The Never Paradox (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs Book 2)

by T. Ellery Hodges

  “Yeah, I’m sorry, that was a shit show,” Leah said, shaking her head. “Rylee knew about the journal somehow. Wasn’t a whole lot I could do to talk her down.”

  Rivers nodded. “That does explain why her behavior escalated so quickly,” he said. “Honestly, we thought we’d have to detain her before she put you in the hospital. Had to hold off when Jonathan showed up. Decided not to interfere unless you signaled us. Then the roommates showed up, and Ms. Silva…” He shook his head. “Well, you were there.”

  “The Mark is secure,” Olivia said. “Rivers, that truck and all this activity is a news report waiting to happen. I want the contents of Mr. Tibbs’ cabinet confiscated and our team off the premises as soon as possible.”

  “On it.” He nodded, opening the door to step out of the vehicle.

  Olivia kept her eyes on the scene after he left, and Leah sat staring at the empty wall across from her in a daze. “What did you say to him, Leah?” she asked.

  Leah didn’t look at her, but she knew the tapes would show the truth. “I asked what happened to Rylee.”

  “And did he answer?

  “He said she was gone.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No, but I couldn’t tell if he was….” Leah trailed off, then shook her head and looked back at the camera feeds. “Are we headed back to base? I need to speak with command immediately, and I need the….” Leah grimaced, trailing off in frustration. “We cut the power.”

  “Leah?” Olivia asked. “What’s the problem?”

  “I need the feeds. I need to see everything that happened.”

  Olivia gave a look of curiosity, but nodded. “Not a problem.” She drew a radio off her belt to contact Rivers. “Rivers, cutting the power took the camera feeds off the network while we were acquiring The Mark. They’re equipped with short term memory and batteries for this contingency. Get one of the techs to download the data before you leave.”

  “Confirmed,” Rivers replied.

  Leah bit her lip and nodded. “Thank you.”

  “You can thank me by telling me what it is you’re looking for,” Olivia replied.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “A lot of what just happened doesn’t feel right to me.”

  Olivia studied her a moment, but accepted the answer.

  “What happens now?” Leah asked.

  “You, Jonathan, his roommates, and The Mark will be transferred to a holding facility with the proper resources. Command will await you there.”

  “What about Paige and Evelyn Tibbs?”

  “The team watching the residence will remain in operation at a reduced capacity to make sure they are watched in the event they need to be contained.”

  Leah nodded, and finally, she closed her eyes and breathed, no longer caring if Olivia knew that she had been rattled by all that had gone down. She heard the porthole slide shut, and a moment later, felt a thin folder drop into her lap.

  Leah opened her eyes, saw Olivia watching her, and looked down at the folder. “What’s this?” she asked.

  “We both knew you were withholding information from me,” Olivia replied. “Command found my suspicions warranted investigation, but would not agree to anything as physically invasive as a blood or urine test on the grounds of keeping your identity need-to-know. They did not, however, have any issue with less aggressive means.”

  Olivia took a seat on the bench opposite her

  “I never doubted you were clever—and you wouldn’t be here if you couldn’t keep a secret. I knew that if you were hiding something, that you were doing it right in front of our cameras. You knew we didn’t watch you every second of everyday, and you could easily avoid a paper trail of any purchase by using cash.”

  Leah sighed, almost certain Olivia had practiced this speech in a mirror. For the time being, she played along, frowning as she flipped open the folder. There were two separate lab reports. Most of what she saw was Greek to her, but Leah was familiar enough with the term “mass spectrometry” to know that Olivia’s lab had been identifying the chemical makeup of some unidentified samples. Each report had the common names of their findings listed and highlighted: doxylamine and folic acid.

  “I don’t think you will be shocked to hear that these samples came from bottles in your kitchen cabinet that were marked as far less telling items. Now, they’re both over the counter drugs—so here is my guess. You started feeling sick a few weeks before I got suspicious of your behavior. You’re late, so you know what it means. You go shopping, buy groceries with your debit card, then these two items with cash,” Olivia said. “Did I miss anything?”

