Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) (44 page)

“Is Bethany there?” Ashley’s voice held that infuriating teenage nonchalance, as if she were doing him a favor by merely speaking to him. She propped her hands on her hips, the motion nearly making her spill out of her skimpy halter top. He thought he caught a whiff of pot.

Tony fought to keep his brows level, and his face from contorting into a sneer at a girl he’d have immediately labeled a slut when he was her age. Instead, he simply told her to wait.

He met Bethany coming into the foyer. “Is Ashley here?” She started to brush past him.

He grabbed her arm, stopping her. “You’re not going anywhere with that girl.”

She jerked her arm away. “Yes, I am! I told her I’d be ready by six.”

Tony stepped aside to block her. “You’re staying home tonight. You don’t need to be partying with older kids; you’ve got—”

“Da-ad!” She squirmed past him.

“Bethany—”

“Stop telling me what to do! I can pick my own friends, and I’m going!” She grabbed the doorknob.

Tony squeezed his hands into fists. Dora called out from the family room. “Tony? What’s going on?”

“Bethany doesn’t need to go—”

“He’s trying to run my life, and I’m sick of it!” Bethany moved toward the door. Tony reached for her again, but she ducked under his arm. “I’m going, whether you like it or not!” She yanked the door open and stormed out.

The other girl sat in her car, talking on her cell phone.

Tony scowled at her, then at Bethany as she flounced down the porch steps. “Fine!” he snarled. “Don’t call me when you wind up in a ditch!” He walked inside, slamming the door behind him.

He cringed at the memory he normally didn’t let himself think about, his own eerily-prophetic words echoing in his brain. He leaned on the privacy fence, trying to steady himself as he scanned a group of kids clustered around a cooler, where a boy bent over, rummaging through its contents. Which one was the friend-of-a-friend hosting the party? And where were the parents?

His vision swam, and he almost missed her, but his subconscious must have made him do a double-take, as the boy at the cooler handed a beer to that Ashley girl. Bethany already held a beer in one hand, and in the other, a boy’s hand—no, make that a young man, for there was no way the guy was under twenty.

Rich Muehlhauser. And beside him, Dwayne Cray. Tony would never forget those names. The scum who’d taken Bethany out to a field and beaten—

He’d head spun and he grabbed a tiki torch pole before he fell over. Bethany turned as she lifted her beer to her mouth, and froze with it halfway there as her eyes met Tony’s. The bottle slid from her hand, crashing into bits on the concrete.

Conversations stopped in mid-sentence. “Shit,” Ashley said.

Bethany rushed to Tony. “Daddy!” she hissed. “What are you doing here?”

Tony leaned on the fence to hold himself upright, which was becoming more and more of an effort. “I might ask you the same thing.” She regarded him with wary eyes as he scanned the area again. “Where are the parents?”

Bethany made a pretense of looking over the crowd. “I don’t know.” She didn’t meet his eyes.

“There aren’t any here, are they?”

She didn’t answer.

“Come on, time to go.” Tony took a wobbly step toward the gate.

She didn’t follow. “Bethany, we’re leaving. Come on.”

Ashley slid her arm through Cray’s, and laughed. “Go home with your daddy, Bethany!” She tugged on the creep’s arm. He chuckled.

Bethany put her fists on her hips. “I am not going.”

“Yes, you are.” He grabbed her wrist and pulled, but his hand slipped. God, why was he so fucking tired?

Bethany crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not go—” Tony swayed. “Daddy, what’s wrong?” She lunged for him, but he caught the fence before he fell. She gripped his wrist. “Are you drunk?”

“No, I’m just...” He caught his breath, clutched at the fence more tightly. “...ungodly tired.”

Bethany grabbed his arm. “I’m taking you home.”

“Yeah, s’long as you’re not drunk.” Please, let him get her away before he collapsed.

“I had one beer!”

Her sharp tone jolted Tony awake. “What are you thinking! You’re diabet—”

“The computer said one drink wouldn’t hurt!”

“I doubt that applies to fourteen-year-olds. For God’s sake, Bethany—”

“Shut up! I hate you!”

“That’s okay.” Tony sagged against the fence. Let her hate him. “’Cause I love you.” God, it felt good to say that.

His hand slid on the fence and he listed forward.

Her scowl went slack as her eyes grew round. “Daddy! What—”

“Gotta... get... home...”

She grabbed his wrist and propelled him toward the Buick. “You’re not having another heart attack, are you? Maybe we should go to the hospital instead.”

“Just... tired. Take me...home,” he managed as she folded him into the passenger seat. Something else he needed to do nagged from the back of his mind, but couldn’t break through the fog of impending recovery.

He barely heard Bethany order the car to take him to Dora’s house as he slipped into recovery sleep, but he must have made it home and to the bedroom, because the next thing he remembered was Dora shaking him. “Tony! Wake up!”

“Huh?” He rolled over. It was still dark, and he was so tired...

“TV!” Dora commanded, and the set opposite their bed lit. “Local news.” The channel switched as Bethany darkened the doorway.

Tony’s head swam with interrupted recovery, and he almost drifted off again when the bed shook as Bethany climbed in beside him. She threw her arms around him. “Ashley...” she blubbered.

“What—”

“Watch.” Dora pointed to the TV. Bethany trembled.

A reporter stood on a country road. Behind her, red and blue flashing lights from police cruisers slashed the darkness over an empty field. “...where police found a sixteen-year-old girl with her ankles and wrists bound. The girl, whose name was not released due to her age, was taken to Miami Valley Hospital, where she’s in stable condition...”

