by Jena Leigh
Whatever his end game was, Alex was meant to be a key player. Masterson wasn’t going to stop until she’d taken her place on the chess board. Until he’d finally succeeded in making her like him.
Declan trudged his way back through the underbrush and rejoined them in the field.
“Declan, I…” she began.
“Don’t, Alex,” he sad, holding up a hand. “Just don’t. I need to think.”
“What happened back there? What went wrong?” asked Trent.
“What didn’t go wrong might be the better question,” Declan muttered. He was staring blankly into space, his brow furrowed.
Trent looked to Alex.
“Li wasn’t who we…” she began.
“Alex,” said Declan. He spoke her name as a warning. “Not another word. Until we know what information won’t change the future for the worse, the others can’t know a thing about what happened in that meeting. No offense, Trent.”
“None taken.” Trent looked thoroughly confused and was staring at Declan as though he were seeing him in a new—far more unstable—light. It was clear that he wasn’t about to argue. “I’m just glad we got out of there okay.”
Declan sighed. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”
Alex frowned.
He was right. The Alex of this time was still in danger.
“What do you want to do, Decks?” she asked softly. “How do you want to play this?”
“We have to try to stop him. We don’t have a choice,” he said. “So, first things first. You’re going back to Seattle with Nate and Aiden and you’re going to stay there until I know that this thing is over and both versions of you are safe. Trent, think you can swing a week’s vacation on short notice?”
Trent’s face was a mask of disbelief. “Only if you plan on paying my half of the rent next month and finding a new bartending job for me when I get back.”
“Done,” said Declan.
Trent gaped at him.
Declan turned his attention back to Alex. “Trent and I will stay here in Bay View and keep an eye on the other you. We’ve got to stop him before he gets the chance to do anything.”
Before Alex could voice her protests, Trent echoed, “Wait. ‘Him?’ Him who? Who’s ‘him’? Are we talking about Li?”
Alex growled in frustration. “Why do you and the others always insist on benching me every time there’s even a hint of trouble? I can help you, you know, if you’d just give me a freaking chance!”
“Because it’s your fault we’re in this mess in the first place, Alex!” he snapped.
She took a step back, stung by the anger in his tone. But it was the truth of his words that really hit home.
Declan was right. When it came right down to it, she was to blame for all of this. Every choice she’d made, every action she’d taken—it had only made things worse. For everyone.
The chill in Declan’s eyes cut straight through her. “You’re going back to Seattle and you’re going to stay there. Is that understood? I’m going to try to fix this, and I’ll come find you again when it’s over. You’re done, Alex.”
He grabbed her roughly by the arm and Alex was forced to surrender to the pressure of the ensuing jump before she could prepare a retort.
She dropped the last few inches to the hardwood floor of Aiden’s living room with a stumble. By the time she righted herself, Declan was already disappearing in a blinding flash of light.
“Alex?” Nate called, pocketing his keys and letting Aiden’s front door fall closed behind him. “Are you here?”
A cool breeze wafted toward him from the open glass door at the back of the apartment.
He almost missed her at first.
On the concrete floor of the balcony, nearly hidden behind a patio chair, Alex sat with her thin legs pushed through the slats of the metal railing, her feet dangling over the edge as her forehead rested against the metal bars.
Nate took a determined step toward the balcony, then stopped.
Aside from Alex, the apartment appeared to be empty. Where was Declan? Why was Alex just sitting there alone, staring off into space?
And what had happened during their meeting with Li?
He’d expected to hear from his brother at least an hour earlier, but no call ever came.
Instead, ten minutes ago, Brian called Nate’s cell and warned him that he needed to get to Aiden’s apartment as soon as he could, for Alex’s sake.
Brian wouldn’t say exactly what had happened and Nate wasn’t sure the kid actually knew. Nate had spent the entire time Alex and Declan were missing relentlessly pressing his little brother for details about the things he had seen, but Brian’s visions were always frustratingly vague where Alex was concerned.
All Brian would say this time, was that she appeared to be in one piece—and that she needed him.
At that, Nate dropped everything and left work on the spot. The decision resulted in his being fired on his way out the door, but he’d deal with that later.
Alex needed him.
Right now, that was more important than a menial job he thoroughly despised. He would find work again soon. He always did.
Nate watched Alex carefully from across the living room. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her middle and her long dark curls danced about in the breeze.
He’d had six months, now, to work out the mystery that was Alex Parker.
Six months, and the only thing he knew for certain was that he was all-in.
In the single week they’d spent together before she and Declan vanished, Alex successfully—and completely—upended Nate’s already directionless existence.
And in all the months since, he’d struggled to find something, anything, to keep himself steady amidst the chaos she’d left in her wake. In the end, the only anchor Nate found lay in the memory and the mystery of a gray-eyed girl even farther adrift than himself.
The moment he’d pulled her from those icy waters, Nate knew everything was about to change—though he never could have imagined how drastically.
“You rescued her,” Captain Ellis said that night. “She’s officially your responsibility.”
But it wasn’t a feeling of obligation that caused Nate to cave six months ago when Alex begged him to help with their attempts to find the Scientist. It wasn’t responsibility that caused him to drop everything and help her again today. It was something far deeper.
