Tess Mallory - Circles in Time Read online

  "Sit down."

  For once Kendra didn't argue. She sat, wondering why she suddenly found it so hard to meet her editor's eyes.

  "I don't want to hear this, Mac," she said, twisting her fingers together in her lap.

  "I don't give a damn whether you want to hear it or not. For once you're going to listen to me."

  Her head jerked up. "I'm not going to listen to more of your armchair psychology."

  "Yes, you are." He turned, his gaze pinning her to the chair like a butterfly to poster board. "I told you on your last assignment that if you took any more unnecessary risks I was going to pull you off the international beat."

  "I didn't—"

  "You did. You're just lucky that you didn't end up getting shot again."

  "It wasn't that big of a deal."

  "My God, woman, you were held hostage by the IRA for two weeks!" He held up one hand to stop her protest. "I think that's a big deal. And it was totally ridiculous. There was no reason in the world for you to place yourself in that position."

  "I thought there was, or I wouldn't have done it, Mac."

  He shook his head and paced away from her. "You always think there's a reason to risk your life. You take more risks than anyone else in the business!" He whirled. "Did you know that they call you Crazy O'Brien?"

  Kendra flushed. She'd heard about the nickname and laughed it off. Now, however, hearing Mac say it aloud made her feel childish and unprofessional.

  "And why do you take these risks?" Mac was still talking, his voice becoming more forceful as he circled around the desk toward her, one index finger stabbing the air for emphasis. "Because you still haven't gotten over James and Nicole's deaths, and deep down, you want to get yourself killed so you won't have to deal with living without them." He paused, and when she didn't respond, he shook his head and sighed. "You've got to get over it, deal with it somehow."

  Kendra stood and turned away from him, her arms folded tightly across her chest. She stared out at the almost empty newsroom through the glass walls of his office. A throbbing pain began in her left temple.

  "Tell me something, Mac," she said as her fingers bit into her upper arms. "How do you 'get over' losing your husband and baby?" She whirled to face him, her eyes narrowed and hard. "Does it just happen one day? Do you wake up and decide, 'Oh, I think I'll get over this today'? Tell me, Mac, how do you get over it?"

  "You begin by getting on with your life," he said softly, looking away from her piercing gaze.

  Kendra sighed and spread her arms in exasperation. "Isn't that exactly what I've done?"

  "How? By becoming one of the Chronicle's best reporters?" He shook his head. "You haven't gotten on with your life through your work. You're using your work to run away from life—and toward your own death!" He paused, letting his words sink in. "Have you taken a look in the mirror lately? You've got circles under your eyes, you're pale, your clothes hang on you—"

  "Are you speaking as my editor, Mac, or my fashion critic?" she asked drily.

  He shook his head. "Make all the jokes you like. I'm not going to continue to be a party to your experiments in attempted suicide! I—"

  A sharp knock at the door interrupted his speech. "What is it?" he shouted.

  The door opened and an older woman with salt-and-pepper gray hair and a tight, harried look on her face stuck her head in the door.

  "Excuse me, Mr. Mackenzie, but I was wondering if there was anything more I could do for you or Kendra before I leave."

  Mac glanced at his watch. "There is one thing I needed mailed, Olivia," he said, moving toward the door. '"Let me get it from the other office." He pointed his finger at Kendra, his expression stem. "I'll be right back, O'Brien. Stick around."

  The door shut behind him and Kendra sagged back against the scruffy chair. She cradled her head in her hands as her anger drained away into a familiar heaviness. Mac was all the family she had left. After her father's death when she was eighteen, his brother, Mac, had offered her a job on the Chronicle. By the time she was twenty-two he'd put her through college and taught her everything there was to know about the newspaper business.

  When her mother died, not long after that, Mac had been there to grieve with her and help her make arrangements. The next spring, he had walked down the aisle at her side and given Kendra Miller away in marriage to James O'Brien. A year later he attended the christening of Nicole Mackenzie O'Brien, Kendra and James's precious baby, and his new great-niece and namesake.

