Chasing Silver Page 15

  Once upon a time, Remy would have been the same way. But once upon a time hadn’t even happened yet.

  “He needs to know the whole story, Nate,” she said, her voice even.

  Nathan shook his head. “No, I don’t think he does. Not right now. Not until we know more, at least.”

  “How much more do we need?” She snatched the sheets from him, then rose from the couch to cross to the small box on the shelves where he was keeping the coins. Pulling out the large silver coin, she held it up next to the sketching on the fax. “They’re the same. And it fits. It all makes sense now.”

  Nathan crossed the room and took her arm. He pulled her aside, his voice low. “Isaac is going to need every piece of evidence you have, and even with that, it’ll be a hard sell.”

  “And your apartment isn’t big enough for you to think I didn’t hear that.” Both of them glanced back to where he sat on the couch, leaning forward, hands clasped in front of him as he rested his forearms on his knees. His shrewd eyes were narrowed, his annoyance visible. “So either you two drop this right now or come clean. The choice is yours.”

  Remy looked up to Nathan. “Weren’t you the one telling me last night I had to trust him?”

  The tightening of his mouth was the only response she needed. Pulling from his light grasp, she dashed for the bedroom to retrieve her torn clothes, then returned to perch on the arm of the couch. Though Isaac shifted to face her, Remy held on to the garments. It wasn’t yet time to offer them as evidence.

  “You’re not going to find anything on my fingerprints. And you’re not going to find anything on Kirsten, either. Because those records don’t exist.”

  A muscle twitched in his tight jaw. “That sounds like fed doubletalk to me. And if you’re a fed, then I’m Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

  “I’m not.” Remy took a deep breath. “Everything Kirsten told you about me was true. Being in D.C., part of the gang, her chasing me. The only thing she didn’t tell you was none of that has happened yet. Somehow, some way, because of this coin…” She flipped it so that it landed in Isaac’s lap. “…I went from running across a senator’s lawn in 2084 to crashing Nathan’s showdown with Tian in 2010.”

  The room was silent for an exhaustive minute while Isaac stared at her. Then his bark of laughter split the calm.

  “You know, if you didn’t want to tell me, you could’ve just said so. Not that I don’t appreciate the good laugh, but I get a little tired of people thinking they can jerk my chain.”

  Nathan stepped forward. “She’s not jerking your chain. I know how it sounds. But think about it. Have you been able to find any trace of Remy’s existence? Any trace of Kirsten’s? Think about her ID card. Yeah, it looked fake, but how did it feel? It’s lighter than other cards, isn’t it? And look at her clothes. I know you have quite the impressive collection of fashion magazines, do these clothes look like anything you’ve ever seen before?”

  At Nathan’s words, Remy thrust the clothing into Isaac’s lap, watching as he took each piece, rubbed the fabric between his fingers, and held it up for inspection. His frown deepened. He even went so far as to turn her shirt inside out to look for the label, though what he read there imprinted on the material obviously didn’t make him happy.

  Abruptly, Isaac tossed the clothes aside and rose from the couch. Grabbing Nathan’s elbow, he dragged him away from Remy, though he made no attempt to keep his voice lowered. “What the hell has gotten into you? You used to be the smart one. Since when do you start buying into cons like this?”

  “I know it’s unbelievable, Isaac. But it’s not just her clothes, or the way she talks, or the fact she doesn’t exist. She has a chip embedded in her skin, Isaac. Have you ever seen or heard of anything like that? It’s right on the back of her neck.”

  Without prompting, Remy leapt from her seat and positioned herself between the two men, scooping her hair out of the way to expose her nape. The room was dead silent for a moment while she waited for someone to do something. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nathan lift his hand and rest a fingertip right over where the chip was, holding it there until Isaac sighed and did the same.

  “What the…?” he muttered.

  She didn’t give Isaac time to start another argument. “We can show you the warehouse, too. The one where Nathan found me. Third floor. No way in. No way out.” Letting her hair fall, she turned around and jerked her chin at the coin he’d left sitting on the couch. “Except through that.”

