He grabbed me close, spun me, and pushed me back against the closed door. I lost myself in his kiss, hoping he could sense my honesty as I returned it. Fisting his hair, I tugged hard, enough to get a husky growl from him.
“All right, other than in bed sometimes…” he said, his hot breath panting at my swollen lips when he’d broken for air.
“Otherwise, we’re equal partners,” I finished for him.
He nodded and rested his forehead against mine. “Does that mean you’ll stay with me?”
I swallowed hard. “Aunt Helen will have no one if I’m gone. We’re not that close, but I love her. She’s the only family I’ve ever known.”
Thinking about her alone tore my heart in half.
“I’m still considering…” That if I choose you… It’d be the same as admitting my love for him. Could this be love? Passion, yes. Lust, attraction, desire. Check. But love?
He straightened and kissed my forehead. “That’s all I ask.”
To consider loving him? It was a huge ask, as in the hardest choice I’d ever make. And I couldn’t ignore the possibility I already did.
“Let’s check this place out first.” I patted his chest, catching the surgical hat I’d knocked off in our kiss. “Then…”
“Then, one step at a time.” With that, he righted the hat, turned to the door, and led the way into the hallway.
Signs were extremely helpful, hologram tickers that floated at the ceilings as we made our way through the hospital’s corridors. The maternity ward wasn’t a long walk, and the closer we came to it, the more my excitement—nerves?—built.
Jake pulled another stunt of waiting for other staff members to head through the door, again locked with a retinal scan, and we slipped in.
I peeked into windows as we passed by, hoping to find Valentina lying back with me as a day-old baby.
“I thought Valetina Marien was in here.”
Jake skidded to a stop, apparently overhearing the same nurse’s words that I had.
We crowded close together, waiting around the corner of a wall. Inside what looked like an empty room, a male staffer changing sheets, he spoke to a coworker who’d been mopping.
“Nah. She was just discharged,” the first man said.
“Already?” the second asked.
“Guess so. Her husband picked her up.”
“So who’s going in this room now?”
“Um, a patient from triage. Doc said she’s dilated nine centimeters, which is why we need to hustle. I’ve…”
We backed up, rushing away.
Dammit, we’d just missed her. Or…if we hadn’t delayed, making out in the closet, maybe we would have caught—
“Husband?” I asked Jake as we nearly jogged. “Did Pete marry her?”
“Not that I knew of.” He frowned at me. “Our lifestyle doesn’t really encourage a settled type of habit.”
Right. But he was inviting me into his nomadic life anyway.
“Let’s go to the parking strip.”
I nodded, running now as we exited the building, dashing up steps. Why he thought Valentina would have a flying car versus an older one was beyond me, but I’d trust his guess.
Up on the top, I held back the hair that whipped in my eyes.
“Valentina Marien,” Jake said, nearly yelling at the strip’s attendant. Cars and bikes landing supplied a throaty rumble, but it wasn’t as deafening as the consistent roar of vehicles taking off.
The pot-bellied man squinted, checking a prototype of a hologram clipboard. “Nah, man. She’s in the old garage.”
A normal car. I sucked in a deep breath, ready to race again.
Down the stairs we went to where cars sat on the ground. Dirt fluffed and clouded in the garage, the pavement already removed from this subterranean space.
Coughing, I tried to catch my breath as Jake held me back from entering the rows and lines of cars.
“There.” His voice was hushed but excited.
I blinked, straining to see through the haze of disturbed dirt. A man and a woman stood next to a car.
Pete. I could tell it was him from across the garage. The woman wore a shawl, likely covering her face and hair from the dust.
Jake dropped to a duck walk, prompting me to follow out of their range of view. We sidled up to cars and low walls, hunkering down.
I pressed my back against a tall van-like monster car and listened. Jake stared over the hood of the next parked vehicle.
Light was dim down here, or maybe it was the ever-present haze of the dirt floating around from whatever vehicle drove past last.
“I can’t do this to the baby.”
