Spectre of Intention Page 19

  “Come on, Ashley.”

  I dug my hands into my hair, shook my head.

  “It’s not like before, Stephan. I can’t. It’s too much. It’s everything!”

  Amilee came back to me.

  “Ashley, what?” But then she knew. She turned on him and I muffled a cry as her outrage, her hurt flooded into me. “You did your thing to her. You—”

  “Did you want to be dead?”

  “Undo it.”

  I opened my eyes. Stephan stalked back to us. His face was beginning to go gray from the pain and blood loss.

  “Don’t you get it? This is how it’s supposed to be. There’s one of her. There’s one of me. We’re supposed to be together. Like this.”

  Stephan grabbed my arm, tried to drag me forward. I twisted from his blood-smeared grip.

  So, he reached for my mind.

  I screamed.

  That sound, that horrible sound of soul-deep death, ripped through the metal cavern, ricocheted, and shot back at us. Froze everything.

  It’s okay. It’s okay, Ashley. I’m going to get us out of here. It’s only until I can get you safe. You’re going to be okay.

  You have no right!

  And then I lunged. The windows, the doors of his mind were mine. I gripped his will with my own and drove him back, ramming his wounded arm against a support beam. Then I dragged him back from the edge of consciousness.

  “Get out. I helped you. This will be the last time. If I see you again, if I hear from you again, I will contact the law. I will confess to every last one of your burglaries. I will spend the rest of my life behind bars, if I have to, but I will not be controlled by you!”

  Amilee stared at Stephan, then she turned to me.

  “But Ash, Mak—”

  I nodded.

  “He’s coming. You need to get out of here.”

  I looked at her pixie-bright face, bruised at the forehead, scraped at the cheek. I looked past her to Stephan’s mystery-dark eyes in an ashen face. I memorized them as a tear slipped down my cheek…

  “Go.”

  I reached into my tiny jacket pocket, pulled out the stick, palmed the bug. Amilee rose to her toes, gave me a hug and a little whisper.

  “Chocolate pretzels and marshmallow crème.”

  I choked out a laugh.

  Stephan stepped forward.

  “At least this time I get to say goodbye.”

  I didn’t answer, just leaned forward and hugged him on his good side, let him go.

  “Go now. He’s coming.”

  Of course. He was tracking me. But someone else was coming, too.

  My head was still ripped open wide.

  But I could focus, and I could think, and my legs stayed beneath me as I took the stairs two at a time back up to the door where we had entered. I stripped off the jacket and the slacks. Ran my nails quickly over the seams of the nightgown, but apparently, they hadn’t been worried about locating me while I slept.

  With the stick firmly in my grip, I unloaded my slacks of the keycard and that blessed mangled energy bar that so cleverly concealed my mini. Quickly, I preset the alarm to five seconds, the volume to deafening. Then I took off down the stairs.

  The guard was unarmed, but I wasn’t leaving Cam and his people to face the gun in Mak’s hand without at least some kind of warning.

  Mak had found a supply closet near the loading facility’s main door.

  Can’t find a fucking piece of solid metal in this goddamn fucking shithole?! Break that goddamn door off at the goddamn hinges! That bitch is dead. I’ll fucking slaughter them. Fucking think they can leave…

  My heart froze. I didn’t want to hear his thoughts. I didn’t want my mind so close to pure insanity. But I thought of Cam and the last time I’d seen him, sleeping so peacefully in those tousled sheets. And I kicked the clothes aside and eased the facility door open.

  I set a chunk of wood from a pallet between the door and its frame. I gripped the mini in one hand and the stick in the other.

  “Stephan…” Fear choked me for an eternal moment. At the sound of my voice, Mak leaned out the supply closet door. “Stephan said you were looking for this.” My hand shook as I held up the stick. Those eyes. His intention grinned sickeningly.

  He stepped out of the closet. I got a full visual of why he hated me so much. He saw Stephan fucking me, an image so vulgar, so debased it made my bile rise. Anything of Stephan’s had to be his, had to be destroyed—and he could think of so many sick, sick ways it could be done.

