Time Keepers

by Kate Allenton

  A single report in the paper. A John Doe, the first in twenty years, was found dead near the sight of the electrical phenomenon that sucked all of the electrical power from the grid instead of the borealis. Sarah took out her contact and earpiece that had stopped working and left them in the room. She wouldn’t have a savior this time, not that she’d ask for one.

  Sarah climbed back through the opening to the sanctuary, leaving one of her watches inside and keeping one on her ankle. She left a note for the one woman she might never get to really know.

  Mom, if for some reason you’re reading this, I didn’t make it out and I hope like hell that Steed didn’t either. I love you, and should I not make it back, please tell Foster he was right. I did fall in love with him for what he did. He’s the touchstone in my fabric in time. If you uncover that Steed did, in fact, die, please convince Foster to tell you where he’s hiding his mother and my adoptive mother, Jane Weston. She did her best to take care of me, which, as you can imagine, was no easy task. This may be the last you hear from me.

  I love you, Mom,

  Sarah

  Things were going to get tricky the closer it got to “D” Day. Sarah had ventured into the small town that surrounded the original STEM Corp location. The name and location were different from the one she knew now. It wasn’t as jarring as 2130, but it was enough for Sarah to feel out of place. People didn’t stare at her because of the way she was dressed. She even remembered to change her shoes this time. She could fit in if no one actually talked to her.

  Sarah sat at the bar inside the Cartwright Club waiting for Steed to show. She hadn’t decided if she’d talk to him. The opportunity had been wasted when young Steed walked in with another woman in tow. Not just any woman but a young Henrietta.

  They sat down at the bar next to her.

  “Have you thought about my proposition?” Henrietta asked, and Sarah lowered her head, sipping her water and pretending not to eavesdrop.

  “What you’re suggesting is unheard of. Bunters are unpredictable. If we were to bring them back, in the wrong hands, they could kill us all.”

  “But think about what they’d do in the right hands,” Henrietta said, grabbing Steed’s arm in excitement. “I’ve studied them. I know how to control them. No one would be able to tell us what to do anymore. Least of all the new Time Enforcement Board they’re forming. I’ve already got an in with them. I know exactly what they’ve got planned, and let me tell you, you don’t want any part of their rules.”

  Sarah closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “Even if I wanted to help you, I couldn’t. Francesca was the scientist studying the aurora borealis. She’s the one that figured out how to contain the energy. She didn’t share those secrets with me.”

  “You mean she stored that energy in a necklace like this?” Henrietta asked, and Sarah glanced up beneath her brows to see that the woman had one of her mother’s necklaces.

  “A little birdy told me she made sixteen. That would be enough to tear a hole in the fabric of time to bring them through, wouldn’t it?”

  Steed leaned closer. “Who told you she made those necklaces?”

  Henrietta shrugged and grinned. “It would tear time, though right?”

  Assuming you don’t get caught.”

  “Perfect.” Henrietta grinned. “Order me a drink while I go freshen up, and you can tell me all about what I need to do.”

  “You’d need to eliminate anyone who could stop you,” he called out as Henrietta left.

  Sarah left her money on the bar and stood to leave. That was when she realized her mistake. She met Steed’s gaze.

  Sarah had found the paperwork amongst her mother’s things, including her personal diary with how to contain the energy.

  The mass exodus of travelers scheduled to leave was only thirty minutes away, and she needed to leave to make sure nothing stood in their way.

  “Pardon me,” Young Steed called out after her as she left the establishment.

  Sarah pretended not to hear him.

  When he touched her shoulder, she turned her gaze to meet his again. Familiarity shined in the young Steed’s eyes. “I’m sorry, but you’re the spitting image of my mother when she was younger.”

  “I have a familiar face. I get that a lot.” Sarah lowered her head and turned to walk down the street.

  “I’m sorry,” Steed said, catching up with her. “Have we met somewhere before?”

  “No,” she answered.

  She’d started to cross the street when he grabbed her arm.

