by Julie Drew
She felt Finn tense, but he did not move. “I know enough,” she said, defiant.
“I was very much their friend,” he continued smoothly as he stopped a mere ten inches from Tesla. Too close, she thought, but she refused to back up. She could see the blood vessels in his eyes, the pale blonde stubble on his unshaven chin.
“Liar,” she said simply.
He looked at her then, his head cocked slightly to the side as he considered the girl in front of him, the shape of her face, her long orange and gold hair, those incredible eyes. “You look like her, you know,” he said. “And you’re quite intelligent, too, I understand. Your mother was a brilliant woman—did you know that it was I, not your father, who began the work on time travel with her? That’s right,” he said softly, in response to the incredulous look on Tesla’s face. “She chose to work with me. For years we were in the lab together. It was I who realized what she was, where she would lead us—your father never understood her abilities—he always underestimated her.”
“Shut up,” Tesla said viciously, unable to bear his oily voice or hear him talk about her parents.
“Such volatility,” he said, clearly amused. “Your mother was a passionate woman, too. Brilliant and passionate—qualities I fully appreciated—personally as well as professionally.”
“You’re revolting,” Tesla said, her voice raw.
Nilsen considered that. “Perhaps. You do look remarkably like her,” he said again as he reached out and took her chin gently in his hand and tilted her face up, searching—for what?
She sensed, rather than saw, movement from Finn at her side, but he was checked immediately as Lydia’s voice rang out like a gunshot.
“Finn, don’t!”
It was enough, and he became still again.
Tesla scowled angrily back at Nilsen. She breathed hard and concentrated on her anger, fanned its flames—anything to hold on to the rage, lest it be replaced by fear. She would not give him the satisfaction, she vowed, as she stared him down, his face only inches from her own. Unexpectedly, he flung her face roughly aside and she staggered into Finn, who caught her and steadied her.
“But there, you have more than a bit of your father in you, too,” he said coldly. “Your moral outrage is so very pedestrian—and completely misplaced.”
“Shut up about my father!” Tesla shouted.
“Time to grow up, little girl,” Nilsen snapped. “Of course you’ve idolized your father, children always do, but you’ve decided to play with the adults now, and you no longer have that luxury. You’ve willfully forced together the few pieces of this little puzzle that you think you know, to create the pretty picture you want, but the pieces don’t fit! You’ve already begun to see that, though, haven’t you?”
He faced Tesla, as angry now as she was. “It was never true—that I stole their work, published it as my own. It was my work all along! Hers and mine, from those early years. She started to date your father, and his work began to evolve, moved more closely to hers, and somehow I was eased out, your father in her lab, and in her bed.” He paused, breathing hard, but mastered it to continue more calmly. “It’s always a sad day when you are faced with the toppling of your heroes. Your father is hopelessly flawed, my dear. In ways you cannot even imagine.”
Tesla stood, her hands clenched in fists by her side. She was only vaguely aware of Lydia, of Jane, of Finn beside her, her entire being focused on Sebastian Nilsen, whose face suddenly changed from controlled anger to cunning—and something else.
“It is your flaws, however, that make you so very valuable, eh?” he said softly as he moved even closer and forced Tesla to lean back into Finn. “That flawed heart of yours—”
Tesla gasped as he suddenly reached out and laid his hand on her chest, his fingers curved to cup her left breast, right over her heart. She jumped involuntarily, her stomach lurching, nauseated that he had actually touched her, just as Finn pushed her aside, lunged forward, and shoved Nilsen hard in the chest.
Nilsen staggered back but recovered immediately and laughed. “How amusing. Young love.” He chuckled to himself for a moment while they all stood, barely breathing. “Enough,” he announced with finality. “Tesla, you’re coming with me, I’m afraid.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Tesla said through gritted teeth.
“Oh, but you are,” he said in a voice like steel. “I know everything—I have someone on the inside, as you now realize. I know how the time machine works, and I know someone can jump with you as long as you are in physical contact with them. I hold all the cards here, and I believe you’re smart enough to understand that. You’re the only one in this room that I have reason to keep alive. And that includes, of course, your father.”
