Out of Nowhere

by Rebecca York

  Was he the one who had trapped her here? Or was it someone named Angelo?

  She struggled toward the enemy, but she was weak from what Max had given her.

  “What the hell’s going on?” the man demanded, looking over his shoulder.

  “Everything’s under control,” Max called out.

  But that was another of his easy lies. She had to get away. He had tricked her again, turned her over to this captor. She had to get down to the ground before she stopped breathing. She had to make the man in the front of the plane stop doing this to her.

  Her hands were claws as she tore at Max’s clothing, at his flesh.

  He grunted, but she ignored him.

  Struggling forward, she tried to reach the man in front. When she lunged at him, the surface under her feet lurched. Down. The plane was going down. Good. She had to get down. She heard someone curse, felt hands on her. But she fought with the strength of desperation.

  Then someone pulled her from behind, pulled her back into the seat where she’d been sitting. Something covered her mouth and nose, and she had time for one more scream before the world swirled away.

  “SHE IS ONE HELL of a fighter,” a man’s voice intoned.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry. Did I give her too much? Is she okay?” the same unfamiliar voice asked urgently.

  Annie’s eyes fluttered open, and she focused on Max, then zinged to a blond man looming over her.

  “Annie, are you all right? Annie?” Max demanded, and she thought he might have said the same thing earlier.

  She tried to keep her eyes on Max. “I…”

  “Jed here gave you a little more anesthetic. It was still in the kit. What happened to you?” he asked urgently. “I thought taking that thing out would solve the problem. I guess I was wrong.”

  She swallowed, then struggled to explain. “It’s not about the thing from under my arm. We…we were so high. Above the ground. Like before.” Her head swung to the side, but now her view of the outside was blocked. She knew they were still in the air, but she didn’t have to look down, and that made the fear almost bearable.

  “Like when you were in the sky over the bridge?” Max asked gently.

  “Yes,” she answered with a sobbing breath, because she realized it was true. She had been in something high in the sky. Then she had been falling…falling….

  “You were scared then.”

  “Yes.” Her hand closed around the seat arm in a death grip.

  “But this is different. You’re safe. You’re with me, and I will never let anything bad happen to you. Never again.”

  She knew in her heart that he meant those words, and hearing him say them made gladness leap inside her. She also knew he might not be able to keep the promise.

  He sat beside her, gathered her to him. “We’re in an airplane. We’re going down soon.”

  She nodded, staying with him, trying to keep calm.

  “This is Jed Prentiss.” He nodded to the blond man next to him. “And that’s Steve Claiborne flying this rig. They’re the colleagues I told you about.”

  “I remember,” was all she could manage.

  “Go back to sleep,” Max murmured, stroking her hair.

  She clung to him, feeling her heart rate slowing. Her eyelids fluttered closed, and her fear drifted away. Not far away, but enough.

  She didn’t know how much later a change in the feel of the plane made her eyes jerk open. Then there was a bump, and she knew they were mercifully on the ground.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Western Maryland. At a small private airport.”

  She looked toward the front of the plane, where Jed now sat with Steve.

  “I could have killed us,” she whispered to Max.

  “You didn’t. We’re fine.”

  “But I feel so stupid,” she blurted. “Your friends must think I’m crazy.”

  Steve must have heard her, because he turned around and laughed before saying, “Annie, all of us are stray dogs here. You’re going to fit right in.”

  She didn’t think it was true, but she clung to his words. As soon as the plane had stopped, men and women came out of a building with a curved roof. Steve cut the engine and opened the door, then lowered a short flight of steps.

  Max climbed out, and she watched him shake hands with the men and hug the women. When she hung back, he reached toward her and helped her down the steps.

  “And this is Annie Oakland. She’s got all the right training to join our high-tech spy squad. But she had a little surgery this morning, so she’s a bit shaky on her feet.”

  He curved his arm protectively around her. “Annie, this is Jason Zacharias, Kathryn Kelley, Thorn Devereaux and his wife, Cassie.”

  Annie struggled to sort them out. Jason was as tough-looking as the pilot and copilot. Kathryn was a redhead—but appeared much more sympathetic than Nicki Armstrong. A competent-looking blonde, Cassie stood next to her tall, good-looking husband, Thorn.

  They all seemed friendly, but she felt overwhelmed, thinking that Max had probably been talking on the phone to them about her while she’d been sleeping.

  And were Steve and Jed going to tell everyone what she’d done? Probably not in front of her.

  Thorn stepped forward and handed her a small jar. “Put this on the wound. The salve will heal it very quickly.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  After they got into a car, with Jason driving, Max took off the bandage he’d put over the incision and applied some of the salve. Immediately, the wound felt warm and tingly, as if it was already mending.

  Leaning into the crook of his arm, she watched the scene speeding by. It was so unbelievably green, so alive.

  About twenty minutes later, they reached what Jason called the Randolph Research Facility.

  “We thought you’d be comfortable here,” he said as they drove through a locked gate that opened for them via a remote.

  “Thank you,” she answered, wondering if they had other reasons for keeping her in this isolated place. Maybe after the way she’d acted on the plane, they thought she was dangerous. And truthfully, she didn’t believe that evaluation was far wrong.

