Losing Time (Lost Time, Book 1): A Time Travel Romantic Suspense Series

by Nicola Claire

  “Did you know you can order in groceries?” she said, absently.

  “Like, to the door?”

  “Yeah. And get this: There are thirty different types of beer.”

  “We do have beer at home too, Carrie.”

  “Yeah, but not in aluminium bottles.”

  “You’re kidding?” I exclaimed with excessive enthusiasm. Her eyebrow twitched.

  “I want one with dinner.”

  “OK. Then let’s go,” I said, reaching for my wallet. “There’s a restaurant and bar down by the pool.”

  Carrie slowly placed the folder down and stared off into space. I stood in the centre of the lounge and watched her for a minute. Then moved and sat down beside her, taking her hand.

  A tear trickled down her cheek.

  “They’ve got Samuel Adams,” she whispered. Dad’s favourite beer. He had to buy it online; the local Liquorland didn’t stock it. But every time there was an All Blacks match on TV, he’d stock up with his Sam.

  “It’s going to be all right,” I said softly. A pale reflection of her earlier words. Because when Carrie said it, she believed it. Carrie believed in life, wholeheartedly. But when I said it, I was pretending.

  How could it be all right? Our world, my world, had ended.

  Carrie leant over and rested her head on my shoulder. “I miss them,” she admitted. Her voice cracked.

  “I do too,” I said, my words barely above a whisper.

  We stayed like that for several long minutes, and then Carrie donned her sunshine superhero cape again and dashed away the tears.

  “Do you think they’ll serve us Starbucks at the restaurant?”

  “Carrie,” I said, shaking my head. “We have Starbucks too, you know.”

  She smirked.

  “I did peek at the menu,” she said mischievously. I couldn’t stop my returning smile. “You can order a NASA Nachos,” she announced.

  “Um…” I said.

  “With Apollo Dip.”

  “As opposed to Guacamole?”

  “It’s better than Armstrong Dip.”

  “Armstrong for avocado,” I guessed. My sister was so lame.

  She sniggered. “You wanna taco ‘bout it? Or do you wanna eat?”

  I snorted. She beamed back at me.

  “I love you, sis,” I said with meaning.

  “Nah, you just like my lame-ass jokes.”

  “Well,” I hedged.

  She slung her arm through mine and walked us toward the door to the apartment. “You don’t have to eat the Nachos. You can save all that for tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  Carrie gave me an “Oh, please” look. “As if we’re going anywhere other than the Kennedy Space Center tomorrow.”

  I offered her my own smirk. “I am a scientist,” I agreed.

  “It’s nacho degree that’s taking us there,” she said straight-faced.

  “Carrie!” I groaned, trying not to smile.

  “Bad, huh?”

  “Terrible.”

  The door closed with a snap behind us and the warm Florida air wrapped around our bodies. I shivered.

  “It’ll be all right, Mouse,” she whispered as we navigated the pathways.

  “I know,” I said, and maybe part of me agreed. “But, Carrie?”

  “Yeah, Mouse?”

  “It’s just us now.” I swallowed down the agony. “The last two Wyldes.”

  She didn’t say anything for a while. Not until the festive lights dotted around the pool area came into view, and soft music from the bar and restaurant reached out to greet us.

  “A promise is a promise, Mimi,” she announced as the happy faces of the other resort tourists danced all around us. Their features wavered in the twinkling lights, as my vision blurred with tears again. I blinked them away and tried to breathe.

  She stopped and turned to look at me, her face so much older than her twenty-five years. As if she’d lived a lifetime in the past year, just like me. She brushed my hair back and smiled. It was sad, not the Carrie that used to be.

  “We reach for our dreams,” she said quietly, the hubbub of the poolside surrounding us, but not touching us inside our little bubble. “And then we return to our lives. You return to your Ph.D,” she said with conviction.

  I nodded my head. A promise was a promise.

  But secretly I knew the scientist in me couldn’t let it go. My parents were still missing. Presumed dead.

  Even dreams couldn’t change those sorts of things.

  You Coming?

  Mimi

  “Come on, Mouse! You know you want to.”

  I most definitely did not want to, and Carrie knew damn well.

  "We were told to stay together," I hissed back.

  "And we'll be together," she insisted. "Like always.”

  "This is not what they meant, and you know it.”

  Carrie had always been the adventurous one. Her dream had been Nepal and Mount Everest. Mine had seemed grander at the time, but I realised now that the Outer Space I'd dreamed of since I was a small child was not as vast as the world's tallest mountain.

  Unattainable things rarely are.

  "How many times have you talked about this?" she asked. We’d talked about it only last night. Over NASA Nachos and Apollo Dip. "And here you are. At last." All thanks to my incorrigible sister. "Just think," she added, laying it on thick now; I could tell, she'd adopted the sing-song voice and whimsical hand motions of an evangelist; an evangelist wearing a sunshine superhero cape, "Neil Armstrong walked here.”

  "Not quite," I grumbled, kicking my Converse into a mound of sandy dirt. "He would have been on a bus." Not unlike the bus beside us, currently spewing steam out of its innards and fogging up the windows. My dream was off to an inauspicious start.

  "My point exactly!" Carrie agreed, moving in for the finale. Her arm snaked around my shoulders, and she swung me to face Launch Pad 39A. She didn't say anything. She just let me look. No words could have convinced me more. This had been my dream. The dream I hoped would conquer my fears when I sleep.

  But still…

  "There's a reason why they bus us around here," I muttered.

  "And there's a reason why our tour bus broke down right beside the one place it all began.”

