Jordan knew it was not a smart thing to say, but in a way, he’d known that before he’d said it.
She stepped closer to him. “I already feel bad enough about that. I’m not one of those people who can just forget their guilt. It eats me up inside. I know how it made me feel when Nathan did it to me, and I didn’t want to do it to you!”
He held his hands up as a stop sign. “Whoa, Kayci, we’ve already been through this. I don’t blame you. It takes two.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t know the repercussions. I did.” She turned away from him.
“Kayci, don’t worry.”
She turned back to him. “But I dragged you into this, pulled you away from your life.”
He laughed. “Did you forget how messed up my life was? And, really, it’s not like you did it on purpose.”
She met his eyes.
“Did you?”
“A part of me thinks maybe I did do it on purpose.”
“Well, there you go. So I was a guinea pig?”
She didn’t respond.
Jordan continued. “Go ahead, admit it and assuage your guilt. Tell me how you used me, experimented on me. I can take it. I’m not fragile.”
“I get it.” Kayci shook her head. “I admit it, okay. A sick, twisted part of me wanted to see what happened. You were drunk. I was drunk. I threw caution to the wind and had sex with you. I knew while I was doing it what was at stake. I used you just like Nathan used me but in my head it was…different.” She walked to the middle of the beach, where she sat on the sand.
He watched her, and the sadness in her face was evident even from fifty feet away. The moon cast enough light to make her blonde hair shine. She looked like the perfect picture of an angel. He loved her. So why was he pushing her on this? Why was he being such an ass?
With a deep sigh, he walked over and sat next to her. The waves were crashing up and rolling within inches of their outstretched legs.
“I’m sorry.” He picked up a fistful of wet sand and tossed it into the surf.
“You’re right. I should’ve never dragged you into this. And I need to make it right.” She looked to him and nodded. “I’m going to make it right and get you out of this. Then we can go our separate ways and be done.”
He shook his head. “Is that what you want?”
“It’s for the best.”
“Says who?”
“We can’t keep going like this”
“Like what?”
She looked at him, obviously steeling herself. “I just think it’s better if we don’t…I mean…I’m falling in love with you, Jordan. And that is dangerous for people like us. We don’t know what will happen. It’s all so complicated.”
“Love is always complicated, Kayci.”
“Not like this.”
“So you want to throw away what we might have because you’re scared?”
“I’m not scared, Jordan. I’m petrified. I loved Nathan, but he never loved me. If you can look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t love me, then we can end this conversation.”
“I can’t.”
“Exactly, and that raises the stakes for both of us. The first night, that was a fling, a fluke. We hardly knew each other. And you know what that did to you. If we add love to the equation, God only knows what might happen.” Kayci wiped her face with the back of her hand.
“So that’s it. That’s what you want. You don’t want to take a chance on me?”
“It’s not that.”
“No, it is that. You’re afraid that whatever happens, it won’t be good. In a sense, that means you feel we’re no good together.”
“Jordan, I—”
He cut her off. “I believe the universe unfolds the way it does for a reason. Everything that happens has a purpose. That’s why I had so much trouble accepting the people I saw die. I knew there was a reason for it. And I was right. Now I believe there’s a reason we were brought together. If you can’t see that, I can’t make you. We could be great together.”
He rose, walked back to the tree line, and sat near their drying clothes, resting his back on a large downed tree. He felt sadness wash over him like he had not felt before. It was over.
He closed his eyes and decided to catch some winks while he had the chance.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Kayci sat on the sand, alone. She stripped off her bra and panties and threw them far enough behind her so the tide would not carry them away. She then walked into the ocean, stopping once the water was waist-deep. She leaned back, wetting her hair, washing off the sand with her hands.
The moon was casting a glow onto the waves around her, and she felt so small. It was hard to argue with Jordan. What he’d said made too much sense. But she was scared. True, she was afraid of what might happen psychically, but she was afraid on a deeper, more, primal level. She’d lost everyone that mattered in her life. She’d let Nathan con her into thinking he cared for her, and she’d lost him too. But he was a mirage that had never existed.
Being nude in the water made her feel good. It was a cleansing. She glanced over at Jordan. He didn’t appear to be looking at her, but she didn’t care if he was.
She left the water slowly and headed back to the firmer sand. Stretching out on her back, the sounds of the wind and water became one with her mind. Before long, the sleep she desperately needed took her.
During her sleep, she woke on the frequency plane. The red world drew to life around her. A scene she didn’t recognize came to life. Tall buildings sprang up, the iridescent red lines working to create amazing detail and shading. Though she had seen this many times through her life, it was always astonishing.
The phantom laser finished drawing the scene, but it was eerie. There were no people around. She was standing among the buildings of Hoboken, New Jersey. Washington Avenue was in perfect detail.
The town was still. The shushing noise of traffic rose up from some highway in the distance. Each passing car seemed to say her name as it thumped over an expansion joint.
“Hello?” she called out, but no one answered.
