OMG, A CUL8R Time Travel Mystery (29 page)

Zoey
looked over at the parking lot and was delighted to see her beloved Mini Cooper was in the parking lot just where she had left it.  “I guess I’d better get home.  I can’t wait to wash my hair with my own shampoo and use my flatiron again.”  She gave them a casual wave and headed toward her car.

“How are your ribs?” Kelly asked Austin.

Austin moved his arms and tried some toe-touches and torso twists, but he grabbed his ribs. “Ouch . . . wow, that hurts.”

“
Lesson learned,” Scott said.

“About what?  That injuries stick with us or that I shouldn’t have played football?”

“Both, actually.  I have no idea what long-term consequences there will be from you helping the team to win that game.”

“Not to mention whether or not Coach Decker will be there in the fall.”

“It’ll be interesting to find out,” Scott said.  “Listen, I think we all need a good night’s sleep.  Let’s meet tomorrow to debrief.  You know all scientists and inventors do a post mortem.

“But in this case, it’s sort of a post
non
-mortem,” Kelly pointed out.

Austin smiled at her joke, but Scott was in his serious scientist mode.

“Could we make it about noon?” Kelly started the bidding.

“
I agree,” Austin said in support.

But
an hour later, after she had successfully slipped back into the house without rousing her aunt and taken a good, long bath, Kelly found herself lying wide awake in her comfortable bed.  All the things that had happened over the last few days kept running through her mind.  She tossed and turned for awhile before she finally gave up.  She wondered if anyone else was having a hard time letting it all go.

Finally, she got up and retrieved her phone from the dresser where she had it plugged in, recharging, and sent out a text to Scott and Austin
to see if they were having trouble sleeping, too.
RU asleep
?

Only a few seconds later, her phone pinged and Austin replied,
No
.

Another ping, and Scott’s text,
Me either.  Meet at lab?

BRT
, Austin messenged.

N
5
, Kelly texted.  She dressed quickly in shorts and a t-shirt and slipped out the front door, locking it behind her.

Austin was already there, so she took an empty stool, and they sat in a loose circle.

“I can’t believe we actually did it,” Austin marveled.

“I won’t feel comfortable until we go to the library and check the papers,” Kelly said.  “I
’ll ask Aunt Jane about Decker.  I doubt that she’ll remember the case, but maybe she’ll look it up.”

What reason
will you give for wanting to know?” Scott asked.

“I
’ll tell her I heard a rumor about a coach from the Sixties being a serial killer, and that I was wondering if it was true.”

“
That should work.”  Scott nodded his approval.

The sound of the gate leading into Scott’s backyard creaked, drawing their attention.

“Who could that be?” Kelly asked, worried it might be her aunt.  Not that anything inappropriate was going on.  But she didn’t want to get into trouble for sneaking out in the middle of the night.

“I don’t know
,” Scott said.

They peered into the darkness, not knowing who to expect.

Zoey stepped forward into the pool of light.  She wasn’t her usual self-confident self.  Instead, she approached a little meekly.

“Hi, guys.  Mind if I join you?”

Austin and Kelly looked at Scott who didn’t appear to be thrilled to see her.

“Can you give us a minute?” he asked.

“Sure.  I’ll just . . . wait over by the fence?”  Zoey seemed hesitant, but she moved out of the light and out of earshot.

“What do you guys think?” he asked Austin and Kelly.

“A week ago, I would have said no, but . . .” Austin shrugged, “she put up with a lot and was cool about it.”

“Yeah, she really saved the day for Wendy.  If she hadn’t been there, things would have turned out very differently,” Kelly chimed in.

“But do we want her in our group?” Scott persisted.

“She started out kind of as a mean girl,” Kelly admitted, “but she got better.  I don’t know how she’ll act once we’re actually in school and she’s around her other friends, but she and I got along fine after a couple of days.”

“She
is
a Trekkie,” Austin pointed out with a crooked grin.

“T
rekker,” Scott corrected.  “Then you two are okay with it?”

“I am, as long as she doesn’t get all diva on us,” Austin said.

“And if she agrees to the rules,” Kelly added.

Scott thought about it for a moment.  “Then let’s do it.”

Kelly jumped off her stool and called out, “Zoey, come on in.”  She picked up a stool out of the corner and added it to the group.

Zoey returned to the shop and stepped inside.  “I had a feeling you would all be here.  I drove by and saw the lights . . . and I thought I’d take a chance.”

“Okay,” Scott led off the meeting.  “Zoey, we have to have your promise that you’ll never share what you’ve done and what you’re about to hear.”

She nodded. 
“Sure . . . I understand and agree.”

“This is a dangerous thing to have access to or even
to know about.  It would change the history of the world if it was in the wrong hands.  I’m not even sure we should have messed with history as much as we did . . . but it is what it is.  I can’t feel bad that we saved Wendy’s life.”  Scott hit a key on his computer and printed out a copy of the contract which he handed to her.

