See No Evil (The PSI Trilogy Book 2)

by J. R. Rain

  “And Noah? I can’t forget about him. We’ve got to go back for him.”

  “I know. Let’s figure this out first so we can circle back and keep him alive.”

  “He’s still breathing. I can hear him.”

  Ayden’s back relaxed a tiny bit. I knew he really did care for Noah.

  I used that as a clarity point and focused on Noah’s singular breathing. It was too fast and uneven, but it gave me a lone person to focus on. I listened, then traveled outward, expanding, expanding, through the entire compound, one hundred yards at a time. I’d only had to do this once before, in the very beginning when I’d been learning. I’d hit some sort of flight path for noise and the sheer amount of noise had nearly deafened me. But it had forced me to hone my ability so that when things got chaotic, I could dial it in and push through the noise to find who I wanted.

  This was different, though. This was the toughest block I’d encountered and I had to wonder if it was Simms or someone else who had set it up. Orlenda didn’t have the power to do so.

  This was like a hundred of those flight paths, almost as if I were pushing back in time to hear Hope.

  Another block, another flight path, but I could hear her. It was just the smallest snatches of her voice, but I could hear her and a woman arguing with a man. Hope was running.

  Running straight for us.

  I bent down and opened my arms. She’d be here any second. I told her we were here, waiting for her, hoping she’d hear and calm down. Right now, she was panicked out of her mind and searching for me.

  Then she ran right past me.

  I stood and heard her on the other side of Ayden. She’d paused for a brief second—long enough to look around for me, then kept going.

  “That’s not possible.”

  Ayden looked up and lowered the nose of his gun. “Did you get something?”

  I couldn’t believe what I was thinking, but it was the only thing that made sense. “We’re on the wrong timeline.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  “Beg your pardon?” Ayden asked.

  “It’s why I can’t hear her clearly.” I spun in a circle, looking up and down the road. “She was right here, Ayden. She was coming right for us.” I threw my hand behind us. “And now, she’s still running. Running in a future where I can’t get to her.” My voice was rising and panic was closing my throat. “I can’t get to her, Ayden.”

  He grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to figure this out. But don’t flip out on me.”

  I focused on his eyes and knew he was right, but the panic’s hold was strong and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to shake it off. If Hope was stuck in another reality, possibly with the two people I also heard running after her, I had no idea how to fix that. I couldn’t travel, so I couldn’t go back to the past and follow her to her new future—I couldn’t hop timelines. I couldn’t do anything. I was more helpless than I’d been five minutes ago.

  “We have to get Noah and get out of here. We’ve got to regroup.”

  He looked at me warily, but didn’t press me for answers. This was how we worked in the field and he trusted me implicitly. “Let’s go.”

  We hurried back to Noah. I helped him up and he was incredibly weak, but alive. Ayden wadded up random work clothes from the site and wrapped Noah’s wound. The bleeding had slowed, but moving him would reopen whatever repair his body had managed. “I’m sorry,” I said, looking into his baby blues.

  “Where’s Hope?” He ignored the truth of my apology and that was probably best for now so I could focus on what we needed to get done without turning into a mushy pile of emotions. I swallowed it all down and stuffed it away like a good agent.

  I filled them both in on my theory while we eased Noah to the edge of the compound.

  “Stay here,” Ayden said. “I’ll take the bike up the road into the town, and find a car.”

  We agreed and waited. Noah didn’t speak much. I briefed him on what was going on with Hope, or what I thought was going on.

  “Not good,” he said.

  “There’s intel on the device. Wolf sent me a contact that contained a cloaked folder. There was a map on it leading to what we think was the location of the scrolls. Grant Simms needed Hope to get those. There’s a lot more information on that contact. Simms was the one who had her in training for time travel. Maybe there’s something in that file that can help us get her back.” I prayed that was the case. God knew I was kicking myself for ever allowing her to travel. Maybe we shouldn’t have tried to change history for the present and future. For me, it could mean I’d lost Hope.

  Noah took my hand as we sat on the ground. “We’ll get her back. We’ll see what Simms has on the contact. Do we even know where Simms is?”

  “Nope.” I shook my head.

  “Yeah. Weird.”

  Ayden pulled a compact car up about then, jumped out and helped me get Noah into the car.

  With Hope and whoever she was with on a completely different dimension, I had no idea what the hell we were going to do to keep her safe, but I had to trust that she was a smart-enough girl to figure out why I wasn’t coming to save her.

  I contacted Sister Marie-Luce and she directed us to a safe house. We got Noah into the house and I stitched him up after we knocked him out with some pain meds. I didn’t like leaving him incapacitated, but the pain had nearly done it for him by the time we’d reached the top step. The bullet had exited cleanly, which was a good thing.

  Ayden paced the edge of my makeshift surgery table. “I’m getting cleaner visions now, but nothing that’s helpful. Noah’s going to live.”

  I clipped the final thread and wiped the blood off his chest. “For now.”

