Chapter 11

Nine.

"Jasper."

He shakes his head, all his focus still on Wolfe's computer. "Shit, they're quick. I didn't think they'd move so fast."

Ten.

"Jasper!" The office is on the fifteenth floor. I whirl. We've got seconds to get out of here, and I don't even see a back door.

"Just let me... one second..." He's still got one hand on the mouse, one hand on his phone, which is plugged into the computer.

Eleven. The light moves to twelve and I hold my breath. There is no thirteen. The light goes out and flicks to fourteen. One more floor to go.

Shit. They're going to walk off that elevator in a few seconds. A few seconds after that, bullets are going to start flying.

"I need a little more time," Jasper says.

"We aren't going to have more time." I rush toward the elevator, hand extended. After the trick with the monitors below, the odds I can assemble enough power to do anything worthwhile are pretty low, but if I really concentrate, I might be able to generate enough electricity to short out the panel. If whoever is in there gets stuck between floors fourteen and fifteen, that's better than nothing.

But I come up empty. I press my palm to the buttons, and all I can gather is a tiny little pfft that might as well be a fart for all the impact it has.

The light for fourteen goes out.

"Jasper!"

"Almost there."

I believe Jasper when he says things will get ugly if they find us where we're not supposed to be, and I don't want to find out the depths of that ugliness.

I run back across the office, pulling off Jasper's hat and undoing the top few buttons of my borrowed flannel. As I come around the desk, I grab the back of Jasper's wheeled chair.

"Morgan. Morgan, wait." His phone and its cord pull free of the desktop as I drag him back.

I climb into his lap, ignoring the way the chair creaks.

"What are you doing?" His eyes are wide with surprise, and he holds his hands away from me, like he's afraid of touching me.

"We will never speak of this again," I say, cupping his adorable, scruffy face in my hands.

Then I kiss him. Hard.

He grunts in shock at exactly the same time the elevator dings to announce its arrival. I grind my lips to Jasper's desperately, hoping he'll play along. I press into him when his hands settle on my ass, squeezing.

"Jasper?" Leo's voice calls up the hall. "The monitors came back on. I called the boss. He said no one is allowed—Oh." When he stops speaking, I glance over my shoulder, feigning surprise.

"Hi." I smile, running a thumb over my hopefully kiss-swollen bottom lip. Jasper is panting, his breath hot on my chest where my shirt is undone.

Leo narrows his eyes. "You're not supposed to be up here. I thought you were fixing something in the kitchen."

I pout, pretending I don't notice the way he's got his hand on the gun at his hip. "I like it up here." Should I bat my eyelashes? No. Too much. I just push my lip out farther, hoping it makes me look like a spoiled twink and not a lying liar who lies. It's everything I can do not to lick that pouty bottom lip too. It tastes like Jasper and that is... My whole body makes a shuddering rippling movement I pray looks sexy, because all I can think about is the feeling of Jasper's mouth on mine. The scrape of his stubble on my mouth. Too bad we were interrupted so fast. I wouldn't have minded a few more seconds of panicked kissing.

"Listen." Leo takes a menacing step forward, but before I can say anything else, the world shifts as Jasper stands. On reflex, I wrap myself around him, arms on his shoulders, thighs at his waist, but his hands drop away from my ass—thank goodness for small mercies—and I take the hint, letting my feet fall to the floor. He gently guides me so I'm standing behind him, which is fine. Gives me an opportunity to do my clothes up again. I have to adjust myself in my pants. His palms on my backside were strong. Firm. Confident. I haven't been grabbed like that in a long time. Maybe not ever. I shiver again as I wonder what else those hands can do.

"Leo," Jasper is saying, and I recognize the tone now. He's going to charm us out of this, and I send up a silent prayer it works. "Come on. You know how it goes. We were on a date. I told him who I worked for, and he wanted the full experience. I knew Bobby wouldn't buy that, but I figured you'd be cool about it. I'm sorry, okay?"

Ugh. The whole explanation is so douchey. But we need to get out of here, so I duck under Jasper's arm, fitting it around my shoulders, and press a hand to his chest.

