The Never Paradox (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs Book 2)

by T. Ellery Hodges

  “How could you even know something like that, Jonathan? You need to tell me how that makes sense.”

  He closed his eyes then, and swallowed. “It isn’t going to make sense, Leah. It’s never going to.”

  She’d never wished she could read his mind more than she did at that moment. It seemed impossible for him to be telling her the truth, yet there was no trace of dishonesty.

  “Jonathan, what am I supposed to think?” she asked. “There is something going on with you and her. You brought her home and gave her your bed.”

  “I didn’t know what else to do. I have to watch out for her…” he said. “But Leah, I don’t feel for her what I feel for you.”

  Leah waited. She wanted him to say something more, needed him to give her something more. “Dammit, Jonathan,” she said, a desperate frustration creeping into her voice. “Please, I can’t stand looking at you, feeling like a fool because I believe you when I know you aren’t telling me everything.”

  “I’m not telling you everything,” Jonathan said. “But it’s all I can.” He watched her, seeming to know what came next. She saw his lips tremble the longer he failed to find something to say.

  “Dammit, Jonathan,” she said. “Would it be me or her?”

  That look was on his face again, as though the question were too complicated to answer. “It isn’t a fair question,” he whispered.

  Leah saw what this was doing to him and hated it. He was trying so hard to find an honest answer that would keep her from telling him to go. She pulled him against her and his arms responded as she placed her head on his shoulder. “Just… tell me a story,” she said. She tilted her head up, whispering in his ear. “It doesn’t have to be your story, just one that will make me understand.”

  She pressed her head back down on his shoulder. Unable to see his face, she waited, listening to his heart. It took some time—how long, she wasn’t sure, but the beats eventually began to slow.

  “I have a story,” Jonathan whispered to her. “But it isn’t going to tell you what you want.”

  After a moment, she nodded against his shoulder.

  “Imagine if there were two rooms, both right next to each other. In one room, there is a person you care about, and she’s hurt, and if you don’t help her soon, you might lose her.”

  Leah pulled back gently, looking up to search his eyes. “And the other room?”

  “A bomb,” he said. “It’s counting down, but you can’t see the clock. If it can’t be defused, both rooms and everyone in them will be caught in the explosion.”

  She blinked at him. The best she could do to hide the grim understanding coming to her. “Will the girl in the room die before the bomb goes off?”

  “There is no way to know,” he said. “It depends on how long she can hold on.”

  Slowly, she brought her head back against him. “What do you have to do to diffuse the bomb?”

  Jonathan took in a long breath and let it out. “Whatever it takes.” His voice trembled. “You can only hope that the girl in the room understands that.”

  They didn’t speak for a while, but the pull of their closeness got the better of them. At some point, her lips were against his, and Leah began to forget that there were supposed to be reasons she couldn’t allow it. Neither of them wanted to stop, but when she could not endure another moment without taking it further, she pushed him away. He didn’t fight; she could see he’d felt the same, that his need for her had come so close to being all that mattered.

  She said that if he needed to go, he had her permission. She could see he didn’t want to leave, but he nodded. He was smart enough not to press his luck, given the circumstance.

  Leah lingered there a long while once he’d left. Jonathan had had no idea just how much more she had inferred from the story, how many meanings he thought were hidden by its vagueness. She was lost in thought when Evelyn stepped through the doorway into the garage and startled her.

  Jonathan’s mother seemed not to notice the lapse. She looked just as upset and contemplative as Leah felt. However, Evelyn made no attempt to hide that her mind was troubled. Leah was about to ask what was wrong, but the older woman spoke first.

  “Leah, has my son come home yet?” she asked, her tone distant.

  Leah nodded.

  “Could you do me a favor, dear? Would you see if Paige would come join us? I need to talk to the two of you. It’s important.”

  He walked away from Leah’s garage in a daze. The last few days had seen several disruptions to his routines, and the growing number of complications made it more and more difficult to focus. He needed to keep up with his training, but at that moment, he looked forward to it for therapeutic reasons. He desperately needed to exhaust a growing imbalance of restless energy. As he neared his garage, unfamiliar music came from inside. The sound was almost tribal to him.

  When he stepped inside, he found Rylee had made herself at home. His weights had been moved to the side of the room and the mats he used for practicing maneuvers were spread over the floor. In the center of them, Rylee balanced in a handstand. Her arms flexed too, holding her steady while upside down. The true strength of her body was on display, the clothes she trained in hiding little while the exertion of exercise pumped blood to her musculature and flushed her cheeks and shoulders. She was a perfect athlete, and the command she had over herself put his to shame. Even now, she seemed to effortlessly resist the forces which would have toppled him to the floor if he’d tried to do the same.

  He was about to speak when she shifted, pulling one hand up from the floor, her legs parting to redistribute her weight as she held the same pose, now with only one hand as a foundation on the floor.

