The Never Paradox (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs Book 2)

by T. Ellery Hodges

  Jonathan smiled, finding it hard not to laugh when he imagined Heyer’s disapproval when he’d found her sitting on the bridge. Rylee told the story as though her rebellion was more like missing curfew than refusing to close an inter-dimensional gateway.

  “What did Mr. Fedora say?”

  “He asked what the meaning of it was,” Rylee said. “I told him I was done taking orders. That I wouldn’t close the gates.”

  “Wow. Nerves of steel.” Jonathan shook his head. “I don’t think I could have done it.”

  Rylee ran a hand through her hair and looked at him. “You’re afraid of him?”

  Jonathan grew thoughtful for a moment. “No, not that he would physically harm me. I think I may respect him too much to put him in that position. But I get why you felt differently. What did he say?”

  “Well, that was when things got weird,” she said. “He didn’t try to intimidate me or take the stone. Didn’t say a word, actually. He just sat a few feet away and watched the water.”

  “How long did that last?”

  “His presence kinda took all the fun out of it—he was kind of hard to ignore. Don’t ever try to beat Heyer at a game when patience is involved.”

  Jonathan snorted. He’d expected this conversation to be so much more confrontational. He kept finding himself more excited to hear her story, to listen to the sound of her voice. He didn’t feel as though she were tricking him… Jonathan turned away and grimaced, the unwanted warning reminding him he couldn’t trust his feelings ruining the moment.

  “I am ashamed to admit I spoke first,” Rylee said. “Finally asked him what he was doing.” She shook her head. “So, he doesn’t answer right away. No rush, right? After hours of silence. He just sighs, turns to me, and says….” That was when Rylee launched into an awful impression of Heyer’s shadow. “There is nowhere else for me to be, Rylee. You refuse to obey me, refuse to take my word—wish to see the truth for yourself.”

  Rylee stopped then, any humor she found in the story seeming to have come to an end as she looked down at the floor.

  “He said I was hurting everyone in that reality—that each moment I didn’t break the stone did them harm. That I would be the only one who didn’t experience the effects, but would have to watch everyone else’s mind degrade. He said that he would not be immune, because he was a copy of himself like everyone else. That I was the only real person in that place. Then he said he would stay beside me until I was convinced—until he made sure that I closed the gates.”

  “How long did it take?” Jonathan asked. “Before you knew he was telling the truth?”

  “Had it not been Manhattan, probably not as long,” Rylee said. “Within a day, I couldn’t ignore that the people weren’t quite right. Heyer … took longer. He said that his device slowed the process, but that he was still a ‘copy.’ The first explosion in the city happened the next evening. After that, violence started taking place in the streets. I watched it all from a rooftop with the alien. He stood beside me, waiting.”

  Rylee stalled. She reached out to Jonathan then, took hold of his forearm and leaned down to rest her head against his arms. “I told him that I saw the gates needed to be closed. But … Jonathan, what you saw in that hotel room—I was afraid that if I didn’t do something, I was going to end up there eventually. I cared—I didn’t want to watch those people hurt one another, but I needed him to tell me something. Anything that gave me a choice.”

  Rylee was afraid he was judging her again, knew it was why she felt she had to explain. Being honest, he was disturbed that she held out. He didn’t know, had it been some stranger telling the story, if he would be so ready to forgive—but the moment he’d experienced within her made it impossible for him to pretend he didn’t understand. He knew her nature could not abide feeling trapped—how it made the fighter in her bleed out the longer she endured it. Jonathan didn’t know, if he’d been slowly dying that death, what length he might be willing to go to escape it.

  “I get it, Rylee,” Jonathan said as gently as he could. “I understand why you felt you had no other choice.”

  She exhaled, seeming relieved at his words.

  “Please, go on, finish your story.”

  She nodded. “Heyer started to struggle against the effects. I knew that he wasn’t going to remember how far I had taken it. I had been disgusted by the idea of sharing what I felt with him for so long, but when I knew he wouldn’t remember—I told him the truth. I told him what he had taken.” A swift breath bordering on a laugh escaped her. “Actually, I screamed it at him, made quite the scene.”