  I pressed my wrist to mouth, felt my lips gone cold. Mak took a step toward me.

  “Stop.” I jacked the stick into my mini. “Stay back or I fry it.”

  Mak pulled out his gun.

  “Think you can push that button before I pull this trigger?”

  “Yeah. I do. Lower the gun and I’ll toss it to you. Shoot me and your billion-dollar black market share is gone.”

  God, I was going to lose it.

  Mak lowered his gun.

  Cam was close, so close.

  Mak pulled out his knife. My whole body shook at the sight of that thing. I fell back an involuntary step and he laughed.

  No more.

  I pushed the alarm button and threw the mini at him, stick and all. The phone began to shriek, the unpadded hallway giving it an unearthly volume.

  I dove back through the doorway, kicked the wood block free, and used all my weight to override the hydraulics. The first bullet hit the door.

  I ran.

  No matter what I did, how far I climbed, I couldn’t get far enough away from it. The terror, the pain, the screaming insanity—claws that ripped at my brain.

  And then the dawn came.

  And the two thousand people living aboard Pioneers’ Port began to rise.

  “Kaitlin. Kaitlin! I’ve found her. She’s here in my apartment. Sharon, you gotta get up here. She’s not… Oh, god, Sharon, hurry! I know. I know that. I didn’t move her. I didn’t touch her. Just get up here…”

  Light.

  Trembling hands.

  Fear. I rock with that fear on my endless ocean, calm it, soothe it. It’s alright. You’re alright. Shh. Don’t worry.

  “Kaitlin?”

  “Hey, Kaitlin, it’s me, Gerard. They let me come up to talk to you. So…Uh, well, so Brian’s going to be here in a couple days. Still haven’t decided what to do with Paula and me, but they decided a boy ought to be with his mother. Probably not the best thing to tell you to convince you to come back, huh? Hey, I’m sorry. You can be anybody you want to be, you can be the boardroom bitch. You can be the fucking damsel in distress. Just don’t you leave me, too. Don’t you fucking leave me.”

  A warm body wraps around me, tries to hold me inside. But I’m sliding away, floating into darkness. I shouldn’t be out here. I know what happens when you’re out here.

  Cam!

  The warm body jerks away from me.

  “Sharon, I’m losing her!”

  “This is Kaitlin, Brian. She’s having a bit of a rough time.”

  “She gonna be okay?”

  “I don’t know, sweetie. We actually, we actually almost lost her last night. Do you mind if I talk to her for a minute? Here, you can take my workpad. Thanks, sweetie.”

  “So, I saw the video. They thought I might be able to tell them what was going on, might be able to figure out some way to help you. They keep looking for aneurisms and tumors—some kind of brain damage. It’s not that, is it? It’s your thing, your built-in intention detector. It got cranked up too high somehow, something to do with that guy. Oh. Oh, maybe…maybe… Brian, you stay right there.”

  A wet breeze played over my skin. The warm weight of filtered sunlight pressed down on me, so gentle and soothing. But the flesh of my left forearm swelled with a cold ache. I reached for it.

  “Oh, my god. Kaitlin.”

  A hand gripped my upraised one. I opened my eyes.

  Cam.

  His appearance confused me. Hi
s face was tan, his hair sun-streaked. He was thinner, too, and carried an exhaustion that dampened the mysterious and beautiful light in his eyes. But the hard, cold snakes of torment and doubt had vanished. And in their place, something beautiful and warm and golden radiated, and it already filled me, my legs, my arms, my torso, my head—peace and joy and the profoundest relief.

  I smiled at him, savored his smile in return.

  I felt my eyelids lowering.

  “So tired.”

  “I know. I’ll be right here.”

  His fingers played through my hair as I drifted off to dreams.

  “It says here, that some of the first and best naturalist accounts of these islands were made way before Darwin got here. It says they were made by pirates and that you can sometimes still find Spanish doubloons washed up on shore.”

