Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) (51 page)

Rumble. Buzz. Whooshing sounds. Charlotte opened her eyes and took in her surroundings as the dizziness subsided. A car passed on the street in front of her. The superhighway bridge Tony had told her about cut a darker swath across the night above, punctuated by misty-circled, orange-tinted streetlights. Something pressed into the hand she held at her breast. She unclenched her fists. Her quarter in one.

The calculator in the other.

She gasped, and it clattered to the concrete. For a long moment, all she could do was stare. Slowly, she picked it up.

She’d promised Tony she’d destroy it. Was taking it out of 1933 altogether enough?

She dropped the calculator into her pocket, but snatched her hands away at the wetness on her dress. Dark stains blotted out the beautiful violet print. Blood. Tony’s.

Lightness burst through her. She’d made it to Tony’s time. She’d jumped into the future, alive! Her eyes darted from side to side, searching for him. He’d be hurt, probably unconscious. She had to find him, fast. The jump would heal the worst of his injuries, but he’d still need medical attention.

She wandered across a vast plain of concrete and sadness sliced her. Everything she’d known, gone. Her home, and all those around it. She swallowed. Except for Tony. He was—fear whisked away her sorrow—in the river.

She had to go there, face the water and the danger and deception it concealed, and get him out of the river before he drowned.

She trudged across Robert Boulevard—now Robert Drive, according to an enormous green sign above the road. It was nothing more than a strip of deserted pavement. No homes. No more beautiful park in the median. Fear threatened to immobilize her. She fought it and tottered across another expanse of concrete, toward the retaining wall still atop of the riverbank. At least the foot she’d sprained no longer hurt, thanks to the jump. She had to get to Tony. Gripping the low, cement wall, she leaned over.

The black ribbon of the river flowed smoothly below. Decades later, the only difference was that more streetlights cast speckled reflections on its surface.

Enough light she should have been able to see Tony lying on the graveled shoal near the bridge support. Dread coursed down her gullet and bound her ribs as surely as if she’d been tied with rope. Had he come forward only to drown?

She had to go down there to make sure. Had to go into the water that would suck her under, steal the air from her lungs. Never mind the river was only a few feet deep, that was enough to be dangerous, Tony could be drowning while she stood there being scared.

She pushed aside her fear and stumbled down the dewy grass to the river’s edge.

She crept along the water, peering in where Tony should have been. The contours of the graveled areas had changed, but not so much he would have wound up under water. He should be—she followed the lines of the bridge supports into the river—Right there. On that little, grassy rise.

She picked her way over rocks, discarded bottles and a tire, squinting at the grass and weeds.

No blood. No indentation where a body might have lain.

But where? He had to be there somewhere.

She paced up and down the water’s edge, searching for any sign Tony might have been there. Blood. Footprints.

She stumbled along the rocky shoreline.
So tired...
She’d forgotten jumping sapped her energy so. She was beginning to slip into recovery. Had to find Tony. Before she collapsed.

“Tony?” Her voice was small and weak. Where was he? How could he have moved in his condition? She had to get away from the water. Wouldn’t be much help to him if she fell in and drowned in recovery. “Tony...” she called. It was useless. Her voice was muffled, darkness was closing in on her. What if something had gone wrong, and he wasn’t there?

Or maybe the jump had healed him more than she thought, and he’d managed to climb the riverbank. Mustering the last reserves of her strength, she did the same, Tony’s image in her mind the only fuel spurring her onward.

But no body lay near the retaining wall. No one hid between the enormous supports for the highway. No Tony.

Barely able to stand, she sagged against one of the massive pylons. “Tony?” Maybe he was in that parking lot over there, hidden among those parked cars that looked like spaceships.

Wobbling, she pushed herself off the column and staggered toward the parking lot as fog descended over her mind.

Her hand met with something smooth and chalky. Metal. She blinked. Heavens, she was already losing consciousness. A truck, its red paint oxidized. And she’d wind up face down on the pavement if she didn’t lie down soon.

And what of Tony?

Nothing she could do, not with recovery about to overtake her. If he was still in the river, he was already dead.

She tipped her face up as tears threatened. He couldn’t be dead! If he was, wouldn’t his body be lying on the shore?

She blinked until her vision cleared. He must have somehow managed to get away.

Phone the police. Yes, that’s what she’d do. If someone had picked up Tony, they’d know. Surely there was a telephone somewhere in one of those big concrete buildings down the street, where a massive, cement sign read Sinclair Community College.

She could make it. If she rested a moment, maybe she could stave off recovery long enough to go there and ring the police.

She glanced at the truck she was leaning against. A pickup truck. With its tailgate down, leaving the way open to a nice, flat, relatively clean place to lie—

Bed...

Charlotte, think! You can’t just lie down in someone’s truck!
She pushed herself off the truck, but listed to the side and grasped it again to keep from falling.

Why not? her weary mind argued. Just for a minute.

It couldn’t hurt. One hand on the tailgate, she grabbed the side of the truck bed with the other hand, and pulled herself up and over. She slid to the metal bed with a thunk.

