by Eva Chase
I’d wanted a plan, but why had I come up with that plan? I didn’t want to wait that long. I didn’t want her having to come all the way out here. If I’d had more time to think I’d have come up with a better idea—but there’d only been seconds before she’d needed to head out the door. It’d been the first option that had popped into my head. Now I was stuck with it.
I tipped my head back against the side of the cliff, my hands clenching. There were too many things I wished I’d done differently, and too many of them conflicted with each other. I wished I’d stayed at the hotel and found some way to confront the threat myself. I wished I was a thousand miles away from the Alpha Project people and their schemes.
Any other time, I’d have headed across the country the second I’d left that hotel. That was what both Mom and Dad would have advised now, I knew that. But they’d also told me to make my own judgments. I couldn’t abandon Grace. Maybe this had started with me saving her life, but she’d been there for me in so many other ways since then.
Knowing that didn’t stop me from worrying about the other people who mattered to me. I got out my burner phone. I could at least set a few of those worries at ease.
First I texted Connor. How’s it going in Florence? Nothing’s burned down so far, I hope?
He responded a few minutes later with a snarky-looking emoji. All buildings still standing. I’ve made amazing strides with my artistic education. You’d be proud of me, bro!
A smile tugged at my lips. Knowing Connor, by his artistic education he probably meant he’d been admiring the local women, not the galleries. But whatever. As long as he stayed out of trouble—for however long he was capable of doing that—I didn’t care what else he did.
Always am, I wrote back. Even when you’re driving me up the wall.
I took a moment to text my parents too. Still fine. Staying careful as usual. I didn’t want to go into any more detail than that. If they’d known how close a call I’d just had, after the way they’d already been talking, it would only stress them out more to know I was still here.
Maybe they’d been right that I shouldn’t take this chance. Maybe I’d only made things worse for Grace by staying. I grimaced, looking out over the shadowy, tree-dotted plains around the cliff.
Decisions like this had always been so easy before. Any sign of danger, I up and left. I’d never had any reason to hang back. I’d never let myself care that much about anything or anyone outside my family.
If anyone understood that conflict, it’d be Nick. He’d built his whole life around trying to help as many people as possible, family or not.
I dialed his number and watched the tree branches drift with the breeze as his phone rang. Three rings in, I remembered that while it wasn’t strange for Connor to still be up at whatever wee hour in the morning it was over in Italy, Londoner Nick was probably asleep. Damn. I was just reaching for the End Call button when the line clicked.
“Hey,” Nick said, his voice drowsy. “Is everything okay?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking about the time difference. I’ll let you go.”
“No, no.” There was a rustle as he must have sat up in bed. When he spoke again, he sounded more alert. “What’s going on? Something must be up, or you wouldn’t forget. You’re the one who usually keeps track of the rest of us.”
He made that remark affectionately, but it tugged at the twist of guilt I was already feeling. I’d made it my life’s mission to protect my brothers—what if I was the one who got them all caught now?
“Yeah,” I said, my throat constricting. “I know. Things have gotten... complicated here. I thought talking to you might help me get my head on straight.”
“Sure. What’s on your mind?”
Now that I had him on the line, I didn’t know where to start. “You use your talent—finding missing things, returning them to people—all the time. Because you want to help people. Even though you know that if you slipped up, if someone realized what you were doing, you could get the attention of the wrong people.”
“And bring them down not just on me but on all of us,” Nick said. “Yeah. Believe me, I keep that in mind every day.”
I rubbed my jaw. “So how do you decide what risks are worth it? When it’s more important that you get something back to its owner than that you keep a low profile?”
Nick paused. “I don’t know. If you were hoping I’ve got some kind of equation for it, I can’t help you there. I really just go by feeling. I always do my work in as low-key a way as possible, of course. And I just pick the circumstances where it feels like the people involved really need whatever it is. That I’d be making a significant difference... Making the world a better place in a way that matters, as cheesy as that probably sounds.”
“It does,” I muttered, and Nick laughed.
“It’s not as if I always had the balance perfect. You’ve had to extract me from a couple of jams, as I’m sure you remember. I just couldn’t live with myself having this talent and never doing anything useful with it, so I kept working at it. It’s taken a while for me to find a way of weighing those priorities that I feel good about.”
I guessed that was the problem. I didn’t have any practice at dealing with this kind of dilemma at all. No experience to guide my instincts.
“I don’t feel good about any of this,” I said. “It seems like I’ve got a narrow thread of a path I could walk where no one gets hurt, but chances are the situation’s going to sway one way or the other and someone is. And I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself either way.”
“Jer...” Nick was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know if any of us say this to you enough, but you’re a fucking hero, you know? You’ve always been there for all of us, any time, any trouble we get into... If you’ve found something else that you really care about, something that’s making you reevaluate your priorities, I don’t think any of us is going to blame you if the situation goes a little sideways. Why should we all get to make mistakes and be forgiven, but never you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. My voice came out hoarse. My chest had tightened around my lungs. Suddenly the thought of talking about this in any more depth pained me. “You’ve given me a lot to think about, anyway. Now go back to sleep, Nick. And thank you.”
