God, everything was going wrong.
Footsteps approached from the other side of the derailed train. The light rail operator, still wearing his yellow-and-orange vest, pointed a revolver at the SUV while running toward the open door. He had to be one of Max’s goons.
I dove for the security guard’s pistol, just as a bullet ricocheted off the pavement. I hit my shoulder hard when I landed, but I managed to get the pistol. I aimed at the driver and squeezed the trigger. The shot went wild, but the operator turned and ran, firing another shot over his shoulder that hit the open SUV door. He pulled the trigger again while he ran, but it clicked on an empty cylinder. He had used his six shots. I pulled my trigger two more times, both missing completely. The operator ran around the corner at the end of the street and disappeared.
The bodyguard’s breathing was raspy. He’d be okay, but he wasn’t going anywhere.
“You.” She lay in the backseat on her stomach, staring up at me with her mouth open.
We looked at each other for a few seconds. Finally, I asked, “Are you all right?”
“How… how did you get here?”
I reached for her. “I have to get you out of here.”
She didn’t hesitate, as if trusting me completely. She took my hand and crawled forward. I helped her out of the vehicle then looked down the street for the operator, but he was still nowhere to be seen.
I didn’t have a lot of time before the machine pulled me back. I had thought I could get the driver of her car to avoid the train altogether, but the whole thing had snowballed.
She reached down to the bodyguard lying on the ground, but I pulled her away. “He’ll be all right. You have to get out of here.”
“We can’t just leave him.”
“They don’t want him,” I said. “They want you.”
“Who?” She pulled at my arm. “What do they want with me?”
“They want you dead.”
She was wobbly as I pulled her around the front of the SUV and led her toward the Honda. “Can you drive?”
She nodded. “What about them?” She gestured toward the men in the SUV.
“The paramedics will be here soon.” I didn’t know how true that was, but I knew her security would want her to be safe first. That was their job. For me, keeping her alive was a passion.
The Honda’s engine still hummed, untouched by the whole ordeal. I opened the driver’s door. “Get in.”
“What?”
“Get out of the city.” I looked around again. If the operator came back, I wouldn’t be there to help her. Damn it. I should’ve given myself more time in case things went wrong. “You can’t stay here,” I told her. “They can’t see outside the city. If you leave downtown at the very least, you should be safe.”
“See me?” She shook her head. “See me from where?”
I pushed her into the driver seat, but she grabbed hold of my coat. “Anna, please. You have to go. I can’t stay here much longer.”
“Why can’t you stay? And who are you? How do you know where to find me?”
It took me a second to comprehend the question. She’d asked how I knew where to find her, as if I’d done it often. And then it hit me. Of course she would remember me. I had saved her when she was ten and again when she was fifteen.
“I’ll explain later.” I pried her hand off my coat. “When you’re out of town, call your people on a landline and have them come and get you. And don’t use a cell phone. I’ll catch up later.”
“How will you know where I am?”
I shut the car door once she was inside. “I’ll know.”
I looked at my watch, then I ran around the side of the light rail to get out of her sight. Passengers stumbled around inside, but I didn’t care if any of them saw me disappear.
~~~~
When I reappeared in the lab, a message was flashing on my monitor. Ralph had marked it as low importance, which meant it was very important.
Hey, Doc, is this your lunch in the fridge?
The time stamp was right after I left. Ralph’s warning came a little late. The security monitor showed Max standing outside the lab door, along with the bandaged-head goon and a handful of security guys. Max had his arm in a sling. On the screen, I could see him speaking, but I had the intercom off, so I couldn’t hear. I switched it back on. “There a problem, Max?”
His winning smile was gone, replaced with a frown my father might’ve given if I’d come home after hours. “You know exactly why I’m here. Get out here, now.”
“I’m kind of busy right now, boss.”
He took a deep breath, acting as if talking to a petulant child. “Yes, I’m well aware.” He pointed at his sling, wincing. “You’re too busy shooting at me and my boys. And trying to save that silly girl.”
Shooting at him?
He must’ve seen my reaction on the monitor on the other side of the door. That famous smile reappeared. “Oh, I see. You haven’t done everything yet.”
Smoke poured from my machine. “You’re pulling some late hours, Max.”
“And you’re using government property for personal business.”
“Why do you want her dead? She never did anything wrong.”
“Yes, she did. Or would have if I hadn’t stopped her.” His smile disappeared again. “She’ll ruin everything we’ve worked for, and you’re helping her.”
I still had three more power spikes to deal with. I carefully brought the viewer on line and scanned forward from where I had last gone. “You care to explain, boss?”
“Don’t be coy.” Max reached over and switched off the intercom. His mouth moved as he said something to one of the security people, and the guy turned and ran down the hall. Max flipped on the intercom again. “She needs to die, Eric.”
“Why?” I scanned the time period just after Anna had driven away in the Honda. Damn it. The duality had disappeared, but another one replaced it a few minutes after I’d left the past. “Max, how can some actress turned pop singer ruin things for you?”