"It's so... big," I say on a breathy sigh. Obviously I'm talking about the office, but Leo snorts.

His hand slides from his gun to his belt. "You think that's impressive, wait until you see?—"

"Okay, time to go," Jasper says, tugging me past Leo. "Sorry, sweetheart. We'll have to role-play at home."

"But baby..." I say, suppressing a different kind of shudder at the whine in my voice. "You said?—"

"Not now." He bends to kiss me, and I stiffen before I remember I'm supposed to be enjoying this. I hum as I fumble for the elevator button, arching as Jasper pulls me closer. His lips stay closed, but they're insistent. We are going to kiss until the coast is clear.

So of course Leo rides the elevator down with us. And I spend fifteen floors giggling into Jasper's neck while he keeps putting his hands places that are barely an inch shy of inappropriate. I guess I could credit his consideration, but I'm too busy fighting the desire to nuzzle in farther and breathe in his scent. It's adrenaline. Stress. I'm not attracted to Jasper. I can't be. Especially not in front of his hench buddies. If I'd had any hope that maybe there was some trick—that Jasper wasn't the henchman he claimed to be—it's impossible to not let that bubble burst now. Regardless of what Bobby and Leo think about him, they know Jasper. He works for Walter Wolfe, and that means in every timeline but this one, we believe in completely opposite things.

As the elevator finally slows, I breathe a sigh of relief, and Jasper swallows it in one more kiss, muttering something against my mouth that sounds like "almost there," before he leads me out into the building's glass and chrome atrium.

"Hey, Leo," Jasper says, as we arrive at the main doors. "This can stay between us, right? The boss man doesn't have to know I sneaked up there. I was only hoping to impress my friend here. You know how it goes."

I risk a glance at Leo, who's still watching me with his viper gaze. He sneers as our eyes meet. "Sure, Jasper. Your friend. No problem, I won't say anything. But you owe me a favour."

"Whatever you want," Jasper says. "You know I'm good for it."

Then we're outside. The air on my face is cool, and my stomach twists with anxiety.

"Don't run. Don't run," Jasper says softly, as I half jog, half stumble over the pavement. I take a deep breath to centre myself, letting my stride settle back into my hips and leaning against Jasper's body again like I have nowhere else to be.

We dance for a second as I go for the driver's side before I remember Jasper's got the wheel here. As soon as the door is closed, I go to slump toward the dash, but not before I hear a "Not yet. Not yet, they're still watching."

I sit up again, glancing out the windshield at the CCTV cameras mounted at regular intervals around us.

"Paranoid bastard," I say.

Jasper laughs. "You did amazing." He holds out his hand, and I think he means to shake on a job well done, but when I grasp him, he pulls me toward him so he can kiss the back of my hand, before he flips it over and kisses my wrist. Energy crackles along my nerves like lightning, starting where his lips touch my skin and radiating to where my heart is still doing a polka inside my rib cage. When our gazes meet, I feel like I could burst into flames at any second.

Slowly, we pull out of the parking lot. We drive past the guardhouse, where Jasper shouts a cheery goodnight to Bobby like nothing is amiss even as my pulse pounds in my ears.

But as we drive away, resolve steadies my heart. Because we still don't know about the time machine, and I doubt we'll have another opportunity to get back into the building. Not tonight, anyway.

"What time is it?" I ask. The clock in this car is with the instrument cluster behind the steering wheel, and I can't see it from this angle.

"Almost eleven, why?"

I take a long slow breath, fighting back anxiety, before I say, "Can you take me home?"

"Yeah," he says slowly. "But why?"

I stare at my hands in my lap because everything about this is wrong, but if I've got all the cards, it's time to play a few of them.

"Because Indigo will be there."

To his credit, the BMW jerks violently on the deserted street as Jasper slams his foot on the brake, so at least I know he cares. "What? Why?"

"You know why," I say.

"I don't think I do," he says, though his knuckles tightening on the steering wheel says he's lying.

Still, it takes me a few tries to get the words out. "Because we have to try again, and the only way to do that is if I die."

"Try what again?" He still doesn't sound like he understands.

