Tim reached over and plugged the laptop’s power cord into the wall. He was going to blow every breaker in this building. Hell, more likely for a half-mile radius. He had to assume the data from the vid monitors would be erased as well. They were on an automatic backup off-site, but he knew the sync schedule, and he still had a good ten minutes. He only needed two.
“Here we go.” Tim walked to the first switch he needed to blow, and flipped it. The small electrical explosions started on the opposite side of the room.
Crackling now with a life of its own, the energy built and jumped all around him like a giant lightning bolt trapped inside his lab. Classic arc flash, but bigger, and more powerful than most electricians would ever see. The energy was beautiful, frightening, and it did its job.
Everything blew up. His laptop jumped off the counter, smoking. The magnetite bars hit the ground and the arc flash moved on, jumping from wires in the walls, to lab equipment, to him.
The last thing he remembered was smiling as the white light jumped into his body and lifted him from the floor, throwing him backward into the wall. It hurt like hell, the right side of his head and neck burned with searing heat, and he smelled cooked human flesh, but he wasn’t dead. Yet. Guess he could thank his rubber-soled shoes and FR-rated lab clothing for doing their jobs.
More explosions followed, but Tim’s ears got fuzzy, then stopped working. He tried to follow the arc flash’s growing destruction with his eyes. The fire suppression system activated, but it wouldn’t help. Red warning lights flashed once from the ceiling, then exploded. This thing was better than an EMP. It would wipe out everything until one of the generators actually exploded, breaking the circuit.
“Mr. Tucker? Sir?” He heard pounding on the door as the building activated their emergency protocols and the rescue team tried to get into the lab.
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His jaw muscles were locked. It didn’t matter if he opened the door or not. Either way, they’d come in.
Every light bulb in the ceiling exploded in a rain of glass and sparks. It was beautiful. He heard cursing from the hallway, and car alarms going off outside. The camera lenses in the corners shattered and the wires started to smoke. The windows went dark as all of the building’s exterior lights exploded.
Mission accomplished.
He watched his new baby jump around the room for as long as he could before the world went black…
Chapter One
One Year Later…
Silent darkness fell from the sky over Chicago and all of her suburbs. The absolute vacuum of nothing spread over the city faster than dawn could shoot its rays of new morning light to combat it. Night hung on by her fingernails, the sun trapped behind the horizon for a precious few minutes. The early risers, those who initially believed themselves blessed to witness a miracle, gasped in awe and cried at the unearthly black space floating down over them like a galaxy without stars.
Then the screaming began as everything and everyone, nine million people, an entire city, simply disappeared, vanished into nothing. A loud boom sounded as the surrounding gases in the atmosphere raced to fill the void where Chicago had once been. It was gone now.
The once great city had simply ceased to exist.
Three Days Earlier, 5:17 a.m.
Silence hovered over the water and a few moments of peace settled over Tim like a cool mist on a hot July day. He grinned and finished tying the spinner on his line. The soft lapping sounds against the side of his aluminum boat, smell of wet vegetation, and honking geese gliding around the edges of Hendrick Lake were as far from the deserted lab, blazing heat and gunfire as he could get. Tuesday morning meant most people were back at work, leaving the lake and the best fishing spots empty…just the way he liked it.
Bandit curled up in her bed on the floor of the nine-foot boat, content to sleep for a few more hours. The tiny Pekingese mix was used to Tim’s routine. Fish. Run. Scan the news headlines every night for things he both expected and dreaded to see. He’d sit at the computer and she’d curl up in his lap. She did everything with him now. When he’d flown home to bury his parents, she’d been a four-month-old puppy he could fit inside his combat boot.
He’d been home for more than six months’ this time, told his superiors that he needed time to heal and “get his head back in the game”. The top brass didn’t like the fact that his research was turning up nothing but rotten eggs. Nothing was said, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know they’d hoped the death of his parents would push him deeper into their world. When the suits in sunglasses had shown up, Tim had been too damn stupid to realize it was time to get the hell out. No, he’d jumped into the deep end of the pool and realized too late that he didn’t want to swim.
