Tempest (22 page)

“Yeah, that’s probably best.” Holly took off her tennis shoes and rolled up the bottom of her pants before turning on one of the showers.

“I hope this comes out of my hair,” she said as she dropped her paint tray onto the floor, under the hot water.

“I think it looks good like that,” I joked. Her arm was within reach and I couldn’t resist the temptation. I grabbed the brush clutched in her hand and pulled hard enough to drag her under my shower. The water landed right on her head.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” she sputtered.

“I thought you should rinse the paint out of your hair before it dries.” I moved under the water with her and she looked up at me and smiled, like she’d forgotten all about this morning, even though I knew she hadn’t. Even though I knew how scared she’d been. And yet she was here. Now.

And then, before I could even try to stop her, Holly stood on her toes and kissed me lightly on the mouth. I instantly tossed the moral debate from earlier today out of my mind. Just the thought of us being closer sent my pulse racing, bringing me to life. The second her lips were against mine, both of us stepped closer, hands reaching out for some part of each other to grab hold of. My hands were on her face, her mouth moving with mine, fingers curling around the back of my neck, the stream from the shower running over us like a waterfall.

It was just like the first time … a couple of years in the future.

The water suddenly turned from steaming hot to icy cold and both us jumped apart. I reached for the knob and shut off the shower. Holly was shivering and dripping wet. I snatched a couple towels from the shelf above the sink and wrapped one around her shoulders.

“You still have paint in your hair.”

She laughed again, a nervous laugh, and then stepped around me, sitting down in front of one of the lockers. “I wonder if Toby’s got an extra shirt in his locker.”

I picked up the paint tray again and dropped it onto the shower floor and watched Holly yank on the lock. “Damn, it’s closed.”

Suddenly I had a flash of an image in my mind: Toby spinning the lock earlier today while I stood at the sink washing my hands.

“Twenty-two, sixteen, five,” I said without even thinking about it. Then it hit me—Dr. Melvin had said something about a photographic memory the other day. When had I started being able to remember things like this, and what did it mean?

She turned the numbers perfectly and the lock popped open. “I hope there’s nothing I don’t want to see in here.”

She didn’t seem in the least bit concerned that I knew his combination, but it wasn’t exactly a safe full of money. It was a gym locker, probably filled with sweaty socks and possibly deodorant. I pushed the questions aside and added them to my list for Adam, when I finally got a chance to fill him in on everything.

“You’re not going to … uh … tell anyone about this, are you?” Holly asked while her head was half stuffed in the locker.

I had to assume “this” meant us kissing and not the paint incident. Or maybe both …

“Not if you don’t want me to,” I said.

She sighed and plopped down on the bench that was pushed up against the wall. “I’m just imagining all the shit Toby and David will give me for this.”

“For getting in a paint fight?” I sat down next to her, and both of us leaned back against the wall.

“Not about the paint.” Her cheeks turned a little pink.

“Your friends are teasing you about me?” I asked.

She nodded. “Ever since the poker game … And
teasing
is an understatement.”

I leaned forward and kissed the side of her neck, just below her ear. I could feel the goose bumps rise on her skin. “You don’t have to tell them anything. It can be our secret.”

Holly smiled and laced her fingers through mine. “Well … then we have to have a secret meeting place, so no one knows.”

I stared at her face for a minute, taking in the youthful, dreamy expression. 007 Holly
was
different from the older one. The girl I met in 2009 was deep and analytical like this girl, but a lot more serious and realistic. She didn’t spend her free time climbing things and turning upside down. She didn’t take nearly as many risks. It was almost like we had switched places.

I kissed her again, then put an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s see … well … there was a great make-out spot at my high school, under the third-floor stairwell. Lots of scandals happened there.”

“Jackson?” someone called from outside the locker room.

Holly and I both jumped up and walked out the door to go back into the gym. Dad was wandering around, taking in the mess we’d made with the paint.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him.

I could feel Holly stiffen and move behind me.

“What the hell happened?” Dad asked.