He paused a beat, let his threat sink in, and then glanced at Jane and Lydia. “Time to wrap this up,” he said casually to the two women. “Kill her. We can certainly do with one less government agent.”
CHAPTER 35
Tesla gasped as she turned in horror to Jane, bracing for the gun in her hand, the shot that would end Lydia’s life.
Jane looked back sadly at Tesla. “I’m sorry, Tesla. Sorrier than I can possibly tell you.”
“Aunt Jane, you can’t!” Tesla cried.
“Oh Tesla, really,” Lydia said, thoroughly exasperated. “She’s sorry she failed her mission, sorry she could not save your father—sorry she has to die. Honestly, for a bright girl you can be a little slow.”
“Lydia?” said Finn, clearly shocked, and he and Tesla saw at exactly the same moment the gun she held—the cold, gray handgun Tesla had refused—pointed right at Jane.
“All our cards, finally on the table, eh Lydia?” Jane asked coldly.
“Indeed, though I suspect you have a few still up your sleeve,” the older woman said serenely. “You’re very good, as I’ve said all along. I want you to know that I know that. For what it’s worth.”
“Very little, actually. When did you turn?” Jane asked quietly.
“When it became clear to me that all we do is tilt at windmills. When my meager pension and that rickety old house became unacceptable compensation for a lifetime of putting myself in harm’s way, while others got rich.”
“Isn’t that every traitor’s rationale?” Jane asked contemptuously.
“Careful,” Lydia said, pleasant and menacing.
“Get it done, Lydia, and the boy, too,” said Nilsen as he moved toward the door. “I’ll make the preparations. Bring the girl to me when you’ve finished,” he said over his shoulder.
“Lydia,” Tesla said when Nilsen was gone. “I don’t understand, you’ve been so—”
“So nice?” Lydia finished for her. “So kind, so motherly? Well, why not?” She glanced at Finn. “I feel a great deal of affection for you all, actually. How absurd to assume I like Nilsen, and dislike you—it’s not true, but completely beside the point. He is clearly despicable, but he is a means to an end, and I did what I could to protect you from him, though I suppose it would be a bit much to expect you to appreciate that now.”
Finn snorted. “Bullshit.”
Lydia shrugged, a small, sad smile on her face. “Well, up to a point of course. I knew Jane would have to die, but I am sorry about you, dear.”
Lydia raised the gun toward Jane, her arm steady, as Finn reached into his pocket and found the utility knife he’d put there after he’d cut Tesla free. He knew they had a couple of seconds, at best, and he also knew that Tesla was their only hope. He withdrew the knife, pushed the blade out as far as it would go, and pressed the handle firmly into Tesla’s hand, which hung beside his own.
He felt an unexpected current run between them as their hands touched and she closed her fingers over the knife without hesitation. She did not turn or start in surprise. He felt, rather than saw her weigh the heft of it in her hand, glance up at Lydia, and then she moved, a wide, powerful movement of her right arm, just as they heard the terrible sound of a gunshot, the boom and echo of it deafeni
ng from only a few yards away. It happened so quickly that all he registered was that Jane stood and Lydia had fallen to one knee, the handle of the utility knife protruding from the back of her hand, the blade buried up to the hilt in her flesh.
Lydia cried out once in pain, the gun fallen from her hand. Finn raced to it and picked it up just as Jane reached Lydia and pulled her to her feet.
“You have the right to remain silent…” Finn heard Jane begin to intone as he raced out the door, his head still pounding, and into the Bat Cave after Sebastian Nilsen.
Tesla took a step nearer to Jane, who had not-too-gently sat Lydia on the edge of the cot, where she cradled her injured, bloody hand in her lap.
“Aunt Jane, I’m so sorry. There was so much left unexplained, so many coincidences, and when Finn and I came down here, we heard your voice. I thought…”
“I know what you thought, Tesla,” Jane said, neither anger nor pity in her voice—for herself or for Tesla. “I understand. Lydia told you I was in on your father’s kidnapping, that I was with Sebastian. And you believed her. And then when you heard my voice—of course I was tied up, just as you were shortly after. One of Nilsen’s goons forced me down here at gun point, and I’ve been down here ever since.” She held Tesla’s gaze, and Tesla’s eyes filled with tears.
