Echo 8 (27 page)

Typical Seattle Psi poltergeist activity. So she hadn't dislocated in her sleep.

Her chair creaked as she rose from the table. “This building has a geriatric nervous system. We'll have to go down to the breaker box.”

“Someone has gone down already. I came to check on you.”

“Thanks.” She moved along the table, cursing as she stumbled over a chair. She couldn't see a damn thing. How could he?

“Just sit tight. The lights will be up in a minute.”

“Okay.”

A heartbeat later she felt a hand close gently over her shoulder, and a finger press against her lips.

Ross drew her into his arms and kissed her deeply with no preliminaries. His hands clutched her back, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. After only a moment he broke the kiss, burrowing in her hair, blowing a puff of warm air against her ear.

Then he stepped back, straightening as the lights came up. He gave her a gentle smile. “You should get some sleep, Doctor. Come on. I'll walk you up.”

Her heart hammered, and all she could do was nod. She'd needed that moment of connection, of physical reassurance. But what did it mean?

As they walked to the lobby together, she thought about the look on his face. And the desperate quality of that kiss.

He's saying good-bye
.

 

G
RADUATION
D
AY

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

—
Lewis Carroll,
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Three days later

“I
WANT
to see Jake Parker perform.”

Ross raised his eyebrows, a warning in his eyes. “I'm sorry, Doctor?”

“You heard me. Jake Parker is a local musician. I don't know where or when he's playing next. I want you to figure it out.” She shoved the pad of paper across the table at him.

Garcia had insisted it was time for real scenarios. This was a real scenario, with her own personal touch.

“This is no different from what we've done before.”

Ross's face relaxed, and he picked up the pen. “Do you know the answer?”

“Nope. Like I said, just like before.”

Tess was snapping at him. She couldn't help it. Because in the last three days there'd been no explanation of the kiss, no
further
kisses, and in fact no physical contact of any kind. He'd given her no information. They hadn't spoken on any topic other than Garcia's project. And Tess was scared. Ross's training had reached the point he hardly needed her anymore. What would happen to them now?

Tess breathed slowly and softened her tone. “Think about dates and locations. Do what you've done before. Draw pictures, scribble notes. Take your time. Breathe and relax.”

Ross rubbed his forehead. He stared at the paper. At the wall. At the ceiling. At her.

He bent and wrote three neat lines and handed the paper back to her.

Tabitha North w/guest Jake Parker
The Tractor Tavern, Old Ballard, Seattle
Thursday, Aug. 30, 8:30
P.M.

“Hmm.” She glanced up at him. “Check it with your phone. I don't have one anymore.” It had been missing since her return to Seattle Psi. She doubted she'd misplaced it.

She folded her arms, waiting while Ross carried on a private conversation with his mobile device. Thirty seconds later he glanced up at her and nodded. He turned the phone so she could see.

“How did you do it so fast? You just wrote it down.”

He shrugged. “While I sat there thinking about it, I saw this.” He waved his phone at her.

“Your phone? I don't understand.”

“The search result on my phone. I didn't have to figure it out because I saw the readout … before I actually
saw
the readout.”

“Wow,” repeated Tess, shaking her head. “A person could go crazy thinking about that too hard.”

Ross smirked. “Are you telling me I've actually managed to shock the parapsychologist?”

“That's what I'm telling you.”

The door opened and Garcia stuck his head in. “Ross, I need to talk to you.”

“Director,” said Tess, “I was hoping to—”

“This can't wait. You can work with the other agents.”

The other two agents she was working with were already pros at energy transfers, though neither of them had dislocated yet. She was glad for that, but doubted Garcia felt the same. She suspected they had the same control issues Ross did. She hadn't brought that up with them, and was surprised Ross hadn't either. In the meantime she'd started working with one of the others on remote location. There were some promising initial results, but nothing like Ross.

She didn't see Ross again that day or the following morning. She worked with the others until lunchtime and then set out to look for him. But upstairs she ran into Kendrick looking for her, and he told her Garcia was waiting to talk to her in the cafeteria.

As she joined him at the table, he opened a bottle of Scotch and poured a little into two glasses.

She stared at him in wonder, and he smiled. “Sorry, no ice.”

“What's the occasion?”

“You've done good work, Doctor.” He raised his glass, and she clinked hers against it. “Better than I could have hoped.”

“I'm only as good as my subjects. Is Ross going to join us?”

He shook his head as his lips peeled back slightly from his teeth, airing the Scotch. “Ross has gone back to Washington.”

A stone grated over her heart, leaving deep ruts in its wake. He hadn't even said good-bye.

“Is he coming back?”

Garcia shook his head like it was the most routine question in the world. “He's on assignment.”

Oh God
.

“And eventually we'll all be joining him there. I've tasked him with finding a building. We're relocating our operation to the D.C. area. I intend to turn over day-to-day management to him.”

Tess raised the glass to her lips. She gulped the whisky, grateful for the slow amber burn that caressed her throat and stomach. Her hand trembled as she set down the glass.

“Are you all right, Doctor?”

“Yes, just a headache.”

“Why don't you take the afternoon off? You've earned it.”

*   *   *

Tess lay across her bed staring at the ceiling. Ross was an assassin now, and she was leaving Seattle Psi. She wondered if they'd let her see Abby before she went.

She thought about her options, and then stopped because really, she didn't have any.

She could go back to Jake. Help him look for other survivors. Try living as an Echo. But then she could do nothing to help the Echoes caught in the Bureau's web. Eventually she'd have to face this.