  “Never got morning sickness—doxylamine was a precaution,” Leah said, shutting the folder and looking at Olivia with a frankness in her confusion. “But what is going on here with the theatrics?”

  Olivia tilted her head, despite the woman’s emotionless facade, Leah could tell she’d been expecting a far less casual reaction than she was getting. “You’ve just admitted to withholding pertinent information regarding an operation involving national security. Carrying the child of the man you were investigating is a direct conflict of interest. I would think the repercussions of this would have dawned on you,” she said.

  Leah stared back at her with growing incredulity. “Yeah,” she said. “They dawned on me twenty minutes ago when I told Rylee I was pregnant in front of every camera in the garage. It’s why she didn’t deck me the second time.”

  Olivia looked away, her fingers tapping against the bench in thought. She looked back to Leah once more as though studying her to be sure. Then she stood and paced. “Well, that does confirm a very worrisome suspicion,” she said. “For the last few days, Rivers has reported multiple instances were Rylee and Jonathan’s conversations didn’t seem to fit their body language. This is the first instance where the phenomenon occurred with you present to confirm what was actually said.”

  Olivia stopped pacing after she finished, her back still to Leah. She continued:

  “I appreciate your honesty, but unfortunately, this does not change the fact that I will have to report your omission to the proper channels. I will not take responsibility for your actions, given you are a consultant I never requested on my team.”

  Leah folded her arms across her chest, shaking her head. “Olivia, I get it, you’re covering your ass, protecting your career. But let me ask you,” she said, holding the folder up, “does anyone other than our commanding officer know about this?”

  Olivia turned slowly. “Why would that be relevant?”

  “Trust me,” Leah said. “You won’t be doing your career any favors by making this known. For your own good, let command decide what is going to be done with me.”

  Olivia’s eyes narrowed on her. “You just told me you were willing to let the entire Cell know, thought we all saw it on the cameras,” she said. “You weren’t concerned with the rest of The Cell being aware.”

  Leah shook her head. “No, I stayed on point. When confronted with a hostile subject who was going to blow my cover, I told a lie in order to sway her suspicions,” she said. “No one has to know it wasn’t a lie for now. I got the idea from you confronting me about it—at least, that was the story I planned on telling you before you went snooping through my pantry.”

  Olivia turned and considered her. “You mean to tell me you planned all that in the time between two punches to the face?”

  Leah shook her head. “No, I told Rylee the truth because I knew it would make her reconsider. The rest I’m making up as I go.”

  Olivia took the warning seriously, though her expression never showed concern precisely. Instead, she was quiet in her thoughts until long after the truck pulled away. Leah was thankful for the short pause. All she wanted to do was lie down on the bench and let the stresses of the last half hour drain out of her, but she opted to lean back against the truck and stare at the wall.

  When Olivia finally sat back down in front of her, she crossed her legs, pursed her lips, and sighe
d. “Leah, I am going to ask you something. You do not have to answer, but you have my word that if you do, whatever is said will remain in my confidence.”

  Leah kept looking at the wall, but she replied, “Well, let’s hear it.”

  “A woman generally doesn’t take folic acid supplements unless she plans to carry a pregnancy to term.”

  Leah swallowed, and closed her eyes. Then she decided she was going to lie down after all. “I don’t know yet,” she said.

  “Well, good thing you needed a ride,” Evelyn said. “GPS is on the fritz. I don’t know how to get anywhere in this city.”

  Paige had been quiet for the most part as Evelyn drove them home. She looked up now and saw the display on the car’s dash blinking an error message: Satellite not found.

  “Oh,” she said. “Take a right at the next light.”