  He remembered how he had felt when he’d first seen her fight—as though he’d been in a trance. He felt the same hypnosis now. She was impressive even without the added strength of the device there to make her grace superhuman. He watched her close her eyes, inhale deeply, and with a sudden swift movement, she swung to the side. Her legs and arms traded places in a manner that mocked gravity, as though the pull of the Earth were some insignificant afterthought she could ignore. Outside of watching an Olympic gymnast, he’d never seen a person move like her. Still, those graceful combinations of movement he had seen on television were practiced. Rylee never looked as though her body flowed through a combination; she felt the movements out as she went, reacting to the changes around her.

  He realized that she was standing on her feet, looking back at him, and by the time his eyes met hers, he’d lost track of how long he may have been staring at the rest of her. If she noticed, she didn’t mention it. He had to drag his eyes away. It was possible that Leah had left him in a state that made his appreciation of the female form more difficult to ignore than it already was.

  “I’ve never had someone to train with, Jonathan. At least, not someone who knew what I was training for,” Rylee said. “Will you train with me?”

  He brightened at the request. “Definitely.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  RYLEE WATCHED AS he stripped off his coat and turned to a small box that rested on a counter under the garage’s one window. He tossed in his cell phone and wallet, but was more careful when he placed a gold pocket watch and a photo inside. He pulled open a drawer and removed some more appropriate clothing, then looked at her, his expression unsure.

  “I need to change,” he said.

  She nodded, taking a few moments to see he was waiting for her to look away. Rylee rolled her eyes and turned around. Of course, the room had a number of mirrors, and she was still looking at his reflection.

  He glowered back at her humorously through the mirror.

  “Jeez, Captain Modest,” she said, closing her eyes and letting herself sway with the music. “As though you’ve got something I haven’t already seen.”

  When Rylee was fairly sure she’d heard him pulling on a change of pants, she couldn’t resist, and made a show of opening one eye. He was barefoot, in a
tank top and some synthetic black exercise pants. She smiled, feigning embarrassment when he looked at her. “Oops,” she said.

  He blushed, but she was sure she saw him grinning before making a point to clear his throat.

  “Where did you learn to move the way you do?” he asked. “I’ve never seen anyone fight like you. Is it some type of gymnastics?”

  She shook her head. “No. Only looks similar.”

  She dropped into a low moving crouch, her legs keeping her in constant motion, then used the momentum to move about him with maneuvers he couldn’t put a name to. Half cartwheel, half somersault, a one-handed backflip? His brow furrowed as he studied her style, his focus serious and discerning as he tried to dissect her unpredictable manner of moving about.

  “I don’t know what to call the things you’re doing,” he finally said.

  Rylee didn’t stop, but stayed upright a moment to respond. “They don’t have English terms. Well, if they do, I don’t know them.”

  She continued to move around him, and he paid attention to each feat of motion.

  “It’s amazing that you never lose sight of me,” he said. “No matter how complicated the move, it’s as though they were designed to keep your eye on the opponent. You only lose line of sight for a brief second—never long enough that I’d be able to take advantage.”

  She fell back into a swaying crouch a short distance away, bringing up her hand to taunt him into coming forward with her fingers. She smiled, watching him try to read her, as though unsure if she meant to seduce him or spar. She didn’t hate the attention—his face seemed hypnotized as he tried to unlock a pattern in her style.

  When he stepped toward her cautiously, she waited until he drew closer and relaxed. Her motion changed abruptly, the smallest of efforts to misdirect his attention. Her body headed toward him from the opposite angle. His reflexes were quick, and he reacted, but her legs were sweeping him off his feet while he expected a strike from above. He hit the matt with a thwack, looking up to see her cartwheeling over him.

  From the floor, he watched her retreat. Jonathan was stunned, only slightly annoyed to have been attacked without real warning that she was ready to put him on the floor. He was too interested to complain. “You aren’t using routines or combinations,” he said. “How long have you trained like this?”

  She flipped forward into a handstand, rolled down gently onto her back, and came to a stop, seated on the mat a foot from where she’d dropped him a moment earlier. “It’s called capoeira. My father is a mestre. When he started teaching me, I was so young that I honestly can’t remember life without it. It’s the best way to learn the style. That is, to be brought up with it,” she said. “But it’s more show than it seems, inefficient to learn the older you start. For most, it’s a dance or a game—takes years of training to become familiar enough with the techniques to consider using it in a fight. Admittedly though, once you’re capable of moving without thinking, you become a very difficult target.”

  He studied her before shaking his head, unconvinced.

  “Stand, Jonathan,” Rylee said. “I’ll show you what I mean.”

  She displayed a series of kicks. They were fast, long, powerful motions that would have taken him off his feet if they had connected. She showed him ways to attack from a hand stand, ways to use one’s weight and motion to glide into positions that provided an advantage. He studied her as he had before, and now, seeing the offensive portion of the fighting style, she saw his skepticism forming.

  “I can see what you mean, at least from an aggressor’s standpoint,” he said. “You’d be hard-pressed to land any damaging blows. Some of those kicks would be liable to hurt your joints more than your opponent if they actually connect.”

  She nodded. “You see the weaknesses faster than most.”

  He didn’t seem to hear her, too deep in thought. He bit his lip, returned to the box where he had placed his possessions, and opened the pocket watch before placing it back. She frowned, thinking it odd that he was already checking the time.

