Unraveling (29 page)
“Janelle, your dad…”
And he pulls away.
“It’s my fault he’s dead. I killed him.”
It’s like I’m stuck outside—like the world has just tilted off balance, like a wall of bulletproof glass has just shot up in between us so that even though we’re separated by only inches, we’re a world away.
My mouth dry, I can’t form words. In fact, all my senses have just turned off. My ears refuse to hear Ben’s words. My skin can no longer feel the heat. My nerve endings are all dead.
I’m finally broken—more broken than I was days ago when my body lay dead on the side of the road by Torrey Pines Beach.
Broken. There’s no other way to describe it. My insides are cracking apart, imploding. Nothing can give me life again—nothing can make me whole. Not even Ben.
This is Just Too Much.
I can’t breathe. I can’t even stand right.
But when he reaches for me again, I
can
jerk away.
Part of me wants to go back to the beach that day and go get Nick. Instead of playing Independent Woman, I could have just been Helpless Female and I never would have gotten hit by that truck. I never would have let Ben Michaels into my life. A part of me even wishes that Ben had just left me there to die after the truck hit me. What good has rising from the ashes of death and being resurrected even done me? My father is dead, Jared is devastated, and my mother needs to be committed. And the one good thing in my life—Ben—is actually the tipping point, the reason everything fell apart.
Part of me even wishes I’d never pulled him out of the ocean that day to begin with. None of this would have happened, then.
Or would it have happened anyway?
“What do you mean?” I ask, forcing the words through.
“I shouldn’t be here.” Ben’s voice breaks on the last word.
“But you didn’t kill him?”
“Not physically, no, but it’s my fault he’s dead.” He turns away.
The relief that washes over me is a palpable thing, like a cool ocean breeze or a shot of pure oxygen. I can suddenly breathe normally again. Of course Ben didn’t kill my dad.
“Don’t you get it? Every moment that I spend in this universe, every minute, every second, is
wrong
. I’m altering the course of events in a world where I’m not even supposed to exist.”
“Ben Michaels, changing the world. Awfully self-important, don’t you think?” Even though I know exactly what he means, I can’t help myself. Mostly because I
want
him to belong here. With me. Because it wouldn’t feel so right when his arms are around me if he wasn’t supposed to exist here.
Ben laughs bitterly. “I wish I were. I wish I were.” He pauses in his pacing and sits down on the couch before burying his face in his hands. “Butterfly effect: A seemingly insignificant incident can cause an infinite chain of events. Think of what a significant incident does.”
“Your existence isn’t what killed my dad. A person killed him, and—”
“I’m not supposed to be here. I don’t belong here.” He looks up. “Those people who died in that earthquake, that’s on me. All of this is on me.”
“You don’t know that’s what this is!” I swallow and make an effort to lower my voice. “Chaos is the natural state of life. You can’t control chaos. You can’t control life—and you know it. You’re here now. You’ve been here for seven years. Fucking deal with it.”
“But just my being here could mean everyone is going to die.”
“You don’t know that!” I scream. Not because I don’t believe it. I see what he’s thinking. I get it. I don’t even know what we’re arguing about anymore, just that I need to scream at him, and then kiss him until I’m not scared anymore.
Of course the logical part of me worries he’s right. But there’s another part of me that’s dead convinced he’s wrong. Because there’s another option. “What’s to say you coming through the portal and ending up here wasn’t what was meant to happen in the first place? What if you didn’t belong
there
?”
Because the truth of it is I can’t imagine a world that says Ben doesn’t belong with
me
.
T
he weirdest thing I notice after the earthquake is that there’s water everywhere. Streets and sidewalks are awash with water that got shaken out of nearby swimming pools. Everywhere you look, you can’t see more than a handful of feet in front of you because of the combination of smoke from nearby fires and the layer of dust that’s just hanging in the air. Some buildings look pristine, like nothing happened, and then others—maybe ones right next to them—have their roofs caved in, or their garage taken out by a tree.
I’m getting out of Alex’s car when Ben leans forward and says, “Maybe you shouldn’t go alone. Should someone sit in another booth or up at the bar to keep an eye out?”
