Run (The Tesla Effect #2) (14 page)

It’s time
, the man thought as he emerged into the cold, the bar door swinging shut and effectively killing the awful music that had given him a headache. He could not get over the coincidence of the boy and girl he’d observed earlier riding away on a motorcycle coming to this bar, of all places. Then again, he didn’t believe in coincidence, so clearly he just didn’t understand all of the intricacies, the crossed threads and timelines that had brought him to this moment.

Yet.

The night air felt good, and he welcomed the three-mile walk to the university where he knew he’d find the young Dr. Nilsen. The man had had only one drink, but he felt a little strange, light-headed even, and the weakness irritated him. All weakness irritated him. A brisk walk in the cold would clear his head so that when he got to the old lab building on campus that hadn’t been used in several years—at least as far as the faculty and administration were aware—he would know exactly how to proceed. Explanations would be needed, of course, but his mere presence would accomplish a great deal on its own. He simply couldn’t afford to wait any longer, or to ponder the potential risks of revealing himself. He had waited months, merely observing, and he was through waiting. No, he needed every advantage, every bit of information to plan this, and the only person he knew whose intelligence rivaled his own—intelligence and ruthlessness—was Sebastian Nilsen.

The man smiled without amusement. Together, they would devise a plan that would put the time machine—and everything else the man wanted—firmly into his hands, the Abbotts be damned.

CHAPTER 16

“One more beer,” Tesla said. Sam heard it as a command rather than a negotiation, which meant there was no way he was going to acquiesce. They’d already had two each, and Tesla had had most of a third draft with her burger. Sam was driving, and besides, he could already feel the effects of the alcohol, could see it in Tesla’s dancing and feel it in his own reaction to her body, so tantalizingly close to his, the supple way she moved, her dark, unreadable eyes. She seemed different to him, and not just because of the disguise. She seemed…dangerous, and he was confused by the swirling emotions this caused, the excitement and the fear of what she might do if they kept drinking—of what he might do.

“No. Let’s go.”

“You’re not in charge, you know,” Tesla said softly, leaning in as they stood still among the dancers, “Gimme Shelter” pounding from the speakers, pushing him, pushing her closer.

“Meaning that you are?” Sam’s expression told Tesla that he wasn’t joking.

She shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe nobody is. Isn’t that what we said earlier? Maybe we can’t control any of…this.” She waved her hand vaguely at the room, but the gesture encompassed them both, the world outside the bar, the past, present and future.

“Maybe,” Sam said. “But we still have to act as if what we do matters.”

“What if I don’t want to?” she said, her voice stubborn, which was nothing new, but there was a steely quality to it that was, and he was again pricked by uneasiness that gnawed at his consciousness like a faint scrabble in the woodwork, barely heard. Determined, Sam steered them back to their seats and laid cash on the bar to cover their tab.

“I guess that’s why I’m here,” he said lightly. “To keep you out of trouble.”

Tesla drank the last of her beer and stepped in close, and Sam took an instinctive step back and found himself wedged up against the bar, her face so close to his he could see the edges of one of her dark contact lenses and the faintest hint of blue where it didn’t quite cover her iris.

“Let’s get into trouble,” she whispered, just before she pressed her lips to his.

Sam tasted cold beer on her tongue, felt her hand on the small of his back, her fingers clutching his shirt. She was pressed up against him, their torsos in perfect alignment, the soft roundness of her breasts pushing into his chest, her pelvis leaning into his creating a heat that raced through his body, a fire quickly raging out of control. His hands moved from his sides to her shoulders and he gripped her through the flannel shirt she wore—his flannel shirt—felt the edges of her collar bones through the soft fabric and pushed her, gently but unambiguously, away from him.

“No,” he said firmly, but his voice shook.

Tesla laughed, grabbed her messenger bag and pulled the strap over her head. “Whatever you say, Sam. By the way, what’s the count now?”

She walked toward the door without registering the baffled look on his face and he heard her laughter as she walked outside and an icy blast of the November night pushed its way into the room.

“Thanks, Sully,” Sam said quickly and followed her toward the door.

“Yeah, good luck, man,” the bartender called out, chuckling. “You got your hands full.”

It took a moment for Sam’s eyes to adjust from the bar to the dark parking lot, nearly filled now with cars, a few trucks, and a dozen motorcycles. There were no lights outside—none that worked, at least—save for a security light on the building next door whose illumination didn’t even come close to its nearest neighbor. The light made its meager presence known only in the glint of chrome from a hundred points of contact in the crowded lot. Sam stood for a moment, blinking, the faint bass from the juke box inside the bar thrumming like distant thunder, his eyes slowly focusing on his motorcycle, and Tesla, standing beside it, her arms wrapped around her waist and a stricken expression on her face as she stared back at him, eyes wide and panicked.