A sudden anxiety started to wash over her. Something about this scene was all wrong. “Hello?” Kayci yelled again, but no one answered. Bad thoughts started to creep into her mind. She’d heard of stories of psychics stuck here on the frequency plane, unable to return. Like Anna, stuck here forever with no way back to her body and no way to move on to the next life. It was an irrational fear at this moment in time for it bothered her nonetheless.
Kayci tried to wake up and couldn’t. She could feel her body but could not get back to it. Once when she was twenty or so, she’d remained trapped in here for several hours. Maybe like then, she couldn’t leave until she received the message. Each visit here had always yielded a message of some type. Perhaps the meaning was deeper in the world and she needed to push farther into the scene.
She started moving down the street, passing by all the Washington Street bars. As she rounded the last building, the path-train station was the end of the scene. There had to be a reason why she was in Hoboken.
“Hello?” she called again, hoping Anna would answer.
She looked into her head as the modulating lines of others beat in many waves. She looked for a familiar frequency and saw Jordan’s, Nathan’s and another that looked formidable but unfamiliar. She tried to connect to Nathan’s, but like a bolt of lightning, it jumped and moved away from her. He was still in evasive mode. It would take a long, exhausting effort to connect and she knew that was not why she was here.
She traced Jordan’s modulation and pulled it in, calling him. But she could not lock on. He was blocking her. This was the future, and she knew it now. She moved forward, and a room drew around her. A body drew on the floor. It was a man, but he had no face. She worried it could be Jordan.
Finally, the phantom laser started to draw a human form, from the bottom up a flowing, lacy dress. In a few seconds, Anna came into view.
“Thank God,” Kayci ex
haled as Anna nodded a soft greeting.
“Hello, Kayci,” Anna hissed in her electronic distant voice.
“Anna, what is this? Why am I here?”
“For the same reason you have always come.” Anna floated closer.
“But what does it mean? Who is that?”
“The answer is the place and not the people in it. You know the future is never written. It is always up to you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“This is where it all must end, the final circle of this session.”
She thought for a second, but still didn’t understand the message. “Why here?”
“Because it must be.”
“You’re not helping me.”
“I’ve given you all the help I can, Kayci. Search your heart and you will know the answers.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just not sure I trust my heart to lead me to the truth.”
“Kayci, your heart will always lead you to the truth. In all matters, the heart is the only thing more powerful than the mind. Trust in yours and in his.”
“I’m not sure I know how.”
“Of course you know. It is what we all are, what we all need. You are a gifted practitioner of energy, Kayci, but you are still a flesh and blood human. If you forget that, you risk becoming like me. You must embrace matters of the flesh as you’ve embraced the unseen things here. If you throw away what’s in your heart, you risk becoming trapped in your mind. That is not an option for minds like ours. There must be a balance, and you’re at risk of losing yours.”
Anna and the entire scene started to fade away.
A wicked downdraft of wind and a thunderous clapping of a rotating chopper blade blasted her from her sleep. She scrambled from her supine position and started looking around for her bra and panties that had blown away somewhere. The lights from the chopper fired down unto the beach. She found her clothes.
Jordan stood there holding her shorts and T-shirt. As the helicopter touched the sand, they climbed in.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Nathan looked at Caden Taylor with contempt, but he would not return the glare. Instead, he flippantly read his celebrity magazine. That made Nathan angry. “It was risky for you to come here.”
“It’s risky for you to question me.” He flipped a page of the magazine.
“I just don’t see what purpose is serves. It’s an unnecessary tactic. I could’ve escaped her without your help.” Nathan sipped his glass of wine and placed it back on the white linen tablecloth.
The lounge was a typical Costa Rican tourist trap. The prices were twice as high as the local places, and the wine sucked. The dark wood and low lighting made it anonymous, and that’s what Caden wanted. And whatever Caden Taylor wanted, he got.
Caden lowered the magazine and removed his thin, wire-rimmed glasses. He was a very deliberate man, both in his moves, and in his mind. His perfectly coiffed blond hair was slightly longer than Nathan had ever seen it.
Caden folded his arms on his crossed knee. “Nathan, you couldn’t find an elephant in a Volkswagen right now. She’s already three steps ahead of you. She called for an extraction team and is probably halfway back to the States by now.”
Nathan squinted at him and stretched a skeptical smile. “When was this?”
“During the night.” Caden laughed. “You had no idea. You’re worthless. You didn’t even feel it. So blinded by the money and the freedom, you’re starting to worry me. Do you think this is over? This will never be over until she’s dead. They won’t let you rest, and as long as she’s out there, they’re only one blackmail away from forcing her hand. You need to get your shit together, soldier. You need to stop dreaming about how you’re going to spend that money and engage your head in this situation. You’re weak.”
Nathan was burning inside. He wanted to take the dinner knife on the table and stick it into this asshole’s heart.
Caden smiled. “Nathan, you’re never going to be a step enough ahead of me to do something like that.” He glanced up from the knife to Nathan. “Have you forgotten who you are dealing with? Do I have to remind you?” Caden stood up, zipped his navy sailor’s jacket, and leaned in close to Nathan’s ear. “Don’t even think of crossing me, Pratt. I will mind-fuck you so hard, they’ll be fitting you for a straightjacket at some filthy, crazy farm in Florida with no air conditioning and pasty food.” He stood upright. “Now, get your ass to the airport and get to New York. You’re done calling the shots. This is my show from here on out.”
