Vortex: A Tempest Novel

by Julie Cross

  “What about your boyfriend? Is he okay with you, flirting with strangers?” I asked.

  “Go ahead, Flynn … level the playing field, but nothing too definite,” Collins said.

  “Brian flirts better than he plays football. Besides, he can’t hear me,” Holly said.

  “Good. Very good,” Collins said. “Now ask him to dance … Carter and Lewis are out there. She’ll jump in when he gets bored with you. This job is yours to keep if you want it, but just between you and me, Lewis is dying for you to screw up. She just told me that you don’t have the balls to get any closer to the subject.” He laughed again, like he knew this would set Holly off. She didn’t like to be told what she couldn’t do.

  A few more words between me and Holly … She asked me to dance … The Journey song played, getting louder and louder. And I remembered her carefully calculated movements. She wanted to prove them wrong, but she wasn’t as comfortable as the character she had played that night. Except … there were a few minutes when I felt like she got lost in the moment … or maybe she was just lost in her role.

  Or maybe I was lost in mine.

  “I bet you get a little wild if you’re drunk,” I heard myself say.

  “I bet you won’t find out,” Holly said.

  “Get him to invite you over, Flynn. We need to search his place,” Agent Collins said.

  “Unless…” Holly said.

  “Don’t go overboard, you can always slip something in his drink. No seduction needed,” Collins said.

  “So, where did you say you lived?” Holly asked.

  I heard myself turning down her open-ended invite and then we must have started writing on napkins at that point. I barely listened to the next couple minutes. Instead, I thought about what Holly had written on that napkin: Tell the wind and fire where to stop, but don’t tell me. Was she trying to tell me something? The quote was just so … Holly. Inside and out. That made it a lot harder to separate that girl from the one in the diary.

  The part where I kissed her followed and then Agent Collins spoke again. “Okay, he’s obviously not inviting you over. Let’s go with the fallback plan. Prove he’s an agent and close the door on this interaction between the two of you, at least for now.”

  That would explain the weird questions about people’s eye color. The fallback plan involved Senator Healy’s made-up bet, Wicked tickets, and me trying not to be completely crushed. After the part where I had walked away, Holly started speaking to Agent Collins in muffled whispers.

  “I don’t think it’s him. He’s just so … vulnerable, but guarded,” Holly said. “He can’t have anything to do with Adam … I don’t know … He just doesn’t seem like the assassin type. This is harder than I thought it would be.”

  “No one is asking you to be Freud,” Agent Collins said in a much gentler tone than he had used all night. “You just follow orders and let us figure out the rest. You did well tonight. For a rookie.”

  “What now?” Holly asked.

  “I don’t think it would hurt for you to make suspect number twenty-two a little jealous. Plant a seed for future use,” Collins said.

  I could hear Holly sigh. “Sure.”

  “All right, I get it … you need a break. Grab Brian and make sure our guy sees you leaving early … together. That’ll be good enough. And, Flynn?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Get some sleep … eat something … call your mother … whatever you need to do to get your ass in gear. I want you healthy. At one hundred percent for the next mission. We can’t change what happened to Adam, but we can keep it from happening to you and find out who did it,” Collins said.

  There was a long moment of silence before Holly spoke again, saying, “Okay … I’ll try.”

  “Carter?” Collins said after another brief pause.

  Carter was the guy on the dance floor. I had already pulled up images in my mind of that night and was nearly positive I could identify this guy. That was more info about Eyewall than we had two days ago.

  “Yeah, boss?” Agent Carter said.

  Now I had the name, face, and voice.

  “Flynn’s heading out … We’ll revisit suspect twenty-two after tonight,” Collins said.

  Agent Carter laughed. “She’s gonna have to sleep with a suspect eventually. What else is she good for? You’re too easy on her. Lewis would have never gotten away with that.”

  The recording stopped and I stayed there, leaning against the counter, taking deep breaths, trying to keep myself from flinging a chair out the window. Finally, I stood up and walked over to the couch. Kendrick sat frozen and wide-eyed, while Stewart chewed on a fingernail, avoiding my stare.

