Spectre of Intention Read online

  “If he’s got reports, then you’re blown. Get off the ship. Get out—”

  “He’s got reports on you, Ashley!”

  I knew he could feel my anger recede. He rushed into the void.

  “We’ll pull this off one way or another, Ash. No one checks those cans once they’re sealed. People are lining up begging to give us money. Millions each. We’ll pull it off—”

  No one checks those cans once they’re sealed.

  My eyes went wide.

  “You are stealing people,” I breathed. Mak was the one who brought him the scam. Mak who was always in and out of jail. They weren’t just going to steal people. They were going to steal convicted felons. The ultimate jailbreak.

  I gripped Stephan’s hand.

  “You have no idea what you’re doing. You could end up murdering hundreds of people. If you break the seal on that canister…if you try resuscitate someone without…”

  Stephan twined his fingers with mine. I ignored it. I had to make him understand.

  “Stephan, this is nothing like cracking a safe.”

  “It’s exactly like cracking a safe. We will pull this off.” He stroked at my fingers with one hand, all the while his other hand had my towel in a vise grip between my breasts. “I want you on our side, Ash. You’ve been gone long enough. It’s time to come back. But you’ve got to stay away from Glaswell. He’ll take you down with or without the free fuck.”

  I yanked my fingers free of his. He used my distraction to make a drunken lunge for me. Except unlike any other drunk, he lunged for my mind.

  I ducked—as though that would somehow save me.

  Deep inside me, Ashley shivered with the sensual familiarity of our joining. I shook in disgust at her reaction, with the effort of maintaining my own self in the midst of his invasion. As he stroked and lulled, I gritted my teeth.

  “I will not help you do this. Get out of my head and get your goddamn hands off me.”

  Just like that, he did.

  Just like that my toes pressing against the tiles had nothing to resist. My feet went out, my body went back, and the side of my head met the edge of the counter on the way down.

  I missed a few seconds.

  I must have, because when I looked up I saw the fragile young boy he had been, his face white, his mouth open in horror, his intention reaching for me. And I knew the lonely young girl was looking back at him.

  “Ashley, oh, god.”

  Carefully, he crouched down in front of me. He gathered up one of the fallen towels. He looked at my nakedness, but right now his heart and mind were elsewhere. I got a full flash of his sister, an actual visual memory, as he gently laid the towel over me. I kept my mind still, blank. I was afraid I might shatter this new connection and something, somehow told me that this was a story I needed to know.

  That tiny, pretty little girl had such a beautiful smile. A smile like her mother’s. But as I watched, she cowered, a huge boot tossing her frail body into the air. And down the stairs. Where she lay sprawled, still as I lay now.

  I promised I’d always protect you.

  I promised.

  My head lifted. I felt his long, slender fingers under my skull. While I’d been taking my first real trip into Stephan’s mind, something hot and sticky had weighted my right eye lid shut. And my head had begun to throb wickedly.

  I let out a cautious breath as he helped me sit up.

  Then caught it back again as the blood rushed to my head.

  I raised a shaky hand to my forehead, but Stephan gently caught my fingers before I could make contact. With a muffled groan, I squeezed my eyes shut. Stephan scooted closer to support my back. I let him.

  “I’m sorry. I would never, ever—”

  “I know.” I turned my hand over in his, gave it a squeeze. “I know.”

  For a minute I just floated in the pain and exhaustion, trying to breathe through it, not succeeding. Stephan shifted behind me, brought me back.

  “I’m going to help you up.”

  I reached up for the counter edge with my free hand; Stephan shifted his hands under my arms. Together we got me to my feet. I leaned heavily against the counter, looked up into the mirror.

  “Oh, jeezus.”

  Her. Blood down the side of her face. Screaming and screaming and screaming and screaming.

