Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) (41 page)

Charlotte snapped the wallet shut and started to slide it back into Tony’s pants pocket when the smooth leather slipped from her grasp. It plopped onto the floor, spilling the contents. She crouched on the floor to pick them up.

A dollar and some change. All that was left of the money he had tried to give her after the scene at Irving’s. They’d spent the rest on provisions on the way to the Fishin’ Shack.

A silver square, with a circle-shaped ridge. What on earth? She read the small print on the foil. A condom? Why would Tony carry such a thing? Had he come to the past intending to seduce her in exchange for information?

She squeezed the little package in her fist. He had no way of knowing she’d have his answers, no reason to think she’d fall for such a ploy. And he’d been the one who’d resisted, trying to do the honorable thing.

What they’d had was too magical, too extraordinary for it to have all been a lie. He must have another girl.

She gripped the foil square so hard the corner bit into her palm. She made herself loosen her fist, and put the condom back into his wallet. She had no right. No claim on him. Not when he wouldn’t be born until decades from now. She hoped the woman made Tony happy, whoever she was. Or so Charlotte told herself.

She forced the thought away and reached for the last item. A flat, brushed-silver rectangle—the calculator!

She snatched it off the floor, unable to believe he’d left it. She drew her fingers across the cool plastic, slid them along its thin edge. How did it come apart? She had to find out. Had to see the workings behind its marvels.

You can’t!
The tiny machine slipped from her grasp. She reached to grab it again, but something stayed her hand. A feeling of impending doom, of evil, and destruction...

She realized what was happening. Her future self had come back to relive this moment. Just like when she’d tried to tell Papa to sell his stocks and get his money out of the bank.

Charlotte straightened, never taking her eyes off the calculator.
Destroy it. Get rid of it,
the little voice said.
Nothing good will come—

“But my dreams are all I have left,” Charlotte said in a weak voice. Tony was gone forever, along with her hopes for happiness. Caruthers had stolen her dignity, her sense of worth.

Her work could provide solace. A chance to discover something meaningful, technology to benefit humanity.

Tears spilled down her cheeks. She brushed them away, then stared at her dampened hand. Shaking.

She crouched and reached for the calculator. Her hand closed over the cool plastic
(Throw it away!)
but she didn’t listen. “You don’t know everything,” she told her future self.

Changing the past could only result in disaster.

If Tony had left the calculator, it was meant to be. She was meant to have it. To do amazing things.

It could give meaning to her misery. Tony had told her she had much left to do with her life. But what?

Now she knew. And it all began with this tiny, marvelous device.

Tony woke to the smell of flour and ground coffee, and a cardboard box labeled T
HERMAL
C
UPS
16
OZ
. staring him in the face.
What the hell?
He groped beside him for—

A pile of towels?

But no glasses.

He’d left them on Charlotte’s kitchen table.

As he pushed himself off the floor, memories returned of Bernie half-carrying, half-dragging him from the police station to the storage room above the deli—

Oh yeah, he’d been arrested. For indecent exposure.

Tony’s face burned. He wanted to curl into a ball and slide through the floor. A car thief in 1933, now—

He cringed. Charlotte. The memory of her betrayal flayed his heart like an expertly-wielded knife.

He couldn’t think about her now. Couldn’t think about Bethany, or what he’d said to her, that awful night, could only think about what he had to do. If he’d taken two and a half days to recover like he had when he’d arrived in 1933, he had to go to Dora’s in two nights—no, tomorrow.

He wiped his hands over his face. It had been cool when Bernie’d dragged him up the stairs, but it was stuffy now.

Embarrassed to face his parents or Lisa, Tony had called his buddy to bail him out. It was either that, or risk being taken to the hospital when the cops wondered why he didn’t wake up. They’d given him the shorts he now wore, courtesy of their lost and found bin. He jammed his hand into the pocket, pulled out a slip of paper, held it close to his face and angled to catch the light from a streetlamp, coming in through the window. A summons to court, next month.

The desire to disappear into the floor returned. He had a police record. They’d added him to their database. Fingerprinted and photographed like a common criminal.

But he
was
a criminal. A time-criminal. Maybe it was fitting.

It felt like hell.

He shoved the paper back into his pocket. He’d plead no contest, pay his fine and get it over with as fast as he could.

He felt his way downstairs to the bathroom and found the light switch. After shutting his eyes to the sudden brightness, he made his way to the sink and splashed water on his face.

A t-shirt lay draped over the sink. Tony grabbed it.

S
pa
S
tar

A
merica
R
emembers

He scowled at the shirt’s bold, blue lettering. What the hell was S
pa
S
tar
? A vague notion of Solar Power Array-something hovered at the edge of his mind, but didn’t materialize.
Whatever.
He’d figure it out later. He shrugged into the shirt and slipped out the door.

In the dark and deserted dining room, a light burned over the counter—enough to illuminate the wall clock. 3:32 AM.

His ATM card was in his wallet, which he’d left at—his gut twisted—Charlotte’s house. He’d have to get inside his apartment somehow, grab his checkbook, and go to the bank for cash to repay Bernie. Then begin the rigmarole of replacing his driver’s license and credit cards. By the time he got all that taken care of, it would be time to warp back and rescue Bethany.

He made his way around the corner, the light rain making cool, wet spots on his back, not unpleasant, now that he was clothed. But when he reached the parking garage, he stopped short, his jaw slack. Graffiti-laced plywood covered all but one window of the attendant’s booth, and that one was broken. Fear lanced through him. Had the garage closed while he was gone? What would they have done with his car? Where would he go? He’d locked the apartment. Curling up in the doorway didn’t appeal—downtown Dayton wasn’t the safest place at three-thirty a.m.