She could try to run from the Bureau on
her
Earth. But she couldn't leave Goff with Garcia, and seriously? Run from the FBI? Dislocation might help, but eventually Garcia was going to have his own army of dimensional travelers. At that point he'd no longer need her anyway, so he'd probably just send Ross to kill her.

Groaning in despair, she pulled a pillow over her face. Over the course of the last couple of weeks she'd lost all of her most trusted advisers—first Goff, then Abby, now Ross. She wondered at what point she had started thinking of Ross that way. Had it been the night he'd forced her to take a closer look at herself and her motivations? Or maybe all the discussions they'd had about the dislocations. They worked well together.

She wondered if he could really pull off the assassination. She hadn't been privy to the particulars, but she assumed he would have to dislocate to the proper location, take care of business, and dislocate out. As far as she knew he'd only done the one dislocation, from Jake's ruin back to the
Kalakala
—between the
two
Earths. Alternately he could dislocate to Jake's world and back on each leg of the journey, but that was a lot of connections to line up, not to mention the dangerous assumption that nothing would go wrong on Post-Apocalypse World.

This all got her thinking again about Jake's dislocation—how he'd vanished and come right back, but in a different part of the room. If Jake could do it, Ross should be able to.

If Jake could do it,
she
should be able to.

She sat up.

She closed her eyes, deepening her breaths, offering herself to the tentacles of light. She thought she felt tingling in her fingertips, and she gave herself to the sensation, real or wished for.

The tingling traveled up her arms to her chest. White light edged her peripheral vision.

*   *   *

She fell out of the light and crashed to the floor. She stood up quickly, glancing around her. She'd landed in the observation room—and it was empty. It had been a pretty big gamble. The building was crawling with agents, and she wouldn't have been surprised to find them here. But considering there were two watching the lab door and two in each corridor, she had thought it might just be possible they hadn't bothered. An agent in the observation room wasn't much use if Goff escaped.

Her gaze fell on the window as she reached for the sound switch, and her heart leapt right out of her chest. Not
one
, but
four
people in the lab, and one of them looked like Ross.

Only it wasn't Ross.

“… warm and dry in here,” he was saying, “and they won't let you starve, so I really think you should be thanking me for the considerable improvement to your situation.”

Her stomach twisted as she wondered if he knew he could walk through walls here.
Only when he's faded. Keep your head!

She recognized the people he was arguing with—the man and woman who'd been with him when he threatened Jake. She listened to more complaints, waiting for something that might help her understand why they were here. And why hadn't the agents outside done anything? Did they know there were new occupants? Her eyes sought Goff, and she found him hesitating in a corner, eyeing the others warily.

“Now if you'll excuse me,” Mac said, “I'm due to be compensated.”

It clicked together.
Mac's rounding up Echoes for Garcia
. The son of a bitch.
Which one?
Exactly.

Tess reached for the light almost without thought. An instant later she found herself in the lab, close to Goff.

She grabbed his arm, jerking him toward Mac, and caught Mac's sleeve just as he was blinking out.

He gave a shout of surprise as they fell together into the light tunnel.

Hold on to me!
she called to Goff. As she released him to reach for Mac, he seemed to slip away, but she felt his hand catch her ankle.

She grabbed a handful of Mac's hair and held on tight.
This time I'll suck you dry, asshole.

I can hardly wait.…

 

E
RRANT

GlobeWatch's investigative team has discovered that the recent upswing in missing persons is not just a national phenomenon. Internet research and interviews with anonymous investigative personnel have revealed similar statistics in at least six other countries. Furthermore we've obtained photos and autopsy reports for three people who appear to have died of “supernatural” causes within the same time frame. Repeated requests to speak with officials in the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the CIA have been ignored.

—“Unexplained Disappearances on the Rise Worldwide,” August 17, 2018, GlobeWatch News Service

The previous day

R
OSS SCANNED
the dimly lit interior of Espresso Noir. Just blocks from Seattle Psi at the end of a quiet residential street, the café was a favorite with the staff. The sign in the window bore the silhouette of a man wearing a fedora.

He hadn't even bothered to question his gut this time. One, he was in too much of a hurry. Two, Tess had told him that 8.6222 times out of 10, his gut was right.
Why
Abby would be hanging around so close to the building she'd been banished from was another question altogether.

When he found her sitting alone with her laptop at a small corner table, the answer came to him: The Bureau people came here too. She was waiting for an opportunity to hold someone accountable. And he didn't have time for that.

“Ross!” she cried, rising to her feet.

She was talking before he even made it to her table. “What the hell is going on? Where is Tess?”

He sank down across from her and leaned close, gesturing for her to sit down. “I'll get to that, Doctor. Just give me a minute.”

She gave him a scorching look. He noted that despite her distress, she was as flawlessly put together as ever. Not a hair out of place. Tess's reddish, neither-long-nor-short waves were always pulling out of hair bands and falling over her eyes. From the first day he'd met her he was continually fighting the urge to tuck the loose strands behind her ear. Mainly because he wanted to know if they were as soft as they looked.

“Ross?” hissed Abby.

He knew he was exhausted and drifting. The transfers and the training had taken their toll. Not to mention the fact he'd been aimlessly dislocating for the past two days while he tried to untangle the mess that had become his life. He felt thin and frayed at the edges. He had to sharpen up.

As if on cue, a waitress stopped beside their table—a girl with heavy eyeliner who'd waited on him before.

“Drip coffee. Black,” he told her.

“You got it,” she said with a wink. “I like the shadow.”

Ross whipped around, almost upsetting the flimsy table.

“The beard!” The waitress laughed. “I like it. You sure you don't want decaf?”

Ross dropped his head in his hands as the waitress moved away.

“Where is
Tess
?” Abby repeated.