The Impossible Future: Complete set by Frank Kennedy (mini ebook reader .txt) 📕

to make this sacrifice. They were good and upstanding Chancellors. Their decision to send you into hiding with our team was devastating, but they understood the necessity. I was there when they said goodbye. They would see the moral rightness of this.”

Jamie froze. “What?” He felt his heart race. “My parents? They didn’t come? What? They weren’t …?”

Agatha twitched. She wondered whether she went too far. “No. Tom and Marlena Sheridan played the part, but your biological parents had a different agenda.”

“They’re alive? Mom and Dad?”

“Likely.”

Jamie wondered what other emotional punishment he was supposed to take today. He knew Agatha was not lying. The pieces made sense. The distance he often felt from his mother … Lydia even hinted at it hours ago. He thought the voices on those farewell messages were computerized, yet they must have been genuine.

“Their names. What were their names?”

“Bouchet. Emil and Frances Bouchet.”

“And Ben?”

“Not your biological brother, but he did love you as one.”

“And my name? Was it always Jamie?”

“James Bouchet.”

“You stole me. You bitch. All you Chancellors.”

He smashed the phone against a tree and turned to his friends.

“We have to move. Now. We’re out of time.”

Jamie gathered up an AK, pulled the strap over his shoulder and looked around until he found the .45 near Ben.

Just before he started back to his friends, Jamie saw a small metallic object half-buried in the kicked-up soil a couple feet from Ben’s body. He recognized the flash drive and grabbed it. Jamie couldn’t imagine what he’d do with this now, but the idea of leaving it behind seemed disrespectful. If Ben was telling the truth, if this represented the only meaningful work Ben did the past few years, then Jamie couldn’t leave it here for anyone to find.

“We’re taking Coop home. He’s going to be safe.”

Sammie nodded through her tears. “But what about you? What did she tell you? What did Ben say to you?”

Jamie brushed hair from his face. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”

“I’m down with that,” Michael said.

Jamie didn’t look back. He walked into the forest with the commitment that his final two hours would have meaning. He tried to suppress his rage, to block the truth hidden within his new and tighter skin: He was falling into an abyss. The Jewel was opening his mind to a different perspective on time and place.

He felt the shadows coming for him.

 

43

T HEY FOUND A battered, rusting, sky-blue pickup where Walt left it: Stopped shy of a trench at least six feet deep and wide slithering through the woods, a shallow but fast-moving stream at the base. Sammie said the stream flowed directly into the lake; they were less than fifty yards from a one-lane dirt road linked to the highway. Michael found keys inside.

“We better move,” Jamie said, listening to the ever-present albeit distant echo of a helicopter’s rotor blades.

Sammie hesitated, looking back across the trench.

“I shouldn’t have left him there like that,” she said. “He deserved better, Jamie. He was only doing what he thought was right. His mission.”

“So did Ben, but it’s done. They’re gone. Only thing we can do now is take care of Coop. I need you, Sammie.”

She raised the rifle to chest level and nodded. Jamie tried to focus upon the next challenge, to suppress fear of a fate two hours away.  Sammie followed Jamie to the passenger side. Before he hopped in, Jamie inspected the seat, which was cracked and spewing foam filler. The rusting floor looked as if it would give way. Michael insisted on driving.

“Don’t got my license on me, but I’m the oldest looking, so that ought to count for something,” he said. As Jamie and Sammie climbed in, Michael leaned forward, looking around Jamie and said, “Figure you might wanna keep that gun on your lap, Sammie. Folks around these parts wouldn’t look twice at a good ol’ boy and his shotgun. But they’d take notice of a sweet thing like you locked and loaded, if you get my speed.”

Jamie wasn’t surprised by Michael’s recharged, sarcastic attitude; he was used to seeing Michael take this road whenever emotions threatened to get the better of him. Michael cranked the engine on the third try and maneuvered the truck around low brush and fallen limbs. The truck groaned and squealed, and each of them shared worried glances. Michael chuckled.

“She’s halfway to the grave, but I’ll bet she gets us there.”

The truck seemed to have little or no shocks, as each tiny bump bounced the three from the seat. Michael worked the steering wheel hard but couldn’t avoid low-hanging branches, which snapped upon impact with the windshield. Jamie remembered the nights he and Michael took jalopies such as this on joy rides. He used to love the exhilaration and fear.

They were within range of the dirt road when Jamie swore he saw an unnatural shadow out of the corner of his eye. The dark movement was cat-quick, visible just beyond the driver’s rear-view mirror. Light and shadow danced through the forest in electric morning routines; he was ready to chalk this up to paranoia. Then he saw Sammie raise her weapon and lean forward, also looking left. Michael made a sharp left around a tree, which scraped the passenger side. Jamie again faced Sammie, whose head still darted about to the left and through the cabin’s rear window.

He didn’t need to ask. “Coop. Floor it.”

Seconds later, the truck careened onto the road, which was thick in sandy soil. The rear tires roared and seemed embedded in the sand, but Michael gave the gas everything, freeing the pickup. The truck struggled until Michael recognized the incoming tire tracks and announced he would follow those out.

The road led straightaway for two football fields then banked to the right. Old growth forest encroached from