Reid's Deliverance (4 page)

“Well, did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Have stimulating conversation. Aha!” Ari pointed. “Forget about denying it. Your face gave you away. What did you talk about?”

“Mazree.”

“The woods?” Ari grimaced. “Oh well. If talking about Nowheresville led the two of you to getting freaky, who am I to judge? Forget what he said. I have the feeling you shouldn’t give up on him. Get dressed. I need pancakes if we’re going to plot guy strategy.”

Oh no. What the hell did she have in mind? Not that it mattered. No one argued with Ari’s sixth sense or logic. Lauren went to get ready. Funny. Reid did fit all of Ari’s criteria. She would share a meal with him in public, and he’d more than pleased her in bed. If he hadn’t left, she would have stayed cuddled up with him and maybe had more orgasms. He’d said he wasn’t interested in anything long term. She appreciated consistency, but she wasn’t aiming for an engagement ring. As long they were honest about not being exclusive, they could have fun together. What if she had attempted… What was she just thinking about? Huh. Gone. That was weird. Not enough caffeine yet to compensate for the mangotinis she’d enjoyed at the club. Oh, that’s right. Breakfast.

She adjusted the belt on her blue tank dress on the way to the living room. “Let’s go. I’m starving.”

“I called Celine to see if she wants to join us. She’s not answering.” Ari put her cell in her purse. “I bet she’s avoiding us for dragging her out last night. It’s a shame she didn’t have a good time. I’d hoped she’d meet someone and get her mind off Dominic.”

Wait a minute. Didn’t Celine—her thoughts grew fuzzy, but then the answer emerged. No, Ari was right. After dancing at The Song, they’d attended an after-party. Celine wasn’t having a good time. Lauren had given Celine the keys to the Mercedes and she’d left. She and Ari had ridden home with friends they’d run into at the party.

“That reminds me, I should text her. I don’t need my car until later this afternoon.”

Ari bent down. “Why are there buttons on the floor?”

“Buttons?” Lauren picked up two. Ari added another to the pile. She hadn’t come across any missing on her clothes. “Not sure.”

Lauren noticed the watercolor of the cabin hung askew. She straightened it.

“
That’s a shame. Looks like a relaxing place.”

Who’d said that? Why?

A vision of a dark haired guy who rated extreme on the eye-candy meter flickered. Desire spread warmth through her middle. Should she know him? Before she could latch onto it, the image dissipated.

“Hey,” Ari waved her hand in front of Lauren’s face. “You ready?”

“Yes, let’s go.” Lauren centered the vase on the entryway table and snagged her purse. Strange. She hadn’t thought about Mazree in a long time.

Reid paced the short living room in the sparsely furnished, rented apartment. Afternoon sun peeked through the closed blinds, illuminating worn patches on the brown couch. The floor, covered in beige carpeting, creaked under his black high-tops. Cheap rent, unfriendly neighbors, and a location near the mall made the two-bedroom space an ideal command central. Strange how his apartment was located twenty minutes away, but now, two years in the future, someone else occupied it. The tapping of computer keys broke up the silence. Mace sat in the kitchenette area working on a laptop. He bopped to the blues guitar riffs playing faintly from the speakers. His muscular body dwarfed the ladder-back chair and four-seat table.

Two flat screens on the wall streamed multiple views of Thane tailing Xenia Allen through the shopping mall. The scientist’s lunch date with Jeff Miller continued with a stroll through stores instead of making the exchange. Jeff didn’t have the motive or the cash. Someone was using him as the go-between. Dalir’s supernatural insight revealed they couldn’t just snag the virus. They needed to take down the buyer.

“I want another look at the files.” Thane’s frustration came through in Reid’s earpiece.

If Thane believed the intel was lacking, it probably was overlooked. Reid picked up a canned energy drink from the faux wood coffee table. A news magazine from months in the future slid out from a pile of papers and dropped to the floor. The cover showed a devastated couple who’d lost both their children under the headline “Major Tragedy
.
” They couldn’t fail in stopping the virus from reaching the black market.

He tossed the magazine back on the table and gulped the last swallow from the can. “Mace, pull up what we got on Xenia. We need to comb through it again for subversive activity.”

“How deep?” Mace’s raised brow rippled the front of his brown, shaved head.

“If she tweeted a rant about her neighbor’s dog pissing on her lawn, investigate it.”

