CHAPTER 2

Leo

Before the redhead had appeared, I’d had my foot halfway out the door, determined to return to Seven Rock where I belonged… at least in part. Despite her icy cold reception, the pull I had toward her told me that I was in the right place, at least for the moment.

Does she know me?

She certainly acted like she did, but gauging by the way she talked and acted, she didn’t like me very much.

I watched her disappear into the back of the diner, tempted to chase after her, but after what had happened at the last place, I didn’t want to push my luck.

I could handle myself, but without having a proper handle on this city and the underlying animus surrounding me, I decided to leave her.

I had the distinct sense that I would see her again, however. I wasn’t going anywhere yet.

I paid my tab to the waitress who was considerably less flirty now, her gaze averted as she took my money, even with the handsome tip. I noticed she went out of her way to avoid touching me.

“What did you mean earlier when you said I was ‘one of those’?” I asked her.

She balked to a near opaque and physically stepped back from the table.

“I didn’t mean to insult you,” she cowered, fear coloring her eyes. “I just meant that you’re an Original.”

“Original what?” I snickered, bemused.

I’d been called a lot of things before, but that was the first. The bell dinged from the serving counter, and she rushed to address the order, rather than respond to me, leaving me to down the last sip of my warm beer and stare pointedly at the swinging door to the kitchen.

But as the minutes ticked by, it became clear that the angry, mystery redhead who sucked the breath from my lungs was not going to resurface.

Reluctantly, I stood and gestured for the nervous server again, and she begrudgingly trudged back toward me.

“Do you need something else?” she asked, still avoiding my gaze.

“Where’s the woman who was sitting with me? She went into the back earlier. Is she still there?”

“Luna?”

Unexpectedly, the name sent spikes of pleasure through me.

“Luna,” I blubbered, the moniker falling off my tongue as if I’d whispered it a thousand or more times already.

Blinking, I centered myself. “Yes. Her.”

The server shook her head. “She left a while ago.”

Disappointment struck me, but I also wasn’t entirely surprised. The persistent pulsating in my chest had diminished a few minutes earlier, and the energy I’d felt seconds before laying eyes on Luna, dispersed.

“Does she come here often? Does she live around here?”

The waitress finally met my eyes. “We don’t ask questions about Luna,” she said firmly. “I have to get back to work if there’s nothing else.”

I let her go, realizing that I wasn’t apt to get much more from her, but my curiosity was beyond piqued. Still, Luna had made it clear that she didn’t want me around, and I had no business chasing after her, regardless of how strongly I felt.

But if I happened to chance upon her on my travels… Well, no one could blame me for that.

Grabbing my leather coat, I made my way back to the parking lot, noting the covert stares of the patrons again. Suddenly, they seemed more pointed, more curious than they had before.

Do they know me?

Now I was just getting paranoid.

I needed to get into the city, not sit on the fringes where all the misfits of society appeared to congregate. Answers weren’t going to find me out there, but I knew I’d purposely avoided heading into the middle of town after my brief encounter in Montshire.

The new technologies and architecture were daunting and unfamiliar, but I would have to learn to adjust, and that wasn’t going to happen by drinking beer in a rundown café in the desert.

Plus, if that redhead lived anywhere, she sure as hell didn’t live out in the boonies.

Sliding into the driver’s seat of the stolen sedan, I curled my hands tightly around the steering wheel and started the vehicle, determined to seek the answers I’d come for. And hopefully, find the redhead along the way as well.

* * *

I quickly found that Pario City was nothing like Montshire. Although the city did boast several high-rise buildings, none rose to the height of those in the place that had seemed like science fiction to me.

People went about their business in much the same fashion, dressed in business attire, talking on those strange, hand-held devices to their ears, which I quickly understood were portable telephones.

It still defied reality to me that I had managed to overlook all of these major changes in the world as I hid away in Seven Rock. A sense of guilty unease overtook me when I pulled the car onto one of the main roads, finding a parking spot near a courtyard park.

Two young mothers sat with two children, both vastly varying in age. It appeared as though the fertility issue existed here as it did everywhere else. There was an old-time feel to Nampa City, despite the modern advances, the buildings clinging to an antiquated décor, the movements less hurried than the residents of Montshire but not quite as slow as us in Seven Rock.

I ambled toward the parking lot but stopped, looking toward the storefronts across the street instead. My pulse quickened as I recognized the sight from the postcard. A flash triggered a fleeting memory, and I raced to grab at it, but it was gone before I could capture it.

I’ve been here before! I know this place!

The thought was astonishing. Nampa City was hundreds of miles away from Seven Rock, thousands from where I’d unearthed myself from a certain death. When had I been here, and why?

Slowly, I turned around in a full circle, my eyes taking in every detail of the downtown core around me, willing myself to remember, to understand why I was there. But the more I stood there, the more my frustration mounted.

Without memories or guidance, I didn’t have anything to go off but a sense of curiosity.

That and a very sexy redhead whose gravitational pull was worth keeping me in her orbit for another day or two until I got a handle on why I’d been mysteriously summoned to the ends of the world.

I didn’t want to believe I’d come all that way for nothing, much as it was beginning to look exactly that way.

But maybe Luna was a good enough reason—assuming I ever saw her again.