In the Air Tonight

by Stephanie Tyler

  “Just ask,” she said finally, her tone curt, her gaze meeting his over the monitor. He’d been standing silently in the doorway, studying her as if she could disappear at any moment. And a deeper part of him didn’t want that, although he couldn’t be sure what that was about.

  Her eyes were clear and calm, because this—computers—this was her world. And she’d helped him before. That was a truth he knew in his bones.

  “When I was with you, last time …”

  “You needed my help then too,” she finished for him. “But I still needed yours more, and I hated that. I didn’t like being dependent on you at all. On anyone.” The admission poured out of her, as if she’d made a decision to stop holding back.

  He walked farther into the office, pulled up a stool and sat across from her at the desk. “You know about the murder and the threat. This morning, I found the generator line cut.”

  “So, not an accident, then,” she murmured.

  “Not by a long shot. And we just found out that Paige’s landlady was murdered, right after Paige left.”

  Vivi’s jaw dropped. “What now?”

  “Paige wants to go visit her brother in prison.”

  “What did her brother do?”

  Caleb hesitated a minute, knowing Paige liked to keep her brother a secret. But in this case, when Vivi’s life was possibly in danger because of it, he felt she had a right to know. And so he said the name and her eyes widened, because Vivi and Paige were about the same age, and the school shooting had been huge news at the time.

  “I can’t imagine,” she began, and then stopped. “She thinks Jeffrey will tell her where he buried the twins. But he would never admit to sending someone to kill Harvey and her landlady.”

  “I doubt it, but that doesn’t mean he’s not behind it.” He paused. “Mace wants to make sure that he and Paige aren’t followed.”

  “So we need to find a way to keep the person behind all of what’s happened over the past twenty-four hours here with us.”

  Us. A good sign, and still he needed to remind her. “If you’re staying here, you’re most likely in danger too.”

  She pushed back from the desk and swiveled the chair to look at the sky. The latest storm had lifted, but the news had been promising another band of them within the next twenty-four hours. And then she turned back to him. “Is the bar opening tonight?”

  “Yes. I’ll be here to make sure you’re safe,” he said quickly and the familiar feeling she’d had around Caleb months earlier flooded her.

  They’d somehow gone back in time and she had a murderer to thank for it. “I’ll stay.”

  “You don’t have to, you know. I can make sure you get to the next town. I’ll have Keagen here with me tonight—we’ll feel out the locals, see if there’s anyone new hanging around.”

  She shook her head no. “Look, if someone’s targeting Paige, they need to think she’s still here. It’s the only way she can reach the prison safely. So we make it look like Paige never left and see if we can draw out the person who’s behind this.”

  It was his turn to nod. “Mace will wait until after dark and sneak Paige into the car—whoever sees him leave will think he’s alone. And you and Paige are close in height. If you borrow one Paige’s sweaters, it could work. Business as usual. You’ll stay in the back room half in view, except for your face. Tie your hair back. People will think she’s hiding out because of what happened to Harvey.”

  He was asking a lot, but she owed him a great deal.

  He mistook her silence for misgivings. “I know I’m asking you a lot, and you have every right to say no. You can back out now. I understand.”

  “I’m not backing out,” she told him. “I owe you.”

  He looked at her incredulously. “You owe me? What are you talking about?”

  “You believed in me when no one else did. You risked everything—your job, your life—to prove I wasn’t in bed with a terrorist organization.”

  “Just because you weren’t guilty doesn’t mean I’m not.”

  “Caleb, please. Whatever it is … whatever it turns out to be, you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

  “Don’t do this if you think it’s going to get you closer to me,” he said roughly, before he could stop himself.

  The look on Vivi’s face told him he’d nearly pushed it too far. She stood and walked over to him. “It kills you that you want me, doesn’t it?”

  “Purely a physical response.”

  “You keep telling yourself that.”

  A knock on the door halted any more conversation for the moment. Mace came in, followed by Paige. Vivi saw past them to the bags on the floor of the bar, assumed they were getting ready to leave.

  “Paige, I need to borrow a sweater or two,” Vivi said. Paige looked at her, a question in her eyes, while Mace flicked a glance at Caleb and asked, “You okay with this?”

  “For Gray, I have to be,” was all he said, and with that Mace and Paige left him alone with Vivi again.

  Vivi, who was putting herself in the line of fire. Jumping in to help out his friends. And she wasn’t doing it for him, or simply to get his attention. No, he would’ve smelled that bullshit from a mile a way.

  Somehow, she’d connected with him enough to know that her loyalty to him had to extend to his team. No exceptions.

  “Are you scared?”

  “Yes.” She looked at him with wide eyes and he flashed back to another time and place—Vivi sitting in front of another computer, wearing that same expression and answering that same question in exactly the same way.

  “I’ve got your back. No matter what else is happening between us, I’ve got your back.”

  The men remained in the back room while Paige and Vivi stayed in the bar area, Paige rooting through her suitcase for a sweater to leave behind.

  She handed one to Vivi, who pointed toward Paige’s exposed tattoos.

  “Those are cool.”

