I keep that information tucked inside, my countenance cool, as I sit in a booth, across from a man long since dead, but now very much alive, Minneapolis Police Chief John Booker. My mentor, friend and the man who will save my life in roughly six minutes and forty-two seconds.
In Jin’s Liquors, the store next door, right now, a robbery is going down, and if we don’t leave now, the owner will be shot in the chest by a Colt. .38. He’ll bleed out in less than five minutes, but before collapsing, he’ll pull his alarm.
And because Booker and I are next door, we’ll respond.
I should probably mention that I’m a Homicide Investigator with the Minneapolis Police department. When I left, I was also the interim Police Chief, so at this point I’m pretty good at this game.
I’ll go in first, breaking through the front doors, and see the downed owner. Going immediately to his aid, I won’t see the perp coming out of the back room hauling the contents of the safe. I also won’t see him aim his gun at me and pull the trigger.
I especially won’t see Booker push me away, behind a display of Seagram’s wine coolers.
The gunshot will hit the Chief.
He’ll die next to the owner within the next two minutes, leaving a legacy of heroism, and taking with him a slew of questions I now need answers to.
But we’ll get to those.
Because this time, he will live. I’ve studied every detail of this scene.
I know how to win.
“So, tell me, Rem, how’s she doing?”
We’re talking about my current partner, rookie investigator Shelby Ruthers. In my time, she’s the Minneapolis Police Chief.
Here, I’m tasked with training her. And apparently, Booker is keenly interested in her progress.
At least, I think that’s why we’re sitting in a diner on a Friday night at 10 p.m. eating pie.
Maybe he has something else on his mind—I don’t know. I’ve never lived this rewrite of time before.
The details of his death I learned from his jacket, the one included in my stack of cold case files, his killer never apprehended.
But that file is never going to be made.
Like I said, things will go down differently this time.
This time, I’ll get there early. And maybe I won’t be able to save the life of the owner, but John Booker will not die.
Neither will I.
The perp will get away, at least for the next forty-eight hours. I know what you’re thinking, but he will go down for his crimes. Just not yet.
Before then I have to bring another murderer to justice.
The man who killed my wife.
It’s a long story, so wait for it. Because, right now, I just need to answer Booker, then figure out how to get next door before the alarm sounds.
Before history repeats itself.
“She’s nailing it,” I say to his question about Shelby and take a sip of coffee. I like this place—it’s a tucked away diner in a strip mall near Chicago avenue and 36th just outside of downtown Minneapolis. They serve killer pies, and sometimes Booker and I sneak away for the house special—Grandma Lou’s lemon angel chiffon.
The place is unimpressive—a long counter display that shows the various pies, a few drugstore stools mounted in front of the Formica counter, retro tables with vinyl yellow chairs and cafe curtains at the window.
But the pie—oh, I’d forgotten how the lemon tart dissolves in your mouth with just the right balance of salty, lard-based crust, and a hint of fluffy meringue. It’s almost enough to distract me.
Not quite. I have an eye on the parking lot, looking for movement. Last time, the perp escaped out the back, and I’ve already spotted a door to the back of the diner.
But, like I said, I don’t want to catch the shooter. Not yet. He’s not why I’m here. Just a by-product, collateral justice, as it were. But the moment he’s caught is the moment this ride through time ends.
And I’ve got stuff to do, places to be before I close the books on this jump.
“That’s good,” Booker says, still talking about Shelby, “because Danny hired her on your recommendation. But we need to get her trained because Burke is finished with his assignment with Danny’s task force, now that Hassan Abdilhali is dead. His gang is in disarray, and the Minneapolis drug trade is ripe for a new regime.”
“So, Burke is looking for a new partner?” I take another bite of pie—my last one, because I’ve gotta figure out how to leave in about forty seconds.
Booker gives me a wry grin. He’s always seemed a man from a different time, as if he walked straight from the pages of Lonesome Dove, fresh from leading a posse, a wizened look of battle in his eyes. He is tall, with slightly graying hair, and speaks with a low baritone, his words slow, thoughtful. But his dark brown eyes are always studying, weighing.
I wonder if I measure up.
“Burke will always be your partner, Rem. You know that.” Booker takes a sip of his coffee.
