Revolution in Time (Out of Time #10) (8 page)

Jack had promised to keep an eye on Project Nursery for them while they were away. Elizabeth covered the mouthpiece. “Slipper Satin?”

Simon’s mouth pursed in disapproval.
 

Elizabeth put the phone on speaker.

Simon came closer. “I called Alejandro last week and told him we wanted Calming Cream with Gray Mist and Simply White wainscoting. Really, if they can’t keep that straight, I hate to see what they’ll do with the room.”

“Cream, gray, white. Got it.”

“
Calming
Cream—”

“I got it. I got it. Don’t worry about it. It’ll be fine.”

Simon frowned. “Very well. Thank you,” he said and gestured for her to take it off speakerphone and continue.
 

“Lord Cross has spoken,” Jack said before she could.

Elizabeth snorted.

Simon played along and looked affronted. “Forgive me for wanting the best for our child.”

Elizabeth grimaced. “Speaking of … I kind of forgot my vitamins.”

Simon rolled his eyes, but she waved his annoyance away and focused on Jack.

“I guess I left them in the kitchen. Do you see them?”

She heard Jack moving around. “Big blue bottle?”

She sighed. “That’s them. I’ll stop at the store down the road and pick up a bottle.”

Simon looked startled. “Over-the-counter? You read the same report on those that I did. Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll go back and get yours. The ones the doctor provided.”

Jack must have heard him. “Naw, you two are on vacation. I’ll bring ‘em up. Painters will have to come back tomorrow, so I’m free.”

“Don’t be silly,” Elizabeth said. “Flintstones will work in a pinch. Haven’t had those since I was a kid. You don’t have to bother.”

She could feel him shrugging through the phone. “I’ve literally got nothing else to do.
Days
was pre-empted so … why not? Beautiful day for a drive. Besides, what kind of uncle would I be if I condoned the use of over the counter prenatal vitamins?”

Elizabeth laughed. “Thank you.”

“No problem. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

Jack was as good as his word and arrived less than two hours later.

“You made good time,” Elizabeth said as she greeted him at the door.

“No traffic.” He held out the vitamins and then peered inside. “Nice.”

She stepped aside for him to come in. Simon appeared in the doorway from the kitchen.
 

“That was fast.”

Elizabeth led him inside. “I was just about to invite Jack to stay for dinner.”

To the surprise of them both, Simon didn’t put up his usual fuss.
 

“It’s the least we can do. There is, however, one problem. We don’t have any food.”

Jack chuckled and jerked his thumb behind him. “I passed a market, just down the way. We could walk down, pick something up.”

Simon agreed and looked to Elizabeth. “You want to come? Be a nice walk.”

She shook her head. “There’s clawfoot tub upstairs with my name on it.”

“All right,” he said and kissed her cheek.

