Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) (17 page)

“Tony...” Her voice was shaky. “It’s right next door!” Orange flames reflected in the glass windows of the warehouse door across the alley, where they’d marked the water’s progress.

“God, we’ve got to get out of here.” He ran to the opposite end of the attic, then doubled back as she caught up with him.

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know.” He stared out at the water, deep and raging. “There’s no way we could swim for it—”

She ran to the other window. “Tony, look!”

Down the street, a man had climbed the telegraph pole where more debris from Henry’s Market had lodged. He walked on the lowest wire like a tightrope, clasping the wire above, while people watched from the second story windows of the house behind him.

Why hadn’t she thought of that? With the power out everywhere, they wouldn’t have to worry about getting electrocuted.

“No way.” Tony’s eyes were huge behind his glasses. The man on the wires was now over a street away, making his way to the big hill by the fairgrounds, and safety. A woman started up the pole, her skirt clinging to her legs, and a man waiting on the rooftop boosted a little boy to his shoulders. “Tony, we can get out! We’re saved! All we have to do is climb that pile—”

“No.” His jaw went slack.

“But Tony—”

“No. Fucking. Way.” He nodded with each word.

Charlotte didn’t know what
fuck
meant, but when Dewey said it once, Papa had washed his mouth out with soap, so it must be really bad. Lots of adults were probably saying bad words now.

“No way,” Tony whispered again.

Charlotte peered at the window across the street. In its reflection, the flames outside the warehouse had made it across the alley and were licking at the roof of the smoke shop. She sniffed. It was getting smoky in the attic. “But Tony, the fire...”

He stared ahead. His mouth moved but no sound came out.

He was scared. Really scared. Maybe as scared as she’d been when the streetcar had come tumbling toward Henry’s Market. But she’d refused to cry, until the piece of wood she’d floated on wedged against the building they were in now, and her hand slipped, and she knew she’d made it only to wind up in all that nasty, cold water anyway. Then she’d started to cry. But she’d been brave until then. Sometimes you needed to be brave and only think about what you had to do. That’s what Papa’d said when Mama was sick.

This was another of those times. But now she had to be brave for Tony, too.

“Tony? You know the future, don’t you?” He didn’t answer. “Will this building be here? After the water goes down?”

Tony recalled the plaque on the Saturn Society house’s front porch. It had been built in 1914, the year following the flood. His voice cracked. “I don’t think so.”

He gripped the window jamb. He hated his phobia of heights, hated how Lisa had always laughed when they were kids and he refused to go on the high rides at the amusement park. He hated the ribbing he’d taken from coworkers when he’d turned down the window office on the ninth floor, even though he’d insisted Tina Watterson had been there longer and deserved first crack at it. He hated how Charlie had to cajole him into going up the pyramid at Chichén Itzá, even though Tony’s bad feeling had turned out to be spot-on. But he’d never hated his fear like he did now, when it stood between life and death. Not only his own, but a little girl’s.

He stared at the wires, high above the rampaging water.
No, please no. Let there be some other way. Anything.

Charlotte coughed. Gray smoke filled the air, and it was getting thicker. “Please, Tony. I know you’re scared...”

He crossed his arms over his chest, more to stop himself from shaking than for anything else. He lacked the strength to lie and say he wasn’t afraid. “There has to be another way...”

He regarded Charlotte for a long moment. The crackle of the flames had crescendoed to a roar. Her eyes met his, beseeching, pleading, sympathetic in quiet desperation.

Somebody’s baby.

What if it was Bethany? What if the situation were reversed, and some other man had held Tony’s baby’s life in his hands?

To hell with his stupid phobia.

He moved to the window, and studied the debris that had been Henry’s Market, then examined the telephone pole and wires.

They’d be wet and slippery. He and Charlotte could fall and die.

Taylor Gressman’s words floated through his mind.
Oh, we keep records. How we die, how we heal...

He pressed his fingertips to the scar on his neck. He’d died in Mexico. And returned to the present.

If he were alone, he might take his chances and remain in the burning building. But Charlotte was too small to hold on above and walk the wires by herself.

He was responsible for her. He hadn’t pulled her from the water to leave her at the mercy of fire.

He threw open the sash. “Come on.”

She trembled as she climbed over the sill. Was it from the cold, or the fearsome journey upon which they were about to embark? Tony followed, then dropped to the wood behind her.

They crept to the telephone pole. Tony glanced back at the tobacco store. The smoke had grown denser, and he thought he saw an orange flicker in the window.

His eyes traveled up the splintery, wooden pole. Metal spikes protruded from it every few feet down both sides, forming a ladder.
Put one hand on this rung, then your other hand on that one, foot up...

His limbs didn’t obey, his body frozen.

“Tony...” Charlotte didn’t whine. Her voice held no accusation. She wasn’t afraid.

He had to do it. Maybe he’d fall and die. But they’d definitely die if they stayed.

“You’re going to have to ride piggy-back.” Tony crouched down, his back to the child. “Climb on.” He grabbed her legs and hoisted her up higher. She locked her arms around his neck and pressed her legs into his sides. Her weight settled on him like a yoke, oddly comforting as it urged him onward. “Hold on tight. And whatever you do, don’t let go.”

“I won’t.” Her voice was thin and strained. Behind them, the crackling and popping grew louder. Had the smoke thickened while he’d stood there waffling? With a grimace, he gripped the spikes and pulled himself up, grunting under Charlotte’s added weight.

He stared straight into the telephone pole as he climbed. His breath came in short bursts. He looked up only enough to see the next pair of spikes. Finally, he reached the point where the first cable crossed the pole, then climbed upward until he could grab the upper wire.