  A long, low building appeared around a bend in the road. It didn’t look impressive from the outside. But inside it was warm and comfortable, with rugs on the floors and paintings on the walls.

  More people, including a man named Zeke Chambers, who looked like he might be a scholar, were waiting to meet her in a large room with tables and chairs and couches. There was also an enormous television and something she knew was a pool table.

  She turned to find Max and saw that he had in his hand the little bag with the thing that had been under her skin. He handed it to Thorn.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to run some tests on it,” Thorn said politely.

  “Please,” she answered, because it might be the key to who she was.

  Kathryn Kelley took her arm. “So, do you feel up to talking to us now?” she asked.

  What Annie wanted to do was run and hide, but that wasn’t an option, so she murmured her agreement.

  “Then let’s get comfortable.” Kathryn led her to a couch.

  Thorn took the plastic bag off somewhere, but everybody else settled onto the couches, where they could look at one another and also out the window at a garden with big stone statues and tall grasses. Max sat next to Annie, his arm around her.

  A gray ball of fur on one of the couches lifted its head and looked at her with its strange yellow eyes.

  “A cat,” she breathed. “Can I touch it?”

  “Harriet is very selective about who pets her,” Max answered. Reaching out a hand, he let the animal sniff him. When it licked him with a pink tongue, he grinned, then scratched the animal’s head.

  She imitated Max’s greeting ritual. When the animal didn’t bite her, she stroked the fur on its broad back. “So soft,” she murmured.

  She leaned back, smoot
hing the cat’s fur, liking the feel of the animal. She was almost relaxed when Max’s next words had her nerves jumping again.

  “As we discussed over the phone, Annie—I gave her that name, by the way—is trying to figure out who she is and where she came from, and I don’t think it’s Kansas.”

  Everybody laughed. Except the subject of the comment, who only shrugged helplessly.

  “You don’t get the reference?” Zeke asked.

  She shook her head, feeling miserable. But she wasn’t going to pretend.

  “It’s from The Wizard of Oz,” he said.

  As he named the children’s book, a line of description leaped into her head. “Dorothy and her little dog Toto get swept up in a tornado and end up in the land of Oz.”

  “You memorized that?”

  “I must have. But I don’t remember.”

  “Dorothy was from Kansas,” Zeke explained. “So ‘We’re not in Kansas’ has become a kind of standard comment when you’re lost in a weird place.”

  “I see,” she answered.

  Max stroked her arm as he looked around the room. Maybe he was trying to make her feel better when he said, “I think that if anyone can help Annie, this group of misfits can do it.”

  “Thanks,” Cassie muttered.

  “Cassie excepted,” Max said easily. “She’s perfectly normal. A travel agent who uses her job as a cover for spying. But let’s get back on track. I haven’t told you how Annie and I met. I was fishing near the entrance to Hermosa Harbor, and she fell into the water.

  “At the time I assumed she fell off the bridge that goes over the channel. Actually, I thought some drug dealer had pushed her off. But now I figure I was wrong. Just before she appeared, the air felt strange. It smelled like ozone. And there was a clap of thunder followed by lightning.”

  He stopped and looked around the room. All eyes were focused on him, and he cleared his throat. “If you want to know what I think now, I believe she fell out of the sky somehow. When we were on the plane coming here, she had an anxiety attack. Which leads me to conclude she might have been dropped out of some kind of vehicle without a parachute.”

  Annie felt her stomach twist into painful knots. She was ready for everybody to look at her as if she was a freak. But nobody’s expression changed.

  Zeke turned to her and said, “Well, there are a number of theories we could explore. I’m a linguist, and one thing I can deduce from your accent is that you’re not from twenty-first-century America. And Max told me that you call binoculars knockers. That’s an interesting variant of the word.”

  “Max thought I acted like someone who came from a past century,” Annie said.

  “Unlikely. But the word knockers suggests that you come from a repressive society. One where sexuality gets channeled into crude references.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, because that had a ring of truth.

  Jason came forward with a question for Max. “You saw no plane or a helicopter?”

  “Right,” Max replied.

  “So let’s think about what other reasons there might be for someone falling out of the sky,” Jason said.

  Annie tipped her head to the side. “I’m Chicken Little.” Everyone laughed, and she liked that.

  Zeke spoke up. “Let’s try some other theories. For example, you could be from another time continuum.”

  “A what?” Annie asked.

  “A parallel universe. A universe that runs alongside this one, but some of our events turned out differently. Like the U.S. didn’t invade Iraq. Or the Germans won World War II.”

  “The U.S. did invade Iraq. And the Germans didn’t win World War II,” Annie said quickly. “At least, those are facts I know,” she said, marveling that these people were discussing the subject so calmly.

  “You could have dropped from a spaceship,” a voice said from behind Annie.

  She whirled around to find Thorn Devereaux standing in the doorway.

  Annie’s heart started to pound in her chest. “How can you think something so preposterous?” she asked.