  Isaac held her eyes for only a moment before lifting his to Nathan’s. “That true?”

  Nathan nodded. “The grenade blocked the front stairwell to the third floor. She wouldn’t have been able to get in that way. And the back stairs are a fire escape with the doors locked to the outside. She wouldn’t have been able to get to the third floor that way either. Tian was waiting in the one unlocked room on the third floor. If she were there before him, he would have seen her and killed her.”

  He said it so matter-of-factly Remy wondered if it was an argument he had already resolved in his head. Was that why he’d been inclined to believe her?

  It didn’t matter. The logic of Nathan’s assertions made Isaac pause.

  “What about windows?”

  Nathan shook his head. “The warehouse was secure, Isaac. I wouldn’t have followed Tian otherwise. But the windows in the room were blown out. All of them. Several minutes after the grenade exploded.”

  She hadn’t known that. She had assumed the damage she’d seen was because of the explosion he had told her about.

  “Let’s go.” Already, Isaac was moving, going back to the table and picking up the box of doughnuts. When he went to pocket the coin as well, Remy darted forward and snatched it away, retreating to put it back in the box they were using for safekeeping. Now that she was sure the coin was behind it all, the fewer people who handled it, the better. “You want me to believe you so badly, I want to see where her little time machine dropped her off. Then we’ll talk.”

  * * *

  By the time they walked around the rear of the abandoned warehouse, Isaac’s clenched jaw ached more than his shoulder. Just as Nathan had said, the front stairwell was blocked by debris. It would take someone much smaller than any of them to get through it, which meant, according to Nathan, there was only one other means of entry. With every step closer, Isaac felt his stomach tighten.

  It was crazy. All of it. Girls showing up out of nowhere, pretending to be from the future, wearing clothes probably picked up at some cut-rate Hollywood costume shop, talking about magical coins capable of…what? He didn’t know. Nathan didn’t know. Remy sure as hell didn’t know. Yet, they both expected Isaac to accept it, to believe someone had shot Remy up with techno gadgetry as if it wasn’t like something off the SyFy Channel.

  What bothered him more, though, was how reasonable Nathan was about the whole thing. He was giving Remy the benefit of the doubt when he had always been the first of them to be skeptical. Well, the first since Susanna. That entire debacle had opened Nathan’s eyes to the world. There hadn’t been a single person in five years—female or otherwise—who had managed to alter that.

  Until now.

  Remy stayed out of their way, letting the two men lead to the back of the building. When Nathan came to a stop outside the door, Isaac nearly collided with him, frowning as he glanced over his friend’s shoulder to see him test the steel door handle.

  It didn’t even move.

  “Damn it.” He glanced at Remy out of the corner of his eye, but it didn’t change the only conclusion he could draw. There was no way she could have entered this way.

  “Do you want to bust the lock?” Nathan asked. “I have some tools in the trunk. And a small blow torch.”

  “I hear a hard head might do the same thing.” Isaac snatched the offered car keys and whirled on his heel, marching back to the street to retrieve the tools. The answer had to be inside.

  By the time they got the door open, the sun wa
s high overhead and Isaac’s back was soaked with sweat. Stepping from the brilliant light of day into the murk of the warehouse was almost soothing, even if it was hotter than Hell itself inside.

  “You want me to wait out here?” Remy’s eyes flashed in defiance. “I’d hate to contaminate the evidence.”

  Isaac was tempted to tell her exactly where she could wait, but one glance at Nathan had him shaking his head.

  “Better to keep an eye on you.” He swept an arm out, indicating Nathan should go first. “Lead the way.”

  “Gladly.”

  The trio moved slowly through the heat, Isaac bringing up the rear. The stairwell was thick with dust and stale air, and Nathan’s flashlight caught the motes whirling about as their footsteps disturbed them.

  The door on the third floor hung open. Light filtered in through the filthy windows, while more clouds of dust danced around their heads.