That stupid mistake had gotten his parents killed.
He was sure that his parents’ deaths had been planned. The Senator’s death shut down all talks of ending the program, and served as a way to wound him, to take away his options.
But, if they’d really done their homework, they would have realized that his dad was a hard-ass, ex-military man who made life at boarding school a blessing. To his father, he wasn’t a child, he was a product for polishing and display.
His mother had been a social climber more interested in impressing the other Senators’ wives than taking care of a messy, curious, busy young boy. She’d produced an heir and considered her job done. She’d loved him, as much as she was capable, but she didn’t bake cookies, comb his hair, or generally take any interest in his life beyond making sure he wasn’t starving to death. The rest was left to the long string of nannies. He’d always been jealous of the other kids’ mothers, with their hugs and care packages, and the smell of homemade cookies.
Want in one hand, shit in the other. He could daydream all he wanted for better parents, but it wouldn’t change a thing. They hadn’t beaten the hell out of him, screamed at him night and day, or spent their lives shooting heroin. They’d simply been detached, busy living their own lives, and now they were gone. He had no siblings. No extended family that wanted anything from him but his mother’s money. He had nothing left now but a dog, a gigantic, empty house that felt more like a fine art museum than a home, more money than he could ever spend in his lifetime, and scars. Lots of scars.
Bandit hopped up and yipped at him, happily wagging her tail as if to remind him that he had her. And how dare he think he needed anything else? The princess of a puppy had been his mother’s whim and a completely spoiled lap dog. The tiny pooch had lived a life of luxury, traveling in his mother’s designer purse everywhere she went. Somehow, Tim didn’t figure Louis Viutton would approve. He’d considered giving the pup away after the funeral, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. That was a year ago. The little girl wasn’t much bigger now, a whopping ten pounds soaking wet, but she kept him company, she was smart, she liked to fish, and she was the only family he had left.
And the ridiculously expensive, diamond-decorated bag she’d spent the first few months of her life riding around in? He let her keep it, enjoyed watching the mutt drag it around the house like a chew toy. His mother was probably rolling over in her grave.
“Okay, fur ball. Let’s see what we can catch today.” Tim cast his line out over his favorite fishing spot and let the spinner sink a few inches before slowly reeling it back in. The rhythm and monotony chased away the last of his lingering nightmares.
Bandit growled low in her throat and paced over her pillow, rumbling like a tiny electric toy stuck in the On position. The hair on her body started to rise, forming a round fluffy brown-and-white snowball with huge brown eyes. Bandit looked like a cartoon character. Tim would’ve laughed, but the hair on his arms crackled with static electricity as well and rose to attention like a thousand miniature soldiers. The water puckered as if it were being hit by raindrops, but there were no clouds. No rain. No thunderstorms on the horizon waiting to zap him and his boat into oblivion with a stray bolt of lightning.
So, where
the hell was this charge coming from? Felt like an arc flash was building all around him. He needed another run-in with a lightning bolt like he needed more scars on his ugly-ass head.
Tim reeled in his line and stashed the fishing pole in its spot along the side of his seat. Bandit stood at rigid attention on her fluffy brown bed and continued to growl, a steady little rumble of warning that set his teeth on edge. They were too exposed on the water, too out in the open. He clenched his jaw to keep a stream of expletives from rolling off his tongue.
Perhaps this was a freak storm. There had to be a perfectly good explanation, because if it were the boys from the lab or the Casper Project, the Rear Admiral’s men would’ve knocked on the front door. And if they’d figured out what he’d done, he would’ve been dead months ago.
No, whatever this was, it wasn’t normal. His silence came as automatic as breathing. He didn’t start the small trolling motor. He took out a wooden oar and paddled smoothly for the tree line behind his house. Two minutes, perhaps three, and he’d be under cover. He hoped that wouldn’t be two minutes too long.
