Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sadie woke once in the night, to find herself lying side by side with her sister, their hands clasped together. It was how they’d always slept. Maybe her sister was in there somewhere after all, and one day she would get her back. It occurred to her that both she and Ethan had been molded by the deaths of the people nearest to them, and both those people were actually still alive.
What did it mean?
Maybe that appearances were an illusion. The world was full of lies, and you couldn’t trust anyone.
Or perhaps…one should never give up hope.
She fell asleep again, this time to dream of Ethan. A different dream this time. One that in a strange way filled her with hope. She woke as the first rays of daylight filtered through the curtains. And she was crying, sobbing, her sister’s arms wrapped tight around her. But it wasn’t sadness, maybe melancholy…and the realization that she’d made yet another total fuck-up with her life. She should never have let him go alone and should certainly not have let him go thinking he didn’t deserve love. His mother had walked away from him. Now she had done the same. Whatever happened, even if he died and she lost him forever, she had to face her own demons.
Josie stroked her hair. “What is it?” she asked.
“I have to go tell a man I love him.”
She jumped off the bed and ran for the door, hesitated, ran back and kissed her bemused sister on the cheek. “Before you…left, you had a crush on Stefan. He’s a sweetie, so if you need anyone to talk to, he’ll help.”
And she was gone.
She raced to her room, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, shoved her feet into boots. She was getting out of this place. Somehow. If she had to walk. But that would take way too long.
She packed a small bag and headed for the kitchen. Coffee first, then she’d have to go creep to the colonel to see if he could arrange transport to London.
As she entered the kitchen, she came to a halt. Jake, Christa, and Kane sat around the big wooden table, sipping coffee, looking at her. She sat down, and Christa pushed a steaming mug in her direction. She wrapped her fingers around it.
“You look pale,” Jake said. “Did you have another vision?”
“Yeah. A dream. Ethan died. And I’m going to London. So don’t try and stop me.”
“Ethan died?”
“It’s complicated. But I need to leave. Now.”
He gave a small smile. “There’s a helicopter waiting to take you to Kasesi airport, where the colonel has very kindly and totally illegally commandeered you a military jet. You’ll be in London tonight.”
She peered at him suspiciously. “How did you know I’d want to go?”
“We were actually taking bets on how long you would last,” Christa said.
“Who won?”
“Jake. I said shorter and Kane reckoned longer.”
“I’ll go get my motorbike,” Kane said. “I’ll take you to the helicopter pad.” He rose to his feet and wandered from the room.
“Ethan contacted us during the night,” Jake said. “From the plane. Kaitlin’s with him. And he got some new intel from London. Some CCTV coverage of the two men who attacked the party.”
“And…” she prompted.
“They look like us. And if you go to London, you have to presume they’ll be able to find you.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Christa said. “The reflector device might protect you. It stops you sending and receiving with each other, so it might prevent these people picking you up.”
She slid a device across the table, and Sadie shoved it in her rucksack, then sat back and sipped her coffee. She’d have the whole journey to London to come up with a plan, so she stared vacantly into space and tried not to think about the future. The thing was, even if they somehow managed to come through this alive, she would still lose Ethan. The Tribe was long-lived. Kane was around a hundred and fifty and looked not much older than Jake’s twenty-nine. Ethan would grow old and die, while she stayed the same. But it was still worth it, however much time they had together—and she was probably worrying unduly, and Ethan would never get the chance to grow old.
“What’s the matter?” Christa asked.
“I was thinking about Ethan growing old. You know, if he doesn’t die imminently.” She realized then that Christa was in the same situation. Although she had small amounts of Tribe DNA, she wasn’t Tribe and would presumably grow old as normal, leaving Jake behind.
Christa reached across and touched her lightly on the arm. “You don’t have to lose him.”
“What?”
“When you both come back—which you will—I’ll be ready to try the first human subjects in my longevity project.”
She was vaguely aware that Christa had been working on some sort of genetic project for the Conclave—albeit unknowingly. “You mean Ethan? Is it safe? Have you done it before?”
“Only once.”
“And…?”
She grinned. “I’m still here, aren’t I?” Then she gave a small shrug. “Just talk to him about it. If that’s what he wants. What both of you want.”
“I will.” It was too much to take in right now. She was finding it hard to believe she’d last the next few days, never mind any longer.
At the sound of a bike pulling up outside the front door, she pushed herself to her feet. “Keep an eye on Josie for me,” she said. “Try and convince her we’re all as nice as you.”
“I will.”
