Silver Storm: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 2 (17 page)

When he could move, he nuzzled her neck with his nose and allowed the sweet scent of roses and sunshine to sooth his soul. Sarah was his now. He’d kill anyone who tried to hurt her.

They lay entwined and he knew she felt it too, the ebb and flow of warmth, the pulses of soothing heat that filled his body with peace.

He rolled to the side and pulled her to lie across his chest before covering them both with the blanket. She wasn’t ready to hunt for the ship just yet. He’d make her rest, then eat. Then they’d figure their next move out together.

She fell asleep almost immediately. He had a long time to lay there, hold her, and think…

<><><>

Sarah blushed as she pulled a comb through her still wet hair. Their lovemaking had blown her mind, her body, and her heart wide open to the soldier sitting across from her. They’d fallen asleep for a couple of hours, naked, limbs entwined, still connected in the most intimate way possible. It had been embarrassing to wake up and feel him still inside her…for about half a minute. Then desire had come roaring back as he shifted against her and his erection returned with a vengeance, filling her from the inside out. The sensation of him growing within her had triggered an immediate answering heat and they hadn’t even tried to deny each other.

Sarah sighed at the memory. Tim was big. He was smart. He was brutal, unforgiving, and trained to kill.

Maybe he was perfect for her after all.

A quick shower, always touching, and now dressing in some more of her new clothing made her feel almost normal. Almost.

The hungry animal she saw lurking behind his gaze as he watched her shower then dress made her feel decidedly not-normal. Men did not look at her like that. They just didn’t. Until Tim. She didn’t even lie to herself about it. She relished his lust, reveled in the memory of their mind-blowing orgasm-fest. In fact, she wanted him again. She could still feel the firm surety of his fingers on her flesh, his mouth on her breasts, his lips and tongue tasting her like he could never get enough.

Jesus, that kind of attention could be addictive. She flinched at the blasphemous thought. “Sorry, Gran.”

Her grandmother would have washed her mouth out with soap for that one.

“What?” Tim sat across from her at the small table, bare foot covering hers beneath the chair, a map of Chicago on the surface with circles and grids.

“Nothing. Sorry.”

Tim wanted to plan, to figure out the best way to hunt the bad guys’ ship. He’d asked her the one question she hadn’t thought of…what if the girl never left Chicago? Ever. What if that was why the bad guys were camped out here? She couldn’t leave. She had to defend the city at all costs.

They’d already spent a couple of hours poring over Luke’s flash drive and all the data on geomagnetics and quantum physics. Theories and formulas and a bunch of words that may as well have been Greek. Tim was in his element. She was no help at all.

She wasn’t stupid. She had a journalism degree and had planned to go to work in the field after she’d finished playing volleyball. But more than twenty-five years of life and discovery had passed her by. Newspapers were, according to Tim, dead or dying. Everything now was on the computer, out there in space somewhere in “the cloud” on his iPad gadget.

She tried to comprehend the changes, but found she didn’t care right now. She needed to worry about survival before she worried about the future of journalism. That meant physics. Mathematical theory. She could understand general terms and ideas, but she wasn’t a physicist or electrical engineer. Magnetics and electricity were beyond her ability to decipher and absorb in a couple of hours.

Especially when her mind was constantly preoccupied with thoughts of getting Tim naked again.

Her attention glued to the steel-like strength of his shoulders where Tim leaned over studying a map of Chicago and her gaze wandered the curves of his neck, jaw, and head. Her lips longed to follow.

Seriously, this was ridiculous. She wasn’t a sex-starved teenager. She had to find a way to take out that ship before it could wipe out Chicago, and as much as the thought disappointed her, sex with Tim wasn’t going to help her with that. She didn’t know who the girl was. She only knew the girl’s soul was young, and in Chicago somewhere. There were way too many people at risk to try to find her in time, nine million too many.

Chapter Nine

Maybe if she had ten years, Luke’s fancy telepathy that Tim had told her about over coffee, and no enemies hot on her trail she could find the girl. Even then, she doubted it would be possible. The child was powerful, but she was very young and didn’t have a clue why she was hunted. Sarah was still in shock trying to digest the fact that these enemies were dedicating so much energy into killing one little human girl.

Why didn’t really matter. It didn’t have to make sense. Maybe she should tell the Archiver and Celestina. They had power. Perhaps they could help her protect the girl.

Perhaps not. And Sarah had no way to get in touch with them, other than attacking their ship again to get their attention. Maybe Luke could get them a message. But was that the right decision? The girl was human. Celestina and the Archiver were not.

And what would she say?
Hey, guys, I found a spirit down here that the Triscani want to kill. She’s human, but I don’t know who she is, or where she lives. Just keep your eyes open.

That just sounded stupid. They obviously couldn’t track her in the energy fields, not like Sarah could. And what if they wanted her dead? What if they didn’t? What if they wanted her alive so they could use her power themselves?

No. And the more people who knew, the harder it would be for Sarah to protect her.

The poor girl was stuck with Sarah as a champion. So, now she knew, it wasn’t just Chicago these aliens were after, it was a baby. But why? And how was she supposed to keep this girl alive when she had no idea who she was or how to find her in the real world?

But whatever the reason for their hunt, the Triscani wanted her dead. And according to Celestina, The Triscani and the Archivers had been at each other’s throats for almost a thousand years. Must be save-the-world important. Then again, what wasn’t with the whole Timewalker theme?

No pressure, Sarah
. No pressure at all. She’d felt like a cheater when she’d learned that Alexa’s mission had saved seven billion people and hers was just Chicago, a measly nine million.

Oh, wait. Oops. Make that nine million people to save and an entire race of evil creatures to evade. As far as she knew, Alexa’s problems had been entirely human ones.

