Road Less Traveled (30 page)

Fargo was now grinning from ear to ear, however. “ ‘The other Eureka's sheriff'?” he repeated. “Don't you mean Sheriff Fargo? As in, me?”

“Not you,” she snapped, stomping across the office and snatching the baseball in midair before he could flail after it yet again. “You are not the sheriff, and you never will be. That is a different reality, and clearly one where everything is completely messed up.” She still couldn't believe it. No Carter, and did she become sheriff in his absence? Of course not, because that would have meant there was justice in the world. No, instead they had somehow hired Fargo to do the job! What was next, putting Seth Osborne in charge of GD and Larry the obnoxious office assistant taking over as mayor?

“It's still me,” Fargo corrected, grinning just as widely. “Just a slightly different version, with a wildly different career path.” He leaned forward and propped his elbows up on the desk, steepling his fingers in front of him. “And he seemed to be doing a darned good job as sheriff, from what I saw.”

“Which means what? No gang warfare or burnt-out buildings or stacks of corpses lying about?” Jo shook her head. As if Fargo needed another reason to be stuck up about himself.

“I'm just saying, he seemed to have everything under control,” Fargo stated smugly. He leaned back again and crossed his hands behind his head. “Which means I could do the same thing here. This chair could be mine, and you could work for me.”

Jo shoved his feet off the desk, causing Fargo to topple over, chair and all. “Never,” she told him softly, biting the word off. “I will never work for you.”

Fargo started to say something else, when his eyes flicked past her and widened. Jo glanced in that direction herself, wondering what he'd seen, and then half jumped, her gun already leaving her holster as she adjusted her stance to face that way properly.

Toward the cell.

It wasn't a very big cell, just a little nook in the back of the office, with brick walls on two sides and bars comprising the other two. A cot sat against the back wall. There wasn't much room in there, which is why she couldn't possibly miss the shimmer that filled much of the space, rippling the air just above and in front of the cot.

The rippling distorted her view of the cot and the wall, darkening them and filling the space with strange shadows.

Then those shadows thickened.

They took on substance.

And, as Jo watched, they gained detail.

Now she was staring at a body perched on the cot. A man. African-American, average height, slender, wearing a stained tan coverall with a patch over the left breast that read “mechanic.”

Jo lowered her gun. “Henry?”

Henry glanced up at her. “Oh, thank god,” he said happily, sighing and seeming to relax a bit. “Jo, let me out of here, would you?”

“What're you doing in my jail cell?” she asked, stepping toward the barred door, but Fargo got there first and blocked her path. “Fargo, get out of the way.”

“Hang on a sec, Jo,” he pleaded. “Look, think about this. How do we know that's really Henry? Our Henry?”

Jo started to reply with something sarcastic, then stopped. Fargo had a point. They were dealing with alternate realities, after all. They all had doubles there—well, all except Carter and Zane, at least. But those doubles weren't exactly the same. So what if this was the other Henry? What if there was a good reason he'd been locked up on that side?

“It is me,” Henry told them, standing up and stepping closer to the bars but not touching them. “I promise you, I'm the real Henry. And I know I'm in my world because you”—he looked at Fargo—“are clearly not the sheriff here.”

“Why should we take your word for it?” Fargo demanded. “If you're the other Henry, you could have heard about this world and the differences between here and there. So you'd know I wasn't sheriff here.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Prove that you belong here.”

Henry sighed. “I can't prove it, Fargo,” he explained. “Most of the things that make me who I am happened to the other Henry as well. Right down to breaking into the SRT to try saving Kevin's life.” He looked down at his feet. “But in that world, Carter wasn't there to help, and Nathan Stark didn't reach that Henry in time. Kevin died. I—the other me—got sent to prison. But over there, I didn't get paroled by Eva Thorne.” He frowned. “Actually, I'm not entirely sure Eva came to Eureka. She might not have. But I'm in prison over there.” He grimaced and rubbed at his wrists—Jo could see mild abrasions, in the exact shape of handcuffs. “As I found out the hard way, when people mistook me for an escaped felon and Jo—the other Jo—tackled me and handcuffed me.”

