Glimpse (The Tesla Effect Book 1) (30 page)

She was twenty minutes into some ancient, post-apocalyptic
Twilight Zone
episode, where some book nerd guy was delighted to find himself the only person left on Earth, with the public library now his, forever, when there was a soft knock on the front door—so soft that Tesla wasn’t sure she’d heard it the first time.

She sat up straight to listen, and then she heard it again.
At this time of night
? she thought. She checked herself just as she was about to open the door wide.
It’s not that kind of a world anymore
. She went to the window first and moved the curtain aside to peer out into the darkness.

Sam.

She leaned her forehead against the glass for a moment and closed her eyes. This was not what she needed, but then again, she couldn’t sleep anyway.
Might as well get it over with
, she thought.

Tesla opened the door and stood back, the open space a clear indication that Sam could come inside. He did and, like Tesla, he did it in complete silence.

She shut the door and then led the way to the sofa, where she’d been camped out before he arrived. They sat down, and Tesla looked at him expectantly. She would not speak first.

At first he couldn’t say anything at all—he could hardly look at her.
Like storm clouds moving in a high wind, expressions of embarrassment, shame, and anger came and went across his face. He knew, of course, that the anger was born of the embarrassment and shame, that it was an attempt to deflect the responsibility of this whole thing away from himself, focus it on Beckett, or Finn, or even Tesla herself, but he refused to let himself get away with that.

“I came to tell you that I’m sorry,” he began.

She waited.

“Tesla, I don’t expect you to just say, ‘Okay, no problem Sam.’ I know it will take a while. I know that I have to earn back
your trust.”

“Earn
back
my trust?” she said. “I don’t know you. When did you earn it in the first place?”

His deeply tanned face seemed to pale a bit, and she steeled herself against the hurt she saw in his dark eyes.

“Fair enough,” he conceded. “But I think it’s safe to say you were surprised and disappointed, and you wouldn’t have felt that way if you hadn’t thought well of me before Beckett staged her little confession.”

Tesla studied his face. “Look, Sam. I don’t want to be mean, but…this just isn’t really on my radar right now.”

He looked confused, and she gave up the effort to spare him.

“I don’t care as much about this as you think I do.”

He seemed to draw away from her a bit though his back was up against the couch cushions. “Wow,” he said quietly. “I was prepared for anger, and hurt feelings, disappointment and a lack of trust. I didn’t expect indifference.”

“Look, it’s not that I don’t like you, it’s just that my life is crazy right now—I mean, really, Sam. My dad, my aunt, my little brother, some mad scientist-kidnapper who apparently hates my family, suddenly I can jump backward in time, I’ve been, like, six feet away from my mom—and that’s just this week. Did you really think that you trying to keep me from getting close to another guy—who I also just met—would be front and center for me right now?”

He looked at her a bit more sharply. “So I’m wrong that Finnegan Ford—and me, to some extent—have not been on your mind at all this past week?”

Tesla blushed, a little less in control of the situation than she’d thought. “No, you’re not entirely wrong,” she finally said. “But I won’t be distracted by this stuff anymore. Not right now.”

He nodded, thoughtful. “I think that’s wise,” he said. “And I really am sorry about that whole ridiculous plan with Beckett. It was very high school of me. I’m embarrassed.”

“Hey, as a high school student, I resent the implication—it was very seventh grade of you.”

Sam smiled, a bit tentatively at first, but then broadly, relief apparent in his expression. “You can’t be that mad if you’re joking around already,” he said.

She shrugged. “I guess not. I mean…,” she struggled to articulate what she felt, forming the thought fully for the first time.
“I guess I’m flattered. But jealousy and emotional manipulation aren’t what I want to want—I don’t want to find those things romantic. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, it does,” he said quietly. “But unfortunately, it just makes me wan—like you more,” he quickly amended.

Tesla leaned toward him and her wild hair fell below her shoulders to obscure the little straps of her black camisole. “Can we just take it a little easier?” she asked. “Let’s be friends, and just let it happen. Or not happen. Whatever. And focus on the more pressing issues. Okay?”

