slightly and something dug into my ribs.
Cat wanted the disk. And I had it.
“No.” I pushed myself into a sitting position as my strength returned in a hopeful rush.
“Emerson, tell them,” Michael pleaded. “Tell them where it is. Don’t let him hurt you again.”
“I say we kill you both where you stand,” Cat offered, all the ugliness in her soul manifested in her face. “We can find it without you. There can’t be too many places to look.”
I found it almost impossible to think over the pounding in my head. “If I tell you … where it is … what’s going to keep you from killing me?”
Cat raised her eyebrows and turned to Jack, now standing beside her.
“Why would I throw away a useful tool, even if there are other options?” Jack said, fingering the chain of the pocket watch. His hair seemed silver in the moonlight shining in through the window. “She’s learned her lesson. If we need her again, I’m quite sure she’ll comply.”
Cat shook her head. “But—”
“Enough.” It was one word, but it had the effect of one thousand. Cat might be in control of the gun, but Jack was clearly the one who controlled the partnership. “We have things to do. We don’t need any more complications in the way.”
He turned away from her and put his hand on the back of the love seat. It appeared he was using it to hold himself upright.
“Emerson. Where is it?”
I worried my bottom lip against my teeth, hesitating, even though my mind was already made up. The adoration that had taken up residence on Jack’s face gave me pause.
“Understand. I’m not doing this for you,” I said in the strongest voice I could muster as I stood up. “I’m doing this for me.”
He smiled.
I zipped and unzipped my jacket nervously. “What are you going to do with it?”
Cat started laughing. Jack silenced her with a glance.
“I have plans.”
Drawing down my zipper and sliding my hand into my inside pocket, I pulled out the computer disk. I held it up, praying it was the right one.
“Right here, the whole time?” Jack asked, now resting most of his weight on the back of the love seat.
I nodded.
“How clever. Bring it here, Emerson.” Like a good little girl. He raised his hand, palm out.
My pulse jumped as I moved toward him, fully aware that the disk might not be the only thing he had plans for. I held the plastic jewel case so tightly it bit into my flesh.
Jack’s eyes were a gray-blue now. Colder than they’d been before. Staring straight into my soul.
He took my hand in his and slid the computer disk case from my grip.
“I’ll be seeing you soon.” Now that I was close to him I saw that his hair had gone almost completely white. He took a step forward and faltered. Cat rushed to his side, pulled his arm over her shoulder, and helped him toward the door.
Without another word, they were gone.
The second the front door closed, Michael rushed toward me and wrapped me in his arms.
“I thought he was going to take you with him.” He covered my face with kisses. “I was more terrified of that than I was when Cat pushed that gun against my throat. Are you okay?”
I couldn’t remember what Jack had shown me.
I buried my head in Michael’s chest and nodded. Holding on. Just holding on.
“Michael, you’ve got to get to a hospital.
Those cuts—”
“They’re fine.” He held me tighter. “They’re small, already stopped bleeding. But we do need to get out of here. We need to tell Liam that Jack’s out of the bridge—that he’s got the computer disk with the formula.”
“He doesn’t.”
“What?”
I pulled away to look up at him, shaking with triumph.
“If I did it right, they don’t have the formula for exotic matter. They have the formula for Kaleb’s emotion control meds.”
Chapter 55
The second Thomas laid eyes on me, he grounded me indefinitely.
That’s not true, exactly. He hugged me first. But the grounding occurred shortly thereafter.
The couch became my new base of operations. I still wore Grace’s duronium ring, and I could see the veil to the bridge too clearly to be comfortable in my room. Forget sleeping in it. I’d also shoved a bookcase in front of the door and forbidden anyone else to go in. Thomas didn’t say a word.
But he did start perusing local real estate listings.
The nightmares started on the sixth day of my sentence.
Flames. Bright and hot, licking around me, as I lay powerless, forced to watch. My parents with their eyes open. Unblinking, cold and dead.
That night I woke up screaming. Thomas came to my bedside and sat with me, holding my hand until I calmed down. But I didn’t go back to sleep.
The next day I watched a marathon of animated movies, craving a fix of fairy-tale endings. Characters in Disney films mostly started out just like me—orphaned, defeated, alone—and they all triumphed in the end.
Unfortunately, I dozed off sometime shortly after Ariel’s misidentification of a fork.
This time I dreamed more than images. I smelled burning flesh, the sickly sweetness of a mass of flowers covering two caskets, the sharpness of hospital disinfectants. I felt shock treatments traveling through my nervous system to my brain, a jolt as a hotel shuttle bus wrapped around a tree. I heard the whine of metal as it broke away and slid down the side of the snow-covered mountain.