Chase (ChronoShift Trilogy) (27 page)

He would not let another woman break his heart.  Steeling himself, he sucked back the tears, wiping away the remnants with his sleeve.  If it hadn't been for his history, he never would have been so sensitive to Abbie's rejection.  Truth be told, he never would have let himself fall for her so easily if it hadn't been for his history.  Abbie had been the perfect image of loyalty and purity, the two things most lacking in his ex-wife and Laura.  That's why he had desired her so much.

He straightened and felt his heart harden.  Like an iron fist slowly tightening its grip, the grief was squeezed from his core, leaving only inanimate cold in its wake.

She saw the change.  Concern leapt into her throat, yet she could do nothing.  When you have just hurt someone, any attempt to soothe their pain feels more like rubbing salt in the wound than a healing ointment.

She'd tried life in his time, in this century, and it didn't fit.  She'd tried shoving herself into it like a foot in a shoe two sizes too small.  Or maybe two sizes too big in this case.

She'd enjoyed working with Mark, and Ty, and Hardy.  It
was
good work they were doing.  Work not to be ashamed of.  Yet, it left her strangely unsatisfied.  She knew in her heart that she was not made for this century, that she must return to the life God had made for her in the time of her
dah
.  For God's purpose, whatever that might be. 

She liked Mark.  You could even say she loved him — but as a sister loves a brother.  Perhaps, with time, he could convince her to transform their relationship into a romance, but it would be short-lived.   They were not made for each other.  They were not a good fit.  And as much as she was not made for this century, he was not made for hers.  The watch on his wrist was proof of that.

She held out her hand.  "Will you take me back now?"

"What about the others?" he whispered.

"I've already said good-bye to them."

He gave her the best smile he could muster.

"One last shift then."

Mark took Abbie's hand and depressed the magical button.  They felt the shift and then they were a little over three hundred years in the past.  The biggest change in the scenery was a little cottage which stood about two hundred feet distant.  Abbie's home.

She'd known the lines of the local terrain so well she had oriented herself home without any historical landmarks to help, just the lay of the hills as a guide.

He held her hand longingly and then released it.  Stretching her arms around him, she said good-bye with a hug.  Then, she stepped away and walked toward home.   After a moment, she turned back for a final look.

"Mark?"

"Yeah."

"Seek God."

He couldn't nod, he couldn't shake his head.   He just stared and then flashed a quick wave good-bye.  Then, he shifted out.

When I go, don't cry for me

In my Father's arms I'll be

"All My Tears"

                     ~ Jars of Clay

July 18
^th
2027, Boston, MA

Mark clenched the paper in his fist, crumpling it so hard it almost tore.  He reread the newspaper article for the third time.

Body Found by

Boston Common

      Ty Jennings, 42, was found dead late last night near the Boston Common.  About 2:00 AM, Jeff Williams, 47, of Worcester, was walking his dog along the sidewalk when he spotted Mr. Jennings lying on the sidewalk.

      "He was just lying there," the computer programmer explained, "It was terrible.  I've never been so shocked in my entire life."

      Police interrogated Mr. Williams for several hours but released him soon after, stating the investigation was still ongoing.

      "Whoever did this is still out there," said Sgt. Matthews of the Boston Police Department.  "We're following a number of leads at the moment."

      Mr. Jennings had been shot once in the head.  It is believed robbery was the motive, though it is unclear what he was doing in the area so late at night.

      Mr. Jennings has no known family in the Boston area.

Ty was dead.

After Abbie left, Mark had grown curious about the future.  He and his team frequently traveled through the past, but for the most part, they'd left the future relatively untouched.  On his own, he'd decided to change that and began exploring different years in the future.

For some reason that no one yet understood, not even their physicist Bobby Prescott, nobody could shift past the year 2029.  2030 and beyond were out of bounds.  Whoever tried experienced a strange bouncing sensation and ended up right back where they left. 

Of course, Ty thought God was limiting them.  In his mind, for some reason, God was not letting them view too much of the future.  Hardy and Bobby thought it was some technical limitation of the shifter.  Mark didn't know what to think and had resigned himself to a state of agnosticism about a lot of things.  He'd learned by now that what he didn't know about life far outweighed what he did know.

Mark first traveled to the year 2029.  He wanted to know what the future held in store for them, assuming he could find records.  A simple search on the internet revealed Ty's death certificate, which showed the cause of death to be homicide.

He next traveled back to 2027, the day after Ty's death, looking for the story in the
Boston Herald
, and sure enough, he'd found it in the crime section.

Who could have done it and why?

First of all, who could have gotten the drop on Ty?  Surely it couldn't have been some street punk.  There was no way Ty could have been taken out by an amateur, unless the surprise had been complete.

Mark activated his shifter.  There was an easy way to find out.

***

July 17
^th
2027, 1:47 A.M., Boston, MA

As with any operation, Mark's first objective was to simply observe.  Observe the target and the events as they unfold.  Take careful note of any details that might affect the outcome of any potential intervention.  Then, once the situation has been understood and all tactical considerations have been explored, shift in to intervene and change the undesired outcome.

Protocol would be no different in this case.  During their work together, Mark had already seen Ty die on several occasions, but either Hardy or he had always shifted back in time to save him.  And Ty always did the same for them.

Still, somehow, this time felt different.

