by Liana Brooks
There were marble statues with more emotion on their faces than hers as she crossed to him. She was shutting him out. Closing down all the nonessential systems so she could survive. He’d seen soldiers do it in war zones and at home. He’d done it more times than he cared to consider, but Sam had pulled him out. Forced him to feel something other than burning self-hatred.
“Don’t even try to pull rank,” he warned with a snarl. He wasn’t going to let her slip into the same mire he’d only barely escaped. “I’ll pay off my government contract and retire down here if that’s what it takes. I’m not abandoning you.”
She pressed a bittersweet kiss to his cheek. Her lips were as cold as the grave. “What if I ask?” she whispered.
Ice filled his veins. His free hand curled around her wrist. “Why?”
“You’re hurting me.” Her eyes were so cold. So dark and distant it was like looking into the face of a corpse.
He dropped his hand, but he wasn’t sure that it was his touch causing the pain.
“Please leave. If you love me at all, you won’t want to see me hurt, so leave. Let me have my life back. What little is left, I want to live free.”
There wasn’t a medicine in the hospital that would fix his breaking heart. No way to return the stolen air to his lungs. No measure for the pain as she walked away.
“Where have you been?” Donovan demanded, as Gant got off the four-wheeler.
He glowered. “Getting more bullets. And a drink.” And revenge. The first light of day was breaking across the swamp, and already the humidity was something near a hundred percent. It felt good.
Donovan rolled his eyes. “You’re pathetic. Get in here.”
“What’s got your panties in a twist?”
“Look here.” Donovan held up a rod with a viscous purple liquid. “Know what this is?”
“Poison?”
“A stabilizing catalytic liquid,” Donovan said with the careful enunciation of someone who’d read the word but didn’t quite know it meant. “Keeps us from going boom.”
“Does it get us back to reality?” Nothing else mattered.
Donovan nodded. “We turn this on at three this afternoon, and we should wind up back in our timeline a few days before your prison break.”
“How do we go farther back?” A few days wasn’t enough. The airports would still have him on the no-fly list. Detective Rose would still have his fortune sitting in an evidence locker.
“We’d have to wait six more weeks to go back farther, and it would still only buy us a few more days.” Donovan hurled the notebook they’d stolen from the wrecked car at Gant. “Read it over.”
Donovan finished putting the machine together as Gant read over the notes. Most of it was over his head, not that he’d ever admit that. He had the sneaking suspicion that Donovan was, possibly, smarter than he. At least with the book work and math. School hadn’t been a bastion of safety and learning as much as a building full of marks waiting to be taken for their money. Gant had spent more time breaking into cars in the parking lot than in class. Up to this point, it hadn’t affected his upward momentum.
Book smarts weren’t necessary for a con unless you played a professor. It was better posing as an accountant. Numbers never lied, but they could dance if you had the knack.
“Donovan?”
“Eh?”
“What’s an einselected node?” Gant asked as he leaned against a support beam of the warehouse. The metal was refreshingly cool, nicely shaded from the blazing sun outside.
Donovan washed machine grease off his hands from a water donkey they’d found tucked in one corner. “I think it’s like a pillar-of-the-world type of thing. You know in a house where you have walls you can knock out and walls that have to stay because the house collapses without ’em?”
“Sure,” Gant lied as he flipped a page of notes with the Zoetimax watermark.
“Haven’t you ever demolished a building?”
Gant looked up from the stolen pages with disgust. “Why would I want to damage a building? I use finesse.”
“Killing people is finesse?”
“Sometimes it’s the only way to get the lock open,” Gant said calmly. Some part of him recognized that murder was not an option for the average person. He was equally aware that keeping murder as an option broadened his choice of options considerably. Really, it was the difference between believing that only the people with keys should open doors and the belief that anyone who could pick the lock should open doors to take what they wanted. It was baffling that more people didn’t view life that way. For which Gant was grateful to his fellow man. Competition—competent competition—wasn’t good for him.