Jo smiled. Good to know she was still a badass, even over there.

She studied Henry for a minute. Then she made her decision. “Get out of the way, Fargo,” she announced. “I'm letting him out.”

“That could be a huge mistake,” Fargo warned, but he quickly slid aside when she took a menacing step toward him. “I'm just saying, better safe than sorry.”

“Your counterpart said much the same thing,” Henry commented, stepping back so Jo could unlock the cell door and swing it open. “I told him I was from here and he said, ‘If that's the case, you'll wind up slipping back to your own reality before too long. But if you are from this world and you did escape prison somehow, I want you back behind bars as soon as possible.'” He nodded his thanks to Jo as he emerged from the cell and into the office proper. “Which I completely understand and agree with.” He glanced around. “Where's Jack?”

“Heading toward Allison's—the other Allison's—last I heard.” Jo explained the situation.

“Wow.” Henry scratched his head. “I can't even imagine what that's like.” Though something in his eyes told Jo he could imagine it, at least a little bit. She knew what he'd gone through with Kim. It wasn't exactly the same, but it was similar. “I hope he can get Kevin back safely.”

“Me, too,” Jo agreed. Fargo nodded behind her. He might be obnoxious most of the time, but at least Fargo's heart was in the right place. It was a large part of why Jo, Carter, and others were friends with him.

“Well, I'd better get back to my garage and make sure nothing's disappeared—or appeared.” Henry pulled his hat out of his back pocket and slipped it onto his head. “Let me know if you need me though, okay?” Jo nodded, and Henry headed for the door. After he'd left she dropped into her desk chair and scowled at the empty jail cell.

“Regretting letting him go?” Fargo asked. “I did say it was a bad idea.”

“It's not that.” Jo waved the comment away like a particularly annoying fly. “I'm thinking about the Thunderbird.”

“Ah.” Fargo came over and perched on the edge of her desk, a move that was eerily reminiscent of Carter. “That.”

“Yes, that.” She frowned at him. “Carter was right. This would be the perfect time for the thief to sneak the egg out of town. We're so busy watching for cars and trucks to materialize that we'd probably never even see him. And even if we spotted him, we'd have a hard time pursuing him.” She pounded one fist on the desk. “It's when I'd make a break for it, if I were him.”

“So we should go back out and drive around some more, in hopes of spotting him?” Fargo asked. “Or patrol the town's border, to keep him from slipping past?”

But Jo shook her head. “Neither of those will work,” she admitted. “We've got too much ground to cover. If he wants to slip by us, he probably will.” She bared her teeth and came very close to growling. “He could be long gone by now, and we'd never even know it.”

Fargo was thinking furiously. “Maybe not.” He pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. “You told everyone not to drive, right? Because of ‘unstable conditions' and ‘atmospheric disturbances.'”

Jo shrugged. “I figured it was suitably vague but still completely accurate. So what?”

“So we can assume this thief knows Eureka pretty well.” Fargo hopped off the desk and started pacing in front of it. “He knew GD well enough to bypass its security. He knew the containment fields well enough to cut through them, too. He's probably a local, which means he has a standard-issue Eureka smartphone.”

Jo nodded. “Okay, so he's got a phone. So what?”

“So that means he heard your alert.” Fargo grinned. “About atmospheric conditions. The Thunderbird egg's at a critical stage right now—it's so close to birth. And he obviously knows what it is and what it can do. But that means he also knows how unstable it is right before birth—and how too much electromagnetic radiation nearby could cause it to hatch prematurely. Just like last time.”

Jo nodded, seeing his train of thought. “So now would actually be a terrible time to sneak the egg out.” She pushed back from her desk and stood. “He needs to keep it safe and cool so it won't hatch before it's ready. If he can wait until after all of this is taken care of, then he can sneak past while everybody's recovering and checking for damage and comparing stories.”