"The time machine plans. We should think of this like a failed experiment. We take what we learned and try again. I'm sorry I had to pull you away from the desk, but if we start over, we'll know what to look out for this time. I can distract Leo, maybe stay down on the main floor with him. We'll come up with a different reason why you're there and you'll have more time to?—"

"More time to transfer the file to an off-site server where we can look at it at our leisure?"

"Yeah, something like that. Whatever you can do. If you take me back to the house and Indigo is there, then..." I trail off, because despite what I'm saying, I don't actually want to die. But it will be fast. Better than having Walter Wolfe pulling off my toenails. Or convincing Jasper to drive us into a wall or off a bridge. I don't think I could do that to him, regardless of how I feel. As I put a finger to my lips, it tingles where his scruff scraped over the sensitive skin there, those feelings are becoming increasingly unclear. The time loop isn't the only thing messing with my head. I really want to kiss him again, even knowing who he truly is now.

"Or we could skip the noble sacrifice part of the evening and go check out the info I downloaded and sent to an off-site server to look at in a more leisurely manner?"

I'm so focused on my inevitable meeting with Indigo that it takes a second before I understand what he's saying.

"Wait. What?"

He lifts his phone from the centre console. The screen is black, but he says, "Finished the transfer as you got in my lap. It's all waiting for us somewhere safe." He tips a mock salute to me. "So thank you very much for your kind offer, but it's not on your shoulders alone to save us. I'm pleased to report that you will not be needing to die tonight."

My whole body relaxes at his words. Clarissa's always telling me much the same thing, though obviously in less fatal terms. She says I don't need to do everything by myself. That we have a whole team of highly qualified researchers who can break down code and run models. It doesn't need to be me sitting at the lab into the darkest hours watching numbers roll over the screen until my head aches. I can lean on other people. I've never been especially good at it. For now, though, I'm going to take her advice. I close my eyes, letting the sound of the tires on the road fill my brain with static.

I must fall asleep, because the next thing I know, we're pulling into a perfectly unremarkable driveway next to an equally and perfectly unremarkable suburban house. It's a two-story home with white shutters and a detached garage.

"We're here," Jasper says.

"Where's here?"

He gives me a soft smile, less self-assured than the ones I've seen before. Something tells me even after all our dates, this is the first time we've come to this specific location, and the thought makes me apprehensive. I hate that I'm still doubting him, but how can I not?

"My place."

My sleepy brain takes a second to register what he's said, but when it does, I'm suddenly very awake. "You brought me to your house?"

"Well... my apartment. I live over the garage."

I glance through the windshield at the detached garage sitting silently at the end of the driveway. I don't know where I thought Jasper lived. Some hench cave somewhere, probably.

"Is it safe?" I don't know how a criminal organization's HR department works, but they have to know where he lives, right?

But Jasper doesn't seem to have any similar concerns. He gives me his lopsided grin and says, "Hide in plain sight, right? With any luck, Leo and Bobby are finishing up their shifts and are off for a few drinks at Kicks. They haven't given us any further thought."

Our luck so far has not been amazing, so I don't know why he thinks it's going to change now.

"And if they have given it more thought?" I'm picturing the gruesome death Jasper described earlier. Something about the way Bobby looked at me the way a predator eyes prey makes me think he'd really enjoy inflicting pain.

"We'll be quick," Jasper says, giving my hand a squeeze. I wiggle my fingers restlessly. This can't be the best plan. "I can't access the files from anywhere but my desktop setup. It's not the sort of thing you really email to yourself."

That part I understand, at least. The security protocols around information about the Ziro Machine are extensive. The five-syllable password may seem silly to Jasper, but it's only the beginning of what you have to do to have access to the plans.

We get out of the car, and when I slam my door shut, Jasper winces.

"What?"

"Just... try to keep it down. The neighbours are fussy about making too much noise."

Except it's not the neighbour's house that suddenly floods the driveway with light; it's the one next to the garage. I freeze in place as the front door opens. A woman with graying hair in navy blue pajamas comes out to the porch, squinting at us.

"Jasper?" she says. "Whose car is that?"

I reach for Jasper's hand, ready to run. "Your landlady?"

Jasper sighs, squeezing my fingers gently. "That... would be my mom."