It’s then I notice he’s wearing a wedding ring, and my mind flips back to the woman I met back in my real time, a reporter named Frankie.
The daughter Booker never had in our original timeline.
So, he’s married, although if my memory of Frankie’s story is correct, he and her mother are separated.
Frankie will lose her father tonight if my rewrite doesn’t take.
I glance out the window, toward the street and frown. A ruse, but Booker notices. “What?”
“Thought I saw something…” I get up, move toward the door, and he follows.
“What did you see?”
“Isn’t the liquor store closed?” I push out into the night, knowing he’ll follow.
Around the force, I’m known for my hunches. You know by now what they are—foreknowledge. And maybe Booker knows it too. But he’s on my tail because I’m also a cop and I see things that shouldn’t be.
It’s late January, and my breath fogs the air, the chill finding my nose, slithering down my neck. The fresh snowfall is piled up around the perimeter of the lot, and an icy layer of danger coats the steps and sidewalks.
Streetlights shine against the dark windows of the liquor store, but as we walk down the sidewalk, a light flashes in the back.
Cheater, you say, but gimmie a break, I need an edge if I hope to pull this off.
We pause outside the window, and it’s then the gunshot barks.
No alarm, not yet, and I hoof it down to the door. It’s locked, the closed sign on it, but a glance inside shows the owner down, writhing and bleeding out.
He might live if we can get to him. In my previous go-round, according to the file, I kicked the door in.
This time I say, “Call it in!” Then take off for the back of the building.
The back door is open, and if I stage this right, no one will die.
I figure, if Booker can’t get inside, he can’t get shot, right?
Including me.
I spot a car idling in the back. It’s a Toyota Supra, a hotrod wanna be, but it has nothing on my Porsche, bless her, now a sooty shell back in my time. I snapshot the license plate in my mind and move toward the door.
It’s unlocked.
My plan is simple. Slip inside, making enough noise that the perp hears me and flees. And I’ll let him go, for now. I’ll pull the owner behind the counter—maybe save his life—and only after the perp has escaped will I unlock the front door.
And Booker will live.
One game point for Rembrandt Stone.
I steal in and spot a light on in the back office, a lamp light. The alarm is still sounding, so it might mask my noise, but even so, I hustle to the front of the building, grabbing a towel off a mop and rack sitting near the door.
The owner is groaning, laying near the front checkout desk and I kneel before him. He’s a middle-aged Korean man, and the shot has hit him in his upper right side. “Hang in there,” I say as I shove the towel against his wound.
He grabs my wrist, and it’s s
tronger than I would imagine. “Help.”
The words still me because he’s a ghost from the grave.
“Jin-Sun…my…daughter…”
My eyes widen because I don’t remember a daughter in the report.
“Where?”
“In…office…
I bite back a word, then swallow and nod.
And that’s when I hear the voice that chills me through. “Rem. We have backup coming.”
Booker has come in the front. I don’t know if he’s broken the lock, or simply slammed through the glass, but he now stands between me and the perp, who, by my estimation, is still emptying the safe.
With Jin-Sun hiding nearby.
And now the game has changed.
Booker is the target. And time is trying to win.
I can almost hear the laughter.
I figure one of two things could happen.
Booker will still get shot. And Frankie will grow up without her father. And the recent past will spool out like it did before—with Danny Mulligan becoming Police Chief, and his daughter, Eve, who I love, moving to Florida, out of his protective reach.
I will lose her all over again to a Miami cop named Val.
And Val will lead us to a serial killer who takes her life.
And sure, there are thousands of ways that might change, but with each variation, each rewrite, my life veers even further off course. Brings me back to another world that has been rewritten into another unlivable version of the life I should have.
No. Not this time.
This time, everything will be different.
Of course, there is option two, where Booker will hear—and catch the perp—before he gets off his lethal shot. Maybe even kill him.
Which means this cold case is solved.
I will then immediately return to the dismal future I left, with me sitting in the rain outside the graveyard where my daughter and my wife are buried.
If that happens, I won’t have time to track down Leo Fitzgerald, the serial killer who, in my time, has murdered thirty-eight women, (including my daughter.) I won’t have time to propose to Eve, and keep her from moving to Florida. I won’t even have time to chop down the massive elm tree that will someday take out the craftsman home Eve and I love.