Violet hesitated at the door to Tony’s hospital room. She hadn’t seen him in over two months, ached to see his handsome face, but wouldn’t it seem funny for her to visit?

It wasn’t strange in Mexico.

But then, she’d been with him when he was hurt. Natural curiosity, a reason to care.

She had to see him. Needed to, ever since his picture was on the news last week, when he’d been found half dead in the river. A shudder coursed through her. She didn’t know why, but the river—any water bigger than her bathtub, but especially the Great Miami—had always scared the wits out of her. At least it had, as long as she could remember. And to think Tony had almost died there. She couldn’t shake the feeling she had something to do with it.

Ridiculous. It was because she’d had one of those awful dizzy spells earlier that night. They always frightened her, even though they lasted only seconds and left no lingering effects.

Tony was going to be all right. She’d heard people talking in the cafeteria line.

But she needed to see him herself.

Just do it, Stephanie and Timmy would say.

She strained to hear voices. If he already had visitors, she’d move on. But she heard only the low buzz of the television. She squared her shoulders and walked in.

He was alone. His eyes were closed.

Still looking at him, she turned around, started to tiptoe out when his eyelids fluttered open. “Violet?”

Jitters surged through her. Lord, he was beautiful. Even in a hospital gown, with tubes stuck in his nose, and his hair all mussed up. Déjà vu struck her. Somewhere, sometime, she’d heard him say her name in that same, sleepy mumble.

She forced her voice to steady. “Hi, Tony. I- I was just here for a follow-up on a procedure I had done, heard you were here, thought I’d stop by...”

Oh, drat. Why had she told him that? Surely he didn’t care.

“Come on in.” His voice was thin. He lifted his arm in a weak wave. “Sit down, if you want.”

She thanked him and smoothed her skirt as she sat. “I’m afraid I don’t have any Jim Winter novels for you this time.”

The corners of his mouth tipped. “I’ve read them all anyway.” He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, then turned away, as if it hurt to look at her. He stared at the television mounted on the wall opposite the bed. “I’m glad you came. I’ve been wanting to ask you something.”

Her breath caught. Had he found out about... whatever she’d done? Something terrible. Something to do with lots of blood, and the horrible vision that had invaded her thoughts when she saw him on the news. Herself, gripping a bloody knife while Tony lay choking for breath beside her. Water all around...

Absurd. She couldn’t have stabbed Tony. She’d been at home with Stephanie watching television when he was apparently attacked. Still, the feeling she’d done something unforgivable
(killed a man)
had grown stronger since then...

“...your family from around here?” Tony was asking.

She inhaled sharply. “Nope, ‘fraid not,” she said with a false lightness. She’d created a background for herself to use in situations like this. “At least, not as far as I know. I was adopted, so I can’t be sure about my birth family, but... why?”

Could he have some clue to the mystery of her real past?

“I found a picture of a woman in my great-grandpa’s stuff. She looked just like you.”

Good Lord, what if it was her grandmother?
Calm down, Violet! Count to ten. Don’t let him see.
“From... how long ago?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I’d say nineteen-twenties, early thirties.” His hand slipped on the bed rail, and his left eye twitched. Like he was lying. But why?

“That’s interesting.” She focused on his face and kept her eyes steady. She couldn’t let him see her nervousness. “But probably no relation. My parents didn’t know much about my birth mother, but I think she was from near where we lived, in southern Illinois.”

Lord, she wished she had a cigarette. Not that she’d be allowed to smoke in the hospital. She reached up and twirled a lock of hair around her finger.

Thankfully, he let the subject drop and moved on to ask about work, people they both knew.

She had trouble concentrating on the conversation. Who was the woman in his great-grandfather’s photos? Did Tony know something? If he found out Violet’s past before she did, would he turn her in to the police?

She’d kept her promise to Stephanie and given hypnosis another try, but the session had yielded no more results than the other times. Most likely, the photo was a coincidence. He couldn’t know anything. His gaze had held no malice, no accusation, only... sorrow?

She forced herself to rise. “I have to go now, I promised my roommate I’d look at her computer.” Strangely, Violet had an affinity for them, though she was sure she’d never touched one before she’d come to live with Stephanie, her then-husband Vince, and her brother Timmy. “I’m glad you’re doing better.”

Tony mumbled his thanks and she walked out, encouraged by his seeming gladness to see her. After he was well enough to return to his job, she’d work up the nerve to ask him out, like Stephanie and Timmy were always telling her to do. At least ask him to join her for a cup of coffee after work.

A loud clang. Something slammed, jostling her. Then a low rumble. Vibration beneath her, and all around. A wad of silk—pretty dress with violets on it, she remembered—clutched in her fist. The acrid fumes of exhaust. A metallic, scraping noise and a sense of motion as something slid past her face—a tool of some sort. The rumble lowered in pitch, and another tool slid by and banged into the first with a clink. She opened her eyes a slit... darkness. More rumbling and motion. She slipped back into unconsciousness.