Silver Storm: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 2 Page 3

  And protect her? Kill for her? He didn’t do that anymore. He’d put in his time. Followed in daddy’s footsteps, first at West Point, then flight school, a few very long years fighting bad guys in the field and he should’ve been over the whole hero complex. But no. He was hard headed. After that, his father had sucked him into the world of government contracting and top-secret weapons development on the private side. Give him a rifle and a clear objective any day of the week over the last couple of years that he’d spent locked in the lab. He’d woken up from that insanity. Walked away. No thanks. That game was over. He’d made sure of it.

  9-1-1. Three numbers, a few questions, and she was someone else’s problem.

  He dialed the numbers, stared at the green Send button, then her face. Bandit’s head tilted in a sweet mixture of curiosity and all-out adoration as she stared at the woman. “Dumb dog.”

  He couldn’t do it.

  “Damn it!” He needed some kind of explanation from the mystery woman. She’d arrived practically on his doorstep, less than fifty yards from his home, in the middle of the most bizarre electrical event he’d ever seen. Curiosity might kill him, but he had to have some answers.

  Hell, maybe the Casper boys had sent her. Maybe he hadn’t been as thorough with his diversion and misdirection as he’d thought. He put the phone down and rubbed his hands on his thighs, unsure of what to do next. Gently shake her? Maybe a cold, wet cloth on her forehead? He snorted. Hell, how about a cold bucket of ice water over her head? That’d do the job.

  If his mother were here, he’d let her fuss over the mystery woman. Oh, how his mother would just love the drama. But she wasn’t here. The thought made his chest ache, so he buried it and sat on the edge of the couch, staring. He wasn’t an eight-year-old, he knew, but the loss was still fresh, and living in his boyhood home made it harder to stay objective. Especially when the problem was a beautiful, naked female in his personal space.

  Bandit tilted her tiny little head at him now and grinned like the know-it-all little female she was.

  “Shut up, Bandit. Stop looking at me like that.” Yes, the woman was smoking hot. Kissable. And that had absolutely nothing to do with his decision to talk to her before he turned her over to the local cops.

  Tim glanced in longing at the telephone one more time. Therein lies the easy road. And damned if he couldn’t take it.

  Some things never changed.

  He rubbed the side of his neck in frustration. The skin itched and burned like he’d just been bitten by a fire ant. Or electrocuted. Again. He walked to the kitchen area, stuck his neck under the faucet, and turned the cold water on as high as it would go. His hair had been kept short for most of the last ten years. After the accident, where a good portion of the longer style had been burned from his head, he’d said to hell with it and just kept it shaved.

  He shoved his whole head under the cold water and tried to gain some damn perspective. The scar was almost a year old, but it still hurt like hell once in a while. The docs called it Phantom Pain. Whatever. It itched on occasion, for no particular reason. With the tingling just getting started, Tim sighed. This, apparently, was going to be one of those occasions.

  Bandit barked and hopped up onto the couch, walking right on top of the woman and lying down on her torso like she had every right. Tim ignored her and stuck his neck back under the water, running possibilities through his mind. Gorgeous woman found naked in lake with no marks of any kind on her and seemingly in perfect health, except for the fact that she was unconscious. Oh, and she called him by name.

  Coming up with a big fat zero on this one.

  “Hi, baby.”

  Tim jerked at the soft voice, banging his head on the faucet and flinging water all over the counter and gray tile floor. He shut off the water and grabbed a hand towel, running it over his face, head, and neck.

  “You’re a cutie, aren’t you?” The coaxing songlike quality of the woman’s voice filled his basement, unnaturally loud in the silence. Bandit’s happy panting and snorting sounds carried to him as well. The little mutt was in doggie heaven.