Something he didn’t quite have a name for yet.
His fate was tied to Alex. He’d follow her until the end.
Having no idea what he’d say or how he was meant to help her, Nate willed his feet to move, crossed to the balcony, and stepped out onto the patio.
She didn’t acknowledge his arrival, just kept staring out across the placid waters of the Sound.
He could see the pale tracks of her tears slowly drying on her cheeks. Her eyes were red-rimmed and shining.
Silently, Nate took a seat next to her on the concrete floor. He pulled an open bag of Twizzlers—his winnings from a bet with a coworker—from his back pocket as he did so.
He turned the bag over in his hands, at a loss for what to say. After a long moment of awkward silence, he pulled a cord of candy from the bag and held it out to her.
“Twizzler for your thoughts?”
Alex finally looked his way, blinking as though registering his presence for the first time.
And then she began to laugh.
Nate froze. That was decidedly not the reaction he’d been expecting.
He was even more taken aback when Alex pulled her legs back through the railing, shifted closer to him, leaned forward, and threw her arms around his neck. He hugged her back tentatively and with only one arm, still awkwardly holding the candy.
“Thanks, Nate,” she whispered in his ear, before pulling away.
“I don’t…” he stuttered. “What did I…? What’s so funny?”
She smiled, though the expression never quite reached her eyes. Finally plucking the
Twizzler from his outstretched hand, she said simply, “You’ll figure it out later.”
Alex took a bite of the candy.
“So.” Nate cleared his throat. “You, uh… you want to talk about it?”
She winced.
That was a definite ‘no.’
He tried another angle. “Where’s Decks? And Trent? I thought they’d be here with you.”
The wince became a full-fledged grimace. “Bay View,” she said. “They’re in Bay View. Trying to protect me. The other me, I mean.”
Nate tensed. “Protect you? Protect you from what?”
Alex couldn’t seem to meet his eye. “I screwed up, Nate.”
He tried—and failed—to hide his scowl. He knew Li couldn’t be trusted. And he should have tried harder to stop them from going through with that meeting.
Alex shook her head as though she’d been reading his thoughts, “Not just with Li. Everything I’ve done. Every choice I’ve made lately. I just keep making everything worse. I never should have jumped to the past. I never should have trusted Li. And I never should have gotten you guys involved in all of this.”
Nate shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, Alex.”
Her expression turned questioning.
“Everything that’s happened?” he said, gesturing out to the city below them. “You being here? Meeting us? It was all meant to happen. I’m certain of that.”
She shook her head, but said nothing.
“Hey.” Nate caught her gaze and held it. “Even if you had chosen differently, it wouldn’t have made a difference. You can’t fight fate, Alex. One way or another, it will inevitably find a way to twist your path around and lead you right back to the exact place you were always meant to be.”
After a long moment, she said, “You’re not the first person to say that to me today.” She looked down at the half of a Twizzler in her hand, spinning it between her fingers. “And I’m starting to worry that you might be right. That all of this? Everything we’re doing here? That it’s all already happened in my time. It would explain so much, and yet…”
“And yet?” he prompted.
“And yet, I’m afraid. I’m scared to accept it, because if it’s true then it would mean that none of this can be fixed. That I can’t repair our broken future by changing the past.” Tears filled her eyes again. “That everyone we lost, everyone we might still lose, that none of them can be saved. And I don’t want to accept that. I can’t. I won’t.”
“Who’s coming after you, Alex?” he asked. “Who is it that Declan and Trent are trying to protect you from in Bay View?”
She bit her lip. “Li,” she said finally. “They’re trying to stop him from injecting me with the VX-2 he’s managed to synthesize.”
“He what?!”
Alex sighed and looked back out over the water. “Li’s the one behind the Scientist murders. All the Variants he killed? He murdered them in order to perfect the serum. They weren’t just his victims, Nate. They were his experiments.”
He studied her expression carefully, getting the sense that she wasn’t telling him everything. Why would Li be attempting to recreate Samuel Masterson’s VX serums? And why on earth would he want to inject Alex with it, now that he had?
“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked
Alex shook her head. “Declan made me swear, Nate. I’m sorry. That’s all I can tell you right now.” She gripped the bars of the railing and pulled against them in frustration. “I hate this! I hate not being there. I should be there, but Decks brought me here knowing full well I couldn’t jump and follow him back. He’s in Bay View facing down Sa—” Alex cut herself short. “Someone way more powerful than he is. He’s in an insane amount of danger and he’s refusing to let me help. Instead, he’s dumped me here, three thousand miles away, where he knows I can’t do a thing. I can’t even catch a flight, since I have no ID with me and no cash to buy a ticket. I’m stuck here until it’s all over.”
Nate scowled. “We’ll see about that.”
Alex’s head swiveled in his direction. “What?”
“How long do you think we have before Li goes after the other version of you?”
She shrugged. “I can’t say for certain. He still needs to test the serum against my blood to make sure it works. I have no clue how long that would take. Could be another day or two. Could be another week.”