Valentina crossed her arms, looking into the rear window of the car she stood against. She hadn’t aged a day. I did the math. She’d be…almost fifty now? No way. She had to have jumped time because she looked my age or younger, just as she had yesterday in 2020.
“You can,” Pete argued, cupping her elbow.
She jerked out of his touch. “I can’t. And it’s not your responsibility anyway.”
“I don’t care if she’s not mine.”
I blinked hard at Pete’s words. Oh. Huh?
“I don’t care if that asshole raped you, that she’s his and not mine. You love her, and I love you. I’ll accept her as my own.”
Raped? I covered my mouth. I wasn’t horrified for the sake of my identity, but for what she had endured.
Valentina shook her head. “Pete, a one-night stand isn’t rape.”
“He took advantage of you.”
She rolled her eyes. “No, he didn’t. I wasn’t myself, no. But it was consensual. When I thought you were killed that one time in 2005, I thought I could fuck my way through grief. Then you jumped back to me.”
Okay. Not raped then, but still.
“I’ve told you,” he said with the start of a roguish grin. “It’ll take a lot more than an agent to end me.”
Jake scoffed so softly next to me, I almost missed it. I set my hand on his back, letting him know he wasn’t alone, offering my understanding for him having to hear those words that wouldn’t stay true.
“And I know this is your life,” Valentina said.
Pete took her hands. “Our life. I want you in it.”
“Me. Not a baby. It’s not right, for her.”
“She’s a part of you.”
Valentina shook her head. “No. She deserves a chance of a normal life. You jumped me every other week all through this pregnancy to keep me from those agents’ hands. If they catch up to you, I can’t risk her being with us too. Just like we’d planned. We’ll leave her here, now, when Helen’s financially stable.”
Faint footsteps sounded nearby, and I tore my stare from Valentina and Pete arguing. Opposite us, a pair of heads peeked over the hood of a truck. Dark-brown crew cut on one, the other bald black skin.
I nudged Jake, and he looked where I pointed.
“Shit.”
“Who are they?” I whispered. From our vantage point of spying on Pete and Valentina, those two men couldn’t see us. Staring at the brown-haired one, I paid attention to his eyes. Soulless, vacant, as though he was hypnotized.
A borg.
The others had that same dead expression.
“The one on the left is Edward’s right-hand man. An agent.”
“The one who kills Pete?”
He ground his teeth, nodding. “The other’s a—”
“Borg.”
“How did they follow us here?”
He shook his head. “Edward’s got programs coded to filter through surveillance. I told you.”
“Surveillance from anywhere in the world?”
“Almost. He’s probably keyed into looking for Pete in facial recognition and found him here. That’s why going on missions in the future is always riskier than going back. Since the internet, he’s had that upper hand of intel, of seeking the Raven crew out.”
Valentina shaking her head caught my attention again.
>
“Helen. I’ll take it all to Helen,” Valentina said. “At least I’ll know it will all be safe with her.”
It? Not her? Me? Wasn’t she alluding to dropping me off at Aunt Helen’s?
“All the marces you’ve given me since the first time I jumped with you in college. I’ll take it all to Helen for now.”
Jake furrowed his brow at me. I shrugged, glancing at the agent and borg to make sure they hadn’t moved yet.
“Helen?” Pete exploded. “She’s a safe place?” He laughed.
“I know we don’t get along, but she’s my sister. Your things”—she pressed her palm to the window, looking in—“and mine will be safe with her.”
“And we can retrieve it later? She threw such a fit about us stashing some marces there once…”
“I think so,” she said, hugging him. “Do you really think you can give up your life to settle with me? Our…little family?”
“One day,” Pete soothed.
“Then we’ll have the resources to stay safe after I do this dropoff at Helen’s.”
Pete stepped back, reaching into his back pocket. “Take this one. It’s older, but it’ll work.” He handed her a folded-in jumper stick. “And some extras, in case anything goes wrong.”
