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“It doesn’t matter. I’m here now.”
“Cat,” Michael persisted, interrupting them. “What is going on?”
“Damn it, Michael. Shut up.”
When she turned around, we both took a step back. Her usually serene face was twisted into a venomous expression of loathing. “The Boy Scout routine is old.”
“I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Are you really with him?” Michael asked, his voice thick with anger.
“I realize you have the whole young, idealistic thing going on, but surely you can catch up.” She snaked her arm around Jack’s waist, leaning her head against his shoulder.
He was looking at me, and his eyes no longer lacked pigment. They were bright blue. And terrifying.
There was a moment of complete silence before Michael spoke again. “Why?”
“Because Jack and I could do more together than we could apart. Because sitting on the sidelines for all those years made me sick.” She stopped, looking up at Jack. When she noticed his focus was on me, she cleared her throat and her fingers gripped the gun more tightly. I wrapped my hands around Michael’s arm.
“You didn’t sit on the sidelines,” Michael argued. “You’re an integral part of what we do. We can’t travel without you.”
“You couldn’t travel without me,” she corrected. “Liam hit a scientific jackpot. He created molecularly complete exotic matter—in an ingestible formula. Unfortunately, the exact formula went up in smoke with him when he died.”
Michael’s muscles grew tense under my fingers. “That’s the reason you let us go back to save him. Because you wanted the formula.”
“When you discovered that you weren’t going to make it back from your little rescue mission, I thought I’d gotten rid of two problems I never expected Liam to come through that bridge with Emerson.”
“How could you do this?” Michael whispered. “Liam and Kaleb love you. You’re family to them.”
“No. Not family. Not even a poor distant relation.”
“That’s not true.” He took a step toward her. “Liam trusted you—”
Cat pointed the pistol at Michael’s head and cocked the hammer. The bullet slid into the chamber, the sound echoing off the office walls.
“Liam sampled my DNA to get that formula. He didn’t even know what he’d discovered, but he still wouldn’t give me a copy.” No hint of guilt for committing murder touched Cat’s eyes or tainted her voice. “So I used it against him. A misunderstanding kept me from retrieving the research before we killed him. As we all know, exotic matter can be quite destructive when it moves as fast as Ava can throw it.”
“Ava?” Michael said.
“The fire that incinerated the lab wasn’t normal, Michael.” Cat scoffed. “I really have to question how normal you are, as hard as we pushed Ava to distract you. Seduce you. Poor, poor rejected girl.”
“But why?” I asked, looking at each of them, my stomach turning as I thought of how Cat and Landers had manipulated Ava. I wondered if any of us really knew her at all. “Why did you do it?”
Jack answered, “I wanted the ability to time travel. There was no ‘recipe’ for the formula, but there was a full bottle of pills. Cat was willing to experiment.”
o;I’ll do my best to make sure you can.” He kissed his way across my cheekbone to my lips, his hands sliding under my jacket, his fingers burning against the cotton of my T-shirt. I couldn’t help thinking about how his hands would feel on my bare skin. “Or that you can’t handle it. Whatever you want.”
I wanted to be alone with him. Really alone. “Maybe we should take this back to my place.”
He lifted his head to look at me, a strange expression on his face. I let out a nervous giggle. “That sounded better in my head.”
“It sounded pretty damn good out of it.”
We reached the house without incident. It almost went too smoothly.
“Did I say thank you?” Michael asked as we ducked into Liam’s office. “If not, thank you.” He raised our joined hands to his lips and kissed the inside of my wrist.
“I can’t remember.” I couldn’t remember anything. Hello, erogenous zone. “And you’re welcome.”
He just grinned.
