The Time Travelling Taxman Series Box Set

by Rachel Ford

  “He thinks it’s ridiculous, too, you hanging out with your ex.”

  She stared at him now. “You mean, you’re talking shit about me – about us – with that damned creep?”

  “No,” he protested. “Of course not.”

  She stood up, though. “You know what, Alfred? I’m going home. And don’t worry about going to MarvelousCon with me. I’ll hang out with the other freaks on my own. You don’t have to lower yourself.”

  He scowled that she’d bring that up, now. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

  “Like hell I do,” she shot back.

  “You know I hate comic books. And crowds.”

  “And I hate chess tournaments, and alien shows,” she countered.

  He gaped. “Hate them? You had fun the other weekend. And you picked up this one.”

  “Yeah, Alfred. For you. I picked it up for you, because you like the stupid things. And I had fun because you were having fun. Because I…” She broke off, shaking her head. Then, in a more measured tone, she said, “Because I care about you. Because I like to do things you enjoy, because it makes you happy. And I thought, maybe, you felt the same.”

  There was a mist in her eyes that cut through all of Alfred’s anger, straight to his heart. “Nance,” he said. “I…”

  She blinked back the tears, and her tone grew steadier. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.” She grabbed her purse and keys. “Enjoy the show, Alfred. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Chapter Three

  Alfred shut the TV off. He stood in his darkened living room, alone, for a few minutes after she’d gone. First, he was dazed. Dazed, though, was preferable to the wave of emotions that followed. He had rarely felt as wretched as he did now.

  Fudge muffins, he thought. He’d been everything she said, and everything she’d been too polite to say: insecure, self-centered, demanding, irritable, unreasonable. He should have trusted her, and respected her autonomy. He shouldn’t have listened to Justin. What, he berated himself, had he been thinking to view his relationship through the eyes of an embittered cynic who still hadn’t moved on from a divorce eight years ago? I’m an imbecile.

  He called her, and was immediately redirected to voicemail.

  He waited five minutes, and tried again. It rang and rang, and then went to voicemail.

  “I’m sorry, Nance,” he texted. But no answer came.

  He paced the living room for a while, hoping she’d write back. Then, when she didn’t, he logged onto his personal laptop, and pulled up a florist shop. He searched the catalogue, balking at the prices. He’d seen enough movies and TV shows to know the established protocol for the boyfriend-in-the-wrong. He just didn’t realize it was so danged costly.

  Still, he couldn’t shake the sight of tears forming in Nancy’s eyes, and the realization that he’d put them there. He got out his bank card, gritted his teeth, and prepared to pay the exorbitant fee required to have a bouquet of eighteen long-stemmed roses, arranged with baby’s breath and assorted greens, delivered to the office.

  Then his phone dinged. It was a text from Nance. His heart hammered as he read, “It’s fine.”

  Sugar cookies. He really was in trouble. He added a dozen chocolate dipped strawberries to the order, just to be on the safe side.

  He drafted and redrafted the accompanying message half a dozen times, settling at last for:

  I’m sorry, Nance. Please let me come to MarvelousCon with you.

  Yours,

  Alfred

  He’d almost written, “I love you.” But, he realized, he’d never told her that; not yet. And an apology didn’t seem the right place.

  He wondered, staring at the order confirmation that promised to have the flowers and berries delivered by nine o’clock sharp the next morning, why he hadn’t done that already. Because the fact was, he did love her. He’d loved her for months now. She was a light that had filled the darkness of his solitary life, that filled him with joy and hope and purpose. Half a year ago, they hadn’t even been a couple; and now, he couldn’t imagine his life without her in it.

  He would tell her tomorrow, he decided – if she forgave him enough to speak to him.

  Alfred woke at his desk. He realized he must have fallen asleep there. “Ow,” he groaned, straightening his back.

  A ringtone was sounding next to his head. Someone was trying to initiate a video call. Who the heck’s calling me this time of night? If they hadn’t fought earlier, he would have guessed the answer; only Nancy, of all his acquaintances, would be up at two in the morning. But he had to see her name on his screen to believe it.