Nate’s brow furrowed. Finding a jumper here in Seattle that could take them to Bay View was a near impossibility. So many Variants had left town during the Scientist’s murder spree that the only one left he knew about could barely manage to teleport himself across town, much less across the country with three people tagging along for the ride. But they could still spring for Option B and pray that Li didn’t decide to act in the interim.
“Aiden,” Alex said suddenly.
Nate turned to find the lanky blonde standing behind them in the doorway with his arms crossed.
“What are you doing here?” asked Nate. “Shouldn’t you still be at work?”
Aiden harrumphed. “I would assume I’m here for the same reason you are.” He held out a hand, palm down, just below the height of his chest. “He’s about four-foot-ten, persistent as a pit bull, and he seems to think I’ll be taking a road trip and losing my job sometime in the next twenty-four hours.”
“Yeah.” Nate smiled. “That sounds about right.”
Aiden released a breath that was part sigh and part groan. “Whatever. I call shotgun.”
Twenty-Two
Alex woke to the sound of the wind whipping through open windows, the throaty rumble of the Charger’s engine, and the steady hum of the tires resonating through the black leather seats.
She also woke with a kink in her neck and an overwhelming urge to stretch her back like a cat in the vain hope of popping some important joints back into place. Unfortunately, that wasn’t much of an option, given the cramped confines of the muscle car’s backseat.
At some point during the last few hours the sun had set, a slight chill had worked its way into the air, and Nate’s black leather jacket had been draped over her sleeping form. Her own jacket was currently pulling double duty and serving as a lumpy pillow.
Hence the kink.
“I’m going to the picnic,” Nate’s voice called over the howl of the wind, “and I’m taking asbestos insulation, brine shrimp, the cryogenically frozen head of Walt Disney and… a dromedary.”
Alex rubbed the sleep from her eyes and sat up, pulling the too-large jacket tighter around her shoulders to hold on to its warmth.
She’d slept through the last driver change and now Aiden was behind the wheel, the driver’s seat pushed back to accommodate his long legs as he guided the car down an empty stretch of interstate.
“What the heck is a dromedary?” asked Aiden.
“It’s a camel,” said Alex, leaning between the two front bucket seats and staring at the darkened road ahead.
“She lives!” said Aiden. “And thank God for that, because I need to find some food that hasn’t been processed, pickled, or wrapped in plastic. Also, a bathroom break would be fantastic right about now. And a camel, Nate? Seriously? I up the ante with a cryogenic head, and that’s the best you’ve got? An evolutionarily defective horse?”
In the dim glow of the dashboard lights, Alex could see Nate’s smile and the slow shake of his head.
“This is a very unusual picnic you boys are attending,” said Alex.
Aiden took a long swig from a thin metal can. “Clearly, Alex, you’ve been going to the wrong picnics.”
She tilted her head closer to Nate. “How many is he up to now?”
“Four,” said Nate, appraising their driver. “No, wait. Five, I think.”
Alex arched a brow. “Five?”
“And counting.” Aiden lifted the can in question and jostled it. From the sound, the energy drink he held was nearly empty.
“And counting,” Nate confirmed with a sigh.
Five
Red Bulls since lunch? No wonder Aiden was feeling chatty.
“What sort of time are we making?” Alex asked, stifling a yawn. “And what state are we in?”
Aiden’s mumbled reply was lost beneath the clamor of highway noise and rushing air.
“What?” she asked.
“Denial,” Aiden repeated, more loudly this time. He held tightly to his drink with one hand and used the other to fish his cell phone from the pocket of his jeans. He propped his knee against the steering wheel in an attempt to keep the car steady. “You asked what state we were in. That was my answer.”
Before leaving Seattle, Aiden made no bones about his views regarding their upcoming quest. Making it to Florida in time to head off Li was one thing. But changing the course of Alex’s destiny? Well, that was another.
Aiden was convinced that preventing Past Alex from being injected with the VX-2 would be impossible. A lost cause that had just cost him another job and sent him on a cross-country road trip, in a car with no AC and a pair of bucket seats that made his ass hurt just looking at them.
Aiden pressed a button on his cell and a pale blue light illuminated the front seat. According to the phone’s lock screen, it was 11:46 pm.
Twenty-eight hours down, roughly sixteen more to go.
“Missouri,” said Nate. “We’re in Missouri. And we were making great time, until Miss Daisy over there got behind the wheel.”
“Alright then, lead foot,” said Aiden. “You can drive, and I’ll sit there all kicked back in the passenger seat and continuously bitch about how long this trip is taking. We’ll see how you like it.”
“Trent still not answering?” asked Alex, attempting to steer the conversation back into safer waters.
“Nah,” said Nate. He pulled out his own cell phone and checked for messages. “I tried him again a couple hours ago. Nothing but voicemail.”
Not necessarily a bad thing, Alex reminded herself.
Declan had probably instructed Trent to turn off his cell; or at the very least, ordered him not to answer any calls from Nate or Aiden. Just because he wasn’t answering didn’t mean anything had happened yet.
And besides, if Trent answered, they might be forced to admit that they were currently driving the length of the continental United States at well over the recommended speed limit, and would likely be joining them in Bay View before the following day was out.
