She didn’t see Ross again that day or the following morning. She worked with the others until lunchtime and then set out to look for him. But upstairs she ran into Kendrick looking for her, and he told her Garcia was waiting to talk to her in the cafeteria.
As she joined him at the table, he opened a bottle of Scotch and poured a little into two glasses.
She stared at him in wonder, and he smiled. “Sorry, no ice.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“You’ve done good work, Doctor.” He raised his glass, and she clinked hers against it. “Better than I could have hoped.”
“I’m only as good as my subjects. Is Ross going to join us?”
He shook his head as his lips peeled back slightly from his teeth, airing the Scotch. “Ross has gone back to Washington.”
A stone grated over her heart, leaving deep ruts in its wake. He hadn’t even said good-bye.
“Is he coming back?”
Garcia shook his head like it was the most routine question in the world. “He’s on assignment.”
Oh God.
“And eventually we’ll all be joining him there. I’ve tasked him with finding a building. We’re relocating our operation to the D.C. area. I intend to turn over day-to-day management to him.”
Tess raised the glass to her lips. She gulped the whisky, grateful for the slow amber burn that caressed her throat and stomach. Her hand trembled as she set down the glass.
“Are you all right, Doctor?”
“Yes, just a headache.”
“Why don’t you take the afternoon off? You’ve earned it.”
* * *
Tess lay across her bed staring at the ceiling. Ross was an assassin now, and she was leaving Seattle Psi. She wondered if they’d let her see Abby before she went.
She thought about her options, and then stopped because really, she didn’t have any.
She could go back to Jake. Help him look for other survivors. Try living as an Echo. But then she could do nothing to help the Echoes caught in the Bureau’s web. Eventually she’d have to face this.
She could try to run from the Bureau on her Earth. But she couldn’t leave Goff with Garcia, and seriously? Run from the FBI? Dislocation might help, but eventually Garcia was going to have his own army of dimensional travelers. At that point he’d no longer need her anyway, so he’d probably just send Ross to kill her.
Groaning in despair, she pulled a pillow over her face. Over the course of the last couple of weeks she’d lost all of her most trusted advisers—first Goff, then Abby, now Ross. She wondered at what point she had started thinking of Ross that way. Had it been the night he’d forced her to take a closer look at herself and her motivations? Or maybe all the discussions they’d had about the dislocations. They worked well together.
She wondered if he could really pull off the assassination. She hadn’t been privy to the particulars, but she assumed he would have to dislocate to the proper location, take care of business, and dislocate out. As far as she knew he’d only done the one dislocation, from Jake’s ruin back to the Kalakala—between the two Earths. Alternately he could dislocate to Jake’s world and back on each leg of the journey, but that was a lot of connections to line up, not to mention the dangerous assumption that nothing would go wrong on Post-Apocalypse World.
This all got her thinking again about Jake’s dislocation—how he’d vanished and come right back, but in a different part of the room. If Jake could do it, Ross should be able to.
If Jake could do it, she should be able to.
She sat up.
She closed her eyes, deepening her breaths, offering herself to the tentacles of light. She thought she felt tingling in her fingertips, and she gave herself to the sensation, real or wished for.
The tingling traveled up her arms to her chest. White light edged her peripheral vision.
* * *
She fell out of the light and crashed to the floor. She stood up quickly, glancing around her. She’d landed in the observation room—and it was empty. It had been a pretty big gamble. The building was crawling with agents, and she wouldn’t have been surprised to find them here. But considering there were two watching the lab door and two in each corridor, she had thought it might just be possible they hadn’t bothered. An agent in the observation room wasn’t much use if Goff escaped.
Her gaze fell on the window as she reached for the sound switch, and her heart leapt right out of her chest. Not one, but four people in the lab, and one of them looked like Ross.
Only it wasn’t Ross.
“… warm and dry in here,” he was saying, “and they won’t let you starve, so I really think you should be thanking me for the considerable improvement to your situation.”
Her stomach twisted as she wondered if he knew he could walk through walls here. Only when he’s faded. Keep your head!
She recognized the people he was arguing with—the man and woman who’d been with him when he threatened Jake. She listened to more complaints, waiting for something that might help her understand why they were here. And why hadn’t the agents outside done anything? Did they know there were new occupants? Her eyes sought Goff, and she found him hesitating in a corner, eyeing the others warily.
“Now if you’ll excuse me,” Mac said, “I’m due to be compensated.”
It clicked together. Mac’s rounding up Echoes for Garcia. The son of a bitch. Which one? Exactly.
Tess reached for the light almost without thought. An instant later she found herself in the lab, close to Goff.
She grabbed his arm, jerking him toward Mac, and caught Mac’s sleeve just as he was blinking out.
He gave a shout of surprise as they fell together into the light tunnel.
Hold on to me! she called to Goff. As she released him to reach for Mac, he seemed to slip away, but she felt his hand catch her ankle.
She grabbed a handful of Mac’s hair and held on tight. This time I’ll suck you dry, asshole.
