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“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.”
Michael shook his head in disgust. “You’re both insane.”
Jack was quiet for a moment, his eyes calculating. “Are we really? Don’t we all have things we’d like to change in our pasts? Wrongs to right? Why wouldn’t one change devastating experiences, horrible history, if one had the choice? You know how that feels, don’t you, Emerson?”
I couldn’t speak. He’d hit too close to home.
The blue of Jack’s eyes had faded a bit, and it seemed as if his hair was no longer just blonde, but somewhat gray at the temples. “I always thought I could appeal to Grace to travel back and change things for me, if the opportunity presented itself. Kaleb dealt with so much; surely she would be sympathetic, understand my plight.”
“But she didn’t,” Michael said.
“She argued. Then she connected me to Liam’s death. I had to take action.”
My face went numb as I struggled against the nausea rising in my throat. “It was you. She didn’t try to commit suicide, or Kaleb would have felt it coming. He felt nothing. You tried to kill her.”
“I did not,” he protested politely. “I simply used my ability.”
“Your ability?” Michael asked. “Do you even have one?”
Jack laughed, a doubled-over, out-loud belly laugh. “Not an ability you’ve ever seen me use. Or rather, not one that you remember. I’ve not been allowed to use it since an unfortunate choice many moons ago. But I carry the same time-related ability gene as the two of you. Just not the travel gene.”