Nathan watched him walk away.
Chapter Forty
Jordan didn’t speak a word to Kayci the entire flight back to Colorado. He was angry with her, still annoyed at what went on while they were on that beach. He wasn’t even sure why it bothered him so much. It hurt his ego to learn she’d used him, but he understood she didn’t do it with malicious intent. Jordan knew he was being an ass, but he couldn’t stop himself. He wondered if perhaps she was playing with his mind. She could probably make him think anything she wanted.
Nevertheless, she made it clear there wasn’t going to be anything more between them. She wasn’t going to take a chance on him, on them. It was too risky, and that was that.
After they landed, she told him to take the Explorer and drive back to Syracuse. She was going to fly to New York City with the FBI and go her own way. He was done, and he’d gotten what he wanted. He knew why he saw people die and that’s what mattered.
Jordan wheeled off the highway to get some gas. Kayci had given him a bunch of cash when they went their separate ways. At first, he refused it, asking only for what she’d stolen from him, but she insisted he take a large stack. He did not count it, but it was a hefty wad. If he had to guess it was probably close to fifty-thousand dollars. It was more than enough to get a new apartment somewhere. He had not decided where to move yet, but he was leaning toward going back to New Jersey.
At the gas station, he went inside and handed the clerk a fifty. He filled up the Ford and got himself a cold turkey sandwich and a Gatorade at the deli.
He decided to pull into a small picnic area to eat his lunch. He left Stormy sleeping in the SUV and sat on the picnic bench to watch some kids playing around with a soccer ball on one side of the field.
Next to Jordan at the edge of the parking lot, was another group of older teen boys hanging around a skateboard park doing various tricks and showing off to the teen girls watching them from the bleachers.
Memories of his own days of BMX riding popped into his head. His friends would roam around parking lots of suburban New Jersey like a gang on wheels. By comparison, the tricks they did back in the day were lame. As he watched one of the kids on his BMX pull off some impressive moves, he was actually missing riding. That short ride in Costa Rica made him want to take up biking again. He would definitely pick up a new mountain bike once he got settled.
The cloudless sky was serene. He was lost in it for the entire time it took him to eat his sandwich.
As he crumpled up his garbage, something caused him to focus his attention back over onto the girls sitting on the few bleachers on the side of the small skate park. A pretty, young blonde girl reminded him of Kayci. He wondered where she was and knew if he wanted to, he could find her. But he would respect her wishes and stay away.
He looked up from the girls. A three-story tower stood behind them. It looked like the entire field and skate-park were relatively new. He was not even sure what town this was, only that he was somewhere near Cincinnati.
A sudden buzzing started to spike into his body, and then he felt the crack. In his mind, the balloon started to fill.
Time started to slow, and the scaffolding above the group of girls on the bleachers broke free on one side. It swung, holding precariously by a single thin cable.
He ran in slow motion toward the group of teens, screaming for them to scatter. They did, except one girl in particular. The headphones in her ears kept her deaf, her eyes buried on the screen of a handh
eld device.
Jordan’s vision zoomed in on her long black hair. The thin purple streaks caught the sunlight and seemed to be the only thing he saw. The scaffold was going to crush her skull.
He glanced up to see the scaffold just fifteen feet above her head. He felt like he was moving so slowly, but he was bridging the gap. With one final push, he was able to dive in full extension and tackle the girl off the edge of the bleachers and to the ground.
With a sudden rush, everything normalized, and the steel rig crashed to the aluminum bleachers with a thunderous clatter. He had gotten the girl out of there with only a second to spare.
His heavy breath was evidence of how fast he’d run. A worker near the light blue tower saw the entire episode and came running over.
“Is everyone okay?” the wiry, mustached man asked. “That was some quick thinking. You saved her.”
Jordan bent over as the strain in his head was enough to make him a bit dizzy.
The young girl was crying and shaking. “You saved me.” She looked to Jordan. He nodded and straightened.
“What’s your name?” Jordan asked her.
“Ariel,” she replied, putting her hands over her mouth, still shaking as one of the teen boys went to her and hugged her.
“Ariel, I’m Jordan. It’s nice to meet you. Be careful in the future.” Jordan walked away to the SUV and climbed in.
He reached out and took hold of the steering wheel with both hands, mostly to stop them from shaking. After a few seconds of heavy breathing, he was fine.
“Well, that was fun,” he jested to Stormy, who replied with a soft meow and curled up into a deeper sleep.
Just as a few people were walking up to the SUV, he pulled away. No doubt they were going to make a big deal about what he’d done. He wanted no part of accolades. The thanks from Ariel was all he needed and wanted.
The feeling he had was amazing. He was learning to make a difference. The only scary part was that this was the second incident in a matter of days. He wondered if he would somehow now be able to know when death was stalking someone and get ahead of it.
Savior Frequency (Frequency Series Book 1) Page 18
