The Keepers Book Two of the Holding Kate Series

by Cole, LaDonna

  “Right, but does he make you feel the way I do?” Smug, he thought he had her.

  “No, he doesn’t. I have never felt wicked or sinful or adulterous or weak or worthless in his arms. I only feel that way when I am with you, Trip.” She croaked out the last sentence knowing it would hurt him. She hated to say it, but it rang as truth, and Trip needed to hear her resolve.

  “You are bad for me, Trip Carson. I love you, but you would end up devouring me, or I would end up a rotting carcass on the inside if I stayed with you. Not because you are a bad person, Trip. You are a great person. But I am not good when I am with you. I think only of my own pleasure, not even your pleasure, just mine, when I kiss you. I am driven only by selfish need of protection and desire. It’s wrong. I am wrong for you.”

  He sat, quiet. She wondered if he had fallen asleep at her lengthy lecture.

  “Thank you for telling me the truth, Kate.” He spoke flatly.

  Her heart stuttered. She wanted to rush to him, to take it all back and tell him they would work something out. She didn’t, though. She rolled back into a ball and stayed on her side of the room, and he stayed on his.

  A pink light strobed overhead, a panel in the wall slid open, and the pink light spiraled out and down the walls. Corey and Navarro rushed in.

  Dear Lord, if I hadn’t pulled away when I did, they would have walked in on us right at the peak of—

  “Aht!” Her stomach turned.

  Corey heard the noise and focused on her, and then snapped his head to Trip on the opposite side of the room. “Kate?”

  “Corey!” She stood and stumbled into his arms. The sight of him entering the room echoed the feeling of hope rekindling in her heart.

  He embraced her then touched her chin and looked at her tear stained face. “Are you okay, sweetheart?”

  “Yes,” she whispered and hugged him tightly. For the first time since she had kissed Trip after the jackal attack, she knew they were going to be okay. They had some things to work through, but they would tackle them together.

  He brushed her hair back to assess her neck. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. Big bugs?” She gently probed the sting at her neck. “It was dark.”

  Corey grabbed her hand and directed it away. “Don’t touch it, honey.” He tilted her chin to the side so he could see it better.

  “I gave her that.” Trip pointed to the half empty vial on the floor.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know.” Trip shook his head. “I took a leap of faith, I guess. She was dying. It worked.”

  Corey moved to Trip and hugged him. Trip stiffened at first.

  “Thank you, Trip, for saving my wife again.” The timbre of Corey’s words rang sincere. He loved Trip, Kate could tell. Corey, loyal to the bone could never betray Trip the way Trip had constantly betrayed Corey. The way she had constantly betrayed him. She wrung her hands and swallowed the big ball of guilt wadded in the back of her throat.

  Trip wrapped his arms around Corey briskly. “Don’t mention it.” He tapped a fist into Corey’s shoulder blade, then stepped back quickly.

  Kate shifted a glance to Navarro, but he just looked down awkwardly.

  A section of a wall slid open across the room. Kate screamed, afraid the giant mutant bugs were coming back. Dirk ran into the room carrying Tara. Mel and Donnie whisked in behind them and whirled around to make sure the panel closed.

  Tara dangled, unconscious in Dirk’s arms, her leg covered in huge bulbous stings. Trip bounded over and ripped her out of Dirk’s arms. He carried her to the vial in the center of the room and sank to the floor. Holding her head, he tipped the vial into her mouth, then poured the remaining fluid onto her stings. They exploded in a puff of green smoke and pus. A putrid odor assailed them.

  “Come on, baby,” Trip growled. “Come on.” He leaned over and listened to her heart and then felt for breath. “Tara, come on, fight.”

  Watching his face, Kate believed he loved Tara. He kissed Tara’s cheek and her eyes fluttered open. She raked in breath and blinked at Trip, beaming pure love and gratitude. Then her face blanched and she turned dejected eyes aside, flared her nostrils and flattened her lips.