He was at her side in an instant, his jumbled thoughts of her body as she had danced hidden within his clothes, his desire to find the familiar buttons and zippers, peel back the layers until he reached her skin—God, the flirting and kissing, her mouth open, warm, even the disguise she wore, the strange look of her and the way it seemed to alter her personality—all of it replaced with a singular, consuming concern.

“Tesla, what’s wrong?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound emerged. She was shaking, and he could see now that she was crying, her cheeks were wet. He put his arms around her and brought her in close, trying to ease her trembling by holding her tighter, anchoring her to him and protecting her from whatever wind was shaking her like a sapling in a storm.

He was terrified that she would break, snap in half, separated from whatever it was that rooted her, and be lost to him forever.

“Sam,” she said in his ear, just the one, tearful word, and the sound of it was agony.

“Whatever it is, we’ll fix it,” he said in a rush, moving her just far enough away from him that she could see his face, see that he meant it. “We’ll handle it. I promise.”

She nodded once with complete trust.

“Can you tell me what it is?” he asked. “What happened?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, her voice still shaking, but at least she was talking. Sam still touched her, his hands loosely gripping her at the elbows, her palms flat against his chest. “I was just suddenly—overwhelmed. Grief, like I haven’t felt since my mom died, that horrible despair and hopelessness—and anger—no, more than anger, worse. Rage. Fury.” She was talking faster now, her voice gaining strength and momentum. “Sam it practically knocked me down, like a massive wave smashing into me, rolling me over, pounding me down and I couldn’t get a breath, wasn’t even sure which direction would get me back to air—to sanity—and I—”

“It’s okay, it’s okay now,” Sam soothed her, pulling her back in, hugging her, waiting for her shaking to subside. Was it the beer, he wondered, although she had seemed strange to him before and she certainly didn’t appear drunk. “What do you think brought this on?” he asked. “Were you thinking about your parents, or the time machine, or….”

“No, Sam, you don’t understand,” she said, struggling faintly for a moment to extricate herself from his embrace. She pulled away from him and his hands dropped to his sides, their bodies disconnected for what seemed the first time in hours, and Sam felt it like cold water thrown in his face.

“This isn’t about me,” she said softly, her eyes like ebony, the faint light glinting off the synthetic surfaces of her contacts. “It’s Finn. Something’s happened. You have to send me back.”

CHAPTER 17

“Hey, Ford.”

Finn look up from his laptop where he’d been reading yet another archived newspaper report on Tasya Petrova’s death, printed eight years ago. There had been multiple reports, in local, regional, and even a couple of national publications—which made sense. It was a pretty grisly death, and the stock photo of the deceased portrayed an unusually beautiful young woman who also just happened to be a highly regarded physicist and whose death just happened to leave two young children without a mother. Tragedy sells newspapers, especially when it involves photogenic people, and everyone had wanted their share of the profits to be gleaned from Tasya Petrova’s death.

What Finn had not expected, however, was the uniformity of the articles, even to the point of identical phrases used by competing news outlets. It was almost as though the journalists were all working from a single press release or approved statement, and instructed to close out the incident, raise no questions, offer nothing more of substance.

Some agency—the one he worked for, or another branch, another office—had been involved and had moved quickly to control the media, that much was clear.

Finn didn’t answer right away, annoyed to be interrupted in general, but doubly irritated to have that interruption come from Sam, at whom he simply stared, waiting.

Sam looked equally unhappy, though, which was somewhat gratifying.

When Sam looked away and ran his fingers through his short hair, Finn’s irritation got the best of him.

“Dude. What?”

Sam looked at him again. “I think you should know, Tesla’s coming back tonight.”

Finn’s chair crashed to the floor as he stood up. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, eight years ago I manned the controls and sent Tesla back, to the present—to now. She’ll be back tonight.”

“What time?” Finn asked sharply.

“I’m not exactly sure, but as far as I can recall it’ll be around two a.m. So I guess technically that’s tomorrow.”

They stared at each other across the room, until Sam cleared his throat. “I think you should be there, too.”

“You’re goddamned right I’ll be there,” Finn said.

The intensity in Finn’s voice steeled Sam’s resolve. He had not realized how difficult it would be to suddenly be in the same position as everyone else, waiting in the dark for the future to unfold. He had taken more satisfaction than he’d realized in knowing things Finn did not know, but that was over. His advantage—his memories of what these people would do, had done—was just about gone. But Sam had no intention of losing, so he would simply need to figure out and cultivate some other advantage.