  Tim draped the towel around his shoulders to catch stray drops of water and slowly approached the couch. The odd heat in his neck had settled to a slow, steady burn, so he ignored it completely. He didn’t want to scare the woman, but curiosity about her drove him forward. He realized it was genius to let the little fluff ball soften the woman up. Waking up to him might scare the shit out of her. He’d had grown men move across the street to avoid passing him on the sidewalk. As if he were a ’roid boy who couldn’t control himself. He’d electrocuted himself, repeatedly lied to his superiors, and nearly burned down an entire building to protect the civilian population. But they treated him like a monster on display, a big, scary monster.

  Idiots.

  “Hi. How you feeling?” He stopped about ten feet away, then decided he’d better not stand over her like a towering giant if he wanted her to talk. He sank onto one of the recliners, rested his forearms on his knees and laced his fingers together in front of him. No sudden moves, nothing to alarm her. He was not a small man. With his shaved head, tattoos, and scars, he knew he could be one mean-looking son of a bitch. And she was most likely a fairy-tale princess still looking for Prince Charming.

  Even more irritating that the thought would bother him.

  “Hi.” She blinked up at him, but her right hand continued to rub his spoiled runt-dog’s belly. “What day is it?”

  “It’s Tuesday morning.” Tim grabbed the towel off his shoulder and wiped a few stray drops of water off his forehead. “I pulled you out of Hendrick Lake about ten minutes ago.”

  She nodded, returning her attention to the dog.

  “You’re naked.”

  “He told me I would be.” Not a trace of shock or teasing in her manner. She continued to snuggle with his traitorous little dog. “Thank you for getting me out of the water. It was freezing cold.”

  “You were unconscious.”

  “Not exactly.”

  What the hell was she talking about?

  “It’s okay about my hair. I appreciated the effort. And thank you for being such a gentleman.” She sat up, tucking the blanket beneath her arms, showing a generous expanse of soft white skin and a long, elegant neck. The view was somehow more seductive now that the rest of her played peek-a-boo with his hungry eyes. Bandit growled a protest, then resettled on the woman’s lap. She laughed. Which was a good thing, because her preoccupation with the dog prevented her from seeing the red streaks he suspected were running up his neck to his ears.

  She’d been watching him the whole time? Listening to him?

  “Do you have some clothes I can borrow? We should really get going as soon as possible. They gave me Alexa’s address. But it’s really her husband we need. He’s the scientist. And we only have three days.”

  “Three days for what? Who’s Alexa? And what kind of scientist?”

  She stared at him as if he had two heads. “To save Chicago. Alexa’s a Timewalker like me, and I’m not sure. I think he’s a biologist or something.” For the first time, he noticed her fingers shaking. Bandit whined and bumped her small head underneath the woman’s palm. Her voice, when she continued, wavered a bit. “But that doesn’t really make any sense unless they think it’s something alive…” Her voice trailed off for a minute, but then she was studying him with a confused look on her face. “Didn’t they tell you anything about the mission?”

  The word “mission” pounded through his skull like thunder and he jumped to his feet. “I’m out of that game, sweetheart. Whatever half-ass idea you’ve got brewing in your head, you better get rid of it now. I’m out and they damn well know it.”

  She bit her lip and stared, clearly at a loss, shaking and breathing more rapidly. Acting as if she were scared. He wasn’t falling for it.

  “Who are you? Who sent you? And how do you know my name?”

  “The Archiver sent me to save Chicago. He gave me your name.
He said you’d help me.”

  “I’m done with that. I don’t save the world anymore.” Once was more than enough. He walked around the coffee table and sat down on the thick oak inches away from her. He’d never heard the term “Archiver” before, but it sounded just like something the Rear Admiral’s goons would come up with. And sending her to tempt him? Brilliant. But no matter how enticing the bait, he wasn’t biting. “Why don’t you call whoever sent you here and tell them to leave me out of it?”

  Slowly, as if she were afraid he was a snake that might bite, she lifted her hand and set her fingertips against the right side of his jaw. With a butterfly’s touch she turned his face away and pulled back the towel so she could see his neck, where his skin continued to burn.

  “But you have the Mark.” She placed cool fingers over the fiery area on his neck and held them there. Heat rolled through his neck and shoulder like he’d just sunk into a warm bath with a willing female on his lap. His whole body reacted to the unusual sensation and he scowled at her.