Outside, she slung her leg over the bike, wrapped her arms around Kane’s middle, and they were off. She looked back. Christa and Jake stood on the veranda, Jake’s arm slung around Christa’s shoulder.
Would she ever see them again?
She almost swayed from exhaustion as she climbed down the steps from the plane. She hadn’t been able to sleep on the flight. Her mind had churned with the information Jake had told her. What did it mean? Who was after them and why? It seemed like they would never run out of people who wanted to kill them.
She’d landed in a military airport a few miles outside London. The colonel still had friends—at least he had some uses. She took a deep breath and settled the reflector device in place and headed out. A black SUV pulled up as she reached the tarmac, and she climbed into the back without speaking to the driver. He had his instructions and drove her out of the airport and headed toward the city. Only when they got close did she tap the screen. It came down. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Take me to Lincoln Street,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She wasn’t sure where Ethan would be, but she’d start at his office. She still had her security clearance; hopefully, it would get her in the door. If not, she’d have to rely on reception to put her in contact with Ethan…if he was there or they knew where he was. At least from the office, she could contact Jake and tell him she’d arrived.
She went through the revolving doors into the reception area, then swiped her card at the security check. She held her breath, half expecting it to flash up with some warning, but it cleared, and the guard nodded her through. She took the private elevator—activated by her card—up to the top floor, where Ethan’s office was situated. With the reflector device on, she couldn’t reach out and see if he was close. She was tempted to take a peek but wouldn’t risk it. The outer office was empty, and she tapped lightly on the double doors to the inner office, before pushing them open without waiting for a reply.
She came to an abrupt halt as she stepped inside. Two guns were aimed directly at her. And the tension oozed out of her. He was here. “Don’t shoot.” She held up her hands. “I come in peace.”
From the expression on his face, he was happy to see her. For all of about ten seconds. Then he was furious. And finally, he was worried, a frown drawing his brows together. Aw.
Fergus was slower to lower his weapon. He probably still blamed her for everything that had happened, and maybe he was right. If they hadn’t come after the Conclave, would any of this have happened? But they had, and she wouldn’t change it, even if she could.
First things first. She took a deep breath. “I love you.”
There, she’d said it. For a second, all expression was wiped from his eyes. Then there was a blaze of something—happiness? He took a step toward her. “I love you, too.”
“Shit,” Fergus muttered in a disgusted tone. “I feel like I’ve been transported to some shitty, crappy romance movie. Get a grip, people.”
Sadie ignored him. Just one kiss, and then they’d get back to business. She closed the space between them, stood on tiptoes, and kissed him. It was meant to be brief, but his hands gripped her shoulders, pulling her against him, and he took her mouth in a fierce kiss that went on forever. Finally, she had to come up for air. She pulled back, cupped his cheek. “I love you,” she said again. She was so brave.
“I knew. I just didn’t think it was enough.” He sighed. “You shouldn’t be here.” He stepped back, studied her, and his hand came out and touched the reflector device. “What’s going on?”
“Christa thinks it might block whoever it is from honing in on me.”
A wave of tiredness washed over her. Important stuff was done, and she felt wobbly. She’d told him she loved him. Once, she’d vowed never to say that to anyone. But it felt as though a weight had been lifted from her. Whatever happened, she was glad.
“So you can’t read my mind with that thing on?” Fergus asked.
“Why? Do you have some deep inner thoughts you want to share, Fergus?”
“Hah.”
“But no, I can’t read your mind with this on. So go ahead, release your inner thoughts.” She gave a small smile. “I know you’re jealous because Ethan loves me more than you.”
His lips twitched.
“Bloody hell,” she said. “Fergus has a sense of humor, after all.”
“Not a lot to laugh about at the moment,” he said.
No. She took a seat on the sofa and closed her eyes for a minute, gathering her thoughts. She opened them as she felt someone come down next to her. Ethan. For a minute, she allowed herself to stare at him.
“Is your shoulder okay?” she asked.
“Yes. Healing nicely.” He lifted it in an exaggerated shrug. “And working fine.”
“Good. And where’s Kaitlin?” She looked around the room, as if she might be hiding somewhere.
“Gone. She thought, in view of the whole potential ‘honing in’ thing, that she’d be better off away from the city. I gave her a shitload of money and a contact where she can get paperwork. She says she’s off to see the world.”
“God help the world.” But a smile tugged at her lips. “It will do her good.”
“You think she’ll be okay on her own?”
“She’s tough, and she’s bright. And it’s not as though she won’t be aware of anybody with bad intentions.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Actually, it’s the other people I worry about. She seems okay on the surface, but there’s a lot of anger bubbling away underneath.”
