Chapter 23
Nothing happened. Kaitlin waited for the blast. All was quiet, but there was a weird tension in the air.
Then a huge explosion sounded from outside, too distant to be the bad guys shooting out the bathroom door, but close enough to make the walls tremble. Which meant—hopefully—it was the cavalry.
For a moment there was silence, then shots rang out, some sort of automatic weapon fire. Followed by silence once again.
A voice called out. “Kaitlin?”
Kane. She almost collapsed with relief. She did sag against the wall for a moment and closed her eyes.
“Kaitlin!” She heard the call in her head that time.
“We’re in the bathroom. Don’t shoot. We’re coming out.”
Josie was standing across from her, her eyes wide.
Kaitlin blew out her breath. “I’ll never call him ‘that fucker Kane’ again.”
Josie grinned. “I don’t believe you.”
“Come on.” She unlocked the door, turned the handle, and slowly pushed it open.
Outside was chaos. Smoke billowed in through the doorway which had clearly been blown in.
While the room appeared full of people, she counted only five.
Kane stood at the center, dressed in Kevlar with SWAT across his chest.
He looked as shell-shocked as she felt. The room faded around her as she stared at him. Closing the distance between them, she reached out with a shaking hand and touched his cheek, just to make sure he was real. “Thank you.”
He ran a hand through his hair. His fingers were trembling. “When we opened the door and you weren’t here, I thought we’d lost you again.”
She stepped back and smirked. “No such luck.”
Rose was there and Janelle, also in Kevlar and sporting an array of seriously impressive guns. The other two men, she didn’t recognize.
“What happened to the bad guys?” she asked.
Kane shook his head. “They must have slipped away when we opened fire.”
“I don’t see how they could have. They were in here only seconds before you blew in the door.
” She thought about it—no way could they have gone out that way.
They would have crashed straight into Kane and his crew.
And the window was still closed. Besides, they were ten floors up.
She remembered Rose telling her that Melody had escaped from a locked basement while handcuffed, with no sign of how she could have gotten out.
They’d presumed, with hindsight—once they’d learned Melody was from the future—that she’d time-traveled out.
Just magically disappeared without even a puff of smoke.
“I think they must have time traveled back to wherever they came from.”
“You really think so?” Rose’s brows drew together. “Without a time machine?”
She nodded. “Like Melody from the locked basement.”
“You’re right. That is wicked cool.” Rose came up to her and opened her arms and Kaitlin stepped inside and was enveloped in a hug.
“Don’t do that again,” Rose said. “My nerves can’t take it.
And you nearly gave Kane a heart attack.
I thought he was going to spontaneously combust when we came through the door, and you weren’t here. ”
Kaitlin looked back at him. He was wearing a reflector device, and she couldn’t read his thoughts. But she could see the signs of strain on his face. And the expression in his eyes. She’d always known he cared. Even when he was trying to kill them all off, he’d still cared.
She remembered the vow she had made that if she got out of here, she was going to make love with Kane.
Now she was out.
The question was, would she hold herself to that vow?
First, they needed to get away from here.
“Who are the other men?” she asked.
“Ethan organized a SWAT team,” Rose said. “We thought it might be better if we looked official. These two guys”—she waved a hand to encompass the two strangers—“are Conclave.”
“Ethan sure is a useful guy to have around.” She turned to the men. “Thanks for the help.”
“He’s also organized a plane,” Rose continued. “It’s at Heathrow airport and ready to fly us wherever we want. And Dave is downstairs waiting to take us there, so I suggest we get the hell out of here.”
Kane had been strangely silent through the whole proceedings. He still looked like he was in shock. Kaitlin snapped her fingers under his nose. “Are you still with us?”
He shook his head. “I never want to live through that again.”
“Well, I can’t promise anything, because I’ve got to warn you, trouble seems to follow me around. Which means, if you have got a thing for me, you’re going to have to get used to trouble.”
“Jesus.” Maybe Kane was going to get over his infatuation. And quickly. But she didn’t think so. He reached out and took her hand, pulled her toward the door. “Let’s go home.”