  “Wait, I apologize if I’m acting like a stalker, but I’m sure we must be related, maybe distant cousins?”

  “Maybe.” Sarah smiled. “I’m sorry, but I must really be going.”

  Sarah hurried her steps until young Steed wasn’t watching her. She turned into an alleyway. Tearing a page out of her mother’s journal, she wrote a note. Then she opened the portal to Ziggy’s room on the compound and stepped inside leaving the stuff she’d gathered for him to find. She left the note, one of her mother’s necklaces, and the chip from the futuristic animal that had tried to kill her that pointed back to Henrietta being the person responsible. Hurrying, she shut the portal and jogged back out of the alleyway, unable to contain the triumph on her face. She whistled as she entered the woods and had glanced back as she stepped inside the tree line. That was when she felt the hard barrel of a gun to her head.

  “I knew you’d come for him. I should kill you here and now,” Old Steed announced. His hand didn’t even flinch.

  “Why haven’t you?” Sarah asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve grown a conscience because I told you that I’m your daughter.”

  “On the contrary, still no conscience, but I must admit that Francesca and I have much to discuss, like the decision not to abort you.”

  Sarah turned toward Steed. “Aw, sorry I’m a disappointment, daddy dearest, but that conversation will have to be for another day or maybe even a lifetime, assuming you can find her again, because I have to admit, she knows you’re out to kill her. So I don’t think she’s going to be so easy to find, especially since she can move back and forth through history.”

  Steed’s eyes narrowed. Unlike with Francesca, her mother, Sarah felt no emotional tie to this man. Nothing at all.

  “Maybe you should search the library. That’s where I found a lot of information about you.” A huge smile split Sarah’s lips. The more she talked, the more Steed’s face turned red. It was only a matter of time before Sarah killed the man by giving him a heart attack.

  It wouldn’t be her.

  “Turn around and start walking. I’ll give you a firsthand show of what awaits your mother when I kill the others that tried to hide from me.”

  “Whatever you say, Dad,” Sarah said as she walked toward the clearing. Night was just starting to fall. The others would be leaving within the next twenty minutes. All she had to do was stall. “You know, there’s one thing I don’t understand.”

  “Just one? I doubt that you’re that smart.” He chuckled, shoving the gun in her back.

  “I would think you’d be happy that Mom survived being able to go forward in time. It solidifies your work with the first batch of stabilizing agents.”

  “It would have, but she destroyed every document, every formula, everything I had. The only thing that was left was the trial patients that didn’t survive.”

  “Ah,” Sarah said. “I guess that made you look like a failure. No wonder you turned into a psychotic nut job. Maybe I should go nurture little Steed to see if I can get him to turn into a decent human being.”

  A weird sound pierced the trees and had Sarah covering her ears. It lasted only seconds before the tones started, and Steed was rushing her to quicken his steps.

  “This is your last chance to turn yourself in and let me help you.”

  “I knew you were missing brain cells. I’m the one with the gun, and you think you can help me,” he scoffed.

  “You’re g
oing to die in these woods unless you change your ways.” Sarah glanced over her shoulder at him for the last time. “Let me help you. I know we don’t know each other, but it doesn’t have to be that way. I’ll visit you while you’re incarcerated, and we can build on that.”

  He stopped just outside the clearing and pointed his gun at her stomach. Sarah screamed and turned just in time for the bullet to hit her side and not her stomach.

  Sarah fell to the ground and hit the buttons on her watch for the added power and threw it into the circle for the extra oomph they needed. It would pull the energy from the grid instead of the borealis. It was the same oomph that Ziggy had used to send Sarah, Tyler, and Steed to this timeline.

  The second the watch hit the running electricity, it exploded in a blue light through the forest, sending shockwaves to everything in its path.

  Sarah screamed, huddling into a ball as the energy traveled above her head. She held one hand to her belly and the other to her gunshot wound as she turned toward Steed, who was lying dead on the forest floor.

  “I tried to warn you.”