Donovan sighed.
“Tired of me already?” Gant asked.
“A week with you is more than I planned for,” Donovan said. There was no malice in his tone.
Gant’s fingers slipped to the reassuring shape of the gun tucked into his pants. Killing Donovan was tempting but not yet practical. If the other man was anything like him, then Donovan was holding a crucial detail back so that Gant wouldn’t be able to use the machine alone. It’s what he would have done. Once again, he felt like his control over the situation was slipping.
He rubbed sweating palms along the rough denim of his pants. Detective Rose was dead. His eye twitched. There’d been a dog, a dark shadow of a monster lunging for him. But surely, surely, the bullets had gone through. He’d seen her fall . . .
Gant nodded to himself. Yes, Rose was dead. For good this time. They were out of hell. In the swamps, but away from the English-speaking abomination of a country that had infested Florida. The gas station had strange beer, no sugar skulls, no chili-covered mangoes. Part of his mind ticked over and started calculating how much he could charge the locals to escape. No reason to be greedy. A few grand a head, and he’d still make money hand over fist.
But that meant staying longer.
Not worth it then.
He flipped another page over. Someone had scrawled dates on the back with sparkling purple ink. The loops of the s’s gave it away. Detective Rose had written herself some notes. Purple. He snorted in derision but read the notes carefully. “Donovan?”
“What?” the other man demanded angrily.
“What’s an Emir?”
Donovan stomped across the warehouse. “A what? An emir?”
“Yeah.” Gant held the note up. “Rose said to watch out for an emir. Avoid at all cost.”
“It’s a . . . whatchamacallit . . . prince sort of title. Exalted one. Commander. It’s an Arab title, I think.” Donovan shrugged and passed the paper back. “Who knows, maybe if you travel on the wrong day, this is the Federated States of Arabia or something.”
Gant tried to remember anything about the Arab nations as Donovan walked away. They weren’t Mexican trade partners, and the Middle East wasn’t a place he ever intended to visit. Too much sand. He couldn’t even remember if they had decent dried mangoes.
Something whined behind him.
Looking over his shoulder, Gant scanned the visible parts of the swamp. The low, keening sound didn’t sound entirely organic. “Donovan!”
“I hear it.” The other man pulled his gun. “Four bullets left.”
“I’ve got five.”
“Did you get any more when you went out?”
Gant nodded. “They don’t have standard sizes, but these will work in a pinch.” Donovan grimaced. A too-small bullet in their guns was risky, but the measurements here were all off by a millimeter or two. They risked a misfire or the guns exploding. Between that risk and the possibility of landing in jail here, though, the gun was a better bet.
“Take the north side,” Donovan said, as he walked out the south entrance. In the daylight, he wasn’t silhouetted against a backlit warehouse, but it was a dumb move
anyway.
Gant took more care as he went to check the swamp side of the hideout. He peered around the corner and waited, watching for any changes. The birds were still singing peacefully. Somewhere, a cricket was humming. The keening whine seemed to come from all directions at once. He would say it was an echo, but there was nothing for the sound to echo off. Swamps weren’t known for their rocky canyons for a reason.
Biting back a curse, Gant moved carefully through the tall grass. Tiny insects rose in black swarms. Prickly sticker seedpods clung to his pant leg as his boots squelched in the mud. The water was still. No ripples caused by an underwater intruder or an incoming airboat. He looked around to see Donovan peering down the road using a sniper scope Gant hadn’t known the other man had. A nice tidbit to file away for later use.
You’ve been keeping secrets from me, friend.
Donovan shook his head and circled his hand.
With a nod, Gant followed the order to walk the perimeter, looking for anything out of place. A bent blade of grass, a suspicious glint of metal, anything to tell him what was making the sound. He looked up at the gray clouds rolling in from the coast. Just how far out could one hear a drone approaching? He watched the tree line for movement, peering at the dark green canopy as if he could pierce it by will alone.
