Free Silver Storm: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 2 by Michele Callahan

an attempt to stop the buzzing pain.
    “Would you?” Luke studied him like he was a rat under a microscope, like a disapproving father inspecting the horny teenage boy picking up his daughter for the prom.
    “Yes.” He would have. Despite his grumbling, he realized he couldn’t have walked away no matter how crazy Sarah had sounded. He could rationalize it all he wanted. He had a responsibility to make sure his work didn’t ever reach fruition in the world. He’d been young, ambitious and naïve. But a deeper, more primal part of him admitted that it simply wasn’t in him to leave a damsel in distress. Especially one so…tired. God, she looked like she was going to drop right there onto the coffee table.
    “Good.” Luke’s hands caressed his wife’s shoulders as naturally as he was breathing. Tim looked away. “We’ll take you two out on the lake tonight, or hit a farmer’s field a couple hours out of town. You need to work on calling the energy and directing it. See what it will take for you to power up and maintain control.”
    “I don’t need to do that.” Sarah chimed in. “I can feel more than enough power now. The city’s electrical grid, even the movement of the air in the room, everything feeds me power if I want it. I don’t need a power source.”
    Alexa’s eyes widened in shock. “Wow. You’re serious, aren’t you?”
    “As a heart attack.” Sarah crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back into the sofa when Alexa sat back in alarm, fear widening her eyes for the first time.
    Tim changed the subject. “Let’s hit the Hancock Observatory tonight, after it’s closed, and see what Sarah can do from there.” He glanced at Sarah, who nodded in agreement, before continuing. He’d spent several hours with her now, and the worst thing she’d done was short out his T.V. and blow a breaker in Luke’s house. “I just don’t know how we’re going to get in without being on a hundred security cameras and setting off alarms. I’m sure they don’t welcome overnight guests and we’ll need some privacy.”
    “Got it covered.” Alexa laughed, then squeezed Luke’s hand. Smiling like a couple of Cheshire cats, they vanished into thin air.
    Tim shot to his feet and had Sarah wedged behind him before he registered her delighted laugh. She patted him on the shoulder and tried to wiggle free.
    “It’s okay, Tim.” She left her hand on his shoulder and he relaxed enough to let her breathe, but blocked her when she attempted to squeeze out into the open. Her warm breath tickled his cheek as she beamed over his shoulder at the now empty space. “Alexa, that was awesome!”
    “I’ve been practicing.” The voice came from nowhere, and Tim left his hand on his knife, just in case.
    “Don’t kill them, soldier. Invisibility is her gift.”
    Luke and Alexa reappeared as if by magic. Alexa’s smile was irresistible, so Tim grinned back.
    “Handy.” It would have saved his ass a lot of trouble on more than one occasion in the field in the early days, before he’d been stuck like a sitting target in the chopper, making those damn comm calls to get his teams out of trouble. He’d always known when they were walking into trouble. Let them die, or expose his secret talents.
    Letting those boys go down on his watch had never been an option, and his instincts accounted for one of the highest success and survival rates of all the ops teams. At least that was what his CO had told him. Tim figured the spook attached to his unit had turned him in. Damn spook was in on every mission, heard every word. Tim hoped the guy would just keep his mouth shut. No such luck. The survival ratio led the Casper Project’s commander, the Rear Admiral, to make a couple calls to his unit commander. Wanted to meet him, talk about a transfer…
    That meeting had scared the hell out of him. The Rear Admiral scared the hell out of him. Tim had gotten out a few weeks later. Gone civilian when his time was up. Believed