After I’d hung up, I reached into my pocket and took out the worn shard of glass I’d been carrying for almost twenty years. It shone faintly in the fading sunlight. I ran my thumb over the jagged edges, hard but too dulled to break the skin.
I had made mistakes. I’d made a big one, all those years ago. We’d been walking down the street in some new city—I couldn’t even remember which one now. Mom, Dad, and the five of us kids, Liam just a toddler Mom had on her back in a wearable carrier. I’d been nine.
Something had caught my eye. I can’t remember that either. A treat in a bakery, or a toy in a store window...
I’d asked Dad, and he’d said no. To keep walking. But I’d been so tired of all the walking and the moving and never knowing where we’d be living next week, let alone next month or next year, that I’d kept arguing. I could still remember the hot flush of anger that had spread through my body, with a jitter of energy I’d never felt before.
I hadn’t really understood how important it was that we keep moving, keep our heads down, until that moment when I almost destroyed everything.
Dad had ordered me to quiet down, and I’d yelled something back at him—and a crate of apples sitting out front of a grocery shop had leapt into the air. Leapt and flung itself across the sidewalk to smash into a car window.
The alarm had started blaring. For a second I hadn’t been able to do anything but stand there staring, the energy still thrumming through me. Knowing that it was my mind that had smashed that window. Thrilled and sickened by the power at the same time.
All the other pedestrians had stopped to stare. Someone had pointed at our family. Dad’s hand had closed around mine with a yank, and I hadn’t argued with
him then.
When we’d made it to the apartment we were supposed to be staying in, I’d found that shard of glass wedged behind the tongue of my running shoe. Mom and Dad had sat me down for another talk about our powers, about responsibility and control, with panicked looks at each other and my brothers. I’d held onto the shard through the whole thing. By the end my palm was bleeding.
We’d moved again the next day. My fault. For weeks Mom had gone a little pale every time I raised my voice even slightly, until I learned to keep it steady. I could have ruined everything in an instant. I nearly had.
I turned the shard over in my hand now as I turned over Nick’s words in my head. A nine-year-old’s mistake with a power I hadn’t even realized I had. Suddenly all the guilt I’d carried seemed a little ridiculous. How many times had Connor screwed up? Liam? Ethan? Even Nick?
My parents had wanted to keep us safe, sure, but they’d also wanted us to be happy. Had I left any room in my life for that, before now?
The answer was painfully obvious. I dragged in a shaky breath. I wanted to keep Grace safe too—and I flat out wanted her. While there was still a chance, just this once I wasn’t letting it go. I’d sacrificed far too much already.
As that certainty settled over me, another idea popped into my head. I needed the Alpha Project people out of here—and there were ways of speeding them along, weren’t there?
It’d be a decent hour of the morning in Tokyo now. I picked up my phone one more time.
“Jeremy!” Liam answered. “More car trouble?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “But I was hoping to get your help with something else. I’d like to leave a trail of breadcrumbs... but I’d like it to still look like I was trying to hide my trail. A credit card charge under a specific name—let’s say in Las Vegas. Is that something you could see setting up?”
I could hear Liam’s grin over the phone. There was nothing he liked better than a problem to crack. “Oh, yeah, we can manage that. A little scavenger hunt for the bad guys. It’ll be fun. Just tell me what and when.”
20
Grace
The redwoods loomed like giants over my head. Even though the spring day was warm, I shivered as I walked up to them. There was something way too ominous about those towering trees.
It was quarter to noon. I’d made sure I wouldn’t be late, but I didn’t want to get here too early either and risk drawing attention to myself waiting around. Hiking along the trail from the parking lot where the taxi had dropped me off, I’d been able to see why Jeremy had picked this spot. He obviously knew the park well. The area between the redwood forest and the visitor’s center was mostly open rocky ground scattered with smaller trees and shrubs. He’d be able to watch anyone coming while hidden in the forest’s shadows, to confirm no one was following me.
I stopped by the first line of redwoods, hugging my purse strap. A squirrel chittered and darted around the trunk. The rich woody smell filled my nose as I inhaled deeply, but I still didn’t relax. It was hard to imagine ever being completely relaxed again after the week I’d just had.
Footsteps crunched over the fallen twigs on the forest floor. I moved toward the sound instinctively, venturing into the forest. It’d be better for Jeremy if he didn’t put himself in view, even if I couldn’t see anyone nearby right now.
I’d only taken a few steps when I caught sight of him. The shadows made his chestnut hair look almost black, and his eyes were dark too, but they brightened when they met mine. A smile lit the rest of his face. He hurried forward.
“Grace.” He came to a halt in front of me, raising his hands to the level of my cheeks but not touching me. His gaze slid down me as if checking to be sure every part of me was okay.
“It all went fine,” I said. “I survived unharmed. Have you been out here the whole time?”
He nodded. “I know the area well enough to stay out of the way of any rangers on patrol. I’m so glad to see you.”
He let his hands come to rest on either side of my jaw then, tipping my head up as he leaned in to kiss me. I kissed him back, relief and longing mixing together in a heady concoction. My fingers curled into the front of his shirt. The solid muscles underneath flexed against my knuckles, setting off a deeper bolt of desire.
