The seconds it took the barkeep to pour the shot and place it before her seemed like hours. “Bottoms up.” He coaxed her with a corrupting smile.
“Ah, what the hell...” She wrapped her fingers around the shot glass. “I’m probably dead anyway.” Tilting her head back, she poured the liquid, warm and stimulating, into her mouth.
“That’s what you said the last time we met.” The voice, smooth and personal, drew her in and tempted her with thoughts of amorous pleasure.
“Excuse me?” The time it took to focus on the silhouetted figure felt like eons instead of seconds. When it did, an odd sense of familiarity rained down on Izzy.
She stared—no, ogled—at the flyer occupying a bar stool a couple of feet away. He was handsome in a rugged sort of way, and far from clean-shaven. The beginnings of a beard, which looked more like two-day stubble, added to his appeal. Eyes glistening like silvery pearls peered at her flirtatiously. When he smiled, Izzy was smitten.
“Do I know you?” Curiosity fueled her interest. She knew him from somewhere but couldn’t place him. Or maybe she wished she knew him. After all, who could’ve forgotten a face as captivatingly handsome as his?
A sharp pain ripped through Izzy’s skull. She grabbed her head, wincing. “Ouch...Jesus!” She closed her eyes in a futile attempt to expel the suffering from within. Instead of subsiding, it amplified, swelling to intolerable proportions. The agony became too much, all-consuming.
Izzy’s consciousness faded into nothing and she collapsed.
CHAPTER 5
YOU CAN’T HELP Jack if you don’t find the information. Cynthia Miller’s voice echoed through Izzy’s thoughts a split-second before she woke.
Izzy’s eyes sprang open. The urgency in her mother’s tone lingered on her mind, but Cynthia was nowhere to be seen. Izzy flung the sleeping bag aside and leapt to her feet, like a warrior gearing up to charge the battlefield.
“What? What is it?” Jack soared to her side, anxiety muddying his translucent face.
“I have to find the answers.” Strange and disquieting thoughts raced through her mind. Izzy stormed to the boxes on the desk and began ransacking the contents. She scanned the papers and files, handful by handful, and when she didn’t find what she was looking for, she tossed the useless material aside.
“Slow down, darlin’.” Jack’s voice had an infinitely compassionate tone. “What’s got you so riled up?” He rested against the desk and pretzeled his arms over his chest.
“My mother.” She answered him, but didn’t stop rifling through his records. “She’s going to send me back in time, to the nineteen-forties, so I can prevent your death. But how am I supposed to do that if I don’t know how you died.”
Jack plummeted to the floor.
Izzy lunged toward him. “Are you all right?” Her hand sliced through Jack, reminding her that he was an apparition. “Damn it.”
Was she crazy? Did it make sense to believe she could change the outcome of his destiny? Her mother thought she could. If the slightest chance of success existed, she had to try.
Jack glided up to the desk top. “I’m okay.” Repositioning himself, he tugged at his bomber jacket. “I wasn’t expecting you to say that. Why would you think you can save me?”
“Didn’t I tell you that already?” She huffed a disapproving objection and went back to tearing through the records again. “My mother said so.”
Jack hesitated, as if searching for safe words. “I thought you said your mother was dead, see.”
“What's your point?” She gave him a stern, fixed glare, and he backed down. “I talk to you and you're dead.”
“Good point.”
“But I still don’t see what good finding out how you died is going to do.” She regretted it as soon as she said it and the blood pounded at her temples.
Good job, Izzy, you dummy. Embarrassed and uncomfortable discussing his death, she turned away and thumbed through a stack of papers.
Jack rose and lingered at her side. “Don’t sweat it, okay,” he said, as if he truly wanted to ease her vexation.
“It’s probably not going to help me at all to know the particulars.” She felt the dull ache of defeat spreading out from her stomach. “Both times I was back there, I couldn’t remember anything but my name.”
“You went back again?” A hint of hope sparked in his tone.
“I was at this nightclub. Singing.” What a ridiculous notion. “You were there. Alive and kicking.”