She accepted a slim cartridge no bigger than a stick of gum.
“More marces?” she checked.
“Like I said. Just in case.” He scoffed. “That’s nothing compared to what you’re storing at her house, anyway.”
Valentina nodded at him, her eyes glossy.
“Get him.”
It was a low growl from a short distance away.
The agent.
He stood with the borg. Valentina and Pete turned toward them as the borg shot out purple beams. A rear window of Valentina’s car cracked and hissed as it was struck.
“Get down,” Pete yelled at Valentina, covering her as he dropped for safety.
I was right in the middle of the gunfire. In the car. A defenseless baby.
If I died in this fight…I wouldn’t exist later.
I dropped to my hands and knees, and Pete and the agent shot at each other.
“Get out of here, Everly,” Jake said, getting to his feet but still hiding behind the shelter of the truck. “You’ve got the jumper. Lure the borg away and jump. Get him away from them.” He ran to help defend his former mentor.
Lead the borg from my mom? Infant me? Him? I couldn’t leave him—but I had to save myself.
“I’ll find you,” he called back.
“Go! Go!” Pete yelled at Valentina, helping her slip into the driver’s seat. She clambered up, crawled in, her head ducked from the spray of more glass exploding from hits.
Pete fired at the agent while Valentina backed up.
Jake ran for the agent to tackle him.
The borg pivoted, spotting me as I stood and ran away from the chaos.
Fast, thudding footsteps pounded after me like a machine pistoning faster and faster.
Gasping, I pumped my legs harder, sprinting. Valentina sped out onto the street, tires squealing as she turned too hard, and the rear-end dovetailed.
“Stop.”
The borg’s order wasn’t even troubled. He wasn’t out of breath, goddamn machine.
I knocked into a garbage can as I tried to jump over the last low wall out of the parking garage. The lid flew up into my stomach as I stumbled over the falling can. Instead of letting it drop, I gripped the plate-like lid. Warm metal that slid in my sweaty fingers.
Metal!
I stopped, turning to face the borg, catching him by surprise.
He must have run out of charge for his blaster, or he’d figured it wasn’t necessary for a plebeian like me. Slowing, he jogged, reaching for his belt, perhaps for a stunner or something else to detain me.
I raised my arm, bent my elbow, and flung the lid.
All those lonely years of playing virtual Frisbee in Aunt Helen’s basement paid off.
It spun in a perfect circle, just enough of an arc, and it struck at his neck. I didn’t decapitate him, but the sharp clang of the metal on metal did what was necessary. That had to have modified his metal interface.
His head flinched back, and the lid fell to the dirt, wobbling like a top.
He stomped on it, growling lowly.
“Yeah, that’s right.” I flipped him off. “You’re not jumping anywhere again.”
He stalked faster, breaking into a run again.
“Dammit.”
Which, genius, means he’s still here and pissed for being trapped here.
I ran out again, just missing being run over by a truck barreling in for the parking garage.
“Oh, Jesus.” I gasped, my heart thundering.
“Ain’t nobody never tell you to look across the road before crossing?” the snarly voice of a female trucker bellowed.
A loud, crunchy crash rent the air. Metal on—
The borg. Nearly tripping over my feet, I spun to look back.
The borg had run after me so fast, he’d been plowed over.
“Ah, hell, what kinda numbnuts was that?” the trucker whined, braking hard.
Thanks!
Breathing easier, I ran for home—Aunt Helen’s home. If Valentina was going there, I needed to see to her safety. Between Pete and Jake, the agent should be subdued. But Valentina, I worried about her. She’d just given birth to me. She wouldn’t be in any position to defend herself—or me—and if she jumped post-partum like that. God, it’d hurt like hell.
Chapter Seventeen
Valentina’s car was parked in Aunt Helen’s driveway, the lone strip of packed dirt that led to the house my grandparents had left to her since she turned eighteen.
It was early in the day yet, and if this was 2051… Aunt Helen wouldn’t be here. She’d be at work, at the plant, and she likely never ever missed a day of work.