  When Paige had called her earlier that morning, they had both thought it best not to compare notes over the phone. Given they had little idea if anywhere was actually safe, they did the best they could. Paige had the idea of meeting in one of the study rooms set aside for students on the upper floors of Odegaard Library on the University campus. Evelyn had agreed; it seemed like as good a place as any. They would be alone, surrounded by brick walls, and the only door into the room had a window that let them see if anyone was approaching.

  Evelyn had been later than they had agreed. After hitting morning traffic, trying to find parking, and getting lost on the campus, she finally had to get directions from a student. Eventually, she found her way to the room Paige had specified.

  Evelyn listened as she recounted what she’d found out after trying to get in contact with Grant Morgan. The man’s sudden abandonment of his home played into their suspicions. Paige planned to follow up, but both feared she wasn’t going to find any trace of him at this point. When it was Evelyn’s turn, she explained that her son’s behavior had drawn the line only at explicitly stating that her suspicions had been right. Before Evelyn went on, she told Paige that she feared for her safety, didn’t want her to put herself in any danger. Paige had politely told her to go to hell, and Evelyn had nearly hugged her for it.

  She told Paige about her overnight road trip to Portland to recover a footlocker belonging to Jonathan’s father that she hadn’t seen in ten years and how her son had refused to open the box with her in the room. By now, they knew Jonathan would have removed anything he hadn’t wanted them to see, but it was still their next best lead. So they had headed home, but agreed not to talk about what they were up to once they left the library.

  When Paige’s directions led them to their first detour, a street temporarily blocked off, neither had thought much of it. When they came to the third, they started to notice that it seemed to be their street itself that was completely blocked off to traffic. The fourth time they were forced to stop, Evelyn pulled over. She looked at Paige and saw the same concern growing in her eyes. Eventually, a strange parade of vehicles approached the detour: three black SUVs, two armored cars, and a semi-truck carrying a wide load and covered with tarps.

  “What do we do?” Paige whispered.

  “I’m gonna follow them—you get out,” Evelyn said.

  “I’m staying.”

  Evelyn shook her head. “You run back to the house. Call me and let me know what’s going on there. If everything is fine, then maybe this has nothing to do with anything.”

  Paige clearly didn’t like the idea of splitting up, but Evelyn had a point. She sighed, nodded, and jumped out onto the sidewalk. Evelyn pulled back into the street and followed the last SUV. She didn’t get far—within a matter of minutes, she turned a corner to find the street blocked off again. She tried not to panic. She didn’t know her way around but could tell that the cars had been headed for the freeway. She did her best to find another route, but by the time she found her way to an on ramp, she didn’t see the vehicles, didn’t know if they had gone north or south. She pulled over, and Paige called.

  “No one’s here,” Paige said. “Leah and Jack are gone, too. The neighbors are all standing in their driveways. I’m gonna go talk to them, see what’s going on. Where are you?”

  “I couldn’t keep track of them,” Evelyn whispered, her voice starting to shake.

  She sat in her car for a long while, unsure what to do. Eventually, she turned the car around and went back to the house. Paige told her what the neighbors had said. That they had been told to stay in their homes, but had watched from the windows. They’d all seen men that looked like a SWAT team carrying guns—that it had all happened in a matter of minutes. Paige and Evelyn started calling everyone, but each phone went to voicemail. They found Hayden’s ringing in his room.

  They found the footlocker, the picture of Evelyn and Jonathan in the hospital, the broken lock. Evelyn had just started dumping out the box’s contents when Paige walked into the garage, holding a bag from Mr. Fletcher’s hardware store. She said she’d found it under the cargo net on Jonathan’s motorcycle. When they found the firearms, they knew why he had gone to replace the lock, but didn’t find anything useful.

  Unsure what else to do, they waited by the phone, expecting a call. They figured that someone would contact them, at least tell them that their loved ones had been taken into custody—something. They turned on the news, but all that was being covered was a story about GPS satellites having been temporarily out of service all over the state. Later on in the evening, that story took a back seat to some mystery around a building in Pioneer Square. Nothing about what had happened at their home.