Mace rubbed his hands on his black cargo pants and rolled up the sleeves of his dark, button-down shirt. As he peered at the screen, he cracked his knuckles. “On it.”

On screen, Xenia’s companion stumbled. She led Jeff to a bench in the middle of the mall corridor. Then she left her shopping bag with him and hurried into the ladies’ room.

Reid studied the split views. The vials were in the shopping bag. Was this the drop that closed the deal? “What’s going on?”

“Don’t know.” Thane stepped out of foot traffic nearer the stores. “Get Mace down here. I—”

A dark haired woman approached Thane.

“Thane.” Reid looked closely at the screen. “Are you okay? Talk to me.”

“Yeah, I need a minute.”

In the midst of a mission, he needed a minute? Who was she? He grabbed the toggle and tightened the view. Damn. Blind spot.

On the other screen, Jeff stumbled around in circles screaming.

Thane broke off from his conversation with the mystery woman and ran toward the commotion.

Some of the shoppers stared at the spectacle. Others smartly backed away as the situation grew more out of control.

“Fuck. Me. What the hell? This bastard has lost his fucking mind.” Reid grabbed his semiautomatic pistol and tucked it into the holster clipped to the waistband of his black jeans.

Mace stood. “Need backup?”

“Negative. Grab Xenia. She went to the ladies’ room.” Reid called up his phase energy. It erupted over him and shimmered like thousands of tiny crystals infused with sunlight. A golden tunnel of light appeared in his vision, and he surged into it. Seconds later, he stood next to Thane. “We gotta get a handle on this guy.”

Jeff pulled a gun.

Reid tugged up the hem of his T-shirt and instinctually calmed his heart rate. Rules of the mission—only engage if directly fired upon and leave no random casualties behind.

Shots rang out as Jeff fired his weapon into the crowd. Commotion erupted into chaos.

Thane’s hard gaze met his. “Get the bags out of here!”

Reid flew into a quick phase and snatched the bags in midflight. As he zipped away from the mall, a whisper of cold energy brushed his shoulder and momentarily knocked him off course. What was that? Probably adrenaline. It could trigger a lot of things, including mistakes. No time for those. He materialized in the apartment and set the bags on the couch. He put on gloves and locked the vials in a small, foam-padded metal case. If he didn’t hear from Thane or Mace in the next fifteen minutes, the abort mission protocol kicked in. Leave no one from the team or any unnecessary things behind. Aside from cleaning up here, they had to warn Colby. He was monitoring the pandemic eight months ahead of them. They’d scoop him up and fall back to the beach house in the present.

He grabbed the backpack and stuffed in laptops, disks, and files. Identification, handwritten notes, a stray hair in the sink would vanish once they phased. He hurried to the coffee table and tossed papers aside. The magazine. He couldn’t find it. Move on. Not a major breech if it got left behind. A publication proclaiming a pandemic in the future would raise questions but offer zero answers. Their shady landlord would probably sell the flat screens and dump the rest anyway.

A sliver of golden light expanded in the living room. Mace appeared. He shook his head as if to clear it. “That was a rough ride. Where’s Thane?”

“Not here. Did he phase?”

“Yeah.” Mace’s mouth flattened with a grim expression. “But he got hit. Of all people for him to see.”

“Who?”

“It was Celine. She was there. He took a bullet for her.”

Shit. He’d just talked to Thane about getting Celine out of his system. He’d come into the mission distracted. “But you’re sure he phased.”

Mace’s wide shoulders stiffened. “You know I am.”

None of them would intentionally leave the other behind, but he had to ask. “What about Xenia and Jeff?”

“The police took him down. I couldn’t find Xenia. The authorities cleared out the mall. She probably blended in with the crowd and left. What about the vials? Do you have them?”

“Already packed.” They’d covered the bases, but Thane not showing nagged his gut.

Mace’s brown eyes narrowed. “You gettin’ the same feeling about something not being right?”

Distracted or not, Thane wouldn’t break from the plan. Unless he couldn’t get to them. Was he already at the beach house? “Abort mission. I’ll make one last sweep here. You grab Colby.”

Mace left.

Reid took one last look around, then he phased. The same cold brushes of energy he’d encountered earlier swept in. Time fractured into a jumbled pattern. He tumbled, losing control. Time literally flew by him as he drifted faster and further from the right timeline. An unbroken stream raced by. He propelled himself forward and leapt into it, manipulating months, weeks, seconds like puzzle pieces with his mind to reach the present.

