Road Less Traveled (24 page)

“He's not going to be very happy about that,” Jo pointed out as they walked away. But a flicker of a smile touched her lips.

“Yeah, well, he can fire me if he wants,” Carter offered with a grin of his own. “Or he could, if I even existed in his town. Guess he'll just have to settle for being annoyed and complaining to Stark, who'll complain to Allison, who'll tell me I should've been a little nicer.” If that. He knew the smug, self-righteous Herrera wasn't exactly her favorite person, either.

“I doubt she'll bother,” Jo replied, agreeing with his own assessment. Her half smile turned to a slight frown, though. “She's been acting a little weird lately.”

“Well, she has seen her dead ex-husband, still very much alive and now remarried to her,” Carter mentioned. He tried to keep his tone from getting too defensive. Allison could definitely take care of herself.

“I know, and that's got to be a huge shock,” Jo agreed. “Apparently Zane and I aren't together over there, because Zane never came to Eureka, either. He's wandering around in that world somewhere, probably in prison, and that version of me has never even met him. Imagine me trying to explain that one if I ever meet her—I mean, me—I mean, the other me.” The frown was still there, though. “But this is different. I can't put my finger on it, but . . . I was talking to Allison in the cafeteria just a little bit ago. And something about the way she was acting, the things she said . . . it just didn't feel right.”

“She's just stressed.” Carter sighed and glanced around. “We all are. And she doesn't like not having all the answers.”

His deputy grinned at him. “Why does that sound familiar?”

Carter scuffed his feet on the polished floor. “Yeah, well, what can I say? I like knowing what's going on. All the time. Everywhere.” They both laughed as they made their way out of the building. “So, speaking of what's going on, how's it going with the Thunderbird egg, anyway? Anything new?”

“Besides me wanting to kill Fargo, you mean? Which is by no means new.” Jo balled her hands into fists and threw a few quick shadow-punches, scowling when her fists didn't actually impact anything. “This whole thing is making me crazy!”

“I know, but try not to take it all out on Fargo. We may need him.” Carter tried not to laugh. “Once we find the egg, he can go back to working for Allison full-time, and you'll have to console yourself with me as your only partner again.”

“Gladly!” Jo's eyes narrowed and she glanced around the parking lot. “And where is he, anyway? I told him I was going to take care of other things, but I'm still expecting him to pop up and beg to tag along.”

“No idea.” Carter patted her on the shoulder and turned toward his Jeep while Jo continued on toward her car. “But I'm sure wherever he is, he's getting himself into trouble.”

 

“Where am I?” Fargo asked himself as he wandered.
He'd been walking back to his office after speaking with Jo and must have taken a wrong turn, because he'd found himself in a corridor that didn't look at all familiar. Which was strange because he knew all of GD backward and forward. Still, it was possible they'd remodeled the hallway for some reason and he'd just forgotten about it. He kept walking, figuring he'd come across something familiar sooner or later, but that hadn't happened yet. And it had to be getting late. Allison would be wondering where he was.

At least, he hoped so.

He was starting to despair a bit when he turned a corner and saw that the hallway widened up ahead. And was that—? Yes, yes it was! Fargo increased his pace and soon stepped out of the strange corridor and into the main lobby.

But something still wasn't quite right.

Fargo knew the lobby well. Very well. The circular architecture, the polished stone floor with the stylized sunburst in the center, the steps leading up to corridors at various points like spokes of a wheel, the large screens that showed a soothing water image, the glassed-in wall that fronted Allison's office, the towering ceiling broken by bands of light where the other floors lay, the spherical sculpture that hung suspended from two stories up, the GD logo mounted on the ceiling—he saw it every single day.

And this wasn't it.

Oh, at first glance it looked the same. But Fargo—for all that Carter and Jo and others gave him trouble for being clueless—noticed things. And there were things here that didn't add up.

Like the floor. It was the wrong shade.

And the sculpture in the center. The shape was right, but it wasn't gleaming Lucite. He squinted up at it. Bronze? It looked like bronze from here.