“I fell off a ladder,” I answered.

He had his phone out and punched button after button. “We’ve got some … family business to take care of right now.”

“Now? What about the gym?” I asked.

“I can clean up,” Holly said, barely louder than a whisper.

Dad shook his head. “I’ve got someone coming. It’ll be good as new in a couple hours.”

“I guess I’ll get going, then,” Holly said, heading toward the staff room.

I followed behind her and grabbed my stuff. “Thanks again … for staying. You didn’t have to.”

She glanced sideways at Dad through the open staff room door, then back at me before kissing me quickly on the mouth. “Oh … and Jackson, there’s no good stairwells at my school and you can’t get in without a student ID. So I’ll have to tell my friends the truth.”

“If that’s what you want,” I said, smiling at her.

I’m pretty sure she just declared herself my girlfriend. Again.

“I’ll wait for you outside,” Dad told me before heading out the front doors.

Holly smiled at me again and leaned her shoulder against the wall. “He’s a little bit scary, I’ll admit that.”

“What about me?” I asked.

She took a step closer and reached for my hand. “Mostly, you just make me nervous, but in a good way.”

I kissed her forehead and then moved my mouth to her cheek, drifting closer to her lips. My phone was clutched in one hand and it buzzed. I groaned before flipping it open and reading Dad’s text:
Outside Now!

“I gotta go. I’ll see you tomorrow?” I tossed my jacket around her so she wouldn’t freeze on the way home, and ran outside.

Dad was waiting for me.

“Get in the car.” He pointed to a black car parked on the street.

I slid into the backseat and the second I saw the tall man beside me, blending into the dark, the fear from earlier today returned. It was the blue-suit guy with the secret fingerprint scanner, dragging people to the underground place in the hospital. I reached for the door so I could jump out, but Dad was already flying down the street.

“What the hell is he doing here?” I moved all the way over, gripping the door handle.

“You know Chief Marshall?” Dad asked.

“Yeah, we’ve met.” I barely had the words out when the crazy tall dude pressed a towel to my face.

Not good
. I slumped over against the cold window and everything faded.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

OCTOBER 13, 2007, 2:00
A.M.

The first thing I noticed after peeling my eyes open was the old man leaning over me, shining a tiny light in my face. The smell of whatever chemical they’d used to knock me out must have been superglued to the insides of my nostrils.

I was lying on a couch in what looked like a normal living room. I blocked the light with my hand. “Dr. Melvin? What are you doing here? Where am I?”

Dad came up behind me and flipped on the lamp sitting on the end table. “This location is confidential. That’s why we had to knock you out.”

“Confidential, as in no one will find my dead decaying body?” Melvin came at me with the light again and I shoved his hand away. “Cut it out.”

“He’s just checking your vital signs,” a deep voice boomed from the other side of the room.

He was here. I hadn’t imagined it. And what exactly was the significance behind the “Chief” title? Dad was just Agent Meyer, so Chief Marshall must be in charge of … something.

I didn’t know what to believe at this point. I needed a plan and maybe some serious help in the form of advice from Adam. I rolled into a ball, clutching my stomach and moaning. “Bathroom, quick!”

Dad pointed down the hallway to my left. “Second door on the right.”

I glanced in Chief Marshall’s direction for a second before heading down the hall. He looked cool and calm, just like he had that day in 1996.

I locked the bathroom door and tried to remember what I was doing a couple days ago and, more important, what Adam was doing. I closed my eyes and jumped back in time over forty-eight hours. This was the plan we had come up with. Find a method of communication while in a time jump, so no one in home base would have any knowledge of it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

OCTOBER 10, 2007, 4:32
P.M.

I ended up sitting in the parking lot of the gym. Lack of focus on my ideal destination, I guess, although my accuracy had improved tremendously since leaving 2009. But Adam’s house wasn’t too far from work. I ran all the way there and was panting a little by the time I rang the doorbell. I only had to wait a few seconds before Mrs. Silverman let me in.

“Hi, Jackson, how are you?”

