Logan Kincaid clapped Kane on the back and laughed. “I’d say that’s up to you. But any man who tells a woman all his secrets is either a fool or in love.” The smile never left his face, but his tone changed. “You aren’t a fool and you cannot afford to fall in love.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Kane nodded and together Fallon and he ambled away from Kincaid.
“You two know one another?” she asked as they stopped in front of a blueprint of a robot that could iron clothes. After glancing at the prototype’s five-million dollar price tag, Fallon moved on. Interesting idea, but at that high a price, the robot wouldn’t replace dry cleaning anytime soon.
“We’re related. Didn’t I mention my last name is Kincaid?”
“No. You didn’t.” The two men shared dark hair and both had broad shoulders and fit bodies. But their features were nothing alike. “How are you related?”
“He’s my great-great-grandfather.”
“What?” That was impossible. She stopped. His hand tugged but she ignored the chain dancing along her nerve endings. “Logan Kincaid can’t be more than thirty-five.”
“He’s thirty-seven.”
Fallon’s thoughts swam through what seemed like a sea of mud. Kane had already told her he’d fallen in love with a woman who’d gone on to become a grandmother. If he wasn’t lying, and after the technology she’d seen, she didn’t think he was, then he had to be from the future. And obviously Logan Kincaid knew it. Perhaps that’s why he’d come by today, since he hadn’t remained to bid.
Was time travel possible? Could people in the future come back in time? Fallon’s mind swirled at the possibility. She had dozens of questions, but Kane was making a beeline to one of the booths. He must have found what he was looking for.
At first so many people stood close by that she couldn’t see the technology that made objects turn invisible. But as the line moved slowly forward, between two security guards she glimpsed a glowing round crystal cylinder. When a man pressed a switch, a vase with flowers disappeared and the crystal’s glow dimmed. Around her people marveled, oohed and aahed.
One man told his wife he wasn’t buying an elaborate magic trick. Several men asked to see the paperwork and the security guard told them the engineering would be sold with the product. Fallon had no idea if this was standard procedure but she applauded Kendals’ precautions.
She could imagine many military applications and shuddered. An enemy could make invisible bombs and leave them anywhere. The U.S. would have few defenses against what couldn’t be seen, and she wondered why her government was allowing this auction to take place.
“How large an item can be made invisible?” she asked Kane.
“A crystal that size could make me invisible for a year.” He kept his voice low and turned her toward the seats. “We have to win the bid.”
Fallon didn’t like the idea of spending her money on a gadget that could be turned into a weapon. And yet, better the CIA had it than fanatical enemies. Ever since Kane’s conversation with Logan Kincaid, she’d suppressed the dozens of questions she had about Kane and his mission, but she didn’t like being kept in the dark. If she was going to purchase such an expensive and dangerous item, she wanted to be fully briefed. She wanted all her brain cells to focus on the task at hand.
As she realized that she wanted to concentrate on business, not pleasure, she noted that the buffs were no longer stimulating her. The chain was still attached to her skin, but so loose it no longer distracted her. So Kane had told her the truth. The body buffs would only do what she welcomed. And when she truly didn’t want to be aroused, they deactivated.
She may not have caught Kane in even one tiny lie, but she knew he was holding out on her. She couldn’t make good decisions when he kept her in the dark.
As she took a seat beside him, she caught the glances of several people who seemed more than casually interested in Kane—and they weren’t all women. One was a man with blond hair, green eyes and an icy stare.
She nudged Kane. “See that blond man to your right?” Just as she spoke the blonde ducked out of the room.
“Who?”
“Never mind.” She shook her head. “The guy seemed to be taking too much interest in you.”
Kane opened his shirt pocket and plucked out a 3-D picture. “This him?”
She studied the image. Never had she seen such crisp detail, clearer than her high-definition television set—only it wasn’t a flat image, but a hologram. In the image, the man possessed the same cold green eyes, but his hair was short and black. And he wore a beard.
“I think it’s the same guy, but I’m not certain. Is this Nigel?”
“Yes. First we’ll purchase the technology and then I’ll catch him.”
Kane made the statement as if there was no chance of failure, no other way his mission could finish. If she hadn’t seen Nigel’s eyes, she wouldn’t have had so many doubts. But the lack of humanity in his soulless stare made her shiver.
“Cold?”
“It doesn’t bother you that Nigel knows you’re here?”
“He knew I would come after him. Now he can’t run again until he sells the technology.”
“Why not?”
“He needs the money.”
Kane’s thinking was simple—too simple—and she felt obligated to point out his mistake. “Nigel can have the money transferred by wire. He needn’t stick around to collect. By the time we purchase and finish with the paperwork, he could zap himself to China.”
“There’s no place he can go that we cannot follow.”
If Kane had meant to reassure her, he hadn’t. His plan made no sense to her. Either he didn’t understand all the ways Nigel could disappear or Kane was holding back information again. She suspected the latter.