He crept around the corner. A few cars hulked in the darkness on the ground floor. A new glass enclosure surrounded the elevator and stairwell. He leaned against a pylon and let out a sigh of relief. They’d remodeled in his absence, that was all. He yanked the door handle, but nothing happened. He swore. Locked! Now what was he going to do?

Then he glimpsed a small, black square beside the doorframe. An engraved placard above it read Prepaid Parking Only, Touch to Enter. What the hell? He was paid, though. Paid through September. He pressed his finger to the square.

“Welcome, Tony Solomon,” a mechanized female voice said. The door clicked.

When he emerged on the fourth floor, his eyes darted to his usual parking spot. Metallic blue gleamed in the blue-white light from energy-saver, LED bulbs overhead. His Buick, thank God. He patted his hip...

And met with the flat, cotton weave of the shorts the DPD had given him.
Shit.
No keys. They too, had been left in 1933.

He leaned against the car door, trying to figure out what to do.

Something poked his back. He turned around.

Beneath the door handle where the keyhole should be, was a little, black square. Like the one he’d pressed to enter the parking garage. He touched it.

The Buick’s lights flashed, and the door clicked. He jerked his hand away as if the square had burned him, then logic kicked in. He yanked the door open and climbed into the car.

The last time he’d ridden in a car, he’d been with—

Charlotte.
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to banish her image. God, how could he have been such a fool? He’d saved her life. Shown her love, given her his heart.

And she’d repaid him by turning him in to the Saturn Society, to be brainwashed and tortured.

Tears burned in his eyes. This time there’d be no stopping them.
Fuck it, it’s four a.m., lay your head on the steering wheel and have it out.
That’s what Lisa would say. Just for a minute. Then he’d find the key—hadn’t he left one under the mat last time he’d had an oil change?—start the car, and go home.

His head crashed against the polished plastic of the dash. “Damn!” He raised up, rubbing his forehead.

His mouth fell open, and thoughts of Charlotte ran away.

There was no steering wheel. Never had been.

He ran his hand over the smooth dash. What the hell?

He could barely make out the digital instruments beneath the smoked Plexiglas finish. Where the steering column should have been, chrome bordered an inch-square tile of black plastic.

The square looked suspiciously like the one on the door. He pressed his finger to it. A blaze of blue lit up the instrument panel, but the Buick barely made a sound—just a quiet, whirring fan, not the engine.

G
reat.
No glasses, no wallet, and now car trouble. He gawked at the display until a disembodied, feminine voice spoke from somewhere behind him.

“Good evening, Tony. Please specify a destination.”

“Huh?” Tony’s head whipped around. “Who’s there?”

“‘Huh’... is not in my database,” the voice said. He twisted to peer into the back seat. Empty. “Please specify the street address, or state another destination.” The voice sounded robotic, like the prompts of an old, automated voice mail system. Not like the navigation and crash response system he’d had before. That had been a computer, too, but he couldn’t see the button anywhere that would call a human being.

Tony stared through his windshield at the blank cement wall. Outwardly, his car had appeared no different, other than the lock. But inside—

The voice spoke again. “Please specify a destination. If you need help, speak the command ‘Help.’ If you—”

“Help.” Tony’s eyes darted around the car’s interior. At this rate, he’d need a lot more help than the disembodied voice was likely to offer.

“Welcome to the General Motors Automated Navigation and Environmental Control System,” the voice said. A computer. “Your car will start automatically when an authorized driver touches the fingerprint recognition pad. To engage the navigational system, specify your destination. This can be a street address, an intersection, or selected from a list of your commonly visited locations, if you have entered any. If the address you specify is outside the city limits of your current location, you must also specify city and state, or the zip code. You have... eleven... commonly visited locations. To hear your commonly visited locations, state the command ‘Favorites.’ To hear—”

“Favorites.”

“Home,” the computer said in a man’s voice this time. His own. “Work. Bernie’s.” Weird to hear his car talking to him, weirder to hear it in his own voice. “Mom and Dad’s. Bernie’s house. Happy Hunan. Danny and Mark’s. Drycleaner’s. Mulroney’s. Wal-Mart. The bank.”

He sank into the seat. Odd, why had he spoken his nephews’ names instead of simply saying “Lisa’s”?

“Home,” he said.

The headlights came on. Gears engaged, then the car silently backed out of the parking space and trundled down the exit ramp. Thankfully, it asked for no more instruction, for all Tony could do was sit in stunned silence as the car drove itself—probably a good thing, considering how little he could see. Fifteen minutes later, it turned into his apartment’s driveway and swung into a parking slot near his unit.

Tony roused himself out of his daze as the headlights went dark and the engine shut off. Rain drummed on the roof. As smart as the damned car was, why hadn’t it parked in the carport? Especially in the rain?

He climbed out and scanned the dimly lit parking lot and saw why. There was no carport. But what happened? He hadn’t authorized it to be removed. Not when there was nothing wrong with it, and he got an extra fifty bucks a month from the tenants who used it.

Anger stirred in his confusion. As soon as Melinda opened the property manager’s office, they were going to have a talk. She better have a damn good reason for the carport—

Shit
.
His steps slowed as he approached his front door. No keys—because they were in 1933 with his wallet and car keys. He’d have to go back to the car and use its built-in satellite phone to call his overnight maintenance service—if he still had one, and if the car still had the phone.

As he turned to walk back to the car, he stumbled over the scalloped, concrete blocks that outlined the flowerbeds, and stepped on an orange marigold. At least that hadn’t changed. As he steadied himself, his gaze drifted over his front door. There was no keyhole on the knob. No deadbolt. And a hinged metal square beside the door. He lifted it, and sure enough, there was another black fingerprint thing. No sooner did he touch it than the door clicked open.