by Liana Brooks
“No, stop!” Sam grabbed his shoulder and pulled him backward as a shot rang out. Metal hit the plastic door of the car, and she smelled ozone. “Get in.” Sam reached across Henry to slam the door shut. She barely sat up in time to twist the steering wheel and avoid a tree. They escaped the parking lot, and Sam gunned the asthmatic engine on the only road back to the main highway.
Marrins fired two more shots, missing her and hitting the road like flint strikes with little bursts of sparks.
His third shot hit home.
The car spun out of control as the tire exploded. She steered into the swerve as best she could, wrestling with the wheel. Her seat belt dug into her throat as the velocity threw her forward. She lost control, and all she saw were the air bags popping into her face as the car hit a tree.
CHAPTER 27
We are reborn moment by moment. The darkness awakens within us an awareness of truth. In that instant of greatest fear, we realize who we truly are.
~ Excerpt from The Heart of Fear by Liedjie Slaan I1–2071
Saturday July 6, 2069
Alabama District 3
Commonwealth of North America
A full moon shone on Mac with all the gentleness of a searchlight. The breeze that stirred the grass was no longer the lightly perfumed breath of spring but the hot, bone-dry promise of summer. His mind was playing tricks. He kept waiting for screams, looking around for the bodies.
An owl was silhouetted against the moon for a moment as it silently drifted overhead. They had owls in Idaho. One summer, the forestry service had paid for proof of owls in the area, and he’d spent every night sitting outside with his dad’s old camera. He’d been thirteen.
Mac sat up, shaking his head and trying to remember the last time he’d thought of the summer of owls. Years, at the very least. Sam made his thoughts turn to home more often. He caught himself comparing her food to his mom’s, and picturing his mother and Sam trying to share the kitchen as they cooked a holiday meal.
Sam . . .
He looked across the bridge and the road that led to N-V Nova Labs. Occam’s razor was dangerous, here. Marrins could have gone anywhere. But the lab was the center of everything, Mac was sure of it. All the bodies could be tied to the lab. Mac had followed the senior agent down this road, it only made sense Marrins would be there. Which meant Sam would be there.
And that meant he needed to be there.
Soon. Not yet.
With a sigh, he looked up at the cold moon. Marrins had a gun, Mac had seen it around the office more than once, and Robbins and Emir hadn’t shot themselves. If he wanted to get Sam back, he needed weapons.
The weight of a phantom gun filled his hand. He flinched at the memory of the sound of gunfire. Ghosts whispered in his ears, shouting orders, telling him to get down, take cover. Lieutenant Marcellus stood in front of him, looking to him for directions.
Mac turned away, looked at the grass, and waited for the phantoms to recede into the dark recesses of his mind. One more mission. Then he would join the dead.
The bureau building was dark when he parked beside Sam’s car in the otherwise-empty lot. He pulled on the door—locked. With a grunt, he kicked the glass door in and took the stairs two at a time as the alarms blared. Red lights blinked in every corner.
A monotone voice announced, “You have unlawfully entered a secured government building. Please wait for the police to arrive.”
“Not likely,” Mac muttered. Where did Marrins keep the guns? There was something about protocols and safeties. He rubbed his aching head and tried to remember. There was an old gun cabinet in Marrins’s office. They kept the splat bullets there. Marrins’s door splintered under his weight. The safe was open and empty. The old American flag had been torn down to expose a hidden wall safe with a discarded box of Starfire ammunition. Marrins had more than his bureau-issued weapon.
Mac looked out the window, a line of police cars screamed toward the bureau from the far end of town. Well, at least Altin was coming. But more likely they’d arrest him for disorderly conduct than believe him.
Too bad.
He ran down the stairs and pulled out of the parking lot before the cops arrived. They’d have fun running around. Maybe call Marrins and ask for help. That would be an interesting conversation.