  Ayden grunted. “For now.” He watched me wash my hands and wipe them on another towel. We’d ruined about a dozen getting Noah cleaned up enough that I could stitch him without closing in anything that would kill him slowly in a week or two. I’d dressed my fair share of wounds, but not on anyone I cared about, and not under these conditions. Thankfully, this safe house was equipped with everything I’d needed, just like all the others, but it was still a crazy thing to stitch up a gaping bullet hole on a kitchen table.

  Ayden sat down in a plush chair close to a window and began transferring the files on the contact onto a laptop that we’d found in the house. As he went to work, I kept vigil over Noah and paced the floor, worried sick about my sister.

  After some time, I heard Noah groan and I walked over to the table and wiped a cool rag across his forehead. “You doing okay?”

  “No. I feel like I got shot.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, you did a good one on yourself.”

  His laugh was rusty and pained.

  I pressed gently on his shoulder. “You need to rest. Ayden and I will pull chairs over so we can figure out what’s next.”

  Noah looked at me and I got hung up in his gaze. “Thanks for coming back for me.”

  “I’d always come back for you.” I fidgeted and Ayden sat a chair down behind me, brushing the backs of my knees. Probably so I’d know he was right there. I brushed Noah’s damp hair back from his forehead, unsure of what to say, but wanting to make him laugh again and ease the tension. The three of us would need some time to fix what we had between us, but for the first time, I felt like we could.

  “I have to tell you both something, just in case,” Noah said, obviously in pain.

  “It can wait,” I replied.

  “No, it can’t. Listen, I did some energy work around Jacqueline and I also spoke with Sister Marie-Luce. Jacqueline did something to me. I don’t know what or how, but she did and she was able to get me to do things that my conscious self can’t recall.”

  I shook my head. “What?”

  “It’s confusing, trust me. But it appears that I’ve been working both sides without knowing it. I was the one who ran the operation to abduct Hope and turn her over to Orlenda in the first place.”

&nb
sp; “No. We were in Mexico after Domingo Rodriguez when Hope was taken from the compound.”

  Noah nodded. “I know, but from what I’ve learned, I orchestrated the operation. I don’t know if Simms was somehow involved or why, but I was and I didn’t even know it.” He winced.

  “I really don’t understand,” I said.

  “Sister Marie-Luce says there is information in a leather-bound journal I had bought for Jacqueline when we first met. I don’t know. I really don’t. I don’t know where it is, but it contains something of value. We have to find it. I think Jacqueline was practicing some sort of black magic and we are caught up in it now.”

  I put my hand on his arm. “One thing at a time, soldier. One thing at a time. We’ve got to get you well, and we have to get Hope back. We can deal with whatever it is that Jacqueline did and whatever it was that she started. But first things first.”

  “She’s right, man. Get some rest. I’m onto something with the cloaked folder.”

  “All right. But I felt you guys should know,” Noah said.

  Ayden and I walked into the family room.

  “Think the drugs are kicking in with him?” Ayden asked. “What he’s saying is a little far out there.”

  “I don’t know what to think anymore,” I replied. “I mean, isn’t everything we’re involved in just a little far out there?”

  “Good point.”

  “Let’s get my sister back and then deal with the rest of it later. We need to study what’s in that folder and see how we can get to her.” I sat down next to him and we opened the file Wolf had sent us, both of us hoping that we’d find some answers in order to get my sister back.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Hope raced toward where she thought Kylie was, even though she knew that her sister wouldn’t be there. She had to take the chance that she’d been wrong about the timelines. Tears blurred her vision, but she wasn’t going to let Kylie down and be a big crybaby. She had to push through the fear that she was trapped on another timeline with Geryon and Echidna. Hope had heard Kylie and Ayden, but their voices had been down a long tunnel, as if they were another dimension away, and they were.

  The scrolls twisted in her pocket.

  Echidna came around the far corner and Hope ran straight for her, which caught the woman off-guard. “Geryon, get us out of here! Control her,” the woman ordered.

  Hope laughed. Like that would ever happen.

  Only thirty feet separated them, and Hope had to make everything come together at precisely the right moment or the entire thing would collapse.

  She sucked breath into her lungs, but they already burned from the exertion and fear. Hope kept going, knowing this was her last chance. When she was ten feet from Echidna, Hope located her hummingbird who found the tiny weakness they needed. Her guide slipped behind the strong shield that had been set up. Hope followed. As soon as she was sure it was secure on the other side of the shield, Hope traveled back as far as she could think to fling herself. Echidna’s face soured immediately as she lunged for Hope’s disappearing image, taking hold of her leg.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  We’d made it through most of Grant’s files and tied it together with what little we knew about the scrolls and the real reasons why Orlenda, or anyone aware of them, would want them. I tried not to focus on my worry about Hope. The kid was strong and smart and until I could figure out how to time travel to another dimension to save her, I was going to have to trust that she could stay alive. We’d find a solution, I just wasn’t sure what.

  Ayden pulled up two files together, one from test results at the schools, highlighting the talents of half a dozen kids and the other, a timeline of horrific acts in history. Holy shit.

  “You think Grant Simms has figured out how to use those kids to recreate those events? Recreate violent acts of history?” asked Ayden.

  I leaned back in my chair, suddenly sick all over again. “But why?”

  Ayden squeezed my knee. “Does it matter?”