  “Thanks.” Paige liked Vivi. She was smart, didn’t pry. Didn’t seem all that comfortable around people, which made her that much more endearing. “I’m sorry things are so hard with Cael.”

  “Yeah, well, I honestly never expected it to be easy but this is … well, much harder than I expected,” Vivi said. “I can’t give up, it’s not time yet. He’s close to remembering me. I’ve never believed in fairy tales, so I don’t know why I was picturing one,” Vivi said. “But Cael’s saved me in so many ways. I just wanted to be able to do the same for him.”

  “I guess we both have men we want to save.” Paige managed a smile. “Don’t give up on him.”

  “He’s given up on us already.”

  “He doesn’t want to get hurt.”

  “Who does?” Vivi shrugged, and looked away as if to signal the end of the conversation. She’d tied her hair back so the blue tips didn’t show. “The hair shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll be kind of hiding in the back room anyway—just letting people get a quick glance of me now and again.”

  “I guess they’ll figure I’m hiding out because of what happened.”

  “Yeah, probably.” Vivi tried on the sweater, the stretched-out sleeves flopping around her hands. She held up her arms. “What’s this all about?”

  “If you’re trying to pass as me, pull the fabric all the way down and catch and hold it in place over your palms with these two fingers.” She indicated her index and middle fingers and Vivi did what she was told.

  “Do you do this because you’re trying to hide your tattoos for work or something? Or are you just always cold?”

  “You don’t know.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “I’m psychic. Psychometric, to be exact. I can read people and objects by touching them.” She held up her hands like they were foreign objects.

  “That’s pretty cool. Except it probably gets in the way of, say, life.”

  “Hence the stretched-out sleeves.” She shrugged. “It’s different, I know.”

  “I’ve alwa
ys been different. Never really fit in anywhere. I still don’t, but I started to, with Cael.” Vivi shrugged the sweater off and held it tight against her body. “I know what it’s like to be isolated.”

  “Did you hear about the school shooting when it happened?”

  “Honestly? No. But I was being homeschooled by then and we didn’t have a TV and we didn’t get newspapers. My dad was a conspiracy theorist to an incredible degree and he didn’t believe anything that was reported. And after what happened a few of months ago, I know what it’s like to have people after you,” Vivi said. “To suddenly lose the sense of safety you had, no matter how tenuous.”

  “Are you still in danger?”

  “Not the way I was, but enough so that they changed my name. I’m hidden from the person I used to be, to the outside world. Inside … well, that’s all a work in progress.”

  Paige liked that Vivi had no problem admitting to—and accepting—her flaws.

  “Are things any better today with Caleb?”

  “Maybe a little. Getting to know him the first time wasn’t all that easy either. This time …”

  She trailed off and Paige zipped up her bag again. “Please don’t take any chances on my account.”

  Vivi gave her a small smile. “I’m careful.”

  “I know. That doesn’t always help, I’ve realized. I’ve been so careful. I don’t give my cell phone number to anyone, really. And I change it every year, just in case.” She frowned. “Probably sounds paranoid to you.”

  “Not after growing up with my father. And, in your case, it sounds like a necessary step for keeping your personal life private.” Vivi shrugged. “Before this, I was basically a hermit. Self-imposed for the last few years. It was just easier than trusting anyone—or trusting the wrong person.”

  “I guess we’ve got a lot in common.” Paige felt her stomach tighten at the thought of having actual friends again. Because she wanted friends desperately, but she also knew how dangerous it could be.

  And the danger was already following her.

  “It’s going to be all right, Paige. If there’s one thing I’ve learned spending time with these men, they make sure it’s all right.”

  CHAPTER

  11

  After Mace and Paige left, Vivi remained at the computer, trying to see if she could find out any information on what could be triggering Paige’s brother to make contact now.

  Something about the phone call didn’t sit right with her, beyond the obvious threat, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She listened to it a few more times, then glanced at Paige’s sweater, which was on the desk next to her, and wished she had asked her more questions about her brother. But time had been tight and Vivi knew that wouldn’t have gone over too well—Paige was shaken enough as it was.

  She could ask Caleb more about Jeffrey.

  Cael.

  She heard him moving around in the bar area and the flutter of nerves began swarming her belly again.

  They were alone here. Totally alone. And that could be very, very good or very, very bad.

  She forced her focus back to the computer, the phone lines and attempting to trace the call. She also Googled Paige’s brother and found out more than she’d ever wanted to know about him.

  After an hour or so, she pushed back from the screen and rubbed her hands, surveyed the neat desk in front of her. Her eye caught on a spiral notebook, opened and partially hidden under some envelopes, saw a drawing and knew it was Caleb’s.

  She felt guilty looking at it without asking, but not enough to resist, because this had somehow turned into trench warfare and she needed to up her game in a major way.

  She turned a page and saw the familiar pencil sketches he used to do in the days they spent together. She wondered if he’d left it out on purpose for her to see and decided she didn’t care.

  Many pages showed a man she didn’t recognize … and then another man. Sometimes, they were drawn together on the same page, their faces blurry, like they were being seen through a mist.