I can hardly wait.…
ERRANT
* * *
GlobeWatch’s investigative team has discovered that the recent upswing in missing persons is not just a national phenomenon. Internet research and interviews with anonymous investigative personnel have revealed similar statistics in at least six other countries. Furthermore we’ve obtained photos and autopsy reports for three people who appear to have died of “supernatural” causes within the same time frame. Repeated requests to speak with officials in the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the CIA have been ignored.
—“Unexplained Disappearances on the Rise Worldwide,” August 17, 2018, GlobeWatch News Service
* * *
The previous day
ROSS SCANNED the dimly lit interior of Espresso Noir. Just blocks from Seattle Psi at the end of a quiet residential street, the café was a favorite with the staff. The sign in the window bore the silhouette of a man wearing a fedora.
He hadn’t even bothered to question his gut this time. One, he was in too much of a hurry. Two, Tess had told him that 8.6222 times out of 10, his gut was right. Why Abby would be hanging around so close to the building she’d been banished from was another question altogether.
When he found her sitting alone with her laptop at a small corner table, the answer came to him: The Bureau people came here too. She was waiting for an opportunity to hold someone accountable. And he didn’t have time for that.
“Ross!” she cried, rising to her feet.
She was talking before he even made it to her table. “What the hell is going on? Where is Tess?”
He sank down across from her and leaned close, gesturing for her to sit down. “I’ll get to that, Doctor. Just give me a minute.”
She gave him a scorching look. He noted that despite her distress, she was as flawlessly put together as ever. Not a hair out of place. Tess’s reddish, neither-long-nor-short waves were always pulling out of hair bands and falling over her eyes. From the first day he’d met her he
was continually fighting the urge to tuck the loose strands behind her ear. Mainly because he wanted to know if they were as soft as they looked.
“Ross?” hissed Abby.
He knew he was exhausted and drifting. The transfers and the training had taken their toll. Not to mention the fact he’d been aimlessly dislocating for the past two days while he tried to untangle the mess that had become his life. He felt thin and frayed at the edges. He had to sharpen up.
As if on cue, a waitress stopped beside their table—a girl with heavy eyeliner who’d waited on him before.
“Drip coffee. Black,” he told her.
“You got it,” she said with a wink. “I like the shadow.”
Ross whipped around, almost upsetting the flimsy table.
“The beard!” The waitress laughed. “I like it. You sure you don’t want decaf?”
Ross dropped his head in his hands as the waitress moved away.
“Where is Tess?” Abby repeated.
He took a deep breath and raised his head. Then he rattled off an account of everything that had happened since Abby had left for her board meeting, omitting nothing but the physical intimacy between him and her employee. He also skirted all the classified information, less for his own protection than for Abby’s.
She studied him for a long moment while he rubbed at his stubbly jaw.
“What is it you want from me, Ross?”
Good question. The waitress appeared with his coffee. The tension at their table was palpable, and she set the cup down without comment and moved away.
He drained half the cup before answering. “I honestly don’t know. I thought talking to you might help me sort it out.”
She sighed, resting her elbows on the table. “You haven’t really told me what it is that needs sorting out. I assume whatever this operation is that the Bureau has undertaken is questionable, and you’re concerned about the ethics. As for why you’ve come to me, I assume that has something to do with Tess.”
He nodded slowly. “That’s it, more or less. Although I don’t think I would have questioned my assignment a couple of weeks ago.”
Abby raised an eyebrow. “That suggests to me this is mostly about Tess.”
He stared at his coffee cup. “I think that could be true.”
Abby sank back in her chair. Ross’s eyes darted to the café’s entrance and around the room. He noted the position of the entrance to the kitchen, which he knew had an exit to the alley behind the building. He pulled the hood of his jacket over his head.
“Then figure out a way to extract her, and go back to your job.” Her tone was devoid of warmth. “After that, forget about her.”
He closed his eyes. “That’s exactly the advice I gave myself. But … even if I could go through with it, they’re not going to let her go. They’ll send someone after her. They might kill her.”
“Ah, Ross.” Abby’s sigh was mournful. She shook her head at him. “I hated her taking this job. She had such a bright future—I knew it was a mistake to let her get tangled up in this.”
He gave a humorless laugh. “There’s no letting her do anything, Doctor. You of all people should know that. She’s doing it because she thinks these people deserve a better option than the ones we’ve given them, and she’s determined to make it happen.”
Abby smiled. But the smile was for Tess. “What do you think?”
He swallowed the last of his coffee and scrubbed his hand through his hair. “I think she’s right.”
She gave a slight sideways nod, watching him closely.
He rose from the table.
“Help her, Ross. And find a way to let me know. She’s like a daughter to me.”
He nodded, and he headed for the kitchen. The cook flung a curse at him as he jogged through to the alley. As his shoes hit the asphalt he vanished.
* * *
When the capital came up in conversation, it usually deteriorated into a diatribe on corruption and politics. People who’d never been to the city were eloquent with regard to the high crime rate, poverty, and drug problems.