I know this is not about a tree, but as long as I’m counting my losses…
Thankfully, fate and I have been in the ring together before. It tried to steal my wife from me, three different ways.
Stole my partner from me.
Killed Booker in every timeline so far.
And swept my daughter and her memory from the face of the earth.
But what fate has forgotten is that I don’t know what’s good for me. And I’ll keep swinging no matter how many times I get knocked flat.
I possess all the cheats.
And, I have nothing left to lose.
“Get down!” I get up, draw my weapon and point to the back—the wall, really, and pull off a shot. Booker turns, as if following my actions and that’s when I dive at him.
It happens fast, so fast that Booker can’t have noticed that indeed, no one stands in the back to take him out.
Yet.
We land in a painful tangle behind the display of Seagrams wine cooler, which crash around us in a splatter of glass and sticky, sweet alcohol.
A shot fires behind me. The front glass doors shatter.
I scramble off Booker and glance in the back.
The perp bursts through the door, into the night.
Yes!
I’m instantly on my feet and running hard to the door in false pursuit.
The getaway car has taken off, the taillights fading as it rounds the end of the strip mall, into the night.
Muffled sobbing, a hiccup of sound emerges from the office and I fear what I’ll find.
The desk lamp splashes wan light into the room. A floor safe is open, the contents—mostly paper—spilled onto the floor.
The sounds come from under the desk. I walk over, then crouch and finally hit my hands and knees. “Jin-Sun?”
She’s young—maybe nine years old, with big brown eyes and dark hair, She’s sitting with her knees pulled to her chest, making herself small.
“You’re safe.” I keep my voice soft, gentle, a remnant of time when I was a father to a seven-year-old daughter. My throat thickens at the flash of memory, my Ashley sitting on her bed, her blue eyes thick with tears as she implores me to find Gomer, a silly bear I gave her for her fourth birthday. But daddy, you’re a detective. You’re supposed to find things.
I am, honey. And I’m going to find you, I promise.
I hold out my hand to Jin-Sun. “Come out. No one will hurt you.”
She stares at my offering, and then places her hand in mine. It’s soft, but she hangs on and I pull her out of the darkness. She stands before me, and then, throws her arms around me.
My breath rushes out of me and I can’t help but wrap an arm around her, bracing myself with the other hand on the desk. “Everything is going to be okay,” I whisper, and the words sink into me.
It’s the last thing I said to Eve, right before Leo Fitzgerald kidnapped her and killed her.
I close my eyes, but the memory burns through me.
Eve, lying in my family’s barn, her body gray and lifeless, a twenty-dollar bill—the calling card of the Jackson killer—in her grip.
Forcing the image away, I stand up and take Jin-Sun’s hand. Sirens scream through the air, and as we walk out of the office, I see Booker letting EMTs inside.
Jin-Sun squeezes my hand as they run up to her father, unmoving on the floor. I crouch next to her. “Honey, don’t be afraid. They’re going to help your daddy.”
She looks at me though, with those big brown eyes and nods. “I’m not afraid.”
“You’re not?”
She shakes her head. “I prayed while I was hiding, and God sent you.”
I have nothing.
I don’t know why, but I can’t help but feel that fate has won, again.
And I wonder who, really, is doing the cheating.
Meet David James Warren
Susan May Warren is the USA Today bestselling, Christy and RITA award–winning author of more than eighty novels whose compelling plots and unforgettable characters have won acclaim with readers and reviewers alike. The mother of four grown children, and married to her real-life hero for over 30 years, she loves traveling and telling stories about life, adventure and faith.
For exciting updates on her new releases, previous books, and more, visit her website at www.susanmaywarren.com.
James L. Rubart is 28 years old, but lives trapped inside an older man’s body. He’s the best-selling, Christy Hall of Fame author of ten novels and loves to send readers on mind-bending journeys they’ll remember months after they finish one of his stories. He’s dad to the two most outstanding sons on the planet and lives with his amazing wife on a small lake in eastern Washington.
More at www.jameslrubart.com
David Curtis Warren is making his literary debut in these novels, and he’s never been more excited. He looks forward to creating more riveting stories with Susie and Jim, as well as on his own. He’s grateful for his co-writers, family, and faith, buoying him during the pandemic of 2020-21, and this writing and publishing process.
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