Giving the truck’s steering wheel a savage twist, he turned into the bank parking lot. Bankers’ hours once meant banks closed at five, a ridiculous time considering the majority of their clients worked until six. Now, at least one bank in town ran a twenty-four-hour office. His did.
The bank clerk behind the front desk was a neatly scrubbed young man with a green pin-striped suit and brown bow tie. “Can I help you, sir?”
“Safety deposit box 203, I need to get into it. Tonight.”
To his credit, the bank clerk only blinked once. “Of course, sir.” He pulled out a black panel. “If you’ll just give me a palm scan for confirmation, and then sign here, sir. And here. And, a reason for the rapid withdrawal, sir? I need something for our records.”
“I’m going to kill someone.”
The clerk hesitated. “I think I might need the manager’s approval before I could use that reason, sir. Our insurance frowns on murder.”
Mac tried a friendly smile, but from the way the clerk tripped backward, he guessed it didn’t work. “I’m proposing to a girl tonight. Her present’s in there.”
“A much better reason, if I may say so. Go right on in, sir.”
The doors weren’t halfway open before Mac pushed his way in and typed in the code. Box was a misnomer: it was a small storage locker, just large enough to hold an old duffel bag and a few very important mementos.
He pulled out the pieces to the HK416 Marcellus had dropped in Afghanistan. Then the pieces to his own gun. The pistol he’d worn as a sidearm. And last, and certainly least, the bureau-issued splat gun he hated. Like Miss Azalea, if he shot someone, it wasn’t going to be so he could have a nice chat with them later.
After a quick check to make sure there was enough ammunition, he stuffed everything back in the bag and pulled the duffel out.
The clerk stood in the doorway watching, slack-jawed.
“Is there a problem?” Mac asked.
“Uh . . .” The clerk shook his head.
“It’s for a girl. She likes this sort of thing.”
“Uh-huh. Um . . . congratulations?” the clerk said in a shaky voice.
As Mac walked out, he watched the clerk reach for the phone in the window’s reflection. He might not get to Sam on time, but the police would have to be deaf and dumb to miss the trail he was leaving.
He got as far as the car before the shaking started. The memory of Alina Marcellus sat beside him. “Will you bring my baby home?”
“Yes. This time I will,” he whispered.
Sirens sounded in the distance. He put the truck into drive and headed for the lab.
His ghosts came along for the ride.
Red-hot, an all-enveloping with-you-to-death sort of pain that Sam never imagined possible burned her leg. She went to rub her eyes, but metal handcuffs hampered her movement.
Marrins stood by Dr. Emir’s machine wearing a black shirt that read AMERICAN HERO in blood-red letters. Harley was standing next to him in a matching shirt. Krenstien limped in, and there was Holt . . . Sam craned her neck trying to get a head count as her headache receded. One of the lab people, she couldn’t remember his name, and three other security guards. That made eight.
Bureau training hadn’t included classes on how to rescue yourself—an oversight, in retrospect. Even the survival and evasion tactics weekend course she’d taken had assumed that an agent would never be dumb enough to get caught.
And no one had ever considered a situation where an agent was being held captive by other agents.
“What did you expect me to do?” she asked, as he stalked over.
His heavy hand smacked her cheek. “What lazy Mexican wetbacks always do, hold still and squeal.”
“I’m Spanish, you bloody idiot.”
He smacked her, harder this time. Racial pride not a key to self-preservation when captured: check. Her whole head thrummed. “You”—he pointed an accusatory finger at Krenstien—“keep her in line.”
“Yes, sir.” Krenstien glared at her and sat out of reach. Sam turned to study the paint on the wall.
Marrins stomped his foot. “I know what the man said, Harley! I’m old, not senile. You, intern, what’s your name? Get over here!” She turned to see Henry dragged toward the machine by a grim-faced Holt. “What’s your name?” the senior agent demanded again.
“Troom,” the student whispered.
Marrins grunted. “What’s wrong with the machine?”
Troom looked down at the abomination with loathing. “Nothing. It’s just a prototype. Dr. Emir never made it do anything more than break teacups.”