  Darkness pulled at Sarah’s conscious. The cold from the snow dissipated with the feeling through her body. The energy was still dancing in the air. Her added electrical oomph hadn’t taken from the borealis, but it added to the dancing lights, heightening its beautiful colors.

  Chapter 24

  Sarah woke with the same warmth in her body as she had the day she’d arrived to save her mother. She opened her eyes. The crinkling of the kindling in the fireplace sparked as flames danced in the hearth.

  “It’s about time,” a familiar voice said from across the room.

  Sarah tried to turn but was halted by the tubes attached to her arm.

  “Commander MacKenzie Chase?”

  “I’m flattered you recognized my voice, but stop moving. I’ll come to you.” Mackenzie rose from her seat and approached the bed. “I know you’re in a hurry, Agent Weston, but you and the baby need to rest.”

  “I’m not more than a week along. How did you know?”

  MacKenzie grinned and pulled out a device. “In your time, you can kick the tires and light the fires, but my time has much better toys. I scanned you and pricked your finger to test your blood.”

  “And the baby?” Sarah asked.

  “The baby is fine,” Mac answered.

  Sarah let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. “The older version of Dr. Steed is dead.”

  “Did you kill him? It’s against the law.”

  Sarah’s brows dipped. “I may have helped the group of travelers leave by giving them an extra kick with my transponder.”

  “The one that you always complain glitches?” she asked.

  “Exactly.” Sarah had come to figure out the reason her transponder glitched when no one else’s did. It had to be from the fact that she had the unusual serum in her blood. After reading her mother’s journal, it explained everything. “The electrical shock exploded near the site. That was where he died. He was going to shoot all of those innocent people to prove a point.”

  She gave a slow nod. “I knew if anyone had the answers you would.”

  Mackenzie unhooked the bag attached to the pole and handed it to her before helping Sarah sit up. “Please don’t think I’m kicking you out, but I’m kicking you out. People are expecting you, and if I don’t send you, then they’ll ransack this place and I’ll have a lot of explaining to do.”

  “Who is expecting me? Where do you expect me to go?” Sarah’s voice rose an octave until MacKenzie walked over to the closet and opened the door. She stopped Sarah at the entrance and strapped a watch to her wrist, unlike her old one, which was probably fried.

  “Tell them I said hello.”

  A smile split Sarah’s lips as she walked into the closet, ignoring the pain as she crawled into the small space and stepped out into what she dubbed the Weston sanctuary.

  Natalie, Francesca, and Sarah’s adoptive mother, Jane, were waiting on the other side.

  Tears stung Sarah’s eyes. She’d been unsure she’d ever see the three women again. Francesca took the saline bag as Natalie and Jane helped Sarah into a bed. “We’ve been waiting on you.”

  “I see you found my note?” Sarah asked Francesca.

  “Wild horses couldn’t have kept me away,” she said.

  “Or me,” Jane answered, giving Sarah a kiss on the forehead.

  “Or me,” Natalie answered, squeezing Sarah’s hand.

  For the first time in forever, Sarah felt safe in the knowledge that she was surrounded by the women who knew her best. Well, almost all the women. Diana was the only one missing, and the first chance Sarah got, she’d rectify that.

  “How’s Foster?” Sarah asked.

  “You should ask me yourself,” Foster said from the doorway. “I seem to recall having to wait an entire year for you to find me.”

  Sarah eased into the pillow. “Then you know why it took me a year?”

  His lips twitched. “You changed the future; I only thought it was fair I did the same.” Foster crossed the room with Sarah’s mother’s diary and the note Sarah had left her in the event something happened. The other women stepped out.

  “Do you always read people’s private messages?” Sarah asked.

  “I wouldn’t hesitate to invade privacy if it meant my future wife’s safety. You should know that by now.”

  “Says the man who left me at the high-rise to die. Tell me, what were your plans in the event Steed killed you? I would have been stuck with no way out.”

