Hourglass

“Enough.” It was one word, but it had the effect of one thousand. Cat might be in control of the gun, but Jack was clearly the one who controlled the partnership. “We have things to do. We don’t need any more complications in the way.”

He turned away from her and put his hand on the back of the love seat. It appeared he was using it to hold himself upright.

“Emerson. Where is it?”

I worried my bottom lip against my teeth, hesitating, even though my mind was already made up. The adoration that had taken up residence on Jack’s face gave me pause.

“Understand. I’m not doing this for you,” I said in the strongest voice I could muster as I stood up. “I’m doing this for me.”

He smiled.

I zipped and unzipped my jacket nervously. “What are you going to do with it?”

Cat started laughing. Jack silenced her with a glance.

“I have plans.”

Drawing down my zipper and sliding my hand into my inside pocket, I pulled out the computer disk. I held it up, praying it was the right one.

“Right here, the whole time?” Jack asked, now resting most of his weight on the back of the love seat.

I nodded.

“How clever. Bring it here, Emerson.” Like a good little girl. He raised his hand, palm out.

My pulse jumped as I moved toward him, fully aware that the disk might not be the only thing he had plans for. I held the plastic jewel case so tightly it bit into my flesh.

Jack’s eyes were a gray-blue now. Colder than they’d been before. Staring straight into my soul.

He took my hand in his and slid the computer disk case from my grip.

“I’ll be seeing you soon.” Now that I was close to him I saw that his hair had gone almost completely white. He took a step forward and faltered. Cat rushed to his side, pulled his arm over her shoulder, and helped him toward the door.

Without another word, they were gone.

The second the front door closed, Michael rushed toward me and wrapped me in his arms.

“I thought he was going to take you with him.” He covered my face with kisses. “I was more terrified of that than I was when Cat pushed that gun against my throat. Are you okay?”

I couldn’t remember what Jack had shown me.

I buried my head in Michael’s chest and nodded. Holding on. Just holding on.

“Michael, you’ve got to get to a hospital. Those cuts—”

“They’re fine.” He held me tighter. “They’re small, already stopped bleeding. But we do need to get out of here. We need to tell Liam that Jack’s out of the bridge—that he’s got the computer disk with the formula.”

“He doesn’t.”

“What?”

I pulled away to look up at him, shaking with triumph.

“If I did it right, they don’t have the formula for exotic matter. They have the formula for Kaleb’s emotion control meds.”

Chapter 55

The second Thomas laid eyes on me, he grounded me indefinitely.

That’s not true, exactly. He hugged me first. But the grounding occurred shortly thereafter.

The couch became my new base of operations. I still wore Grace’s duronium ring, and I could see the veil to the bridge too clearly to be comfortable in my room. Forget sleeping in it. I’d also shoved a bookcase in front of the door and forbidden anyone else to go in. Thomas didn’t say a word.

But he did start perusing local real estate listings.

The nightmares started on the sixth day of my sentence.

Flames. Bright and hot, licking around me, as I lay powerless, forced to watch. My parents with their eyes open. Unblinking, cold and dead.

That night I woke up screaming. Thomas came to my bedside and sat with me, holding my hand until I calmed down. But I didn’t go back to sleep.

The next day I watched a marathon of animated movies, craving a fix of fairy-tale endings. Characters in Disney films mostly started out just like me—orphaned, defeated, alone—and they all triumphed in the end.

Unfortunately, I dozed off sometime shortly after Ariel’s misidentification of a fork.

This time I dreamed more than images. I smelled burning flesh, the sickly sweetness of a mass of flowers covering two caskets, the sharpness of hospital disinfectants. I felt shock treatments traveling through my nervous system to my brain, a jolt as a hotel shuttle bus wrapped around a tree. I heard the whine of metal as it broke away and slid down the side of the snow-covered mountain.

I didn’t remember any of these things actually happening to me, but I knew in my gut that they did.

I drank two pots of coffee that night.

When Dru woke up the next morning and caught me trying to stay awake by rocking back and forth in a chair and reciting “Casey at the Bat” from memory—backward—she put her foot down. I could hear her arguing with Thomas in their bedroom.

“You can’t isolate her right now, Thomas. She might have given us the basics of what happened, but she didn’t tell us all of it. She’s hiding something. At least let her call Lily. Even prisoners—”

“Prisoners are in prison because they’ve made poor choices. I’m proud of her for saving Liam Ballard, but damn. Was it really worth it if that is what she’s turned into?” He lowered his voice, but I’d stopped rocking and had tiptoed over to press my ear against their bedroom door. “I can’t watch her be reduced to a … shell of herself. We just got her back.”

“Then let her make contact with someone,” Dru pleaded. “Someone she feels comfortable talking to about whatever it was that happened to her.”

He was quiet for a few seconds. “Do you really think that will help?”

“It’s worth a try.” More silence. “I have Michael’s number on my phone. I could call and ask him to come over.”

Talking to Lily would have been spectacular—I’d only been able to make contact to tell her I wouldn’t be at work—but talking to Michael would be heaven.

Thomas and Dru hadn’t allowed me to see or talk to him since the day he’d picked up his stuff from the loft and returned his key to Dru. Even then I’d gotten only a quick hug and a kiss on the forehead, and enough conversation to learn that all interested parties were now back at the Hourglass, trying to figure out how to start over.

Even Ava.

My heart leapt at the thought of seeing him now. So did my feet. Thomas entered the living room to find me curled up in a blanket and absently singing the ABCs.

I’d do whatever it took to talk to Michael. If that included serving up some extra crazy with a side of sauce, so be it.

“Babe?” he called over his shoulder to Dru, watching me with wide eyes as I kept singing, twirling my hair around my finger. “You might want to hurry.”

The nanosecond Michael’s black convertible turned the corner, I launched myself off the front steps. Before he had it in park, I’d opened the door and jumped across the seat into his arms.

I never thought I could be reassured by someone’s presence, simply by knowing and being known. When I looked into Michael’s eyes, I centered. He cupped my face in his hands and lifted my mouth to meet his. The kiss consumed every breath, every thought, burning my raging fear down to a smoldering ember.

He moved his lips to the space just under my ear, and his mouth formed the shape of a smile against my skin. “I missed you.”