  Kendra closed her eyes, wishing she could shut out the memories as well. Tears pressed with a terrible heat against her eyelids, but she ignored them, even when they slipped down her face and burned salty across her lips.

  Two years after her daughter's birth, Mac had helped Kendra plan two more funerals. Standing before the caskets that held her husband and daughter, she had buried her face against her uncle's broad chest and screamed with impotent rage. She had been working late. Mac had offered to run her home, but James wanted to take her and Nicole out to dinner. She had been waiting for them to pick her up when the call came from the hospital.

  A drunk driver had smashed into her family head-on and the occupants of both cars had been killed instantly. Kendra's life suddenly broke into shattered fragments—fragments that could never be put back together again.

  She knew that over the next few months Mac had felt as helpless in the face of her overwhelming grief as she did. She couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't work—until the day she picked up a rival newspaper and saw that a senator, arrested for drunken driving, was suspected to have Mafia ties. That was when her life had irrevocably changed.

  Storming into Mac's office she had demanded he back her in an investigative attempt to prove the story's allegations. Mac had refused. She'd covered the story anyway, uncovered the truth, almost gotten herself killed, and won the respect not only of her editor, but of the publishing world at large.

  After that she had requested every dangerous, exciting assignment that came across Mac's desk, and he'd granted most of them to her. Her obsessive passion for her job hadn't waned in three years. It had given her a way to go on, a reason to live.

  And now he was telling her she really wanted to die.

  Well, do you? she thought. Kendra's innate honesty compelled her to consider the question. It was true she sometimes took incredible risks. Could it be Mac was right? Was her bravado simply a subconscious way to end her life and join her husband and baby?

  No! Angrily she pushed the ugliness of Mac's accusation away. Mac was an old man, almost seventy, locked into old ways. She was a woman, and his niece, and those two factors were enough reason for him to decide her job was too dangerous. He'd been tolerant while he thought she needed the change in order to get on with her life, but lately he had begun acting like an overprotective maiden aunt. There were no dark, psychological secrets lurking in her closet. She simply loved her job, that was all. It had given new meaning to her life. And now Mac was asking her to give up that new meaning—as if he had the right.

  A cold realization settled suddenly in the pit of Kendra's stomach. She opened her eyes and felt the moisture flooding her cheeks. If Arthur Mackenzie didn't have the right to ask something of her, then no one did.

  The door opened and she dashed the tears from her face. As Mac crossed to his desk, Kendra noticed for the first time that he hadn't shaved that day. It gave him a tired, haggard look, and she felt a swift stab of guilt as he sat down at his desk and started shuffling through one of the many piles of paper stacked there.

  "Look, Mac," she said quickly, "I appreciate your concern, but just because I've investigated some dangerous stories, doesn't mean I have a death wish."

  He looked up, one gray brow raised knowingly. "Doesn't it? Not long after James died you insisted on investigating that senator and almost got yourself blown up when a bomb went off in your car!"

  "But I wasn't in the car," Kendra reminded him firmly, "because my contacts warned me. I'm a go
od reporter, Mac, and you know it."

  "Being a good reporter didn't protect you when you were shot in Iraq," he said. "You were lucky you know, you could have died."

  "It was a flesh wound!" she retorted. "Besides, if I remember correctly, you're the man who assigned me to most of these so-called dangerous stories."

  "Yes, I did, and if you'd handled them correctly I wouldn't be making this speech." His hand tightened on one of the papers he held and he shook it at her. "You are a damn good investigative reporter, Kendra, but you're reckless. That kind of recklessness has no place on my paper. It could cost you not only your life, but someone else's."

  "But, Mac—"

  "I've tried very hard not to let our personal relationship interfere with your career. I needed your passion for this area of newspaper writing and I also felt that you needed it at the time. But I've realized that I'm not helping you. I'm hurting you by allowing you to keep running away from reality."

