“I plead the fifth.”
“Well, I think this is going to work out as long as you guys are careful. Aaron’s pretty good about keeping in the background. Just listen to his hunches.”
It takes me a few seconds to realize that he’s shifted away from talking about my personal life and is now on to work. And I decide not to point out that he wouldn’t be wearing that sling if he’d listened to Aaron’s hunches.
“Maybe you can help some of those kids. Michele was telling me about those two girls in London, and . . . well, somebody needs to do somethin’. And this way, you and Deo aren’t off on your own without any support.”
My phone vibrates in my back pocket, and I fish it out. Probably Aaron or Kelsey.
But it’s a text. And I don’t recognize the number.
I’ll never pause again, never stand still,
Till either death hath closed these eyes of mine
Or fortune given me measure of revenge.
Shakespeare again. Which leaves me absolutely no doubt who sent it.
“D? I need your phone.”
“Whyyy?”
“Just give it, okay?”
He hands it to me, and I push the button to open the window. Then I hurl both phones out, watching in the side mirror as they clatter down the road behind us. I feel ten pounds lighter, knowing that Cregg doesn’t have any way to contact me now.
“Was that really necessary?” Deo asks.
“Mmhmm. We’ll get you another one.” A huge yawn hits me in the middle of the sentence.
“You two go on and sleep if you can,” Porter says. “I’ll put on the radio to keep me company. Classical okay? Or we can do R&B.”
“You choose.”
When I close my eyes, Porter is playing finger piano on the edges of the steering wheel to something by Rachmaninoff. Molly would know it, I’m sure, but I’m too tired to dig through her files . . .
. . . and the moonlight on the water reminds me of the glimpse of the river from Memorial Hall that night, right before everything went up in flames. But mostly, it’s just quiet. And peaceful. And as close to private as we’re likely to get, at least until my head is entirely my own again.
I lean back against Aaron’s chest. “It’s nice. Are you sure this is still Ohio?”
He laughs and pulls me closer. “Hey, it’s not all corn and cows. But to be honest, I think that bit”—he points off in the distance—“that might be West Virginia.”
And then he kisses me, and I don’t give a damn what state we’re in, because this is where I’m supposed to . . .
. . . always to-mah-ah-row
I jolt awake suddenly. Porter has swapped out the classical station for R&B, and abandoned the steering wheel piano. Now he’s singing “Lean on Me,” in a mostly on-key duet with Bill Withers.
The moon is gone. Aaron’s gone. But it’s so warm and it would be so easy to slip back to sleep. There’s a blanket—no, a jacket—around my shoulders. It’s not mine or Deo’s, so I guess it must be Porter’s.
Was that thing with Aaron just now a dream or a vision?
Don’t ask me.
I wasn’t asking you, Daniel. I was asking Jaden.
Um . . . I don’t know. It’s hard to tell when you’re half asleep. But the visions aren’t all bad. Sometimes, they let you experience the good things twice. And even if it was a dream, doesn’t mean it won’t happen, right? In this case, it’s win-win. Just pick one.
Hmm. But which to pick? A vision of something good that you know is going to happen? Or a dream that would be really nice to work toward?
I snuggle back under the jacket and close my eyes, still trying to decide which is better as I drift off to sleep.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The idea for this book popped into my head in early 2013, and I wrote the first five chapters in less than a week. Shortly after that, my first novel, Timebound, won the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, and Delphi was shelved as I focused on completing The CHRONOS Files. So first and foremost, I want to thank Anna, Deo, and the rest of the crew for having the patience and perseverance to stick with me, and for remaining clear and vivid in my mind even as it was being mauled and twisted by time travel. Shifting gears took a little longer than I’d planned, but coming back to Anna’s story was like crawling into a warm sweater hung at the back of the closet when the first autumn chill arrives.
There’s not as much history in this book as in The CHRONOS Files, but I want to continue my tradition of highlighting the bits of fact that hang out in my fiction.
While the Delphi Project is my own creation, predecessor programs like Stargate and Project MK-ULTRA are very real, and the military’s remote viewing program is well documented.
All three fires predicted by the fictional Delphi psychic actually did occur on the same day—April 19, 1993.