And the shimmering water image. It was still water, but more like the trickle of water down a window in the middle of a storm.

Something had happened. This wasn't the GD he knew.

“Let me guess. You're wondering what happened?” a voice asked. A voice that sounded awfully familiar.

Fargo jumped a little, then composed himself. “Well, yes,” he admitted. He turned to face his questioner—and froze, his jaw dropping.

He was staring at himself.

Or a version of himself. A version that stood a bit straighter, looked a bit prouder, even seemed to have a bit more muscle to him. He certainly filled out his sheriff's uniform well, anyway.

The grin looked the same, though. Fargo saw it in the mirror all the time.

“Welcome to Eureka, Dr. Fargo,” the sheriff told him.

“Thank you, Sheriff Fargo,” Fargo replied with a matching grin. “It's a pleasure to be here.”

Carter nodded. “Sure seems that way.”

He and Jo glanced back over their shoulders at the closed conference room doors behind them. They'd had to expand their “otherworldly waiting room” operation to a second conference room because the first was now filled to capacity. Oh, they could cram a few more people in, maybe, but only if they treated them like cattle. And these were honest Eureka citizens, respected scientists and researchers. It wasn't their fault they'd wound up in the wrong reality, and Carter didn't want to be any harsher toward them than he had to.

Which was already plenty harsh.

“I can't believe Seth Osborne tried to deck you.” Jo laughed.

“Yeah, well, it wasn't all that funny at the time,” Carter groused, rubbing the back of his neck. “Makes sense when you think about it, though. He's never been big on respecting authority, and I'm not even his sheriff, so why should he listen to me?” He'd had several run-ins with this world's Seth, a botanist who specialized in tailoring exotic plants— often with disastrous consequences. More than once the big, burly scientist had come close throwing a punch at Carter, and each time Carter had intimidated or reasoned him down. This time, it hadn't worked quite as well.

“Did he actually land the punch?” Jo squinted at him, inspecting his face for bruising.

“No, but it was close.” Fortunately, Carter'd had plenty of training in handling belligerent and violent individuals. He'd blocked the punch, twisted Seth's arm behind him, and handcuffed him before the big man knew what was happening. If that blow had landed, though, Carter had a feeling he would've been picking his teeth up off the floor.

“And all because you told him to stop working?” Jo shook her head. “You know, anywhere else people would be thrilled if the cops showed up and said, ‘Okay, knock it off and go home for a while.'”

Carter laughed. She was right. Most workers would be delighted to have an excuse to take a break. But folks in Eureka were pretty driven, by and large. “Yeah, he told me his experiments were at a critical stage and he needed to monitor them closely. I tried explaining that his lab was in the other Eureka, so it wouldn't do him any good to head to a lab here, but he didn't believe me.”

“So now he's locked up with the rest of our ghosts.”

“Until he fades away.” That was the one thing that had kept this situation from becoming completely unmanageable—nobody stuck around for too long. After a little while, anywhere from a minute to half an hour, the other faded out and apparently reappeared in his own world. The conference rooms were constantly changing in terms of who was there and who wasn't.

But it seemed to Carter that people were staying here longer and longer. And that couldn't be a good sign.

“How much longer do you think this'll go on?” Jo asked, leaning against the wall and crossing her arms over her chest.

“Not much longer.” Carter sighed, looked around, and lowered his voice. “Either Zane and Dr. Russell will figure out what they've been doing wrong and fix it so they can push the two worlds apart again, or—”

“Or the two worlds overlap completely, and cancel each other out, wiping all of us off the face of the map,” Jo finished for him. Then she stiffened slightly. “Wait, Zane's still working with Russell?”

“He sure is.” Carter smiled slowly. “Tall, blond, gorgeous Dr. Russell. And a genius physicist to boot. They've got a lot in common, don't you think?” He chuckled as his deputy's eyes narrowed, then took a step back and raised his hands in surrender as she turned that murderous gaze in his direction. “Okay, okay, I surrender!”

