by Jen Greyson
“I’ll bet. Where’s Papi?”
“Home, I would assume. You and I haven’t worked on a mission for over three months.” He keeps advancing, unperturbed by my appearance, the lightning, or the effect I’m having on the overheads. My lightning snaps and writhes along the floor. “You seem angry.”
I laugh. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“Enlighten me. When are you arriving from? Did we have an argument? Am I the source of this unbidden anger? What arc are you working on now?”
I can’t even. “You lied to me again!”
He straightens his tie. I lash out and cut off the bottom four inches. Smoke tendrils curl upward and he waves them out of his face. “That seems unnecessary.” He motions left, toward a conference room behind a row of windows. “Shall we talk?”
“You mean lie?” I follow him into the room, seething. Lightning flares behind me like a cape. “I’m done talking! I’m trying to figure shit out, figure out who’s after me, who’s behind killing Nikola, and in the middle of that I find out that you fucking lied to me!” Lightning flashes through the room, racing up the walls and across the ceiling.
“Fine. No talking. Shall I stand here—” He points to the head of the table. “—Or over there—” He gestures to the far side of the room. “—While you use your weapon to barbecue me?”
I glare at him.
“That must be why you came, correct? If you don’t wish to discuss the matter of my falsehoods. I would ask only that you at least let me know what grievance I’ve caused you this time.”
He says it like I’m some hothead who takes every little disagreement personally. I grind my teeth until my jaw aches. In a slow show of power, I spread my arms and let the lightning come. Sparks fly from my shoulders, wisps of electricity race down my spine and flare from my hips. Red tendrils sneak into the display and I pull them back reluctantly. I want to use them on him so bad. I want to make him pay for all the heartache and hurt and stress he’s put me through. It would be so easy to kill him.
But then I become him. I become a person who lets my emotions rule my weapon. “I hate you.”
“You always have.”
“Because you’ve always lied to me.” Lightning creates its own pattern on the canvas of the room, barely leaving an inch of untouched air around Ilif.
“This again?” He does his best to downplay the electrical field, but doesn’t move an muscle, trapped where I want him.
“The truth is pretty big fucking deal!”
“Your truth, perhaps.” He raises his voice. “But you are forever unwilling to accept anyone else’s version of the truth. It’s what still makes you a wildcard as a rider. Time travel proves the theory that every truth exists.” He shakes his head and steps toward the door. “I continue to have such high hopes for you, yet you remain emotionally unstable. It was my greatest fear of a woman rider and you continue to prove me right.”
“This again?” It feels good to throw his words back at him, barely tempering the desire to throw lightning and take out other parts of his manicured façade. The pulsing web surrounding us recedes, allowing him space to turn toward me. I take a step closer. “You lost my sister. I think that gives me a right to get pissed. You weren’t in my house. You lied about where you were so I’d work with you. Again. You’re always lying to me to get what you want.”
“Ah.” He looks away, staring at nothing, then adjusts the buttons of his jacket. “Now I know when you are. That explains why you’re here now.”
“What does that mean?”
“You have work to do.” He purses his lips and strokes his tie, fingertips fumbling with the singed end. He flicks his fingers in distaste, brushing them together. “I cannot convince you otherwise, so arguing this point with you is fruitless. Good day.” He strides to the door and I hurl yellow lightning, blocking his exit and furious that he’s going to walk out without giving me a single damn answer. The yellow expands to fill the door and pushes him back a few steps.
“I’m not done with you yet.”
“While you may not have pressing matters demanding your attention, I do.” He strokes the edge of his right lapel. Bastard is trying to get rid of me. “Like resetting the system to track your sister. Please remove your illegal lightning so I may return to my work.”
I laugh bitterly. “Work. That’s a good one. What is it you do here, Ilif? Really do?” I step to the window and watch people walk past, stare down the end of the hallway toward the lab.
The lab. The lab that has been the bane of my entire existence. The lab where he lost my grandfather. The lab where he trapped Penya. The lab she snuck in to. The lab where he had to rewrite code to match my uniqueness. The lab where that uniqueness couldn’t track my little sister. Whether I want to admit it or not, a good portion of my existence is wrapped up in this lab. And I’ve willingly played into his hands, allowing him to bring my family and an entire new generation into the workings of this lab. I’ve foolishly done it without knowing the truth of what he does here and what he wants all Nikola’s patents for and who’s paying for all of this. He’s told me it’s privately funded now, but by who?
More questions. There are always more questions where he’s concerned. Never answers. Never the truth.
“I do meaningful work here, Evy. Good work. Work that is beyond your comprehension. Now leave me to it.”
“Meaningful. Is that what you thought when you were working with Penya? The two of you are probably all cozy again, aren’t you? The past issues you’ve had with her were probably nothing more than a lover’s spat. Lie about that, too?”
He spins and rushes me. “I was there, god dammit! Your neighbor showed me around your house. He was quite concern—”
“STOP LYING!” A rainbow of colored lightning erupts throughout the room, canceling each other out before I blow us all to smithereens. “I just saw Steinaman. It wasn’t you. You weren’t THERE!”
“Gray hair, walks with a limp, knows everything about you!”
