15 Minutes- The Complete Saga Boxset

by Jill Cooper

  “You do that. Take care of my girl, Don.”

  The line goes dead and that’ll be my neck if something bad happen to Lara. There will be a line of people out for my blood, and I’ll be the first one that tells them they’re right.

  C’mon, Lara. Where are you?

  *****

  I get to Cassidy’s apartment and knock on her door. “Cass?” I bang a little louder and balance the phone against my ear. I slam my shoulder as I try to bust the door open and I’m surprised when it swings open.

  Lowering the phone from my ear, I head inside. It’s dark and I resist turning on the lights. “Hello?” I call out in the dark as I swing through the living room and then passed the kitchen. When I flick the light switches, nothing happens. Nothing turns on. Well, that could be a big problem.

  I hear a noise in the bedroom and I start toward it as my phone rings. “Hello?” I whisper as I watch light bounce around inside Cassidy’s bedroom.

  “It’s me,” Cassidy’s low voice breathes into the phone. “I know you have a lot of questions, but we don’t have a much time. We’re on our way to Trident Technologies. You’re going to have a lot of questions, but stay low. Let me and Lara handle this.”

  Lara was with her? That sets my heart at ease but if Cassidy is out, then who the hell is that in Cassidy’s bedroom?

  I lower my arm, able to hear Cassidy’s voice echo out to me. “Don, did you hear me? Hello?” I turn the phone off and creep into the bedroom. I don’t have a weapon. It’s kinda stupid of me to head into there at all.

  As I get to the foot of the bed, the lights turn on and a revolver is pressed against the back of my head. Damnit.

  “Very stupid, Mr. James. Far as loose ends go, you’re the easiest to deal with. You’re unremarkable. No power. Nothing but a nuisance to me, my partners. Even Lara herself. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

  I turn around slowly, my hands up in the air and stare down Future Mike. My chest puffs up defensively, but I can’t really argue with what he says. “Guilty as charged, but I’d do it all again if it means standing with Lara. I’m sorry this is how it ends.”

  “Doesn’t have to.” Future Mike shrugs. “I can remove her memories of today. I can remove everyone’s memories of Mike and Molly, even Cassidy. You’ll get Lara and I’ll get what I want. Morgan and I will control the world’s technology and your wife will never be the wiser. What do you say?”

  Future Mike smirks. He thinks I’m weak and maybe I am, but maybe I’ve learned my lesson. Lara would never be able to look at me if she discovered what I had done and even worse…I wouldn’t be able to look into the mirror either.

  I shake my head. “I can’t stand by while you do any of that. That’s a big no from me, Mike.”

  Future Mike’s face twists with a scowl. “Then I’m afraid— for the husband of a time traveler—your time is up, Don. I for one am sorry you never got to meet your daughter.”

  Daughter? I would’ve had a daughter?

  Mike lifts his gun and fires.

  Chapter Thirty-One: Lara

  Old Lara is given oxygen and loaded onto an ambulance. I promise to check on her at the hospital. First, Cassidy and I have family business to deal with.

  Still, I can’t get Old Lara out of my head. I can’t forget everything she’d told me. She’d called me a hero. Me? Doubtful.

  When we arrive at Trident Technologies I can’t get the phone call between Cassidy and Donovan out of my mind. The call had been dropped or lost but in either case, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. As we take the elevator down to Sub-Level Three Cassidy turns to me. “He’s been looking for you. He’s worried sick something’s happened to you.”

  I wish that made me feel better, but it doesn’t. It only makes me feel worse. I want nothing more than to run away from Donovan and get some space. It seems all he wants to do is coddle me. He loves me but I’m not looking to be controlled. It’s all too confusing for me to work out in an elevator. So for now, I have to file it away.

  Come back to it later. If there is a later.

  We step onto the elevator and Cassidy pushes the button to take us into the sub-level. “Lara, I know what’s happened is big. I know—.”

  “Not now,” I scold her. “We need to focus. I can’t have my mind swirling about future Lara or what you, Donovan, and Molly did to me. It’ll keep for later. Just do your part.”