“Shit.”
The electrical buzz building in the air continued to grow stronger until he could hear the slight hum around him. His skin prickled and the water on the side of the boat rose, formed hundreds of fluid stalagmites rising, bursting, and sinking back into the water faster than he could track them.
Earthquake? E.M.P? Geomagnetics? Had those bastards finally found someone to finish his research? Had they done the unthinkable and created a weapon that would make the atom bomb look like a fourth of July firecracker? Had his sacrifice, the explosion, the fire, and his weeks in the hospital all been for nothing?
The electric charge shocked him with static buildup every time he moved. Time to get off the water before whatever was happening cooked him in place or worse.
He glided into the reeds only a few feet from shore and tried to figure out how he could get off the boat without touching the supercharged water. Any second now he expected stunned or dead fish to start popping to the surface. Maybe the Fish and Game boys were doing this for a count or culling of the lake. He couldn’t imagine why they would, but they should’ve posted warnings.
Bandit yelped and sank to her belly, whimpering and shivering. A thunderous boom filled the air and a burst of silver light to his right blinded him. Instinct drove him to the bottom of his boat for cover. He grabbed Bandit and held her squirming torso down as his mind raced with possibilities.
A bomb? Lightning?
Whatever it was ruined a perfectly good morning of fishing.
As suddenly as it all began, it was over. The super-charged air dissipated like it had never been and the hair on his arms returned to its usual resting place. His clothes stopped crackling. The water, roiling moments ago, returned to a serene and placid lapping against the side of his small boat. The geese took up their honking as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. Bandit suddenly leaped to her feet and jumped onto the bench seat he’d just vacated. Her curled tail wagged fiercely as she yapped at something just out of his sight.
Ears still ringing from the blast of lightning, he pulled his ever-present knife from its sheath at his waist and lifted his head just enough to see over the edge of the boat.
She floated face up at the water’s edge. Unconscious. Naked. Her head was toward shore in no more than three or four inches of water, leaving the rest of her long, willowy body drifting alongside his boat. Was she dead? That was all he needed. Dead body, 9-1-1 call, and uncounted hours at the police station saying, “I don’t know,” until his tongue was bleeding.
Hell. He didn’t dare get in the water and risk immediate electrocution. Bandit had no such inhibitions.
“No!”
Too late. The little wet rat swam happily to the woman’s side and sniffed her hair, sopping-wet tail wagging like a curled mop waving him into the water.
“You little turkey.” With a sigh, he threw the small anchor and then jumped over the side after his crazy dog. He landed in knee-deep water and leaned over to the woman, feeling for a pulse. His shoulders relaxed when the steady beat of her heart thrummed beneath his fingertips. Her chest rose and fell, her small, perfect breasts capturing his gaze as they followed the peaceful rhythm of a deep, dreamless sleep. No blood. No lacerations. No bumps on the head or obvious injury. She was, in a word, perfect.
Sun-bleached brown hair floated around her pale face in a halo of dark silk. Full, deep pink lips and dark lashes outlined her features like an artist’s brush strokes. A light dusting of freckles gave her a pixie-like quality he found shockingly appealing. She looked like a sun-drenched California beach beauty, complete with tan lines from an itsy-bitsy bikini and a siren’s hair. Long hair. Long everything. He guessed she was at least six feet tall, with incredibly long legs, a slender waist, and small tight breasts that would fit his hand to perfection. She was lean, like a gazelle, muscular and slim. Obviously either an athlete or someone obsessed with the gym.
What the hell was she doing naked, floating in a lake where she’d appeared from nowhere like a bad magic trick?
Her eyelids fluttered open to reveal dazed hazel-green irises that seemed unable to focus on his face. Her whispered words shocked him.
“Timothy Daniel Tucker.”