  Then there was a picture of Zane, and one of Dylan too, and those made her smile. She’d never met either man but she’d seen many photos in the album in Cael’s apartment. She wondered if he’d remembered them at the time, since the drawings were dated two months earlier.

  A couple of pages later her breath left her. She stared at the drawings and then touched them tentatively with a single finger, as though they might disappear if she did so.

  But they didn’t.

  Caleb had drawn her, and they were dated within the last few weeks, well before she’d arrived.

  The sketches were similar to the ones he’d drawn of her when they were together—in the safe houses, in his apartment. He had the shading correct on her hair … her bangs, which were now grown out.

  There were six of them altogether, and the last one showed her sleeping, the sheet half off her. He’d drawn the outer curve of her breast, her hip … it was at once innocent and erotic and she ran a finger lightly along the penciled edges, tried to picture Caleb drawing these. Was he confused? Was he dreaming about her?

  She’d wanted him to be.

  What would happen if things didn’t work out? Never regaining his memories was one thing, but if he wasn’t able to fall in love with her again, what did that mean?

  Maybe it was only the danger—and the sex that came with all that fear and adrenaline—that had drawn them together in the first place. Maybe forever wasn’t in the cards.

  But, God, he’d drawn her. That had to mean she’d meant something to him. She would hold on to that.

  Reluctantly, and with shaking hands, she turned the notebook back to the page he’d left it open to and she slid it back where she’d found it, only to look up and find Caleb framed in the doorway, his broad shoulders a reminder of the nights she clung to them as he pressed inside of her. She was pretty sure her face flushed, and so she focused on the screen in front of her, ducking her head slightly, forgetting that her hair was pulled back and she couldn’t hide behind it.

  She knit her fingers together so he wouldn’t see them tremble, said, “You’re still drawing,” lamely, because there was no way to deny she’d been spying. “Why didn’t you tell me that you remembered me?”

  “Because I didn’t—I don’t,” he answered sharply enough to make her wince. “You’re still getting into places you don’t belong.”

  Caleb, when he was on a mission, was an unstoppable force. After last night’s debacle and this morning’s uneasy truce, he seemed to accept the fact that he wasn’t getting rid of her anytime soon. Now he appeared calm, but she knew she was on extremely thin ice.

  And still, she pushed. “You drew me. Naked. When I came here, you must’ve recognized me from the pictures, and you still tried to push me out the door—why?”

  He ignored the question and shot back one of his own. “So, you’re working with the feds,” he started, and she nodded, refusing to admit to her lie after he’d lied to her. “Where will your home base be?”

  “I’ll work out of a field office. I can work anywhere I have a computer,” she explained, felt the tension filling the air as he walked around the desk and planted himself pretty much in front of the computer—and her chair. But he left some space between them and she put her hands in her lap, still twined together.

  “That means trusting people,” he said, leaned his ass against the desk.

  She looked up at him. “Right.”

  “And you don’t trust easily. I’m right about that, aren’t I, Vivi?”

  “Very.”

  “But you trusted me.”

  “One of the few,” she agreed.

  “I need to know more,” he said gruffly. That surprised her, threw her off balance even more than she already was.

  Whatever they’d had before this was still so new, so fragile. It might not have survived under the most normal of circumstances his job allowed.

  Under circumstances like these, anything would most
likely crumble into a thousand pieces.

  The question, How can this work? ran over and over in her mind.

  “I’m supposed to spew out my whole life to you now because you’ve decided it’s time?”

  Caleb cocked a brow. “Yes.”

  “God, you always were arrogant. I shouldn’t have expected anything different.” She reminded herself that she loved this man. That she came to help him, even if the outcome wasn’t them together.

  She owed him.

  “Were you always this opinionated with me?” he asked.

  Had she been? “I was comfortable with you, even though I was scared. I was pretty innocent in a lot of ways. I was sheltered because my dad didn’t trust anyone. That meant I didn’t either.”

  He wasn’t sure what she meant at first and then it slowly dawned on him. Because, with him, as with most men, it went right back to sex. “You were a virgin?”

  “No. But I was pretty close to it.”

  “Did I take advantage of you? Because it sounds like you were in a vulnerable situation.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “No way. You’re not like that.”

  “I’m so tired of hearing what I’m like, what I’m not like, from you and from everyone.” He stood up fast and she tried to get up too, but he was too quick; he leaned over her, forcing her to stay put, trapping her with a hand on either armrest. “Did I trust you completely?”

  She didn’t answer him immediately and he touched the pulse point on her neck with two fingers. “I can tell how nervous you are. Don’t bother trying to deny it.”

  She didn’t. “You didn’t trust me much in the beginning. By the time you left, you did. And you were right to.”

  He nodded, as if her answer satisfied him. She thought he would allow her to stand, thought the questioning was over.

  She was so damned wrong.

  Instead of moving back, he reached for her wrists, separated her hands easily and pulled her out of the chair. Kicked it away and pressed her up against the wall so she was trapped between him and the paneling.

  “You’re lying to me, Vivi. And I want to know why.”