“He can work with her all he wants,” Jo ground out through clenched teeth. “I trust him.” But her knuckles were turning white where her hands were clenched into fists.

“Relax, Jo,” Carter told her gently, reaching out and taking one of her hands. She flinched at first, but then let him. “You've got nothing to worry about. Zane's crazy about you—and for good reason. Russell's just a colleague on a project, nothing more.”

“You're sure?” There it was again, that brief glimpse at the Jo inside, the quiet, vulnerable little girl afraid to have her heart broken.

“Positive.” And he was. He'd seen the way Zane looked at her. The young whiz kid was head over heels.

“Right, then.” She pulled her hand away, and turned from Carter for a second, composing herself. When she swiveled back around, she punched him in the arm. Hard.

“Hey!”

“That's for teasing me,” she warned. But her tone had changed back to its more typical “give Carter a hard time” snarkiness, and he knew everything was okay between them again.

He really needed to keep his sense of humor in check, though. It was always getting him into trouble.

 

“So.”

“Sheriff, eh?”

“Yep. Executive assistant to the director of GD?”

“Yep.”

Fargo nodded, and rocked back and forth on his heels. Sheriff Fargo did the same thing. They were still standing in GD's lobby, though they'd moved off to one side, and people gave them curious looks as they walked past.

“What's it like?” both of them asked at once, then laughed together. “After you! No, after you!”

Finally Sheriff Fargo held up a hand. “It's good,” he admitted. “Crazy-busy most of the time, with things mutating or escaping or being stolen or getting broken, not to mention all the little squabbles and infractions you'd get in any town, but with Eureka-level tech added in. But it's good.” He hooked his thumbs in his belt and puffed up a little bit. “I'm the law around here. People listen to me, and they do what I say.”

“Must be nice,” Fargo muttered. “Nobody listens to me until it's too late, usually. And nobody does what I tell them, even when I tell them the right thing to do!” He brightened a bit, thinking about his job. “It is good, though. I work for Allison Blake, and I'm involved in the day-to-day operations of GD, plus I've got a hand in almost every project going on here. I get to see everything, and talk to everyone, and I've offered suggestions on hundreds of different experiments. Plus, it never gets dull—in one day I'll help collate reports from a bio lab, order supplies for a pharmacology experiment, watch the test run of a new propulsion unit, study the latest medical tech developments, and balance the budget for five experiments. That's when I'm not helping Jo and Sheriff Carter solve something.”

“Ah. Jo. I'd heard she was still deputy there, too.” Sheriff Fargo smirked a little. Fargo studied him as best he could without openly staring. Was that a hint of stubble on his double's chin? “Is she still just as hot?”

“Amazingly so,” Fargo agreed. “But in my world she's going out with a guy named Zane.” He waited for a sign of recognition, but the sheriff shook his head.

“Never heard of him.”

“Yeah? Well, you're lucky,” Fargo groused, adjusting his glasses. “He's smart, really smart, and good-looking, like a dark-haired surfer. And he was a high-tech crook so he's got that bad-boy vibe. We didn't stand a chance.” A thought struck him. “Wait, she's not seeing anybody in your world?” There was something . . . knowing about his double's smirk. “Are the two of you . . . ?”

“It's complicated,” Sheriff Fargo replied, but his smirk widened slightly. “Jo and I, we work together, after all. Can't just date when we're colleagues, too.” Now he was positively grinning. “But there's definitely interest there. No question about it.”

Fargo frowned, considering this. Was his double telling the truth? Did he have the better job, the respect, the authority, and Jo as well? Or was he exaggerating to impress him? It's what
he
would do, after all. And there was something about that look, the way his other self wouldn't meet his eyes, the way his lips twitched like he wanted to say something else but didn't dare. No, Fargo decided finally. No, maybe there was some tension there, but he didn't believe his other self had won Jo's heart. He felt a wave of relief. At least the sheriff version of him didn't have
everything
.