But the monuments were beautiful in the pink-orange light of the setting sun.
“In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.” Jamie was standing Lilliputian-like at the feet of President Lincoln. He turned as Ross approached. “Hey, Bro.”
“Thanks for coming, Jamie.”
“Want to take a walk?”
A dozen people milled around on the steps and at the base of the statue.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
They headed down the steps toward the reflection pool.
“I was surprised to hear from you, Bro.”
“I know. I’m sorry for that.”
“I have to admit I might not have answered if I’d recognized the number. To what do I owe the honor?”
“You’re still working for GlobeWatch?”
Jamie nodded. Pride blossomed on his acne-scarred face. “I proofread, mostly. But occasionally I write up briefs.” He shrugged. “I’m not a real writer or anything.”
“It sounds like a good start. I’m proud of you.”
Jamie gave a snort of disbelief. “So why are we here?”
“I have some information I think your employer will be interested in.”
“Yeah?” His voice rose with interest. “Secret agent stuff?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t you get in trouble for that?”
“Yes. I’ll lose my job.”
Jamie stared at him. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Jamie ran his tongue over his lips. “Shit.”
Ross fished a pin drive from his pocket. “There are classified files on this drive, along with a letter that explains everything. Make sure your editor reads the letter. This needs to be handled carefully, or there will be panic. It’s going to sound crazy, and if your employer talks to the Bureau they’re going to deny it, but it’s all backed up with documentation.”
Jamie stared at the drive, wide-eyed. “Whoa, are you sure the crankhead can be trusted with this?”
“I’m counting on it, James.”
His brother shot him a look of surprise. “No lecture? You must be in deep donkey shit, coming to me for help. That’s ironic, right? I’m never sure if I’m using that word right.”
Guilt and regret sank into Ross’s bones. He had done everything he could to help his brother, or so he’d believed at the time. Hired a good lawyer, served as a character witness, helped him navigate the complexities of the legal system. But Ross had been helpless against his brother’s addiction, and instead of supporting him, he’d fallen back on his favorite coping mechanism.
“I’m sorry about the lectures,” Ross said. “It’s not my job to tell you how to live.”
“Confessions like that are a little suspect at the moment, Bro.”
“I know. But I mean it.”
Jamie let out a long breath, and he held out his hand. Ross dropped the pin drive on his palm. Jamie turned it over a couple of times, and he slipped it into his pocket.
“Hang on to it until tomorrow afternoon. Unless I call with other instructions, give it to your editor before you leave for the day. And for God’s sake, don’t you look at any of it. I don’t want you involved.”
Jamie eyed him, and Ross could feel the shift in his intentions.
“I mean it, James,” said Ross, stern as only an older brother can be. “This has already ruined the life of one person I care about. Do you hear me?”
Jamie swallowed. “Yeah, I got it. What’s going to happen to you?”
Ross stared at the mirror surface of the water, awash in orange light. “I don’t know.”
“You going to disappear on us?”
“Probably for a while.” He met his brother’s worried gaze. “Will you let Mom and Dad know everything’s okay? That I know what I’m doing?”
“Do you?”
&nb
sp; “Yeah, I do.”
Jamie sighed. “Okay, Bro. Take care of yourself.” Then he grinned. “Try to be less of an asshole.”
“I’m working on that.”
“Ha,” Jamie snorted. He nudged Ross with his elbow. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
* * *
Ross materialized in Tess’s apartment just after lunchtime the following day, but she wasn’t there. He hadn’t really expected she would be, but it would have made things easier.
Next he dislocated to the lab. Not finding her there either, he ran out into the corridor, followed by the curious gazes of the other agents. He bumped into Garcia in the lobby.
“Ross,” he said, startled. “I’ve been waiting for confirmation about your assignment. Report.”
“Where’s Tess?”
The older man frowned. “Report, Ross. Did you complete your assignment?”
“Almost. I need to talk to you.”
Garcia’s expression of disapproval deepened. “Almost? What does that mean?”
Perez passed them on her way to the stairs. “Where is Dr. Caufield?” Ross asked her.
The agent’s eyes flickered between Ross and Garcia, but she kept walking.
“Ross,” said Garcia, “Dr. Caufield has left the institute again. She took Goff with her, as well as an important contact from his Earth.”
Having only absorbed the first sentence of this, Ross asked, “Do you know where she went?”
“I’ll defer to you on that, but my guess would be the other Earth. I want you to go after her and bring her back.”
Calm down and let it come to you. She’s probably with Jake. He felt a pang about the fact she’d run to Jake instead of him, but he had no right to expect otherwise. He’d delayed while he was figuring things out, and she’d probably interpreted that as him falling back into step with the Bureau. Then he’d disappeared without a warning.
Besides that, Jake’s Earth was probably the safest place for her. Especially if Goff was with her. During the energy transfers he’d filled in the older scientist about almost everything that had happened to them, and, interestingly, Goff had already seemed to develop protective feelings about her. It reminded Ross of the stuff in Tess’s thesis about quantum entanglement between people.
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