Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) (43 page)

Many aspects of his life were no different. He’d still met Dora in college. In this timeline, they’d met at a bar, instead of being introduced by Keith Lynch, when Tony and Dora were in college, and Keith was an industry advisor. They’d still married, still had Bethany. And she’d still met with the same, horrific death.

Tony had still time traveled. He’d still busted Dora with Charlie. And he’d met Charlotte in 1933, fallen for her, gotten his heart crushed to smithereens.

But Mexico didn’t happen. Couldn’t have, not if Keith Lynch didn’t exist to have taken Tony on the trip and talked him into climbing the pyramid. Tony touched his smooth, scarless neck. But if Mexico had never happened, what had caused the scar on his chest? And how had he come into his time travel capability?

God, where did he work? He squeezed his eyes shut so hard it made a roar in his ears. An image of gray cubicle walls appeared in his mind. On one hung a poster that read “ S
pa
S
tar
– America Remembers” across an American flag. Beside it, a sheet of paper listed his sales accounts.

An ad agency. Binkmann, Crook and Waters. Tony was an account executive, and one of his clients was the Solar Energy Museum. Last winter, they’d charged BCW to design promotional materials and a commemorative exhibit featuring solar energy pioneer Dorothy Charlotte Henderson.

Tony’s beer slipped from his hands and bounced on the carpet, spewing foam. “Oh my God...” What had he done?

He’d interviewed her, that day in February. The same day he’d gone to the ruins at Chichén Itzá in the other timeline.

He hadn’t been able to believe his luck when she’d agreed to meet with him. The centenarian Henderson hadn’t spoken to anyone connected with the media in years.

On the way to the nursing home where she lived, Tony downed a whole energy drink and chain-smoked three cigarettes, then topped it off with a greasy, drive-thru hamburger in an attempt to clear the last vestiges of a hangover—an all-too-common occurrence. Hopefully, the valet wouldn’t smell alcohol on him when Tony pressed this thumb to the card that would allow the man to park his car.

He crossed the vast, marble-tiled lobby that looked more like one in an upscale hotel than a nursing home, and located her room. As he knocked on her door, he popped a couple of antacid tablets while he waited for her to answer. Damn heartburn had been acting up worse than ever.

A uniformed maid let him across a plushly-carpeted sitting room to a chair that faced an antique sofa, where the surprisingly sound Miss Henderson waited. The lights from the overhead chandelier sparkled in her brown eyes.

Her comments baffled him.

“I only agreed to this because it’s you, Tony.” She indicated the chair, and he sat.

Her low, raspy voice took on a melancholy tone. “I’ve wondered for years when you’d come to see me.”

Huh? “You know me?” He sure as hell had never met her.

“Oh my, yes. You were the most incredible lover...”

Tony almost leapt out of his chair. “What?” Lover? “You must have me mixed up with someone else.” He forced himself to relax. She was either mistaken or crazy.

“Oh no, it was you. You’ve hardly changed at all.” She brought her hand to her neck and dragged a finger around a worn, gold chain. “Oh dear. It hasn’t happened for you yet, has it? I’m so sorry...” She sat straighter, and folded her hands in her lap. “What was it you wanted to ask me?”

“Uh...” Her outburst, and the absurd idea he could have had an affair with a woman sixty years his senior had destroyed his train of thought. Of course, the time travel thing hadn’t happened to him yet at the time, and if Charlotte had explained it to him, he would have laughed and told her she read too much science fiction. He grabbed his tablet computer and skimmed some questions he’d scribbled down that morning. “How did you get started in solar energy research?”

Her gentle smile was tinged with sadness. “My schooling and early employment are well-documented. After the Kitchen Products Research shop closed—didn’t make it through the Depression, you know—I continued my work at home. I was experimenting with a solar-powered radiator...” Tony’s eyebrows lifted. She flashed him that disquieting smile again. “You’ll see,” she said.

Definitely senile. But Tony scribbled in his notepad anyway. “So that’s what led to your breakthrough?”