The warehouse walls rumbled. “Oh, hells, no.” Underground? How could anyone possibly tunnel through this wet earth? He ran in the direction he’d seen Donovan go as the ground shook. The walls of the warehouse buckled outward. “Donovan!”
As the ground bucked, rippling under his feet, he stumbled and rolled. Clutching his gun with white knuckles, Gant scrambled to his feet.
“Gant!” Donovan skidded around the corner.
“What did you do?”
Donovan shook his head and lifted a finger to his lips in a command for silence.
There were voices inside the damaged warehouse. “Team One, check the perimeter. Team Two, identify the machine. Commander, where is this place?” The voice was definitely a man with an accent that Gant pegged as British, but it wasn’t quite British. University English, perhaps, learned as a second language at an expensive school.
“Unknown, sir. The location is not listed as any known contact site.”
Gant’s hand tensed around the handle of his gun. He knew that voice.
Donovan tilted his head to the side in question.
With a nod, Gant confirmed what they’d heard. Detective Rose just wouldn’t die. He shook his head. Five bullets left, and every single one had her name etched on it.
Heavy boots stomped on the cement floor of the warehouse. Sounded like Team One was moving out.
“Do we run for the tree line?” Donovan asked breathlessly. “We can’t survive a shoot-out with them.”
“What’s the standard federales team have? Six men? Five?”
“For a sting, it’s twelve,” Donovan said with an angry frown. “Too many for us to take out quickly.”
Gant felt himself cheering up. Long odds against overwhelming force was his forte. “But they’re moving together, with no eyes outside. They go out, we go in.”
“And going in gets us, what, exactly?”
“The four-wheelers, you idiot. Shoot Rose. Grab machines. Leave in a roar. They’ll follow the tracks. We can drop the four-wheelers by the main road and take a boat back while they’re still hunting.” It would work because it had to work. Their window of opportunity was too narrow for anything else.
Clearly, Donovan agreed—with the sentiment, if not with the plan. With a nod, he led the way, which suited Gant to the bone. The bigger should always go first. Donovan was his shield. That way, at least, the smart one in the partnership got out alive. They moved away from the sound of Team One’s beating the grass to circle the building. Inside, six people stood hovering around the machine and a bright blue portal. Four were dressed in gray scrubs and held various bits of tech. The other two stood to the side supervising: an older man with a trim goatee and Detective Rose, still alive but thinner than Gant remembered her being hours before.
“I’m beginning to see why you hate this woman,” Donovan muttered.
The old man looked up. “Mr. Donovan, is that you?”
Donovan’s brow furrowed.
“Captain Joachim Donovan? Dishonorable discharge was it, or did you walk away in another fit of morals?” The man laughed at a joke no one else saw.
Rose turned, a sneer etched into her elegant face. “We can see you, Donovan. Stop being an idiot and get over here.”
Rage poured through Gant like lava in an erupting volcano. “You traitor!” He struck Donovan across the head with the butt of his gun. “You filthy, lying, whoreson!” Another beat against Donovan’s thick skull. Gant brought his knee up, catching the larger man in his kidneys.
Donovan lashed back, slamming a heavy fist into Gant’s ribs. “Shut up. They don’t know me.”
“On the contrary, Captain, I’ve studied your life quite extensively,” the man with the goatee said over the sound of their brawl.
Gant got ahold of Donovan’s neck and squeezed. “Who is he?”
Donovan’s face turned red as he choked out the words, “Don’t. Know.” He pushed Gant away with brute force and brought his gun up, aimed at the strangers. “Who are you? Why are you here?”
“To kill you,” Rose said. “Iteration three is already crumbling, fracturing in your absence. Faster than we anticipated, but your presence here is subverting predominance.”