“So what happened?”
“Nothing. I fainted. And then I woke up here.”
A devilish chuckle reverberated from Jack as he floated backward and cascaded toward the chair by the door. “Isabelle, if you keep dreaming about me...” He took a seat and clasped his hands behind his head. “It’s enough to give a ghost a complex, see.”
Izzy’s cheeks stung. Common sense urged her to shake it off, but that was easier said than done. Feeling and fearing the blush coming on, she kept her eyes on the boxes of ancient documents. “Shut up.”
“What...What?” Jack's chuckling laughter pealed through the air and nipped her with chills.
Izzy quieted him with a quick shush. “Will it kill you to hold on a sec?”
“Very funny, Isabelle.” His tone, short and on the verge of laughing, made her want to giggle even though it was in bad taste. “I just want you to share your findings with me.”
“No, no...what you asked for was how you died.” She waggled her finger, admonishing him, but kept her eyes on the records. “You didn’t say you wanted to know about your daring exploits while providing air cover at both Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge.”
Jack’s eyes lit up.
Did that spark some sort of recollection for him? Maybe the key to getting him to cross over was refreshing his memory.
A voice, much like her mother’s, breezed through her thoughts. But, is that what you really want?
Was it? Izzy stopped and stared off into space. A single word, a big fat resounding ‘no’ echoed through her mind.
Izzy returned to the files and continued her search. The song from her dream rippled off her subconscious and the humming began as a soft, almost undetectable whisper.
“What’s that you’re humming?” A mixture of curiosity and recognition lit Jack’s face.
“I don’t know.” She delivered a quick shrug, remained focused on the files and continued to hum.
He tilted his head to one side and stole a slanted look at her. “There’s something very familiar about that tune, see.”
Was she unlocking his memories? Normally, that’d be good. But not anymore.
Her thoughts wandered off into the abyss and her humming died away.
If Jack remembered flying, it might induce him to cross over in hopes of doing it again. She had to uncover the details of his death before that happened. Saving him would be kind of hard, actually impossible, if he crossed over. And she had to save him, or at least try, because that’s what her mother wanted.
He’d stay, she figured, at least until she exposed the facts of his demise. That information was vital if she hoped to save him. And, once she knew the particulars, she also needed to go to sleep one more time before she told him how he died.
Her cell phone rang, and Jack’s ghostly apparition faded. It bothered her for a second or two before she turned to the caller ID. She dropped the papers into her lap and flipped open the phone. “Aunt Marilyn, what’s up?”
“Isabelle, where have you been?” Marilyn Grayson’s voice barged through the phone. She only called her Isabelle when trying to exert her ‘motherly’ role. “I haven’t heard from you in days.”
“I’m working,” Izzy said, busy scanning the records.
“I’m not trying to be a nuisance. I just wanted to check in and see how you’re doing.” Marilyn’s open-ended tone and the long pause that followed grabbed hold of Izzy.
“How I’m doing?” She tossed a batch of paperwork to the floor and grabbed ano
ther from the closest box. “Why would you be worried about how I’m doing?” Thumbing through the papers fanned a gentle breeze over Izzy.
“When’s the last time you looked at a calendar, Isabelle?”
“I know what day it is.” Izzy stayed on task. “I know the anniversary of my parents’ deaths is coming up.” She didn’t wear her heart on her sleeve anymore, she’d learned that lesson the hard way. For years now, she’d looked for a distraction of some sort as the date drew close. Captain Jack Baker was going to be a precious diversion.
“You’re okay then?” Marilyn didn’t sound convinced. Izzy hated that about her aunt. Not only did she always see through Izzy’s charade, she was usually right.
“I’m fine.” Which was true. She’d seen her mother twice in the last couple of days, and now Izzy was hoping for a third visit. Maybe she’d bring Daddy and Rebecca along this time.
But that was the last thing Izzy could tell Marilyn. Her aunt had always been a little on the mystical side, but this might be asking too much. Izzy didn’t need to get locked up in the nuthouse. It might not stop her method of time travel, but it could put a damper on her finding vital information. Without more knowledge on Jack’s death, she was doomed to failure.
