Implacable Alpha (Team Psi, Band 2) - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

W. Michael Gear is the author of more than fifty published novels, many of which are co-authored with his beloved wife, Kathleen O'Neal Gear. He is a New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author whose work has been translated into 29 languages and has over 17 million copies in print worldwide. Both an anthropologist and archaeologist, he brings extraordinary depth and complexity to his characters and settings.

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1

Grazier

General Elijiah Grazier might have only had two stars on his shoulders, but--as he liked to say--he punched well above his rank. His elaborate master bathroom was proof of that. The walls gleamed with polished marble, had a full-length mirror bathed in lights and matching golden Kohler faucets on the sinks, deep tub, shower, and bidet. The two-story house in Georgetown-just minutes from downtown Washington, DC-didn't look that impressive from the outside, just red brick with white accents. As in all things, it was what lay within that mattered.

Eli padded across Venetian black-marble tiles and onto the thick carpeting in his walnut-paneled bedroom. Tugging back the blankets on his oversized king bed, he pulled his pajamas straight and checked to see that everything on his nightstand was in order: phone, light switch, flashlight, his glass of water, and the M92 Beretta. The intruder alert button was hidden from sight next to the bed and below the table's top.

Hell of a day. But that was Washington. For the time being he had Bill Stevens, the president's chief of staff, by the balls. And he was squeezing. To Eli's disgust, President Ben Masters was cautious enough to keep his pit bull in reserve. As much as Eli would have loved to have cut Stevens' throat and left him behind as roadkill, the president would have disapproved.

Stevens could be dealt with. That was just "Potomac politics."

Eli's pressing problem was Skientia, the cutting-edge research firm. A team in their New Mexico lab had developed a powerful technology that allowed them to project and analyze entangled particles from the past. Events out in the Los Alamos lab might have momentarily chopped the head off the serpent, but on this new battleground, Eli Grazier needed Skientia's science and engineering know-how more than ever. That meant he had to rely on Dr. Maxine Kaplan and her engineer, Virgil Wixom.

Eli trusted Kaplan as much as he'd have trusted a black mamba. Wixom remained an unknown.

"So, is Kaplan smart enough to take the reins?" he wondered as he slipped his feet beneath the covers and lay back to fluff his pillow.

But more to the point, could he control her?

He was reaching to turn off the light when the contralto voice said, "Please do not try anything foolish. And before you reach for your pistol, I can assure you that I took the liberty of unloading it. The intruder alert is disabled as well."

Eli froze as a green-eyed woman dressed in black tactical clothing stepped out of his walk-in closet. Her auburn hair had been pulled back in a ponytail. The bone structure in her tanned face was a perfect balance of cheeks, straight nose, and full lips over a strong chin. Were the faint patterns on her cheeks and forehead the ghosts of scars, or just a trick of the light? She stood about five-foot-six and moved with an athlete's toned grace. Call it predatory. She didn't need the slung M16 or the knife and pistol on her belt to look dangerous.

What convinced Eli to behave lay behind the woman's hard green gaze: something weary, eternal, and strained. He got the distinct impression that she wouldn't think twice about putting a bullet in his brain. That she'd been tested-a lot-and always survived. Wherever she'd been, she'd seen and lived through it all.

"How'd you get in here?"

"Let's just say I go where I want, when I want, to whenever I want."

And it hit him. He remembered where he'd seen those hard green eyes: in the Grantham Barracks camera footage. She had been crouched over a dying man's body in the mental hospital's underground garage. "You're the woman who tried to kill Alpha and Ryan that day."

"Alpha? That what you're calling her?" The distaste in her words couldn't be missed. "Her real name is Nakeesh, and her title in the Ti'ahaule is Domina, not that the term means anything to you."

"Sorry about your companion."

"He was a good man." A faint smile. "Rare. In any age."

"Who are you?"

"I've been called a lot of things over the centuries. Nakeesh calls me the Ennoia. Means the embodiment of God's first thought. It's a mystical concept from another age. She and Fluvium once considered it a cruel and sick joke. Most call me Helen, from the Greek 'Elena. As to why I'm in your bedroom? Nakeesh and Fluvium have to be stopped. Here. In your timeline. Once and for all."

"Fluvium's already dead. As to Alpha-"

"Are you still so limited? Despite what you've seen?"

Fluvium's not dead? Eli had seen the guy's desiccated corpse after it had been removed from a three-thousand-year-old sarcophagus.

The woman calling herself Helen studied him with that flat green gaze, one hand on the rifle slung at her shoulder. "Good. You're starting to catch on to the whole 'time' thing. If Nakeesh contacts Imperator, finds a way to get her hands on Fluvium's cerebrum, your world and your timeline are dead."

"Who's Imperator?"

"Your worst nightmare. Not that I give a shit. They've taken out better worlds than yours. It's just that this is the first time they've screwed up enough that I've got a chance to end it." With her free hand, she slipped a device from one of the pockets in her cargo pants and tossed it.

Grazier snagged it out of the air as she said, "Decide if you're in or out. All you have to do is press the silver button."

Grazier glanced down. The thing looked like a pager. Maybe two by three inches, a couple of ounces in weight. A prominent silver button could be seen on the black surface.

"In or out? You're going to have to be a lot more specific than that." Ely looked up to emphasize his point.

Not a trace of her remained. Not even a swaying of clothes back in the depths of his closet. But for the device he held, she might have been nothing more than a figment of his imagination.

In . . . or out?

He was about to pull his blanket back when a tingling presaged a crackling in the air around him. His skin prickled like a thousand ants were crawling over his body, and the lights went out.

2

Ryan

My name's Colonel Timothy Ryan. Normally, I didn't run meetings where we discussed the safety and security of the world, let alone the future of our entire timeline. I'm still hazy about what a timeline is. Theoretical physics was never my strongpoint. But there I was, staring down the table in the conference room at a team of physicists, Mayan scholars, and engineers. Not to mention General Eli Grazier, my current superior. Wearing his uniform with all its campaign ribbons, the two stars prominent on his collar, he sat in a chair off to the side so as to be inobtrusive. Right. Eli was about as inobtrusive as a crouching tiger.

My team was in charge of saving the world. It remained surreal.

I'm a mental health professional with both an MD in psychiatry and a PhD in abnormal psych. I'd spent my life working with service personnel who put their lives on the line for this country. And too often ended up broken and wounded in ways that didn't leave visible scars. It was one thing to teach a crippled vet how to walk again when he or she had lost both legs. Something entirely different when that person-in an effort to stop the pain-just wanted to end it all.

Working with mental illness was my passion, both in the service and afterward. It had finally taken me to Grantham Barracks, a...