  “Nance,” he said as he answered. He didn’t even mind the time.

  Nancy’s face popped onto his screen, the familiar dark hair outlining a now tired face. “Alfred.”

  “Listen, Nance, I’m so sorry. You were right, and I was-”

  “That’s not why I called, Alfred. I think I found something – something important.”

  “Oh?”

  “That work I was making up, from earlier? After – well, after I got home, I couldn’t sleep, so I started going over some of it. It’s a report, from one of the Special Agents. I’m verifying transfer IP’s on a routine audit.”

  “Okay.” He suppressed a yawn. He knew her well enough to know that this was leading somewhere. Moreover, he knew it had to be important. Nancy’s night owl habits might be annoying, but they were never unproductive. “What’s an IP now?”

  “Never mind that part,” she said.

  Oh good. It was too early in the morning to talk computer language. “Okay.”

  “The important part is, I think I found a discrepancy. And I know this is your department more than mine, so I wanted to run it past you before I bubbled it up the ladder.”

  His interest was picking up. “What kind of discrepancy? And what are we looking at?”

  “The ECF: the Entrepreneur’s Children Fund. There’s a payment, on September 10th of last year-” Nancy broke off suddenly and glanced behind her, into what appeared to Alfred an empty room. “What was that?” she wondered, more to herself than him.

  “What was what?” He saw her get up and go to the window. “Nance? What’s going on?”

  She stood for a moment by the glass, checking the yard beyond. Then she returned to her seat with a shrug. “I don’t know. I could have sworn I heard something, but there’s nothing there now.”

  Alfred felt his pulse, which had spiked at that, start to relax. “Nance,” he said, “I’m going to come over. We’ll talk about it in person. If you’ll let me, that is?”

  She nodded, the ghost of a smile on her lips. “Alright.”

  “And Nance?”

  “Yes?”

  “There’s something I need you to know. I-” He stopped short, the I love you frozen on his tongue. “Nance, lookout!” There, behind her, was a masked man, gun in hand. “Nance!”

  Alfred heard the gunshot just as she started to turn. A spray of red passed by the screen, and he saw Nancy collapse.

  “Nancy!”

  The gunman turned to the phone now, and fired again. Alfred’s screen went dark, and he lost the call.

  Alfred called 9-1-1 en route. He arrived at Nancy’s house before anyone else, and found the front door unlocked. He raced upstairs to the spare bedroom she’d converted into a home office, taking the steps two at a time. He’d hardly breathed since he got that call.

  Whether she was alive or not, he couldn’t say. He feared the worst. But he couldn’t think it. He didn’t dare.

  He burst into the office, and a strangled cry escaped his throat. “Nancy.” She was slumped onto the ground, in front of the desk where her laptop – now gone – used to be. “Oh my God, Nancy.”

  Blood seeped out of a hole in her back. He didn’t see the rise and fall of her chest that indicated breathing. He turned her over carefully, and cried anew at the sight of her eyes staring back at him, open and unseeing.

  Nancy Abbot, his sweetest Nancy
, was dead.

  Chapter Four

  Alfred sat at his desk, his forehead furrowed into a deep frown. He was staring with unseeing eyes at his monitor. Somehow, despite his best efforts, he couldn’t shake Justin’s words. That’s what my ex-wife did. Right before she moved in with the ex.

  He knew it was stupid to be worried about Nance, of course. She’d only dated Josh for two weeks, and she’d been the one to call it off. It was stupid to worry.

  Of course it was.

  A whoosh, like a sudden breeze, sounded behind him, and the taxman spun around. He almost yelped when he saw himself – a distorted, haggard, blood-soaked reflection of himself – standing behind him. This second him reached for the door, closing it quickly.

  “What the heck?” Alfred – real him – gasped. “Who are you?”

  “I’m you, in about twenty hours,” the haggard man answered.