“What’s this project you’re working on?” Marilyn asked, as if she sensed the change in her demeanor. She had Izzy pegged.
“Just a flyer from the Second World War.” Izzy shook her head as if Marilyn could see it. “It’s no big deal. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“A pilot.” Marilyn’s voice chirped. “My grandfather was a pilot, but he died way before I was born. Grandma talked about him a lot when I was little though.”
Yeah, yeah. Izzy wasn’t in the mood for family tales. They wouldn’t help her. They hadn’t helped her parents, and they wouldn’t help her save Jack. “That’s nice, Aunt Marilyn,” she said in a cool, evasive tone.
“What’s with you, Izzy?” Marilyn’s voice reached across the airwaves and needled her. “You seem so preoccupied. What aren’t you telling me?”
Izzy felt like a teenager who’d come in late for curfew. And just like that teenager would have done, she pretended naive innocence. “Nothing. I just have a deadline, that’s all.” That wasn’t a total lie. She did have a time limit, of sorts.
“Well,” Marilyn stalled, and Izzy waited for the bomb. “Let’s have dinner tomorrow evening. I want to see for myself that you’re okay.”
That’s it? That’s all there was to the bomb?
The document Izzy pulled out of the box, a death certificate, set her heart in motion. Escalating jitters didn’t alter her voice. “Sure, Aunt Marilyn. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay.” Without waiting for a response, Izzy flipped the phone shut single-handedly and set it on the desk.
She waved in the empty space behind her, feeling for the cool steel of the old office chair. Her heart continued to clobber the inside of her chest as she sat and perused the death certificate.
The section titled ‘Cause of Death’ leapt off the page. Izzy mouthed the words, plane crash. “That’s not enough,” she whispered. “I need more.”
She skimmed the papers beneath the certificate and found a detailed account of Jack’s final flight. As she reviewed the file, a single word breezed off her lips. “What?”
...Captain Jack Baker lost his life when his plane crashed during an evening patrol off the coast of California. The accident was attributed to a faulty dinghy that inflated accidentally during the routine mission. Baker was restrained against the seat while the inflated dinghy pinned the stick forward, sending the plane into a fatal dive. At this time, there are no known reports of similar accidents....
Another note attached to the same page added further testimony. ...In the months following Baker’s death, more than twenty-five similar accidents were reported by the various branches of the US Military. Various pilots report a quick and easy fix of carrying a hunting knife in their flying boot, which they can use to stab the dinghy if it inflates on them. Several pilots have reported success at regaining control of the plane by this method. Others, while losing the aircraft, were able to climb out of the cockpit and parachute to safety.
Izzy compared the date of birth and the date of death on the certificate. The month and day were the same, but twenty-seven years separated his birth and death.
His birthday? He died on his birthday? Izzy choked back the urge to cry. In an instant, she stuffed the evidence into a nearly empty box and buried the telltale documents with papers from the floor.
She scanned the office space. “Jack...I’ll be back later.” A quick moment of hesitation, she wondered if, hoped, he heard her.
Jack materialized and leaned against the doorway just as she disappeared through the outer door. After a moment, he slid his hands inside his trouser pockets and glided out into the hangar. Surveying the wide open expanse, a sense of regret poured into his soul. According to Izzy, he’d been here a long time. Longer than even he realized, but he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.
She’d come there to send him, but now—thanks to her strange dreams—she thought she could save him. He doubted her ability to travel through time, much less change the past. For Jack, that seemed like a wild fantasy at best.
Well, he noted with a soft chuckle, he’d give her the opportunity to save him, but crossing over was out of the question.
In her haven at Room 125 of the local Days Inn, Izzy stepped out of the shower and draped the warm, plush towel around her bare body. She tucked in the wrap at her chest, tousled her hair and used a dry washcloth to clear the mist off the bathroom mirror.