  "Reality!" Kendra bolted out of her seat. "I've seen more reality than most people could ever bear!"

  "Which is exactly my point. You're numb, O'Brien. You're running on empty. When is the last time you felt anything, besides grief or anger?"

  Kendra spun away from him. It was true, working on stories often under traumatic circumstances had caused her to harden that part of herself that could still feel, still hurt. She liked to think she had her emotions under control, packed into a neat little bundle that she could set aside at will. Before she had seen it as an asset to her profession, like a doctor's objectivity. Mac's accusation threatened her defenses.

  "I want you to live, Kendra, not blindly rush toward destruction. I want you to date, get married again, have more children—"

  "That's enough, Mac!" Kendra searched frantically inside herself to find her cool, controlled self, the self that was able to keep the walls up that prevented anyone from ever touching her unbearable pain. She was losing her protection, and feeling a slight panic, she turned and strode to the door, shoulders stiff with anger and determination.

  "Kendra…"

  The tenderness in Mac's voice stopped her. She didn't look back at him as he began to talk, the crusty newspaper editor suddenly becoming simply her uncle.

  "Look, sweetheart," he said, moving to stand behind her, "you're like a daughter to me. Can't you understand? I don't want to lose you."

  Kendra turned, feeling her resistance ebb away as she searched his face. When had the 'worry' line between his brows gotten so deep? When had his gray hair grown so white? When had the laughing eyes filled with such pain?

  Closing her own eyes, Kendra leaned her head against his shoulder and felt his strong arms wrap around her in a familiar, comforting gesture. Summoning the last ounce of strength she possessed at that moment, she pushed down the emotions about to flood over her, and pushed herself away from her uncle at the same time.

  "All right," she said, folding her arms across her chest and moving to stare out the window. "All right, Mac. I'll write your Elvis and the UFO stories for six months—no longer." She glanced back and saw him beaming at her. She couldn't help but smile back at the sight of his obvious relief. "But, there have to be two conditions."

  His smile faded and his gray brows collided. "What conditions?" he asked warily.

  Kendra sighed and turned away from the window, squaring her shoulders. "You don't tell anyone about this—not yet, at least." He started to speak but she held up her hand. "And I have complete editorial control."

  Mac ran one hand over his rough face as if in solemn consideration, then nodded. "You drive a hard bargain, but you've got a deal."

  Kendra's lips curved up and her eyes flashed with challenge. "You may live to regret this, Mac, I hope you realize that."

  The older man shook his head, his gray eyes steady. "Just as long as you keep living, O'Brien, I won't regret a thing. Now…" He quickly crossed the room and handed her an envelope. "Here's your airline ticket, plus travel expenses. Call me and let me know what the situation is once you get there." He hugged her tightly and in spite of herself, Kendra found she was hugging him back.

  "The situation?" She laughed harshly, tossing back her braid as she gazed up at him. "What else can it be but another stupid trick being perpetrated against mindless idiots who read drivel on supermarket racks? I'll write you a story, Mac, but trust me, it won't be what you expect!"

  "It never is, O'Brien," he said with a chuckle. "It never is."

  Chapter Two

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  Kendra shifted in her uncomfortable squatting position and eased the strap of the camera case away from the back of her neck, hoping desperately that the large, neolithic rock she was hiding behind wouldn't decide to come crashing down on top of her.

  She had arrived in England only twenty-four hours after her talk with her uncle, eager to get to work on her assignment and be done with it. True to her disciplined nature where her job was concerned, Kendra had gathered all the information on crop circles she could find in the short time given her before leaving New York, and had read it all on the plane on her trip over the Atlantic. Expecting to be bored, she had been amazed at how interesting the subject really was.

  She learned that in the late nineteen-seventies and early eighties, huge circles of flattened wheat and barley, the stalks pressed down in a curious swirling pattern, began to appear in fields in southern England. And no one had ever seen what caused the circles. A field could be completely untouched one evening, and the next morning sport two, three or even four circles.

