Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) (47 page)

Iron formed around his heart. His feelings for Charlotte didn’t matter. She’d betrayed him. Then had gone on to start a technological revolution responsible for so many deaths. If Tony’s return to 1933 meant she had to die, so be it.

A bump jostled the car. Tony’s eyes flipped open. Solar collectors filled the fields on both sides of the road. The one he’d noticed on the way to Bernie’s the other day, that had been an undeveloped, wooded area in the other timeline.

The right timeline.

Another bump. Tony jerked upright. What the hell? The jolt came not from the road, but from behind. Something rumbled.

He whipped around.

A big, gray pickup truck bore down on him. Boxy-shaped, from the eighties. He barely had time to register the letters on its chrome grill before it drew close again and jolted him forward. “Turn right!” he yelled at the Buick.

“There is no access to the right,” the calm, feminine voice informed him. Fucking automatic navigation. Not that going off the road made sense, with a four-wheel drive after him.

He twisted around again. A big, bald guy built like a football player gripped the truck’s steering wheel, his lips curled into a grin as the truck drew closer. He lifted his left arm
(a gun)
and squeezed the trigger.

Tony ducked. A muffled report from behind. The back window cracked as the bullet struck.

He started to lift his head, then ducked again. The guy fired a second time. The Buick’s rear window shattered, and beads of tempered glass rained onto the back seat. A few struck Tony’s head. “Disengage speed control!” Tony yelled to his car.

“Automatic speed control disengaged,” his car confirmed. The car gained speed. “Faster!” Tony ordered. He raised up and peered around the headrest. The pickup had fallen back but was gaining. “Faster!”

The car complied and the pickup fell farther behind. “Obstruction ahead,” the Buick said, and braked.

“What?” Tony whirled around. An orange and white sign loomed in the road. “Road construction? That wasn’t there yesterday!”

The car’s only response was to slow and stop in front of the sign. The truck rumbled louder as it drew closer behind him.

Tony’s first thought was to jump out of the car and run. He stared at the pickup as it rolled to a stop. The guy reached for the door, still smirking. Tony’s logic kicked in. No businesses or homes for another mile or so. To the left and right, nothing but solar collectors. His pursuer was a big, athletic guy. He’d catch Tony before he reached the nearest solar panel.

There was only one way out.

Tony crouched out of the man’s sight. He envisioned the woods that had been there before, in that other timeline. Woods that had undoubtedly had been there in 1933—he hoped.

His vision swam as dizziness engulfed him.

At her workbench in the basement, Charlotte reached for her cigarette and tried to take a puff. Air. She held the stub in front of her. The darn thing had burned out.

She should quit. So many of them burned to nothing while she worked, it was a waste of money. Saturn Society money that Theodore had lent her, along with increasing pressure to move into the House. Besides, Tony had told her smoking was bad for her.

She lay the butt back in the ashtray and picked up the calculator parts she’d neatly lined up on the workbench. Light played across the case’s brushed metal face as she turned it over in her hands. Reflections glittered over the magical red squares that captured light.
So tiny.
Bubbles rose within her, miniatures of those she’d felt when Tony had come to her in the Fishin’ Shack during the storm. Exquisite joy.

The bubbles popped. Tony was never coming back.

She felt like she’d stolen from him.
But I haven’t.
She had the calculator because Tony left it in his pocket. If he’d tried to get his clothes—or the calculator—before he jumped home, Dr. Caruthers would have overcome him. Tony’s life would have been forfeit. Or worse.

Tony wanted her to succeed as an inventor. She had important work to do, much to contribute. He’d told her so. His leaving the calculator was a sign. Something meant to be.

Even Theodore had been supportive of her renewed interest in her work, confident she’d in time repay the Society for its investment in her education. She’d begun working with copper plates while she waited for the newfangled silicon chips from a laboratory in Boston that Theodore had lent her money for. He’d even enlisted Society help in acquiring research texts.

Of course, he didn’t know about the calculator.

She replayed her rationalizations as she reassembled the instrument, fearing if she didn’t, she might lose some of the tiny parts. By learning from it, she wasn’t fiddling with time. She hadn’t asked Tony for it. And burying herself in unraveling its mysteries was the best way she could begin to fill the hole his leaving had left in her heart, the best way to mask the pain from the emotional wounds Caruthers had inflicted.

She pushed the painful memories into a dim corner of her mind and picked up Theodore’s knife—she kept forgetting to return it to him—and scraped the carbon off the copper plate she’d fired, exposing a layer of oxidation beneath—

Don’t!

She hesitated. What on earth? She brought the knife to the copper piece

Don’t do it! It’s dangerous! The world’s not ready—

She lay the knife down as she recognized the feeling of compulsion. Another visit from herself, from the future. “Why should I listen to you?”