“Exactly!” Fargo pounded his fist down on her desk—and winced. “Which means the Thunderbird egg is still in Eureka, and will be at least until you give the all-clear.”

This time it was Jo who grinned, tight and nasty. “It would be a shame if I forgot to sound the all-clear for a few hours,” she pointed out, her voice just as sharp as her expression. “Maybe just long enough for him to slip up and reveal himself.”

Fargo grinned back at her. And deep inside, Jo was forced to admit to herself that maybe working with him isn't as terrible as all that.

At least, not all the time.

 

Carter raced back upstairs, taking the steps two at a time. Kevin followed quietly behind him. He was never completely sure how much the teenager understood of what was going on around him, but right now all that mattered was that he stay close to Carter.

“What?” Allison looked up as Carter banged open the door to Kevin's room. He didn't have time for subtlety. “I thought you were taking him back.”

“I was,” Carter agreed. “But I may be too late. The worlds have started to slip apart again. And we're still here.”

She wiped the tears from her eyes and nodded, focusing on the matter at hand. “Won't the two of you just fade away and wind up back in your own world? That's what happened to me when I found myself over there instead.”

“Maybe, but I don't know for certain.” Carter frowned. “And we have no idea how long before that happens. If it's too long, the worlds could be too far apart for us to get back at all.” He saw the hope wash across her face, though she was decent enough to try to hide it. “I've got a daughter of my own,” he explained quietly. “Zoe. She just started college.”

That put an end to Allison's hopeful expression. “What can I do to help?”

“Call Dr. Russell,” he told her. “Maybe she's got some idea.”

He headed back downstairs—better to be closer to the door in case they needed to make a run for it—and Kevin followed. So did Allison. She had her phone out as she walked.

“Dr. Russell?” she said after a second. “It's Allison Blake-Stark.” Carter hoped she didn't see him wince at that one. “I've got Sheriff Carter here with me. Yes, from the other Eureka.” She sighed just a little bit. “Yes, and Kevin, too. But the worlds are starting to shift apart again, aren't they? The worlds were so close he slipped through before, but now he and Kevin are on this side and he's not sure how to get them back home again.”

She listened for a moment, and Carter watched her face intently. But after a few seconds she frowned, and the mild expression hit him like a freight train. “Oh. No, I understand. Well, if you do think of anything, please let me know. Thanks.” The look she gave Carter was filled with remorse. “I'm sorry, Sheriff. She said they can't reverse the process without tearing both worlds apart or squashing them together all over again. And she has no idea how to get you back to your world, because she never expected anyone to cross over in the first place.”

Carter sighed. He'd been afraid of that. Having people from one reality appear in the other had been a fluke, an accident brought about by the larger accident of the worlds shifting toward each other. Now that they'd corrected the bigger problem, the smaller one was probably taken care of as well. Which was great as far as the people in their proper reality were concerned.

But it meant he and Kevin could be stranded here for good.

He bunched his hands into fists and pounded them on the kitchen counter. No, he wouldn't accept that. He belonged back in his own Eureka, and Kevin with him. Allison was waiting for them. So was Zoe, even if she didn't know it yet. There had to be a way to get back home.

He turned away from the counter and his foot slipped—the floor was different from the one he remembered. His hands shot out to stop his fall, and one grasped the counter's edge. The other brushed the sculpture that stood there—and twitched as the contact gave him a mild shock.

Ouch!

“What the hell is it with me and shocks lately?” Carter muttered as he shook his hand out, trying to get rid of the tingling sensation. “Did I swallow a balloon or something?”

Then he thought of something.

“Call Russell back,” he told Allison. “And hand me the phone.” She did, and he got another minor jolt as he took the little device from her. “Thanks.”

“Hello?” Dr. Russell was saying on the other end.