They really needed to talk. But with the seats around them filling in and the auctioneer starting the bidding, now was not the time. Fallon bid on the innovative sunglasses and won, then lost out when she dropped out of the bidding on the quartz countertops.
Although she kept out a sharp eye for Nigel, she didn’t see him again. Not even when the crystal that turned objects invisible went up for sale. The auctioneer explained that only the winning bidder would see the plans, the patent and the engineering. If the winner wasn’t completely satisfied, he or she would have twenty-four hours to return the item and it would go to today’s second-highest bidder.
The bidding began at five million and quickly escalated to twelve. Fallon had yet to raise the paddle with her bid number on it. She never jumped in too early, getting a feel for the other bidders and the rhythm of the sale. Next to her, Kane didn’t flinch a muscle or change expression, but then it wasn’t his money they were spending.
The bidding slowed at fifteen million. Daron Levenger, a financial analyst from Price Dunstreet kept up a steady conversation with someone on his cell phone while Daisy Malone, a European investor whose fortune originated in Swiss banks, hesitated to raise her bid. While she deliberated, Fallon finally jumped her bid straight to twenty million, hoping the other two bidders would drop out.
Daisy bit her bottom lip and shook her head as Fallon had hoped. But then Daron went to twenty-two. And a new bidder entered the fray, Jamaal Ali Azeez, his wealth grounded in Saudi oil, coming in at twenty-five million.
Fallon didn’t like Jamaal. As far as she was concerned the hypocrite should go back to his homeland and his five wives, fifteen children and thirty-three grandchildren. His lifestyle irritated her for several reasons. A man who had five wives shouldn’t be cheating on them with his French mistress, but Jamaal did it openly and proudly. She liked his political leanings even less. He had ties to poppy fields in Afghanistan that terrorists turned into heroin, which they sold to fund their illegal activities, and it was rumored he had several congressmen in his hip pocket. No, she had no use for Jamaal, but the man was far wealthier than she and could outbid her if he wished.
“Perhaps you should have asked your great-great
-grandfather to stay,” she muttered to Kane.
“Why?”
She bid again, trying to decide how high she was willing to go. “He can better afford this purchase.”
“Bidder thirty-seven bids thirty million,” the auctioneer went on with his singsong patter.
At her comment, Kane rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Is spending money so painful for you?”
“Wasting money is painful,” she snapped, irritated when Jamaal went to thirty-two million. She immediately jumped to thirty-five. She didn’t want him to sense any weakness. While she was prepared to go to at least forty, she had already spent more than she’d planned for an item she didn’t want.
Jamaal hesitated, then shook his head. Finally the auctioneer dropped the gavel. “Sold for thirty-five million dollars to Ms. Fallon Hanover. And that concludes our auction. Thank you all for coming.”
FALLON SETTLED HER BILL and accepted the crystal and plans. Kane waited for a private moment then transferred them back to the hotel room. While Fallon used the bathroom, he placed the plans in a garbage can, lit a match and began to burn them.
Fallon rushed back into the living area, her eyes wide, her steps at a run. She tried to take the can with the burning papers from him. “What are you doing?”
“I always intended to destroy these items.” He held the can out of her reach and when the smoke detector was about to sound off, he used his specialized technology to prevent it.
She picked up the crystal and held it out to him. “I just paid a small fortune for this…thing. If we’re going to destroy it, I deserve to know everything.”
He had to admire her intelligence. She hadn’t tried to stop him after her first burst of horror. Not that she could have stopped him from doing what he aimed to but that knowledge wouldn’t have prevented most people from trying. Instead, she was facing the fact that his action might be a good one and was asking for an explanation.
“You might want to sit down.” The papers quickly finished burning and he stirred the ashes with a hanger, then washed them down the sink drain at the bar.
“You’re from the future, aren’t you?” she demanded, without taking a seat. Instead she fixed them both a drink of tomato juice, vodka and a celery stick and he noted that her hands weren’t even shaking.
He’d given her enough clues to guess the truth. Still, she had to be shocked. In his own time, only a few civilians had heard of time travel. Only those who served the government and needed to know ever learned about the technology.
“Yes. I’m from the future. I traveled in a time bubble and you were caught in it. The illness you experienced is on a cellular level. There are no permanent harmful effects, but you are trapped with me for the duration of my mission.”
“Which is?”
“Nigel James is also from the future. He stole technology and is trying to sell it here.”
She bit into her celery stick, chewed and swallowed. “I’m assuming he’s under the same constraints you are? He’ll eventually return to the future, also?”
Kane nodded. “But we couldn’t wait to catch him in our future. Allowing him to sell those items would disturb the time line. The consequences could be catastrophic.”
“How?”
“Without being too specific, suppose,” he took the crystal from her, opened the power source and disconnected the battery, “the wrong people got hold of this item? They could change history by planting a bomb in the Oval Office.”
“So I spent millions of dollars to—”
“Preserve the status quo.”
“The Agency could do a lot of good with that crystal.”
