Vortex (30 page)

“You killed one of my best friends.” She turned around to face me, her eyes pleading
with mine, but for what? “This is how it goes, right? Nobody gets caught and gets
away with it.”

“I don’t know,” I stuttered, trying to keep up with this crazy turn of events. This
wasn’t in the training manual. There was no protocol to follow.

She took a deep breath, closing her eyes tight. A few more tears tumbled out. “Can
I please call my mother? I need to hear her voice … just for a second…”

It felt like someone had ripped my heart right out of my body, that was how much her
words hurt me.
She thinks I want to kill her
 … How could this happen? Who would put Holly in the FBI or the CIA or whatever the
hell organization gave her a gun and an assignment?

The floor creaked loudly as I approached her again. Her chest stopped moving and she
held her breath, squeezing her eyes shut even tighter.

I picked up her hand and turned it palm up, placing her gun on top. My fingers lingered
over hers and I whispered, “I would never hurt you, Holly … ever. Just leave … It’s
okay.”

Her eyes flew open, staring straight into mine. She tightened her hands around the
gun and knocked me out of the way. It was a very predictable move, but I let myself
fall down, for her benefit. I stayed sitting on the hardwood floor, while she pointed
the gun at me again and backed up slowly toward the front door. I could see the confusion
and relief flickering in her eyes, and then pain clouding everything. “He was a really
amazing person … I can’t believe you—”

“I know,” I said, choking back my own tears. “I know he was.”

My face had dropped to my hands and I didn’t even see her leave, but I heard the door
shut quietly. The first thought to come to mind was,
I can’t have her back
. Not the girl I loved in the future. Those timelines were gone, leaving me only with
a version of Holly whose life had taken some serious turns for the worse. Someone
was doing this. It wasn’t a coincidence. It couldn’t be.

Thomas trying to screw with my head again.

And Adam … What had I done to get him killed? It hurt too much to even contemplate
tonight. I just wanted to crawl under my bed and hide out until someone told me what
to do … who to save, where to go. If only I could flip a switch and go into mechanical
mode so I didn’t have to feel any of it. Just work … nothing else.

I lifted myself off the floor and collapsed onto my bed, but the second my eyes drifted
shut, Adam’s voice invaded my thoughts. Had I ever even told him … how cool it was
to have one person in my life whom I could tell everything? This was completely true.
I kept secrets from my dad, from Holly, but Adam knew all of it.

He’s gone.

He was gone the second I jumped to this timeline because I erased him, like I’d erased
my Holly. Except I always had a method of convincing him.
His code
. That had stayed in the back of my mind, like a favorite place you could keep coming
back to.

May nineteenth …
May 19, 2009 … afternoon.

That was the only nudge I needed to jump back. Thomas-jump, Thomas-jump …
Please be a Thomas-jump
. But my insides burned and ripped to pieces immediately. A half-jump … which meant …
failure. Complete and utter failure.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

MAY 19, 2009

Holly hadn’t misled me. This was the right date. Adam was alone in his house when
I found him. The front door unlocked. The neighbors’ kids splashing around in their
pool next door. And Adam, sprawled out on his living room floor, blood seeping through
his pant leg.

“Fuck!” he said when he heard me walking across the floor. “Not another one.”

I could see his head rising, and eventually he sat all the way up. I ran over to him,
dropping to the floor beside his leg. “Adam! You’re okay … I mean, it’s just your
leg.”

His mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. “Jackson! What the hell are you doing
here?”

I had just started applying pressure to his leg wound with a dust cloth that was lying
on the coffee table, but I froze when he said my name. “You know who I am?” This version
of Adam shouldn’t know me any more than Agent Holly knew me.

He pressed his hands to the side of his head, wincing and squeezing his eyes shut.
“Yeah … I mean, in theory … sort of. Oh, no—you aren’t here to change this, right?
You can’t!”

“No,” I said bitterly. “This won’t change a thing … unfortunately.”

“Good.” His breathing had become labored, but he opened his eyes, looking at me intensely.
“I have a source … a great source. Just let this go. Let me go.”