“Okay. Good. I’ll meet you at the lab at 1:30.” Sam turned to go, hesitated, and turned back toward Finn, who stood watching him still. Sam had thought long and hard about this, about what he could say, should say, and how that might play out. And he had made his decision.
Goddamn it, he liked the guy
.

“Finn,” he said clearly, purposefully. “Be careful.”

Taken completely by surprise, Finn’s anger dissipated completely, and he didn’t even try to hide his confusion. “Well that’s a pretty cryptic warning,” he said. “Should I read it as a warm glow of concern for my general wellbeing, or are you threatening me?”

They looked at each other, neither of them smiling, and it was the most honest moment they’d had since they met. There was no audience, no reason for quips or banter that didn’t fool anybody. In this rare moment, they saw each other, and all pretense fell away.

“Let me be clear, then,” Sam said, his voice almost gentle. “Yes.” And he walked out the front door of Jane’s house and closed it softly behind him.

“Where the hell have you been, Finn?” Keisha asked, staring at her cousin as he exhaled loudly through his mouth, forcing the air from his lungs while he pushed the weighted steel bar up and away from his chest. Hitting a two-twenty-five bench for the first time was a milestone. He wished he could care.

Finn didn’t answer immediately—he couldn’t, without risking the possibility of dropping the bar and crushing his windpipe with it. His arms shook just slightly as he re-racked the bar, the sharp clang of metal on metal ringing in the basement gym of the old house. He slid forward a couple of inches and sat up on the bench to face his cousin.

Words weren’t immediately necessary. Finn raised an eyebrow at her, and Keisha rolled her eyes in response, their seamless communication as well developed as if they had grown up together, brother and sister.

“Okay, yes, obviously, you’re right here,” Keisha finally said.

“I live here, Keish. It couldn’t have been that hard.”

Finn stood and picked up his towel from the bench, wiping the sheen of sweat from his face and hands. After his conversation with Sam the hours had dragged unbearably. Tesla was coming back, and Sam had clearly staked a claim. Finn was still a bit surprised by Sam’s willingness to let him see his intentions, see that he recognized some sort of competition between them. Finn felt it too, but didn’t want to be
that guy
, the one who sees the girl as a prize, the reward for besting his rival. He acknowledged that this effort wasn’t for Tesla’s sake, but rather for his own: he simply did not want Sam to be a part of anything that had to do with Tes. If he viewed her as having been won through beating Sam, Sam would always be there, a part of whatever it was between them.

Would Tesla see it that way, though? He loved her stubborn independence—and was simultaneously, and frequently, annoyed by it—but maybe she’d turn out to be one of those girls who
wanted
to be hovered over, put up on a pedestal. Sam treated her like that, Finn thought, or at least that’s how it looked to him. The guy watched her with those black eyes like—well, like she was
his
, or at least like it was inevitable that she would be.

Finn had gone over and over their conversation since Sam left, the warning, the threat—whatever it was—that Sam had delivered. But as strange as Sam’s advice to be careful had been, it was Tesla’s return that occupied his thoughts for the most part. He was actually kind of freaked out by the depth of his worry over Tesla’s arrival—how she was and what had been happening. Not to mention wondering what she was feeling. At least he had some small understanding of the situation, if Bizzy’s theory about quantum entanglement was right. He hadn’t had a chance to tell Tesla about it before she’d jumped, so she was completely in the dark. Did she wonder what was happening, wonder if something was wrong with her? Was she, like Finn had been, worried she was losing her mind?

His cousin’s voice brought him back to the moment at hand. “Whatever, Finn. Look, you’ve got to come over to my house. Now.”

“Keisha, I have things going on. I can’t come over.”

Keisha took in the gym, Finn’s sweaty clothes.

“Yes, I can see you’re hard at work. Or, as Bizzy would say, actually thinking she was funny, I can see you have ‘pressing duties.’ Gotta love the little dork. At least she tries.”

“This
is
work,” Finn said. “I have to be in top physical condition at all times. It’s part of my job, whereas you simply play high school basketball. Apples and oranges, really. The danger, intrigue and inherent sexual magnetism of the international spy doesn’t just happen, you know. Did you know that in order to bench this amount I have to first be able to beat each of the university basketball team’s starters in back-to-back one-on-one, without stopping for water breaks, and then—”

Keisha didn’t bite. “Yeah. Sounds like Bro-Science.”

Finn laughed out loud. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I love those guys.”

“Seriously, Finn. My mom sent me over. You need to come to the house.” Her tone was uncharacteristically urgent.

“Okay, but only for a few minutes,” he agreed, however reluctantly. “I really do have stuff going on. Let me shower first.”

“You really will come, right?”