“What’s this?
” she asked.

“Our expectations of each other,” Austin said.

“Okay,” Zoey quickly read through it, then reached out and took Scott’s pen.  She signed with a flourish, then gave the pledge and the pen back to Scott.  “Now show me how you found out about Wendy.”

Scott
pulled a cloth off of the Spirit Radio.  “We don’t have to take the time tonight to demonstrate it, but her voice came through to us on this.  She actually answered our questions and asked us to help her.  The problem is, it’s not always clear and there are a lot of people out there, trying to get our attention.”

“A lot of people?” Zoey repeated.  “Does that mean that you’re going to go on more travels?”

Scott, Kelly and Austin exchanged quizzical looks.  The subject had not actually come up between them, but now that they had actually completed a successful trip, it was time to consider that possibility.  They all nodded.

“I guess if someone comes through
, and we can figure out what we can do to help them, then I’d be willing to go again,” Scott said.

“So would I,” Kelly agreed and Austin nodded his approval.

“But we need to plan the next one a little better.  There were some things that didn’t go well.”

“Some things that
almost killed me,” Zoey said.

“We’re going to always have to play it by ear and learn to adapt.”  Scott carefully covered the Spirit Radio back up so it would stay clean and dry.

“Things like no transportation,” Austin volunteered.

“A
regular schedule for food, sleep, clothes . . . you know, life’s basics,” Kelly offered.

Scott erased everything off his white board and began to write down the list of all the suggestions and issues brought up by the team.

“Even though it was dangerous, what we did was good and important, and we
can’t
quit . . . can we?” Zoey asked with surprising passion.  “Wendy was a person worth saving.  I’d love to know what she did with her life.”

“Is that Zoey getting soft on people?” Austin
asked.

“Yeah . . .
so what?”

“Just asking. 
Whatever.” Austin’s grin told her he was just teasing her.

“
Whatever
,” Zoey echoed with a smile, actually mocking herself.

“What we’ll never know is how many girls Decker would have raped and killed had we not stopped him,” Kelly commented.  “Hopefully, a lot more parents aren’t wondering what happened to their daughters.”

“We’ll see what we can find out at the library tomorrow,” Scott promised.

“The library
again?  Twice in one week?  My dad will think I’m sick,” Austin said as he pressed the back of his hand against his forehead as if checking for a temperature.

“
I have one more question,” Kelly said, looking around the room at her new friends. “When and where are we going next?”

COMING SOON

B R B
– April, 2013

http://www.cul8rseries.com/Book__3_BRB.html

B I O N
– July, 2013

Check out the O M G Video on YouTube

http://youtu.be/T4dlWmUi9hM

If you enjoyed
the award-winning
OMG
, don’t miss
BRB
, Book #2 in the
CUL8R
Time Travel Mystery Series, released on April 5, 2013.  Please enjoy the following preview chapters.

BRB

(Be Right Back)

CUL8R
TM
SERIES BOOK #2 By BobKat

CHAPTER ONE

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 2013

Austin Burke was standing in line beside a canopy-covered hot dog cart when he heard someone calling his name.

“You didn’t wait for me.”  A very pretty teenage girl with long straight golden blond hair and huge pink sunglasses hiding her brown eyes slid into line with him.  The ridiculously large brim of a white straw hat cast her cotton-candy pink bikini-clad body into its own portable shade.  Possessively, she looped her arm through his as she gave him a flirtatious pout.  “I wanted to go to the library with you guys.”

“We called, but your mom said you were still asleep.”  Austin moved forward in line as the customer ahead of him stepped up to the cart. 

“I didn’t think early was
that
early.  Weren’t you
exhausted
?”

“Yeah, but we wanted to check things out.” 

She leaned closer and whispered.  “I still can’t believe we actually
did it
, can you?  I mean, that was
cray-cray
, wasn’t it?”

He looked down at her and smiled.  Zoey had a habit of over dramatizing everything.  That was an advantage when she was leading the cheer squad at a football game, but it was exhausting to spend a lot of time around her.  No one had planned for her to tag along on their first time travel adventure, but she had been a surprisingly good sport once it became clear that if she didn’t cooperate she would be stuck in 1966. 

A thirty-something mother who was standing behind them in line gave Austin a censuring look, and he suddenly realized she had probably overheard the interchange and assumed that the “
it”
Zoey was talking about was something way different than what it actually was. 

“She didn’t really mean
it
as in…uh…we didn’t
do
anything...we just...uh...sort of went on a trip...,” Austin stammered.

The woman’s eyebrows lifted, clearly indicating that he wasn’t helping his case.  Because he couldn’t actually tell her anything close to the truth, he gave up.  The person ahead of him finished paying and walked away, so Austin gave the woman a rueful smile, carefully disentangled his arm from Zoey’s and stepped forward.

“What can I get you kids?” the portly middle-aged man asked.