“It can do more,” Marrins shouted. “We’ve all seen the proof! I’ve got a stack of corpses that prove this machine can move people around in time. It can save us.”
Sam shivered. One of those corpses was hers, some future her, maybe even the ugly version with a gun.
“No,” Troom argued. “It doesn’t. You can’t . . .” He sighed and rubbed his head. “Dr. Emir is dead. So is his machine.”
Marrins said, “We need the one timeline that steers all the others so we can keep the United States from selling herself and letting filth in. Emir said there were iterations, variations, something like that. The machine can make the United States come back.” He scowled in Sam’s direction. “Dr. Emir promised his machine could do that. He said he knew how to make everything fall in place.” An edge of desperation bit into Marrins’s words.
“I can’t make that happen!” Troom said, with a shrug. In his drugged state, he seemed indifferent to the danger he was in. “The machine doesn’t work like that. If it did, I’d go back and save Dr. Emir.”
“He’s useless,” Marrins said in disgust. He jerked his head toward the corner Sam was in, and Holt threw Henry hard into the floor by her.
Sam was about to talk to the intern when she saw the lights flicker off again as the machine whined to life. The lights were flickering because the machine must be drawing more power than anyone expected. The night Melody Chimes had died, the lights had gone out entirely because of the machine. She laughed.
“Shut up.” Marrins shouted. “Somebody shut her up.”
“Emir lied,” Sam said. “And then he left you.” Laughing hurt, but she laughed anyway. “He lied, and he left you here with a mess. You’re a murderer, Marrins, and you can’t get away.”
“SHUT UP!” Marrins roared.
He stalked over to Sam and pulled out a gun. Not the standard-issue bureau weapon with purple liquid bullets that knocked a victim out, but the old-fashioned lead-bullet kind. “Go ahead. Keep talking,” he said. “I’ll leave your brains spread all over the floor.”
Sam just glared, but it must have satisfied Marrins since he turned back to look at the machine. Lying on the floor, she counted ceiling tiles until Krenstien’s attention drifted, and he moved toward the machine. Marrins seemed to think that beating the machine would make it work, but she doubted it. Keeping one eye on her ex-boss, she whispered to Troom, “Are you okay?”
Troom cleared his throat and snuffled.
She risked a glance. His eyes were puffy. “Are you hurt?”
He shook his head.
“Do you think you can run?” she whispered.
“He’ll shoot me!” Troom hissed, a little too loud. Krenstien scowled over his shoulder, and Sam went back to counting ceiling tiles.
When Krenstien turned away, Sam said, “I can distract them, but if I do, you need to run. Call someone.”
“They turned on the priority security system. No phone reception. No live-feed camera going off-site. We’re only supposed to use it during certain tests.” Troom sniffled again. “None of the guards that like me are here. I think . . . I think they’re dead.”
So he’s not going to be much help. Sam cursed under her breath. I’m an idiot. Marrins had told her who the killer was—not tonight, but days ago. He’d told her exactly what the shot across the throat meant and why. He’d started out as a police officer in Texas working violent crimes. The casework was in his public record, and she’d ignored it because he was a bureau agent.
Holt turned, pacing in their direction. Sam lay still and stared ahead blankly as Holt passed by, black shoes reflecting the overhead lights. She moved away, and Sam stretched to look at the machine. No time to worry about missed opportunities—have to take advantage of this one. And if this twerp won’t make a break for it, then he might still be able to help.
“How do I break it?” she asked Troom.
“Break it?” he asked in anguish. “Why?”
She turned to glare at him. “Do you want to live?”
“They’ll kill you.”
“Some things are worth dying for.” Some deaths were better than others, and she’d rather go out with a bullet to her throat than slowly tortured to death in whatever parallel timeline Marrins might drag her to. Troom was silent as Krenstien made another circuit. In the center of the room, Marrins and Harley seemed to reach some agreement, and the lab lights dimmed as the machine powered up again.