“Ashley,” Bethany said in a shaky voice.

“Huh?” Tony tried to forge through the fog as he absently patted her back. “Who’s—”

“My friend, Ashley. That took me to the party. When we got home, I called her, she didn’t answer. Kara said she left with those two older guys, the ones we were with when you came...” She shook and scrubbed at her eyes.

“Bethany called the police,” Dora said. “She told them—”

“Shh!” Bethany sat up, her gaze fixed on the TV.

“One of the men, twenty-seven-year-old Dwayne Cray, was shot and killed in a confrontation with police,” the reporter said. “The other man, twenty-nine-year-old Rich Muehlhauser, was apprehended shortly thereafter. The girl suffered numerous bruises and lesions, but she’s expected to fully recover.”

“My God,” Dora said. “That could have been—”

Bethany looked up at Tony, the TV’s flickering light reflecting in her tear-stained face. “Daddy,” she sobbed. “How did you know?”

Tony pulled her close and shuddered in relief. His baby. Alive. “I just had a bad feeling.”

The next day, when the pull began to hit, Tony was smart enough to drive to his apartment (which wasn’t his at the time), warp back to the present from the parking lot, then stumble to the door—at which point it was his apartment.

He frowned at the flowerbed as he thumbed the fingerprint pad beside his front door. Yellow and orange marigolds filled the plot, surrounding a little round, woodcut sign. Neighborhood Beautification Award, 1997. What the hell? Had he warped further into the past instead of forward?

Oh please, no.
Heart pounding, he stumbled inside. “TV. News.” A quick glance at the ticker confirmed he’d jumped to the correct date. His breath rushed out in a whoosh.

He rubbed a hand down his face. Man, was he tired. Even a little jump back three years. But he’d accomplished what he wanted more than anything.

A glow settled over him as he trudged down the hall toward his bedroom. With recovery setting in, his legs moved as if through molasses, but he had to check one thing first.

He tapped the second bedroom’s door open and leaned inside.

Posters of rock bands he’d never heard of adorned the wall above a brass-framed daybed. Stuffed animals congregated along the rail, and the striped, purple coverlet matched the curtains. The coat rack on the wall banished his remaining doubts. Its wooden letters spelled out B-E-T-H-A-N-Y.

He’d done it. He’d come back to the present, and his daughter was alive. If he had more energy, he’d have wanted to run around the block. Shout for joy that Bethany was alive. Warmth filled him, and everything was right with the world.

The scum who’d killed her in that other timeline had been caught, the survivor with a rap sheet so long he’d never see freedom, or get the chance to hurt another girl. Thank God Bethany had called her friend, known something was wrong, and had alerted the cops before the creeps had been able to do more than rough the girl up.

But how had Bethany known? He vaguely remembered her saying something about a “little voice” in her head, almost like the way his past self had interpreted his current self’s urgings to make Bethany leave that party. Could she have—

Nah, coincidence. Had to be. Bethany was no time traveler.

He tottered into his bedroom and sank into bed as recovery numbness settled over him. A sudden chill burst through him as another thought tripped through his mind. Would Everly be able to tell what he’d done? What if the sign in the flowerbed was the result of a time bubble?

Dizziness burst through Tony on the way out to Bethany’s car the following night. Stumbling, he braced himself against the car while it passed. What the hell?

Slowly, he pushed himself off the yellow Camaro, thankful he hadn’t jumped. “Come on, Daddy.” Bethany touched the fingerprint panel to unlock the car. His mom always complained when they were late to their weekly dinner at his parents’.

He’d felt a couple of dizzy spells earlier in the day. They’d passed quickly, but if more came, he preferred to deal with them in the passenger seat. Even though the car drove itself, his habits from the other timeline lingered.

Tony and Dora were still divorced, only in this timeline their constant bickering over Bethany had been a major factor that drove Dora into Charlie’s arms. She thought Tony was overindulgent, especially when he bought Bethany a new car for her birthday. To Tony, Dora was overly permissive.

He let Bethany pick the music for the ride, some electronic dance crap he didn’t see how the kids could listen to. But if that was what she wanted, it was okay with him.

She touched up her makeup while they rode. Tony couldn’t believe how beautiful she was. She didn’t need all that stuff on her face, though it was a lost cause to tell her so.

What had the past three years been like, in this new, Bethany’s-alive timeline? He recalled basketball games (Bethany’s team usually lost), having kids over to hang out or study, dropping her off at the mall to meet her friends—then, to her dismay, hanging around, though he tried to stay out of sight. He remembered holidays and birthdays, where he wanted to buy her everything. Fights he and Dora had when he wouldn’t let Bethany stay out late or found fault with every boy she dated. At least he didn’t have to worry about her friends. After he’d passed out—so he’d heard—and destroyed her credibility with the kids at the party, Bethany had learned they weren’t friends after all and found others. Thankfully, these kids were more into movies and video games than getting wasted. They were all close to her age, too—Ashley’s experience had driven home the lesson about creepy, older guys.

Yet, much was the same. The visit from Everly in the parking garage. Getting locked up in the Saturn Society’s conference room. His trip to 1913, and his later trip to see Charlotte, because he’d still needed to go back in time, and make sure Bethany didn’t leave that party with those guys.

Lisa’s family was already at his parents’ house when Tony and Bethany arrived. Charlie grunted a greeting from the sofa, where he and Tony’s dad watched TV. Tony’s mom threw her arms around him. “I’m so glad you made it back! I know, those cruise ships are perfectly safe, but I still worry...”