  “In your standard state, it would be problematic,” he thought out loud. “But when activated, your body’s resilience makes it so you can use all that speed to bring your legs around like hammers. Being able to move and balance like this, and still keep your eyes on your opponent… it gives you a freedom of adapting that I can only imagine, and your strength…”

  He reached out unconsciously, taking hold of her arm. His hands caused a stir of awareness, his fingertips warm on her skin. Her eyes widened. The moment was short-lived however, as she saw how clinically he studied her, preoccupied with her physique only with respect to how it made her a better fighter.

  “You’re like iron,” he said.

  When he looked to her eyes and saw how they looked at him with uncertainty, Rylee found herself quickly hiding behind a pretense of nonchalance. “Smooth talk. A girl just dreams about the guy who only wants to stare at her biceps,” she said.

  Awkwardly, Jonathan let go, and she watched as he searched for words to put between himself and the look she was giving. He seemed suddenly troubled, frustrated. “It’s not fair,” he finally said.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” she asked.

  He looked back at her, his face hard to read as he took a breath. “Let’s spar. I’ll explain as we go. Our mutual acquaintance in the fedora told me a lot the other night, and you need to know it.” Jonathan pointed to his chest, and then to hers. “You and I, we have a different set of rules than most.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  NO ONE HEARD her enter the house. She’d come through the front door while Rylee and Jonathan were busy training in the garage. She was supposed to bring Paige next door for Evelyn, but her friend was preoccupied. Leah could hear her laughing on the other side of Collin’s door. It was as good a moment as any to slip quietly up the stairs. Now, she sat at Jonathan’s desk, holding the journal she’d pulled from Rylee’s bag.

  In the event she was discovered, her cover story was to play the jealous girlfriend. Completely believable—more so now, after the exchange she’d had with Jonathan earlier. Still, Leah didn’t want it to come to that. A part of her knew that, if she was forced to play that role, she’d be hurt if Jonathan believed it. It was a part of her that she had to pretend wasn’t there—letting herself have feelings had already caused enough problems.

  She was part relieved and part disappointed in finding that, for the moment, there was nothing she could learn. Every entry was written in Portuguese. Anxious of being walked in on, Leah took pictures as quickly as she could with a pocket digital camera. The fact that it hadn’t already been destroyed gave Leah little hope that there would be any viable intel given Rylee knew she was under surveillance. When she turned to the last few pages, she didn’t find more handwritten text, but a pencil sketch of Jonathan’s face.

  More often since the days that followed their one night together, Leah had seen that expression on his face, had watched it slip over him on the footage recorded by The Cell. It was always when he was alone—when he’d thought there was no one watching. Only once had she seen him look that way when there were people around to see him—the night Grant had pushed him to violence in his driveway.

  This was the side of Jonathan that stared back at her, now, through the drawing, Rylee had captured what Leah herself had been trying to bring out of him. So much effort had been put into the details, such careful attention to the contours of his face. It was as though Rylee had been desperate to see him, for something real and tangible to feed her starving eyes.

  Leah felt herself swallow, noticed she was fighting off a mounting fear, cowering inside and trying to push it away. Then her attention came to the date of the entry and she blinked as though she must have misread it.

  Rylee had sketched this the day before she’d shown up in Jonathan’s driveway, before everything The Cell knew said they could have been in contact. Jonathan—he’d been so convincing, made her believe they had never met
. She remembered his face, his alarm—he’d seemed so genuinely confused. It didn’t make sense—if he’d been lying, he deserved a damn Oscar nomination.

  Reason told her that Rylee must have made a mistake, written down the wrong date, but a more practical voice told her to stop being naïve, that her “reason” was really wishful thinking in disguise.

  Slower than she should have, she slipped the camera back into her pocket, trying to force herself to ignore a growing uncertainty. She hadn’t had to question where Jonathan put her, what place she held in his mind until now—she didn’t like the feeling. She needed to put the diary back, undisturbed, from where she found it and get out. Yet, she opened the journal once more, flipped to the drawing as though she hoped it had changed, all been some trick of her eye. She noticed that pages had been torn out, but only those immediately in front of the portrait. At first, she thought it was as she expected, that Rylee had removed pages to hide something when she knew she was under surveillance—but now she wondered.

  How many times? Leah thought. How many tries did it take Rylee to get the picture in her mind onto paper before she—

  “Soooo busted!”

  Startled, Leah jumped—and the diary dropped on the floor.

  “Leah,” Paige said, attempting to restrain a childish grin as she stood in Jonathan’s doorway. “I am so very, very disappointed in you.”

  Leah flushed, panicked for a moment. She’d been stupid, hadn’t been paying attention—and now she was humiliated at being caught red-handed. Her mind was already racing, unsure what this meant for her. Was she compromised? Gracelessly, Leah rushed to put the journal back in its place and practically tripped over herself in the process.

  “Paige, please, I know how this looks. I can expla…”

  It had taken a moment to sink in, but as Leah turned to plead with Paige, she noticed that her friend was taking what she’d seen rather well. Actually, Paige’s fingers were over her mouth trying to hold in laughter.