I’ve been there. I’ve seen what comes of this—

She let visions and sensations from her future self play through her mind. People using solar technology to better their lives. Military men presenting her with awards. Reporters. Fame and glory. Fortune, too. Enough money to pay Theodore back many times over. Enough to break free of the Society forever—

Get rid of it!
her future self urged.

“I can’t,” she whispered. It was financial freedom. Her name in history books. A triumph for her, for all women.

And most of all, meaning in her otherwise empty life.

Destroy it! Or else.

“Or else what?” Her future self had made this trip to change something. Something that could result in another disaster like Papa. Perhaps worse. And Theodore would sense it. Still angry with her for letting Tony escape, he wouldn’t forgive her this time. Never mind the Society money that now paid her bills and financed her work—if Theodore caught her future self influencing the past, it would be
her
in the Treatment chamber.

She was meant to do this. She picked up the copper plate and resumed scraping. Eventually, she would discover the calculator’s inner workings.

The knife slipped and skittered across the back of the plate, grazing her left palm. She dropped the knife and clutched the edge of her workbench until the dizzy spell passed.

Someone had jumped. Who?

She gazed around the basement, as if the answer lay within the ceiling joists. Could it be Tony?

As soon as the question formed in her mind she discarded it. Tony wasn’t coming back.

It didn’t matter. Theodore would find whoever it was. It wasn’t her problem. She didn’t want to go to the House and meet the traveler, didn’t want to see anyone.

She picked up the knife and resumed scraping.

A light drizzle greeted Tony as he hopped out of the truck at Fourth and Hopewell, and watched it rattle away. Hopefully, no one would notice the dollar’s slight differences when the old farmer spent it—particularly the issue date. The guy had given him some furtive, weird looks, but Tony guessed his manners had kept him from asking about Tony’s mud-soaked clothing, courtesy of a heavy rain during recovery, which he’d slept off in the woods bordering the country road where he’d warped.

He gazed around the neighborhood. The deepening twilight held a preternatural silence, though there were noises. The hum of crickets. A conversation drifting out an open window from the house on the corner.

No steady drone of air conditioners, that’s what was different. That, along with the fact it was strange to see houses instead of the vast, concrete, community college that existed there in Tony’s time.

Get going, get it over with.
Tony walked. One foot in front of the other. One step at a time.

Humidity clung to him like a straitjacket, and when he finally convinced himself to move, it was like slogging through mud. Step by inevitable step closer to Charlotte’s house. Closer to the woman who’d betrayed him. The woman whose work was responsible for thousands of deaths.

A car going the opposite direction slowed as it passed. The streetlight above cast just enough light for Tony to recognize the driver. Dewey. Tony turned down an alley—no time to chat, if Charlotte’s brother happened to have recognized him.

Dewey drove on. Tony slipped out of the alley and continued to Charlotte’s.

Four more houses. A tantalizing fragrance of someone’s late dinner—meatloaf, perhaps—drifted through a screen door and made his stomach growl. God, he was starving. But food would have to wait. The longer it took for him to retrieve the calculator, the better the chance the Society would find him and stop him before he could get it. He quickened his pace as he passed through a streetlamp’s weak pool of light.

A glowing, red dot moved inside a parked car across the street. The tang of cigarette smoke reached Tony’s nose. The man inside leaned out the window, as if studying Tony, then jerked back inside. Tony walked on. The car started and pulled away from the curb with a screech, then roared away.

Tony stopped, the light, evening breeze chill on his rain-dampened skin. Had the man been watching for him? What if it was the Saturn Society?

He broke into a jog. The slap of his loafers on the pavement drew curious stares from a young couple huddled beneath an umbrella as they walked past.

What if they were with the Saturn Society?

Don’t be ridiculous. Get the calculator. Destroy it. Then get the hell out.

Charlotte’s house loomed ahead. Moonlight bathed its wooden siding in ghostly white. He forced himself to slow to a fast walk as he approached her front gate. Something rustled in the bushes beside the neighbors’ house.

Saturn Society.

Stupid. Paranoid. Probably a squirrel.

Like last time. Caruthers.

He wouldn’t think about that.

A cat darted out from the bushes as Tony lifted the latch.
See?
The gate creaked when he pushed it open, making him wince. He pulled it shut behind him but didn’t latch it. He’d have to make a fast getaway, before Charlotte could contact Pippin and betray him again.

Hope to God, he wouldn’t have to hurt her. But he would if he had to.
Whatever it takes.
Just like she’d told that Caruthers guy.

His steps resounded on the wooden porch. He lifted his fist to knock, then hesitated. Listened.

No sound except the whir of crickets and the light patter of rain dripping from the edge of Charlotte’s roof.

He fingered the wallet in his pocket, his thumb squeaking on the stiff, new leather. She’d left the light on over the kitchen sink, and it cast a jaundiced, yellow glow in the window. She had to be home. He raised his hand again and gave the door three solid raps.