He slowly let go of the metal protrusion and flexed his hand. It was already stiff from clutching the cold, metal spikes so tightly.

The wires dipped in gentle scallops from pole to pole. Three streets away, a corner pub’s porch roof extended close enough they’d be able to hop onto it from the wire. He counted the poles between them and the tavern. Seven.

Seven hundred feet between them and safety.

It might as well have been seven miles.

Then he looked down. Big mistake.

Far below—it was only fifteen feet or so, but it seemed like a hundred—the turgid, brown river burst by. Death above, death below, death behind them.

“Hurry, Tony!” Charlotte’s voice was firm and strong. Facing death in three forms, the kid was braver than he’d ever thought about being.

Her legs gripped his middle tighter. He flew in planes all the time. He could do this.

He clenched his jaw, grabbed the cable above, and slid his foot sideways onto the lower one. With his feet perpendicular to the wire, the heels of his dress shoes hooked around it.

He gripped the wire so hard he half expected it to cut his hand. For the first time in years, Tony prayed.
Please, God, get me through this... if not for me, for her.

He started across.
One foot in front of the other
. He kept his feet angled on the wires, and concentrated on the next pole, impossibly distant.

By the time he reached it, he’d gotten the hang of the tightrope act. From the upstairs window of a nearby house people cheered and bolstered his spirits.

He let go of the cable with one hand. His jaw rigid, he swallowed a string of expletives as he swung around the pole. Charlotte tensed. He picked his foot up, gripped the wire on the other side, then clutched the splintery surface of the post with his left hand as he scooted the rest of the way around. He reached for the wire again with his left hand. His legs wobbled. Charlotte gasped.

We’re
dead. This is it...

He fumbled for the cable, then miraculously found it.
Don’t look down...

He’d made it this far. Damned if he was going to fall now.

Somehow, they made it across two more poles. After they crossed the fourth, it started to snow. The wires grew more slippery. Every few seconds Tony slowed and checked to make sure his shoes were planted on the wire.
Don’t look down, don’t look down!
He could no longer feel his feet or his hands, and Charlotte shivered so hard he feared she’d fall off his back.

Halfway to the fifth pole he slipped.
Damn damn damn!
He hung on to the wire above as his left foot flailed for purchase. Charlotte bit back a wail, then he regained his footing.

He inched along without lifting his feet again. The world narrowed until it was nothing but his numb hands on the wire above, his feet sliding on the one below, and the weight of Charlotte on his back. Nothing but the need to move forward.
One foot in front of the other, don’t look down!

“Hello there!” a man called from below.

Tony stopped. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t take the chance he’d slip again.

“It’s a boat!” Charlotte said.

Tony let his gaze travel downward, then wished he hadn’t when he saw how far away the boat was. “Ohhh, shit,” he mumbled. Charlotte’s grip tightened around his neck.

“Just a little farther, there, and we’ve got you.” The man stood in one of those odd flat-bottomed boats. Another passenger clung to the telephone pole Tony was trying to reach, and held the boat stable in the rapid flow of water.

“Thank God,” Tony breathed.

He barely remembered the descent down the spike ladder. His foot touched the blessed, wooden surface of the boat’s bottom, and Charlotte slid off his back. One of the men reached for him, grabbed his arm and guided him into the craft. “Steady, there, fellow,” said the man holding on to the telephone pole. “We’ve got to pick up a few more, then we’ll head for the cash... get you some warm food, dry place to rest.”

Tony didn’t know what the guy meant by the cash, but he didn’t care. He’d give them all the money he had, if that’s what they wanted. As long as he was on the ground. His head slumped to his knees as the boat slid away with the current. He palmed the wooden plank of the seat beside him. Wood. Solid. His whole body shook, but it wasn’t until a small arm linked through his that he realized he was sobbing. “It’s okay Tony,” Charlotte said. “You know what?” She snuggled close to him. “You’re a real hero.”

“The cash” referred to The National Cash Register Company, which had transformed into a huge rescue and relief operation. Tony spent the next two weeks there, working with the Ohio National Guard. He fell into bed every night, aching from physical labor he wasn’t used to, but he slept better than he had since before his divorce. When he got home—if he ever did—he’d have to start hitting the apartment complex’s workout room on a regular basis.

Staying busy helped keep his mind off the things he missed. People and places he feared might be gone from his life forever. His parents. Lisa and her family. The bagel shop. Bernie and the guys at Mulroney’s. People at work. Violet, and build-your-own tacos on Wednesdays at the cafeteria. Television. Cell phone service and the Internet. His electric razor—even though it wasn’t fashionable, he was growing a beard. He didn’t have much choice when the sight of the straight razors at the barber shop made him break into a sweat, reminded him of things he’d rather not think of
(stone knife)
.

His latest assignment was building wooden walkways in a temporary camp for the homeless. He bent over to hammer nails into a plank—not fun, when he’d had a hellacious headache for the past two days, and aspirin from the relief center’s infirmary did little to help. On top of that, he’d been catching weird glimpses of home—fleeting images of modern cars and trucks, One Dayton Centre rising from downtown, the new University of Dayton buildings where the tent city had been a second before. But no matter how hard he concentrated, the views always disappeared, and home never materialized. Probably nothing more than wishful thinking—

Footsteps stopped behind him, jerking him back to reality. “Tony?”

He turned to see a little girl in a blue sailor dress. Her waist-length, wavy blond hair blew in the breeze, catching the sunlight, and when she gave him a gap-toothed smile, it was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. “Charlotte?”

She rushed for him and gave him a big hug, then stepped back. He set his hammer down, amazed at the difference clean, dry clothes and hair made. He hadn’t seen her since they’d parted at the rescue operations, and her sister had arrived and practically had to drag her away from him.