Reversion (The Narrows of Time Series Book 3) (7 page)

The police cruiser slowed its approach and pulled alongside his Lexus. It stopped, and the passenger-side window rolled down. Inside was an overweight female cop—Hispanic.

Larson rolled his window down and leaned through the opening, consciously wanting the officer to get a good look at him. He didn’t want her to see him as a suspicious person or a threat, so he smiled at her.

Her eyes were on him, though her right hand was busy on the computer terminal mounted to the dashboard, only inches from a tactical shotgun.

“Everything okay?” she asked, leaning her upper body to the right—the seatbelt still wrapped around her shoulder.

“Yes, Officer. I’m just taking a break. Resting my eyes,” he said, hoping the cop wouldn’t get out of her car and ask for his ID. If she lingered, the buyer might get spooked, and then Larson could kiss the money goodbye.

“You live around here?” she asked in that special tone that cops use.

“No, ma’am. Just passing through on my way to an early meeting.”

Her eyes tightened. So did her jaw. “Where? What kind of meeting?”

“I’m an attorney for the University of Arizona. We’re negotiating with several contractors for a campus expansion. I have a meeting with the highest bidder in Nogales,” he said, reaching for the contracts sitting on the passenger seat. He held them up for her to see. “I was up all night working on the agreements. Didn’t get much sleep.”

“There’s no stopping on the pavement,” she said with authority. “You need to get moving. There’s a rest stop fifteen miles ahead. I suggest you use it.”

“Okay, will do. Thank you.”

She studied his car for a few seconds, then gave him a sharp mini-wave of her hand. She closed the passenger window and drove off, accelerating to high speed as she sped around the curve and out of sight.

He exhaled and held his stare for a few seconds, letting the back of his head hit the headrest before looking at the fabric covering the underside of the roof. He rolled his eyes.

“What the hell am I doing here?”

He took a long minute to let his pounding heart slow down. It did. But before he could decide what to do next, a black SUV pulled alongside of him, skidding to an abrupt halt. His blood pressure surged into overdrive again, sending a sudden rush of adrenaline pumping into his system.

“Here we go,” he mumbled, preparing himself for what he hoped would be the final encounter with this man. He grabbed his data recorder, swiped the menu screen to the second page of icons, and turned on the covert audio recorder. He waited for the screen to go blank, then got out of the car.

The buyer—a smartly dressed businessman in his forties, with a thin nose and pale lips—got out of his car and walked to the rear of his vehicle. The man pulled a semiautomatic Glock handgun from a shoulder holster hiding under his suit coat. He cocked the weapon and pointed it at Larson’s face.

“Easy now,” Larson said, taking a shallow step back and putting his hands up. He could feel the beat of his heart pounding at his eardrums. His military training kicked in, helping him appear calm. “Let’s not do anything rash.”

“What the hell was that cop doing here?”

“She stopped to see if I needed any help.”

“What’d you tell her?”

“That I was just resting my eyes. Taking a break from driving. She bought it and drove off. End of story. No reason to get jumpy.”

The buyer didn’t respond or move.

“Look, she was just doing her job and I took care of it. It’s all good. Are we gonna do this or not?”

The buyer stared at the pavement ahead, then put the gun away. “Do you have it?”

“Yes. In my briefcase.”

“Give it to me, before the LEO returns.”

“Do you have the money?”

The buyer nodded, but only once.

“Let me see it.”

The man opened the rear hatch of the SUV. He pulled out a green canvas bag with an exaggerated sag at its midpoint. He opened the bag, showing the contents to Larson—bundles of hundreds were lying inside.

“One million, as agreed. Do you wanna count it?”

Larson didn’t want to extend the exchange any longer than necessary. The cop might circle back any minute, putting his ass and his family’s future on the line. “No, I trust you,” he said, leaning into the Lexus. He opened the briefcase and grabbed the thumb drive from inside one of the pouches. He stood, holding the storage device in front of his face. “You hand me the money and I give you the drive. Agreed?”

The buyer held the money bag out with one hand, extending an upward facing palm with the other.

Larson put the drive into the man’s free hand and snatched the bag by its straps.

