Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) (8 page)

I
HAVE NOT GONE BACK IN TIME.
I have not gone back in time. I have not gone back in time.
Tony walked down the street to the office. Everything would be okay once he got there. He’d misread the date in the paper. Imagined Bernie’s weight loss. Maybe Bernie’d fired Jack—sometimes the kid slacked—and that’s why he’d been so brusque.

But things got weirder when Tony reached the office. The receptionist gave him a puzzled look as he walked past her desk.

“Hi, Sarah,” he said.
Weird.
Her hair had definitely been grayer the day before. She must have colored it, but hadn’t done a very good job, for some of the gray still showed.

“Tony? I thought you were out today. Miss your flight?”

Flight?
The itinerary.
He mumbled something about changed plans and hurried to his office. Once inside, he shut the door, something he rarely did.

He walked to his desk, dreading what he’d find.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Stop and think.

He decided to do what he always did as soon as he arrived at work. His stomach settled a little as he hung up his coat on the middle hook behind the door, sat at his desk, and turned on the computer to check email.

The computer rejected his password.

He tried again, typing slowly to ensure he didn’t fat-finger it. No go. After a third failure, he grabbed the phone and punched in Violet’s number.

A man answered. “I.T. Support, Pete speaking.”

Tony scrutinized the display on his phone. He’d dialed the right number. Maybe Violet had gone to the john. “Is Violet around?”

“Violet? You must have the wrong number, sir. This is I.T. Support—”

“Yeah, I know. Is Violet there, please?” He twisted the phone cord in his fingers. He always forgot his new password after he changed it each month, and Violet gave him less shit about it than the other techs, so he preferred to deal with her.

“Um, the only Violet I know is in food services. Is there something I can help you with?”

Food services. Where she worked two years ago.

By the time Pete reset the password, Tony had the phone cord wrapped so tightly around his wrist it was starting to cut off his circulation.

The calendar view in his email program displayed March from two years ago, and showed him as out of the office for the meeting in New York.

He grabbed the phone and punched in the ad agency’s number, but as he waited for someone to answer, a horrible thought occurred to him. What if another Tony Solomon, a two-years-ago-version, had caught the flight as scheduled, and was already there?
Damn.
He pressed his palm to his forehead.

He started to hang up, but the agency receptionist answered. He explained that he’d missed the plane.

“No problem, Mr. Solomon,” she said. “I’ll let them know.”

Tony exhaled as he hung up.
Well, that’s one question answered.
One down and about a million to go.

Throughout the morning he pushed his chair away from his desk every now and then, closed his eyes, and concentrated on the present—or rather, two years in the future, if he’d really gone back in time. He concentrated on the one thing in his office that would have changed—his desk calendar, which should have been
Dilbert
, but now featured
The Simpsons
—which his Grandma Anderson had given him for Christmas, a year before she passed away—which should have been last year.

Nothing happened.

So much for that Everly guy’s “all you have to do is imagine.”

On the other hand, dreams didn’t usually make sense.

Maybe he had to let the dream—or so he hoped it was—run its course. By eleven he could no longer ignore his growling stomach, so he headed for the cafeteria.

The room was empty aside from two employees at a table by the far window, where a few stray snowflakes fluttered to the flat roof of the building next door. Violet stood behind the cafeteria counter’s glass hood.
Oh, no.
Tony’s steps faltered, his appetite vanished, but she’d already seen him. “Hello, Mr. Solomon.” She flashed him a wide smile. “Chili or vegetable soup?”

He forced a chuckle. “Violet, I told you you could call me To—” One of the men by the window rose to get a napkin. Tony did a double take. Keith had fired Bentley over a year ago.

“Mr.— Tony?” Violet’s lips turned up a fraction. She tipped her chin down, then brought her gaze up to meet his. Warmth radiated from the half-circles of her golden-brown eyes showing beneath her thick lashes. “Chili or vegetable?”

“Oh, sorry. Chili, please.”

Weird.
Violet knew he always chose chili. He felt like he should say something more. Keith had told him she was the one who’d grabbed his ankle when he fell on the pyramid, possibly saving his life.

But the Violet who now ladled chili into his bowl hadn’t yet gone to Mexico, wasn’t yet the woman who’d come to his hospital room and read to him. A kindness he couldn’t forget.

At least she hadn’t changed. She wore her white chef’s apron over a blouse and red plaid skirt that was dressier than her job demanded, her long hair pinned up in a bun. “Would you like anything else?”

Yeah, how about some sense to this crazy day, please.
But Tony simply thanked her for the food and paid, then took it back to his office.

He hardly tasted the chili as he sat at his desk, with his two-year-old calendar staring him in the face. Had he traveled in time? Maybe that Everly guy wasn’t such a nut after all. What if it was real?

It was like he’d stumbled onto a line in the sand, and he, ordinary-guy Tony Solomon, had just stepped over it.

My God, what have I gotten into?

What if he was stuck, and had to relive the entire two years?

Bethany was still dead; her murder had still happened. Those two years had slipped by in a mire of work, golf and boring nights watching meaningless television.

Everly! Tony jerked out of the slump he’d fallen into and dug out his wallet, where he’d stuck the card out of habit.