“I know. So does she. That’s why she wanted to get away. Get some space. Work it out.”
“She’s the best of the lot of us. She’ll be fine.” Unlike the rest of them. “What’s been happening? What’s the plan? Is there a plan?”
“So far, Lauren has been acting as though everything is fine. She’s backing my leadership, but Fergus believes she’s up to something. He accepted her offer. Told her he believes I’ve lost the plot.”
She turned her attention to Fergus. “Does she believe you?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe not. I don’t think she’s telling me everything.”
“In a week’s time, there will be a wake for my father,” Ethan said. “At his estate in Scotland. They’ll all be there. I plan to take out the four hereditary leaders.”
“Will that be enough?”
“I believe so. But I’m also setting the files to self-destruct almost simultaneously. I can’t do anything beforehand, in case someone picks up the activity and puts them on their guard. That will cut the ties to the assets and also freeze most of the monies. The remaining members will be in chaos. There are protocols in place for when one of the leaders dies—passing things on to the new leader. But there’s nothing to cover the possibility that they all go down together.”
“Are you okay with this?” she asked, searching his face. She’d gotten so used to reading his mind. Now she had to try and read his expression, and he was a master at hiding his thoughts.
“It has to be done. Three of them are truly evil. The other, not so much. But for it to work, for the whole thing to come down, they all have to die.”
“Collateral damage?”
“Hopefully very little.”
“And you?” The place would be packed, with guards as well as mourners. No way would he calmly shoot four people and walk away.
“I’m hoping to slip away in the chaos. Fergus is setting up a few tricks. Fake explosions. Gas bombs. Anything we can think of that will cause confusion.”
It wasn’t enough.
But they had a week. Maybe they’d come up with something.
“I have to get back,” Fergus said. “I managed to slip away, but they’re watching me.”
“How’s Max?” she asked as he turned away.
“He’s a pain in the ass.”
She grinned as the door slammed behind him. Then she turned to Ethan and the grin faded. “Alone at last.”
“I thought I might never see you again,” he said. “What changed your mind?”
She thought about whether to tell him. What to tell him. But she’d cleared it with Jake. No more lies. “Do you want to sit back and relax?”
“Why? Am I going to need to?”
“Maybe.” She thought about it. “Probably. Okay, definitely.”
“Now I am intrigued.” But he relaxed back in the seat, turning his head so he could watch her. A smile tugged at his lips. “I can’t believe you’re here. Part of me doesn’t want you here. But most of me…just can’t believe it.” He blew out his breath. “So talk.”
Hmm? Where to begin?
“When we broke away from our government controllers nine months ago, our major aim was to find out where we came from. Jake believed that only by understanding that, could we gain leverage to stay free and move on.”
“And what did you find?”
“Not a lot, at first. For three months, all we had to go on was an article about a Caucasian tribe being found in the Mountains of the Moon over a hundred years ago.”
“Malcolm Rayleigh? I found the article.”
“Yes. Kane put us onto it. Kaitlin had been contacted by him before we broke out. He’d sensed Sam’s distress and offered to help, but only if we got away. But afterward, we could find no sign of him. Then some of us were captured and everything went to shit. Jake kidnapped the colonel’s daughter, people started dying—anyone who had any connection with us. It seemed like someone was trying to wipe out any knowledge of us.”
“Kane?”
“Yes. He’d infiltrated the Conclave. Through the colonel, he got information on the next person up the line and so on, to a General Webber. He used Webber to eliminate our contacts. He tried to kill the colonel and Christa and failed. We eventually went after him. Traced him to Uganda and had a showdown.”
“But you obviously came to some sort of agreement. You’re working with him now.”
“Jake nearly killed him, but at the last moment, he couldn’t do it. Jake’s a good man. He wanted to find a better way. And Christa had come up with some information. Obviously, Kane was trying to keep everything quiet. She set it up so if anything happened to us, all this information would be made public.”
“What was the information?”
This was where things got a little unbelievable. “Christa is a geneticist. She was working on a longevity project funded by the Conclave. But she was also doing her own research—apparently our DNA is fascinating.”
“I bet it is.”
“So anyway, she reckons—and she spouts all this complicated stuff about phylogenic trees as proof—that the original tribe actually came from the future, not the past.”
“What? Say that again.”
“She explained it to me, but honestly I didn’t really understand. Something about us being the leaves and not different branches. Our DNA has modern markers that it wouldn’t have if we’d been isolated for so long, which was the original theory.”