  I laughed. It had taken me three days, but I finally felt like consciousness was something I could hold onto. I rolled my head to the side in the deckchair that was my sick bed. He felt me watching, closed his book, and turned on his side to grin at me. That dance was back in his eyes. I could see the energy bouncing off him at the idea of pirates and lost treasure. I could see it, but I could still feel my own more tired humor. That was good. That was better.

  “Maybe we could go look down on the beach for some old pirate booty.”

  Cam swung his legs around, jumped to his feet.

  “Really?! You think you can make it?”

  “Gotta start sometime.”

  His grin was huge and foolish, but his hands were strong and gentle as he helped me to stand and wrapped a sweater around me. Every day I thanked Jessie for keeping me fit and strong. My arms and legs were loose and unsteady, but I could feel already it would come back quickly thanks to his relentless regimen. However, for now, Cam and I wrapped our arms around each other’s waists.

  As I picked my way over loose shards and rolls of lava rock, he chattered happily about pirates and murder and cursed islands.

  “Did you know they actually thought these islands moved? They call them the Enchanted Islands, but they meant they were cursed, because you’d finally make it here and there was nothing here to save you, no drinkable water, nothing! These really desperate guys would be sucking the juice out of cactus leaves just to stay alive.

  “Oh, and the volcanoes,” Cam paused long enough to pull me upright again when the piece of scrub brush I’d made a grab for didn’t hold. “There was this seal hunting ship docked here one night when ‘boom!’ this volcano completely blows and its pouring all this steaming hot lava into the sea and these guys on the ship are like, ‘oh, shit,’ because they are on this wooden sailing ship and there’s no wind and it’s getting so hot that the guys are passing out. And then finally they feel this tiny breath of wind and they pop those sails up so fast, but even then they are floating past these rivers of lava and they know that if that tiny puff of wind dies, they’re dead, too, but finally they glide out of this water that’s almost at the boiling point and they can look back and watch the volcano that’s like this amazing fireworks show. I wonder what that did to their ship. You think it sank after that because the wood got all twisted up?”

  I was laughing so hard by this point, I couldn’t see for the tears in my eyes. We’d made it down from our little encampment to the beach by this point. I turned into him as the sand poured into my sandals, reached up and pulled him down for a kiss.

  He hummed against my lips.

  “Do pirates get to kiss the pretty girls?”

  I chuckled.

  “I think they’re more into rape and plunder.”

  Cam grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. I just shook my head. I stroked his tan, stubble-roughened cheek, drank in his giddy joy.

  “This is good.”

  He nodded. “You’re getting so much stronger, so fast.”

  “No, I mean you.”

  Cam’s eyebrows shot up and he pulled back, so he could get a better look at me.

  “Yes, you,” I repeated. “You are so free, all the way to the core of your heart. You look so healthy, so happy. You never felt this way on the ship, not even on the first day I met you.”

  “Ha! Paula warned me that if I radiated anything but serenity and good cheer I would be yanked off this island so fast my head would spin. She wanted to send you out here alone. I told her I thought you could handle one person and it didn’t take much to convince her that Dr. Sharon Smith had never radiated serenity and good cheer a day in her life.

  “They say hello, by the way, her and Brian and Gerard, your two techs. Gerard’s spending more and more time out of the wheelchair, kicking Brian’s ass at Intergalactic Raiders.”

  I spotted a chunky boulder. Cam turned us a little and led us over to it. That gave me a little chill. It seemed…it seemed almost like he knew what I wanted the moment I wanted it. It made me pause, trying to remember how it had been in the beginning with Stephan and I, but I couldn’t really remember. It didn’t feel the same, though, no blank spots, no startled realizations that you’d done something you’d never intended to do. And so, I tried to find comfort in that.

  We settled in and I tucked my head against his shoulder, pulled my sweater tight around me.

  “I’m so glad to hear they’re doing okay.” I couldn’t really bring myself to ask what was going to happen to them, or to me for that matter. Too much the coward. “Am I…am I allowed to ask about Mak?” Before I could catch it, a shiver ran through me that had nothing to do with the cool breeze of the ocean rolling over the sand before us. So much for my brave face.

