Jesse looked up at him. Her neck creaked. “All of them. The whole site.”
Aran blinked. “You’re number one for the entire store?”
She nodded, despite the stiffness of her neck. She couldn’t feel her fingertips. Her toes were tingling.
Aran crossed the room, pulled her to her feet and hugged her. Hard. “God, Jesse, that’s amazing,” he breathed, the warmth of his breath brushing her neck. “I’m so very happy for you.”
Jesse let him hold her. She didn’t know what else to do. Her thoughts careened off each other. Chief among them was the sensation that this was wrong, that it wasn’t supposed to happen like this, not with this silly little book, not when her back was turned, and she was busy falling in—
Jesse snapped up straight. She was trembling, now, too.
Aran shifted away from her. Just a few inches. His eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?”
Her phone buzzed again, rattling against the little table.
They both jumped.
Jesse looked down at the screen once more.
“The Vineyard Gazette?” Aran said, over her shoulder. “Why would they be trying to reach you?”
Jesse looked at him, startled.
Aran rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean, it’s fantastic that the media want to speak to the author of the top selling book, but I don’t get why the Vineyard’s little paper would be one of them.”
Horror slammed into her. “Oh, god,” she breathed. “It can’t be…”
Aran was frowning again, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the laptop screen. “Who is Jerry Hale?” he said, his tone flat.
Jesse disconnected the call, then turned off her phone. It took twice as long as it should because her fingers were uncooperative. Her heart was slamming against her chest. It didn’t help her composure to have Aran peering at the book.
He looked up at her. “This is you?”
Jesse crossed her arms. “I didn’t tell anyone it was me.” Her tone came out sounding apologetic, for she could see the stirring of anger in his eyes. “No one, Aran. I don’t know why these media people are trying to reach me but having the Vineyard Gazette call makes me think…makes me suspect they’ve figured out that Jerry Hale is me.”
“What does Martha’s Vineyard have to do with it?” Aran demanded.
“That’s the snail mail address I use for everything. Veris said I could, because I’m itinerant.” She swallowed. “Your parents still own the house there, and Taylor checks on the house once a month and brings any mail that arrives there for me. But it’s only when I need a snail mail address, you see…”
Her phone buzzed again.
Jesse turned it over. “I thought I’d turned it off…”
“Take the SIM card out,” Aran said, his tone urgent.
She frowned.
“You’re not answering the phone,” Aran said. “How long do you think it will take them to give up calling and track the phone’s location, instead?” He glanced at the window. “They could already be on their way here.”
Fresh horror built in her. She cracked the case quickly and removed the card, feeling nausea swirl in her gut. “This is…how could I have slipped up? There wasn’t any connection between me and Jerry Hale. I thought I’d made sure of it. She doesn’t even have a website.”
Aran was back to reading the screen on her laptop. Reading the book blurb. He glanced up at her. “But there’s an email address in the author description,” he pointed out. “At Jerry Hale dotcom, so you bought the domain. Did you buy privacy for it, too, Jesse?”
Her lips parted. “No…” she whispered. “I didn’t even think of that.”
Aran nodded. “That’s how they figured out who you are. Ten seconds online and they’d have your name, your phone number and your snail mail address…in Martha’s Vineyard.”
He scrolled the screen back up to the top of the page and began reading the description again. “This isn’t your usual fare, is it?” he remarked, his voice tight.
Her heart thudded unhappily. “Aran, no one knew about the book. I didn’t leave you out of this deliberately—”
This time, it was Aran’s phone that interrupted them.
Jesse shuddered. She needed to sit down. She wanted a stiff drink. She felt light-headed.
Aran fished out his phone and glanced at the screen. His only reaction to the caller’s ID was to lift a brow. He answered. “Far…what world-ending event made you pick up the phone?”
Jesse froze. Veris was calling Aran. Aran was right, this was a seismic event.