“Jesus, Keish—I said I would. Give me fifteen minutes, I’ll be right behind you.”

Five minutes later Finn stood under the hot water, letting it pound the tension from his back and shoulders. He was unable to think of anything but the fact that Tesla would be back tonight. He’d make his stop at Keisha’s brief. What the hell did his Aunt Monica want, anyway? Whatever it was, he’d make short work of it and get to the Bat Cave. There wasn’t a single thing he could imagine that could distract him from Tesla.

Monica Jackson opened the door while Finn was still knocking, and it startled him. Clearly she’d been standing just on the other side of it, waiting, and this additional bit of unusual behavior from his relatives made him jumpy. His instincts told him this was not going to be a simple case of his aunt lecturing him about coming over to visit more often, or asking him to help move something heavy. One look at her face—so very like his own mother’s—was all he needed to see that.

“Come in,” said his aunt softly, without preamble, grabbing his wrist, pulling him into the foyer, and shutting the door behind him. They stood in the entryway, Monica looking at him with such a serious expression, her dark brown eyes filled with such concern that he wanted, inexplicably, to run out the door and postpone indefinitely whatever was going on here. Aunt Monica was a very strong person. Her husband—Keisha’s father, Vaughn Jackson, was a career Air Force officer stationed abroad, and Monica had insisted that she could live and work and raise their daughter here, mostly alone, because it was better for Keisha. She and her husband made it work, and Finn had never heard about, let alone seen, his aunt overwhelmed by anything. He didn’t think he had ever even seen her upset, but she certainly was upset now. Her mouth was tense and slightly downturned at the corners. There was a small crease, a “worry-line,” his mother would’ve said, just at the bridge of her nose, and the way she was looking at Finn—with pity—was starting to freak him out.

“Why are we whispering?” Finn asked, refusing to let her sepulchral tone make him act equally ridiculous. “And where’s Keisha? Doesn’t she want in on the big reveal?”

Aunt Monica cleared her throat and stood up straighter, and Finn remembered that his aunt did not like to be teased. She didn’t have much of a sense of humor, in his opinion, which was odd because her daughter was hilarious and found comedy in almost everyone and everything around her.

“Keisha decided to give us some privacy. Come in here,” she said, turning and walking into the formal living room they never used. “We need to talk.”

Finn followed her and sat where she indicated, on the edge of the white sofa that was covered in some kind of see-through plastic that protested loudly as soon as he touched it. He wondered idly if when he rose to leave the plastic would stick to him, like gum on a shoe, and he’d have to fight his way out.

His aunt sat in a green chair directly across the coffee table from him, her hands tightly clenched together in her lap.

“What is it?” Finn asked, allowing a little of his alarm to show. “Is my mom okay?” It was the only thing he could think of, and if something had happened to his mother—wherever in the world she might be at the moment—it made sense that her sister, his aunt, would be the one officially informed and he’d have to hear about it from her.

“Yes,” she said hurriedly, not wanting him to think it even for a second. But before he could feel any relief at her assurance she rushed on. “It’s not your mother. She’s fine as far as I know. It’s something else. There’s…someone here to see you.”

Finn closed his eyes, shutting out the sight of his aunt—the fear on her face, her inexplicable inability to just come right out and say whatever it was. His mother was fine, as of course she would be. Beyond that, there was nothing that warranted this kind of seriousness. Finn felt his heartbeat slow to normal, realizing only as he felt the tension leave his body how much of it he’d carried around since Keisha first appeared in the gym to drag him over here.

“Aunt Monica, I have to go. I have no idea what you’re talking about, and if my mom is okay, I’m not really sure I care right now. I don’t have
time
to care right now. So either tell me what this is about, or it will have to wait.” His exasperation was not feigned, and he stood, so she would know he was seconds from walking out.

But Monica stood too, her hands still clasped together in front of her, and her knuckles were white. “Finn—Finn it’s about your father.”

Finn felt his face suddenly devoid of expression as it went blank, as if a plug had been pulled and every outward sign of thinking or feeling swirled down some unseen drain in an instant, leaving him an empty shell. The words didn’t even make sense, and after a beat he frowned at her in simple confusion, as if she’d been speaking gibberish.

“My…what? What do you mean?”

“Finn, your father is here. He wants to see you.”

He heard the clock on the wall ticking. It was a monstrous thing with carved figures all over it that his mother had brought her sister Monica from Germany a few years back. His aunt loved it, but Keisha and Finn thought it was the ugliest, gaudiest thing they’d ever seen. It ticked loudly now, a relentless metronome keeping time to the words in his head, stuck in some infinite audio loop:
yourfatherishere yourfatherishere yourfatherishere
…