He nodded, and she sighed just a little, because his heart was so completely in his eyes.

“I can’t help it,” he protested. “Yes, we’ll be friends. We’ll spend some time together—without the intensity. But I won’t pretend I don’t feel this way, Tesla. And I won’t pretend I don’t see Finn as a rival, or that I don’t plan on winning—you’ll just have to live with that. But I won’t be an ass about it, and I won’t be dishonest again, you have my word on that.”

“Okay,” she said, and visibly relaxed.
“I mean, we’re going to know each other a long time, right? It’s not like there’s any rush here.

Sam’s eyes lit up at that, and he smiled a very strange, very little smile.

“What?” she asked, confused by that smile.

“Nothing,” he said, as he picked up the TV remote. “I just have to remember that everything can happen.”

“You mean ‘anything can happen?’”

“No,” he said.
“I mean everything.” He slouched down comfortably on the sofa like he planned to stay awhile. “So what are we watching?”

CHAPTER
33

Finn got up again from his favorite chair in the parlor, a peacock blue, velvet wingback. He wasn’t sure why it appealed to him—it wasn’t that comfortable—but he liked the contrast of the formal lines and the outrageous color, the sensual fabric. He was drawn to contradiction.

Like this thing with Jane Doane. In all the confusion tonight, Lydia had not had a chance to fill them in on any details, and it all felt very incomplete to him. He didn’t like loose ends, and the notion that Jane was a double agent was nothing
but
loose ends, at least at this point. What kind of evidence did they have against her? And, perhaps more importantly, where was Jane now? Lydia was out again, no doubt to gather all of her resources to locate Jane and, thus, find Dr. Abbott and Sebastian Nilsen, but he hated to be out of the loop. After Tesla left, Finn had gone in to check on Beckett again before he got back to work, but by the time he’d come out Lydia was already gone and he was left to pace the floor and wonder what was happening elsewhere.

Clearly he would get no sleep tonight, and that stretched-thin feeling didn’t help. His mind was a merry-go-round that spun endlessly; the same pieces came around again and again, but they
were gone so quickly that he never could grasp what connected them.

He finally got up and went to Lydia’s office. He’d already been in there twice tonight, but he came back on instinct alone, like some mindless swallow to Capistrano. He sat down at the desk and pulled the full-size hardcopies of the blueprints toward him that the analysts had delivered, the ones Tesla had photographed in her dad’s office. He had pored over them already, and he did so again now, more out of a need to do something than an expectation that he would find anything new. He traced with his eyes the route Tesla had described to them when she told the story of her first encounter with the Bat Cave, the night she was in the hospital with a concussion. The sound of her voice was in his head as his eyes followed her route from the hospital to the first security door, which had stood open, oddly enough, then the second door and down the long hallway that ended at the door she then passed through into the Cave….

Finn suddenly sat up straight, his breath caught in his chest. He retraced her path, this time with his finger on the page, and followed the lines that indicated her route. Down the stairwell, the security door, the long hallway, the door to the Bat Cave—
Goddamn it
, he thought as he sprang to his feet.
I should have seen this before
. He rolled up the blueprint and tore down the stairs and out the front door, racing to Tesla’s house just as the sun rose above the treetops.

When he rounded the corner to Tesla’s street and her house came into view, Finn felt the strange, tight feeling in his chest begin to ease, but before he could examine that feeling, wonder at the change and what it might mean, he saw Max on the sidewalk headed toward the Abbott’s front door.

“Max!” Finn yelled. “Wait up!”

Max turned, saw Finn and waved.

“I need to talk to your sister right away,” Finn said. “Hey, you okay?” he asked.
He realized only now how early it was, and here was Max, out and about with a backpack slung over one shoulder.

Max turned and they walked toward the front door. “Yeah,” he said. “I spent the night at Dylan’s, but he has a piano lesson today so I had to leave early.
His mom said he had to practice.”

Max opened the door with his key and they walked inside and moved straight into the living room, where they could hear the TV.
Then they stopped dead in their tracks.