  “Watch your step,” Nathan warned as they picked their way down the corridor. He paused outside a door and pushed it open with his shoulder. “This is where I found Tian.” As they entered the room, Nathan pointed to a makeshift blockade of tables and boxes. “He was hiding behind there.” Then he turned to the right, pointing to the empty center of the room. “Remy was there.”

  Shattered glass covered every available surface, the sunlight streaming in pale yellow stripes through the broken windows. Isaac stepped gingerly forward to the patch of floor Nathan indicated and crouched down to inspect it more closely.

  “When did the windows break? Before or after you saw Remy?”

  “It all happened fast. There were some explosions, and then it felt like a mild earthquake, and then the glass shattered, and there she was. I was too distracted by Tian to notice when she…arrived.”

  Nathan’s choice of verbiage was what Isaac didn’t want to hear. Because Remy hadn’t arrived. She had only left. After the glass had already broken.

  There wasn’t a large enough patch of floor bare of the shards that could indicate Remy was there before the windows had shattered. There were footsteps in the dust showing someone had fled from the spot Nathan had pointed out, but nothing leading up to it. By all appearances, the only way someone could have come to that spot was if they had dropped from above.

  Isaac tilted his head back to look up. The smooth ceiling stretched above him.

  “Thin air,” Nathan murmured over Isaac’s shoulder.

  He was beginning to see that. Unbidden, his gaze slid sideways to Remy, but she stood, large-eyed and silent, watching them. Waiting.

  His phone rang shrilly from his pocket, startling Isaac into straightening and pulling it out. He didn’t recognize the number on the display, but that didn’t mean a whole hell of a lot. “McGuire,” he snapped. “And this better be good.”

  “It’s Ronnie, Detective McGuire. You asked me to call when I got something on that ID you gave me yesterday?”

  Isaac calmed at the young man’s nervous voice, turning his back on Nathan and Remy. “Yeah? What do you have?”

  “Oh, man, detective, this shit is incredible…”

  As Ronnie descended into an almost unintelligible stream of technical geek-speak, Isaac rubbed at his eyes in a vain attempt to lessen his growing headache. He had expected to hear the funny-looking piece of plastic was a cheap knock-off of a Hollywood prop. He hadn’t anticipated the department’s best tech guy getting a hard-on for the microchip he’d peeled away from the holographic picture, and he hadn’t bargained on said tech guy calling in his buddies from some computer company Isaac didn’t recognize to help him figure out the technology it contained.

  By the time he disconnected, Isaac decided it was better for his personal sanity to just accept Remy’s story and pray nobody from the station found out.

  “So,” he said, shoving his phone back into his pocket as he looked back to Remy, “who do I put my money on for next year’s Super Bowl?”

  * * *

  Nathan knew Isaac needed some time to process everything and double-check his conclusion before he’d be ready to talk about it. He’d repeat all the doubts, re-ask his questions, and re-think the evidence until he was satisfied his conclusion had been the correct one. Nathan could be patient, but Remy kept sending worried glances Isaac’s way. The only time Isaac spoke was when he indicated he wanted to pick up his car.

  Nathan was just relieved Isaac hadn’t had them both carted off to the madhouse. He’d expected his skepticism, his impatience, his annoyance. He had even expected Isaac to insist on seeing every piece of evidence with his own eyes, and he hadn’t been annoyed when Isaac demanded a tour of the warehouse.

  But truth be told, he had never expected Isaac to believe Remy’s story.

  Of course, after Ronnie’s report on the card, what choice did he have? Nathan wondered if they were messing up time somehow by selling the coins she had stolen, or letting geeky kids with computer fetishes look at her identification card. Allowing parts of the future to interact with the past always seemed like a pretty big mistake in the books he’d read and the movies he’d seen, but everything seemed to be fine now. Now being the operative word. Maybe he was messing up shit twenty years in the future and wouldn’t know it until then.