  She nods but I can tell the way I snapped has shaken her. I’m not even sure I care. I’m too angry to care about anything as the elevator doors open and we step into a large lab. Reminds me of the bridge—of what I can see of it, anyway.

  It’s dark and when I step forward, the lights illuminate beyond me, but only to a certain extent. Mike and Molly are both suspended in their own cells in some sort of shield, like something from the movies. The tech is from the future, brought here by Morgan, my adult daughter from the future.

  First step, free Molly and make sure we apprehend Morgan. I’ll need to make sure that my future daughter can never hurt us again and that means doing things I’ve never wanted to do. It means embracing my dark side and I hate all those who have pushed me to this point.

  “Hello, Mother.”

  The lights snap on up above on the balcony that spirals upward toward the ceiling. Morgan, I’ve met her before but now that I know she’s mine, now that I know she’s part Donovan, I see him in her face. The way she holds onto the railing and peers down at me, she moves like her father.

  It makes my insides ache. How could she be so lost? What can I do to save my daughter?

  “Now that you’ve met us, you really want to go through with this?” I ask.

  Morgan nods. “Maybe now more than ever. My mother was always well put together if not distant and cold. Never able to get over who I look like, that I’m more like my grandmother. You, well, you’re an absolute hot mess.”

  I see what she means now. She looks like a young version of Patricia James and she’s inherited her cold heartlessness instead. If I even up this woman’s mother, how will I ever be able to look at my baby and not see this future?

  How? I want to help her but if I can’t…what if I curse the future by being a bad mother? I feel like I’m paying for tomorrow’s sins today.

  Cassidy stands beside me. I see the way her hand twitches to her belt. She’s ready to move. It’s almost our time to strike.

  I take a deep breath before I speak. “If you think I want to fight you, I don’t. If you think I want to defeat you, I don’t want to do that either. I want us to settle this like family. Family does that with love.”

  “Love?” Morgan laughs. “Please! There’s no love in our family. Lies and manipulation. That’s all we have. It’s all we’re ever going to have. You were more concerned with hurting Dad, keeping me away from him, then you ever were with me.”

  Doesn’t sound like me at all. Had the pain of Donovan’s betrayal twisted me so much or was it this Other Lara that I now carried around inside of me? She could be vindictive, her pain from her lonely upbringing corrupting her way more than it had ever corrupted me.

  “I’m sorry for that, but I haven’t made those decisions yet. Cassidy and I, we’ve fought to restore free will in the future. We’ve fought so people can make their own choices. Let me make mine and we can put all this behind us. I want to save you, Morgan.”

  “You can’t stop me, Mother. You have no power. This time,” Morgan cups her hand and I see a shot of blue light glimmering up from her fingertips, “I’m the one with the power. Funny, transferred to me, Molly’s power works differently. I guess it’s true what they say, we’re all unique little snowflakes.”

  She stole Molly’s power? “You might be right about that, but you’re wrong about me.”

  “Oh?” Morgan cocks an eyebrow as she gazes at me. “Pray tell, how exactly are you different?”

  “I have my power. It was given to me as a gift. Given so I can stop you.” I nod to Cassidy. A split second later, I crossed m
y arms. I felt a surge of power beneath my feet and I pushed off the ground. Lightning zapped all around me as I flew up through the air. Pulling my knees in tight to my chest, I hurdled my body over the railing.

  Morgan’s frozen face is one of surprise. Her eyebrows are arched high and her mouth has fallen open, the blue glow in her fingertips stuck in static time. I put my hand behind her neck and as time snaps back into place, I see Cassidy dropping the stasis field and getting Molly out of there.

  “You couldn’t have,” Morgan whispered and struggled backward against my hand. “You can’t take this from me!”

  She pushed and pulled, sliding backward, one hand firmly against the railing.

  “I’m the only one who can. Some part of me is responsible for you and I’m sorry—sorry for failing you—but next time, I won’t. I won’t.” I repeat gently and place my hand over her chest. As I pull the power of time control from her, my hand pulses with a radiant blue. “I will love you and I will put our family back together.”