“See you soon, kid,” Jack said and then lingered for a moment, gave her one of his winning smiles and followed Simon out.
 

~~~

The mountain air was crisp and fresh and, Simon realized, growing colder. It would be the perfect night for a fire. And once Wells left, other things.

His eyes shifted over to Jack, who was kicking a rock ahead of him like a child and a tin can.

Wells was out of sorts. He seemed anxious and that was not his natural state. The cause of it was his business and none of Simon’s, of course, but Wells had been a good friend to them and, as a man literally out of time, he didn’t have many friends. Simon nearly laughed. Many male friends that was. Women were never in short supply.
 

Wells checked his watch and rolled his shoulders.

Simon clenched his jaw. He really didn’t like interfering in other people’s lives. Time travel notwithstanding. But ….

He struggled with what to say. Simon had had friends, of course, but since college, he’d never really let anyone in, or cared enough to be let in with the exception of Elizabeth. However, Wells had shown time and again that he was the sort of man worthy of their friendship. And, from the look on his face, maybe in need of it.

Simon felt uncomfortable but pushed ahead.

“Everything all right?”
 

“Hmmm?” Jack was miles away. “Oh, yeah. Fine.”

Simon nodded once. “Good.”

Maybe he’d misread the situation. They continued on their walk in silence. Simon smiled to himself. He’d get points for asking and wouldn’t have to endure any personal conversation.

“There is this woman,” Jack said. “Renee.”

Or not.

“Is there?” Simon asked.

Jack turned around and walked backward. “She’s got a face like Rita Hayworth. Legs like Grable and a …” He hesitated and let his hands float in midair in front of his chest.

“I know what you mean,” Simon said.

“Like Jane Russell.”

Simon had heard a few of the names, but he wasn’t as up on his classic films as Elizabeth. “That’s good?”

Jack laughed. “Good? Brother,” he said, turning back and clapping Simon on the shoulder, “that’s great.”

“So what’s the problem?”

Jack ran his hand through his hair. “She keeps talking about our future.”

Simon could see how that would be disconcerting, especially for a man like Wells, who was well and truly committed to playing the field. It didn’t seem like an insurmountable problem, though. Not for Jack.

“Why not let her down easy? You do it with all of the others who come in and out of your life and apartment like they’re going through a revolving door.”

Jack tried to look affronted. “There haven’t been that many.”

“Robin, Tonja, Jenifer with one n, Jennifer with two n’s—“

Jack held up his hands. “All right, all right.”

“You didn’t seem to have any problem moving on from any of them. Why is this any different?”

Jack shook his head. “I can’t bring myself to pull the trigger, ya know? There’s just something about her that keeps pulling me back in.”

“Well,” Simon said and raised his eyebrows. “Jane Russell.”

Jack laughed.

“When you find the right woman, you’ll know,” Simon said. “You certainly won’t be asking me for advice.”

“I don’t know. You managed to land Elizabeth. I don’t know if I’ll ever get that lucky, though.”

Simon smiled. No one would ever be as lucky as he was.

“Meh,” Jack said, throwing his hands up. “No point in worrying, right?”

“Right.”

Jack shrugged and shifted the grocery bag from his left to his right arm and checked his watch. Again. Simon had noticed him looking at it in the market.

“Are we keeping you from something?”

Jack shook his head. “No, I was just ….” He glanced over at Simon. “Trying to get rid of me already?”
 

Simon laughed. “No, you’re welcome to stay.” For an hour or so, he added silently. He was more than ready to be alone with his wife.

They rounded a bend in the dirt drive, and the house appeared before them. Elizabeth stood near the window in the second-floor bedroom and caught sight of them. She pushed the filmy curtain aside and waved.

Simon waved back. She smiled and let the curtain fall over the window.

“I hope she’s got the grill—”

The rest of Jack’s sentence was lost in the deafening roar of an explosion.
 

A huge red and orange fireball erupted from the house. It billowed out from the center in a rage, engulfing everything in its path. The shockwave came a split second later and knocked them both backward onto the ground.

Simon’s ears were ringing as he tried to shake off the effects of the concussion. Dazed and not sure what had just happened, he managed to get to his feet and look at the house. What little was left of it. Shards of wood and burning embers rained down around them in some sort of apocalyptic storm.

He stood there, stunned, unable to process what his eyes were seeing. Then it hit him with a force more powerful than the explosion.

“Elizabeth.”

His heart in his throat, he ran toward the fire, but Jack grabbed his arm.

Simon struggled against him. Why the hell wouldn’t he let him go? Elizabeth needed him. She was in there somewhere, and he had to get to her.

Simon tried to escape his grasp, but Jack wrapped his arms around him even more tightly.
 

“Let go of me. Elizabeth!”
 

She was alive. She had to be alive.

Jack wouldn’t let go, but somehow Simon escaped his hold and ran toward the front of the house. He stumbled to a stop at the edge of the burning remnants. The house was gone.

And Elizabeth was gone with it.

D
ESPERATE
BEYOND
THOUGHT
, S
IMON
stepped into the flaming rubble. The heat threatened to overwhelm him, but he ignored the pain. She needed him. He would find her.

“Elizabeth!”

What was left of a wall engulfed in flames collapsed to his right and fell into a pile of embers and ash. It seemed to knock something loose inside him, and he looked around at the house, seeing it as it was for the first time.
 

There was no life here. Only death.

Jack caught his arm again, and this time, Simon didn’t fight. The truth had made him numb. He could barely think the words, but once he did they rang out in endless succession. Elizabeth was dead. Elizabeth was dead. Elizabeth was dead.

Jack led him away from the flames as another small explosion destroyed what was left of the east wall.

Simon let him. His legs weren’t his own. His mind and body weren’t his own. This wasn’t happening.

They stood in front of the wreckage of the house, of his life, but Simon refused to accept it.

He repeated over and over,
no, no, no
.
 

Next to him he heard Wells speak in a hoarse voice. “I’m sorry.”

Simon fell to his knees and cried out in anguish. It was a sound torn from his very soul.

