The Shoes Come First: A Jennifer Cloud Novel

by Janet Leigh

Chapter 17

  Caiyan’s kiss was mesmerizing. An intense heat poured through me and down into the inner sanctum of my body. The forces of the time travel swirled around me as if I were bundled inside a cocoon. When the vessel stopped, our lips parted. It worked. I was still in one piece. My hands were resting on his muscular chest, and his arms were wrapped tightly around me. I pulled away from him, and his dark lashes fluttered open, revealing the deep smolder of his emerald-green eyes.

  “It worked. I’m alive,” I said, my knees giving out beneath me. He gathered me in his arms and kissed me again. A ball of fire formed in my gut and seemed to explode out my fingertips. We broke, and I think he must have felt the same thing, because he stared at me in amazement.

  Then I felt the other sets of eyes staring at me. I turned to face three men in suits standing with hands on hips, glaring at us through the glass door of the phone booth. Caiyan slid the door open.

  “Welcome to Gitmo. Lassies first.” He gestured with a palms-up movement toward the men.

  “Um, hello,” I said, stepping down from the platform.

  From behind the men, footsteps echoed into the room. A voice of authority rang out. “Where the hell have you been?”

  The wall of men parted, and Jake came front and center.

  “Oh shit!” we both said simultaneously.

  Caiyan stepped forward. “Meet our fearless leader,” he said with a hint of sarcasm.

  “Jennifer, what the hell?” Jake tried again.

  “You two have met, yeah?” Caiyan said, stepping aside. He backed up to lean against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. His western wear had changed into a worn pair of Levis, a tight-fitting black T-shirt, and black Doc Martens. I looked him up and down, and he raised an eyebrow at me. “Not exactly what I expected,” he said, the corners of his mouth turning up.

  I looked down and realized I was in the dreadful smiley-face scrubs from the clinic. Damn.

  “Um, these are my work clothes.”

  “Nice boots,” Brodie added, joining the group.

  I took in my surroundings. It was a big empty space that reminded me of an underground airplane hangar, no windows. There were twelve square platforms lined up in four rows. Each platform was about ten square yards, providing plenty of room to land a vessel. Brodie’s bathtub sat on the next platform.

  “Mr. McCoy, should we take the girl to the debriefing room?” asked the suit on the right.

  “No, I will talk to her first. McGregor, go to the infirmary and get looked at by a medic. Everyone else, go directly to the blue room. I’ll be in shortly.”

  I noticed a bloodstain seeping through Caiyan’s pant leg about midthigh. Caiyan pushed away from the wall and sauntered off down a long hall to the right, followed by the three suits and Brodie.

  Jake grabbed my arm and ushered me down a long corridor. I felt like I was going to the principal’s office. We turned left and went into a small room.

  There was a desk with a laptop surrounded by stacks of files, a black leather office chair, a gray metal file cabinet to the right of the desk, and a black upholstered metal chair in front of the desk, which Jake motioned toward.

  “Sit,” he commanded as he took a seat at the desk.

  I’m no dog, but I sat anyway, because I felt a fight coming on. Growing up, Jake and I had had our fights, so I knew when he was about to blow. He looked at me, started to say something, then shut his mouth, obviously trying to find the right words. He picked up a blue ballpoint pen and clicked the cap a few times.

  “What are you doing here?” he finally asked.

  “I am a transporter,” I replied smugly. “What are you doing here?”

  “This is my top-secret assignment, babysitting the time travelers.” He stared at me with chocolate-brown eyes that made my heart melt. Avoiding his stare, I looked around and saw several maps tacked to the walls. Some of them had dates back to the seventeen hundreds. Jake tapped the pen on the desk.

  “How did Caiyan take you?”

  On a bed of straw was my first thought, then I realized Jake was asking how I ended up here. I quickly explained that Aint Elma had left me her key and reminded him about the time the outhouse threw him into the yard. This got a small smile out of him.

  “Yeah, that explains a lot about that outhouse. It was pretty funny, but what we do here isn’t fun.” The storm cloud returned.

  “I understand the danger. Hell, I have experienced the danger. Besides, Caiyan and Brodie have given me a brief synopsis.”

  “When did you start traveling?”

  “Well, my first trip was when I was eighteen, but I didn’t know what was happening to me. This would be my second trip.”

  “Where did you meet McGregor?”

  “In Scotland, the year of our Lord 1568,” I told Jake, mocking Caiyan’s Scottish brogue.

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  “Well, I don’t think that has anything to do with the WTF.”

  Jake rose out of his chair, came over, and put both hands on the arms of my chair. He leaned down and looked me directly in the eyes. “Did you sleep with him?”

  “Maybe…”

  “Shit, Jen.” Jake pulled back and paced around the room. “Have you been traveling around the universe sleeping with him the whole time we dated?”

  “No.” Then I went into a brief synopsis about my traveling experience.

  “Jennifer, he is not a good person. He kills people. The only reason he is not behind bars is because we need him to work with the WTF.”

  “He only kills bad people,” I said in Caiyan’s defense.

  “Yes, but sometimes good people get killed in the process.” He put both hands on his hips. “I will not allow you to do this.”

  “No!” I jumped to my feet. The metal chair scraped on the floor in my haste. “You can’t make me quit. It’s my gift. If I get my key back, I don’t need your permission.” I crossed my arms over my chest and held my ground.

  “Where is your key?”

  “The Mafusos took it.”

  He huffed. “I run this operation. If I say you don’t travel, you don’t travel.” He stood firmly on both feet, squaring me off like we were about to have a gunfight. We’d had many disagreements in our long friendship. We were both hardheaded, determined people, and we had battled like this before over much less serious issues. We stared at each other, not saying a word for a full minute. Damn, I could feel my heart beating frantically in desperation. My eyes started to fill with tears of defeat. He looked away and then back at me again, and I could see his eyes soften.

  “Your key is gone,” he said gently. “I’ll arrange for transportation home.”

  “Jake, please don’t take this away from me. I finally have a job I feel is the right one.” I gave him my saddest bleeding-heart, tear-filled eyes.

  “Don’t use those baby blues on me; it won’t work.”

  Moving around next to him, I placed my hand over his. “I know it’s dangerous, but I can make a difference.”

  The phone on his desk rang, distracting him from our intense conversation. He informed whomever that we would be there shortly and slowly replaced the phone in the cradle. He turned and looked at me again.

  “Jen, you can’t.”

  “Yes, I can,” I said, interrupting. “Besides, they took Gertie, and I have to help her.”

  “God, this just keeps getting better and better. Is Gertie a transporter too?”

  “No, she sort of hitched a ride with me.”

  Jake ran his hand through his hair. “I have to go do a debriefing. You have to come too. I need to hear everyone’s story.”

  “Thanks, Jake.”

  “This discussion isn’t over, but I have a job to do. Follow me.” He picked up a file off his desk and walked past me. “Christ,” he mumbled as we set off to the debriefing room.

  We walked down another long hall in silence. Finally I asked, “How did you know I had slept with Caiyan?”

  “He sl
eeps with everyone.”

  Ouch, that hit hard. After the kiss in the vessel, I was looking forward to more, but maybe I needed to keep a working relationship.

  “Did you sleep with Bambi?” I threw back at him.

  He looked momentarily confused, and then reality set in. Busted.