  Morgan screams and when I let her go, she drops to her knees on the railing beside me. “It’s all gone. You took it all! All of it? It was supposed to be mine. Mine!” She sobbed and wailed, her hands shaking against the railing.

  I gazed down at the lab below, feeling this new power borrowed from Molly channeling through my body. All the timelines, all the choices, they hurried through my mind. I couldn’t pick and choose which ones I saw, instead I saw all of them, but one stole my attention more than the others. One pulled me closer, like a speeding train going down a mountain.

  It was in Cassidy’s bedroom. It was Donovan.

  He’s dead. Oh God, Donovan is dead.

  *****

  It’s been so long since I’ve time traveled, I’m almost not sure I know how. Then I do it without meaning to. I’ve moved into the past and transported myself to Cassidy’s bedroom. I bend over Donovan’s dead body and stare at him. His skin is soft as I stroke his cheek and I try to pay no attention to how his head is blown out through his forehead.

  But how can I not? How can I ignore all this?

  The scream starts in my toes and works its way into my stomach until I’m shrieking without meaning to. My voice rattles and shakes. “Don! Don!” I grip his shoulders and everything in my shudders without meaning or purpose.

  I kiss his lips and want to hold onto a piece of him, but he’s so cold. So very cold. His fingers are blue, and he stares up at the ceiling unable to see me.

  I’d give anything right then for him to see me. For him to touch me so I can tell him how I really feel, beneath the anger. Beneath the rage, there’s a woman who loves him and always will, no matter what kind of stupid decisions he makes.

  Come face to face with my own grown adult daughter, its clear he’s not the only one who has made bad decisions. I have too, and it’s driven a wedge in our family. One that’d sent me living eighty years in the past, but now I have a chance to make it all right. A chance to fix everything.

  I’m going to take it. Despite the fact I’d said I wouldn’t, I need to bring him back. I can’t have my family suffer if I have the power to fix it.

  And I always will. I have to come to terms with that.

  I close my eyes and slowly rewind time. I see the living room and the kitchen. I focus on the sound of Donovan’s voice from the phone call I’d overheard. The longing in his voice, that fear that something might have happened to me. Tears gather in my eyes and the bedroom rushes toward me.

  Donovan no longer lays lifeless beside me. He stands in the center with his hands up while Future Mike keeps a gun trained on him. Future Mike’s jaw is tense as his finger slowly presses the trigger. I move through time, able to walk faster than the bullets and block the shot from hitting Donovan.

  I bring my arms up and time engulfs me like a protective golden bubble. Whatever Old Lara did to me, it seems I am able to control the time stream better than before. The bullets bounce off of me and go flying. One of them hits Future Mike in the chest and he goes down for the count.

  There’s blood on the corner of his mouth and I feel great remorse for what’s going to happen to him. He’s my little brother, or will be, one day if we can’t stop what’s happened to him. How will we stop it when Mike seems to want to become all-powerful?

  I’m afraid for him more than I’m afraid for us.

  Future Mike gasps and reaches a hand toward me. “Please…Lara…”

  I bend down and grab his hand. I squeeze it tight. “I’m sorry, Mike. Sorry Rex got to you. Sorry you felt that all of this is necessary because it wasn’t. I love you and whether you ask or not, I forgive you.”

  He’s wrecked my life, helped destroy my marriage before it even began…is there any hope of putting it all back together?

  Donovan is at my side and takes my other hand. He touches me, and I grapple with the conflicting emotions of his touch while instead I scream with sweet relief that he’s back. “Your compassion, is one of the many reasons why I love you.”

  He doesn’t know how I’d stood over his dead body and it wrecks me. I don’t need him to know, but I need him to understand so many other things. I don’t know how to put it into words.

  I rest my head against his shoulder, hoping this is enough of a sign of conversations left to come. I hope he sees it for the olive branch that it really is. I’m not prepared to lose Donovan but I’m not ready to go home with him yet either.

  Home is a long road traveled, sometimes it’s wrecked or overgrown but I’m prepared to get there. One step at a time.