Way to one-up that tiny little blonde. If she had a Champagne glass she’d salute her horrible victory right now.

If Chicago were attacked, would the girl go down with it? Was that why they were attacking a single geographical point this time? It was her best guess. Celestina did say the Triscani had never done that before…

This felt like a messed-up version of
Terminator.
She’d watched the movie a few months before the lightning strike that took her away from her old life. So, she was Kyle Reese, sent through time to save a kid, the aliens were the Terminator, and little John Connor was a baby girl.

Trouble was, Kyle Reese died in that movie. He won, but he died.

Did that make Tim her very own Sarah Connor? She studied the chiseled lines of his face and bit back a laugh. Her name was Sarah, not his. And the thought of him in one of the popular mullet-style 1980s hairdos didn’t fly. She kinda liked his bald head and hard edges. She was stubborn and strong-willed, but she wasn’t used to death and war. Battle. He was. She could see it in the ghosts behind his eyes and the alert way he moved. His vigilance allowed her to relax a bit and trust that he’d know if something went wrong. She could relax and think…about sex.

Crap. Focus. Map. They were looking at a map.

“Okay, let’s hit the northern edge and work our way south.”

Sarah followed his fingers as his hand flowed from grid to grid on the map. “Okay.”

“And you’re sure you can take out the ship without killing yourself?” Tim’s intense gray eyes focused on her face like laser beams, making it impossible for her to lie.

“I think so.”

“You think so.” Tim sighed and rubbed his head with a free hand, a frown on his face. “You think so. That’s not good enough.”

Sarah shrugged and sat up straighter in her chair. “It’s all I’ve got.”

“I know, sunshine. I know.” Tim rose from his seat and her foot lost contact with his as he walked around the table to stand behind her. The energy overload didn’t hit her like a sledgehammer this time, instead it stretched and pulled between them like invisible strands of warm taffy. She instinctively knew if he went more than a couple of feet away from her, those strands would break. But for now, it was enough to know she wouldn’t be dropped to her knees every time her skin lost contact with his.

He felt it too, and smiled as his hands came to rest on the back of her neck and shoulders. He massaged the knots out of her tense muscles with pinpoint and painful precision. She let her head fall back against his stomach and relaxed into his care.

“We’ll start up north. And this time you won’t ride the lightning alone.”

She nodded and closed her eyes, afraid he’d see the tears that gathered despite her brain’s fierce demands to stay strong. She would do what she had to do. She’d fight to the death if she had to. But she wasn’t strong enough to resist the solace of his touch and found that she was no longer sure she even wanted to try.

<><><>

Wednesday, 8:04 p.m.

They drove for two hours, her hand wrapped in the warmth of his between them in his truck. They fought traffic and hit the northern edge of Chicago along the shores of Lake Michigan as the sun was setting. Twilight. Perfect flurry of kinetic energy, wind shifts, and power flowing through the water as the top layers of the lake released the sun’s heat back into the approaching night. A dense cover of clouds hovered over them from the high humidity and lingering warmth.

“Why did we start up north?” Sarah was curious. He’d been adamant from the moment they’d pulled out the map.

“A hunch.” He shrugged and pulled into a parking spot, cutting the truck’s engine.

“A hunch.” Sarah raised her eyebrows and waited. There was more to it than that. She could feel it.

Tim stared out the windshield as he spoke. “I’ve always had strong instincts. I don’t know how to describe what I feel. I just know sometimes. It saved my team too many times to count. It got to the point where the CO would come to me in private and lay out a mission and ask me if my gut was talking or not. Most times, I got nothing. Sometimes, I’d tell him to pull the plug or rethink it. I can’t explain it. I’d be sitting on the helo and see things in my head, things that the guys on the ground were dealing with. I’d know where snipers were before they fired, or where a bomb was buried. Stuff like that. The guys started calling me Prophet. I told them to stop, but it kind of became their thing, a superstition. Guys started asking for me to fly them, knew I brought guys home. The spook attached to our unit knew how accurate I was. He was a good man, but loyal to the Casper Project. I think he turned me in. I knew the top brass would turn me into a lab rat or bury me in some company think tank and never let me out. In fact, after my little chat with the Rear Admiral’s boys in the Casper Project, I figured if I didn’t get out, I’d disappear. The last mission I flew confirmed it.”

“So, you’re clairvoyant?”

Tim shook his head and finally looked her in the eyes. “I guess so. Sometimes.”

Sarah squeezed his hand in hers. She had to know. “What are you getting right now about this? About us?”

Tim’s jaw clenched and unclenched several times before he answered her. “Not a damn thing.”

“Well, that stinks.”

Tim burst out laughing and it completely transformed his face. She grinned back at him. “Yes. Yes, it does.”

They got out of the truck and walked toward the shoreline hand in hand like a couple of goo-goo-eyed teenagers. She couldn’t resist the urge to swing their joined hands as they walked.

“So, you said after the last mission you knew you had to get out. What happened?”

Tim snugged the backpack strap over his opposite shoulder and lifted their joined hands to his lips to drop a quick kiss on her fingers. “I got shot with a tranq dart while I was in the field waiting to pick up the team. Never should’ve happened. No one was supposed to be there. I was captured. There were three of us, but the people who took us weren’t interested in the others. It was obvious that they only wanted me. They wore masks. They took my blood. Drugged me and interrogated me all night, then dumped us at the embassy. I can’t prove anything, but they knew where we were going to be, and when.”

“And you think it was an inside job?”

“Yes. I think it was the Rear Admiral’s boys.”

“But why? Why would they do that to you? They’re supposed to be on our side.”

“Yes. And they saw me as a threat. I said too much and the recordings got back to the wrong people.”