“This isn’t some undercover cop show,” I say as I shift my swimming backpack on my shoulders. “From my interactions with him, Barclay seems like a jerk, but he’s still one of the good guys.”
Ben looks at Alex, like he’s not sure he should take my opinion without male corroboration, but thankfully, Alex knows who his real friend is, and nods. “She’ll be fine.”
I slam the door without waiting to hear what one of them will say next. Jared is safely at a friend’s house for the next three hours, and Struz is dealing with fallout from the earthquake. Mission Valley, where the 5 and the 163 all meet the 8, suffered the most damage. Reports are coming in about the death toll climbing, and the beach towns are supposed to get hit extra hard too once the aftershocks start rolling in. Right now the biggest concern is whether the quake will create a tsunami. The news is predicting a couple of thousand deaths and billions of dollars’ worth of property damage.
Chili’s in Mira Mesa is closed, of course, but luckily for me, Whole Foods is still open, and Barclay agreed to meet me there instead.
Apparently Barclay is sort of a slacker, so he didn’t cancel on me to go put in time helping emergency responders, like Struz did.
Power is out all over the city, and the fact that Whole Foods is dimly lit gives this meeting a sort of sinister, illegal feel that makes me shiver a little. That and the fact that every housewife within a ten-mile radius is here now or has been here already, rushing through the aisles, fighting over canned goods and bottled water and anything else that won’t go bad. Things they left—like economy-size packages of paper towels and crates of oranges—are overturned and strewn in the aisles. It looks like a tornado went through here.
I step over some discarded and smushed fruit and head toward the café, where I’m supposed to meet Barclay.
Alex, Ben, and Elijah all have the photo of alias Mike Cooper, and they’re going to attempt to drive around and figure out which gas station it is—but who knows how far they’ll get with all the traffic. Despite my objections, Alex and Ben are working together on all the gas stations north of University, Elijah is on his own on the south side, and Reid is apparently stuck at home with his parents.
Barclay’s already waiting for me with a beer and a slice of pizza. “So Tenner, what’ve you got for this meet-up?” he asks as I slide into the seat across from him.
It looks like he’s the only one in the seated café.
I guess most people are taking the whole “go home and stay home” thing seriously.
“My questions first,” I say, sliding the picture of alias Mike Cooper across the table. “Can you find this guy for me? He sometimes goes by the alias Mike Cooper.”
Barclay glances at the picture and shrugs. “What do you want with him?”
I debate explaining what I found on my dad’s computer, but if he doesn’t already know how alias Mike Cooper factors into the case, I don’t want to tell him. Barclay strikes me as the kind of guy who’d be likely to find Cooper and not tell me—just go for the glory and take all the credit himself. And he can have the credit, but unless the FBI is ready to jump forward leaps and bounds with what we know about science, it’s not going to do us much good in the scheme of things.
Instead I say, “I just want to talk to him.”
Barclay looks at the photo again. “He looks a little old for you. Is this about drugs?”
I roll my eyes. “Stop being such a dipshit. Can you do it?”
“Of course I can, but what do I get?”
“These are the files my dad had for the current case you guys are working,” I say, opening the backpack and retrieving them. I’ve already been through them forward, backward, and upside down, and there’s nothing here I haven’t seen yet. But I’ve made copies of everything just in case.
“Case files? I have access to these at the office.”
“I doubt that.” Dealing with Struz would have been easier if I thought he’d believe me—and keep me in the loop. “This is everything, plus all my dad’s notes. But if you don’t want them, I’ll just keep them.”
“No, I’ll look at them.” He’s trying to keep up the nonchalant act, but I can see in his eyes how much he wants them. When he reaches for them, I pull back.
“And you’ll find alias Mike Cooper for me?”
“I said I would,” Barclay says. “C’mon, give ’em up.” When I do, he adds, “You should quit the whole junior-investigating thing, though, and leave this stuff to the people who know what they’re doing.”