“Nice guess. You’re wrong!” His description soaks into my brain and my anger stutters. Before I can recover, he rotates the button on his left sleeve and I freeze. “Why did you do that?” I point a shaking finger at his arm.
He drags a disgusted look down my outfit and sniffs. “Not everyone finds it appropriate to clothe themselves in head to toe leather, scuffed and dirtied from whatever trip you’ve returned from. I prefer to keep my jacket tidy.”
“That one. Why did you touch that one!” I can’t handle one more second of his lies. Left is truth. It’s taken me all this time to figure it out, but it’s the best tell he has. There’s no way he’d know that I’d figured it out just now. No way he’d know to fake it. That’s the beauty of a tell, the person doesn’t know they do it.
Except now I’ve told him.
He runs his fingertips down the knife-edge crease of his left sleeve. “I don’t understand.”
I close my eyes and take a step back. I’m trembling head to toe and there’s a chill at the top of my scalp that won’t let go. “Forget it.”
CHAPTER 13
THE QUIET SLIDE of the door Has me grinding my teeth. The day has been one interruption after another. I close the folder and slide it to the left, away from prying eyes. I’ve been expecting his arrival and while Neil is valuable in his own right, no one gets to see the results of Garrett’s findings.
I frown at Neil’s empty hands. “Did you get the papers out of Evy’s house after I left?”
“She didn’t follow you like you said. She blew up the room, then disappeared.”
I flatten both hands to the counter and stand. This is the trouble with the simpletons I must endure. I dislike the physicality of employing him. But Evy has proven to be beyond reasoning with. She understands violence which was why I hired Neil, so he could talk to her in her own language. Yet the concept seems beyond him. Not only did he fail to counter her lightning, it seems he let her get the best of him. “Why do you think I fo
rced so much training on you? I knew Evy would have lightning we hadn’t seen before.” Again, I’m going to have to handle this myself. “Obtaining those papers was imperative. I thought I made that clear.”
He crosses his arms over his chest.
“How did you get out?”
“No help from you. Things went weird after the two of you disappeared. The lightning she’d bound me with followed her. I barely made it out before cops and a couple neighbors came to investigate. There weren’t no time to snoop through her place.”
Time is a circular loop and if he’s just come from there, I can send him back immediately to a different time. I’ll have to decide if it’s worth the trouble or if I’m patient enough to wait until Tiana is ready to take me back to Tesla’s warehouse where I can gather the documents I need.
Have her say something that’s in contradiction to what evy and Ilif are working through. They need to find her.
CHAPTER 14
THE AIR BETWEEN us crackles with tension that has nothing to do with my lightning. If Ilif presses me I will reveal the tell. I don’t want to give it up yet. He stares at me for a long beat, then blows out a hard breath.
“No matter our differences, we must work together if we are to stop Penya and find Tiana.” He holds up a hand. “Tiana first, I know. Why do you think I’m lying about your neighbor?” He lowers his voice and there’s an earnestness he doesn’t give me often enough. His fingertips play at the innermost cuff of his left sleeve. “I was there, Evy. I can describe details of your bedroom, the incinerated condition of the room beside it, the curious scrape marks along the wall where it appears someone fell down the stairs.” He pauses and looks at me. “Who was the man who showed me around?”
“Not my neighbor.”
“Who?”
“I’m further from answering that than I’ve ever been.” I pull my braid forward and feather the end against my jaw. Until Steinaman and I gather more intel about the Gray Man, I can’t bias Ilif’s impression of him. For now, he’s a clean observer where Gray is concerned and I may need that untainted view in the future. I stick to facts. “He saw me get one of Nikola’s papers from the hotel safe—maybe the most important one—then he followed me while I was trying to arc home.” Ilif inhales sharply but doesn’t interrupt. “He was in Nikola’s room less than an hour after he died. A bunch of men came with him, but they weren’t happy about finding each other there.” I squeeze my eyes shut. “One said Gray worked for the President.”
“I see.”
“He’s smart, he’s shifty, and he fooled both you and Mr. Steinaman—that’s my actual neighbor. Steinaman worked for both the FBI and local police; he’s helping me figure all this out.”
“Good. It would please me if you passed along the information as you acquired it. The man meant to deceive me, of that I’m certain.”
“What makes you say that?” I pull out a chair and sit heavily, kicking the one beside it and propping a boot on the seat.
“His repeated assurance that he belonged in the neighborhood.” Ilif strokes the hair at his temple while he ponders their interactions. “He shared three different explanations of when he’d encountered you while he was walking his dog, or washing his car, or returning from watching the local baseball team.”
I frown. He was far less and yet he also ensured that I would come get you. He seemed certain that I would be able to find you. That alone is curious. If he worked for Penya, the expectation would have been for him to send me elsewhere.” Ilif tugs at the bottom of his tie.
“Sorry about that.” Slapping him across the face would have made less of an impact than ruining his clothes and I knew that when I made the choice of where to hit him. Now that I know he wasn’t lying, I do feel bad about it. “I really do apologize.”
He bows his head and pulls a chair to the space beside the one I’ve turned into an footstool. “May I?”