“So she thinks you came from the future?” He sounded skeptical, but really, who wouldn’t?
“Not us, but the ancestors of the original tribe.”
“How?”
“Good question. And I’m getting there. When she confronted Kane with this theory, he didn’t seem surprised. Then he took us to this cave where there’s a machine. According to Kane, it’s been there as long as he remembers and he’s a hundred and fifty or so.”
“I saw the cave. One of your people was guarding it.”
“Yes. Kane’s people have guarded the cave and the machine for as long as his people’s memories go back—thousands of years.”
“And he thinks it’s a time machine?”
She nodded.
“Really? A time machine? And has he tried to use it?”
“That’s not allowed. They have all these legends and laws tied in with this mission they’re supposed to do, and one of them is—don’t touch the time machine.”
“Very convenient.”
“But don’t you see? It’s an actual machine. It looks a little like a rocket. There was nothing like that around in 1878. So where did it come from?”
“And you know for a fact it was there then?”
“Yes. I’ve seen into Kane’s mind. We can’t lie like that.”
“And you’ve seen the machine?”
“Again, yes. In fact, we persuaded Kane to investigate it a little. Christa tried to open it, but it just started this timer thing. A countdown, she thinks.”
“A countdown to what?”
She shrugged. “Who knows? The mysterious mission. All will be revealed when the time is right. Blah, blah, blah.”
“You don’t sound like you believe it.”
Did she?
“I was skeptical at the start. But Christa is convinced, and she’s the smartest person I know. And I’ve seen it and…I know it seems unbelievable but…”
“Occam’s razor. The simplest explanation is likely the correct one.” He rubbed his forehead. “But what does it all mean?”
“I have no clue. But there’s more. Sort of tied in, but not.”
“Are you getting all the shocks over in one go?”
“I guess.” She took a deep breath. “I can see the future.”
“You’re kidding me?”
“Just bits and I have no control. But I saw you, before we met. I’d been dreaming of you for months before that night at Forrester’s.”
“What was I doing in these dreams?”
She looked him in the eye. “You told me you loved me. We made love. Over and over. I thought you were safe. My dream lover. Something I could have that wouldn’t be taken away. And then, there you were. One of the bad guys. I was supposed to kill you.”
“A shock.”
“Totally.”
“What else have you seen?”
“Not a lot. That night before the party, I had a vision. I saw everybody dead in the ballroom. But they weren’t dead, they were unconscious.”
“Scary.”
“Maybe. But I talked it over with Jake and Christa. If time travel is possible, maybe seeing the future isn’t so weird at all. And I don’t think they all come true. I don’t believe the future is set. Maybe I’m seeing possible futures. Maybe it’s some sort of racial memory. Then the night after you left…”
“You had a dream?”
“I dreamed we died.”
For a moment he was silent, and she wished she could get inside his head. She could see the turmoil in his eyes. “What? When? You said the future isn’t set. It might not happen.”
“You don’t understand. It was strange, bittersweet.” She swallowed as she remembered the vision, the feelings that had wrapped around her, engulfed her, warmed her. “We were lying on a mountain top, a vast, beautiful land all around us. The air was sweet with the scent of flowers. The sun was going down, and far away, two crimson moons were rising above the horizon.”
“Two?” He thought for a second. “We weren’t on Earth?”
“I don’t know where we were, but somewhere far, far away.” Distant in time as well as space. “You looked almost the same as you do now, but you were old, very old.” Thousands of years. “And we were tired, but happy, and we knew it was time to go. And we held hands. And you told me you loved me.” She’d woken up sobbing into Josie’s shoulder. Not sad, just melancholy and filled with the knowledge that everything must one day end. It didn’t have to be full of regrets. The lucky ones could choose when and where.
“Shit.”
“Yeah. Deep stuff. Anyway, I’m sort of hoping that one comes true because it means that at least, we’ll survive the next week or so.”
“That would be good.” He still appeared a little dazed. She had given him a lot to think about.
“Do you believe me?”
“I want to, but it sounds beyond unbelievable. Does it make a difference? The time travel, I mean. Can it help you find out who these people are? Why they want you dead?”
She’d thought about it a lot. Jake had sent her the video, and she’d watched it on the plane. She’d cast her mind back to that night at the party. Their clothes. Their weapons. And an idea had come to her. One she’d discounted as crazy but which wouldn’t leave her alone. “The ‘why’ I have no clue. But as for the who? This is going to sound crazy.”
“And what you’ve said so far doesn’t?”
She smiled. “I think they might be from the future.”