Her latest task, saving Jack, had weathered her panic-stricken face. Time travel, a concept she knew little of, came off as more of a wild fantasy than reality. Even if she was actually traveling through time, and wasn’t just some nutcase, she doubted she could save him when she had no recollection or recourse when she got back to the 1940s. Maybe she was crazy.
Izzy commanded her thoughts to the here and now. Jack would be at the hangar waiting when she returned. He’d want to know what she found in the records. She didn’t have the heart to tell him he’d died because of an equipment malfunction—and on his birthday. That was breaking-point information.
Concern lingered while she towel-dried her hair. Even a motel bed looked inviting after sleeping on the Air Force’s cot. She lived less than fifty miles from the abandoned base, but she’d opted for a local motel instead of driving the distance just to shower. She pulled on an oversized tee-shirt and hurried across the room, eager for the feel of a real bed.
Jack’s photograph still lay on the nightstand where she’d placed it, and now the image stared at her as she eased down onto the bed. Familiarity washed over her as she examined the picture. There was something very recognizable about Jack now. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but it was something she hadn’t felt before. Izzy shrugged and propped the photo against the lamp’s base, attributing the odd sensation to having met Jack in her dreams.
Hopefully she could visit the past through her dreams anywhere. If she wasn’t at the hangar, she wouldn’t have to face Jack before she had a chance to fall asleep.
She peeled the covers back with exact precision and slid between the sheets. The fear of what he’d do when he found out what happened to him loomed over her like a dark cloud threatening to unleash its wrath.
Izzy closed her eyes, waiting for the exhaustion, expecting it to overwhelm her. It never did. Various aspects of her life popped in and out of her head instead.
...Her sixth birthday. She’d asked for a pair of ice skates and ended up breaking her arm....
...Her mother’s tears, brought on by the family’s darkest moment—the loss of baby Rebecca....
...And then, Izzy’s greatest loss—the death of her parents....
No matter what she did or tried, her thoughts always snuck back to that one moment in time. It was her burden to bear and a memory Izzy would never be rid of. She’d com
e to accept it, and unwillingly learned to live with it.
Okay, Isabelle...concentrate. The words rambled around in her head. She was too tired to acknowledge that forcing the issue never worked. You need to focus on Jack, and sleep. You’re not going to get back to 1946 unless you fall asleep.
At least she knew her destination date, or thereabouts. Anytime before February 21, 1946. The day Jack died—also his twenty-seventh birthday.
Sleep, Isabelle. Well, at least her mind was on the right track now and not off wandering around the cosmos of her chaotic memories.
Izzy lay awake, fretting the night away. She tried to coax herself into sleep, with no luck. She tried concentrating on Jack, hoping that might induce slumber. It didn’t happen. Frustration turned into heat and she threw back the covers. She waited, but the AC offered no solace.
At 5:30 a.m., she gave up the fight and headed back to the abandoned Air Force base. Driving in silence, she struggled to find a way to put off the inevitable. Jack’s life was literally on the line and dependent upon her. If she failed, he suffered the consequence.
Terror placed its icy finger in her heart. Izzy didn’t have the stomach for this sort of risk.
Whatever happened to the simplistic, clear-cut rules she’d come to count on? Send the wandering spirit on into the hereafter. Whose bright idea was it to throw save the wandering spirit into the mix? Who really thought she could accomplish such a feat?
By the time she reached the abandoned base, she hadn’t come up with a plausible solution. Jack didn’t want to leave, but she worried that he wouldn’t be able to stop himself after the truth came out.
Navigating the facility’s streets, which hadn’t seen traffic in who knows when, she absorbed the somber sentiment of the deserted surroundings. A strange gray pall hung over the neglected buildings and sidewalks overgrown with weeds.
In a moment of blurry confusion, Izzy’s sight faded into a hazy daze. Scenes from the past, the base’s heyday, intermingled obscurely with its present rundown state.
She rubbed her eyes. When she looked back, fate had twisted with a savage glee, and the only thing left was the notion of what might have been.
Incredible Dreams Page 5
