Clint placed a hand on mine and I calmed down, my knee ceasing its endless jittering.
“We won’t kill him,” he promised. “But we have to stop him.”
“You’ve seen this guy! He never stops! He’s like a machine!”
“If he can sense you the way I can, he’ll follow you wherever you go.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Wonderful.”
“No, it is. Think about it. If he will always follow you, then that means we know where he’ll head.”
“Toward me.”
“So, we can set a trap. He’ll come for you and we’ll figure out a way to lock him up.”
“How? The guy scaled my parents’ farmhouse like it was nothing and he smashed through those motel doors like they were matchsticks. There’s nothing that can keep him contained.”
Clint’s eyes turned distant with thought.
I wondered where he had drifted off to.
“You’re right,” he said. “Nothing can hold him… except the latest advances in technology that haven’t been released to the public yet.”
I took my eyes off the road and peered at him.
“What are you talking about?”
“Something I haven’t told you about yet. When you hypnotized me, I saw things, remembered things. It worked. I’m not sure it will work a second time—”
“Good, because I never want to turn you into a vegetable like that again. I was so scared you would never wake up. And when Liam came…”
I shook my head, refusing to ride the rollercoaster of emotions that threatened to take me again.
“I won’t leave you,” Clint said. “I don’t need to. I rediscovered some of my old memories. They’re buried so deep… I remembered flying through the storm when it struck, and a bolt of white lightning hitting my ship. I fell and crashlanded in the lake. I saw the ship I was flying. It was nothing like the technology you have. It’s more advanced, futuristic.”
I couldn’t believe my ears.
“Liam was right…”
“About what?”
“He came up with this bullshit story about you being a Russian spy. Don’t worry, I don’t believe that for a second, but there were parts of his story that correlate with what you’re saying.”
“What parts?”
“That you might work for the Air Force, that you were a pilot testing out some kind of new airplane with cutting edge technology. That was why, he said, no one came looking for you. They didn’t want to admit they’d lost a pilot, never mind a plane that shouldn’t exist.”
Clint drifted from me again.
He shook his head and focused on the here and now.
“That ship had some advanced technology on it. I can’t tell you what because I honestly can’t remember. But there were advanced weapons—”
“I told you,” I said, “I don’t want to kill him.”
“And advanced medical technology.”
He looked at me pointedly.
“There might be a way to heal what happened to me so I can remember everything.”
“You think you’ll remember something that will help us?”
“Yes. And the ship is bursting with advanced technology. There must be something on board we can use to restrain him.”
Clint ran his thumb over my bare knee and felt the goosebumps that popped up on my skin.
“Then take us to the crash site,” he said.
I hit the indicator and pulled off the road and rejoined the motorway.
We were heading back to my hometown, back to Phoenix Lake, back to where our story had begun.
And where, I hoped, this episode would end.
Ras
I instructed Isabella to keep a close eye on the bond she felt with Liam—or whatever that thing chasing us was.
I had no connection to it the way I did with Isabella.
She was the only way for us to know how far away he was.
“He’s heading in our direction but he’s not going faster than us, I think,” Isabella said.
We raced down the highway as fast as we dared but kept at the speed limit.
The very last thing we wanted right now was to be pulled over by the police.
With Liam’s connections, he could have put out a warning to keep an eye out for us.
They would book us and we would be trapped.
Then he could take his sweet time and pick us up whenever he got around to it.
Isabella checked her mirrors often, keeping a close eye on anyone who might be trailing us.
The highway was quiet at this time of night.
According to the digital clock on the dash, it was two in the morning.
Mostly, we saw large trucks transporting goods across the country.
Isabella focused on any cars we passed very closely, studying the shape of their rear and front headlights to determine if they were cop cars.
There was no way of preventing the cops from picking us up if they spotted us.
I wished we could have swapped vehicles but there were none to be found.
And so, we pushed on.
I’d opted not to tell Isabella about everything I saw while I was under hypnosis.
It would only frighten her.
Hell, it frightened me!
I knew what to expect when I saw my ship again but it still didn’t quite feel real.
I’d seen the changes I could have on my memories.
Was it possible I could have completely fabricated the playback of a memory I’d experienced too?
I guess it was possible, though I wouldn’t have done it on purpose.
Besides, I had no other memories to draw on, no movies or books or stories to recall.
It made the likelihood of me altering a memory less possible.
It meant that, no matter how crazy, what I’d seen in the memory was what had actually taken place.
I’d been in a dogfight with another ship that, come to think of it, looked identical to the one I’d been flying.
Seeing that memory play out hadn’t answered many questions, but it gave birth to a bunch of new ones.
Who was I really?
Where did I come from?
What was I doing in a dogfight in the first place?
And why were we trying to kill each other?
That question more than any other simmered in