For a moment, she dug in her heels. She had a feeling he was referring to Uganda. Was she ready to go there? But she had an idea that if Stella and her cronies returned from wherever they had vanished, they would be heading to Uganda as well.
Looked like Uganda was where the action was going to be. She allowed him to pull her along. “Okay.”
He seemed vaguely taken aback that she had given in so easily. She supposed it was quite a novel reaction from her. Then again, she liked to keep him on his toes.
They took the elevator to the ground floor—just the four of them.
The two Conclave operatives stayed behind, presumably to clean up.
Likely, they were real SWAT officers. That was the way the Conclave worked.
They recruited from within organizations that could be useful.
Ethan had explained it to her once. They kept people on retainer, almost like sleepers. Many of them were never woken up.
Outside the building, another black SUV was parked. It looked exactly like the last one, except this one showed no obvious damage, so she assumed it was new. The windows were tinted but the driver’s window rolled down, and she caught sight of Dave at the wheel.
Kane still had hold of her hand, as if afraid she might bolt if he let her go. She considered telling him that she wasn’t going anywhere—except to the airport and then to Uganda. But she quite liked him keeping hold of her. It made her feel grounded.
He opened the back and tugged her inside. Taking a seat, he pulled her down beside him. Rose got in the front beside Dave, and Janelle and Josie took the seats behind them, then the vehicle pulled out into the traffic.
She was pondering the time travel thing. “If the bad guys did return to the future, how did they do it?” she asked. “They obviously didn’t have a time machine. So why do you think you have a big silver time machine, but they didn’t need one?”
“I’m guessing they come from farther in the future. Maybe they did away with the need for an actual machine.”
“Melody certainly didn’t have a time machine,” Rose said from behind her. “I would have noticed.”
“That would make sense. The machine that brought our ancestors back in time came from an earlier future than the two agents we just met. And they probably came from around the same time as Melody.”
She cast Kane a sideways glance. He was staring out of the window. She couldn’t read his thoughts and could get no sense of what he was thinking.
Suddenly, he turned and looked at her. “Here, put this on.” He handed her a reflector device.
“Just in case they come back.” He frowned.
“I suppose if they’ve gone back to their time, then they could actually return here at any point.
Hell, they could already be here. Or they could go back to just before the attack and—Jesus, it does your head in. ”
“I don’t think they can come back and change what happened.
Melody once told us that there are rules.
They’re not allowed to change the past. It can have too many ripple effects and totally alter the future, and then, they might not even exist. Which hopefully means they won’t come back and stop you from rescuing us.
Because then we wouldn’t be here... You’re right, my head just exploded. ”
“What else did you learn?” Rose asked.
“They’re agents for something called the Tel Group. But other than that—not a lot. I couldn’t read them at all.”
“Like Melody.”
“Yes, I’m guessing they have a one-way implant that stops anyone getting inside their minds, but they can still read everyone else.”
“I wish I’d known that when I caught the last lot,” Kane said. After the party where Josie’s husband had been shot, the attackers had headed for Uganda. Kane had been there waiting for them. “I would have taken a look inside their heads.”
“What did you do with the bodies?” Kaitlin asked. Though maybe she didn’t want to know.
“Left them in the jungle for the scavengers to clear up.”
“Ugh.”
He shrugged. “Everything has to eat. Why waste good food?”
She supposed he had a point. There were a few people she wouldn’t mind feeding to the hyenas and vultures.
“They told me a couple of interesting things,” she said.
“They’re here to finish a job—which I’m guessing is tied to the mission and the cataclysm, but whether to cause it or stop it, they didn’t say.
But they’re also here because we’re some sort of anomaly.
We’re not supposed to exist now, and they want to know why we’re here.
And maybe, how we’re connected to them.” She thought for a moment.
“But that was secondary. The ‘job’ was their primary concern, so we have to presume that they’ll head to Uganda and try to take the time machine. ”
“They could be already there,” Janelle added.
“We’ll contact Jake from the plane,” Kane said. “They’re on high alert anyway. Nothing will get through our perimeters.”
“They don’t need to get through,” Rose replied. “They can just beam up—or whatever it is they do—inside the cave right next to the machine.”