  “Whoa. You’re okay.” Stephan grabbed my arms to keep me from sliding. “You know what? You know what? Her name was Jemma Weir. She went on to break into many, many more houses. Except she was a fucking idiot. I’m pretty sure she’s serving a life sentence right now for getting caught so fucking many times. I’ll bet you could look her up. Okay?” As he talked, Stephan tried to wrap the towel around my back.

  With a low chuckle, I took the towel from him and secured it around me.

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  We shared a sad smile in the mirror.

  “You want me to try to clean that?”

  “I think I’ll just get back in the shower.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll go get you some clothes.”

  “Thanks.”

  Even though Stephan paced outside the bathroom door, his mind hovered inside with me, watching for any sign of unsteadiness. I made the shower quick for both our sakes.

  I went out into the bedroom area dressed in a cotton tank top and shorts with a tissue pressed to my forehead. Stephan perched on the edge of the bed. I couldn’t feel the alcohol in him anymore. I sat down next to him and we both stared at the bathroom door.

  “How bad is it?” he asked.

  “The cut is pretty small. I must have hit it just right. But I’m going to have a killer goose egg tomorrow.”

  He smiled, pulled my hair back to look for himself, nodded.

  “Probably more water than blood.”

  I nodded back, and we slipped back into silence.

  “Your sister…”

  Stephan looked up in surprise. “You…?”

  “I saw her when you remembered.”

  “How could you? You’ve gotten so much stronger, but you could never see before.”

  “She….”

  “He killed her. Just like he killed my mom. Just like he’d kill me if he could find me. Sometimes…sometimes I wondered if he’d gotten you, too.”

  “He’s dead. Presumed dead. Firefight with the coast guard.”

  Stephan let out a disbelieving breath. I watched as his intention rose from him and walked away. Just completely detached from him and walked dead-eyed out the door. My heart stopped for a second and I gripped his arm.

  “Stephan?”

  His eyes remained vacant as he stood. Alarmed, I stood with him.

  “Stephan!”

  He gripped my arms, but he still didn’t see me.

  “Ashley, come with me. One last gig. After this, we could go anywhere, do anything.” The longer he talked, the clearer his eyes became. “I’ve loved you from the first minute I met you. When you left, I tried to understand, but it hurt so fucking bad. I looked for you everywhere.” His intention slowly drifted back to him, between us now it reached for me—my face, my hair. He was making no attempt to control or conceal it. “I never stopped looking for you. And then when Mak said he’d found you….”

  My heart broke hearing his words. Despite my best intentions, I had to reach a little for Jessie’s Kaitlin as I shook my head.

  “I can’t do this with you, Stephan. I won’t. And you have Amilee now. You have no business betraying her like this. She loves you.”

  “She knows. She knew before we came here.”

  “That doesn’t make it right. And it doesn’t change anything. I will not help you do this.”

  “We’ll do it with or without you. We’re in too far now.”

  “Then do what you have to do. Just know that I will do the same.”

  “Ash.”

  He pulled me to him, crushed me to him. With a hand in my hair, he pulled my head b
ack and kissed me. I felt his tear wet my cheek. I didn’t respond. Once he’d had his fill, he lifted his head, brushed the hair back from my damaged temple. Those dark, liquid eyes shimmered in the low light. When I stepped back, he let me.

  “Goodbye, Stephan.”

  There was a hard, pained twist in his smile as he stepped past me. He pulled open the door, hesitated. When he looked back at me, that wicked, cocky glint had returned to his eye. My heart stuttered just a little.

  He laughed and closed the door behind him.

  At 2:52 a.m., I rose and dressed for work.

  The long-awaited tour was today. I chose a charcoal-gray pants suit with a satin and lace camisole that matched my eyes, dressed it up a little with a silver-gray scarf knotted at the side of my neck. I searched the closet, then realized that Stephan had claimed my other white sandal in our first skirmish. I settled for the black pumps.

  Between Stephan and Cam I was going to need to go shopping.

  I spent time on my hair and makeup. So far, the goose egg wasn’t living up to my predictions, but I didn’t feel the need to advertise my little mishap either.

