Vortex (20 page)

I turned my head to the left and caught Senator Healy’s eye. He didn’t look angry
anymore, just gave me a tiny nod of approval. But for what? Maybe he was trying to
prove a point? That I could still watch, even when I thought I was slacking?

I needed to be watching now, figuring out why no one knew where my dad or Chief Marshall
were. Figuring out why I needed to befriend Stewart and what the hell was so important
about Kendrick’s focus.

“Another drink?” the bartender asked both of us.

I turned to him first. “Nothing for me.” Then I took a deep breath before facing Holly.
“Have fun at
Wicked
. I’ve heard it’s a great show.”

The first sign of guilt crossed her face as I stood up. She grabbed my arm and held
it. “It was fun … really.”

“Winning is always fun, right?” I stepped closer and smiled before touching my index
finger under her chin and rubbing the skin and sighing with relief when I felt the
familiar scar. I dropped my hands and walked away. She wasn’t exactly my Holly, but
I didn’t think she could be a clone, either—but I didn’t really know how that worked.

I only got a few steps away when Kendrick came over and swept me toward the dance
floor. “That little bitch. I could totally kick her ass right now.”

The irony of that statement was almost funny. “Don’t sweat it … seriously.”

“Just a warning, I’m not such a good dance partner,” she said, putting an arm around
my waist.

I pulled Kendrick close enough so I didn’t have to look her in the eye. Other than
fighting in self-defense practice, I had never been this close to Kendrick, and I
wondered if this was more evidence that the two of us were becoming friends. “Any
updates?”

She shook her head. “Just keep your eyes open.”

That was exactly what I did as we swayed in the middle of the dance floor to a song
I’d never heard before. I reverted to lip-reading because it was the most distracting,
but after a little while Brian’s voice emerged though my earpiece. I realized, within
seconds, that Stewart was standing right next to them with another tray of food.

“You wanna stay a little longer or … leave early?” Brian asked Holly, and the suggestive
tone to his voice made my stomach turn over and over.

She laughed and then said, “Leave early … totally.”

Now I had to look. I couldn’t help it. And the first thing I noticed was Brian’s hands
resting on her ass and his tongue being shoved down her throat. I groaned to myself,
but not so loud that I missed him mumble, “Don’t worry, I came prepared.”

I spun Kendrick around to face the other way and closed my eyes, absorbing the weight
of his words. It was like four fists punching me all at once.
He’s sleeping with her?
He stole my moment. One of my favorite Holly memories.

And now I’d have to figure out how to keep from killing him.

“I think you’re gonna dig a hole through my hand,” Kendrick whispered. I loosened
my fingers and then wiped my sweaty palm on my pants. “Sorry.”

I watched Holly retreat with Brian and felt a mixture of relief and emptiness. At
least I could focus the rest of the night. Drunkenly focus.

Just as I was about to scan the room again, I felt the vibration of my cell phone.

“Is this right?” Kendrick mumbled, now looking at her own vibrating phone. “Freeman
wants all of us?”

I shook my head. “That’s what it says … but why?”

“Let’s not make a scene leaving,” Kendrick whispered.

I nodded my silent agreement and we waited an agonizing thirty seconds for the song
to end before drifting casually out of the spotlight and over to a dark corner. My
heart raced with anticipation. Something big had to be happening if they were pulling
all of us away right in the middle of a mission.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

JUNE 16, 2009, 10:20
P.M.

We sped up our pace once we were in the lobby and far away from the front desk. “Any
idea how they want us to get underground?”

I felt someone brush up behind me and saw that it was Stewart. “Yep. And we don’t
even have to go outside.”

Kendrick and I followed her to an elevator at the end of a long hallway. As the doors
opened, Mason was right next to us, slipping in first.

“How do you do that, man?” I asked him. “I never see you.”

He smiled at me for a second and then nodded to Kendrick as the doors shut. “All right,
Doctor, you and I have to rewire this thing.”

I was sure my face reflected the confusion I felt, because Stewart explained. “You
need a key to go to the basement level … where the laundry room is.”

“Right … isn’t there a staircase?” I asked.