  Nathan decided not to think about everything he was probably destroying, shifting his attention to the story behind Remy’s coin. It had been a nice story. A little dire for his taste. He wasn’t sure what it had to do with time travel, though. If the legend was to be believed, the woman who created the coin hadn’t jumped backward seventy-five years. She’d turned into some sort of animal. Or she had died. Either way, she wasn’t moving through time.

  So how did it apply to Remy?

  Nathan wasn’t surprised when Isaac asked to be dropped off at the valet stand. “Did they pass the test?”

  “All I ever ask is they treat me like any of their other customers.” Isaac pushed his door open and stepped out. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting a little respect.”

  Nathan opened his door as well. “Wait here, yeah? I need to talk to him.” He followed Isaac to the stand. “You’re LAPD. You already get as much respect as you deserve.”

  “Probably.” Isaac handed his parking stub to the valet and turned his back to the stand, folding his arms across his chest. “Make me feel better and tell me you didn’t know about Remy all along.”

  “She told me yesterday morning. She said she didn’t want to lie to me. I didn’t really want to believe her at first either, but…I don’t know how else to explain everything.”

  Isaac nodded. He seemed to be taking Nathan’s answers more in stride now, though Nathan wasn’t sure if it was because of the overwhelming physical evidence or because he was tired of arguing. After a moment of more contemplation, Isaac exhaled loudly and almost smiled.

  “You’re fucking her, right?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

  “And you do know you’re robbing the cradle, right? I mean, your new girlfriend hasn’t even been born yet.”

  The joke was further proof Isaac was coming around. “Now I’ll have something to think over during those long winter nights.”

  “You really think she’ll be around that long? If all this is true, she showed up without any warning. Who says she’s not going to leave the same way?”

  Nathan looked down, unable to answer immediately. It wasn’t that the question hadn’t occurred to him before. He just didn’t want to think about it. It was easier to take things one step at a time. “I don’t know, Isaac. I really don’t. But what can I do?”

  Isaac’s car appeared at the parking garage exit and pulled to a stop in front of them. “Get this bitch Kirsten off her back, for starters,” Isaac said, stepping around the front of the car to the driver’s side door. He took the keys from the valet, but paused before getting inside. “Maybe all we have to do to get rid of her is find her parents and keep them from dancing together at the senior prom. Less chance of getting shot again.”

  “Isaac. If all o
f this is too crazy for you…if you don’t want to risk another trip to the hospital for some girl you don’t even know…I’ll understand.”

  “And miss out on the grand finale? Not on your life.” Ducking his head, he started to get in the car, only to hesitate and look back up to Nathan. Isaac’s eyes were free of the earlier amusement, but the anger was gone as well. Only sincerity was left. “I won’t lie and tell you I trust her now. But I’ve got eyes. I can see she’s important to you. That means, whatever you want from me from this point on, you’ve got. No questions asked.”

  Nathan wasn’t surprised by Isaac’s response. He was the one person on the planet Nathan could count on, regardless of the situation. There wasn’t anything to say except, “Thanks. Don’t let Kirsten get another piece of you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  After dropping off Isaac, Nathan was too lost in his own thoughts to worry about conversation, though thankfully, Remy’s silence said she was preoccupied as well. At her tentative request, he drove them to the beach again, more than happy to follow her around the pier as she wandered amongst the throng. He bought her a pretzel and frozen lemonade, nachos and an ice cream cone. She accepted everything with a warm smile, but her eyes were a hundred miles away.

  He let her lead the way, eventually ending up on the shore. There was a moment when she slipped off her shoes that he thought to warn her about the hot sand, but after a quick glance at the sun, Nathan changed his mind. It hung low on the horizon, orange streaks licking across the smooth surface of the water, and a cool breeze eased the earlier heat. There would be no danger of burned soles at this hour.

  “You have got to be the most patient guy in the whole world,” Remy said out of the blue. Her voice was quiet, nearly drowned out by the distant roar of the waves, and her eyes still fixed someplace far away. “I’m the one all this shit is happening to, and I still only half believe it. You even stuck up for me with Isaac before you had half the proof you do now. You are an interesting man, Nathan Pierce.”