  “I think it does. We always pull motivation into cases when we’re trying to find workarounds and a way to put an end to something. Why should this be any different? If we know why he’s doing it, or why anyone of them are doing it, then we’ll be able to possibly pinpoint their next moves.”

  “Crazy doesn’t always move in a straight line, Ky.”

  I shook my head. “Grant is not crazy, he’s desperate. Orlenda is crazy. The Russians, I don’t know. But Grant Simms is...I mean, come on, what makes a lifer go off the deep end like this? It’s something else besides insanity.” I frowned and stared blindly at the screen. “I know I always look for the best in people, but I don’t think Grant started bad, I think he turned somewhere along the way. What I don’t know is when.”

  Ayden pulled the computer away from me and punched up two more files. “Have Wolf cross-reference this with anything else he thinks is relevant.” He lifted his head and gazed at me, tenderness and pity softening his features. “But Ky, I think you need to face facts that it’s highly possible that Grant’s always been on this track. There’s nothing, no dangling carrot that could turn someone against the world like this. This is the kind of thing that starts when they’re young and festers. I think he deliberately tried to get himself in a position of power and made a whole lot of contacts that got him the things he needed.”

  I still didn’t want to admit that a man I’d thought of like a dad could have turned so bad.

  “Maybe,” was all I conceded. I looked at Ayden. “So now what?”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Hope landed hard and teetered on the steep incline of the sand dune, held by Echidna’s grip. She’d gambled and gone back about a thousand years, hoping that would be enough. There weren’t a lot of times in the past when the land of Israel wasn’t a deadly place, but she only had to be in the past for a moment. Pockets of buildings stood all around her, but none right by where she’d landed, and all she needed was to buy a teeny tiny bit of time.

  Echidna heaved and gasped on the sand next to her. Hope twisted and rolled as fast as she could down the side of the dune, wrenching out of Echidna’s grasp before the woman could regain her breath and get herself righted.

  “What have you done?” Echidna yelled, but Hope didn’t look back, she just rolled and rolled, closing her mouth and eyes tight to keep as much sand as she could out of them. If she could make it all the way to the bottom of the dune, then she could leave and strand the evil woman here. It was the most brilliant plan Hope had ever thought of. Without any way to travel, Echidna would be stuck back in the unsafe borders of Israel without friends or weapons, or even money. She probably knew how to speak Hebrew, so she might survive, but Hope just wanted to trap her as far as she could away from Kylie. The only other problem was Geryon. But he could be looking for her for the rest of his life. She didn’t think Echidna knew how to time travel, but she knew Geryon did. He had no idea what timeline they were on. He’d been left far into the future.

  Hope dared to open her eyes, and Echidna was crashing down the side of the dune, legs and arms flailing as she tried to keep her balance in the deep, hot sand. The terrain was terribly uneven here and the sands weren’t at all what Hope had expected, but she kept rolling and twisting, trying to come up with the perfect time to leave. As long as she left before Echidna touched her, Hope would be safe. She should go right now because Echidna was gaining on her, but she wanted to get just a little...further...away.

  The woman tripped and fell to one knee, spreading the distance between them just enough that Hope knew she’d have enough time to completely disappear. She didn’t want to take the chance that Echidna could catch up to her in the few seconds of in-between time when Hope wasn’t quite here but wasn’t quite gone. She wasn’t positive that the person had to be touching her right when she started traveling, but she wasn’t going to take the chance.

  The entire valley shimmered and Hope traveled forward again, latching on tightly to her hummingbird�
��s current location.

  Once again she asked for St. Eligius’ guidance. As Echidna reached her and tried to grab hold of her, Hope transcended and went forward in time to where she belonged.

  She was back at Qumran 4. A man she didn’t know or recognize was in the cave and at first, she started to run. He yelled. “It’s okay. I’m going to take you to your sister. I’ll take you to Kylie, Hope. I promise.”

  Hope looked at him warily. She knew she shouldn’t trust him, but something in the man’s emerald-like green eyes said that he was speaking the truth, and she knew she needed to get away from the caves. She reached for his hand.

  “Nah, kid, trust me. Don’t take my hand. Just follow me. I’ll get you safely back to Kylie.”

  She followed the man out.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  We continued to look through the files. There was information on each child at the school, including Hope. There were details on the scrolls and The Book of Enoch. There were numbers and reports in Excel spreadsheets that we couldn’t figure out.

  But nothing was telling any of us how we could reach Hope.

  “We have to go back to the caves. We have to find her. We don’t have any other options. Sitting here, trying to understand all of this could take days or weeks,” I said.

  “We need Wolf,” Noah said, sitting up slowly and getting off the table attempting to amble over.

  “Whoa, there. Take it easy,” I said.

  He batted a hand at me. “I’m fine. But you’re right. I think we have to get back to the caves and see what we can do.”

  “I don’t think you’re in any position to go anywhere,” Ayden said.

  “I made arrangements for you to go back to Sister Marie-Luce and heal,” I said.

  “Bullshit. You’re my team and I’ve caused you both hell. I need to make it up to you and figure out what Jacqueline did to me, to us. There are answers in what I can only quantify as some kind of witchcraft.”