Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) (2 page)

Mr. Vogel started up the steps, but Tony stopped at the bottom of the pyramid, so she did the same. She looked up at him. His gaze met hers for a brief moment.

Could he know his eyes were exactly the same shade of blue as the sky? He snatched off his glasses, peered through them, then slid them back on.

Tightness laced her chest. She was alone with him. Finally. But what would she say?
Gracious, I need a cigarette right now...

No
, I don’t.
Determined to stop smoking, she’d left her pack at the resort. This time she’d quit for good.

An unbidden thought of slipping into his embrace rushed into her mind, and warmth replaced the tenseness in her body. Somehow, she knew exactly how his arms would feel around her... could almost smell the clean scent of his shirt—
Tony, I’m sure we know each other...
maybe you don’t remember...

Hope flared within her. Was a memory returning?

She waited. Nothing.

Just like it had been since that day years ago, when she’d awoken alone and terrified, unable to even remember her own name. She had no idea how she’d gotten into someone’s garage, or how her dress had come to be covered in blood. Or whose blood it was.

Keith Lynch waved at them from the top of the pyramid. Violet looked at Tony.

She didn’t know how she knew, but something—a buried snippet of recall from her unknown past—made her voice encouragement. “Just don’t look down.”

Tony snatched his glasses off again and wiped them, then started up the steep staircase.

Like some of the others, he crawled up on his hands and feet. Behind him, Violet took the steps in an upright crouch, mindful of her dress. Not the most practical choice for traipsing around the ruins, but she wanted to play up her positives. Its long, loose cut hid her belly and less-than-perfect thighs while displaying her cleavage to advantage. Her face heated. She shouldn’t think such things. She’d worn the dress because it was comfortable, she insisted to herself.
And he’s married.
Even if she had so little regard to pursue a married man, she wouldn’t have a chance. Not when his wife had the figure and looks of a movie star.

By the time they reached the top, she and Tony were out of breath. Violet wiped the sweat from her brow.

Tony crept toward the square building topping the structure. “I guess that wasn’t so bad.” He turned around and stopped panting.

Six feet of platform at most stood between the building and the edge, and like the staircases, it lacked any kind of restraint. Violet’s legs felt jittery and she wasn’t typically bothered by heights, so it had to be terrifying for someone who was. She moved closer to Tony and took in the view.

Below, grass carpeted the clearing, dotted with small groups of people the size of dolls. Beyond the meadow, other stone structures broke the swath of green here and there. Buildings that had once been people’s homes, markets, gathering places.

The enormity of it all sank over her like a suffocating depth of water. Ages had passed before her. Ages would follow. In the bigger scheme of things, nothing she did mattered. She’d built a life for herself from nothing. So why couldn’t she figure out what Tony meant to her before—and why she was afraid to find out?

Tony flattened his back, arms, and the palms of his hands against the temple’s wall and inched along it, then ducked into the doorway.

Unwilling to let him out of her sight, Violet followed him inside. Their footsteps echoed on the stone walls of the narrow corridor. She turned a sharp corner, and goose bumps rose on her arms in the cool, damp air. Or was it from Tony’s nearness?

Seconds later they turned another corner and emerged on the opposite side of the pyramid. Violet started out but Tony lingered.

“Tony?” she called. “Are you—”

Another fragment of memory struck her. She gasped, didn’t hear his answer.

No
way,
he said. It was his voice, she was sure. A vision of water, lots of it, far below...

“Violet?” His voice in the here-and-now shattered the image. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She swallowed. Years ago, when she’d hesitantly asked if they’d met before, he claimed they hadn’t. But every cell in her body screamed otherwise. She knew him, and he’d been someone special. Someone
very
special. Then the familiar guilt crawled down her throat, forced its way deeper, whittling her thoughts down to one: sometime in her hidden past, she’d done something to him. Something terrible. Her lungs shriveled, stopping her from asking the questions whose answers she feared. “Some kind of... déjà vu,” she managed. “Like I’d done something like this with you before...”

Tony’s mouth lifted in a wan smile. “Trust me, if you had, I’d remember.” He gripped the edge of the portal and stepped through. Staring at his feet, he crept along the wall until he stood beside Violet and Mr. Lynch.

The tour guide was in the middle of a lengthy discourse about the ancients of the ninth century who’d built the pyramid and surrounding village. Violet pretended to listen as she sneaked a furtive glance at Tony, then cast her gaze toward Mr. Lynch when she sensed Tony watching.

The CEO stood straight, arms crossed over his chest, and his face toward the tour guide, but his eyes flicked sideways, meeting Violet’s. “I’ll bet you’ve already read all about them,” he said in a low voice.

“How did you know?” Violet whispered.

“I saw your book on the plane.” His mouth quirked, and Violet jerked backward. His smile looked just like Tony’s... or had she imagined it?

Mr. Lynch sidled toward Tony, and the resemblance leaped out. Mr. Lynch was a little taller, but aside from his graying hair and brown eyes, he could have passed for an older version of Tony. Yet—maybe it was his position in the company—she couldn’t imagine having the kind of feelings for him that she had for Tony.

Tony had developed a fascination with the platform floor. She longed to wrap her arms around him and tell him it was all right. But even if he wasn’t married, she doubted she’d ever be able to work up the nerve to do so much as ask him to join her for a cup of coffee after work. Push aside the feeling she couldn’t shake that there was something... well,
wrong
about asking a man out, even though other women did it all the time.