I swallowed, trying to steady my breaths as I slowed to a walk. Around the edge of the dirt-yard were some old pine trees. All dead. Fat old trunks that had already lost all their branches from the herbicide incident the previous year. That “mistake” that wiped out conifers across the nation.
I ducked, hiding behind the widest trunk, and watched her exit the car. She reached into the backseat and removed my holder seat. I couldn’t hear a cry, so I must have slept through all that chaos somehow.
With a solemn face, she surveyed the street. Most who lived on this street would be working, but I understood her worry about nosy eyes. Those meddling neighbors…
She set my slim, bean-shaped carrier inside a box. What else was in it, I couldn’t see. Standing on the single raiser of a stoop, she turned and pushed the box into a small alcove. A nook that was out of sight from view of thieves on the street. Aunt Helen called it her delivery niche.
“Don’t give her too much trouble,” Valentina said, smiling, backing away.
I heard a single sniff, but her ease of leaving me on Aunt Helen’s doorstep didn’t seem to be breaking her. Watching her step back, she seemed so young, looked younger than me, the real me from 2071. Like a sister, not a mom. Witnessing my birthmother…abandon me didn’t tear me up either. I wasn’t apathetic. But…I’d never known her to miss her.
I stared at her as she retreated, watching me on the doorstep.
A buzz zipped through the air, and static pulled at my sense of balance.
Then she screamed. For a split second until a hand covered her mouth.
“Give me the jumper.”
Freddy!
He stabbed her in the stomach.
I stood, choking for a breath as I witnessed her slink back against him, her eyes wide with alarm.
Without letting her fall, Freddy dug into her pocket and took the jumper Pete had given her.
I barely registered another buzz and stomach-churning vacuum of the atmosphere.
Edward’s right-hand man blurred into sight next to Freddy. “The jumper?”
Freddy nodded and tossed it t
o the agent. He let Valentina drop to the ground then crouched next to her. From a slim pouch hidden under her shirt, he withdrew slim strips like gum.
“Check it out!” Freddy handed them to his superior.
“Quite a bounty.”
Freddy scoffed. “What a messed-up assignment this one was. First, I had to sleep with the niece in the future to get into this house, and here, I lucked out catching Pete’s lady when she’d been jumping through time.”
The agent grinned. “Least you got laid.”
“Hell yeah, I did. She begged me for it.”
What? He was delusional!
“Anyway, what should we do with the body?”
The body. Like a thing. Not a person. A woman who gave birth to me. Tears scalded me now, the crude way they discarded her for the sake of taking these damn vials of antimatter.
“We? You do the dirty work, not me.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
The agent shrugged. “I don’t care. Jump her back in time somewhere and toss her body.” He vanished, the cartridges of vials in his grip and a sinister smile on his lips.
Freddy nodded, withdrew his jumper, set his hand on Valentina’s shoulder, and they disappeared in a fast, blurry snap.
I blinked, staring at where she’d been.
She’d abandoned me. Aunt Helen was right about that. But I finally had my closure. My mom wasn’t out there somewhere, potentially coming back to find me. She was dead after all.
I’d never have to wonder what-ifs anymore or daydream about her returning and how I could accept a mother in my life.
She was…and had always been…gone.
A cry broke me from the numbing shock. I flinched, checking the box.
Me.
I’d woken up.
Checking that no one was staring out the nearest windows, I ran to the box and saw…myself.
“Hey…me.”
Damn. I was a chubby baby. A laugh slipped from me, despite the stunning violence. I was looking at myself, one day old.
Shaking my head, I let the shock spread through me. Then I spotted the rest of the box. A gray blanket. I picked it up, feeling the familiar softness of it. Aunt Helen never failed to tuck it in around me when I’d napped or watched TV as a kid.
As I lifted it, a letter fell down. She hadn’t sealed the envelope, and I picked it up.
In the Wrong Year (Double-Check Your Destination Book 1) Page 14