  I studied my artistry in the mirror.

  The eyes.

  I had dressed my body, but I couldn’t seem to dress my mind. No matter how I twisted and stretched, after these last few days Kaitlin just didn’t seem to fit anymore. Her Teflon ego and ability to skim over the surface of anything emotionally challenging…I was losing my grasp of her. I was drowning in emotional reality.

  And Ashley? Her unreality jarred against the open-hearted innocence of the girl she had been. Even the battered soul that had fled Seattle that autumn night so long ago had more courage, more determination than the terrified and shattered remnant of her I hid shamefully in the recesses of my mind.

  How the hell could I do my job, live my life with no defenses against the deluge?

  I turned away from the mirror.

  I couldn’t answer that question.

  I pulled my bag from the floor next to the door and dropped it on the bed. Immediately, I knew Stephan had been through it. Just little signs. My tank top was folded lengthwise, then cross; my perfume had swapped places with my lip gloss. I dug through the workout section, found my stick of deodorant. I gave the base a little twist. It didn’t move. I smiled grimly.

  “Take that you cocky bastard.”

  So,, Stephan hadn’t gotten the stick with the ship’s schematics on it. Mak knew I had it. Mak would come for it.

  I slipped the stick back in the bag, finished packing, and slipped out of the room.

  I knew where most of the ship’s cameras hid now. No punch-happy guards would sneak up on me this time.

  This observation deck—more like a lounge—bore the title, Breaking Free, in beautiful gold script across the upper window. Instead of reproductions of ancient paintings or artful images of worn artifacts, this deck hosted video displays along its walls.

  One holographic video showed a man in a shiny space suit and a claustrophobia-inducing helmet making his dramatic walk toward a cramped little capsule.

  One showed a handsome, clean-cut man taking the podium before a crowd of media sporting enormous cameras.

  One grainy image showed a kid squatting in the sand watching rocket fire disappear into the clouds.

  The men from the Apollo program, the men who had strapped rockets to their chairs and gotten away with it.

  Keeping to the left of the deck’s camera, I slipped between two of the displays. I settled down on the thick pile carpeting, pulled my legs and bag out of view, rested my head against the display stand.

  The wall of the stand rumbled against my head. I didn’t look up. But I listened.

  “Somewhere along the line I made a rational, coldhearted decision that, on the one hand, there was a one-in-three chance of not making it back. And I wasn’t just worried about me; I thought about my family. We had no insurance; you couldn’t get insurance. And we had five kids, and how irresponsible that would be…. It certainly was a negative on that side of the balance. Not to mention my own hide. Versus the other things, which were…adventure, exploration, national prestige, personal honor, and excitement… And I had decided that that was acceptable.”

  I closed my eyes. Just like that, huh? No comets, plagues, signs from God? Just bye honey, bye kids, see ya on the other side! For…

  I opened my eyes and looked up. The projection on the ceiling rumbled me through the visuals of lift off. The blue of the sky growing thinner and thinner until finally it was no more. We continued into the pin-pricked blackness up and up. And then we started to spin. And there was the Earth, an aquamarine opal glowing against black velvet. So impossibly beautiful, growing smaller and smaller.

  “Sure, it’s breathtaking to look out and see the Earth. And probably if somebody’d said before the flight, Are you going to get carried away by the Earth view? I’d have said, Nah. That sort of stuff—Are you going to get carried away looking at the Earth from the moon? I would say, No, no way. But yet when I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the surface of the moon, I cried. And if everybody had ever told me I was going to do that I’d have said, ‘No, you’re out of your mind.’ …Whether it was relief, or whether it was the beauty of the Earth, the majesty of the moment—I don’t know, just every—you know, I never would’ve said I was going to do that. But I did.”

  We kept spinning and there it was, that too-big moon in all her majesty and secret power, a chunk of hammered silver gleaming on that same depthless velvet.

  The wall vibrated with the appearance of the new scene.