I examined the two halves of the duality. One time line showed her lying in an alley, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the back. The other was nothing but a blur caused by someone going back in the machine.
“If you don’t know, Eric, then why save her?” Again, he smiled that loathsome smile. “You like her. You stupid boy, you care about her.”
I rolled the viewer back a few minutes before she died. Before the duality, the Honda crashed, just as I’d seen in part of the previous duality. Another vehicle had knocked hers to the side of the street, followed by the distortion.
“You got a thing for young girls, yourself,” I said. “What’d you do with Rhonda anyway?”
His face flushed. Even on the screen, it was obvious that he had to force himself to remain calm. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about that worthless girl you’re pining over.”
“If she’s worthless, why kill her?”
“She doesn’t know what she’s doing.” Max turned as the security guard returned. The guy carried what looked like a set of Jaws of Life. Max switched off the intercom and shouted something, then flipped it on again. “Her careless words ruined everything.”
“Your perfect little world is that fragile, huh?” I locked in on the position inside the alley a minute before Anna arrived. One of Max’s guys would be there. That was why she was dead on one side of the duality. What I needed was a gun, but I didn’t have one. Then it occurred to me. I did have a gun, or at least access to one.
“I should have known.” Max crossed his arms and shook his head. “How long have you been a Hater?”
“I’m a Hater, huh? I’m not trying to kill young girls, in the past or today.”
He clenched his jaw. He knew I meant Rhonda. He really must’ve had a thing for her, the poor girl. He came very close to losing his temper completely, but he maintained his cool. “That singer of yours has to go. The hate she spreads will change everything.”
&
nbsp; “You keep saying that, Max, but I still don’t get it.”
“Of course you don’t.” Max thrust his finger at the camera. “I’ve worked hard to help create the perfection we have today. People like you spread your vile speech everywhere, and she’s the one who started it all.”
The security guard brought the giant cutter toward the door. Two of the other guards helped him. Max’s two men didn’t even try to help. They stared at the camera while Max bleated.
“She has to go, Eric. That’s how it works. There’s an order to things today, and she’s going to disrupt it. We can’t have that, so she has to go.”
“She’s a good person, Max.”
“She’s naïve. She’s doesn’t realize how bad she’ll screw up the world. I can’t reason with a person like that, so I have no choice but to remove her. It’s not personal, Eric. If you were smart, you’d see that. Now, you leave me no choice but to remove you as—”
The fire alarm suddenly went off, drowning out Max’s voice. The smoke had cleared, so that meant Max had done something to set it off. In a few seconds, it would open the lab door as a safety precaution.
I grabbed a screwdriver off my desk and dove for the door. I jammed the tool between the wall and the panel that covered the locking mechanism. Using the screwdriver as a lever, I snapped off the piece of metal, reached inside, and yanked at the wires. They sparked, giving me a little shock as the door mechanism short-circuited. That door wouldn’t be opening again. It kept them out, but it also kept me in. The only way I could leave was through the machine, and that would eventually bring me back.
On the screen, Max shouted at the security guards, pushing at them. I jammed the screwdriver under the smoke alarm and pried it off the wall. It silenced immediately.
Max frowned at the camera. “You’re only delaying things, Eric. Be sensible. Knock off this nonsense and help me out.”
“I’ll go back, Max. I can go back and stop you.”
Max laughed. “For how long? You can’t take her to the police. I have access to every police record, every report. If there’s a record of it, I’ll find it. I have resources you don’t. Once I get through here, I can undo everything you’ve done, and you’ll be out of the picture.”
The security guards went to work with the massive cutter. The window in the door was too small for a man, and the thick door was designed, along with the rest of the lab, to protect the rest of the building in case something went wrong. The only way for them to get through was to cut their way in. I guessed I had a couple of hours to save Anna.
“It’s over, Eric. You can’t save her more times than I can kill her.”
I ignored him and dug through my toolbox. A dozen handheld wrenches were probably enough, but I grabbed three more to be sure. Weight was critical, and I couldn’t be under by even a gram.
Max continued to bluster as I changed the coordinates for a different location and set the timer again.
~~~~
I materialized next to the dumpster outside the junkie’s apartment building and threw open the lid. The gun lay on top of an old box. I grabbed it and emptied the wrenches from my pocket, hoping their weight was enough to match the mass of the revolver. The last wrench barely hit the ground before I returned.
At the lab, Max continued to chew me out as if I’d never left. I ignored him and pulled up my keyboard. The machine ran hot but still functioned. I hoped it’d work long enough for what I planned.
~~~~
The Honda raced around the corner a minute after I materialized inside the alley where Anna would die. She was swerving all over the road. Fortunately, that early on a Sunday, she wouldn’t endanger anyone. Behind her, a large sedan closed in and hit the left rear fender of the Honda. The collision sent her car into a tailspin. The smaller car bounced off the curb, bending the rim until the tire was almost horizontal with the street, then slid to a stop.
The sedan screeched to a halt several car lengths past Anna. A man casually stepped out of the driver’s side as if nothing mattered. I didn’t recognize him, but he wasn’t the one who had masqueraded as the light rail operator or the man I’d clocked on the theater catwalk.