  “Did you guys have to do that?” I asked.

  “What?” Kendrick asked, looking surprised by the question. “Go undercover? Flirt with a suspect?”

  “Not flirting,” I said firmly.

  Stewart finally looked at me. “He’s asking if we’ve slept with someone as an assignment.”

  “No,” Kendrick said right away, then she let out a breath and added, “But close.”

  “Seriously?” I said. “Like you really felt like you had to do it … or was it your idea?”

  Stewart laughed and then her face turned completely serious. “Yeah, she did it because it sounded fun … Are you on something? We do what we have to do. If Kendrick was fat and ugly she wouldn’t have to worry about any of that. Neither would I. But power is power in whatever form we can get it.”

  My eyes bored in to Stewart’s and I had to ask. I had to know. “Is that what it was … with me? Did someone make you do it?”

  She stared right back, waiting a long time before answering. “No. It wasn’t an assignment. Your dad would have never … I mean … I couldn’t…”

  “How did you know about Agent Collins?” I asked, changing the subject quickly while she was being honest.

  She let out a breath, shaking her head in frustration. “Agent Collins offered me a job.”

  “When?” Kendrick asked.

  “Two years ago … right after I started training.”

  “Does he know which division you work for?” I asked, and even though I wanted to not think like an agent, I couldn’t help it. Stewart was offered a position by the division trying to take us down. How did we know she hadn’t accepted that position, but stayed in Tempest as a—

  “He knows now … but then, I’m not sure,” Stewart answered, her eyes bouncing between us, probably weighing our suspicion.

  “Well, maybe you’ll remember more about the EOTs or some details to help us take them down,” I said, thinking that might be the only way to free Holly.

  Her face changed to stiff and formal. “I’m not going to remember anything else, so you might as well just forget about telling anyone.”

  I crossed my arms and stared her down. “What’s the deal? Did you want to join Eyewall? You heard what they think about us.”

  “Forget it,” she said, shaking her head. “I just thought you, of all people, might understand.”

  Kendrick kept her eyes on us, but stayed silent.

  “Why me? I haven’t been invited to their secret society, if that’s what you think. Agent Collins hasn’t offered me a job,” I said.

  “Did you listen to anything Thomas said the other night?” Stewart asked. “He said things none of us have ever heard before. And it didn’t really sound like they wanted us dead. I know we should assume he’s being manipulative, but what if he’s not? We don’t even know what the hell we’re fighting. All we know is what we’re told by Marshall and now Healy. I’m not taking down any Eyewall people without a damn good reason.”

  Both Stewart and I turned toward Kendrick, who was now staring at her hands. She took a deep breath before looking up at us and saying, “Stewart’s right. Everything about the other night had me shook up but I couldn’t place where my fear was coming from … and now this thing with Holly…”

  “We don’t know anything,” I conceded. The u
ncertainty should have made everything feel worse, and maybe I was still in shock, but the fact that the three of us had just agreed to doubt the people we worked for created this bond I’d never wanted to form, and yet … it was nice. My heart sped up as an idea formed, and I let it spill out before I could second-guess myself. “I need you guys to look up something. It’s really important, but I can’t tell you why just yet.”

  “Okay…?” both of them said together.

  “Surveillance photos … from March fifteenth of this year … around five in the afternoon until six.” I waited for them to shake their heads or show some kind of reluctance, but neither did. “The camera on Ninety-second Street … right in front of the Y.”

  Stewart grabbed the laptop from Kendrick and set it on the kitchen counter, already typing superfast. “I think I know how to find those.”

  Kendrick rushed behind her, watching over her shoulder. I glanced down at the coffee table and saw they had Holly’s diary out, along with a few pictures of Adam and me that Holly took and taped to various pages. I picked up the pink notebook and the pictures and sat down on my bed, flipping through the pages.