Finally, he appeared in the living room of the beach house. His heart and mind slowed to the easy rhythm of the surf as he fought to catch his breath. He laid the backpack on the coffee table. The clean, professionally decorated space housing blue upholstered furniture, bright and modern beachscape paintings, and his baby grand was a huge switch from the cheap apartment.

A crackle of energy exploded into light. Colby and Mace materialized, breathing as if they’d run a race.

Colby combed back his mussed blond hair. “What’s up with the time stream?”

“Tell me about it.” Mace wiped his brow. “I barely controlled the phase.

“Not sure, but the entire mission jumped off course.”

“What happened?” Colby’s mustache and beard framed a scowl. “The pandemic dropped from the radar in the future, but I thought Dalir said we had to nail the buyer.”

“He did. I’m thinking all that unexpected shit that happened at the mall changed something.” On impulse, Reid opened the case.

Mace gave him a what-the-hell look. “I thought you had the vials.”

“I did.” Reid reined in the urge to punch a wall. They always expected the unexpected. Thane and the vials gone, and a fucked up time stream equaled too much of a coincidence. “Get West down here. No one goes anywhere until Thane or I give the all clear. Go through the files I brought back. I want an updated profile on Xenia. Now. I’m going to talk to Dalir.”

He jumped into a phase but not the normal time stream. He flowed smoothly to The Drift. The last fallback Thane would go to if all hell broke loose. A new dimension where time moved at its own slow pace. He landed near a dark, solid oak coffee table. Prickles traveled over him from the abrupt change from air conditioning to intense heat. Flames popped and flickered in a fireplace centered in a stonework dark wall. The acrid, sweet scent of burning logs hovered. A large couch upholstered in brown, velvet-like fabric and two forest green side chairs sat empty.

Dynamic energy also saturated the air. Alluring, intoxicating, it molded the entire space, house and landscape, seamlessly together into perfection. He hustled past a glass wall, showcasing sun beaming out of a deep blue sky. The rolling green grass, trees, and snowcapped mountains appeared endless. They resembled the splendor of the Blue Ridge landscape, but the one hill in the distance reminded him of the one in the sketch of Mazree.

Lauren.

What if she had been at the mall with Celine? Wait. Why would he think of that now? See? Prime reason why they couldn’t let a woman occupy headspace.

As he jogged down the gleaming wood floor in the hallway, power grew stronger. It seeped through his pores. It became so palpable he could taste it, like honey flowing over his tongue. He passed a sunroom filled with shelves of books and turned. Four closed doors, two on each side, lined the next hall. At the end, a door stood open. Apprehension built.

Thane lay facedown on a dark wood double bed, the only furnishing in the room. Sheer curtains softened the sunlight to an ethereal glow.

Tightness gripped Reid’s throat. The light beige sheet had more color than Thane did.

“How is he?”

Dalir cleaned blood from mottled bullet holes on Thane’s back. More of it streaked the ancient’s gray thermal shirt and dark jeans. “Healing, but he’s not in the clear.” A hint of a Mediterranean-like accent flowed into his words. “He let me into his mind. I saw what happened.” Dalir dropped the blood-soaked cloth in a bowl sitting on the bed. A crimson drop landed on the sheet and widened in the fabric. “We have the virus?”

“Not anymore. They disappeared on the way back to the present, and the time stream has gone to shit. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” Dalir placed bandages over the fading wounds on Thane’s back.

The ancient’s calmness grated on his nerves. How could Dalir not know? He saw the future. Thane believed Dalir was holding something back from them. He’d let it slide because it didn’t interfere with the mission. Thane should have brought it up. He could have died. Hell, they could have lost half the team. “Care to explain why not?”

Energy swelled and receded like an echo. Dalir met his gaze. “Stop wasting time and get to the point.”

Tired of keeping anger in check, Reid unshielded his mind from Dalir. His thoughts and emotions rolled out with his words. “You sent us into a clusterfuck and you don’t seem to give a damn.”

“My focus is on Thane.”

“Now it’s on Thane? It should have been on all of us before we started running the operation. You should have seen this coming. We went out based on your intel. Don’t blow me off like Thane getting shot and a botched mission are no big deals. We deserve answers.”