  “What?”

  Future Alfred held up a shiny silver gadget. “I had to use this.”

  The taxman felt the color drain from his face. He recognized the gizmo. It was a spacetime manipulator, developed by Futureprise Corporation. It was the last remaining prototype of a device that could transport users through time and across dimensions. He and Nancy had each held onto a piece of it, vowing never to use it: the risk was too great. “You used it?” he asked his future self, incredulously. “Why? You know what could happen. We could split the timestream. We could-”

  “I had to,” the other him said, and his voice cracked as he did. “Nancy – she’s dead in my timeline.”

  “Dead? No.” He felt his heart sink, as hard and fast as a stone dropping to the bottom of a lake. “How?”

  “Someone murdered her. I was on the phone, on a video call. He shot her, right in front of me.”

  Alfred felt the bile rise in his throat at the very idea. “My God.”

  “You’ve got to save her, Alfred. So my timeline doesn’t happen.”

  “Of course. What do I do? Who was it?”

  “I don’t know. It was related to a case she was working – it had to be.”

  “Okay.” He nodded briskly, seizing onto this tidbit to arrange his thoughts around, to order his mind. “What case?”

  “I don’t know. She said something about a charity, the Entrepreneur’s Children Fund. She’d found an irregularity, something from the tenth of September last year, but he killed her before she could tell me what it was.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. He was masked. He broke into her house and shot her.” Future Alfred shook his head, a glazed look coming over his face. Present Alfred tried to swallow the lump in his throat as he looked at this man who, though not even a day older than him, looked like he’d aged decades. “I can’t believe she’s dead.”

  “I’ll fix it,” he declared. “Help me – help us – and I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen.”

  His future self nodded. “Yes. You have to succeed, Alfred. I can’t – you can’t – lose her.”

  “No,” he agreed. He was trying hard not to think of that, to focus on what needed to be done. “Tell me what to do.”

  “You need to change how things play out. As it stands right now, you’re going to fight with her.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes. You’re going to be – well, a complete asshole.”

  “I am?” Alfred was amazed at this revelation, as much as the language from his future self’s mouth. Both seemed wildly out of character.

  “Yes. You’re going to be worried, about Nance and Josh.” He shook his head. “You already are. I remember, sitting there, thinking about what Justin had said.”

  Alfred felt himself flush. “Is that why we fight?”

  “Yes. You have to get over it, Alfred. You can’t fight with her.”

  “Alright.” He nodded. “I will.”

  “I mean it. If you do, she goes home. And she starts working. You know how obsessive she gets when something’s bothering her.”

  He nodded. “She’s a real bloodhound when a problem gets stuck in her craw.”

  His future self frowned at his harried mixing of metaphors, but said only, “Right. You need to keep her distracted. Whatever she’s working on, you can’t let her dig deep.”

  “You’re sure it’s related to something she’s working on?”

  “It has to be. The killer took one thing: her laptop.”

  “Alright,” he nodded. “So I keep her off the case.”

  “Yes. Or distracted enough so that she doesn’t notice the anomaly. She said something about checking ID’s or IP’s. She wasn’t looking for a contradiction, it sounded like she just happened to notice it. You need to find out what projects she’s working on, and then figure out whatever it was she spotted – without her getting involved.”

  “Yes. That way, if I figure out what she saw, I’ll be able to work out who is trying to kill her.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I can do that.”

  “You better,” future Alfred said. He turned haunted eyes to the taxman. “You don’t want to watch her die, Alfred.” A knock sounded at the door, and both men started. “I’ll go.”

  With a whoosh of air, his mirror image vanished. Alfred cleared his throat, and tried to keep the tremble out of his voice as he answered, “Come in.”

  The door opened a crack, and Justin peeked his head in. “Freddie? Everything okay?”

  “What?”

  “I thought I heard voices. Like, your voice. You know, talking. To yourself.”

  The taxman flushed. “I was…listening to music.”