  “Well, in the first place, I always keep an open mind when I deal with scientific facts. I’ve examined that little piece of plastic that came out of your body. It’s a sophisticated computer. I think Max was correct in inferring that it was, to a certain extent, controlling your behavior. And whatever else it is, it’s based on technology that’s not available in the U.S. today.”

  “It couldn’t have been made in a secret government lab?” Max asked sharply.

  “I doubt it.”

  “What about the Russians?” Jed Prentiss asked.

  “Forget the Russians,” Thorn answered. “They don’t have the resources.”

  “So you really believe in space aliens?” Annie asked Thorn.

  He laughed. “Well, since I am a space alien, I guess so.”

  Her jaw dropped open. “That’s a joke, right?”

  He shook his head. “It’s a long story. But I came here from another planet.” He walked to his wife and stood behind her. When he rested his palm on her shoulder, she reached up and covered his hand with hers. “Cassie found me and saved my life. If it weren’t for her, I would be dead.”

  Annie watched the couple touching, exchanging a warm look, and she felt a pang of envy. Like the men and women she’d seen at the nightclub, they were open in their affection. The public display at Nicki’s Paradise had embarrassed her, and she still had trouble watching lovers touch each other. But what she was seeing was different from the sexual atmosphere at the nightclub. Thorn and Cassie loved each other. It was hard for her to use that word, even in her mind. But she could see it in their eyes, in their touch. And she wanted that closeness with Max, even if it was forbidden.

  Forbidden.

  She swallowed, feeling her throat burn.

  Forbidden by whom?

  “What is it?” Kathryn Kelley asked, and Annie realized that the other woman had been watching her observe Thorn and Cassie.

  “I was just…” She let her voice trail off because she couldn’t reveal anything so personal.

  “Let’s get back to the problem of your identity,” Kathryn said briskly, and Annie was grateful that the woman wasn’t going to press her.

  “Do you have a theory—besides space aliens?” Zeke asked Thorn.

  “The most likely explanation is that she’s from the future,” the researcher said.

  “Oh,” Annie breathed, feeling her heart lurch.

  “Think about it,” Thorn continued. He turned to Max, “Annie told you she has a mission—something important she has to do.”

  “When the governor of Florida goes to Sea Kingdom,” she said in a voice she could barely control.

  “So maybe she was sent back by some technology we don’t have yet so she could change the past. And to make sure she carried out her mission, they put a computer inside her. A computer with a self-destruct mechanism.”

  “As in destroy itself?” Max asked sharply.

  “Yes. And destroy her,” Thorn said. “At the end of the assignment.”

  Annie felt a wave of cold sweep over her.

  Max’s expression had turned angry. “They don’t sound like very nice folks,” he muttered.

  “Or they’re desperate,” Thorn countered. “They need something done and they don’t want to leave any evidence.”

  “So what do they want from her?” Jed cut in.

  “I’d like to know,” Max growled.

  They talked for half an hour longer but could come to no conclusions.

  Finally, Max turned to Annie. “You look terrible,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “You had anesthetic this morning. You need to rest.”

  “All right,” she agreed, glad he hadn’t mentioned the scene on the plane.

  Kathryn gestured toward the hall. “Let me show you where you’re going to be staying.”

  Annie stood. So did Max. When she swayed slightly, he caught her arm and held her against his side.


  She felt strange because everyone was looking at them. Yet at the same time, she liked having these people know that Max cared about her.

  Kathryn led them toward a wing of the building that she explained housed the sleeping quarters.

  “We understood that you didn’t come with any luggage. So in the room you’ll find clothing and anything else we thought you’d need.”

  “Thanks,” Max told her, and the tone of his voice made Annie suspect that he’d expected no less.

  Kathryn stopped by a room and opened the door. Annie and Max followed her inside. Beyond a sliding glass door was interesting greenery. Not as colorful as the gardens she’d seen in Florida, but still pleasing to the eye.

  “I’ve put you in adjoining quarters,” Kathryn was saying. “This is Annie’s room.” She looked at Max. “You’re through that connecting door. I hope that’s all right.”

  “Fine,” Max said.

  Kathryn glanced at him. “Could you leave us alone for a while?”

  Annie felt a jolt of panic. Yet when Max looked at her, she gave a small nod.

  He left them standing in the middle of the room, with Annie clasping her hands nervously.

  CHARLES ADJUSTED the sun hat on his brown hair and looked out at the crowd of men, women and children enjoying the Florida afternoon. He had nothing against them in particular. They hadn’t chosen to be born into this godforsaken society. But they had come here to play, and they would suffer the consequences of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Well, not these exact same people. Unless they came back to Sea Kingdom for a few more days of fun in the sun.

  He ambled down a path, then stopped to buy a cup of ice-cold lemonade from a vendor. Fresh-squeezed. The best kind.

  He paid for the drink, then returned to the path. As he sipped his drink, he looked around the park.

  He was scouting locations now. He was pretty sure where he was going to do it. But he had time to pick his spot. Not in the hall where the governor was speaking. Out here in the open air where more people would die.

  He was dressed like a tourist today. Nobody knew him. He wasn’t even on the FBI radar. He should be on the Ten Most Wanted list. But they had overlooked him.