“A boyfriend?”
“No, just a friend. He’s older, but I think you’ll really like him. He’s one of the good guys.”
***
Thirty minutes later, the girls were walking and making slurping noises with their ice cream. Junie picked rainbow swirl, half of which was now smeared across her face, and Emily went with chocolate. The frozen, velvety texture rolled across her lips and tongue, sending a flurry of chills down her spine. She tried to remember the last time she had ice cream, but couldn’t.
Appreciate the simple things, she reminded herself.
They finished their dessert just before rounding the corner onto North Glassford. The house numbers told Emily they were a block from Jim Miller’s house.
“Crap!” Emily said, seeing something a few hundred yards ahead. It was Detective Alison. He was pacing back and forth, talking on his cell phone.
She stopped and grabbed Junie by the arm, tugging her backward.
“What’s wrong, Em?”
Emily held a finger to her mouth. “Shhhh. Follow me.” She pulled Junie into a nearby doorway.
“Uh-oh,” Junie said. “I know that look.”
“What look?”
“That one. The Emily-knows-what’s-good-for-Junie look. The one that comes right before you tell me what to do and then disappear for a year.”
“I know. I’m sorry, but I can’t take you to see my friend Jim.”
“Why not?”
“Cops!”
“Seriously? Where?” Junie asked, darting her eyes around the street.
“They’re in front of Jim’s house and might be waiting for me. I need you to walk away, right now. Go back the way we came and get to the shelter.”
“Emily, what’s going on?”
“Please? Just do this for me. I can’t get you involved in this. I need you to be safe.”
Junie folded her arms across her chest. “Okay. But I swear, if you disappear on me again, I’m never gonna talk to you. Ever.”
“I’ll come find you. I promise.”
Sadness filled Junie’s eyes. “It’s just not fair.”
“No, it’s not. But you need to go, and I mean now. Your mom’s probably already wondering where you are, anyway.”
“As if she’d even notice,” Junie said, sniffing and wiping her eyes. “Remember—you promised.”
Emily nodded, watching Junie disappear down the street.
She snuck along the front of the shops ahead of her and stepped into a store called Turnbuckles. She smiled at the old man with slicked-back gray hair sitting behind the counter.
“Can I help you with something, young lady?”
“No, just looking,” she said, pretending to be interested in the front window display while she kept an eye on Detective Alison.
***
Derek approached Jim Miller’s house from the east. He was about two hundred yards away when he saw Detective Alison pacing back and forth on the sidewalk next to an ugly green sedan.
Derek slipped into spy mode, changing course to stop at a crowded bus stop. He stood alongside the waiting commuters, trying to blend in.
Alison was on his cell phone and the conversation looked heated. Probably fighting with his wife or girlfriend, Derek decided.
A moment later, a middle-aged man, who Derek assumed was Alison’s partner, arrived at the car carrying a weighted bag of fast food—Jack in the Box. The two men got in the front of the car and dug into their meals. The whole scene had stakeout written all over it.
Shit.
He needed to get off the street and out of sight. He scanned the area and saw the perfect spot—a leather shop with a huge display window covered in hand-painted lettering. It would provide him with cover and a clear view of Detective Alison.
He changed direction, crossed the street, then made his way to the target. He slipped in the front door, turned to his right—and there she was, standing in front of him: Emily Heart.
***
Emily felt Derek’s essence flood into her a split-second before he spoke. He was back to his old self—a deep ocean of calm, covered in teenage boy cuteness. His energy jumped the gap between them, sending tingles coursing through her body.
“Emily! Holy crap! What are you doing here?” Derek asked, giving her a hug.
Emily expected him to try to kiss her, but he didn’t. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. Neither felt right. “I was coming to see Jim. Didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I was looking for you, actually. Hoping Jim had some answers.” He looked through the front window. “But there are—”
“Cops. Yes, I know. The same guy from the theater.”
“And his partner.”
Her eyes took control, admiring Derek’s boyish presence as he watched the watchers across the street. Her heart changed its rhythm and ran soft, making her insides melt into warm jelly.
He turned to her. “Where have you been?”
Emily wanted to tell him, but couldn’t. Not in some random store. She needed the timing to be perfect, and this wasn’t it. She glanced at the service counter. The old man was busy picking something out of his teeth, and didn’t seem too interested in anything else.
She looked at Derek. “It’s complicated.”
“It always is.”
She shrugged, giving him an “I’m sorry” look.
“You’re never going to tell me, are you?” he said, rolling his eyes.
“I will. Just not here. Not now. What about you?”
He hesitated, looking through the front window again, before turning back to her. “In jail. And in the woods. In jail in the woods. Like you say, it’s complicated.”
She smiled. “It always is.”
Derek’s eyes gathered their focus, staring at her cheek. He put his open palm across her tender skin.
Her smile disappeared. She looked away.
“Shit, Emily! What the fuck?”
She pulled away. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”
“Tell me who hurt you! I’ll go beat his ass.”