  “It’s a burn scar, sweetheart.”

  “I see the scar. But the Mark is there as well.” Her dark hazel eyes rounded in empathy and shared pain.

  Irritated at the pity in her eyes, the heat still flooding him, and the telltale bulge in his pants in reaction to it, he pulled from her grasp and marched to the beveled mirror hanging on the wall inside the elegantly tiled bathroom a few feet away. Turning his head to the side, he pulled on his neck, bringing his scar and the odd shape now imbedded within it into view in the mirror.

  What the fuck was that?

  Chapter Two

  “Look. I have it, too.”

  He turned back at her softly spoken invitation, stunned to see a Mark on the side of her neck that looked like an old hieroglyph in the rough shape of a circle, slightly open at the bottom, resting on a small line. It matched the new Mark on his neck exactly. Same size. Same place…

  “It’s called a Shen. It’s what they use to Mark us when we are Taken and sent through time, and to Mark those chosen to help us. My name is Sarah St. Pierre. You were chosen to help me, Timothy Daniel Tucker. The Archiver Marked you.”

  “That’s impossible.” Tim shook his head, waiting for the next insane lie to fall from her lips. It wasn’t the Mark that he called a lie. It was there, in his flesh. How and why he had no idea. No, it was her name that threw him for a loop. A name that made her a liar. Sarah St. Pierre was a name he knew, a name everyone who lived along any beach on Lake Michigan knew, a name a dozen different conspiracy theorists and cold case enthusiasts had romanticized over for a couple of decades or longer.

  “Afraid not.”

  “How tall are you?”

  “Six foot.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “I used to be an Olympic athlete. Before I was a Timewalker, I played professional beach volleyball and windsurfed in competitions. Why?”

  Tim crossed his arms over his chest and studied her for several minutes. She didn’t squirm, blink, or bat an eyelash at him. Her hazel-green eyes, eyes that had won the hearts and souls of thousands of volleyball fans from the covers of sports magazines, stared straight into his. She appeared to utterly and completely believe what she was saying to him. She was tall. She had an athlete’s body. She looked so very familiar. Still. “It’s impossible.”

  “Why do you keep saying that?”

  “Sweetheart, I don’t know what kind of mind game you are trying to pull, but Sarah St. Pierre is an urban legend. She disappeared more than twenty-five years ago. Working theory on her disappearance is that she was hit by lightning while windsurfing. Body never found. She’s dead.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.” Tim raced upstairs to his old high school bedroom, rifling through a complete collection of Sports Illustrated magazines in the trunk at the foot of his bed. His mother had never bothered to change his bedroom, and now that they were gone, he couldn’t bring himself to change anything in her elegant and highly decorated domain, which meant the entire upper floors. But, on the good side, he knew exactly where to go to find the special summer issue. He remembered the date because his grandmother had lived in the town of Grand Haven the day of the freak storm. She’d even been interviewed by a national news station because her home lined the beach where Sarah St. Pierre’s windsurfing board and sail had washed ashore…when he was in grade school.

  He grabbed the magazine and ran back down the stairs. Then stopped in his tracks, frozen. There she was, on the cover.

  Glancing from the magazine to the woman sitting on his couch and back, he walked up to her and held the photograph next to her face.

  “What the f…” Perfect match, right down to the freckle at the corner of her left eye and the tiny scar centered under her perfectly pink lower lip. The quintessential all-American girl next door. Sunshine in a bottle.

  She attempted a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Told you so.” She stood, and he couldn’t help but notice that for once he faced an incredibly sexy woman whose lips were a scant few inches from his own. He wouldn’t have to bend himself into a pretzel to kiss her.

  Squeezing his hands into fists to resist the temptation of placing them on her warm, soft shoulders, he stared at her, a million questions rolling around inside his head. His mouth froze, incapable, for once, of asking any of them. Three days. Save Chicago. Missing woman arrives naked via lightning storm twenty-seven years after her mysterious disappearance. Archiver. Shen. Scientist. Freaky Mark on his neck.