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Molly

  Cassidy snaps a pair of handcuffs onto Morgan and forces her down the stairs. Meanwhile I stare up at Mike’s face while he’s still trapped inside the stasis field. My finger twitches next to the controls to let him out.

  “Don’t,” Cassidy calls. “Lara’s done giving him second chances. He’s hurt us enough.”

  Mike’s eyes implore me. Wide, begging. “He didn’t mean this to happen.” I turn to face Cassidy. “He wants us to live a normal life.”

  Cassidy stands defiant and strong. “You can’t let him out. I won’t let you. If you make a move, I’ll have to stop you, Molly. I know he’s your twin, but enough is enough.”

  Morgan cries from where she lies on the floor and I feel bad for her. I know what she’s done, what she stole from me, but I have nothing but compassion for her. Just like I have for Mike.

  A portal opens, and I think it’ll be Lara returning from wherever she is, but instead it’s Mike from the future. Not the Future Mike who’d nearly destroyed us, but the one who’d tried to kill Morgan in the bathroom at the restaurant so many days ago.

  He’s older than Mike, but only by a few years. He raises his eyebrows at me. “I told you, you should’ve let me kill her. Things would be a lot easier now if you did.”

  Cassidy draws her gun and aims at him. “Don’t move! I will kill you to protect her. To protect all of us!”

  “I know, Cass, but you don’t have to.” Mike smiles at her as he holds his hands up. “I want to repent. Even when I’m in that stasis field, I do, but I’m still confused. There are people who are still out to get me. Get all of us. If you leave him here, they might succeed.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “What are you trying to say?”

  “I’ll take him into the future. I’ll rehab him, put him on the straight and narrow path, so one day he can return to you as Mike. Your brother. If he stays here, he’ll keep messing things up. Trust me, I know.”

  Let him take Mike? I shake my head. “He’s my brother. I can’t let you take him. I can’t—”

  “Molly,” Mike whispers from behind the stasis shield. “I want to go. I don’t want to feel like this anymore. I need to go with him.”

  I glance at Cassidy who shakes her head no. It could be a trick—Molly worries about that too.

  Mike from the future steps forward. “I can rewrite things here, as you know I can. No one would miss him. Everyone would go on.
It’d be like he never existed, until it’s time for him to come back. You, Lara, Cassidy. You’d remember but everyone else….” Mike shakes his head.

  “I can’t agree to this,” Cassidy says. “It could be a trick!”

  “Mom wouldn’t remember having twins?” I ask with a desperate, quiet horror.

  Mike from the future shakes his head. “Only you. Her perfect little princess, just the way it’s intended to be, right? Tell me yes, Molly. Tell me and we’ll be gone, and I’ll do whatever I have to, to make this right. So we can repent for what we’ve done.”

  “Molly!” Cassidy hisses.

  I nod. “Do it. But hurry. Before she stops you.”

  Mike snaps his fingers and a moment later he’s gone. Behind me, the stasis field isn’t just empty. It’s not there and neither is the cell in which it functioned. It’s like it never happened. It’s like Mike was never here in the first place.

  I cover my face and cry, my shoulders rocking back and forth. I know Cassidy is unhappy with me, even as she puts her gun away and pulls me into her arms. I know one day she’ll make me listen to her lectures and talks about making these sorts of decisions on my own, but right now I don’t care.

  Right now, I’m nothing but alone.

  ****

  “Molly! You’re going to be late for school.” Mom’s voice bellows from the stairs like it always does, but it was different, wasn’t it? She’d always called for ‘kids’ but now…she only remembers having the one.

  I’m already dressed and sitting on the edge of my bed. I hold my backpack’s strap and stare off at the photos on my dresser. There’s one of me with Mom and Dad by the Christmas tree, another one of me skipping alone down the sidewalk.

  Except, I hadn’t been alone in those photos. Mike had been holding my hand, or slinging his arm around my shoulder. I knew this was what was going to happen, but to be going through it, to be feeling this pain, this loneliness that Mike’s left me, crushes me. Sadness is everywhere, and it engulfs me like a horrible sickness.