“You already did,” she said, before she could stop the words from exploding across her lips. She held the rest of them back before they told Derek that she had jumped ahead in time, and this was same injury inflicted by the sicko in the restaurant. If she weren’t careful to pick the perfect moment to come clean, he’d never believe her, or he’d think she was a wacko.
“Derek, it’s really, really complicated. Right now, how ‘bout we focus on getting into Jim’s place without the cops seeing us?”
“Damn it, Em. Why won’t you trust me?”
“I do trust you. This just isn’t the time or place. Okay?”
“Fine,” Derek said, scooting past her on his way to the service counter.
Emily followed.
“Hey, dude? Is there a back way out of this place?”
The old man nodded at Derek, then pointed. “But only employees are allowed back there.”
“How many employees do you have?”
“One. Including me.”
“Then I guess you won’t mind, will you?” Derek said, grabbing Emily’s hand. He tugged her around the open end of the service desk, through the door marked Employees Only.
They found the rear exit door twenty feet away. It led to a narrow parking lot that ran parallel to Glassford Street.
***
Ten minutes later, Emily had let Derek haul her around the block, where they’d found a low-lying greenbelt area that, based on distance and direction traveled, was adjacent to Miller’s house.
They cut across the water retention basin, keeping an eye on the house numbers stenciled in black spray paint on the wooden gates along the way. Emily assumed the numbers were location markers for the gas company’s roving employee tasked with pulling meter readings each month.
She worked through the descending sequence in her head, calculating which gate was Jim’s. “Number 333 should be the fifth one from h
ere.”
He nodded, then sidestepped a mound of miscellaneous trash, lumber, metal, and bulky household items that had been piled behind one of the houses. There were seven more piles ahead of them.
“What is all this junk?”
“I’m guessing it’s time for the city’s uncontained trash pickup,” she said. “A virtual goldmine of recyclables. Won’t be long before the pickers sweep through to grab all the good stuff.”
A minute later, a powerful static charge rippled through her body. It carried with it an intense feeling of dread that penetrated her bones. She focused her skills, trying to get a bearing on the new sensation. It wasn’t coming from Derek. The source was ahead of her, in the direction of Jim’s back yard.
She stopped walking, throwing her hand out to get his attention. “Wait!”
He turned. “What?”
“Something’s wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not exactly sure. But we should slow down until we know more.”
“How do you know this?”
“It’s hard to explain. Trust me, I just do. There’s trouble ahead.”
Derek changed course, ducking and working his way along the five-foot-tall block fence that encompassed Jim’s back yard. Emily mirrored his movements.
Derek stopped moving, held up his hand, and looked over Jim’s fence.
Emily did the same. A well-built man in his mid-twenties with the chiseled physique of a body-builder was a hundred feet away, creeping behind Jim’s outdoor barbeque island.
Everything about the stranger was off: orange-hued tanning salon glow, short-sleeved blue plaid button-down shirt, slightly too-short green athletic shorts, white crew-length socks, black shoes, and a metal briefcase. It looked like he’d dressed from the closets of four different people—all color blind and fashion oblivious—and then stolen a lawyer’s briefcase for good measure.
The man looked around the yard, sending his eyes in their direction. They both ducked behind the fence. Emily felt a jump tingle start in her spine.
She snuggled close to Derek and whispered into his ear “That’s no cop.”
“Yeah. No shit, Em,” he answered in a soft, quiet tone.
“You ever see him before?” she asked.
“Nope. And I’m sure I’d remember him. That’s not something you see every day.”
“I’m getting a weird vibe from him.”
“Me, too. And so is probably the rest of the neighborhood.”
Emily began her breathing exercises, trying to soothe the countdown building in her spine.
“You okay?” Derek asked.
She shook her head, but didn’t answer. She needed to focus her energy and thoughts to suppress the jump process. She didn’t understand why the mere sight of Orange Man initiated the countdown.
She needed to stop the buildup before it grew past the point of no return. She figured that she had a handful of seconds remaining before she’d lose control.
Focus, Em, focus. Equal breaths. Find your center. Find your calm. Peace comes from within. Reality is self. Nothing else matters.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Derek rubbed her back with one hand and squeezed her trembling hand with the other. He seemed to know she was in trouble, because he didn’t say a word. He began breathing in symphony with her, like an expectant father in the delivery room empathizing with his wife’s labor process.
She could feel his inner strength travel across their physical connection and enter her body. It dug in, providing a rudimentary backstop, helping her to wrestle control from the mounting jump. A few seconds later, the tingle began to wane. She slowed her breaths and let her shoulders relax.
“Better?” he asked in a comforting voice.
She looked at him and nodded. “Thank you. That helped.”
Derek let go of her and returned his attention to Orange Man. She did the same, peeking over the fence.
The man put the briefcase on the ground behind the BBQ and opened it. It was no ordinary briefcase.
