LITMIR.BIZ

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      She cut him off sharply. “My office. Now.”

      His eyebrows shot up and he studied her far too intently for comfort. It felt as if he was all but stripping her naked with his burning blue eyes. And at the thought, her body suddenly felt entirely too hot.

      She tried to cover up her gaff by adding hastily, “Cup of coffee, Colonel? I can give you an overview of the program and then walk you through where we are now.”

      Thankfully, the good colonel was not slow on the uptake. “Coffee. Great. I had to get up at the crack of dawn to fly here this morning.”

      Athena caught the curious gazes of a couple of the computer techs. She really hoped they hadn’t heard that ‘not long until something bad happens’ comment from Grafton. She’d deliberately kept that part of the project from her team. They were already under enough pressure what with all the funding problems they’d had. They didn’t need to know that the fate of the world rested on their heads, too.

      The moment her office door closed, Grafton whirled to face her. “What’s up?” he asked shortly. Impatient energy poured off of him, and her breathing accelerated to match it. He was such a man’s man. Definite alpha male.

      She replied, “The staff hasn’t seen the classified document you have. They’re not aware of the deadline looming over this project.”

      “Why the hell not? They’ll work faster if they know what they’re up against.”

      Facing him felt like trying to stand against the force of a hurricane. Lord, he was overwhelming. She was a scholar and an academic, and lived in a quiet world of study and thought. She wasn’t up to dealing with this tornado of a man. But she didn’t have much choice in the matter. Funding and Grafton…or no Project Anasazi.

      She tried to explain her decision. “They already give me a hundred percent. And what we do takes tremendous attention to detail. Absolute precision. I can’t afford to have anyone racing through their work and making a mistake. Lives depend on us getting this right.”

      “If you’re correct, the future of the world may depend on us getting this right.”

      Athena knew that. She’d already bet her reputation and her career on that fact. And as soon as they tried to use the crown, she might very well be betting her life on it.

      He made no further argument for the time being, but she got the feeling she hadn’t heard the last of it. After a moment he asked, “Where are we on the project?”

      “Close, but we’re missing something in the algorithms, and my brain waves aren’t being exactly duplicated. We’re within a few microns of the right amplitude variations, but we’re not quite there.”

      “Have you sent anything back in time yet?”

      She jolted. “Good Lord, no. We don’t want to chance breaking the crown by using it incorrectly.”

      “Seems to me that at some point you’ll just have to jump off the cliff and give it a go.”

      Humph. Military thinking. “That might work when you’ve got a hundred more tanks to blow up where the last one came from. But we’ve got one crown. One shot at getting this technology right.”

      “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. You might very well discover that last missing bit if you just use it.”

      “Too risky.”

      He gave her a long, hard look, then said tightly, “That’s not your call anymore, Dr. Carswell.”

      She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again. A surge of resentment warred with a wave of desperation in her gut. She’d known she was selling Project Anasazi’s soul to the devil. She just hadn’t expected to be confronted by the consequences so soon. She’d hoped to have a couple more weeks before Uncle Sam swooped in and took over. And she definitely hadn’t been counting on this force of nature landing in her lap.

      Grafton startled her by saying, “Tell me more about you. The report didn’t say much about your talents beyond the fact that you’ve shown a knack for using the crown.”

      She shrugged, embarrassed. “My particular skills seem specially suited to it.”

      “You have the ability to astral project, is that right?”

      She squirmed, abruptly aware of how perceptively that sapphire gaze was drilling into her. “Well, yes.”

      “What exactly does that mean?”

      “It’s akin to dreaming, but a great deal more vivid. I project my awareness to someplace other than my own body and experience it with exquisite sensory accuracy—as if I’m actually there.” Thankfully, he made no editorial comments on how whacky that sounded. She continued reluctantly. “With the crown’s help, I can project an image of myself to another location so that people there can see me.”

      His eyes definitely widened at her assertion, but she pressed on doggedly. “I’ve recently mastered sending an image of another person to a specific site. When we perfect the computer program and can boost the signal more, I should be able to send not only the image, but the physical person. Eventually, we hope to parlay that into sending people into different times entirely.”

      He responded, “That’s…incredible.”

      “I know it sounds crazy. But it’s true,” she blurted. “Every bit of it. You can see for yourself. We’ve got an astral projection experiment scheduled for tomorrow.”

      “I’ll be there.”

      At least he was suspending judgment on her sanity—or lack of it—for now. Silence fell between them. Eventually, he murmured, “So. You’re unique, as well, then.”

      His voice was a caress across the back of her neck, intimate, sensual. Surely he was only talking about her psychic ability. But something in his tone hinted at a deeper meaning.

      “I highly doubt that.” Damn. Did she have to sound so breathless? “I’m sure there are other psychics in the world who can do what I do. Probably better, in fact.”

      “Maybe. But none of them are here and involved in this project. What effect does the crown have on other types of psychic abilities?”

      She blinked. That was actually an insightful question. “We have a telekinetic gal on staff. Using the crown she can zip stuff all over the room, but has had no luck sending an object out of her direct line of sight. Apparently, her skill is tied to seeing where she’s sending the object. We’ve pretty much given up trying to further develop her relationship to the crown.”

      Grafton looked surprised. “Are you saying the device is sentient?”

      Another insightful question. Athena frowned. “I’m not quite sure how to answer that. You’d have to try the headgear on yourself to know what I mean. Whether it’s some other part of my own awareness that’s being enhanced, or whether there’s actual intelligence—artificial or organic—within the artifact itself, I couldn’t say. But I’m definitely

      not…alone…when I use the crown.”

      “I’d like to try it.”

      Alarm shot through her. Maybe it was fear that the crown would like the new boss too much, or maybe fry his brain. Or maybe she just felt proprietary toward it. Either way, she wasn’t comfortable with the idea of him using it. She answered quickly, “Most people who put it on experience a blinding headache for several days thereafter. The crown seems to have an affinity for certain brains.”

      “Have you determined what it is about those brains that it likes?”

      “Everyone it has not bothered has been strongly psychic.” She added with a certain satisfaction, “And everyone it has liked so far is female.”

      Grafton’s gaze narrowed. “Are you jacking me around, or are you serious?”

      She

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