EMIT (THE EMIT SAGA) (49 page)

They must have been really close because it seemed the bell rang a few minutes later.

When they walked in, they were absolutely shocked by the apartment.

In the kitchen, Lily asked, “Did you hear me when I said the party was raided?”

“No, what happened?”

“It was a good thing you didn’t come. Billy came to the party drunk.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“It gets worse. He got into a fight with somebody over a girl.”

“It was Nick Logan. I spoke to Nick afterwards and he said that Billy approached Josie, his girlfriend, started flirting with her and when she told him she wasn’t interested, he grabbed her breasts,” said Chad. So Nick and Josie are dating! Too bad, I was hoping Reed would date her.

“Did Lily tell you what happened to me?” I asked Chad.

“Yeah, I couldn’t believe it,” said Chad. “I heard that Carla broke up with him right before the party, so that might have set him off tonight.”

I turned and looked at Daniel. “I wonder if our talk had anything to do with this or that I told Daphne.” Daphne or Paul might have told someone and it could’ve spread like wildfire this afternoon on Facebook and Twitter. Carla wouldn’t care that he tried to force me, she’d only be angry that he was with me.

“Let’s be grateful we weren’t there because I would’ve decked him and I would’ve been arrested,” said Daniel. I wonder what happened when an NSA agent got arrested. Probably nothing.

Chad continued, “Somebody called the cops. When they showed up, the fight was over. We snuck out a back door.”

Each couple took a couch and we put on a movie. This time, Lily fell asleep on Chad and when the movie was over, I had to wake her
up to go home.




In the morning,
I found a note in the kitchen. “Dad and I went to get food for lunch,” I read out loud. “I’m so glad he’s feeling better.”

“Me too,” agreed Lily. Lily started searching for breakfast and suddenly stopped. “Oh...I forgot to tell you. Chad said Reed is dating some girl in Canada.”

“That’s so great,” I shrieked. “But wait, she lives in Canada, that’s not good.”

“No she doesn’t. She’s lives in Connecticut and she’s a figure skater.”

“I thought it’d be a girl hockey player. I’m happy for him, but Carla won’t be.”

While Lily had cereal, I called Daniel. “Good morning, what are you doing?”

“Morning, I’m at the Dakota finishing some last minute arrangements.”

As we were eating strawberries, Mom and Dad returned.
Dad sat on the couch and read the papers, while Mom arranged the flowers she purchased in a couple of vases.

“Dad, you look good.”

“Thanks, Honey, I’m fine. I spoke to Nana this morning and I told her what time you’d be in and that Daniel was dropping you off.”

“
Thanks. Lily, come upstairs and keep me company while I finish packing,” I said.

An hour late
r, I heard the doorbell ring. We went downstairs fifteen minutes later and found Aunt Cecile and Uncle Ian munching on grapes in the kitchen.

We sat down for lunch and when we were on dessert, Martin, Marina and Anna arrived. All Anna wanted to do was crawl around after Amber.

I carried Anna to my room and Lily and I danced around with her. When she started getting cranky, I found my bubble blower. That amused her for a little while, but as soon as she started crying, we took her back to Marina.

Marina was in the kitchen getting coffee. “
Anna wants you.” Marina reached for her crying child. “Can we talk?” I asked.

“Sure, what’s up?”
she asked while she rocked Anna.

“Can you tell me what Martin’s problem is with Daniel? I keep meaning to call you, but things have been so crazy.”

“Yes, I know. I’m hurt that you’ve been so unreachable this summer. I called you a bunch of times this week and you’ve never returned any of my calls.”

“Marina, I swear I didn’t get them. I would’ve called you back.” Daniel had to get my cell phone debugged. This was
crazy! Everyone is going to hate me!

“I thought so before, but now I see you’re just too pre-occupied with Daniel.”

“You’re not being fair. I didn’t get your messages. My cell phone is wacky.”

Marina looked at me skeptically, like she didn’t believe me and said, “Then get a new phone. You keep saying there’s a problem with your cell, so why aren’t you getting a new one?”

She had me there.

“Martin and I like Daniel, but we miss you and you need to remember you have a family.”

“I do. It’s just been a crazy summer,” I tried explaining.

“That’s not an excuse. Everybody has things going on. We thought we’d see you more since you were home, but it didn’t happen and the lack of communication was upsetting. You used to call to chat and see how Anna was.”

“I’m sorry.” Marina was right. I got so sucked into this vortex of Daniel that nothing else  mattered. I now understood how Eden felt being with Paul.

“Is that why Martin seems mad at me?”

“Martin’s not used to his little sister having a boyfriend, so you’ll have to be patient.”

I went into the living room, got a pastry, sat down next to Martin and talked about nonsense.

Soon enough, it was time to leave. Martin brought my luggage down and the entire family insisted on seeing me off by coming to the lobby. It really was quite comical.

When Daniel arrived, he was greeted with quite a crowd. Amused, he couldn’t help chuckling and when I passed him, he quietly said, “What a send off!”

“Be quiet,” I snickered, embarrassed by the entourage.

“Paige, it’s very nice. I’m joking,” he whispered in my ear

“Daniel, please take care of Paige for us,” Mom said approaching the car.

“You don’t have to worry, Mrs. Devon. I won’t let anything happen to her.”

I could see that Mom had tears in her eyes and I gave her a big hug. We jumped in the car. I was absolutely free until I got to London. As soon as the car was out of sight, I felt Daniel’s arm around me, pulling me close to him.