“Adam, it’s just your leg,” I said, pressing harder on his bloody jeans. Why was I
even trying? Obviously it wasn’t just his leg.

He shook his head, as if reading my thoughts. “I saw things … I time-traveled and …
oh, damn, my head is fucking killing me.”

My eyes traveled from the bleeding leg to his face, and it was like everything moved
in slow motion and I already knew what was coming. He lifted a hand from the side
of his face and both of us stared, horror-stricken. Sticky red blood covered his palm
and dripped between his fingers. I couldn’t breathe or move. He collapsed onto his
back, giving me a clear view of the dark red, almost purple oozing from his ear.

My hands no longer pressed on the leg wound. The panic had left, leaving only grief.
I was here to watch him die. Or just leave him, and I knew what that would do to me.
Tears fell from my eyes and I didn’t try to stop them.

“There’s surveillance cameras … CIA-planted devices,” he croaked. “The corner of Lexington
and Ninety-second Street … find the pictures … hack into the system … whatever you
can do … two months ago … March fifteenth…”

“What? What are you talking about?” I leaned in closer. “Adam … who did this to you?”

He closed his eyes again, his breathing jagged and inconsistent. “It was just … an
accident … accident.”

Oh, God … no
. “Was it me? Did I do this?”

He didn’t answer, and I reached out desperately and shook him. “Adam! Was it me? Did
I try and take you somewhere?”

“No,” he gasped. “It wasn’t you.”

My fingers were still tangled around the front of his shirt and I couldn’t bring myself
to let go. Why let go? Why hold on? Any gains I ever made would end up like this.
Where was
my
end, and could I just jump there and get it over with?

I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and noticed Adam had gone completely still. Adam …
my best friend … gone. All logic disappeared and I shook him again, harder this time.
“Please wake up! Please! I can’t fix this … I can’t do anything right.”

His hand opened as his entire body relaxed. A wad of paper fell from his palm and
somehow I managed to open it, recognizing his writing immediately.

JACKSON,

Something’s happening to the world right now and I can’t figure it out. Agent Collins
and I are doing everything we can to solve the puzzle. I remember pieces of meeting
you, as if it happened in a dream or a retelling of a story I was too young to remember.
But that part doesn’t matter, only that I know who you are … I know you’re not bad.
I know Tempest isn’t bad. But Eyewall … I don’t know much about them. Even though
I thought I did.

Keep looking for clues. Keep asking questions and whatever you do, DO NOT fix this!

ADAM

It took me only about two seconds to figure out why Holly thought I’d done this to
him. An EOT found this note … They knew Adam was figuring things out … They knew they
needed to frame me to add fuel to the fire. To keep Eyewall wanting to hunt us down.

I folded the note and stuffed it back into Adam’s hand, wishing I could take it with
me.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered to him before jumping back to my present day and time.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

JUNE 17, 2009, 11:52
P.M.

“It’s completely clean in here,” Kendrick said, crawling out from underneath my bed.

“Check under the sink with the metal detector … run it over the pipes,” Stewart said
from behind my laptop.

I’d been sitting on my bed, leaning against the wall, staring at the TV for almost
two hours. Complete numbness … that was all I felt at the moment and I was afraid
if I moved, even just a little, that would change.

“Blondie’s not in any of the recent surveillance photos taken of Eyewall agents,”
Stewart said.

Obviously.
No way would I have missed that.

“Would she really be working for Eyewall?” Kendrick asked from under the sink. “I
thought she was just some average girl.”

“Probably not, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t,” Stewart said. “Think about it … Jackson
left her in another timeline to keep her safe. Her diary’s floating around … Obviously,
he’s been set up for this. The diary was in Agent Meyer Senior’s place. Someone meant
for Jackson to find it. Not only is he trying to avoid contact with her, she’s been
brainwashed to hate his guts.”

I inhaled slowly, focusing on the Mets game on the TV in front of me.

Kendrick came out from under the sink and adjusted her dress. “You’re right, she could
just be a pawn … and Adam Silverman, too, although it sounds like he’s got some useful
skills.”

