Free Rush (Phoenix Rising) by Joan Swan

edge. It wiggled but didn’t come free.
    Quaid coughed, then groaned. She glanced over her shoulder in time to see him roll to his side and fall still.
    “I’m here, Quaid. I’m right here. Hang on, baby. I’m going to get us—”
    The big man kicked Quaid again. Jessica screamed. Dropping back on her heels, she covered her mouth with both hands, unable to breathe.
    Quaid groaned again. Jessica let out the air she’d been holding. Relief eased the sting of terror, but rage grew in its wake. She was going to kill that man—she didn’t care who he was. She was going to find him, hunt him down and kill him when this was over. But she had to get Quaid out first. She went back to work on the coin.
    The man rolled Quaid onto his back and pressed his boot to his sternum. “You know what I think, Q? I think you’re just more goddamned trouble than you’re worth.”
    Pain chewed at Jessica’s fingers and still she couldn’t get the coin loose. The scene flickered. Chaotic horizontal static patterns blocked her vision.
    “No, no, no!” she screamed and pulled harder at the coin. Complete static overtook the scene just as her body went weightless. “No!”

F IVE
    “N o, no, no . . .” Jessica choked out the words and rubbed the coin like a genie lamp, even though she knew that’s not how it worked.
    Her throat burned from screaming. Her mind turned inside out. The gapped wooden floor of the cabin had transformed back into the dove-gray commercial carpet of her office. The water-stained sheetrock walls back into sleek floor-to-ceiling windows facing the Capitol building.
    “Jess, what’s wrong?” The voice startled Jessica and she jerked her head in that direction. Keira crouched next to her on the floor. “What happened?”
    Jessica stared at Keira, her mind chugging to a stop. She looked up. Around. Her office. She was in her office. Kneeling on the floor. With the coin in her fingers.
    Her gaze blurred as her mind struggled to draw a line between fantasy and reality. Tremors overtook her arms, crawled down her back. Pain beat at her temples to the rhythm of her heart.
    “Jess?” Teague’s big hand pressed against her shoulder from behind. “Honey, are you okay?”
    What in the hell . . . ? That couldn’t have been merely a vision. Could it? It had all been too vivid. Too real . She couldn’t have glimpsed Quaid only to have him taken again. That couldn’t happen. It just couldn’t .
    “I have to get back,” she murmured. “I have to . . .” She pushed to her knees, lifted the coin toward the window and screamed, “Take me back!”
    “Back where?” Keira’s hand squeezed her arm. “Where are you trying to go?”
    Jessica didn’t answer. She didn’t know. God, she didn’t know anything anymore.
    The coin was dull and the dismal weather outside didn’t provide any reflective light. Even the furious desperation whipping up inside her was answered by nothing more than a distant roll of thunder.
    “We can’t stay here,” Teague said to Keira over Jessica’s head. “I didn’t think it would take this long.”
    Sweat broke out on Jessica’s chest, her face. Her heart thudded against her ribs. She couldn’t get enough air. She didn’t know what was happening. Her brain wasn’t working and it hurt. Her stomach hurt. Everything hurt.
    A cramp tore at her stomach, and Jessica doubled over, clutching her belly. She could only stare at the carpet until the twisting pain passed. Her gaze caught on a pill bottle at the foot of her desk. Her mind turned, searching for its identity, and it hit her just as the cramp released and the shakes kicked in. Her Xanax.
    And that’s when she knew what this was—withdrawal. This was one of those rare, bizarre, phantom withdrawal episodes. She’d had two others since rehab, and even her doctors didn’t understand them. But it was as if the mere consideration of taking drugs had corrupted her system into believing she’d actually taken them, then she had