  Shit. The fact that he was considering the possibility that any of this were true proved that he’d finally, completely lost his mind.

  Inside his sick and twisted head he heard the theme music from the Mission Impossible movies cranking at top volume and then the voice… “Your mission, should you choose to accept it…”

  All the while her eyes held him captive and the flesh of his scar burned anew, like someone had taken a branding iron to it in the exact shape of that strange Mark beneath her ear.

  Sarah studied the man before her and tried to reconcile what she’d been told with the fierce, hard-core, tough-as-nails ex-soldier who was supposed to help her. He wasn’t soft. He didn’t inspire thoughts of gentle wooing or sugar-coated realities. She couldn’t imagine him running around at the beach playing volleyball and flirting with the over-exposed, too-tanned, summer beach bunnies. He didn’t fit in her sunny-side-up version of the world.

  He was dark, brooding, and grumpy. Not at all what she had in mind for a husband. She’d always envisioned herself marrying a happy-go-lucky blond who loved to laugh, had a dimple in his cheek, and had an optimist’s cheer always near the surface. She needed that lightheartedness.

  She was dark. She was intense and competitive, always driven to do more, always waiting for the other shoe to drop, constantly fighting the fire in her gut pushing her on because, as a rule, people either disappointed her or died. Both outcomes hurt like hell, and she worked her butt off to make sure neither would permanently cripple her.

  Now she had no choice. The newly shining Mark of the Shen was still hot to the touch on his thickly corded neck. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him and he moved like a cagey predator, always watching his back, analyzing every sound. Constantly alert. That was how she would describe him. She doubted a spider could crawl across the floor even half a room away without him noticing it. Judging by the tense lines around his eyes, she doubted he slept much either.

  He was a few inches taller than she, which was saying something. And he had to outweigh her by at least fifty pounds of rock-solid chest and bulging muscles showcased to perfection by soft denim jeans and a snug, wet, molded-to-every-muscle, jersey cotton T-shirt. His head was shaved, and she guessed this chosen hairstyle had something to do with the jagged scar about three inches wide that began behind his right ear. The scar traveled down his head to curve around the side of his neck, across his collarbone and disappear beneath his d
ark green T-shirt.

  He’d been hurt at some point, burned. The thought didn’t sit well with her and she found herself fighting the urge to trail her fingertips over the pale pink skin and trace it with her lips.

  Once she’d explored there, she’d start on the tattoo playing peak-a-boo with her from beneath the shirt’s collar on his left. If he’d had hair, it would probably be coffee colored to match the arrogant flare of his eyebrows. Startling gray eyes assessed her every move, studied her face. Stared at her lips. How utterly ridiculous that she would be hungering for a kiss, wondering how it would feel to be in his arms while he was most likely thinking of a hundred important, relevant, tactical questions that she couldn’t answer.

  Turning away from temptation, Sarah tried not to stare at everything around her, but it was all so strange. The Archiver had warned her that things had changed. She’d scoffed. How much could things really change in just a few years? But looking around Tim’s basement at all the bizarre boxes, gadgets, and remote controls, she was out of her league and too exhausted at the moment to figure it all out.

  Tim mumbled something about getting them both some dry clothes and disappeared up the stairs again, leaving her free to explore. She wrapped the blanket around herself as best she could and prayed her legs wouldn’t collapse as she wandered toward the large black rectangle hanging from the wall directly across from the couch. There were no buttons on the front, no numbers or any way to turn the thing on.

  “That’s the T.V.” Tim spoke from behind her and she jumped at the sound of his voice.

  “Where’s the cable box? And the control panel?” Sarah ran her hands along the front of the smooth black frame. “It’s so thin. How do you turn it on?”

  “Well, it’s hooked into the Internet through the gaming system right now.” He lifted a remote control that looked like it could operate a spaceship and began pushing buttons. He might as well have been speaking Greek to her.