  “We have a housekeeper that comes once a week. She would have let you out.” Foster sat on the side of the bed and stared at Sarah’s wound. His jaw ticked.

  Sarah reached for his face and guided him to her eyes. “I’m fine and so is the baby.”

  His gaze softened. “Your mother told me that you believe we’re pregnant.”

  “MacKenzie Chase confirmed it with her scanner doohickey.”

  Foster’s smile reached his eyes as he leaned down to kiss Sarah. His lips lingered, and she was in no hurry to push him away.

  “Once you're healed enough to travel, we have to deal with the Enforcement Board, but first…” Foster said. He pulled out a box with a contact and earpiece, and she sat up, easing them into her eyes and ears.

  Foster kissed her once more before heading to the door. “I’ll go make you something to eat.”

  Sarah waited for Foster to leave before she climbed out of the bed and headed into the closet. She grabbed the backpack she’d packed. “I see you got my message.”

  “Kind of hard to miss when you left it on my kitchen counter. What I don’t understand is how you got the necklace.” Ziggy answered in the ear piece.

  That was one of the things that Sarah had mulled over. How had she gotten the necklace and the chip in the mirage? “It had to be you warning me. You and I were the only ones who knew I was ever in that computer-programmed mirage.”

  “I’m good like that.” Ziggy chuckled.

  “Don’t get cocky. This isn’t over, and we’re going rogue,” Sarah said, removing the biofeed watch that Mackenzie had given her and putting on another one, one that was untraceable if they didn’t know where to look. Her brother, Tyler’s biofeed.

  “He’s going to kill us,” Ziggy announced.

  “Correction, he’s going to kill me, but I’m sure he’ll forgive me when he figures out what we’re up to. After all, he was the one to warn me Henrietta was dangerous.”

  “Good thing you checked into the quantum computer on her. You might never have realized she’s the one we should have been worrying about all along. She’s your brother’s mother, and she’s been fooling everyone for years. She isn’t there to corral the others; she isn’t going to take them back. She’s going to kill them.”

  “Not if we can help it. Now that we know what energy was contained in those necklaces, we should be able to trace the energy signatures to each and every one of the missing pe
ople.”

  “It’s just a matter of who gets there first,” Ziggy said with a worried look. “Zeke is expecting us.”

  Sarah smiled as she opened the portal to find Ziggy waiting for her on the other side of the opening. She stepped through just as the bedroom door opened.

  A mixture of anger and annoyance filled Foster’s face.

  “I wasn’t about to give you the chance to lock me up again. I can’t accept the future you’ve chosen, so I’ve got work to do. I’ll see you in a year.” Sarah grinned seconds before she shut the portal.

  The End…for now.

  I hope you enjoyed Time Keepers. Book 3 is in progress and due out in June 2019. This is my first Science Fiction series and not my usual cup of tea. Feel free to check out my other works in the genres of Romance, and/or Mystery, Thriller & Suspense by clicking here to be taken to my Amazon Page.

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  Other Books by Kate Allenton

  Suggested Reading Order

  BENNETT SISTERS BOX SET (Books 1-4 in one bundle, 1218 pages)

  BENNETT SISTERS BOX SET VOLUME 2 (Books 5-7 in one bundle, 517 pages}

  INTUITION (Book 1)

  TOUCH OF FATE (Book 2)

  MIND PLAY (Book 3)

  THE RECKONING (Book 4)

  REDEMPTION (Book 5)

  CHANCE ENCOUNTERS (Book 6)

  DESTINED HEARTS (Book 7)

  PHANTOM PROTECTORS BOX SET (Books 1-4 in one bundle, 964 pages)

  RECKLESS ABANDON (Book 1)

  BETRAYAL (Book 2)

  UNTAMED (Book 3)

  GUIDED LOYALTY (Book 4)

  CARRINGTON-HILL INVESTIGATIONS

  DECEPTION (Book 1)

  DEADLY DESIRE (Book 2)

  SHIFTER PARADISE BOX SET