“God, Junior, when are you going to grow a brain?” she said, tossing her jacket onto
the floor. “The stairs also require a key, except there’s no electrical system we
can fool, like with the elevator.”

Mason and Kendrick were ignoring us. They already had the cover off the control panel
and were now sifting through wires.

“So steal a key from a maid. Seriously, it’s not rocket science,” I snapped.

“This is less risky. No outsiders involved,” Mason mumbled, with his eyes still focused
on the wires.

“I don’t buy that at all. Admit you just like taking shit apart,” I said.

Even though my stomach was fluttering with nerves, I had to smile at the image of
Kendrick, in her long pink dress and heels, ripping through wires like the freakin’
bomb squad. The confidence was the complete polar opposite of Kendrick trying to stitch
a dead body. I wondered what Michael would think if he saw her like this. In her element.

“Hook the red to the orange,” she told Mason.

“Got it,” he said, and then the elevator jolted downward.

“Nice work, Dr. Kendrick,” I said.

She smiled at me and then removed her shoes and held them in one hand. As the elevator
doors opened, Stewart and I both drew our pistols at the exact same time. If there
was one thing I could contribute to this team, it was a damn good shot … although
I’d never done any target-shooting while completely wasted. My aim might be a little
different.

We dodged several bins of white towels to get to a small opening in the floor. Well …
actually it was a manhole concealed by a small brown rug. I climbed the ladder first,
aiming my gun below, just in case. The second I landed on the ground, Agent Parker
and Agent Freeman walked right past me.

“Hey! What’s going on?” I asked. “Why are we crawling through the sewers to get to
the classrooms?”

Freeman glanced up and down the tunnels as more of us flooded through. “I got a page
from Healy who said to round all of you up. He must know something, if we’re aborting
the mission like this.”

I squinted, trying to see down the semidark tunnel. “Who are those two … up ahead?”

Freeman said the name of two of the agents who had also just completed their training
in France.

Kendrick, Stewart, and Mason had all touched ground by this point and were listening
carefully to Freeman. I couldn’t ignore the uneasy feeling that came over me. Something
wasn’t right. I had just been practically standing next to Healy … only minutes before
getting called.

“Why would he call everyone at once? Don’t some of us have posts to guard … or something?”
I asked Freeman.

“I’m not sure, Jackson. This wasn’t part of the original plan, but missions change …
you know that.” He glanced down the tunnel and then back at Parker. “Why don’t we
run ahead and check?”

“Sure,” Parker said, then he called over his shoulder, “See you guys in a few minutes.”

Kendrick walked next to me, still holding her shoes in one hand. “What’s on your mind?”

“I don’t know,” I said in low voice. “Something about this seems bad … really bad.
And Healy told me to—”

I froze in my spot, searching my memory for the assignment that Healy had given me.

Tell me what the Chinese ambassador and his friend are discussing
.

I had been distracted by my spotlight dance with Holly, but my mind didn’t fail me.
After playing the moment in my head over and over, I came up with one complete sentence
straight from the mouth of the Chinese ambassador.

“The children will be occupied.”
Children … as in baby agents … which was the majority of us … And Freeman was a baby
leader … usually that job fell to Dad or Marshall.

“I think we’re being set up,” I said immediately. My heart was racing, and even Stewart’s
attitude wouldn’t shake me from this new discovery.

“What are you talking about?” Stewart said with a groan.

“Something’s going to happen while all of us are being dragged away from the scene …
Think about it,” I insisted.

“It doesn’t matter,” Stewart said. “We do what we’re told.”

“You heard Freeman, this wasn’t part of the plan,” Kendrick said.

I glanced at Kendrick and then back at Stewart. “I’m going back.”

“Fucking idiot,” Stewart mumbled under her breath.

“I’m going with you,” Kendrick said.

I nodded, then we both turned around.

“Jackson, wait!” Mason said before trotting up beside me. “I’m coming, too.”

“Mason! What the hell are you doing?” Stewart shouted at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not turning around to face her.

“Whatever,” she grumbled. “Fucking traitor.”

Kendrick started to climb the ladder again and I looked over my shoulder at Mason,
his eyes on Stewart’s retreating form. “You can go with her. It’s okay, man,” I told
him.