She thought, suddenly, of Thanksgiving and Veris’ bitter, not-so-off-hand remark about Aran never going home.
That lack of contact ran both ways, she realized.
Aran was frowning as he listened. “Yeah, I can do that, but…” His frown increased. “I can. Of course, I can, but…” He straightened, as if he’d been slapped. “I see,” he said quietly. “Five minutes.” He listened a bit more. “See you then.” He disconnected, put his phone on the table and studied it. His expression was thoughtful.
“Aran?” Jesse didn’t speak too loudly. She didn’t want to startle him or piss him off. She wasn’t sure what was going on, only that she felt as she did when there was a live grenade nearby.
Aran didn’t look up. His tone was complete devoid of expression as he said, “Far wants me to jump you to Canada. He got a phone call from the Edgartown Police Department on the Vineyard. There’s a gaggle of journalists and cameras in front of the house.”
Jesse pressed her temples. Hard. “Oh, shit…”
Then a secondary, but just as alarming, thought occurred to her. “How did your father know I was with you?”
“I imagine my mother found us both on the timescape. She defers to Marit as the expert, but she’s nearly as good as Marit at navigating the time plane.” He still spoke in that stiff, formal and remote voice. The sound of it wasn’t making Jesse feel any happier.
“They know we’re, that we have been, that…that we’re…whatever it is we are?” Jesse felt like she was running three different defense strategies at the same time. Three different threats, all of them major. She didn’t know which one to tackle first.
For the first time since he’d finished his conversation with his father, Aran looked at her.
She couldn’t read the expression in his eyes. There was no expression, she realized. He was holding everything in. He’d shut down, just as she’d seen Brody do, more than once, when he…when he was wounded, or angry but couldn’t sound off because it was Veris he was pissed at and they weren’t in private. Or when he was holding in his response to something he didn’t like or didn’t agree with, especially if it was Veris he was disagreeing with.
Her pulse leapt yet again. How many more times could it do that and not come out the top of her head, or rupture a ventricle? “Aran…”
He shook his head. “There’s no time. Far wants you there yesterday.”
“Literally?” She caught her breath.
“Figuratively. He wants to speak to you. You know what he’s like. He’s probably standing beside the arrival chamber, his arms crossed and his foot tapping.”
Jesse might have laughed at the accuracy of the observation at any other time. She couldn’t even summon a weak smile, now.
Aran’s gaze was unwavering. “How does he know you’re connected with what’s happening on the Vineyard?”
Her heart squeezed again. This time, it lodged in her throat and stole her breath.
Aran nodded, as if she had confirmed his guess. “Far knows about the book.”
“I…” Horror touched her. “I forgot I had told him, Aran! He almost broke my arm to make me give him the name, and Brody said if Veris had the name then I didn’t have to know when or even if he was reading the book.”
“Then Athair knows, too?” Aran’s voice was flat. Almost disinterested in tone, but it made her heart fibrillate.
She pressed her fist against her
aching chest. “This is a disaster.”
“That’s one name for it.” Aran’s tone was dry. “Get your coat. It’s still below zero in Alberta.”
Jesse moved into the loungeroom, where her coat hung over the piano bench, where she had dropped it the last time they had moved through space-not-time. Jumps back into the past, these days, meant arriving in clothes belonging to the life which time instantly spun around them when they arrived. Taking a coat with her was a waste of, well, time.
She picked up the coat and shoved her arms into it. She felt sick. Weak.
Aran had followed her into the room. He stood with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his trousers, his gaze bleak.
“Aran—”
He shook his head. “Not now.” The two words were clipped. Precise.
“Then soon. We have to talk soon. Promise me.”
Aran moved over to the hooks next to the front door and took down his overcoat and donned it, then came back to her. “I can’t promise,” he told her. “I don’t know what we’re jumping into. The only thing I know about my parents is that life around them is interesting in the Chinese curse way.” He put his arm around the middle of her back, just barely pulling her up against him. “We’re jumping back into the cauldron,” he finished bleakly and leapt.