Had
some useful skills.

“So, do you think Agent Meyer knew? That she was involved in the CIA?” Kendrick asked,
tentatively because she knew how Stewart and I might react.

“No,” Stewart said firmly, closing that door quicker than it had been opened. “Let’s
not forget that Blondie was at Healy’s event … even though you manipulated that situation.
She acted really bizarre. I listened in on most of her chat with Jackson.”

They had stopped including me in the conversation over an hour ago when I’d stopped
answering questions. Once I heard the details—Adam Silverman, senior at George Washington
High School in Newark, New Jersey … soon-to-be MIT freshman … died May 19, 2009 …
cause of death … accident in the home.

Right. An accident.

“Holy fuck!” Stewart shouted, jumping up from the couch. “Why didn’t I remember this?”

From the corner of my eye, I saw her open the closet door and pull out the big bag
of Mason’s stuff, the one she hadn’t touched since taking the T-shirt and sweatpants
from it this morning. When she removed his laptop, I could sense the reluctance as
she carried it over to the couch like it might explode or shatter any second.

“Mason did some crazy computer-geek shit and if she had an earpiece in or any communication
device that night, it should be recorded here.”

“How is that possible?” Kendrick sat down next to Stewart, leaning close to the computer
screen. “He would have had to stream it through the Internet and that would make it
available to anyone.”

Stewart let out a deep breath and turned the computer toward Kendrick. “Yep … he streamed
all the radio communications within a half mile of the area and had it encrypted to
the hard drive. Only someone as smart as you and him would be able to unscramble it
and sort through the hours of data.”

“Right, I’m on it,” Kendrick said with a sigh.

Personally, I didn’t need to hear anything from that night. What I needed to do was
decide if I was going to leave. Get the hell out of this nightmare universe. I could
go back to that 2007 timeline. Adam and Mason were alive in that year. 007 Holly hadn’t
accused me of murder. That was another plus.

I didn’t even remember closing my eyes, but I must have.

JUNE 18, 2009, 6:05
A.M.

“Five minutes,” Kendrick said. “I’m moving it to my iPod and we can listen through
our earpieces.”

The sun streaming through the blinds surprised me and I jerked upright, rubbing my
eyes. “It’s morning?”

“Guess he’s not deaf and mute after all,” Stewart said.

I swept the room in one quick glance and saw they both were wearing sweats and there
were crumbs and napkins all over the kitchen counter … and coffee … I smelled coffee.
I got up from the bed and walked into the bathroom, turning on the shower to avoid
communication.

“He’s totally bonkers right now. What are we supposed to do with him?” Stewart asked,
loud enough for me to hear.

“Just let it go for now,” Kendrick said. “I’m sure the six hours of sleep must have
helped.”

Six hours?
That had to be a new record for me. Actually, I’d hoped to feel some sense of purpose
or determination to fix this year … this universe, when I woke. But I just wanted
out. Maybe I’d talk to Dr. Melvin first, if I could get him alone.

When I was in the kitchen a few minutes later, pouring a cup of coffee, Kendrick came
up to me and stuck an earpiece in my ear. “You okay?”

“Not really.”

“We’ve unscrambled several CIA agents’ conversations from the night of Healy’s event.
We were surrounded by agents. The three we identified as Eyewall were in some remote
location, giving directions. That’s why we didn’t have any pictures.”

“Great.”

Kendrick sighed and left me alone in the kitchen. I didn’t think she had any idea
what to say, which was good, because I didn’t need her giving me some reason to stay.
I leaned my head on the counter, burying my face in my arms as the recording started.

“Flynn … what part of ‘keep your eyes open from a distance’ do you not understand?”

“That’s Agent Collins,” Stewart said. “He’s in Eyewall.”

“And how do you know that?” Kendrick asked, pausing the recording.

“I just do,” Stewart said firmly.

I took a second to glance at Kendrick and we both exchanged a look, knowing Stewart
had just given us information only her specialty was allowed to have.
She must really trust us now
.

My face was buried again as Kendrick restarted the recording.