“Perhaps.” He tossed it into the air and caught it. Before she said more, he placed it on the floor, crushed it with his shoes, then ground every memory chip to dust before sweeping it into the trashcan. “But this machine isn’t supposed to be here. Even if your people used it for good, it could still damage the time line.”
“And who are you to decide what’s good for my world?” she demanded, her tone ringing with real annoyance.
“You’re forgetting that I’ve seen the future and it’s—”
“Perfect?”
“Better than now.”
She crossed her arms across her chest. “That’s too vague for me.”
“I’m not allowed to be more specific. I shouldn’t be telling you this much. Just the knowledge that the future is a better place might change your actions and damage the time line.”
“What do you mean?”
“Perhaps if you’re optimistic about the future, you’ll invest more heavily in computer circuits or transistors, instead of oil. With your buying power, you could change economies, alter the market.”
She shook her head. “You’re giving me way too much credit. But I have another question. If Nigel is going back to your time, how will he take his new-found wealth with him?”
“There are several possibilities. For example, he could convert his paper wealth to a commodity and leave it in a trust. Or he could hide it and retrieve it in the future.”
“Has this kind of unofficial time travel happened before?” she asked.
“A few times. I’m a time cop. It’s my job to preserve history.”
“And it was during one of your past missions that you fell in love?”
He held her gaze. “I left without a trace and she never knew why.”
“My…God.” She raised a hand to her lips, her eyes bright with compassion. “You never told her?”
“She lived in a time without much technology. And back then I never broke the rules.”
She eyed him with a speculative arch of her brow. “And if Kincaid hadn’t cleared me, you wouldn’t be telling me, either.”
At her words, his frustration escalated. He could not go through falling in love and leaving a woman again. And there was a reason he’d been harsh and uncommunicative: to discourage her and to protect himself. “If you know the truth and understand that I must leave, you will not allow your emotions to become involved.”
She let out a long, low whistle. “Damn you. It’s too late. You should have told me sooner.”
“I will not allow you to have feelings for me.”
“Really?” She released a harsh laugh. “Do you have a machine, some new invention in that future of yours, to prevent people from having feelings?”
“That’s not what I meant. I’ve been so reserved and distant, there should never have been any real connection between us.” And if the time bubble hadn’t trapped them together, they wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
“Maybe you’ve held back with words. But your actions and expressions reveal the real you. From the first moment we met, when you handed me a damp paper towel to ease my sickness, you’ve shown yourself to be kind. You also like to be in control. The pleasure I’ve had has all been very one-sided, no doubt so you could keep your feelings in check.” He stared at her, surprised she could know him so well. She sighed again. “Well, did it work?”
“What?”
“Did stopping yourself from making love to me prevent you from wanting to?”
“Of course not.”
“So—” she shoved a lock of hair behind her ear and drilled him with a stare “—what you’re telling me is that your rationale for not making love to me is a complete failure.” She held out her hands to him. “And since you’ve already broken your rules by revealing your secret to me, you might as well break the rest of them.”
His mouth went dry. She was offering him everything he wanted…everything he couldn’t have.
8
KANE SHOT FALLON a harsh, heated look that should have rocked her back on her heels and made her wish she’d never uttered those last words. “You want to make love to me, knowing that after I leave in a few days it will be impossible for us ever to see one another again?”
Fallon didn’t hesitate. “If we don’t make love, I will regret it for the rest of my life.”
He coun
tered. “And if we do, you may regret it for the rest of your life.”
She grinned, her smile saucy, her hip cocked at a brazen angle. “If we could have regrets either way, then why not enjoy ourselves today?”
Kane chuckled, pulling out her cell phone and offering it to her. “You certain you wouldn’t rather return these dozens of phone calls?”
He was testing her. And she almost reached for the phone out of habit, but she resisted and shook her head. “What I want right now is you.”
“Your mom’s called eight times.”
“Then she’s still alive, and right now, that’s all I need to know. But what about you? What about catching Nigel?”
“He’s already gone.” Kane’s tone was light and easy as if catching Nigel didn’t matter, but she knew he was not a man to take his mission lightly.
“How do you know he’s gone?”
“I can…keep track of him.”
Kane was being vague and she realized he was trying hard not to reveal more about the future technology. But if he could track Nigel, then why had he earlier insisted on using the television to find him? Did his technology require the television for it to work? “So you know where he is?”
Kane shook his head. “I should have said I am aware of his proximity to me, just like you are aware of when I’m near you.”
She didn’t understand. “But you and I are connected through the time bubble.”
“Our connection to one another is different,” he admitted, then let out a long, low breath of air. “All you need to know is that when Nigel uses our technology, I’m aware of it. And once he discovered that we’d spotted him, I had the choice of either following him or securing the technology. Since the technology was dangerous, I had no choice but to let him go.”
“So where is he now?”
“He jumped from New York to Logan airport. I haven’t picked him up since then. He must have taken commercial transportation after that.”
“Perhaps I can be of some assistance.” She held out her hand. “My cell phone, please.”
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