Jane smiled a little, and her kindness made Tesla feel even worse. “It’s not your fault,” Jane assured her. “I learned a long time ago that you can’t live this life, in which you keep everyone at arm’s length, lie about what you do, where you go, and why, and expect them to really know you. We make that impossible, eh, Lydia?”
Lydia looked, for the first time, Tesla thought, old. So much smaller than Tesla had always perceived her to be. The woman looked up at Jane and she, too, smiled.
“It’s not an easy life,” Lydia conceded. “You’ve suspected me for some time, haven’t you, Jane?”
Jane considered the question. “Not as long as you might think. I didn’t like you much, of course—you’ve always seemed a bit off to me—but I didn’t have any evidence. So I watched and waited. I knew you searched Greg’s house, rifled Tesla’s room weeks ago, but I assumed it was a questionable method in your effort to protect the family. My mistake.”
“Yes,” Lydia said. “That was sloppy of me, but frankly we had gotten nowhere with Tasya Petrova’s ‘Tesla effect’ reference, and Nilsen is not exactly a patient man. He was in favor of taking Tesla, actually, and I tried to forestall that. My hope was that we would learn what we needed and Nilsen would be gone before the gala, and then none of this—the kidnapping, whether it was Tesla or her father—would have been necessary. But that was before we knew Tesla herself was necessary to jump. Given that fact, this really couldn’t have ended any differently.”
“Was it you who shot Beckett?” Tesla asked.
“No, dear, it wasn’t,” Lydia said. “Neither did I set the explosives in your father’s office to play for time, nor attack you in your home and break your arm. I assure you that Nilsen has other employees who are far more capable—and enthusiastic—in that department than I.”
“Lydia,” Tesla said then, too exhausted to accuse her, too filled with anxiety about her father and Finn, who’d gone after Nilsen, to rail and shout her outrage, “Where’s my dad?”
“He’s here,” Lydia said without hesitation, not because she wanted to help, Tesla realized, but because it just didn’t matter anymore. She had lied, she had stolen, she had put them all in danger countless times when it served her purpose. Lydia indicated, with a sideways movement of her head, the mountain of cardboard boxes behind Tesla. “In there.”
“Dad?” Tesla called as she moved toward the boxes. Jane scrambled right beside her, though she kept one eye on Lydia. They heard nothing, sensed no movement, not a whisper or a breath, and Tesla felt the panic begin to rise in her chest. “DAD!” she screamed, suddenly desperate.
She and Jane began to remove boxes, which turned out to be empty, tossing them aside quickly. It took less than a minute to reveal that the boxes had been stacked over and around a low, sturdy structure made of some kind of smooth, solid metal with a latched lid, not unlike an oversized freezer. With the boxes gone, Tesla and Jane unlatched the lid and opened it wide, hope and fear warring for supremacy in their minds.
Dr. Abbot lay on his side, elbows and knees slightly bent. He was bound at the wrists and ankles just as Tesla and Finn had been, with similar plastic ties. He was motionless, though, and his eyes were closed. He had some kind of a mask on his face, a clear plastic cup over his nose and mouth, and the contraption it was attached to was strapped to his head.
Tesla was sure her heart had stopped. She heard a strangled little cry and started, only to realize that she had made the sound herself.
Jane looked closely at Greg Abbott, deep inside the metal chest, and put her hand on Tesla’s arm. “It’s okay, look—he’s breathing.”
Tesla looked again, focused on the clear cup over her father’s nose and mouth, and she saw that the cup misted up with his breath every time he exhaled.
She exhaled herself, finally, and climbed into the box with Jane’s help. Jane handed her the utility knife she’d extracted from Lydia’s hand, and Tesla quickly cut the plastic that bound her father as she noted rather grimly that she had become somewhat accustomed to this stuff already. She pushed the blade back into the handle and locked it, slipped it into her pocket, and looked at Jane, a question in her eyes.
Jane turned to Lydia. “Is he injured or has he been drugged?” she asked coldly.