Kaitlin shook her head. “No. I doubt they would have gotten accurate enough coordinates from inside my head. I don’t think they would risk it. But, hell, what do I know? Let’s just get there.”
She sat back and stared out the window as they drove through the dark.
It had been a long day. Her feet throbbed from all the walking, her leg hurt from where they had jabbed her with the sedative, her head ached from their goddamn mind probe.
Then Kane rested his hand on her thigh and warmth and peace flooded her.
She closed her eyes and drifted off into a light sleep.
She woke as the vehicle stopped. She blinked and realized she felt better. The headache was gone, at least.
They’d pulled up in front of a medium-sized plane. Hopefully it was big enough to get them all the way to Uganda, but small enough to land at the local airport. It looked disturbingly similar to the plane she’d been in eighteen months ago—the one that had been shot out of the sky.
Apprehension tightened in her chest. She ignored it. Having avoided the place for years, she was now filled with a need to get to Uganda as quickly as possible. Something was going to happen.
A man stood at the foot of the steps, and she recognized Detective Steve. Josie gave a little cry, flung open the door, leaped out, and raced across the tarmac. She came to an abrupt halt in front of him, reached out and touched his face. Then they were hugging.
Kaitlin sighed. She’d been worried that Josie would back away now that she had nearly lost Steve. But her friend was obviously made of sterner stuff.
“Aw,” Rose murmured from the front. “I think Josie has gotten over her asshole husband at last.”
“Yeah. Let’s hope we can keep them both alive long enough to appreciate it.”
Kane was already out of the car. Reaching in, he took her hand and almost pulled her out, then kept hold of her as they crossed the tarmac and climbed the stairs into the plane.
Ethan had outdone himself; the plane was pure luxury.
More echoes of the one that had crashed with her on board.
She shook off the feeling. She couldn’t give in to her fear, couldn’t let it control her actions.
No one was going to shoot them down. The last time, it had been rogue Conclave agents, but Ethan was sure he had rooted them all out.
There was absolutely nothing to worry about.
Kane headed toward the row of seats, still holding onto her hand and she couldn’t get up the energy to object.
Besides, she quite liked the feeling—it took her mind off imminent crashes.
He nudged her toward one of the wide seats and took the one beside her, finally releasing her hand to fasten his seat belt.
He was still being quiet and staring fixedly ahead.
She wanted in his mind. Presumably, they could take off the reflector devices once they were in the air. Surely there would be no one close enough to read them at thirty thousand feet.
She closed her eyes as the engines revved, her hands curling into fists on her lap. Then she felt Kane’s hand in hers, uncurling her fingers.
“You’re scared of flying,” he said quietly from beside her. “That’s why you were acting weird in the helicopter.”
“No, I’m—” She bit off the words and then sighed. “Yeah, I am. Just a little.”
He shook his head. “I’d forgotten about the crash. Jesus, how could I forget?”
“Hell, I try my best to. And I’m not too bad. Except I keep flashing back to the pilot’s thoughts just before he died.”
“It was one of the worst days of my life. Your plane just vanished off the radar.”
“It wasn’t too good for me either. The thing I hate most is that I used to love flying.”
“I’ll teach you how to fly a plane. It’s one of the best feelings ever. You’ll forget you were ever afraid.”
She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. But she’d think about it later. If there was a later.
They were speeding down the runway now, and she kept her breathing slow and even, her fingers loose in Kane’s. Then they left the ground and her breath caught. They were climbing, and she felt slightly light-headed. Finally, they leveled out and the seatbelt light flashed off.
“Good. I need a drink.” She flicked open her seat belt—she hated the feeling of being strapped in, unable to move—and jumped up.
Beside her Kane rose to his feet, towering over her. He stared down. She’d thought his face free from expression earlier, now she noticed a tic jumping in his cheek. “No, you don’t. Not yet anyway. You need to come with me.”
“I do?”
“You want to have this conversation in public?”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to have this conversation—whatever it was about—at all. She looked around at the grinning faces.
Was no one going to save her?
“Not a chance,” Rose said. “Go take it like a man.”
She gave in to the inevitable and allowed herself to be pulled along—again.