by Nina Croft
“Have you ever come across that before?” Quinn asked.
“No,” she said. “We spoke about it before you came down. It’s never been known.”
Damn. He’d been hoping there was some logical explanation.
“So first,” Janelle continued, “you have questions. Are you happy if we share the answers?”
“Mostly,” Quinn replied. “But we haven’t told them anything about the time machine—it’s not our secret to tell.”
“We didn’t know that, either. We’ve had no contact from the guardians since we parted company. And Kane is alive. His parents believed him dead.”
“No, he’s definitely alive.”
“Okay. What do you want to know?” Janelle asked out loud.
“Tell us about Africa,” he said. “Where you came from, what you know about your ancestors.”
“Freya will tell us. She’s the oldest.”
“I’m six hundred years old.” His mother’s voice was low and husky. “The first four hundred and fifty years of my life were spent in Africa. Our people were split into two groups. Most of us just worked on surviving, getting enough food, protecting ourselves from the dangers. We don’t get sick and we don’t grow old. But we can be killed. Accidents, wild animals, other tribes. Then there were the guardians, the ones who guarded the secret.”
“The secret?” Mel asked. “What’s that?”
Freya smiled. “We never knew. It was a secret.”
“But you must have had some idea?”
“The truth was lost in time.”
“Have you any clue where your ancestors came from?” Quinn asked. “How long you’d been in that place.”
“Not exactly,” Freya replied. “But certainly, thousands of years. As people died, the truth was lost. At one point, it is thought the adults all perished—a whole generation. No one knows what happened, we can only hypothesize—maybe we are not immune to all illnesses or we were attacked. But it left a huge gap in our knowledge. We went on, following the laws laid down by previous generations, but we had no clue of the reasons behind those laws. We just continued, striving to survive until the waiting was fulfilled.”
Quinn was pretty sure that would coincide with Kane’s mission in 2020.
“Do you know when that time is?” Mel asked.
“I presume the guardians know, but we were never told.”
“Go on,” he said.
“When Malcolm Rayleigh found us, the guardians wanted him, and his guides, eliminated. But we agreed to find out more, and it became clear that the time when a group of our size could effectively hide was coming to an end. We would be found again and again. We could keep on killing but more people would come looking for those who were lost. We had no knowledge of the outside world or of new technologies. We had no weapons to fight off attack and most of us weren’t fighters anyway. And Malcolm was a good man. It was decided that the main group would go with him, leaving only the three guardians behind in the hope that they could remain a secret. Their leader was Jonas, and they were to protect the secret until the time came for us to fulfill our destiny.”
It all sounded a little like mumbo-jumbo to him. Quinn believed you made your own destiny. “Jonas is dead,” Quinn said. “He died last year, following an accident in the mountains. He named Kane as his successor.”
“It’s sad about Jonas, but wonderful news that Kane survived. He was a precocious child. It was clear from an early age that he was destined to be a guardian. And he loved Jonas, pestered him to help all the time. On the day we were to leave, he ran away, far enough that we couldn’t pick him up. It was believed he’d met with an accident.”
“Have you seen him?” A man spoke up from the other side of the circle. Kane’s father. Jake’s as well. It was weird, but all his people were related to someone here in some way. He could see a woman who looked almost identical to Rose. He caught her gaze and she nodded.
“No,” Quinn said. “Not face to face. But I’ve spoken to him.”
“Is he happy?” Freya asked.
The question took him by surprise. He didn’t know the answer to that. He’d never been particularly interested in whether Kane was happy of not. “I don’t know. He’s dedicated. And ruthless. Determined to carry on what Jonas spent his life protecting.”
“That’s good. We are so close now. And in some ways, we have all done our part.”
What the hell was going to happen? And how had it been destined thousands of years ago. Where had these people’s ancestors come from? It made no sense.
“What happened to you all in Scotland?”
“Very little,” Freya replied. “We lived quiet lives on the estate, working the land. The local people left us alone, we didn’t mix. At first, they were afraid of us. It was a time when people were always afraid of what they didn’t understand. But soon we became part of the landscape, some guessed what we were, but they still left us alone. We had a few children. We’re not a fertile lot, but it was unthinkable to go outside our group. Although the new generation were not always so fastidious…”
Freya looked at Janelle as she spoke, but the other woman just grinned.
“Around thirty years ago, I was approached by a young captain in army intelligence.” Martin spoke for the first time. “Harry Winters. Somewhere, he’d heard rumors about the tribe and was interested in using them. He spoke so eloquently of a future with no more lies, where the innocent would never again be wrongly accused, where acts of terrorism would be stopped when they were no more than a thought. He took me in. We became friends and we shared a common vision. Or so I thought. Even so, I wouldn’t put the safety of the tribe into another’s hands. That was something I couldn’t countenance—I’d been brought up knowing they were my responsibility.”
“And besides,” Freya said, “We were not suitable for what he wanted. We could never do the things you have done.”