“I honestly don’t know,” Lydia replied. “I wasn’t privy to all of it, not by a long stretch.”
“It looks like a simple oxygen mask,” Jane said after a moment. “Go ahead and take it off.”
Tesla gently removed the straps that held the canister with its clear plastic cup to her father’s face. He continued to breath, she noted with relief, but his eyes remained closed. He might have been asleep.
“Dad?” she asked tentatively. Tesla was about to turn to Jane, insist that they call an ambulance, when she saw his eyes begin to flutter.
“Tesla?” he asked as his eyes came slowly into focus and he tried to turn his head toward her.
“Yeah, Dad, it’s me.” Tesla laughed and cried simultaneously, her hands flitted about him, touched his face, his arm, his shirt collar. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
He began to move then, rolled over slowly, painfully, and sat up in the box. Both Tesla and Jane reached in to help him.
“Jane,” he said once, clearly. Simply. Tesla saw Jane smile at him, a tremulous little smile, and then she said, her voice strong, “Good to see you, Greg. Happy belated birthday.”
He laughed—a little exhalation of breath, really—and then stood up. “I’m all right, I’m all right,” he said, irritated by the fuss. “I’m just stiff, I haven’t moved much in—how long has it been?—feels like weeks. Sebastian came in a couple of times every day, let me out to use the bathroom. He gave me food and water, and then back in I’d go, and whatever was pumped through that mask would put me right back to sleep. At least I’m well-rested.”
Tesla threw herself into his arms and hugged him as tightly as she could. His stupid jokes, his matter-of-factness—God, she’d missed him.
He seemed surprised, but after a few seconds, his arms went around her, too, and they held each other for a minute as Greg and Jane exchanged a look over Tesla’s head.
When he gently stepped back from her, Tesla let go. “Dad—there’s so much to tell you—” she began.
“Yes,” he said, oddly grim now that everything was fine. “There is a lot to say, a lot to explain.”
“Right,” Tesla said, “but first I need to go find Finn.” She was already through the door before they could stop her, and though she heard Jane’s shout—“Tesla, wait! That’s exactly where Nilsen wants you!”—she sped down the hall, through the door, and across the vast, open space of the Bat Cave, following the p
ersistent pull in her chest as she headed straight for the time machine, and Finn.
“Mildly impressive,” Nilsen said calmly as he stood in the control booth, his hands loose by his side and in plain sight, as Finn had ordered. Finn was tense and hyper-aware, the gun Lydia had dropped on the floor now in his hand and pointed right at Nilsen’s chest.
“Thanks,” Finn said. “It’s always nice to be appreciated.”
“I have to ask, though,” Nilsen went on conversationally. “What do you imagine will happen here?”
“Well, I know I have the gun,” Finn said. “And I know Lydia is now out of the picture, which would suggest that you’re finished. I guess we just sit here until the cavalry arrives.”
Nilsen smiled—actually smiled, Finn thought. He had to give the bastard credit for having a pair. “And do you suppose that a man of my means and intelligence has only one middle-aged woman on his payroll?”
Finn’s face was impassive, but inside he cursed himself for his carelessness. This could be a bluff, but it stood to reason Nilsen had others here, or at least nearby. Shit, he thought. He even had two men at that stupid keg party, and that was just a fishing expedition. Surely Nilsen’s people would arrive soon, and to Finn’s knowledge, none of the good guys had called this in.
There would be no back-up.
Finn shrugged. “I’ve got all day,” he said. “And plenty of bullets. The only way into this room is up those stairs, single file, and in plain sight.”
Sebastian Nilsen merely smiled, and Finn forced himself not to react. The seconds ticked by, then minutes, and then a sound, the last sound Finn wanted to hear right now: Tesla’s voice, on the staircase, her feet pounding up the metal stairs to the control room, as she shouted his name.
“Finn!”
“Tesla, no!” he yelled as he moved toward the open door in an attempt to slam it shut and lock her out, anything to keep her away from Nilsen, but it was too late, she was through the door, out of breath, and then Finn felt the cold metal of Nilsen’s own gun pressed against the back of his head, just at the base of his skull.