  SEPTEMBER 27, 2009

  I’m so, so confused. Now would be a great time to have a parental figure truly lay down the law. Or just tell me what to do. I made plans with Jackson tonight that started with me meeting him at his dorm and then me breaking up with him (of course he only knew the first part). Well, I show up a few minutes before seven and his roommates, Jake and Danny, let me in.

  Because he’s not back from class yet.

  Seriously? Its seven o’clock. What the hell has he been doing for the last five hours? Some kind of mysterious activity. Like always.

  By seven-thirty, I’m completely pissed off and he doesn’t answer his phone. I decide not to leave because I’ll lose my nerve and I won’t be able to say what I need to say tomorrow.

  I knew I had avoided reading this last night for a reason. My eyes drifted from the notebook page to the picture of Adam and me at the zoo … an elephant’s ass positioned right between us. I turned a bunch of pages, choosing one closer to the front of the notebook. There was another picture of me and Adam at an overnight campout, Holly seated between us, sharing a blanket.

  Holly knew the answer to 007 Adam’s question: he was my friend, even without the time travel. I think I had never actually come up with concrete reasons why he and I connected so well right after we met, but looking back on it now, that me was probably very desperate for someone to see through all my bullshit and not make a big deal out of it.

  And he was Holly’s friend, someone who shared her restless desire to avoid ordinary life.

  And he was gone.

  “Jackson?” Kendrick said, while Stewart continued her search for the photos. “While you were asleep, we came up with a couple different strategies for making sure Holly’s safe and not in the line of fire between Tempest and Eyewall.”

  I heard her words, but I couldn’t let them sink in. My eyes bounced between Stewart and Kendrick, then down at Holly’s diary and Adam’s picture. And the idea that Stewart and Kendrick had spent all of last night helping me. Now they had a plan to protect a complete stranger … for me. It was risky and against CIA orders and neither of them looked even the least bit doubtful.

  And I’ve been lying to them all this time.

  It was too much to handle … too much to keep to myself and still be open about everything else. Adam’s gone … Mason’s gone … Dad’s MIA … Holly’s brainwashed. This was my family now, or as close as I’d get in this timeline.

  “Junior?” Stewart abandoned the laptop and walked toward me, snapping her fingers in front of my face. “Did you hear anything Kendrick just said?”

  I grabbed her arm and held on to it to keep her from snapping. “I’m not sure you guys should help me.”

  “Why not?” they both said together.

  “No one in Tempest is going to kill me or throw me to the wolves … The EOTs aren’t going to kill me,” I said, feeling my breath quicken with panic, knowing it would all tumble out. I couldn’t stop it. “But you guys—especially Stewart—are disposable.”

  “Because of your dad?” Kendrick asked. “I don’t think that really gives you a big advantage. He’s just as replaceable as us.”

  “No, nothing to do with my dad,” I said slowly, trying to figure out why they hadn’t caught on to my hints.

  “He’s just fucking with us,” Stewart said, shaking her head.

  “I’m not fucking with you!” I took a deep breath, lowering my voice. “They won’t kill me because I’m too valuable … An EOT didn’t bring me to this timeline, I brought myself here.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  JUNE 18, 2009, 7:27 A.M.

  Stewart leaned her face very close to mine, then threw a worried glance in Kendrick’s direction. “Do you think it’s just shock?”

  “Most likely,” Kendrick said, walking closer to us.

  I gave Stewart a light shove out of my way and went straight for the closet, digging up my lockbox with all my notes. “I’m only telling you guys all this because I probably won’t stay here very long. So it really doesn’t matter.”

  “We should call Dr. Melvin,” Kendrick muttered under her breath.

  I found the page and slammed it onto the bed. “In 1989, Dr. Melvin and Tempest used the eggs of an EOT and joined them with an average Joe’s sperm and stuck them in a woman named Eileen Covington’s uterus, and nine months later a pair of half-EOTs were born.”

  “Wait … are you talking about Axelle?” Kendrick asked.

  I gaped at her. “You know about it?”

  Stewart looked back and forth between the two of us, confused.