  As though she had cast a net of wire over Kate’s soul and left it to die, Tara pushed Trip away from her. Kate watched her rejection of Trip and the violence of it crashing over him.

  I did that to her. My weakness caused Tara to lose faith in Trip. Kate’s heart broke for Trip and Tara.

  Tara reached for Dirk. He stepped around Trip, scooped her up and supported her beside him. She clung to him until her breathing slowed, then she lifted her leg and looked at the stings.

  “I hate bugs,” she grumbled.

  Kate definitely agreed.

  “Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live.” ~ Albert Einstein

  QUANTUM PERSPECTIVE SOURCE (QPS): COREY CHASTAIN

  We went on several jumps over the next weeks, trying to ferret out the infiltrator. It became increasingly obvious that no matter who we took with us to target on the jumps, it didn’t work. All the quantum journeys were focused on Kate. Every demon, monster, creature, and spawn of the pit latched its attention solely on Kate. Yes, we all paid in injuries and insult, but Kate’s were multiplied.

  We sat in First Cabin one night after a particularly grueling jump into a zombie nightmare, where we all came back with serious wounds, and discussed it. Trip, arm in a sling, leaned against the bar. My mangled leg throbbed. Kate’s hair puffed up in the back from the wrap around her head injury. The others all had bandages or ice packs strategically placed. The danger in the jumps intensified each time. The DNA reset stopped. If we sustained an injury on the jump, more times than not, we brought them home with us.

  “Why do they keep going after Kate?” Tara asked and shifted. Her head rested in Dirk’s lap and her legs were draped over the edge of the love seat.

  Dirk toyed with her hair. “I don’t know, but that is obviously what is happening. I don’t even think we need to take the others along with us anymore.”

  I nudged Kate closer to me, my protective instinct to shield her rose in my chest threatening to smother me. I don’t know how many more of these excursions she could survive. Each one drew her closer and deeper into the clutch of death. Exhausted trying to keep her alive, Trip and I fought to protect her through every jump. I honestly don’t know what I would have done without him.

  I couldn’t begrudge him their kiss, either one of them. Kate and I had talked a whole night after that freaky insect jump. She opened up to me, confessed her attraction to him, tried to explain their connection, and begged me to forgive her.

  “I won’t lie to you. I am very physically attracted to his strength and his weird need to protect me. It’s like our weaknesses call to each other. I hate it. When I am with him I feel less. I feel soiled. But I can’t deny there is a part of me that desires what he has to offer.”

  I grimaced. Not what I wanted to hear, I looked away.

  Kate took my face in her hands, and I gazed into her sorrowful eyes. “Please, forgive me,” she breathed out a huff of breath.

  “Corey, you are my life. I cannot live without you.” She ran her palms across my cheeks and her fingers into my hair, as though she couldn’t touch me enough. “You are breath and beauty and all things precious and sacred to me. Please, if you don’t forgive me, then I just want to die.” She crawled into my lap and wrapped her arms and legs around me. She held on so tightly that my heart broke.

  “I am whole in you, my husband. Without you there is no meaning, no beauty, no spark of life.” She kissed my neck and nibbled my earlobe and whispered. “Please. Please.”

  I wrapped my hands around her arms then slid them to her waist and drew her closer.

  “We will not be alone together anymore. I can see, now, that we were just tempting fate. I’ll keep my distance. I’ve told him to stay away from me and that I only want you. I spok
e hard words of truth to him. I think he finally understands. We won’t ever be alone again.” She ran her hands over my chest.

  I kissed her neck. “Kate,” I whispered her name. My love for her stayed just as strong as ever, I couldn’t imagine a scenario where I wouldn’t forgive her.

  She shivered. “Please forgive me.” Her pleading wrecked me. I touched her lips to stop the words that didn’t need to be spoken.

  “I won’t lie to you. It ripped me apart seeing you with him like that.” I kissed her ear and the sweet spot where her jaw met her neck. She turned her head to offer herself to me, shaking.

