I tried to catch a glimpse of Ava’s face as they walked past the building and into the woods, but all I saw was the flash of a long necklace and a blue coat. Then they were gone.
A rectangle of golden light formed on the frozen grass.
Michael—alive, whole, breathing—leaving the lab to retrieve John Doe from his car.
I watched him hurry to the side of the house, keeping him in my sight line until he disappeared.
This was the worst part, knowing what was about to happen and being forced to wait. I tried to use the time wisely, testing the floor gingerly with my foot. Michael and I needed a quick shelter after I pulled him from the building to avoid the blast.
The wooden planks were stronger around the perimeter of the room, and as I scanned it to find the best place for us to hide, the unthinkable happened.
The logs that made up the interior walls morphed from blank, decrepit slats to ripples filled with life. In the light from a kerosene lantern, the images came faster and faster, a crazy quilt appearing on a rack beside a woodburning stove, a young girl—her dark skin shining like ebony—singing to a carved wooden doll, a young mother rocking a baby in the corner.
“No, no, no.” I closed my eyes tightly and opened them again. The images were still there, now with more details filled in. The room had completely transformed. I thought about Liam’s words, that ripples were bleeding through the fabric of time. I’d gone from seeing individual people to a jazz trio to a horse-drawn carriage, and now the inside of a whole cabin with occupants intact. How far could the color run—how wide would the ripples spread?
I looked out the window, now hung with homespun curtains. Outside, other tiny cabins formed a kind of semicircle around an open area.
There was no lab in sight.
Do I pop the little girl or her mother and the newborn?
Because one of them had to go. Everything needed to disappear, and quick. I needed to see the present time out of the window, not an entire scene from the past.
The little girl was closest, so she was the winner. Or the loser, depending. I reached out and tapped her gingerly on the shoulder, rather than lunging into her as if my arm was a rapier and she was the target.
The dissolve was different than anything I’d ever experienced.
Instead of an instant pop and poof from the little girl, the fade started at the top of the scene and ran down like rivulets of rain on glass.
Something was very, very wrong, but I didn’t have time to think about it. Like a screen wipe in a movie, the lab reappeared, filling in from the top to the bottom. Michael was walking toward the door—dragging John Doe.
I had maybe a minute. I ran, giving no thought to possible exposure. Jack and Ava were secured somewhere in the woods, preparing to do serious damage, and now Liam, Michael, and I were busy arguing in the doorway to the lab. When I reached the side of the building, I pressed my body against it, squeezing my eyes closed. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to see myself.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
“I’m not leaving you here.”
“Go, Emerson. Take these.”
“Come with me. You promised we’d be safe.”
I sounded desperate. In that moment I realized that somehow I’d known Michael wasn’t going to make it out of that building alive. But that was then.
I wouldn’t let history repeat itself.
“I promised you that you would be safe, and I don’t want you anywhere near this lab. Go with Liam to the car. Please? Time is running out.”
“I’m sure Michael knows what he’s doing. We’re just holding him up.”
“Go. Stay safe. I’ll get to you when I can.”
The second I was positive the pathway to the front door was clear, I stepped away from the side of the building and into the lab.
Michael stood frozen; his shoulders slumped forward, defeated. His fingers gripped the body as if it was a lifeline.
“Michael!”
He looked up, and his eyes widened, filling with fear. Shaking his head violently, he said, “Why are you here? Get out, Em, run!”
“No.” Grabbing Michael’s wrist, I kicked at John Doe as hard as I could, and the body fell to the ground. It landed with a thud, one arm escaping from the plastic it was wrapped in. The sight turned my stomach. “We both run.”
Still holding tight to Michael, I dragged him outside and hauled ass, my feet pounding against the frozen ground. I heard Michael’s heavy breathing behind me as he followed me through the woods and into the tiny shack.
Two seconds after the door shut behind us, the lab burst into flames.
Chapter 52
What did you do? Emerson, what have you done?”
“I saved your life.”
“The rules—”
“Don’t say anything about rules, or you’ll be dead in the future because I killed you. No one else is following them besides you, and I’ll be damned if some misguided sense of honor makes you do something stupid right now.” My heart was so conflicted. Part of me wanted to throw my arms around him and never let go. The other part wanted to rage at him for knowing that he was going to die and choosing to do so instead of stopping it.
“Why did you come back to get me?”
Rage took a clear lead. “Did you even think, for one second, about what losing you would do to me? To your mom and sister? To Kaleb? To all the people who care about you?”
“It was all I could think about.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“I didn’t have a choice. It was the way things were supposed to happen. Once I knew that you would make it back safely—” He stopped. “I had to believe you’d be okay with my choice, eventually. And you were.”
“Was I?”
He stared up at the ceiling. “When I saw you, you were being taken care of. You were … loved.”
“Who was taking care of me?”
He met my eyes. “Kaleb.”
I shook my head.
“So I knew you had a future. I had to let go of the fact that I wasn’t part of it.”
“Maybe I don’t want a future without you in it.” I licked my lips and tried to push down my nerves. How screwed up was I? The prospect of a conversation about my feelings was more terrifying than the drama going down outside the door. “Did you think of that?”
“My death was staring me in the face. I shouldn’t have been able to think of anything, but there you were, at the top of the list.”
I wondered how I ranked so high.
Another explosion rattled the windows, causing us both to jump.
“We should get out of here,” he said, gesturing toward the door.
“We can’t yet. There’s too much going on outside. We have to wait until some of the traffic clears out. So since we have some time to kill”—I paused, grimacing at my word choice—“I have some things I have to tell you before we go back. So much has happened in the last twenty-four hours.”
“You came back to get me that fast?”
“Trust me, it didn’t feel fast. I don’t know whether to start with the bad news or the bad news,” I sighed. “Okay, first. You were right about Jonathan Landers being the murderer.”
“I knew it.”
“That’s not the worst part. He’s been living in my loft since the day I met you. Yours, too.”