Quinn felt a flicker of anger at that. As though he’d had a choice. He’d been brought up believing he owed a duty to his country, to the human race, even. He was born with special talents which should not be squandered, which could take mankind to the next level.
“Together Harry and I came up with a compromise,” Martin continued. “It was when cloning was just becoming viable. And so you came into being. Jake was the first successful cloning. He had genetic information from three parents, two from the tribe and a normal human. Most of you were one tribe and one normal. Part of the agreement was that none of you would know of the tribe’s existence, that they would be kept totally separate from the experiments. That was when they left the estate. They spread over Scotland, and I kept their locations secret even from Harry. Jake stayed with me and I brought him up.”
“You’re his third parent?”
He read the answer in Martin’s mind. “I’d never had children of my own and by that point, I suspected I never would.”
Because he was in love with Janelle? “Yet you never told him.”
“Again, part of the agreement. I thought it would be easy to let him go, but it nearly broke me. But by then, Jake was sold on the dream as well.”
“They did a good job on us,” Quinn said, hearing the bitterness in his own voice. They’d been effectively brainwashed from birth.
“Then about five years ago, Harry came to me and told me he’d been recruited into a secret organization. The Conclave. They had powerful members and were going to cut through the bureaucracy that stopped anything from really changing. He wanted to recruit me. I had my reservations but decided that at least I would be in the loop, privy to information. But I was shut out more and more. I had no say in decisions. When Shanna died, I tried to believe it was from natural causes, as they said. But then the next died and I couldn’t deny that something was very wrong.”
“Yet you never thought to warn us.”
“I was being watched. They wanted access to the original tribe members. At that point, I knew I had to do something. We set a plan in motion that resul
ted in them coming here, hidden even from me. Once the last member was gone, I meant to come and talk to you, help you get away. Instead I was arrested and never saw the light of day again until you got me out.”
And that brought them up to today. Almost.
“Is this Conclave still looking for us?” Janelle asked.
“Yes and no.” Mostly no, but Quinn decided not to go into that too deeply. “The Conclave is now under the control of an ally.” Of sorts anyway. “Though there are rogue elements who are still searching. But there’s also someone else.” He projected the image into their minds. This was the part they hadn’t shared with Mel—the part where it got murky and totally un-fucking-believable—though he supposed it wasn’t really, if you believed in time machines. The agents they believed were from the future, the ones who had tried to destroy them and the Conclave a few months ago.
Janelle’s eyes widened. “Who and why?”
“No fucking clue,” Quinn replied.
“And the FBI?” Janelle asked. “How did they get involved?”
“I was looking into some deaths of people related to Quinn’s group,” Mel replied. “It became clear that there was someone within the Bureau who didn’t want me to succeed. I found a link to Martin—I was there when they broke him out of prison.”
They were all silent for a few minutes, while they thought about what had been said. “So, what do we do now?” Janelle asked.
“If what the people who attacked the plane believe is true, then they’re close to finding you. Which means we have to get you away from here.”
Janelle pursed her lips. “Maybe we should just leave without you. Maybe you and your friend”—she waved a hand toward Mel—“are what’s leading them to us.”
He shrugged. Suddenly the anger that had been simmering inside him broke free. What did he owe these people? Absolutely fuck all. What had they ever done for him or Shanna? They’d donated their DNA and then abdicated all responsibility. Well fuck them. And fuck Kane. He had tried to destroy them all. Keeping his fucking crappy secret. Well, he could take his secret and his time machine and shove them up his ass. “Maybe you should,” he said. “Just say the word, and you’re on your own.”
Freya rose to her feet and crossed to where he sat. She rested her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.”
She spoke the truth, but it didn’t change things. It wouldn’t bring Shanna back, or Sam, or the others. He shook his head and looked at them all as they sat around the room. What the hell did they know about anything? “You think you’re so fucking virtuous. You abhor violence and won’t sully your fucking perfect, nice clean minds with it. But you’ve no objection to hiding away while other people fight your battles for you. Martin devoted his life to you, held you above his own son, but have any of you made an effort to go find him over the last four years? Save him?”
“I wanted to,” Janelle said.
“Not enough. Not anywhere near enough.”
“We have a mission.” That was Kane’s father. “We might not play an active part, but we must survive in case we are needed.”
“Jesus, you don’t even know what the mission is. Kane doesn’t know what it is. How the hell do you even know you’re the good guys at all? You’re just blind.”
“We have faith.”
He wanted to tear his hair out. “As I said—just say the word and you’re on your own. Do whatever the hell you like. I really don’t give a fuck.” All his life, all he’d wanted was to be one of the good guys. Now he was finally ready to admit that he had no clue who the good guys were, or whether they even existed. Shanna had always laughed at him, told him his black-and-white attitude would be his downfall.