  There was a silence as she paused, recalling how the alien’s shadow had reacted.

  “I think he didn’t want to,” Rylee said. “That, if he hadn’t been suffering the degradation, he might not have said anything, but he wanted the gates closed so badly…” Rylee swallowed, then. “Finally, he said that this war would not remain isolated to me, alone, forever. That the Ferox would come for all Mankind. He said, the only weapon humanity had against enslavement would need my protection. That, when the day came, it would start here, in Seattle.”

  Rylee and Jonathan looked at each other.

  “I believed him,” she said, “because I could see that every fiber of his being didn’t really want to tell me. That his resolve had only faltered because he wasn’t able to fight what was happening to his mind. So, I closed the gates. I got myself together and left town—I came here. I didn’t have a plan, didn’t know what I was looking for, but I had something. I don’t regret anything I did—not now.”

  She went silent, and Jonathan reached out to her in the dark. She melted into him as though she wouldn’t have known what to do if he had left her there, waiting. She laid down, her head against his chest. He wanted to hold her, despite knowing he shouldn’t, that he was making everything worse for the both of them. He wasn’t sure what would hurt her more in that instant, bringing her close or keeping her at a distance—but she’d been so honest.

  “So, that is how and why,” Rylee said. “Is that what you need? To know how I got here?”

  “Part of it,” Jonathan said.

  “What is the other part?”

  “I….” Jonathan trailed off, too conflicted. “I need to think it through, but it can wait. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  She didn’t push, just nodded against his chest. They didn’t speak again and eventually she fell asleep beside him, though Jonathan laid awake. He believed everything she told him. Where Heyer had suspected some treachery, Jonathan only saw Rylee trying to free herself. Maybe she should have considered what the consequences would be, but she hadn’t felt like she had anything to lose, certainly hadn’t thought she would hurt anyone other than herself.

  He wished that he didn’t know about the bond. How was he supposed to tell her to leave? How was he supposed to know if she would fall into a depression again if he asked her to? How did he know that the bond hadn’t already sunk its claws into him?

  Collin stopped himself from hitting the snooze button on his alarm clock, seeing he’d slept in longer than he’d planned. He flipped the blinds up, glad to see it wasn’t raining, and dressed in a hurry. He pulled his backpack over his riding jacket and headed out his bedroom door. As he reached for the handle, he reminded himself to be quiet, not wanting to wake Jonathan if he was still asleep on the couch.

  He found Paige standing in the living room with her back half-turned to him. She frowned down at the couch, and Collin’s eyes followed her gaze to see Rylee asleep in Jonathan’s blanket, with Tibbs himself gone. Already left for work, he guessed.

  Collin wanted to pretend he didn’t understand what bothered Paige, why she had a thousand-yard stare as she looked down at the girl sleeping peacefully on the couch. He’d be lying to himself, though. He was just as curious about what order of events had led to Rylee sleeping there now. Had she come down in the night and slept with Jonathan, or had she come down after he left, found him gone, and fallen asleep i
n his blanket?

  “Subtle,” he whispered to Paige.

  Startled, she turned in his direction. She flushed slightly at having been caught staring while Rylee slept. Seeing he was smiling at her like a conspirator, she smiled back.

  Then he frowned, checking his watch and realizing she was as late as he was. “Don’t you have class in fifteen minutes?”

  She closed her eyes, nodding.

  “Well, I’d offer you a ride, but….” Collins eyes made a wide circle, taking the scenic route from her face, around the room, and then to the helmet he held at his side before he looked back up at her. “We know how you feel about motorcycles.”

  Paige looked down at his helmet. Biting her lip, she took another look at the girl sleeping on the couch. When her eyes came back to him, she lifted an eyebrow. “That a dare?”

  Collin tilted his head, intrigued.