Three words. His name. His whole name. No one had called him that since his mother had thrown it around the house when he would behave like only a particularly aggravating teenage boy could. He was damn good at aggravating a woman when he wanted to be. At least when they were conscious…
“Who are you?” Tim demanded an answer, but she was out again. So, who the hell was she and why did she know his name?
Regardless, he couldn’t leave her in the water. The lake was cold, even this time of year, and she’d get hypothermia. Training kicked in and he lifted her from the water to carry her inside. His house backed to the lake. Five steps and they’d be at his fence, in his yard. He’d get her inside and warmed up. Once she came to, he’d get some answers. If he didn’t like those answers, a phone call and an ambulance ride would get her out of his hair.
Bandit jumped around in the water and swam to shore right behind him, tail still wagging like she’d lost her little mind.
“You know something I don’t, girl?” Tim walked under the raised porch and yanked the sliding glass door to his basement open with his thumb. Careful not to bang the unconscious woman’s head on the doorframe, he turned sideways and stepped into the rec room in his basement. Suede leather couches. A couple of fat recliners. Giant flat screen T.V., X-Box, pool table, a kitchenette and bedroom off to the side. It was the ultimate bachelor pad and his mother had hated every piece of furniture, the flooring, even the soothing green he’d painted the walls. She’d wanted classic regency era, English furniture, imported, ridiculously uncomfortable, and built for a man half his size.
She wanted a show room with designer vases, art, and floral wallpaper accented with fake flower arrangements, not a living space. Nothing she did was homey or about comfort. At least that was why he told himself he never went upstairs anymore. Might as well live in a four-thousand-square-foot, five-bedroom show home, a fucking museum. Most days it felt like he did.
Bandit yapped happily and he’d swear the dog was smiling as she trotted after him into the house dripping lake water. Gently as he could, he laid the mystery woman down on his soft brown couch and pulled a fuzzy green blanket from where it rested over the arm of the couch to cover her. He tucked her in like a mummy, a sigh of relief escaping. With her delectable body covered, maybe he could start using his brain again, start thinking about something other than the softness of her skin. He grabbed a thick towel out of the bathroom closet to put under her hair. The silken mess reached just past her shoulders and was soaking everything in sight.
As gently as he could, he tugged the wet mass out from beneath her shoulders. With his right hand he reached along her neck to cup her head and lift it, sliding the towel b
eneath her and doing his best to fight with long strands that seemed determined to stick to her skin. Heat pulsed beneath his palm, surged through the soft flesh of her neck, unnaturally hot, but he ignored it for the moment, intent on his goal…getting the wet mass of her hair contained in the towel. Moving the sopping strands on her head around was worse than battling tangled rope. He grimaced at his lack of finesse, absolutely certain he was only making it worse.
“Sorry.” She couldn’t hear him, but it made him feel a bit better about the hack job he was doing to her head. Towel in place, he stepped back and debated what to do next. She’d said his name. He’d never met her before, he was sure of it. The whole thing screamed trouble, and that was one thing he couldn’t afford if he wanted to stay off the Rear Admiral’s radar. He didn’t care who she was, it wasn’t worth the risk.
He reached for the cordless phone on the end table and studied her face while he went over the facts again. She wasn’t bleeding or obviously injured. No black eye or bruised ribs from a fight with a boyfriend. No wedding band. No marks on her perfect body whatsoever. How she ended up next to his boat in the middle of an electrical storm, he had no idea. But her arrival wasn’t normal. There was no logical explanation for where she came from or how the hell she’d managed to get that close to his boat without alerting either him or Bandit.
So, that left illogical explanations.
Illogical, like the feeling he had that he’d seen her somewhere before, or that he’d kill to protect her.
The two feelings were equally unwelcome. First, she was gorgeous. He was sure he’d remember her if he’d met her before. And he hadn’t. His life the last ten years hadn’t left much room for a woman, and he hadn’t felt right asking one to put up with what he did. He’d seen the wives of soldiers wailing in grief too many times to go there.
Silver Storm: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 2 Page 2