Chapter Thirteen
The brightly lit workroom in the basement of the big log house formed around them. The benches on three sides of the neatly painted square in the center of the room—the arrival chamber—were as usual: one scattered with frantic sprays of equipment and bits and pieces of projects; one table with absolutely nothing on it but a computer tower and monitor; the third with some sort of delicate box construction glued and clamped together drying in the middle of the tabletop. Jesse didn’t know which table belonged to any of them, but she suspected the untidy one was Brody’s.
Brody himself stood just outside the square of white paint, which surprised Jesse.
Aran quickly dropped his arm from around her back. “Athair.”
“They’re on the island already,” he told them. “I’m here to tell you to jump straight there. Taylor got antsy about journalists peering in her windows or damaging the place because they couldn’t raise anyone.”
Jesse’s heart sank.
Brody’s gaze shifted to her. “Don’t let them get to you,” he added. “They’re like sharks. If they sense blood in the water they’ll circle for days until you weaken and they can close in.”
And he would know. He’d been the lead singer of a rock band that had been famous for a while, especially in Europe.
“Great way to make her feel confident, Brody,” Aran said.
Brody looked at his son with a steady gaze that was Aran’s, almost exactly. “Jesse already has the steel backbone. She just needs a sit rep, that’s all.”
Aran glared at his father.
Because Brody never aged and because Aran aged too damned fast, the two of them looked more like siblings than father and son. Their jaws were both squared and stiff. They were identical in height and breadth of shoulder. The same dark hair and pale Celtic flesh. Only Aran’s chin was dark with growth, while Brody stayed clean-shaved, most of the time.
“And it’s good to see you, too,” Brody added. He moved toward the swing door of the work room. “I’ve called the others. They’ll be here when you get back.”
“The others” meant everyone else in their extended, unofficial family, including Neven, London and Remi. Alex, Sydney and Rafe, too.
Jesse’s belly clenched even harder. Brody was calling in the big guns. Sydney was Morrigan, Queen of the Americas, and David Pallis’ second in command.
Jeeze louise…
Aran pulled her back against him, his manner almost rough. “I guess we’re jumping again.” He almost growled it.
Before Jesse could catch her breath, he jumped.
The air in the big central room of the house on Martha’s Vineyard was musty but not cold, for the furnace was left running. Snow piled up against the glass doors on the rear of the house, bright white and dazzling in the late afternoon sun. The naked, leafless oaks around the perimeter of the property sent long shadows over the untouched snow.
Only two of the French doors had their blinds raised. It would have been dazzling in the room if all of them had been opened.
“There you are!” Taylor said, hurrying across the room to where Jesse and Aran stood by the fireplace, which was the unofficial arrival point inside the house for any jumpers. Taylor always left the spot in front of the hearth clear of furniture and obstacles, to avoid tripping up arriving jumpers. She crossed the open spot now, with a thick wad of mail in one hand.
“Hi, Mum,” Aran said, his tone…odd.
“Come here,” Taylor said and hugged Jesse, not Aran.
Jesse took the few seconds of the hug to pull her scattered thoughts togethers. “Hi Taylor,” she breathed.
Taylor gave her another squeeze and let her go. Her big brown eyes were shining when she stepped back to consider Jesse. “Veris won’t tell me what the hell is going on. There’s a dozen journalists at the end of the drive and I think one of them is the ABC, and the others are network affiliates. What have you been doing, Jesse?”
Jesse swallowed. “It’s…complicated.”
Taylor nodded. “It’s you. Of course it’s complicated.”
Jesse blinked. She was complicated? That was not something she would have said about herself.
Taylor went on. “Veris went up to the surgery to spy on the journalists and talk to the Chief about running them off, or not.”
“Can’t we all just go away and ignore them?” Jesse asked, wondering if that was too naïve a hope.