Tesla was asleep on the couch, curled up, her head on Sam’s chest. Sam, too, was asleep, with his arm around her. He had slid down low on the sofa, and his head was tilted toward Tesla, his chin settled lightly on the top of her head.

“Geez,” said Max.

Finn said nothing as the sight of them hit him like a truck, and he heard the
click
of all his defenses settle back into place. Tesla looked so peaceful as she slept that he realized for the first time how consistently worried and anxious she had looked lately. Her hair was a tangled riot of red curls, and her skin looked like the magnolia petals he’d seen once on a trip down south, creamy white and soft to the touch. He’d never seen so much of her skin before, her long legs and feet bare, her pink-polished toenails. She wore only a tiny black shirt with thin straps, a shirt that hugged her body intimately, beautifully, and black silk boxers that shone softly like a slippery seal in water.

“Tesla, what are you doing?” Max asked, both amused and a little shocked.

Sam woke up first, and all at once. His eyes flew open and his arm tightened protectively around Tesla before he even registered that Max and Finn were in the room. When he did, he gently moved Tesla off of him and sat up. “Tesla,” he said as he touched her arm and gently prodded her. “Wake up.”

Tesla opened her eyes and looked at Sam. “Wha—?” she began, clearly confused. “We fell asleep? What time is it?” She turned her head to find the big clock by the front door and saw Finn and Max in the doorway.

“Oh, hey,” she said, and then she blushed as she began to grasp the situation. “We were watching TV,” she said. “I guess we fell asleep.”

Sam stood and spoke to Max, ignoring Finn completely. “Sorry about that, Max. We were watching some
Twilight Zone
marathon and I guess we both fell asleep. I’ll get out of here, give you and your sister your house back.” He looked at Finn then, his meaning clear: they should
both
leave.

Finn looked back at him, unmoved. “See ya,” he said, and stood his ground.

Sam flushed, clearly unhappy, but mindful of his promise to Tesla. “I’ll call you later,” he said to her, and left.

Max whistled as he walked into the kitchen to rummage for breakfast, and the front door closed behind Sam.

“I should go get dressed,” Tesla stammered as she rose from the couch and pulled what there was of the legs of her boxers down a bit, then tugged at her camisole, all too aware of what they revealed.

Finn raised his eyebrows suggestively. “Suit yourself,” he said casually, “but there’s no need to on my account. Why should Sam have all the fun?”

She was stung, just as he’d intended. “What do you want?” She forced herself to stand still, refused to fidget or cover herself up. She had nothing to be embarrassed about.

He looked at her for a moment, torn between the vulnerability that made him angry, even mean, and an intense desire to move closer to her, touch her skin, talk this over in hushed, intimate tones while she reassured him.

She stared back at him, defiant.

“I think I found something. I came over to convince you to go back to the Bat Cave with me, to see if I’m right, because I think your dad is out of time, and no one wants to say that to you. So I came over here to say it.”

“Will you please tell me what you found, and why, exactly, we’re down here?” asked Tesla as they began their descent down into the bowels of the hospital, down the metal staircase that was by now all-too familiar.

“Of course. I just thought we should get started first, not waste any more time.” Finn’s tone was impersonal, matter-of-fact, but at least he was talking to her.

“Well, we certainly have time now,” she said. “It takes a while to get down to the bottom.”

“I brought the enlarged copies of the photos you took of the blueprints in your dad’s office,” he said as he opened the flap of her messenger bag and took out the rolled-up paper he’d placed in there. While she had gotten dressed upstairs Finn had picked up her bag from the floor, wandered down to the basement, added a few items, and slung it over his own shoulder.

He stopped on the stairs in mid-descent. “Here, take a look at this.”

Tesla came in close, aware of the warm brown skin of his hands that held the paper up for her to see. She looked, immediately oriented to the diagram on the page, and placed her index finger on the page at a point about three inches from his thumb. “We’re here,” she said with absolute authority.

“Right,” Finn said. “Let’s go the rest of the way, and I want you to keep in mind when you were down here before.”

“Which time?” she asked. “The one where I had a concussion, or the one where Beckett got shot?”