  She began to cry. “My precious Corey, I hate myself for hurting you.” Her arms tightened around me. “If I could carve that part of me out, I would. If I could kill the Kate that is drawn to him, I would. I am despicable. You deserve someone who is faithful and true.”

  “No,” I rasped out in desperation. “You are my perfect match. I chose you. I love you, only you.” I ran my hands up her smooth back into her hair.

  “Corey, I need you. You can erase his touch. Make me solely yours again. Take me, I beg you. Wipe away this horrible guilt. Say you will forgive me. Please.”

  Tears stung my eyes. “Of course, of course, darling Kate. I forgive you,” I crooned between kisses.

  A sob broke out of her and she kissed me with ferocious need and passion. I spent the night loving her so thoroughly, binding her to me so completely that her heart would never stray again. She took me into herself with such openness and trust, strength and hunger that I felt consumed. Our communion tasted perfect and whole and we put behind us the things of the past. We bonded ourselves to each other and a future full of potential and promise.

  We hadn’t spoken of it since then. Her devotion and commitment to me had a singular focus. Each morning we started the day as one flesh and each night we spent in bliss so full of worship. We were growing into one person. I only had to think a thought and she intercepted it. We functioned utterly in tune with our partner.

  Trip and I never talked about the incidents. I had no blame for him. I had completely forgiven Kate and my sentiment extended to him too. He backed away from pursuing intimacy with her. They only spoke in public and didn’t slink off to share private moments anymore. His eyes followed Tara most of the time. She wouldn’t give him the time of day.

  I asked her about it once when we were on watch together in a mist-shrouded canyon. She said. “Something just snapped in me when I saw them kissing, Corey. I won’t be his second choice.”

  “I really think he loves you, Tara,” I offered.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter anymore, anyway. I’m done.”

  “You are going to let your pride get in the way of your love for him?” I asked her.

  She flashed a brilliant smile at me. “That is my fatal flaw, as you love to point out to me.”

  I chuckled. In our two hundred years together, we never settled the debate between us. Tara argued for pride as a virtue, but I maintained it as a flaw.

  She considered it for a moment, and then answered. “It isn’t the same thing, Corey. You are Kate’s first choice. She isn’t settling for you.”

  I didn’t press the issue because I could see how much pain it caused her. Moving toward Dirk more and more, Tara certainly didn’t pine away. A bond formed between them, not yet romantic.

  Trip’s moods became darker and darker as the days passed. He rarely hung out at First Cabin unless a jump requisite came through. We saw him several times in the village with a perky red head hanging on his arm. He had no light in his eyes when he looked at her, though. I almost felt sorry for her.

  This last jump nearly killed us. We almost lost Kate and Caitlyn, the designated Chartreuse team jumper, and we all paid dearly for it. Caitlyn recovered from the zombie bite in the hospital, and we retired to infirm status.

  “We can’t keep this up,” Kate murmured. “It’s getting too risky.”

  She looked around the cabin at the rest of the team, bandaged, broken and bruised.

  “What have we learned exactly?” Mel asked. She opened her compad and turned it on. The graphic hovered in the air above it. She placed her fingers inside the holo keypad and began taking notes.

  “Kate is the focus,” I offered. Her fingers whisked through the projection.

  “The danger in the jumps is escalating,” Kate added. Mel typed, noiselessly.

  “We don’t need to bring along other jumpers anymore,” Dirk said, contemplating Tara’s profile. “They aren’t being targeted anyway.”

  Donnie paced along the front windows looking out at the pond. “Nothing is pointing to the Inner Circle.”

  We turned to look at him. The faces of the twelve scientists, leaders, and doctors ran through my mind. Having memorized their dossiers, we recalled the extensive details listed. Nothing matched.

  “There is no evidence that any member of the Inner Circle is causing the problems.” Donnie stopped pacing and turned to us. “What if we are barking up the wrong tree?”

  “I thought the infiltrator had to be one of them,” Trip grumbled.

  “It does. Doesn’t it?” Tara sat up. “I mean, no one else has access to the jumps, right?”

  “We do.”

  “I don’t follow, Donnie,” I said.