“Um … okay. Is Adam home?”

“Yeah, go on in. He’s in his room.”

I walked down the hall and knocked on the door.

“Mom, I told you I’m not hungry!”

“It’s Jackson,” I said through the door.

He flung it open and stared at me, taking in my paint-splattered, slightly damp clothes. “What happened?”

“Remember when you told me to ask you about the Latin stuff or whatever?”

Adam yanked me into his room and slammed the door shut. “Spill.”

“Am I supposed to show you the message again?”

“I know what it says. That was only if you jumped back to before I wrote the note.”

I paced around the room, telling him everything, starting with the incident in the park.

“This is so weird,” he mumbled. “You’re from the future and this isn’t your home base, so that means I won’t remember anything. Maybe this has happened lots of times … of course, I wouldn’t know and neither would you, if it’s your future self who jumps back to see me.” He spun around and looked at me, his eyes bugging out. “I wonder how many times we’ve had this exact same conversation!”

“Focus, Adam! Crazy CIA dudes are waiting for me to come out of a locked bathroom two days from now!”

He shook his head like a swimmer emerging from a pool. “Sorry. The message is just a code. One I made up years ago that no one will be able to decipher. I can teach it to you.”

I nodded slowly. “That way, in my present, I can tell you what’s going on without my father and his coworkers knowing.”

He grinned. “Exactly. And Jackson, I’ve never told anyone about this. I’ve only written messages in my code twice. The first time was nearly two years from now, which hasn’t happened yet … and the second one was a few weeks ago. I created the whole system in my head. They’re not going to figure it out easily.”

“I think the real question is … can I figure it out, and quickly?”

He nodded. “I think so.”

We dove into a major cram session. Adam was right. His spy language wasn’t
that
hard to decode.

“Okay, what now?” I returned to pacing. “I don’t know who I’m supposed to be more worried about … the CIA or the people they were trying to take down today … The redheaded dude from 2009 … he didn’t seem to have good intentions then or today, and my dad and his team went after him, so does that make the CIA good?”

Adam wrinkled his nose. “They
did
knock you out without your permission. Not exactly nice-guy behavior.”

“Do you think they want to kill me?” I asked.

His momentary silence reflected the many arguments I had gone through in my mind and his answer matched mine. “They would have done it already. Of course, if you give them everything they need, then maybe…”

“What’s my plan for when I go back? My dad already knows I’m from two years in the future. So that secret is probably out in the open.”

Adam shifted in his chair. “Okay … tell them you jumped once.” He paused. “No, once is a dead giveaway that you’re lying … say it’s been three times and the last time you ended up here and now you can’t do it anymore.”

I nodded in agreement. “Which is sort of true. I can’t go back to 2009.”

“Exactly, and since your dad knows something happened to 009 Holly, then he knows you’re not just hanging out two years in the past for fun. That you’re actually stuck.”

I was so relieved he said that, because giving Dad that information was an impulsive decision and I had been worried it wasn’t the right one. “Glad I did something right.”

“I think it should help,” Adam said. “I’ve read tons of government documents … just for fun. The more truth to your answers, the better. CIA agents are incredibly well trained in identifying liars. Give them some real details and see if you can get Dr. Melvin to accidently slip again, like he did with the genetics thing, and help fill in some of the pieces we’re missing.”

“I accidently let it slip that I’d seen Chief Marshall before,” I remembered.

“Yeah … but none of them know how or when. Don’t tell them about
that
dive into the past. The one with the secret underground hospital wing. But if you’re too secretive or guarded about everything, they’ll know you’re up to something.” He stared at me and lifted his eyebrows. “I’m sure your dad and the other CIA people expect you to be scared about finding out you can time-travel and the weird brain activity thing. You played that up pretty well with your dad and the doctor the other day.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. “This is going to be tough, fooling those guys.”

“Good luck.”

I didn’t waste any more time in my little excursion. I jumped again, hoping I could pull off this act. Chief Marshall was a very intimidating guy.