“Oh, and there’s one more thing,” the buyer said, slipping the flash drive into his pocket.

“What’s that?”

“We need an exclusive.”

“What kind of exclusive?”

“The campus experiment needs to be shut down, today.”

“That’s a tall order, my friend. I don’t have that kind of authority. Only the Advisory Committee can terminate a university-funded research project.”

“Can you do it, or not?”

“It might be possible,” Larson said after a two-count. “But it’ll cost extra.”

“How much?”

“Another five hundred large should cover it.”

“That’s a bit steep.”

“What you ask is difficult. I may have to grease a few palms along the way, not to mention the added risk I’m taking.”

The buyer looked at his shoes for a few moments, then made eye contact with Larson. “Fine. Five hundred thousand. But you’re committed now. The project gets terminated—today,” he said, yanking out his gun again. He pressed the barrel hard against Larson’s chest. “Otherwise, you get terminated tomorrow. Understood?”

It look Larson a few seconds to find his voice. He sucked in a few extra breaths to energize his vocal cords.

“Yes. Completely. Won’t be a problem.”

“Good. Then we have an understanding—a binding agreement, if I choose to speak in your vernacular,” the buyer said, with attitude in his voice.

Larson nodded.

The buyer lowered the gun and returned to the SUV. He slipped in and spun the car around, then drove off with squealing tires, leaving a trail of burned rubber and black smoke.

Larson threw the bag of cash into the trunk of the Lexus, closed it, then leaned his butt against the car. He turned off the audio recorder and put the unit into his pocket, making a mental note to save the recording to a secondary backup device.

“How the hell am I going to pull this off?” he asked himself as his mind began to swirl with panic. He ran his fingers through his thinning blond locks, finding the dollops of sweat thick and plentiful.

He didn’t know the buyer’s name or who the man worked for and that was fine with him.

Just do as they ask and pocket the rest of the cash. Then you’re done. With everything.

It sounded simple in his head, but it wasn’t. He had no idea how to get the project’s charter revoked, much less do so in a few short hours. Kleezebee had too much clout with the Advisory Committee and wouldn’t allow it. He hated that arrogant man.

Then the answer hit him.

He didn’t have to stop the project. Just remove one of the pieces from the game board—Lucas Ramsay. If he did, the experiment would fail, or at least be delayed long enough for him to collect the money and disappear with his family.

Lucas slid his body off the table and gently set the foot of his injured leg on the ground. It was sore, but manageable. Certainly better than an hour ago. Masago’s needle ball remedy must have started to penetrate and work its magic. He might be able to resume his mission to restore the timeline soon. He leaned to the right, putting more of his body weight on the knee. Almost instantly, the pain became too intense. He backed off the leg, realizing he wasn’t going to walk normally for a while.

He considered his options. Masago had been gone awhile after leaving the bunker to investigate the perimeter breach. The tense knot in his stomach told him something must have happened to her. If that were true, he was on his own, stuck in an underground mountain bunker in the middle of the Tucson desert. He looked around the room to see what items he might be able to use to help with his exodus. Then he remembered the pair of hunting bows.

Masago had taken one of the two bows with her, leaving the other behind. If it were long enough and could support his hundred-sixty-pound frame, he might be able to use it. He hopped on one leg to the wall where the bow was leaning and grabbed it, tucking it under his arm like a crutch. He kept a firm grip while pressing down hard to test its support properties. It seemed to hold, though there was a fair amount of flexing along the bow’s shaft each time weight was applied. It needed reinforcement, but how?

He found a roll of duct tape and a hacksaw under some loose clothes near the water canisters. They gave him an idea. He took a few of the arrows from her U-Haul box stash and unscrewed the razor-sharp tips, then cut off the flights from the ends. The next couple of minutes were spent cutting the carbon shafts into equal-length sections with the saw. He applied the pieces to both sides of the bow near its midpoint, forming a ninety-degree-angled crosspiece, and wrapped duct tape around the ends to hold them securely to the shaft. He tested it. It worked—the new cross section kept the bow from flexing too much and provided him with a hand hold to use.