  “You got a spare helmet?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  MONDAY| OCTOBER 10, 2005 | 6:30 PM | SEATTLE

  WHEN THE SUN had just started setting, the new motorcycle already sat in Leah’s garage. The side paneling was still pulled off, though Leah could have finished fitting the clips to hold the demolition bar hours earlier. She’d let the job stretch out, making sure Jonathan would see she still had it in her garage when he came home. Now she was waiting, keeping herself busy, letting classic rock play over the stereo and ignoring the clock as the hour he normally returned home approached.

  She knew he had arrived when his shadow cast itself against the wall in front of her, standing in the light of the work lamp she’d mounted over the bike. She didn’t let on that she’d noticed—wanted to take her cue from him. She wondered if, now that they were alone, he would try to explain himself or if he would ignore the oddities of the last few days. In the end, she’d be forced to accept whatever he said, but she had to push back—if she were too accommodating, it would be suspicious.

  “You know,” Jonathan said. “One of these days, I’m going to lock my garage door.”

  “I have my doubts, Tibbs,” she said, not yet turning to look at him, instead finishing putting her tools away. “Then you’d have to find an excuse to come over all by yourself.”

  She didn’t need to look. She knew he was grinning.

  Leah heard his footsteps draw closer, saw his shadow grow against the wall. He stopped before he reached her, his attention drawn to a work table along the side of her garage. “You never showed me these,” he said.

  Photos she’d printed were loosely scattered on the table top, all shots Leah had taken since moving in next door. Some were nature and scenery, a flower, the Seattle skyline at night, birds in trees. Then there were the two she’d had framed. One was a picture he’d been there to see her take—Paige standing in her garden with a pink flower behind her ear. The picture gave him a warm feeling—bright sunshine and a pleasant face smiling back. The other picture was strange, harder to make out, dark. He held it, his face growing troubled in a way Leah found hard to read. After a moment, he slowly set the frame back down where he had found it.

  “You framed this one?” he asked, as Leah joined him at the table, “These others seem more…”

  Jonathan trailed off and his eyebrows drew down in thought. As though he’d expected the word he needed would come to him, but had reached the end of his statement without having found it.

  “Pleasant?” she asked. “Hopeful?”

  He nodded noncommittally.

  “Well, I prefer this one. I feel more looking at it than I do with the others.”

  The photo was of Jonathan in his garage. A few weeks back—the moment before she’d kissed him for the first time. The picture had a lonely quality to it; a trick of light. He was walking away from the camera, his face turned to look back, half-hidden in shadow. The darkness seemed alive in the photo, as though it followed him—would consume him. He was like a candle flame that the shadows were trying to snuff out of existence.

  “What does it make you….” They smiled at one another when they both started asking the same question at once.

  “You framed it,” Jonathan said. “You go first.”

  Coyly, she held his eyes as though she might protest. She let out a breath then and looked back at the picture. Her smile faded. “It hurts to look at,” she said, turning back to him. “But I don’t mind that it hurts.”

  He tilted his head, waiting for her to help him understand.

  “I am standing behind you, watching you walk off into the dark. I feel you going into this empty, black place, alone. There is no one to warm you, to talk to you. Feels so lonely it hurts to imagine. I feel like….” Her courage faltered then, and she had to look away to finish. “I’d do anything,” she whispered, “to keep you from that place.”

  When they had first met, it had seldom been Leah who looked away when they found one another’s eyes. Now, it seemed like the more she feared losing him, the more transparent she felt looking back at him.

  She felt his hand, warm and gentle on her cheek.

  “Leah,” he said. “About the other night, Rylee. I…”

  “No.” She stopped him, her tone changing abruptly. “You’ll just table that for a moment. Don’t change the subject.” She glanced back at the frame, prompting his attention to stay on the picture. “I shared… now it’s your turn. Tell me what you see.”

  A conflicted smile came over his face as he withdrew his hand. He folded his arms over his chest and studied the picture again as he gathered his thoughts. “It reminds me of a dream I keep having.”