  “We have access. We take in there everything that we are.”

  “You think one of us is the bad guy?” Dirk’s head snapped up, incredulous.

  “No. I don’t know. It just seems, it seems intimate, personal, like someone who knows us. Not something a stranger could do.” Donnie scratched his forehead and plopped down beside Mel. “I am just trying to think outside of the box.”

  We sat there silently, trying to think outside the box. A dread gnawed at me. It seemed incredible that a jumper could cause this havoc. But Donnie’s words rang true. The “bad guy” evidently knew Kate. But how could a jumper effect changes in the quantum matrix? I glanced at Kate.

  “We need to study Quantum Physics,” she spoke my thoughts.

  “Specifically, jump related Quantum Physics,” I added.

  Donnie nodded, Tara sighed, Mel typed, Kate and I pecked each other on the lips, and Dirk frowned.

  Trip moaned. “I volunteer for Kitchen Patrol.”

  We laughed.

  QUANTUM PERSPECTIVE SOURCE (QPS): DONNIE DUDGEON

  The Chastains and the Dudgeons dug into research mode. Donnie loved research as much as he loved canker sores, but as the resident expert on all things web related, he joined as a key player in the research team. They transformed the office just off the dining room into a Quantum Physics library and research center. Trip kept them fed with his grill master talents, and Tara ran errands and kept them in tea and coffee. Dirk maintained the house and did a lot of fishing in the pond. Trip enjoyed having a fresh catch to grill up, as long as somebody else cleaned it.

  Tara came out of her room one day with several volumes of dusty old books labeled Quantum Physics and a set of leather journals from the bookshelves in her room full of antique tomes.

  “I combed the shelves in my room and found these.” She plopped them on the large mahogany desk.

  Corey grabbed the journals, fascinated. “I can’t believe these are here,” he whispered and carried them to the stuffed wingback chair. Mel poured through volumes of books while Kate accessed the campus database.

  Donnie surfed internet sites. What are we missing? How could anyone affect the jumps unless they were in the Inner Circle? So far no clear answers presented themselves. I hope I haven’t launched us on a wild goose chase. But there is no way that group of strangers in the Inner Circle could set up each jump to specifically undo Kate, unless they knew her.

  He studied Kate across the room. She pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth as she peered into the computer screen. Deep in concentration, she flicked her hair over her shoulder in a characteristic move. Donnie knew her well. They had spent months together when the four o
f them jumped to rescue Corey. They had talked for hours and hours in the cabin as he relearned his native language. He ticked off the things he had learned about her over their time as friends. She had an unrealistic fear of dogs, because a German Shepherd chased her at the age of five. She told him of her fear of the dark one night on the barge trip into the Darchewud Forest. He knew she thought her small size put her at a disadvantage. He witnessed her extreme reaction when bugs landed on her. He chuckled at the memory of her falling off her horse trying to get away from a large moth.

  She glanced up from her computer, caught his eye and tilted her head. He shook his and focused on the holoscreen in front of him, and she stretched and sauntered out of the office with her coffee cup, snagging Corey’s on her way past him. These attacks are aimed right at her weaknesses. Someone knows her well and is using that knowledge against her. Donnie ground his teeth. They compiled tons of information during the mornings, and then shared the information with each other in the afternoons, yet nothing of consequence offered any answers.

  They found much of the information rudimentary, grade school stuff. Kate, Mel, and Donnie needed the refresher course. Donnie hadn’t had a course in Quantum Physics since ninth grade science class. Corey’s knowledge far surpassed them. He seemed to know more about Quantum Physics than any normal teenager.

  “Dude, how do you know so much about this stuff?” Donnie asked him.

  He scraped his bottom teeth across his upper lip and finally he answered. “It’s been a family hobby for generations. You can’t really be a Chastain without a fascination for Quantum Mechanics.”

  “Hmmm, that’s good to know, Mr. Chastain.” Kate sidled up to him with a fresh cup of coffee and kissed him on the cheek, handing him the mug.