~~~

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

Simon looked up at the nurse, but like everyone else, everything else, he didn’t really see her. He was lost inside his own mind, unable to latch onto anything, unable to hold a coherent thought, unable to feel the needle or the stitches or anything at all.

The bloody bit of wood that had struck him sat alone on a metal tray. He looked down at the gash in his forearm. His skin was now pulled tightly against itself, closing the wound. All of it held together with thin, black thread. Spiky bits of thread poked out like spider legs. Sewn up tight. But nothing was holding him together on the inside. His whole body was on fire and frozen cold at the same time.

How could she be gone?

It couldn’t be real. He’d had nightmares like this. Surely, this was just another nightmare, and he’d wake with a start and find her next to him.

“The doctor will be in again in a few minutes.”

Simon nodded slowly, some sort of reflex.

The nurse touched his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

She had said it again. They’d all said it. The firemen, the police. But the words didn’t make sense. He could feel something just beyond his reach, like a thought in his peripheral vision, but he couldn’t grasp it. Why couldn’t he hold it?

“A few minutes,” he said to himself although he didn’t know why.

He glanced up at the clock on the wall. Six thirty. Was it day or night? Did it matter? How could anything possibly matter again?

He stared at the second hand as it slowly ticked forward. The world turning outside, time passing.

And suddenly he saw. He saw the way to save her.

His heart lurched in his chest and his breath caught in his throat. He could go back in time and save her.

The room, everything, came into sharp focus. He was two hours from home. Two hours from the watch. Two hours from her.

He pushed himself off the examination table and felt the stitches strain against his muscles as they flexed. He rolled his sleeve down to cover the bandage and started for the door.

Someone called out to him to stop, but he ignored them. Nothing would stop him now. He strode past the nurse who tried to get in his way and then ran. He ran down the corridor and out the front door. Someone shuffled their way inside as he went out.
 

He grabbed onto their arm. “A cab. Where can I find a cab?”

The elderly man looked at him in surprise and then glanced to the right. “Over there, I think.”

Simon let go and headed toward the corner of the emergency entrance and the street. A yellow cab sat waiting at the curb, its driver leaning against the hood, smoking a cigarette.

“Santa Barbara!” Simon called out. “And fast.”

“Simon!”

He turned around to see Wells chasing after him.

The driver frowned and shook his head. “Too far.”

“Get in the damn car,” Simon said as he grabbed the man by the shirtfront.

“Cross!”

Wells pried him off the driver.

“What the hell?” the man said, tugging his shirt back into place.

“It’s all right,” Wells said. “Sorry.”

Simon wrenched his arm out of Wells’ grasp. “Stay out of my way.”

“Look, I know what you’re thinking.”

“If you do, then you’ll damn well stay out of my way.”

Wells looked at him with pity, and Simon wanted to put his fist through his face.

“The watches don’t work,” Wells said. “The new Council leadership froze them all.”

“I’ll make it work.”

Wells looked ready to argue the point, to tell him it was madness, but Simon would not be swayed. He could save her. He
would
save her.
 

Finally, Wells nodded. “All right. My car’s over there.”

Simon held out his hands for the keys, but Wells shook his head. “I’ll drive.”

Simon took the stairs two at a time and raced toward their bedroom. He grabbed the mahogany box off the shelf and pulled out the watch. If only he had the damn key.