  “Only if it will keep you from worrying.”

  I stayed silent, waiting. Cam’s intention wrapped around me, trying to protect me from my own fear.

  “He’s dead. He got a few shots off. Heather took one in the vest, but he was aiming for his own guy. And he got him. And then we got him.”

  “Heather okay?”

  “Yeah, her vest’s an antique, her dad’s lucky vest from when he was on the force, so she’s got a hell of a bruise, but hey, the vest is still damn lucky if you ask me.”

  “Yeah.”

  I raised my head a bit, looked around the empty sand.

  “Isn’t the Galapagos supposed to be famous for its gigantic tortoises?”

  “I’m afraid on this island you’re stuck with penguins.”

  “Penguins? On the equator?”

  “Yeah, I thought I saw some down on those rocks the other day. Think you’re up for it? Want to go take a look?”

  I sat up straighter and turned to him.

  “Right after you tell me what’s bothering you.”

  “Ah,” Cam pulled his hands away to rub them over his face. “I forgot it’s impossible to keep secrets around you.”

  “You are the one who said you didn’t ‘do’ secrets. Gave me a big lecture about pilgrims and the fate of nations resting squarely on the shoulders of Camden Glaswell.”

  “Ha! I have a feeling I will be changing my opinion on that one very soon.”

  “Spill.”

  “Ah, okay…you hugged them goodbye. You hugged him goodbye. And then you let them go.”

  Slowly, I nodded and as understanding bloomed in me, I saw the nauseated worry drain from his face. He was definitely reading me. I didn’t know if he knew it yet, but he was definitely reading me. I pressed my lips together.

  “Okay, how do I…? Okay, off with the band aid. They’d been tracking me. With bugs. These giant, completely hack…” I was blushing now. “Okay, so I’d finally figured that out after a whole week and I knew there was one in my jacket pocket. I palmed it and I planted it. But it’s completely useless by now. I’m sure they’re long gone.” A realization that brought me both relief and unease.

  Cam jumped up.

  “That’s why! The clothes by the door when we got in there. And why you were wearing that skimpy little nothing when I found you on the floor in my apartment.” He whirled around on me with a warning finger. “And by the way,
there is no one on the ship who doesn’t know you and I have a thing now thanks to that outfit.”

  “A thing.”

  Cam’s emotions stopped whirling like a little boy who’d hit the candy jar. He looked down at me. I ignored his intention as it stroked my face in favor of those gentle blue eyes. For a moment I was back in the restaurant on the ship, dreaming about flying off into the stars with him at my back, murmuring magic into my hair. He reached out for my hand.

  I slid my fingers into his palm. I had never felt so fragile, so delicate. He pulled me to my feet, pulled me to him.

  “More than a thing.”

  I shook my head. This was the part I didn’t want to talk about, didn’t want to think about. “When we get back to the ship—”

  He put his finger to my lips.

  “You—”

  “I am not running. Not ever again. If I made choices that are seen as unforgivable mistakes in the eyes of the law, then…I’ll just…”

  The shaking snaked out from my stomach through my chest, out into my arms, out in my legs.

  “Hey, shh, hey.” Cam pulled me in tight. “You’re not strong enough for this yet. Shh. Hey, let it go. Do I feel worried to you? Don’t you think I’d be worried, if I thought Will was going to turn you over to the authorities? And no matter what, the Port doesn’t fly a flag, but you’re an American citizen. We’re not just going to toss you in some dank, sweaty Ecuadorian jail cell to rot.”

  We.

  My teeth started rattling in my head. Cam tilted my head back, made me look at him.

  “Hey, look at me. Whatever Will and the captain decide, I’m going to be right there with you, okay? Okay? I’m not leaving you, alright?”

  “’Kay.”

  I tried to smile for him. He raised an eyebrow at my pathetic attempt. His hands slid up my back, cupped my head. He sank his lips, softly, deeply into mine and then he kissed me and kissed me and kissed me and that might not have been enough, but his intention was never satisfied with just a kiss and soon my bones grew too loose and the tremors lost their grip.