  By 1987, so many circles had appeared, many of them in elaborate geometric designs, that the name pictograms was given to them. Researchers had flooded the areas where the circles usually appeared, and for years had tried to capture the making of a circle on film, to no avail. Also fascinating were the reports of popping sounds, coupled with sightings of UFOs and flashing blue lights that often danced above or within the circles.

  Reading further, Kendra found that many theories had been espoused in connection with what came to be known as the "circles effect." She dismissed the UFO-type theories, but found herself intrigued by one scientist who believed the circles to be caused by whirlwinds. When she stumbled across an article by none other than Ian McKay, she read with rapt concentration his premise that the phenomenon was caused by magnetic waves that he believed were capable of disrupting the time-space continuum. It was a fascinating article and made a sort of sense, at least to anyone who had studied with this brilliant teacher, as she had.

  She still believed the circles were the work of men—and not little green men from Mars, either—and more recent research would seem to back her up. There had even been a contest to see if the circles could be duplicated. The results had been highly debated and varied conclusions reached. But Professor McKay's theory was very interesting to say the least, and she was intrigued that he had disappeared at the same time the crop circle appeared.

  Perhaps Professor McKay had been kidnapped, she reasoned, although why was a mystery. He wasn't that well known, or rich, or as controversial as some. One thing was certain—at least in Kendra's mind—the crop circle had absolutely nothing to do with his disappearance. How could it? There was a logical reason for his disappearance and as soon as she did her bit to satisfy the crazies that liked this sort of goop, she was going to find the real story.

  After a leisurely bath and a good night's sleep in a good London hotel, Kendra felt prepared to investigate the newest of England's famed mysterious circles. She arose early, hired a car, and drove straight to the site of the latest sensation.

  When Kendra reached the field, near the ancient Avebury monuments in Wiltshire, she'd discovered that reporters had been banned from examining the circle close up. Too many people tramping around would apparently destroy the find. TV cameramen, photographers, reporters—all sat outside the fenced-off area grumbling their discontent. But Kendra hadn't made a name for herself in reporting by taking no for an answer. Now from her cramped po
sition, she glanced over at Sean Taylor.

  She'd met the wiry, small-for-his-age, fifteen-year-old in the crush of people outside the fence. The boy sported a wild hairstyle that left half of his head shaved and the other half with hair to his shoulder. His clothing was a trifle ragged and only slightly outlandish. Tight-fitting jeans with holes in the knees covered black boots. A plaid shirt hung down to his thighs, and a black leather jacket studded with metal completed the picture.

  His cockney accent added to his overall charm, that and the fact that he continually called her "love." His appearance was nothing compared to characters she'd met in New York, and yet nevertheless, Kendra's caution radar had gone on alert as the boy pulled her away from the teeming crowd of spectators.

  "Wanna see the thing close up, love?" he had whispered into her ear. "For five pounds I kin take you right up to the bloomin' thing's elbow."

  Sure that circles didn't have elbows, but somehow charmed by the boy's eagerness, she'd nodded agreement then followed him on a thirty-minute trek that had led distinctly away from the crowd of onlookers at the site.

  When they had entered a dense forest glade, Kendra had begun to grow a little uneasy at being in such an isolated spot with this curious guide, but a few minutes later they had broken free of the trees and were on the other side of the conglomeration of photographers and reporters. Sean had led her to a large, strange-looking rock and they were now hunkered down behind it, waiting. For what, Kendra wasn't certain.

  "Great view from here, eh love?" the boy asked in his thick brogue, smiling eagerly at her. "In just a few short steps ya could practically be inside the circle yerself."

  She smiled at his exaggeration. They were a good twenty feet away from the circle. "Thank you, Sean, I should be able to get some great pictures from up here—if anything happens."

  "Cor, something's gonna happen," he said. "Ya can feel it in the air, can't ya, love?"

  Kendra didn't answer. The truth was, she could feel something in the air—a heaviness, coupled with an awareness she could only describe as electric.