Around him, the room had gone quiet. He knew they were talking in their heads, discussing him, but he couldn’t even be bothered to listen. What had he expected when he found them? A blinding white light and a revelation of the truth? They were no better than some crazy cult. Well, he’d spent most of his life risking his very existence because someone he trusted told him that it was all in the name of good. Now he was right back there—expected to put his life on the line for something he knew nothing about.
No more.
Janelle came toward him, crouched down, and rested her hands on his knees, looking into his eyes. Hers were so like Jake’s.
“I feel your pain. And I apologize for our part in that. But feel mine also.”
He took some deep breaths and looked into her mind. Chaos. A seething mass of fear and hatred and frustration. “Hell, you’re worse than me.”
“At least most of the time, you had an outlet. I was expected to keep everything inside.” She waved a hand around the room. “They are good people, but they are different. We were always a small group—maybe inbreeding strengthened certain traits, weakened others. As a group, we’re passive, rational, moral, and peaceful.”
“Except you.”
She grinned. “I’m a throwback. They happen.”
He saw the years of frustration. How much she’d wanted to break away, go explore the world. Then later, she’d wanted to go looking for Martin so badly, it had been a physical pain.
“You love him.”
She smiled. “Always. He sent me away. He couldn’t face the idea of growing old, while I stayed the same. He said he was doing it for his own good, but in reality, he was a goddamn coward.”
“I couldn’t leave,” she said aloud. “I was the only one who might be able to do what was needed to keep us safe. And whatever else we are to each other, we are family. As you are now family. I apologize for my comment earlier. This is not your fault.” She stood up and gave a shrug. “I’ve developed the habit of pushing people’s buttons as a way to strip them down to the real person. And you, my friend, have a lot of buttons to push.”
He’d done the same himself, wound somebody up to discover what they were like when they lost control. “Are you my friend?”
She nodded. “If you can forgive us for the past, then we would like to be friends going forward.”
He liked her. Perhaps because she reminded him of a mixture of Kaitlin and Jake. Or because she often felt alone, even though she was in the midst of her family. Or maybe because she had lost someone she loved, even if he was still alive. He glanced at Martin. He looked every one of his fifty-eight years and more. Then Quinn glanced back to the young, vibrant woman in front of him.
“I haven’t totally given up on him yet.”
“Don’t.”
He supposed if this thing with Mel worked out, then at some point she would face the same decision. She would age, and he would stay the same. If they survived.
He exhaled. “Okay. So how soon can we leave?”
“We’re just about ready to go,” Janelle replied. “We’ve always been ready to go. But I suggest we wait until morning. You’re all tired and will function better after a night’s sleep. I have a few things to do still, like take the horses up to the high pastures and release them.”
As soon as she said the word “tired,” a wave of exhaustion washed over him. “Is there anything you need me to do?”
“Nothing. Take your woman and find some peace.” She smiled. “You think it unlikely, but for the night, let go of your responsibilities. We’ll hear if anyone approaches. Relax.”
It sounded like a plan and he had the overwhelming urge to crawl into that big bed and lose himself for a few hours in Mel’s arms. And then sleep.
He stood up and held out his hand to her. “Shall we go?”
Mel nodded and slipped her palm into his.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Mel allowed him to pull her to her feet. She nodded at a few people as they passed, and they smiled, but she could feel their reticence. Did they think of her as something less because she couldn’t hear them? More likely they were confused by the fact that they couldn’t read her. They probably relied on that heavily to assess people, to weed out potential enemies. She was a mystery to them. They were bound to be wary.
But she had sensed Quinn’s anger. You didn’t need to be telepathic to see his clenched fists and tight jaw.
But Janelle had soothed his temper and Mel wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
Jealous?
A totally alien concept.
She pushed the thought from her mind, because it made her feel uncomfortable, as though the world she knew was shifting beneath her feet. Hell, the world she knew was two thousand years away. It didn’t even exist yet, and might not ever exist, if she messed up.
But apart from the undercurrents, she’d also sensed that there was something Quinn was keeping from her. Something related to this secret.
As they climbed the stairs to their room, she considered the pros and cons of bringing it out into the open, of asking him straight out if he was keeping stuff from her. And why? Obviously, he didn’t entirely trust her.
He tugged her into the bedroom and kicked the door closed behind them. It was dark outside now, and he released her, crossed the room and switched on the floor lamp. It filled the room with a rosy glow from the crimson shade. As he turned back to her, he was tugging his T-shirt over her head, then he balled it in his fist and tossed it on the floor. He stalked toward her, and the muscles of her stomach clenched while her insides turned molten.
“You’re wearing too many clothes,” he growled.
She’d never seen him like this, almost predatory, and shivers prickled across her skin, her nipples tightening. He unbuckled his belt, then flicked open the button on his jeans and her mouth went dry. She licked her lips as she shrugged out of her jacket, her fingers fumbling on the buttons of her shirt. She was clearly too slow for him, though. He reached out, took the two sides and ripped it open. She was naked beneath, her nipples hard little peaks. He stepped up closer and she automatically backed away. There was something so dangerous about him tonight.