“Same back at you,” I said, a little breathless, when he eased back. He gave me another smile, one so adoring it made my heart flutter.
“Come with me. There’s a better place for us to talk.” He glanced beyond me. “I assume you didn’t see any sign that you were followed.”
I shook my head. “I took kind of a roundabout route and then grabbed the first taxi I saw. For a lot of the trip I couldn’t see any other cars on the road behind us. Not a lot of traffic out this way in the middle of a weekday.”
He took my hand, swinging my arm gently as we walked through the forest. The atmosphere that had felt foreboding a few minutes ago had lightened with his presence. For a moment it felt as if we could be nothing more than young lovers, strolling through the woods without any care except each other.
Lord, I wished that were true.
My fingers squeezed Jeremy’s a little tighter. He caressed the back of my hand with his thumb. “I heard your conversation with Malcolm through the door. Tell me what happened after you went down to the bar.”
“Oh, I just babbled a lot about not much of anything. Still pretending I was freaked out about you and hadn’t seen you since the accident.” It was easier to brush off my little chat with Malcolm now that I wasn’t sitting across a polished black table from him and his watery blue eyes anymore. “Obviously there wasn’t much I could tell him that he could find useful. But I acted incredibly grateful that he was trying to ‘help’ me.”
Jeremy chuckled. “And how did he respond to all that?”
“I think he bought it. He didn’t ask anything that showed he was suspicious, anyway. I have the feeling I annoyed him after a bit, and he wrapped things up as soon as I let him. We couldn’t have been at the bar for more than an hour. I just wanted to make sure you’d have enough time to get well away.”
“Well, it seems like your trick worked.” He stroked his thumb over my hand again. A more pleasant shiver traveled up my arm. He glanced over at me, waiting until I met his eyes. “Thank you for that. You have no idea how much I hated watching you go out there to confront him.”
“There wasn’t anything you could do,” I said quietly. “Other than giving yourself up.”
“I know. I still don’t like it.”
“Hopefully we’ll never be in a situation like that again,” I said, putting as much optimism into the words as I could summon.
Jeremy smiled—a real smile that relaxed me too. “I might actually have contributed to that goal last night.”
My eyebrows rose. “Oh, really? Sounds like you’ve got some stuff to tell me too.”
“I was thinking maybe I could hurry Malcolm and his people out of the city. So I came up with a little plan of my own.”
“Out of the city,” I repeated, my pulse skipping. “Does that mean you’re still going to try to stay here?”
He nodded. “I’d like to, if I can. I called up my—a friend of mine who’s got some computer skills, although a little more on the black hat side of things than yours are... He’s going to leave a trail of little ‘mistakes’ with the name they’ll have from the apartment records, right across the country. The first one should have popped up sometime overnight.”
I grinned, catching on. “So then they’ll be sure you’ve already left. That’s perfect.” But I hadn’t missed the hesitation in his words. I’d heard it before when he talked about how he got by, always partly on the run. The little things he didn’t think he could trust me with yet.
No, not that he didn’t trust me, I reminded myself. He didn’t trust Malcolm’s people not to hurt me to try to get any information I had. The less I had, the less motivation they’ve have to come after me.
It made sense, but I couldn’t h
elp feeling a twinge of disappointment. Of course Jeremy had to be careful. But if we were really going to be in this together, if he really meant to stay like he was suggesting—to stay with me...
I pushed aside that line of thinking. This wasn’t the time for worrying about exactly how open he was being. He’d shared so much of himself and put so much trust in me already.
“Do you think, once they’ve gone after you somewhere else, they’ll assume San Jose is a dead end? Or would they come back later to check for you again when they don’t find you anywhere?”
“I don’t know. But I guess I’ll just keep my eyes open like I always do and tackle problems as they come.” He came to a halt at the edge of the trees. Beyond the stretch of forest, an expanse of dusty fields rolled out alongside a tan cliff face.
Jeremy tugged me gently so I turned to face him. His expression had gone serious.
“I want to stay,” he said. “And I’ll do whatever I can to make that happen. But unfortunately, after all the attention they’ve focused on you, I think we’ll have to keep our relationship secret for a while. Even if they’re not in the city, they might keep tracking your comings and goings. We can’t risk them wondering about a new guy suddenly in your life. I know—”
“Jeremy,” I said, touching his chest to stop him. “I get it. You don’t have to apologize. Knowing you’re safe is a heck of a lot more important to me than showing you off around town. As much as I might be looking forward to that.”
I gave him a cheeky smile, and the tension went out of his face. He leaned close enough to brush a kiss to my forehead. “You have no idea how much I’d like to show you off.”
I’d never really thought of myself as someone special enough to be shown off, but when he looked at me like that, talked to me in that low clear voice, I believed it. I was pretty sure I was glowing right now.
He drew me over to the cliff. “This is where I’ve been staying,” he said. “I scoped it out as a possible refuge not long after I first moved here.” He hopped up on a ledge and offered me a hand up to follow him.