  “I’ve always believed in exploration… Exploration is the greatest adventure. And exploration is why we’re no longer huddled up in caves. Or no longer huddled up on the eastern seaboard, in thirteen colonies. Or why we carved this tremendous nation out of a wilderness… This spirit that took us to the moon is the same spirit that moved our forefathers west across the country. And as they carried the flag west, why, we carried it to the moon.”

  Risking safety, security, risking love and life. For….

  For freedom, for the chance to become something more, for the chance to become a part of something greater. Insanity, maybe. I held a secret little smile to myself. But then it took a little divorce from reality to do anything worth doing—chasing a dream, loving a relative stranger, building a new life.

  Okay, sometimes a big divorce from reality.

  I looked down from the ceiling to the brushed steel and black leather of the seating area. I pressed my fingertips over my still bruised lips. When I closed my eyes, I could feel Cam’s arms around me, the scent of him fresh and clean and salty like the sea. If we were any other two people, the physical and the mental rapport we shared would have led us easily into love. Right now, we teetered on the edge of it. And I didn’t have long before we fell either one way or the other. I sighed.

  I knew what Stephan’s parting laughter meant. He thought he’d found a weakness, a chink in my armor he meant to exploit. A wriggling thread of fear slid down my throat and spooled in the pit of my stomach, coiling and coiling and coiling. Out of time. I was running out of time.

  I looked up at the ceiling. We rocketed past planets now, past solar systems and star clusters and nebula. Finally, we began to slow. What was once invisible now unfurled in our vision: a planet marbled with greens and blues and browns, a swirling lace of clouds. Earth-like, but not Earth. Someplace…worth the risk.

  “I have learned to use the word impossible with the greatest caution.”

  There had to be a way to take these jackasses down. There was no way I was going to let them hurt me or the people I loved. There was no way I was going to let them murder people simply for the thrill of the heist.

  I’d told Stephan I’d do what I had to do. If in the end it ended up ripping the beating heart right out of my chest, then that’s just what had to be.

  A shriek from my mini woke me. I fished it from my bag and killed it. Forgotten
I’d left it on.

  With a silent groan I straightened. My neck hurt in a sharp, spinal sort of way that said I was going to have a killer headache later today.

  Coffee.

  Dodging the camera, I left the rocket men to their remembrances.

  The elevator took me down to the food court. I got a little shot of adrenaline when I stepped into the seating area. The nausea and fog of sleep deprivation should have made it easy to ignore. It should have dissipated as I stood in line for caffeine. It didn’t.

  I looked around.

  He was here, somewhere just at my periphery, getting closer.

  I stepped up to the counter. A giant cup of scalding hot coffee could be an excellent weapon. But just in case I ended up drinking it….

  “Grande nonfat hazelnut latte.”

  I moved down the counter, thanked the barista as she slid the cup into my waiting hand. Carefully, I loosened the lid.

  Coming in from my right.

  I turned. I couldn’t see him in the breakfast crowd, but I could feel the impatience, the scorn, the disgust trying to coalesce into an action. I felt him veer away. He was going to lie in wait again.

  No, fucking way.

  I muscled my way through the scattered throng, carefully guarding my coffee weapon from innocent victims. I caught up to him before he made it to the hall.

  “I’m right here.”

  Sleep deprivation could make reckless anger gloriously easy.

  Mak flipped around. The broom he held as a prop came up in front of him in both fists. Recognizing pathetic, helpless Ashley, he lowered it.

  “You have it.”

  “And you don’t.”

  I saw a group of professionals coming toward us, operations personnel by their purple badges. Mak took a step toward me, his anger buffeting me like volcanic wind. Stephan had to be somewhere near because I saw the faintest outline of Mak’s intention spark to life, his knife hand sweeping toward me. Forgetting the coffee, I took a step back.

  Fortunately, that put me right in the path of the technicians. Quickly, I snapped the lid on my latte before I could damage the wrong people.