Seven steps.
Six.
Five.
Anton felt as if he was climbing to the gallows.
At the head of the stairs, he cracked his forehead on the doorframe to his room. As Ma used to say, “Probably knocked more sense outta ya than inta ya.”
“Sure thing, Ma.”
And he’d remembered to duck for this one. It was just that doors in a five-hundred-year-old Cornish inn were even lower than most. Old houses, like his parent’s North Carolina farmhouse, were a real problem for a guy who was six-five. He’d cracked his head on the back kitchen door so many times that Pa had nailed a doubled strip of old blanket on both sides because he never seemed to learn.
Anton collapsed kitty-corner onto the bed and groaned.
Despite all his years flying for the Army, jet lag always kicked his ass, and this trip had been no different. Besides, when he was flying a helo, he wasn’t jaunting through six time zones in a single day. But good old San Antonio, Texas, now lay a quarter of the world away.
On top of that, dudes his size were not designed to be folded up into airplanes for twelve hours.
Just to continue his losing streak, he’d lost the front-seat toss for the five-hour drive from London to Cornwall. Of course, that was kind of a given, as Jesse’s wife Hannah was the best driver the team had, so the cowboy always claimed the navigator seat. Watching the crazed English drivers race by on the wrong side of roads so narrow that they barely deserved the name, Anton had almost been glad to be in the back with the rest of the team.
It wasn’t even coming up dusk yet, but he didn’t care. They’d eaten something he didn’t remember in the inn’s pub, and now he could just stretch out and pray that his body recovered sometime this decade.
Seven p.m. local meant it was only one in the afternoon in San Antonio, so his mind was wide awake. Or was it one in the morning?
Didn’t know. Didn’t care.
With nothing left to do but ache, Anton decided it was time to put himself back on the winning side of the coin. And, at that moment, that meant the best place to be was anywhere else, so he went “lookabout.”
His semi-sister always called it “going walkabout” like in that Australian movie she’d watched when they were kids. But it was his vision, so it was “lookabout” no matter what she said.
He closed his eyes and let his personal, private magic trick slip out of the room—his out-of-body vision went sightseeing while his body lay there unkinking.
Anton mentally strolled his vision through the closed door, down the stairs, and peeked in on the rest of the Shadow Force: Psi team. Yep, they were still downstairs in the pub. They’d claimed they were going exploring through the town, and the April evening was nice enough for it, but not a one had moved so much as a muscle. Lame-os.
He hadn’t been in the mood to really notice earlier, but the pub looked majorly cozy, old-style Cornwall.
He had to laugh; his semi-sister Michelle was leaning half asleep against Ricardo. It was still weird thinking of them as a couple, but since they’d married last month and he’d stood as best man, he’d better get used to it. It had given him the oh-so-sweet opportunity to threaten Ricardo with utter mayhem if he made Michelle unhappy. Of course, based on growing up with her and being Ricardo’s best man and all, he’d gotten to threaten Michelle with the same. Two for the price of one, which totally made it worth the price of admission.
The other three team members looked equally hammered. Easy bet he’d crashed only minutes before they would. Sure enough, Jesse and Hannah made excuses that Anton couldn’t hear. He often wished that his hearing would go for a stroll with his vision, but it never did. Instead his ears were still back in the room listening to the occasional pop from his abused vertebrae.
The way they were holding hands as they headed for the stairs, without seeing him, told him that they had other ideas about how to cure their jetlag. Must be nice.
One more flip to the wrong side of the coin; he hadn’t found a lady to do the horizontal tango with in far too long.
He looked away to give them their privacy, because it so wasn’t envy. Really not.
Only Isobel found her feet and headed out on a walk. She had on her winter jacket. Spring here in Cornwall was in the fifties, still colder than a San Antonio winter. Of course, April was already kicking out dailies over ninety back in Texas, so it was kind of a relief.
Anton followed her for a bit. The place had a harbor about the size of five Dixie cups. The town wrapped around it in a broad crescent, and a big granite seawall curled in from either side like a dragon’s jaw. Cute as hell.
He lost Isobel in the evening light when he wasn’t paying attention. How he did that with one of the most beautiful movie stars anywhere in a town as small as Mousehole, Cornwall, was a mystery, but he did.