“That’s complicated, too,” Aran said from behind her, his tone wise.
“It is,” Taylor said, nodded. “We’ve had a bit of practice dealing with the media,” she added.
“And Athair scared the crap out of her with some of that experience,” Aran added dryly. “Do we really need to be here?”
“Veris wanted to speak to Jesse,” Taylor said. “Probably better to do it here than have Sydney over your shoulder, weighing in.” She smiled as she said it, with warmth coloring her tone. “Jesse, why don’t you head up to the surgery? I’ll take this chance to talk to Aran in person instead of by text.”
Jesse wanted to protest. To refuse. The last thing she wanted to do was be in a small room with Veris, who could detect more truths just by standing beside her than Sherlock Holmes had deduced in his entire career.
But she couldn’t refuse. It would be churlish, just to begin. It would be juvenile.
Gear up, Captain Hall, she told herself. She gave Taylor a stiff smile and a nod, turned and headed for the stairs.
Her heart was racing by the time she stepped into the surgery. There was nothing in here, now, but it had once held a small ER’s worth of diagnostic equipment and supplies. The built-in counter was empty. A thin layer of dust on the top tickled her nose.
Veris stood near the window. Not right next to it, where anyone glancing up could spot him, but close enough to look through and still be out of reach of the daylight that would reveal him. A cellphone hung between the fingers of one big hand, which made the oversized phone look like one of the old, small ones from ten years ago.
He put the phone on the bench as Jesse came in and turned to her. He didn’t look angry. He didn’t look upset, either. “You’ve been busy.”
Jesse spread her feet. She realized she had settled into the ready position, weight on both feet. She made her hands hang at her sides, instead of putting them behind her back. She was on the alert. Veris tended to do that to her.
“Not something I planned.” She just barely held back the “sir” that tried to follow.
Veris considered her. “Coaxing the world’s media to your door? It’s not your style.” His tone was one of agreement. “But they’re here, now, which means you miscalculated, Captain.”
Jesse nodd
ed. “I did. I forgot to add a privacy screen to the registration for the pen name domain.”
“Ah. I wondered where the leak had sprung,” Veris murmured. He crossed his arms. “Congratulations, by the way. You’re a best seller.”
Jesse grimaced.
Veris tilted his head. His very blue eyes considered her even more closely. “No?”
Jesse sighed. “I just wanted to put the story out there so a few people might read it. That’s all. This, all this fuss, it’s not what I wanted. Not for this book, at least. It was just a throw-away story.”
“You said it wrote itself.”
“It did. But if I wanted this at all, it would be for one of the books with my real name on it. Why did it have to be this one, of all of them?” She threw out her hand.
Veris’ mouth twitched. He leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. “Life can be contrary, in that way. It’s always the thing you don’t have your eye on that blows up on you. The possibility you didn’t think of is the one that happens.”
“That’s just it. I didn’t think it was even a possibility,” Jesse admitted. “I’m a midlist author writing genre fiction. I had no great expectations. If I’d wanted press gaggles hounding me, I would have become an actor.”
“You?” Veris did laugh, this time. A low chuckle. “You didn’t even turn up for your own award ceremony. You flew up here from Washington to tell Aran you weren’t wearing a red shirt.”
Jesse drew in a breath as she remembered that day. She had put on her dress uniform, her arm still in a sling, with every intention of heading to the Armistice Day celebrations in Washington, where she was due to receive a medal she’d earned. Instead, she had headed for the airport and the first flight to Boston.
She had stood before the front door of this house after ringing the bell. The smell of burning leaves had been thick in the air, along with salt from the ocean, and the cry of a distant seagull.
Aran had opened the door. He had appeared to be much younger then than how he looked now. Much more than the few years that had actually passed. Even then, his eyes had caught her attention. The life in them. The intelligence. And the hint of wisdom that belonged to a much older man. Even then, he’d felt older than her.
Kiss Across Chaos Page 15