Strong arms gripped Gant from behind. He snarled, bent his back to crack his head backward into a nose, and hit the solid plastic of body armor. He roared in fury, squirmed, and felt his shoulder pop out of place.
The old man watched him with the scholarly interest of an entomologist spotting a new species of flea. “Bring them inside. The heat outside is quite oppressive.”
“An excellent reminder of why such iterations should not be preserved,” Rose said. She was ignoring him again. Acting as if she hadn’t fumed at his court case, demanding his death. Acting as if he hadn’t tried to kill her hours before. Acting as if she were another clone of the Rose he’d killed. How many Roses existed?
“So very calm, Detective Rose,” Gant said through gritted teeth and pain. “I see you washed the smoke off.”
She raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Smoke?”
“I set your apartment on fire!” Fleck of spittle fell from his mouth as he screamed. Gant didn’t care. Let her see the anger. Let her see the fire burning in him.
“You’re mistaken, sir. I live in residential building 3–42, and there has never been a fire in that building.”
The old man patted his shoulder. “Perhaps he saw another iteration of you. A detective, you say? How typical of the Roses of the world, don’t you think? Always enforcing laws.” He chuckled, as if this were a joke.
Donovan was pushed beside him, held by two soldiers wearing full black body armor.
“A detective shows a lack of initiative,” Rose said. “This is an iteration with a strong military. If the shadow of me living here had ambition, she would have sought glory there.”
The old man nodded. “A weakness. Make a note of it. It will make her easy to destroy in the long run.”
Rose wrinkled her nose, giving the impression that such concerns were beneath her. “This iteration is flawed. The entire historical structure is baseless. They’ll topple without our help. Fade into the oblivion of nightmares.”
“You—” The soldier holding Gant jerked him backward so he bit his tongue instead of shouting at Rose again. With a snarl, he spat the bloody salvia at her feet. “I’m not done with you.”
“You never started with me,” she said. It was a cold dismissal. Too cold.
For the first time since the fire, Gant felt a tremor of fear unsettling his soul. This . .
. wasn’t what he’d imagined. Detective Rose wasn’t supposed to ignore him. It went against everything he knew. Dread touched him, the knowing that came before the fall of the axe. His death was coming, and it was wrong in every way.
“Captain Donovan,” Rose said, ignoring Gant. “You and I must talk.”
“I got nothing to say to you, lady.” Donovan sneered at her.
She smiled, and Gant realized she was a monster. The pretty outfits and pageant-queen smiles were the disguise of a monster, and now he saw the teeth. “Oh, no, Captain. We have much to say to each other. I spoke to your crew in Iteration 3 yesterday. They were very, what is the word, hmmm . . . broken?” Her dark eyes flashed with devilish delight. “Yes, broken is the term. Arms. Legs. Fingers. Jaws eventually. The youngest one held out longer than anticipated, but I know there is more than one way to skin a man.”
“Cat,” Donovan corrected. “The term is more than one way to skin a cat.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? I’ll make a note of the wording. However, I was skinning a man. He only screamed after that, but it was enough. I had what I wanted from him. Clever of you to hide here in another iteration.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Donovan said.
“You don’t need to,” Rose said.
The man with the goatee clapped. “Oh, bravo, Commander. So much menace.”
Rose’s glare promised pain to the man, but he missed the glance. “You don’t approve, Dr. Emir?”
“Torture produces erratic results.”
“The promise of torture produces good results,” she countered.
“But in this case, it isn’t required. Question the captain and let’s be done with this. Our window is small.”
The soldier holding Gant shook him. “Sir? What do you want done with this one?”
“Captain Donovan’s little pet?” Emir looked at him with eyes filled with a glittering madness. He’d seen the look in the eyes of prisoners in isolation. The ones on death row who would go cackling to their executions looked like that. “Put him in the corner in case the captain needs persuasion. That is your weakness, isn’t it, Donovan? You never left a man behind.” Emir chuckled, and even the birds went quiet.