Read Online Steamrolled by Pauline Baird Jones - Free Book Online Page B

sideslip so she’d arrive just off her mark. She liked to get there early and watch them watching for her. Her supervisor thought she was just sloppy about her arrivals, but what if someone else realized it was with intent? Could the breach have been intended to trap her? But how would they know which way she’d slip? She never made the same move the same way. And every now and again, she arrived exactly where she was supposed to just to mess with her supervisor’s head.
    A thread of bitch runs through your family.
    That truth didn’t hurt as much as it should have.
    The time breach might not be all about you.
    Got a bit of bitch in you, too. But he did have a point. What if it had been her fault? What if her sideslip had somehow pierced the alternate reality? It had appeared to be a slice of life, not a whole scale alternate reality. Or worse, what if someone had created it and she’d accidentally landed inside it?
    If someone can do that—
    Ashe didn’t blame him for not knowing a word to describe how bad that could be. How dangerous. We don’t know what research has gone on here, or is going on or will go on. The fact that it involved the base seems to indicate sanctioned research.
    Or someone is trying to take over the base.
    Aren’t you cheerful and optimistic this morning? Not that she could fault his pessimism after what they’d seen and felt in the stream, or what she sensed now. Took a delusional Council to go for optimistic at the moment.
    “You will activate your emergency beacons and keep them activated for the duration of the drill.”
    Ashe didn’t like that, didn’t like being tracked for any reason, but she did it—for now. It’s not like they all wouldn’t rejoice if she managed to get lost. And she could shut it off as soon as she was off the base.
    The Controller walked the line of trackers, checking the integrity of each signal with his gear before stepping back with a nod.
    Carig glanced at Ashe, unable to hide his distaste. Not only was she a woman, and a descendent of people he hated, but her blood was “tainted” by several generations of Earth intermarriage—and a couple of other planets from other galaxies. Too bad for him her family had the influence to get her in. They’d always been loaded with pretty and power.
    In some way, she believed the chemistry of her “tainted” blood heightened her sensitivity to time. Time tracking could be taught to some extent, but if one didn’t have the instincts for it, they ended up like Selnick—in it, but only able to do the most pedestrian tasks. Time sent up warnings when it went off true, but the resulting wake could muddy the trails, hiding the epicenter. In all her senses, she felt the trail, saw the slight differences in the threads, heard it like the out of tune notes of a harmonious, even smelled the nuances in time’s flow. The Council couldn’t know how she could track without being her, something they’d hate with every fiber of their beings if they did know. Living out of time hadn’t ended their girl issues.
    The more things change, the more they don’t. Lurch’s thoughts were tinged with wry humor. Prejudice is a constant, just the object of it changes. And as challenging as it sometimes is, it is good they don’t know what you can do.
    Ashe homed in on a flicker of something he hadn’t said. Do you think one of them is involved?
    If someone is manipulating time, it would require a high-level cover-up to manipulate records and sensors.
    It was true that the sensor logs did not reflect what she’d felt in the stream prior to her arrival, but it was hard to see any of the five as a mastermind. It was possible one of them was being played by a mastermind. Or, like her, someone was hiding who they were and what they could do. If I were an evil genius, would I hide in annoying or bland?
    You would have to hide in annoying.
    Funny. Through her lashes, she studied Glarmere, Carig, and Faustus, the three members that Lurch