Now, somewhat mobile, it was time to outfit himself with a few more items. First, he took the robe off and slipped on the Smart Skin Suit. Then he found a two-quart water canteen with a shoulder strap and a child-size backpack. It was smaller than the canteen and wouldn’t hold much.

Prioritize. Only the essentials.

A handful of dusty energy bars with faded wrappers were sitting on a shelf, just begging to be eaten. Their expiration date hadn’t passed, but the aging treats were stiff and hard as a rock. A smarter man would’ve left them behind, but his fingers couldn’t resist. He was starving, and a gurgling stomach would always trump logic. He tossed the bars into the knapsack. If nothing else, they’d make an excellent hammer or paperweight.

He couldn’t see a way to carry any of the #10 food cans, not without a much larger rucksack and a stronger back, so they remained untouched. Masago’s stack of two-ply toilet paper caught his eye, but he didn’t want to use up the remaining space for a single roll of creature comfort. His butt would have appreciated it, but not at the expense of more important items.

A man must choose wisely, especially when it came to . . . before he could finish the thought, inspiration found him. He unclipped the canteen’s shoulder strap and squeezed its end through the center of a roll of toilet paper. A smile grew as he repeated the same process with two more rolls. He reattached its clip to the side of the canteen and slid his arm inside.

“Not bad,” he said. “Three rolls ought to last a while.”

He hobbled his way into the next compartment, where he found a few things he wasn’t expecting. A four-by-four-foot section of plywood had been attached to a wall with cement anchors. Deep gouges and slices covered the wood surface, forming an ellipse around an object at its center—a traditional dartboard. However, Masago wasn’t throwing steel-tipped darts at it. Instead, she was practicing with knives and throwing stars—several of which were stuck deep into the center of the dartboard.

Lucas pried one of the knives and one star loose from the board. It took several wraps of toilet paper to protect their sharp points before they joined the other items inside the backpack.

Next to the dartboard was a boxer’s heavy bag hanging from the ceiling. Beyond that, a long stack of dumbbells ranging from five pounds to fifty pounds. Nothing he could use. He continued his recon, discovering a pack of waterproof matches, two small candles, six bandages, a travel-size version of antiseptic spray, sunblock, and a metal compass—all of which he made room for in the pack. It was now full. Time to leave.

He made his way through the rest of the bunker, section by section. First, it was the simply appointed kitchen and laundry area, then the sleeping quarters that featured stacks of bunk beds attached to three of the four walls. He found an equipment room surrounded by walls of glass. Inside were stacks of old computers with reel-to-reel tape drives and metal desks from the sixties.

Masago did mention her dad was a scientist, but Lucas wasn’t sure if her old man built this place or acquired it from someone else—like the army. Either way, he was impressed by the size and scope of the underground facility.

He limped down a connecting hallway that led to the library. Masago wasn’t exaggerating earlier when she said her father had stocked the book repository with hundreds of books covering everything from hunting and fishing to surgery and science. The nerd inside of him wanted to spend the next hour skimming through the impressive collection, but he needed to press on.

The homemade crutch helped him through another doorway, this time, he found a smaller room. At first, he thought it was a chapel, complete with candles, an altar, and a kneeler positioned in front of it. But the person’s face featured on the wall above the altar wasn’t Jesus. It was Lucas’s face—hand-drawn, and a very good likeness of him.

“What the hell?” he said, waddling a few steps to the shrine. There were dozens of sketches lying about its wooden surface. Some of the drawings showed his face with cheek scars while others didn’t, but all of them depicted him as a young man. He dug through a few more, moving them aside, until he found two color photographs hiding at the bottom of the pile.

The first snapshot was that of a child sitting with two adults on a park bench. It was an oriental family, who Lucas assumed belonged to Masago. The young girl was around eight years old and looked just like her. He tossed the photo aside and studied the other one. Masago was a little older, sitting partially sideways in front of an easel with a thick, charcoal pencil in her hand. The drawing she was working on was a portrait of Lucas—detailed and complete.

He held the photo up and compared the easel’s sketch to the artwork hanging on the wall. It was the same rendering.