I sit up, put my feet on the floor and push the chair in, making room for him. The baby step doesn’t go unnoticed by either of us and there’s a pregnant pause as we absorb it. Too much has happened between us that a complete coming together will take time, and he’s going to have to earn my trust as much as I will his, but there’s a spark of hope that’s never been there before. Our experience is layered with the stories we’ve created about ourselves and each other.
He lowers himself with the poise and propriety of a lady in waiting and—while I don’t change my slouch in the chair—it’s the least attitude I’ve given him since we met. For the briefest second I wonder what he was like before; before Penya and Renaee and Nikola, if he was always this anal about everything or if this has come as a result of the trauma. They say every villain is the hero of his own story and I’ve never allowed the possibility of that for him. He has been my enemy for all time, even when I afforded him the option to direct my actions. “I understand your anger. I understand why I have always been the easiest target for it. I’ve withheld many truths from you because I didn’t think you could handle them. At moments I thought you didn’t need to know. I worry perhaps that those decisions have put you in danger.”
“You’ve put all my family in danger.”
“Quite possibly.”
“I have to fix this, Ilif. I have to find out who this guy is. I’m sure he’s connected to Penya.”
“Perhaps, yet he wanted me to find you and know of Tiana’s disappearance. He’s certainly not a part of my operation and not someone Penya met here. Can you avoid him for now, or stay guarded until we can solve the matter of Tiana’s whereabouts? Once she is safe, I will work to aid you in determining his affiliations.”
I nod in agreement. “No more lies.” Two pieces slam together and I freeze. “Wait. You said we hadn’t worked together in months.” I frown. “Why would we have stopped if Tiana is still missing in your now?”
“No more lies, correct?” I watch him intently. His fingers stay folded in his lap. “We never found her, Evy. Your father and I failed at every turn. Penya never came to you, not once in all the time we looked.”
“But.” I can’t grasp this. Again, the workings of time race through my fingers like water. I close my eyes and take a breath and focus on the grains of truths that I know about riding. I cling to them like they’re the last morsels I’ll ever hold. “Doesn’t mean I can’t change that, right?” I open my eyes. “If I do something different?”
“Eliciting my response of why you’re here now.”
“Please tell me you’ve found a trace.”
The corners of his lips curl in what must be his version of a smile. Like everything else he does, it’s awkward and confusing. The apples of his cheeks swell like backward dimples and the skin at the edge of his eyes crinkles. If my memory wasn’t a fractured mirror, I’d be able to remember if I’ve ever seen a real one from him before. If I have, it’s been forgotten amidst the rest of our interactions. This seems genuine. He’s pleased with himself. “I did find a trace. He points toward where he was standing when I came in. “That trace was what caused the flurry of activity and we’re making adjustments now to reduce the data to indicators we can not only track, but predict.”
“And that hasn’t happened before today?” I think of the computers, of the wild spinning diagrams, at how much firepower he’s put behind the workings of this place.
“This is the first time since she went missing that I’ve had one solid enough to replicate.”
I really wish he was fiddling with his left sleeve. But there’s still one other truth that’s never happened, one he can’t manipulate in any way—I’ll gain a memory from him while I’m here. “How long will it take you to make something of it, something useable?”
He strokes his tie, then brushes a speck of imaginary lint from above his left pocket. “A team of seven is working through the data. We’ve dedicated every server we have to locating her. I anticipate a resolution within two days.”
“Then what?”
“We destroy Penya.”
<
br /> “And bring Tiana home safe.”
He holds out a hand. “You must tell me everything. I understand your hesitation and I will do what I can to prove my trustworthiness. No matter where if fall right now on that measurement for you, I cannot help you if you don’t trust me with the details.”
Another request for trust and I think of what Steinaman said about the difference between trust and accepting help.
“I’ll think about it. For now, you have work to do and I have to get back to Steinaman. We were in the middle of figuring this guy out and I’ve got to show him my lightning and explain this whole thing to him.” I wave my hand toward the rest of the lab.
“Can you trust him?”
I shrug. “Not sure. But I need his help.”
“A wise course of action. Trusting creates problems.”
Yet that’s exactly what he’s asking me to do.
CHAPTER 15
IN STEINAMAN’S KITCHEN, I snuff my lightning and Daisy whimpers in Mrs. Steinaman’s lap; they’re both shell-shocked and working to recover. Mr. Steinaman blinks and taps his cane repeatedly against the carpet, unaware he’s doing it. A scowl furrows a deep line between his bushy eyebrows. It’s the most he’s moved since I agreed to reveal my secrets. “Time travel?”
I nod.
“Goodness,” Mrs. Steinaman says, taking a big breath and relaxing into her chair with relief. “When you told us you were traveling for work I thought you meant the occasional trip to Santa Fe. It didn’t occur to me that you meant backward through time.”
“I’m sorry I had to lie to you.”
She dismisses me with a wave. “Brant did it all the time when he was working for the CIA.”
“FBI.”
“Whatever, dear. Evy, lying to keep people safe and out of harm’s way is far different than lying to do others malice. You did what you had to do. We understand that most of all. I’m happy to keep caring for Ike while you’re away. Just maybe use the phone to keep me apprised.”