  “Yeah, I know about it … but not much. I don’t know what happened to products or the subject,” Kendrick said. “I thought it hadn’t happened yet.”

  “The subject was shot by an EOT named Raymond in October of 1992. The female product of Axelle died of brain cancer in April of 2005,” I said, all in one long breath. “And the male product of Axelle … well … you’re looking at him.”

  “Uh-uh,” Kendrick said.

  “No way,” Stewart said, shaking her head.

  Okay, so they weren’t going to try and attack like I had thought, but they might check me into the mental ward. I hadn’t really considered that outcome. “If you guys would just sit and think about it for a few minutes—” I stopped suddenly, not having the patience to wait for them to think it through. Blood was pumping too fast through my veins. Despite Emily’s warnings and everything else, I took the impulsive route. “I’ll just show you.”

  “Show us?” Kendrick and Stewart said together.

  “Yep.” I took a step back, away from both of them. “Don’t blink.”

  * * *

  Half a second passed and I stood in the exact same spot in my apartment. But Stewart and Kendrick were gone, all the papers and cups strewn across the coffee table were gone. I turned on my computer monitor and clicked on the date: June 16, 2009, 12:22 P.M.

  It was two days ago … I had focused on that date, but it felt more forced … or just heavier, and I was sure I had jumped further back in another timeline, unless …

  Frantically, I grabbed a knife from a kitchen drawer and shoved the bed aside, then slowly lifted a floorboard with the aid of the knife blade. I flipped the jagged piece of wood upward and carved the words: Jackson was here.

  I made sure the board was smoothed down flat and the bed returned to its original position before jumping back.

  JUNE 18, 2009, 7:32 A.M.

  I ended up landing so close to Kendrick I knocked her back onto the couch and fell right on top of her. She just looked up at me, eyes wide with shock, and said, “Holy shit!”

  “Oh, my God,” Stewart said from behind us.

  I swallowed hard, waiting for either a million questions at once or an attack.

  “But you don’t have it,” Kendrick argued from underneath me.
“The Tempus gene … you don’t have it … I’d know.”

  “Maybe because I’m only a half-breed?” I rolled off Kendrick and onto the floor, then lifted the bed up toward the wall. My fingers searched frantically for the almost-invisible crease where I had pulled up the wooden floorboard. My hand froze, feeling it … just like I had left it a few minutes ago. My heart raced as I pried it up and stared at the carving, now two days old.

  “Holy fuck!” I shook my head in disbelief. “I actually did it. I mean, I’ve done it before, but this time I actually tried to do it … I altered the past. I did a Thomas-jump.”

  The grin on my face must have looked totally creepy, because Kendrick and Stewart slid closer to each other, as if preparing to converse quietly, but probably neither knew what to say.

  For me, I had just realized that maybe I didn’t have to leave after all. Didn’t have to take the risk of making new timelines. I could actually alter the past. Fix it. Everything.

  “Let’s make some more coffee,” I said finally. “This is gonna take a long time to explain.”

  “Oh … kay,” Kendrick said, moving toward the kitchen.

  Stewart sighed and sank onto the couch. “I’m all ears … This is gonna be good, isn’t it?”

  “If crazy is your definition of good, then yeah. It’s gonna be great.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  JUNE 18, 2009, 5:30 P.M.

  “It’s not working!” Pain shot through my head and all I could do was lie facedown on the wood floor, panting and waiting for even ten percent relief.

  “Maybe you’re focusing on the wrong moment?” Kendrick suggested.

  We had spent the last eight hours talking time travel and experimenting. Kendrick knew a lot more than I ever could have imagined and was almost as helpful as Eileen had been. It was now even more obvious why she was in this division.

  But none of her knowledge or research could help me actually succeed in doing the Thomas-jump again. I totally sucked at it and the half-jumps were wearing me thin.

  “Let’s take a break … please?” she said, pointing to the couch. “We can review the timeline data again. Maybe that’ll help you get a grasp on what you’re trying to do.”