She wrenched her gaze away before he caught her staring again.

Across the meadow, slabs of white stone rose in neat columns around a flat, raised platform like soldiers in formation, guarding something the mere mortals clustered at the top of the pyramid couldn’t see. Another staircase, crumbled to rubble, had once led down the side of the pyramid.

“You still got that brochure?” Tony asked.

“Sure.” She drew it out of her pocketbook and handed it to him.

He held it close to his face, as if trying to block the faraway ground from his view. “Wow, it says here this thing used to be a temple... they even sacrificed people here.” He gazed over the view with a pained expression and started to hand the pamphlet back to Violet, when the woman from Finance stepped between them. Tony leaned back to reach around her, but his foot slipped, and he crumpled to the floor, then slid over the precipice.

Tony rolled over, then over again. He grabbed. Clutched. At anything, could hold onto nothing. His glasses flew off and skidded away. Every sharp stone jutting out from the ragged surface poked him, mocking his attempts to stop himself. A burst of pain flared in his forehead, then there was nothing but white...

A dim sensation of pressure on his ankle, then the motion stopped. “I got him!” someone said. The man’s voice sounded like he was deep in a tunnel. Foggy, too indistinct to identify. Nothing but cloudy whiteness in Tony’s sight. A muffled rattle of falling, crumbling stone. Shouts from above. Other voices. More hands grasping at him.

“Is he okay?”

“I don’t know, he’s banged up pretty bad...” More falling rocks.

“I think I saw a park ranger...”

“Tony! Tony, oh good heavens...” A woman’s voice. Violet. “Tony, wake up!”

I’m awake
, he said.

“Step back... everyone clear the area! Charlie—go for help! You...” Keith. Taking charge.

“Tony, please... you’ve got to be all right...”

Violet!
Tony shouted.

She hadn’t heard him. No one had. He hadn’t said it out loud. Her voice faded, along with the sensation of hands on his ankles. With a strange detachment he realized his head no longer hurt.

He no longer felt anything. Only an impression of floating.

Whiteness surrounded him. There was nothing—no touch, no sound, no sight except light all around. The light grew brighter at some distant point ahead. He took two steps toward it, unsure of when he’d stood. Another step. No pain. No sadness. No fear. And somehow he knew, no questions left unanswered once he reached that light. He shielded his eyes with his hand and continued forward.

A dark speck broke the brightness.

“Daddy?” A girl’s voice.

He dropped his arm. “Bethany?”

“Daddy... No!” The speck grew larger. It was her.

“I’m coming!” He started to run, then stopped. How could that be Bethany? She was dead. Had been for almost three years—

“Daddy,” she called again. “Don’t! Go away...”

“But...” He held up his hand so he could see the silhouette. Thick, blunt-cut hair; a lanky, young female form. But if it was, then that meant—

He looked down at himself. He could barely see his yellow knit shirt in the brightness, couldn’t see his feet at all.

So this is what it feels like to die.

A lot of people had died in this place, centuries ago.

He was about to join them. To his surprise, he wasn’t afraid.

“Dad?” Bethany called.

His mom would take it hard. His sister, too. His dad would deal in stoic silence as he always did. Dora’d hit the antidepressants again, but she’d move on sooner than the rest of his family.

Nothing hurt. Life wasn’t that great anyway. Hadn’t been since Bethany...

He started forward again, but something clamped around his wrist and pulled him back. Dizziness burst through him, and he stumbled and fell. A tingle flared in his wrist where that other hand touched him, and sparks spread through his body, then faded. The whole world spun, around and around, everywhere and nowhere...

“No!” Violet gripped Tony’s wrist tighter, clutching at the stone with her other hand. She couldn’t have a dizzy spell here, of all places! She was spinning, whirling through the air, ungrounded, Tony’s wrist all she could feel....

A tingly feeling grew in her palm, spread out to her fingertips, then dissipated. As if something had gone from her into Tony’s body.

The vertigo stopped.

Tony’s wrist twitched.

“Tony?” She pressed her thumb onto the artery of his wrist and felt a weak pulse. “He’s alive!” A cheer rose from the LCT executives clustered around them and the tourists gathered on the ground.

Mr. Lynch patted Tony’s shoulder. “Tony? Can you hear me? Tony?”

Tony blinked. “Beth—” His eyes focused on Violet. “Violet?”

A laugh escaped her throat. “Tony! Oh, thank heavens!” Relief settled over her like a cozy blanket on a cold winter night. She looked skyward and sent up a prayer of thanks.

Tony was the only clue she had to her past, her only possibility of finding out what happened all those years ago.

The only man she loved.

In the face of his death, she could admit it, if only to herself. It didn’t matter if he was married and she could never tell him, didn’t matter if he couldn’t return her feelings and there could never be anything more between them. He was alive.

He shifted in her grasp. A flush crept into his skin, and sweat mingled with the blood on his forehead. He struggled to sit.

“Tony, what are you—”

“Lie down,” Mr. Lynch ordered.

“Burning up,” Tony said. “Get me—”

“Before you fall the rest the way,” Mr. Lynch finished.

“—out of the sun.” Tony sat, then pulled his feet beneath him and yanked his wrist out of Violet’s hand. With a grunt, he rolled over and settled his foot onto a protruding stone, then began to climb back up the pyramid.