But none of the thirteen cards inside were Everly’s.
Idiot.
Of course it wouldn’t be in this wallet. Because if he’d really gone back in time two years, he hadn’t yet met the man.

We can help you, Everly had said.

Maybe it was time to find out. But first, Tony would do a little research, and make sure it wasn’t a scam.

He turned to his computer and did a search for the Saturn Society. The first hit was for a non-profit organization dedicated to the study of time travel.

He clicked the link. It existed all right, and “Find a Society House” returned the same Harrison Street address he remembered from Everly’s card. A map pinpointed it in the neighborhood known as the Ghetto, between downtown and the University of Dayton. The rest of the information on the site was useless and vague, or required a login.

Tony grabbed the phone and started to punch in the number beside the listing, then hesitated.

In this time, Everly would have no idea who he was. He wouldn’t give out much information by phone, if any. Tony hung up, then grabbed his coat. He’d use his lunch hour to check out this Saturn Society, whatever it was. And figure out what Everly had meant when he’d told Tony “Like it or not, you’re one of us.”

Storm clouds were gathering overhead as Tony left the office, but Harrison Street wasn’t far. He could check the place out and be back before bad weather hit.

He parked across the street from the red brick Victorian house. The three-story structure loomed above him as he crossed the road. 140 Harrison Street’s well-maintained exterior and tidy front lawn contrasted sharply with the surrounding properties. Two of the windows on the second floor had been filled in, judging by the rectangles of lighter brick.

A dark cloud drifted across the sun, and a sense of foreboding settled over him, like he was about to be tossed into a den of lions.

He gave himself a mental shake.
It’s just a house, for God’s sake!

His legs wouldn’t move.
Why am I here?
a little voice inside his head asked.

To get some answers, dammit!

But he still wouldn’t—or couldn’t—move.
No reason to be here. What am I doing?

He took a step closer to the porch, but that other...
presence
inside his head—he could think of no other way to describe it—continued to balk.
What the hell?

He stopped trying to force himself to move and stared down at the pocked cement of the sidewalk. A line of ants trailed busily into a raised, dirt anthill in a crack. On the street, a big, black SUV approached. Slowly, as if the driver were looking for something,

Or watching him.

Tony glanced up. Wasn’t that Keith Lynch’s truck?

The SUV trundled past, not slowly enough for Tony to get a glimpse of the driver.

Don’t be ridiculous.
What would Keith be doing in this neighborhood?

This time travel stuff was weirding him out, making him paranoid.
Go to the house. See what it’s all about.

No reason to be here,
he argued with himself.
Go back to the office.

It was as if two of him resided in his head at once. A past-self and a present-self? Or rather, a present-self and a future-self?

Crazy.

So is standing here like an idiot
, his resistant self said.

A white, lace curtain fluttered in one of the house’s first floor windows.

Someone was watching him.

Leave. Now. Before they think you’re casing the joint and call the cops.

His legs obeyed the small voice, and he strode back down the sidewalk toward his car.

As he stepped off the curb, the black SUV came careening around the corner.

All Tony saw was the silver grille and a Cadillac emblem bearing down on him.

As Tony emerged from the elevator on the parking garage’s fourth floor—after six again—a black SUV trundled down the spiral exit ramp from the floor above.

Tony tensed. Had whoever it was come back for him, after his near miss in front of the Saturn Society house?

He waited while the truck rolled down another loop, and as he glimpsed the Ford emblem on its tailgate, he let out his breath.

On the way home, he picked up dinner at Happy Hunan. He could eat Chinese almost every day, but Dora...

Depending on her mood, she’d complain or tell him to save it for tomorrow. Either way she’d say something if he brought Chinese takeout two days in a row.
If
he’d actually done so. Two years ago, he might not have. One way to find out.

When he got home, a silver Lexus sat in the driveway, blocking him out of the garage. Charlie’s.
What the hell?
Lisa had choir practice at church every Tuesday night. And they never showed up at Tony’s house unannounced.

Unless... He remembered the hospital in Mexico. Charlie sitting with Dora, his hand on her knee. But if he’d really gone back in time, that hadn’t happened yet. And he still wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined it. Maybe Lisa’s choir practice had been canceled.

He parked beside Charlie’s car and walked to the front door, conscious of placing one foot in front of the other, unable to get the picture of Charlie and Dora out of his mind. His wife and Charlie.
Oh, come on!
He was still freaked out by all the weird, two-years-ago stuff, not to mention almost getting run down by that SUV on Harrison Street. Maybe Dora had made plans with Lisa and Charlie, and hadn’t mentioned it since Tony had expected to be out of town.

His hand trembled as he placed it on the doorknob and slowly turned it. At a gentle push, the door swung open without its usual squeal.

He took a hesitant step inside, then another. The carpet muffled his footsteps through the foyer. Before he turned the corner, a familiar giggle made him stop. It wasn’t his sister’s.

Dread lanced through his middle like a giant fist strangling him.
God, no.
They had to be watching TV. Laughing at some stupid sitcom.

More giggling. “That tickles,” Dora said.

“A bad tickle, or a good one?” Charlie’s voice.

“Mmm.... good. Very good.” Dora sighed.

Tony put a hand to the wall and leaned on it. He could feel his heartbeat in his throat.
No.
He was imagining this. And the date on the paper. His email. Dora’s blue sweater. Everything.