He stared at me and shook his head. “Healy asked me to search the basement for explosives
an hour ago … me, as the expert in Futuristic Technology…”

I swallowed hard and forced down the very bad feeling. “Yeah, that is a little suspicious.”

*   *   *

After ten minutes of combing the basement for clues of any kind of attack, we were
all starting to feel a little stupid for going against orders.

All three of us turned a corner and walked down a narrow corridor, the hum of the
utility room coming from the right side. Mason suddenly skidded to a stop and Kendrick
and I smacked into him.

“Mason?” Kendrick said.

He put his hand on the doorknob to the utility room and then pressed his ear to it.
“Something’s different…”

He opened the door and Kendrick and I both looked over his shoulder.

“What the hell is
that
?” Kendrick said.

I followed her eyes to the floor in front of the water heater. “Oh, damn…”

The giant glass case lying on the floor with clear tubes of liquid running through
it was identical to the explosive we had encountered in Heidelberg. The one Emily
disabled.

“Is this … oh, God, it is, isn’t it?” Mason muttered.

“If you mean the weird-ass explosive Stewart found in Germany, then yes, it looks
the same,” I said, and then covered my tracks when he shot a glance at me. “Based
on her description anyway. I read the report a few times.”

Blood rushed to my face. My heart pounded at twice the pace of the tiny clock ticking
against the front of the bomb. Kendrick and Mason dropped down to their knees, eyeing
the foreign and most likely futuristic object from every angle. This was what they
did best. It wasn’t my territory, and yet most of Emily’s steps of disabling it had
stayed etched in my mind.

“There’s fourteen minutes left on this timer,” Kendrick said.

“This has to be a test,” Mason said. “If it were a real threat, why the hell would
the EOTs leave a clock counting down the minutes for us? To be polite?”

“I don’t know,” I said, slowly trying to put the logic together. He had a point, and
yet I’d seen this thing before and the EOTs
were
behind it.

“Just be careful, Mace,” Kendrick said, holding her breath as he removed the glass
cover.

Mason set the glass top beside him and brushed his fingers over a clear tube on the
outside. A pale yellow liquid floated inside it. “This one’s cold … could be—”

“Nitroglycerin,” Kendrick finished for him.

“As in dynamite?” I asked.

“In simple terms, yes,” Mason answered.

He touched the tube closest to him, with bright blue liquid inside it. I watched his
fingers wrap around it and start to tug. “If I just take this one off, I can get a
better look at the rest of it.”

“Wait!” I said, kneeling down beside Kendrick. Emily hadn’t done that first. Maybe
there was a reason. “Hold up, okay?”

They both looked at me, waiting to hear my not-so-brilliant plan. “I think you should
pull the pink one off first.”

“Why?” Kendrick asked.

Because a pint-sized time traveler did it that way.

“It’s just a guess. But I have good instincts with this kind of stuff.”

“Yeah, and what’s your specialty again?” Mason laughed derisively. “Seriously, Jackson.
Are you out of your mind? I’m not taking anything apart until I know for sure it won’t
blow us to pieces.”

“He’s right.” Kendrick pulled out her phone from her pocket and started punching in
buttons. “I’m calling Dr. Melvin.”

My stomach twisted in knots with every second that ticked down on that clock. Mason’s
eyes darted fast from one end of the bomb to the other, trying to find something he
could use. Sweat trickled down his forehead, causing his glasses to slide down his
nose.

I played Emily’s exact moves over and over in my mind while Kendrick mumbled descriptions
to Melvin on the phone. I could hear the frantic tone in his responses. He didn’t
have the answers.

“Nine minutes,” I said, throwing a panicked glance sideways at Kendrick.

Mason’s hands started to tremble and his breathing grew more and more ragged. “Dude,
keep your hands back,” he snapped at me.

“Yeah, Jackson’s here,” Kendrick said to Dr. Melvin, followed by a long moment of
silence. She covered the phone with one hand and turned to look at both of us. “He
says when it gets to six minutes, we have to get out. It’s protocol, if we aren’t
able to disable it.”