  When Evelyn was far beyond panicking, she started growing angry. “I’m calling the police, the news, the governor’s office… every damn person who will listen,” she said. “They can’t just take people from their homes!”

  Paige stopped her before she picked up the phone. She exhaled, looked sickened by what she was about to say. “There is someone I can call,” she said. “He might be able to help.”

  “Who?” Evelyn asked, wondering why the girl had waited this long to say anything.

  “Evelyn,” Paige said. “If we’re going to discuss this, we should do it somewhere else.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  THURSDAY| OCTOBER 14, 2005 | 4:50 PM | TEXAS

  AS THE BUSINESS day drew to an end, Anthony Hoult stood at a window, looking down on the city of Dallas from the top floor of a skyscraper. Few were aware he owned the building—on paper, it appeared to belong to a collection of vested parties, all of which led back to Anthony if one was willing to shuffle through a bureaucratic nightmare of legal documents to find out. Most of the building’s floors were rented out to various startup companies, though, few of which he had anything to do with. Anthony had controlling interest in a number of companies in a wide range of industries. Most of them were managed by appointed CEOs with the proper backgrounds. The exceptions—the companies he ran directly—were those involved in R&D.

  Anthony wasn’t young, but he wasn’t old either. He was fit, more so than most realized due to only ever seeing him in business attire. This morning, he’d worn a custom-made suit to the office—he referred to it as the other-other gray one.

  His office was large and modern, but he had little to do with it. His assistant, Sydney, had brought him a concept folder from an interior design firm and Anthony had picked one the way most picked a haircut. Skylights in the roof brightened the room during the day, but recessed lighting in the ceiling was keeping him from standing in the dark now. The floors were white marble squares. The walls, those that weren’t floor to ceiling windows, were covered in some type of plastic, textured paneling—if there was a word to describe them, Anthony didn’t know it.

  There was a conference table and two white couches for face-to-face meetings. His desk was a fancy table with a fancy chair. The only thing about the office he had requested were the hidden flat screen monitors that flipped out of the walls at the touch of a remote. Anthony hadn’t felt very original having them installed, but had
gotten a small amount of pleasure checking off a bucket list item he’d had wanted since childhood.

  When Anthony had ended his last conference call, his assistant assured him that there were no pressing matters that could not wait until morning. Now, his jacket was off and thrown over his chair, his tie and top button were loose, and he was in the middle of rolling up his sleeves when Sydney’s voice buzzed in from the intercom on his desk.

  “Tony?” she asked. “Good time to drop whatever you’re doing?”

  “Sydney,” he said, shaking his head as he finished rolling his sleeves. “Go home already. I promise the world won’t end if you get out of here on time for once.”

  “Sorry, it’s just—” Sydney paused. “Well … it’s ringing.”

  Slowly, Anthony turned away from the window and stared at the intercom. He went quiet, his face growing serious with concern—but not panicking.

  “Sir? That line you had put in a few years ago? The one you said would mean I interrupt you no matter what you’re doing and start clearing your schedule—Tony?”

  He blinked when she said his name again, pulled out of his thoughts. “Thank you, Sydney, please send the call over to the conference screen.”

  “Done,” she replied. “And in regards to your schedule?”

  “Clear it.”

  “How far out?”

  “Until I know otherwise,” he said. “Indefinitely.”

  In the brief silence that followed, he could practically hear Sydney’s eyes bulging over the intercom. “I’ll get on it,” she finally said. “What do you want me to tell people?”

  “Family emergency,” Tony said, reaching for the remote to flip his conference screen out of the wall.

  “Psh, you don’t have any family.”

  “Improvise,” he replied, ending the conversation as the conference screen illuminated.

  A familiar cartoon visage stared back at him.

  “Good evening, Mr. Clean,” Tony said, his eyes narrowing slightly. He’d been expecting Heyer, though the alien usually just appeared when he needed a report. However, it wasn’t the first time he’d had to communicate with the alien’s computer.