Free Run (The Tesla Effect #2) by Julie Drew Page B

rather on what she would say to him. Things were trickier now. She knew Sam in two different times, he was in many ways two different people to her, and she wasn’t sure if it was possible to keep them separate—in terms of information she might accidentally spill, but also in terms of her feelings about him, which were not exactly clear.
    Tesla realized that Sam was headed for the field he’d taken her to the last time, when she’d thought she’d been seen by her father here, in the past, and blown everything. It was also the open land an older Sam would one day buy, and on which he would build a little cabin back in the trees—the little cabin where he had kissed her. Where he would kiss her, she corrected herself. She was beginning to understand how difficult it was to know things about the future when it was your own past, and to have to try to keep that knowledge from changing anything.
    Sam drove slowly into the field and they left the motorcycle to walk and talk, their boots crunching the dead grass and faded flowers that had bloomed so beautifully in the summer, the single headlight from Sam’s bike illuminating a narrow swath of the field.
    “So?” Sam prompted. “What are you doing here this time?”
    “I have no idea,” Tesla said.
    “Well that’s helpful.”
    “I know. Things are just… let’s just say things have gotten weird at home. Plus,” she continued, remembering her conversation with the older Sam just before she jumped, and trying to assure the future unfolded as it was supposed to, added, “I had a really shitty day and all guys are asshats.” Tesla congratulated herself on an obviously flawless attempt to not screw things up. She was going to be a boss at this.
    “Tesla, what the hell are you talking about?” Sam said, utterly confused.
    Tesla laughed, crossing into the glaring brilliance of the headlight, which dramatically picked out the fiery colors in her hair in sharp contrast to the predawn darkness outside its beam. “I know, I know. This is not as weird as it seems at the moment.”
    “If you say so,” he said.
    They walked on, their unspoken agreement to stay in the open and skirt the trees guiding their steps. Tesla’s mood, so dark and quick to change lately, did another one-eighty.
    “I’m not sure why I’m here in terms of a specific plan, but I do have reasons for coming,” she said. “My mom—no, scratch that,” she amended hastily. Unbelievable , she berated herself. Almost the first thing you do is tell Sam your mom is supposed to die in a few days? He knows she dies, but not when or how. Keep it that way.
    “Sebastian Nilsen, the guy who kidnapped my dad last summer, managed to jump back here in the time machine—we don’t understand what happened, he had a gun on me, made me jump with him, but I somehow stayed and he made the jump. Anyway, he’s here, as far as we know. Both of him, I guess. And he’s dangerous, and I want to find out what he’s up to.” It wasn’t exactly not true, and it certainly seemed plausible, and that was all she needed for the moment.
    “Wait, what?” Sam was incredulous. “The guy’s criminally insane, a kidnapper, and there are two of him—and both of them are here?”
    “Yeah,” she said, unable to keep the grin from her face. “Weird, I know. But there are two of me here, too.”
    “Well, yeah, but neither of you is a psychopath.”
    “Far as you know.”
    Sam was silent for a moment as they walked slowly back toward his bike, completing their loop around the outskirts of the field. When he finally spoke, it was clear where his thoughts had gone. “Just be careful, Tesla. Don’t do something crazy without thinking it through, okay?”
    “Nice,” she retorted. “Your first assumption is that I’ll be some sort of loose cannon, and turn the world upside down.”
    He considered her for a moment in the wan light as they got closer to the motorcycle. “Well, it is what you do.”
    When they reached his