  “Oh?” Her eyes grew wider with curiosity. “Do tell, Mr. Tibbs.”

  She saw his guard coming down.

  “I’m standing in this dark room. It should be pitch black but it isn’t—there are these shapes that seem to catch the light when I stand close enough. I don’t know where the light is coming from, and it’s only enough to get impressions. It’s familiar—the room, the shapes—but I don’t know why. I find this table in the dark, a lot like this one, with a picture on top of it. When I hold it close enough, I recognize it: a photo, that my father kept in his garage, of my mother and I when I’d been born. There….”

  Leah listened, not making any attempt to hide that she wanted to know, but his eyes wandered to her lips. She felt his desire, heard him trail off and forget what he had been talking about. Then—he hesitated, suddenly seeming to think he had no right to touch her. He looked away, and a moment passed, before he finally managed to remember what he was saying.

  “There’s something in the dark that I’m supposed to see,” he said.

  “What?” she asked softly.

  Jonathan shook his head. “I don’t know. There’s this box on the table, beside the picture. It’s locked and I don’t have the key. I usually wake about then.” He shrugged. “I suppose Jung could have some fun with it. But it’s just a dream.”

  Leah closed her eyes, biting her lip as she imagined being inside the room he’d described. “It’s troubling,” she said, opening her eyes again. “That what you’re looking for has been locked away in a dark place. It’s as though you’re looking for a truth you know can’t be good.” She looked at him, her seriousness fading into a smile. “You know, because if it was good, you’d dream of a box in a meadow with flowers, and chirping birds,” she said, pointing at the other photos scattered on the table.

  He grinned and nodded. “The truth doesn’t care what we think of it. It is what it is. Couldn’t care less if we put it in the sun or the dark.”

  Leah giggled before she could stop herself. “Oh-so wise,” she said mockingly. “Professor Nietzsche over here.”

  He smirked, but otherwise took the joke gracefully.

  Then they found they had run out of things to say, and the silence that followed reminded them they were distracting themselves from an awkward conversation. Jonathan, enjoying her company, seemed to go looking for another way to put off the inevitable.

  “I see I owe you a fav
or,” he said, nodding to the work she’d done on the motorcycle. He walked to the side of the bike, crouching down to take a better look. “Course, last time we discussed terms before you went and stole my motorcycle.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Truth is, you’re pretty much on the hook for whatever I ask now.”

  “Well, that’s just not fair.”

  “Aww. The truth doesn’t care if it’s fair, Nietzsche.”

  Jonathan smirked in amusement. “Walked into that one,” he said. “So, what can I do for you?”

  “Isn’t that the question….” She turned around and pushed herself up to sit on the table. Without asking, she gently used her legs to maneuver him so they stood face to face. She saw him growing wary, finding himself in a position where he couldn’t easily look away. “I want you to promise you won’t leave this garage, no matter what I ask you. No running away until I say you can.”

  Jonathan sighed and seemed to be bracing himself.

  Then, just as he looked on the verge of giving his consent, she added, “And promise it will be the truth.”

  He closed his eyes, her request now clearly heavier than the one he had been ready to commit to a moment before. “I promise that I’ll do the best I can,” he said.

  Leah narrowed her eyes at him, but nodded a reluctant acceptance. “Rylee,” she said carefully. “When she showed up in your driveway. I saw your concern for her, as she drove off, but you didn’t know who she was, Jonathan. I didn’t doubt you. I should doubt you now, but I don’t. It’s just… not how you lie.”

  He flinched awkwardly at the last word, but she hadn’t asked a question, so he waited.

  “Jonathan,” Leah said. “Why did you leave the other night?”

  “I didn’t want to,” he said. “But I had to.”

  “Because of Rylee?”

  Slowly, he nodded.

  Leah’s eyes pleaded with his. “How is it you had to leave for someone you didn’t know?”

  He took a moment to answer. “She was in trouble, Leah,” he whispered. “I had to do something.”