“Oh heavens no. That would have been the...” Her face went slack, and she laid her hand on his forearm. “Please, Tony... go back. Take it away from me—”

“Go back where?” Tony drew away.
Nuttier than a four-dollar bill
.

“To 1933. Please...” Her voice quavered. “I’ve tried. Lord, I’ve tried. But I lacked the strength. The woman I was then wouldn’t let me destroy my own dreams, they were all I had left after you. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t change anything, not after Papa. You’re the only one who can stop me...”

He shrank farther away. His heartburn worsened, then the cramp in his left arm, the one he’d ignored for days, flared in his chest and down to his fingertips...

His memories of the rest of his time with her were vague. He couldn’t breathe. His chest felt like someone dropped a three-hundred pound weight on it.

Charlotte hovered over him. “Tony! Tony!” She moved faster than he’d thought a hundred-year-old woman could, and yanked a pull cord on the wall. “I need medical help...”

Her words faded, and everything washed into white. Pure, bright light. Someone called to him. Not Charlotte.
Bethany?

Then pressure and an eerie tingle as Charlotte clutched his wrist.

The last thing he remembered was being carted out on a gurney, hearing the words
heart attack.

In his apartment, Tony cleaned up the spilled beer, then unbuttoned his shirt. He felt down his chest. The scar was still there.

But smaller and neater than the one the ancient Mayans had inflicted. Because in this timeline, it came from heart surgery.

That tingle he’d felt when Charlotte’s touch had pulled him out of the white light, and away from Bethany, was the same as the one he’d felt when he pulled Charlotte out of the floodwaters a century ago.

In this timeline, she’d passed time travel to him.

His hands dropped, shaking, as another memory surfaced. He’d researched Charlotte Henderson before he’d set up the interview. One biographer theorized that the reason she’d become so consumed by her work in the early thirties—and why she’d never married—was because she’d had her heart broken.

By a man who’d lived with her for a week as a boarder, then left her, never to return.

Tony dragged the back of his hand across his forehead. He was sweating, though it wasn’t warm. Had all this change in technology happened because of him?

It hardly bothered Tony to walk past the sofa where he’d caught Dora cheating on him. Affected him little to sit in the same recliner he’d occupied so many evenings, the two of them barely speaking. His call had surprised her. But when he told her why— “to remember,” he’d said—she’d welcomed him into the home that had once been his, too.

Being with her was nice, companionable in a way. But once the initial pleasantries were over, neither had much to say. They watched TV in silence, just as they had that night three years before and countless others. He realized the comfort didn’t stem from lack of caring, nor was it simply the passage of time.

He’d gotten over it. Over her. Because compared to the soul-searing connection he’d felt with Charlotte, his relationship with Dora had been shallow. Comfortable, sometimes fun, and even loving, but lacking in depth.

And compared to Charlotte’s betrayal, Dora’s was nothing.

Bethany was all that mattered.

Trepidation grew in his belly as he settled into the recliner and thought about the night before her death, trying to ignore Charlotte’s warning echoing in his mind.
You could make it worse.
He heard Everly, too.
Playing God.

The dizziness hit instantly, and passed almost as quickly.

He glanced at Dora. Like the other time, she wore different clothes—a light green, button-down blouse instead of the knit shirt she’d had on a moment before. And Bethany—

“Where’s Bethany?” he asked.

Dora gave him a strange look. “She went to that party, remember?”

Tony’s heart nearly stopped. “What?”

“She went to a par—”

Tony jumped up.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to get her.” He hurried for the back door.

“What? Why didn’t you—”

He slammed the door, cutting her off. How the hell had he miscalculated? He had to get to her, now.

And hope to hell he could stave off recovery long enough.

Tony’s world spun, and he had to force his eyes to stay open as he trudged through the gate in the privacy fence, searching the crowd. Recovery was hitting him.
Got to find her, got to stop her.
Young people thronged around the pool, laughing and drinking. Most held brown bottles Tony knew weren’t designer sodas. A guy dove into the pool, fully clothed.

It was just as he’d feared. Just what he’d told Bethany, when they’d fought about her going. That Ashley girl she’d taken to hanging out with was nothing but trouble; he’d known that as soon as he’d answered the door.