  Lyon studied him. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay. Because – I mean, I know things are maybe a little rocky with you and Nance, now that she’s back with the marine.”

  “They’re not.”

  He held up his hands placatingly. “Alright, alright. All I’m saying is, if you need someone to talk to, you know where I sit. That’s what friends are for.”

  Friend, Alfred thought, was a curious term for a guy who had been as excited about the prospect of him losing his job as Justin had been during the Landing Site Earth case. Aloud, though, he said only, “Sure, I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “Alright then.”

  Alfred extricated himself from the office, having to sidle past Justin – who made no attempt to move to let him pass. He headed for Nancy’s office.

  When he reached the nerd bunker, the taxman ignored Jeff Filmore’s eyeroll as he passed. Jeff was one of the hardware techs who gave Nance a hard time about dating a number cruncher. He tended to give Alfred grief for being a frequent guest in the IT wing, too. This morning, though, Alfred had no time to be waylaid.

  He reached Nance’s office, and knocked on the open door. She glanced up and smiled. “Alfred. Come in.”

  He did and shut the door behind him. “We should talk, Nance.”

  “Ohh…” She raised her eyebrows archly. “Now this sounds ominous.”

  “I want to do the MarvelousCon thing with you, babe.”

  Her expression lost its playfulness. She’d gotten to her feet and was smiling in earnest now. “Really?”

  He nodded, pulling her close to him. “I do.” He drew her in for a kiss, pressing her to him with an urgency that was entirely unsuited for a workplace environment. But it helped to drive away the images his desperate future self had conjured, of a world without her.

  “Hell, Alfred,” she murmured, flashing him a cheeky grin, “if I’d known you’d get that excited about being Spock, I would have found us a convention sooner.”

  “It’s the pointy ears,” he grinned, still holding her.

  “That’s good to know. I see a lot of elf cosplay in our future.”

  His grin broadened, and he kissed her again, warning, “Don’t push your luck, beautiful.”

  He left shortly thereafter to return to his desk. Justin watched him pass with attentive eyes but didn’t say anything.


  Nance and he had agreed that they’d start planning his cosplay tonight, as soon as Josh’s interview was over. Now, Alfred considered how he could distract her from her work – not enough to get her in trouble, or leave piles of unfinished project work, but just enough to keep her keen mind from being so focused she’d pick up whatever it was she wasn’t meant to see.

  He settled on text messages. Every few minutes, he’d message her. And he’d wait just long enough to respond to her texts that, he assumed, she’d probably set the phone aside and picked up her work again. He started with, “What color is my uniform going to be now?”

  Then, when he got his answer, “You’re sure it has to be blue?”

  When she affirmed that it did, he returned, “Stupid question. Of course my queen of the nerds would be sure.” He waited for her response, which was a gif. He wasn’t sure how she always seemed to find the perfect picture response, but she did, and they always made him smile. This clip of an angry, square-jawed jock screaming “NERD” was no exception.

  He waited a few minutes, and then sent, “By the way, where’s our hotel again?”

  In this way, he idled away the morning. If his own list of accomplishments was anything to go by, Nancy’s morning had been very unproductive indeed; for he had barely glanced at a handful of emails. He had half a dozen voicemail messages waiting to be attended by lunchtime, and more reports in queue.

  “So,” she told him over lunch, “I was thinking, once I drop Josh off, I could grab dinner to-go from Fanelli’s.”

  His eyes lit up. Short of homemade, Fanelli’s was the best Italian food around. “Oh, eggplant –”

  “Parmigiana,” she finished with a grin. “You are very predictable, Mr. Favero.”

  “I prefer ‘consistent.’”

  Lunch finished too soon, and they parted to return to their offices – with a firm hint from Nancy about how much work she had to finish before she could leave. Alfred promptly ignored it and resumed his barrage of text messages.

  “Babe, don’t forget breadsticks.”

  “Pass up carbs? Do you even know me, Alfred?” she wrote in reply.