The goon strode toward Anna as she stumbled out of the Honda. She didn’t see him at first, but when she did, she backed away, shaking her head. He smiled and pulled out a gun. He looked as though he was thoroughly enjoying himself. Maybe that was why in the duality he had let her run down the alley before shooting her in the back.
I stepped out of the alley just as he approached. His mouth fell open when he saw me pointing the junkie’s gun at him. That instant of hesitation was all I needed. I’d never killed anyone, but knowing what he would do to Anna made it a little easier.
I pulled the trigger. The first bullet hit him in the chest, but I squeezed off another round to be sure. The man lay on the sidewalk in a growing pool of red. I wondered what Max would think when the goon’s body returned to the future. Then I realized Max already knew about it. Ralph had said he thought he saw them carrying a body.
Anna stared at the dead man, her lips trembling. I knew the feeling. She’d probably never seen a dead body, much less a man killed in front of her eyes.
“Anna?” I went to her and took her hand. She didn’t react. “Anna, we have to go now.”
The engine of the sedan was still running. I started to drag her toward the car, but I heard a police siren approaching. Even if I could outrun them, there’d be a record of the chase, leaving a trail for Max to follow. Giving ourselves up would also create a police record. Max could send someone right into her jail cell. One of Max’s goons could kill her and be gone in a minute. The only choice was to run, to get away from everyone.
I squeezed her hand. “Anna.”
She looked at me. “How are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“You always show up when I need you. How?”
I sighed. “Anna, I need you to trust me.”
To my surprise, she nodded. We ran down the alley, away from the approaching police.
~~~~
“Can’t we hide here?”
She pointed at a parking garage.
I shook my head as we turned up another alley. “Cameras in there are run by the owner. If they save recordings, then they’ll be stored somewhere. My people can look it up and send someone back.”
“They have cameras in the streets, too.”
“Those belong to the Colorado Department of Transportation. Those feeds are available on the Internet, but they don’t actually record them unless they set up something special. At least not yet.”
“What do you mean not yet? And how do you know all this?”
I looked both ways. No one was around, and thus no one was around to recognize her. “I lived in Denver most of my life.”
We hurried across the street and down another alley. Trash lined the area, filling my nostrils with the stench. Someone had stacked a pile of lumber near a dumpster.
“Where’d you get the gun?” she asked.
I felt for the revolver in my coat pocket. “I dropped it in a dumpster. I went back to get it, then came back again to save you.”
“You went back? Back from where?”
“It’s a long story.”
“No.” She pulled at my arm and turned me around. “No, I deserve to know. I want to know why you only appear when I’m in danger. Why do you have the same coat and the same shoes after ten years?”
I didn’t know what to tell her. The truth seemed too unbelievable. “I like these shoes.”
She put her free hand on her hip, looking at me the way my mother used to when I’d try to lie to her. “Ten years and they look the same, along with your coat. And you haven’t aged a—” She looked over my shoulder and her eyes widened.
Before I could turn around, a hand reached under my chin. I lost my footing completely as someone yanked me backward. The breath went out of me as I slammed into the pavement. The light rail operator stoo
d over me, anger written all over him. He reached down and twisted my wrist, forcing me to drop the gun.
“What the hell did you do?” He wrapped a hand tightly around my neck. “I was only supposed to be here an hour. I didn’t go back. Why is that, smart guy? Did you turn it off so you could come here? You son of a bitch, you stranded me, didn’t you?” He squeezed my neck. “I’m gonna break you, and then I’m gonna break your—”
I heard a thump that sounded like a cantaloupe bouncing off the concrete. I managed to roll to the side before he fell on top of me. He lay on the ground next to me, his eyes rolled up into his head. He still wore the yellow-and-orange reflective vest worn by light rail operators, though I was sure RTD had never hired him. God only knew what he had done to the real operator.
Anna stood over him holding a two-by-four. “That actually worked.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Good job.”
She tossed the piece of wood back onto the pile of lumber. She looked at the man’s crumpled form and grimaced. “Will he be okay?”
I had to smile. He had been intent on killing her, but she was still worried she’d hurt him. “Someone will see him and call the cops.” I didn’t know if that was true, but I had to get her out of there. I stood and grabbed her hand. “Let’s move.”
“Where are we going?”
I led her across the street. “To a place I know.”
~~~~
No one saw us. Thank God for small favors.
I retrieved the junkie’s spare apartment key and unlocked the door. The junkie wasn’t coming home any time soon.
She glanced inside the apartment. “Your place?”
I ran my hand across the back of my neck. “No, it’s not mine. But the guy who lives here won’t be back for a while.” I gestured for her to enter. Then I followed her in and shut the door behind us.
The place was as much of a pigsty as I remembered. She wrinkled her nose. I removed a stack of magazines from the loveseat. I peeked through the filthy curtains. Nothing moved on the street below.
“Whoever lives here doesn’t care about anything,” she said. “Who is he?”
“A friend,” I said. “He’s, uh, out of town.”