“Alone at last,” I whispered and leaned in for a kiss. “I missed you today.”

“Hopefully, you won’t be sick of me by the time we get to London.”

“That’s not possible,
” I said.

Newark Airport materialized into view. The driver pulled up to departures at British Airways and we exited the car. Boarding passes in hand and luggage checked, Daniel took me to the lounge and we called my parents to tell them that we were at the airport. Then, Daniel called James and asked if there were any new developments.

When he got off the phone, he seemed puzzled.

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s crazy, but James said there was never going to be a nuclear attack. We had stopped it a long time ago. He had to go to a meeting and he’d tell me more when I got to London.”

“What?” I asked confused.

“When they started investigating Frank’s death internally, they found a lot of discrepancies with one scientist’s data. They gave Seth the truth serum and found out that he kept the nuclear attack going to keep EMIT busy. He’s been feeding us bogus information. When they pulled him off the case a few days ago, that’s when they found out that there was something wrong. We thought it was the envelope that fixed everything, but today they found out that the event was stopped months ago. He kept altering the data so that the event kept showing up.”

“W
hy?”

“He was trying to steal and sell the time machine.”

“I don’t understand. What about the terrorists and all that money?

“That part of this was real, but even if they got the money it wouldn’t have worked.”

“I’m so confused.”

“EMIT stopped everything you were personally
involved in and saved your life, but whether the terrorists got the envelopes or not, the event had already been stopped. Seth was helping them dodge us daily by giving them information of our whereabouts. That’s also why things kept constantly changing.”

“But why didn’t you know about this if you went in the future?”

“Seth put in a code that covered his tracks. We weren’t able to override it until he gave us the password and that only happened after the truth serum.”

“Who was he going to selling the machine to?”

“The highest bidder, but it was between China and France.” Daniel shook his head. “James was right. It was an inside job. They are still interviewing Seth. James said they’d ask who the fake Laura Burke was and why they put the tracker in Amber. We’ll know more when we get to London.”

“So other countries do know about the machine. How
do you handle that?

“We’ll erase Seth’s memory of the machine and he’ll have nothing to sell. The important thing is that we got him and he will no longer work at EMIT. Even with some of the bad things that happened in this case, I met you, so for that I’m thankful.”

While I read magazines, Daniel spent the rest of the time on the phone gathering information and talking to other agents about Seth.

When we got onboard, I
turned right, but Daniel grabbed my arm and pulled me left.

“Paige, I upgraded your seat. It’s one of my perks when I fly,” he said winking. “Besides, I still have to watch you, so it’s still business.”

First class was great, but we were sitting in the middle aisle so there was a partition between us from the seat down. I pushed a button and a wall panel rose and Daniel disappeared from view.

“Hey, you’re sick of me already?” he called out.

“I was just playing,” I said as it came down. “I’m so glad that this mess is almost finished.”

“It sure has been a whirlwind.”

“You know since the first time I saw you in the park, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

“Well, I was thinking about you before that day,” he said, trying to one up me.

“But that’s not fair, I didn’t know you existed,” I said making a gloomy face.

Laughing, he leaned over and kissed me. “You’ll have plenty of time to make it up to me.” He bent down a
nd reached inside his bag and pulled out a red box with a white bow. He held it in front of me and said, “Something for you to remember our trip.”

“But we haven’t even been to London yet.”

“Okay, it’s a pre-trip present,” he conceded. “Please open your present.”

As he held the box, I pulled the ribbon off with my right hand and lifted the lid off. I reached in to find a necklace. On a long silver chain, there were three charms. One was an hourglass and as I turned it over, the sand fell from the top to the bottom.

“As I’ve said before, time stops when I’m with you,” Daniel explained.

The next charm was a crystal obelisk. “I love obelisks. Ooh, but you know that!”

Daniel smiled. On closer inspection, in the middle of the center there was a thin piece of blue metal wire running from the point to the base of the obelisk. It looked like the same type of crystal I had seen at Daniel’s library but in a different shape. The third charm was a silver
P
.

“It’s beautiful, thank you.” As I held the
P
in my hand, Daniel took it flipped it upside down and twirled it to show a lowercase
d
. How remarkable! My letter
P
whether uppercase or lowercase could also be the lower case letter
d
for Daniel. “That’s unbelievable!”

“I know, I thought the same thing so I got one, too.” Daniel pulled out the identical chain with a lowercase
d
charm on it that he was wearing under his shirt. He flipped it to show it become a
P
. “It’s a
d
for Devon and a
p
for Paige,” he said smiling.

“No, it’s a
d
for Daniel,” I corrected him. “This is amazing! I’m never taking it off.”

“That’s good, because neither am I,” Daniel stated. “I saw them and thought of you. Do you know there was a study done in London and it said that it takes a man 8.2 seconds to fall in love? That first day when I spoke to you in the park and looked into your eyes, I knew I was in trouble.” Daniel leaned over, kissed me and everything was absolutely perfect….

Hearing a commotion behind me, I looked around my partition and saw Juliette entering the first class cabin. Because of my audible gasp, Daniel stood up to see what had happened. When I looked over at him, he looked visibly angry.

“I’ll be right back.” Daniel walked straight back, through the galley between First Class and Business Class and reached Juliette on my side of the plane. She was getting situated with her belongings and smiled when she saw hi
m. Daniel whispered as he spoke, but from his facial features I saw that his jaw was clenched during their exchange. Daniel left and Juliette sat down in her window seat. When she noticed me looking at her, she gave me a Cheshire cat smile that made my skin crawl and waved.