Inside the top of it was a gleaming chrome surface filled with swirling contours of gray. She thought it was some type of display unit, or possibly a control console, but the metal looked alive. The bottom of the case didn’t seem to contain anything. In fact, it was shadow black, like an empty void in space.
Orange Man touched the middle of the oscillating display unit, pressing both his index and middle finger against it, then made a clockwise rotating swipe.
The shadow base began to change color from all black to gunmetal gray. A bulge rose from its interior and changed shape a dozen times, eventually morphing into an all-white, right-angled shape.
Emily’s mind churned through possible explanations, but one thought kept rising to the top: the case was reconstituting matter; creating the object out of thin air.
The shape began to change again, this time flickering twice before revealing more detail along each of the two sides. A handgrip formed near the base, and some type of elongated tube materialized from the other. Orange Man grabbed the device and turned it over in his hand.
“It looks like a gun!” she whispered.
“I think you’re right. But what does it shoot?”
The base began to move again. Three snake-like tentacles swirled up and out of the recess, connecting to the grip of the newly formed weapon.
Emily realized that the colors, shape, and movement of the tentacles were a dead match to the technology used in the medical torture chamber on the ship that abducted her and her mom in 1985.
She covered her mouth to suppress the volume of her unexpected gasp. It worked, though she couldn’t stop her hands and knees from shaking. The sight of the familiar tech had supercharged her senses, reactivating the jump process within her body.
Orange Man didn’t look anything like the sick, deformed beings that she remembered seeing beyond the translucent walls in the ship. Nevertheless, the technology was unmistakable, suggesting he was a co-conspirator in her abduction and transformation. It was also probable that the heinous beings had returned from their long sabbatical and were searching for her. Most likely, to finish the ghastly experiments they started long ago.
A radiant ball of blue energy surged through the tentacles and landed in the center of the handheld weapon, as if to deposit fuel into the gun. A moment later, the tentacles retracted into the bottom of the briefcase and disappeared into the nothingness.
A satisfied look came over Orange Man’s square chin and prominent cheekbones as he held the device in front of his eyes for what she assumed was a readiness inspection.
Derek looked at Emily, his eyes infused with excitement. He mouthed the words, Holy Shit!
She needed to warn him. “That’s one of them.”
“Them who?”
“Them. The ones who took me and my mother. They did horrible experiments. Changed me, which is why I . . . vanish when I get emotional.”
“And you chose this moment to finally tell me?”
“I never expected you to actually see one of them. At least now you’ll believe me.”
“So, let me get this straight. This guy abducted you?”
“And my mom.”
“And hurt you?”
She nodded.
“Someone needs to make him pay,” he said, as the expression on his face turned from exuberance to an angry scowl.
She grabbed his arm. “No, Derek. Please, I beg you.”
He pulled away, creeping along the fence to the right. He kept low until he was next to one of the uncontained trash piles behind the neighboring fence. He grabbed a broken pool cue that was lying with the rest of the junk and returned to Emily.
He looked over the fence, then shot his eyes at her. “He’s on the move. You stay here.”
“You can’t. We don’t know what that weapon does,” she said, trying to take the club from him, but he was too strong.
“Look, we don’t have time to debate this. He doesn’t know we’re
here. Right now, we have the advantage. Hang back and let me handle this.”
“But this isn’t your fight.”
“The hell it isn’t.”
“I can’t let you get involved in this. This is my problem. He’s probably here for me, anyway.”
“Then you’re definitely not going,” Derek said, hopping the fence.
Emily followed, taking only seconds to scale the fence.
Orange Man was indeed on the move, with his back to them, just stepping around the far side of Jim’s house, gun in one hand, briefcase in the other.
Derek looked back at her and whispered. “I told you to stay back.”
“No way. I’m coming with,” she answered, splitting her focus between following Derek and trying to perform breathing control exercises to slow the jump process.
She didn’t want to disappear until she knew Jim and Derek would be okay. Then an idea hit her. If she was able to jump at precisely the right moment, then Orange Man might follow her across time and space, leading him away from the people she cared about.
“Grab that shovel,” Derek told her, pointing to a rusty, short-handled spade with a D-shaped handle. It was lying flat on the ground next to a mound of dirt with clusters of weeds growing on it.
She took the shovel, then returned to her position behind Derek as they moved to hide behind the L-shaped barbeque island.
“What’s the plan?” she asked.
He traded the pool cue for the spade shovel. “You stay here while I go brain this fucker.”
“But?”
“No buts. As soon as you see me go around the corner, count to ten, then use the pool cue to break the window in the back door and get to Jim. Then run to the cops out front on stakeout. They’ll protect you.”
“What about you?”
“Trust me, he’ll never see it coming.”
She nodded, unable to think of a better plan.
He kissed her hard on the lips.
The jump tingle exploded inside of her, rising up her spine and filling her chest.
He pulled away with a “Good-bye” look in his eyes.
Glassford Girl: Boxed Set (Complete Series) (Time Jumper Series) Page 23