“You appear to be doing a bang-up job so far,” I say, because I just can’t deal with his condescending attitude. “Do you have any idea what did that to the people in that house—”
“I told you to stay in the car, there was no reason you had to see that—”
“—how to shut off that countdown?”
He stops talking over me and reaches out and grabs my arm. His voice is low, serious, and a little frightening. “What do you know about the countdown?”
G
one is the arrogance and condescension, almost like he flipped a switch, and I realize I’m meeting Taylor Barclay, FBI agent, for the first time. Before this I was just dealing with a jerk who underestimated my intelligence and dismissed me, but this guy, with the tight grip on my arm and the fierce determination on his face—this is a guy I don’t want to mess with.
I try to jerk my arm out of his grip, but he holds steady and pulls me across the table so I’m closer to him. “I said, what do you know about the countdown?”
“It’s in the files,” I hiss back at him. “A UIED with a countdown. No one knows how to disarm it. My dad thought it was connected somehow to the bodies.”
He lets go of my arm, and I pull it away from him and lean back as Barclay starts to flip through the files. I’m tempted to say something about his unnecessary use of force, but I don’t. Instead I sit still and quiet and try not to let on how much my arm hurts from the way he grabbed it.
I knew what I was getting into when I decided I wanted to play with the big boys.
I’m trying to think of something to say to him, some way to right the scales of control again, so I’m the one with the upper hand, when I have that sick feeling again, and there’s a quick jerk beneath me, like a car just ran into the building.
Barclay’s beer falls off the table and shatters on the floor. A collection of screams go up through the store, and I hear a rumbling—products shaking and vibrating against the floor.
“Shit,” I say. It’s an aftershock. Not as strong as the earthquake this morning, but it doesn’t matter. It’s just emphasizing the fact that this is a colossal waste of time. I think of Jared, and I know I should be with him, or at least be around when he gets home, to make sure he’s okay.
I look down and grab my backpack, pulling a twenty out of my wallet for the food. Any more conversation with Barclay is a waste of time. “This is a sign,” I mutter to myself.
Apparently, a little too loud. “A sign of what?” Barclay asks.
“The apocalypse.”
The asshole laughs. “The
apocalypse
apocalypse? Like four horsemen, pestilence, all that?”
And because I’m frustrated and I hate how helpless I feel—like I’m wasting what are potentially the last precious moments of my life sitting here with one of the biggest jerks I’ve ever met—I just tell him the truth. “I was thinking two universes colliding and effectively destroying each other. How about that?”
And then I get up and walk out. I need to go. I’ll wait at home for Jared. Hopefully Alex has had better luck.
It takes me about fifteen minutes to walk home, but when I’m there I find a package in front of the door. It must have been delivered before the earthquake.
It’s addressed to my dad.
My legs feel like Jell-O, and I just have to sit down. So I do—right there on the worn
WELCOME TO EARTH
mat that my dad bought forever ago. I hold the box, and for a second I don’t know if I’m actually going to open it. Not because it’s technically illegal to open mail that doesn’t belong to you, but because I’m not sure I want to know what’s inside.
But I only hold on to it for a second. Because I have to know.
Using my keys to cut through the tape seems to take forever, and the only thing I can hear is the ripping of cardboard as I pull it open.
When I see what’s inside, I realize I’ve been holding my breath, and I lean my head back against the door with a thud and close my eyes to keep from crying. It’s for Jared. It’s a
Firefly
poster, signed by each of the cast members. The inscription at the top reads “To Jared.” And then Nathan Fillion’s signature is at the bottom. It’s perfect.
My dad has—had—an eBay addiction. Sometimes the strangest things showed up on our doorstep because he’d been mildly interested in something listed for a penny, and then he’d gotten so caught up in winning the bidding war that we had some ridiculous toy from the 1980s that cost over a hundred dollars.
I don’t know how much this poster was, but I know it’s a Christmas present. It doesn’t matter that it’s only September. My dad never rushed out to buy presents on Christmas Eve. He bought us presents year round and stored them in odd places we’d never think to look. It made opening presents that morning that much more exciting, because each present came with a story—where he found it, how long he’d had it, where it had been hiding.