“The first one,” he said grimly. “I don’t want to be reminded of the second time, especially since we’re down here alone.”

“And why is that?” Tesla asked. “Where are the others—does Lydia even know we’ve come down here?” She wasn’t sure why this hadn’t occurred to her earlier, she had just thrown on a pair of shorts and a semi-clean T-shirt, pulled on her running shoes and left with Finn, no questions asked.

“Beckett’s out of commission, and Lydia is away, probably assigned to bring in your —bring in Jane. The others have a lot to offer, don’t get me wrong, but mostly in terms of research. Not so much in terms of, um, a more physical situation.”

“And you and I do?” Tesla asked, skeptical.

He laughed, more relaxed than he had been since they’d left the house. “Yeah, well. We’re what we’ve got.”

They continued to follow the stairs down, each of them lost in their own thoughts. And then they rounded another bend and found themselves at the bottom, the security door in front of them.

“I forgot,” Tesla said suddenly, her hand on his forearm as she turned to him. “The combination didn’t work on this door yesterday, when we tried to get out after Beckett was shot.”

Her hand on his arm burned and he moved it, breaking contact. He wasn’t an imbecile—touch a stove once, and that’s enough for a lifetime. He was happier and more effective, more focused when he was alone.

“No, it’s fine,” he said.
“Biz gave me the new code.” He punched in the seven-digit number, the door clicked open and swung inward.

“Here we go,” said Finn.
He exchanged a sober look with Tesla, then led the way down the hall. “Leave that door open,” he said over his shoulder.

At the end of the corridor, just as Tesla remembered it from months ago, and just as she and Keisha had seen yesterday, was the second metal door without the security key pad, the door that led into the Bat Cave.

Finn had stopped and turned to face Tesla. The look on his face was strange, and she could not read it.

“What?” she said, agitated.
She supposed the blood on the floor right by Finn’s feet—Beckett’s blood—was enough to explain it. She felt jumpy, she supposed he did, too.

“That night you first came down here,” he said. “When you had a concussion. When you told us the story, you said that the hall dead-ended at this door, and you went through it.”

“Yeah,” said Tesla, confused. “Same as yesterday, same as right now.” Her hand indicated the space they both stood in. “There’s the door.”

“I’ve only ever been down here from the physics building side, never from this side, never from the hospital,” he said, and her skin prickled at the suppressed excitement she heard in his voice. “But I remembered the way you described it.”

“So?” Tesla asked.

“So, look at the plans.” He held the blueprints out for her to see again. “What do you see?”

Tesla looked, and then stepped back to look around her. “This hall dead ends here, at this door. But in the drawing, the hall goes on, that way,” she said as she pointed at the solid wall immediately to their right.

“Exactly,” Finn said. “You had a concussion, and you were confused, you said, but you never mentioned that you had to make a decision here that night, about whether to open this door or continue down the hall to the right. I wondered why, and I started to suspect that it’s because there was no decision to be made at all.
And what that might mean.”

Tesla looked up at him, as excited as he was now. “It might mean that they built it like this,” she said, and tapped the blueprint. “It might mean that this is a false wall, and the hallway continues behind it, with the rooms shown here hidden away.”

“Exactly,” Finn said. “And why would anyone want to have hidden rooms that nobody knew about?”

Tesla’s breath was caught in her throat, and she had to attempt twice to get the words out. “Because they have something that they don’t want anybody else to find.”

Finn looked at her and nodded. “Yes. I think your dad might be down here, behind this wall somewhere. But you have to be prepared, Tes. We don’t know what we’ll find.”

Tesla nodded, and couldn’t seem to stop, or even blink her eyes.

“Breathe,” Finn said quietly.

Tesla closed her eyes and exhaled, long and slow, as she’d seen Beckett do to prepare herself for pain. If Beckett could do that, with a bullet in her shoulder, she could do this.

She opened her eyes. “How do we get in?” she asked evenly.

Finn’s face broke into a wide grin. “Glad you asked.”

Before Tesla could speak he opened her messenger bag that he had slung across his chest. “While you were upstairs I raided your basement. I borrowed a few things.”