“Besides—they’ll probably kill us anyway. Might as well try living.” Sam looked at Troom, his eyes wild. “How do I break it?”
“Y-you could smash it, or remove the core. Or . . . or push it into the anomaly.” He squeezed his eyes shut as tears appeared. “Smash it. Break the power coil off, and it will shut down. We had to bolt the casing to the floor because the linkages were so fragile. The slightest bump means you need to recalibrate. A solid hit would probably destroy it beyond repair.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay.” Even without a broken ankle, it wasn’t a perfect scenario. Marrins had lead bullets, Holt probably had her gun, and goodness only knew what everyone else was carrying. She patted her pocket and pulled out the small truncheon. She felt the Auburn University sticker on the handle. It was fitting, really: Melody Chimes had lost everything, and now part of her would be there for the final payback.
I hope.
Sam nudged Henry Troom. “When I move, crawl for the door, get outside, and run. Don’t stop for anything. Call Detective Altin. Tell him everything.”
“He won’t believe me.”
“I know.” She sighed. “But you have to try, you know?” He nodded. “Good. Have . . . have someone tell my parents I was doing my job. They’ll understand. And tell MacKenzie it wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t have done anything. Tell him to take my dog.” Poor Mac. She wished she had the time to say good-bye. At least she hadn’t taken him to meet Marrins and an unwelcome end.
The machine’s whining grew louder. Krenstien cut his circuit short and moved into the safety zone marked by yellow tape. Sam couldn’t help but notice that she and Troom were both lying in the death zone, the riptide of time was just waiting to suck them down and smash them to brittle bits.
Fun.
Nodding to Troom, she army-crawled forward. Sam stopped and pushed herself to a crouch when Marrins started hitting buttons. Her ankle burned. Her arm ached. It’s just for a moment, she promised herself. She glanced back. Henry was crouched near the door, watching with a terrified expression. She nodded, and he opened the door. As light from the hall stabbed the dark lab, she erupted into motion, lifting the baton and hurling it at the machine like a spear.<
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It missed, bouncing off Marrins’s arm instead, but she was already twisting away. He yelled out, drawing his sidearm. Sam ducked, rolling forward in the confusion of light and darkness, and came up with the truncheon in her hand again, slamming it into the machine as someone tried to pull her away.
The machine fizzled, blue-green light washed in kaleidoscope ripples around the room and fell dark.
“Sam! Down!”
She hit the floor before she realized what was going on. Lights were turning on as the machine died. There was a gunshot. She recoiled on involuntary reflex, waiting for the burn.
It didn’t come.
Agent Marrins dropped beside her, a stunned expression on his face.
Blood dripped on the tile floor as another gunshot sounded. She flinched, shutting her eyes. There was a burst of noise, more gunshots, the sound of bodies dropping, then an eerie silence.
Someone touched her leg, and she screamed.
The light flickered off as the machine behind her coughed a death rattle. There was pain, and the soft sound of liquid hitting the tile. Sam forced herself to open her eyes and turn. Light from the hallway silhouetted a bulky figure in exo-armor kneeling beside her. “Captain United, I presume?” she joked with a tear-filled laugh.
“Close, but not quite,” the man said, his voice calm, deep, and familiar.
“Mac?” Tears stung her ripped cheek.
Strong hands helped her sit up. “Captain United was busy, beautiful. Will a US Army Ranger do?” She started crying in relief. He slung his gun over his back. “How bad are you hurt?”
“Facial contusions and some bruises. I might have a concussion, I was feeling pretty light-headed for a bit. Oh, and my ankle is definitely broken.”
“The left one?” Mac guessed as he unrolled something from his pack.
“How did you know?”
“Jane’s autopsy. She had a fractured left ankle that had healed over.” Tenderly, he lifted her leg as she winced. “Consider me your doctor for the evening.” She gasped as his warm fingers probed gentle flesh. “Broken. Can you hold a flashlight?” he asked as he pulled one out of his bag.