Mark was nervous —
very nervous
.  He had no good explanation for Ty's death certificate existing two years in the future from now.  Both he and Hardy had always been close by.  If something had happened to Ty, they should have jumped in to reverse it right away.  Why hadn't that happened?  Where was he? Where was Hardy?  Mark could find no death certificates for either one of them, just Ty.

Butterflies floated spasmodically in his stomach.  He felt nausea.  Palpable fear that this might be one of those unchangeable events, like his children, lurked in the corner of his heart.

Ty was walking up the sidewalk now.  His friend strolled at a casual pace, entering and exiting the yellow pools of light cast down by the street lamps overhead.

It was Ty all right, but not
quite
the same Ty he knew.  This Ty had a lot of gray peppering his hair.  He looked to be 25 to 30 years older than the Ty of Mark's time, yet 2027 was only 15 years in the future.  Maybe he hadn't aged well.

As Ty drew closer, Mark caught a glimpse of movement behind some bushes lining the sidewalk and understood what was going to happen.

A dark form rose from the shadows as Ty reached a spot in front of a large shrub.  The pistol in the hand of the shadowy figure bore a silencer.  From this distance, there was no sound to be heard, just the image of Ty falling limply to the sidewalk.

Mark felt sick.

He was about to shift out of the nightmarish scene when he remembered he hadn't identified the killer yet.   He waited while the dark form emerged from the shadows behind the bushes.  The man entered the glow of the streetlight, glaring down at his fallen victim.

A scream of rage almost escaped Mark's lungs, stopped only by sheer determination to not give himself away.  He knew
that
face.  It was the face of a killer he would never forget.  If Mark had any enemy on earth it was this man.

Alexander Rialto.

He vomited onto the ground, shaking with fury.  The stench of his regurgitated lunch strangely calmed his nerves and strengthened his resolve.  This would not stay this way.  It could not.  It would not. 
He would make sure of it.

***

May 5
^th
2014, Boston, MA, ChronoShift Headquarters

"The two of you look like someone stole your Girl Scout cookies," Hardy laughed.

It was Monday morning, time for their regularly scheduled debrief, but Hardy was the only one smiling today.

Mark and Ty were both sullen.  Mark was staring at the table with his arms crossed.  He was clearly in no mood for jokes. Ty had his elbows on the table looking pensive, chin resting on folded hands, eyes turned down.  Mentally, he was somewhere else and hadn't even heard Hardy.

Mark still reeled from his weekend trip to the future where he'd witnessed Ty's murder.  He stole a glance Ty's way.  He hadn't told his friend what he'd seen yet, and he probably wouldn't.  He needed to try and resolve it on his own first.  If he couldn't, then he'd decide whether to tell Ty or not.  In the meantime, Mark would bear this burden, this weighty knowledge, by himself.

Maybe they'd subconsciously avoided visiting the future until now for this very reason.  The past was the past.  They already knew what had happened in the past.  When they traveled back to the past, mentally, they were still living in their
present, not knowing
their
future.  But if they traveled to the future, that future was not only the world's future, but their future as well.  Once that Pandora's box was open, how did you close it again?  How do you resist peeking at what's going to happen, and then how do you forget what you learned if you don't like what you saw?

"I know what's bothering me, but I ain't got a clue about Ty," Mark said.

Ty looked up, his mind landing back on earth upon hearing his name.

"Sorry, what?"

"What's up with you, man?  What's the matter?"

"I've got to go kill a friend."

"What?"

"Whoa.  What do you mean?"

"You know I've been traveling back to ’Nam now and then, saving my buds during the Tet?"

They both nodded.

"I got curious to see what they did with their lives after that, after the war, so I researched them.  In the original version of history, all of these guys died — along with me, of course.  I wanted to see if any of them had done something good, you know, something really good.

"A couple got killed again in later phases of the war, so I went and saved them again, but most made it back to the US and just led normal lives.  You know, working hard, raising families.  One guy became a neurosurgeon, another became a missionary.  A few did some other remarkably good things.  One guy saved a couple of kids from getting killed in a car accident."

"That's great!"

"Yeah, but it wasn't all good."

Ty's eyes welled with tears.

"One guy...this one guy...he...uh...he became a child molester," Ty finally spat out.  "At least four different children were victimized, and he even killed one of them."  A tear fell down his cheek, and he wiped it away.

Mark and Hardy both cringed.  It was clear why this was eating at him.  That kind of thing was one of their worst nightmares.

"Man, you can't control what these guys do with the life you save," Hardy argued.

Ty slammed his fist onto the table.  "It's my fault!"  He exclaimed.  "
I did it.
  If I hadn't saved the guy, those kids would be fine!"

There was nothing to say.  Logically, he was right.  Morally, philosophically, who could judge?

Ty placed his hands on the table resolutely.  "I've got to go back and snipe this guy while he's still in ’Nam.  I've got to look the guy in the eye and kill him."

"This is unreal," Hardy said.

"You know what's worse?  John was my bud, not like a brother or anything, but we looked out for each other.  I swear to you, there was no sign he was like that when I knew him back in ’Nam."  Ty's eyes were pleading for affirmation that he'd done no wrong.

"I'm not sure what I'd do in your shoes," Mark said, "You weren't wrong to save him.  You couldn't know."