  Slightly dramatic, but that was Carrie, too; full of life and wonder and ever-present optimism.

  I looked across at my younger-by-three-hundred-seconds - her words, not mine - sister, and saw the strain of the past few months, hidden beneath the thin veneer of our promise. Dark blonde hair, like me. Blue eyes, like me. Five foot five, like me.

  Dark rings beneath long lashes adding shadows to high cheekbones, just like me.

  I saw that promise she’d made me. And my reluctant promise to her in return.

  The weight of it felt heavy. Living when your heart felt dead was even harder than it seemed.

  "OK," I said. "You win.”

  "I always win, Mouse," she said softly, giving me a tight squeeze, and then looking around surreptitiously. We were standing slightly apart from the other misplaced tourists, but close enough to be seen.

  This was so going to backfire. I could feel the handcuffs on my wrists already.

  "Quick," Carrie announced suddenly. "The replacement bus is almost here.”

  I glanced up to see a glint of light reflected off an approaching bus grille, the angle of the sun momentarily blinding.

  "Now or never," Carrie whispered urgently, tugging on my arm and pulling me away from the safety - and sanity - of the rule following crowd.

  "And how will we get back?" I whispered frantically in reply, second thoughts assaulting me much too late for my intrepid sister to notice.

  "We'll wing it," Carrie said excitedly. And for a moment I saw her, the Carrie I'd known all my life. Fun, upbeat, wild. The yin to my yang.

  Protests drowned a silent death on my tongue. Sense evaporated on the warm Florida air. And I followed like I'd followed her here, to my dream, n
ot hers.

  My chest tightened, and the ever-present threat of tears almost became too much. But I dashed them away with an angry hand and took one last brief look over my shoulder. The group we'd been with were lining up like good little soldiers, waiting to board the new bus and resume their tour from behind the safety of glass walls.

  My heart missed a beat, and for a second I felt truly alive again. For a small moment in time, I felt weightless.

  I rushed to follow my sister's darting frame as it ducked around a course clump of bush out of sight of the bus driver and potential handcuff-wielding officials. My feet felt three sizes too big for my body to make for stealthy manoeuvring, but somehow we made it. Fate, as my mother used say, lending a hand.

  Fate and Carrie's penchant for adventure. She'd never met a challenge she couldn't beat.

  With a huge grin on my face, I came to rest beside her, bright blue eyes shining wickedly back at me. The world momentarily complete.

  And then the roar of the bus's engine reached us and the reality of what we'd done sunk in.

  "If I get arrested in America because of you, Carolyn Wylde, I'm gonna haunt you until you die a dastardly death," I said steadily.

  Carrie snorted. "Nice Kiwi girl like you in the state penitentiary could do quite well, you know.”

  "This is insane," I insisted.

  "No, Mouse," Carrie said softly. "This is living.”

  For a heartbeat the past few months caught up with us again, both of us quiet as we remembered our own battle with shock and grief. Perhaps if our parents hadn't have been such big personalities, it wouldn't have hurt so much.

  Who was I kidding? It would hurt no matter what. We weren't special, our family. Eccentric, maybe. But not unique.

  I blinked away tears, again, and cleared my throat.

  "So, are we doing this?”

  "Look at you," Carrie teased. "All fired up for your big adventure. I'm so proud. You're practically all grown up.”

  I play punched her on the upper arm.

  "Just don't get used to it. Scientists aren't known for their sense of adventure.”

  She simply laughed; a sound I hadn't heard enough of recently.

  "Come on then, Madame Curie. Let's run an experiment. How exactly did they walk in those space suits?" She started stomping towards the launch pad in an exaggerated Michelin Man gait. Rocking side to side, legs wide, arms outstretched. Armstrong would have been mortified.

  I felt my lips spread into a wide grin, my heart healing a little, even as my breath hitched inside my chest. Why did everything hurt so damn much? Why did laughter feel like guilt?

  The towering hulk of the launch pad scaffolding cast striped shadows across the concrete towards us as we passed beside the giant liquid hydrogen tank. Until then, most of the details of Launch Pad 39A had been only visible through the digital zoom on our phone-cameras, but as the towers grew in height, and the globe-like tank passed us by, it became obvious that gaining entry into the launch zone itself would be impossible.

  Despite the knowledge that we were trespassing - a pastime I had never before attempted - I felt disappointment settle deep inside as we stared up at the security fence. Still a good fifty metres away from the actual place Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins strapped themselves into Apollo 11 and rode a Saturn V rocket to the moon.

  "So close," I whispered, my fingers wrapping themselves around the thankfully not electrified wire fence.

  I could see where the water tower released its gallons and gallons of water across the launch pad in an effort to suppress sound. I could see prior scorch marks in the concrete deflection trench, where the blast from ignition would go. I could see how the pad had been modified for the Space Shuttle programme, making it almost unrecognisable to an Apollo astronaut today.

  But I was close. So close. Closer than a bus full of tourists.

  "It's all right," I said, as much for myself as for Carrie. "It's enough.”

  "You see," my sister drawled from the other side of the security fence, "that's always been your downfall. Dissection you can do. Chemical combustion you're a whizz. But lateral thinking? Hopeless!”

  "How did you...What are you...Huh?”

  "Now's not the time to impress me with your language skills, Mouse. Get on your knees, sister!" She indicated a hollow barely big enough for a child to crawl through under the fence several feet away. I glanced at it. Glanced at her, noting the dirt stained hands and broken fingernails. And then glanced back at the hollow.

  "Are you mad?” I all but screeched.

  "Undoubtedly. But that's beside the point, don't you think?”

  "Beside the point? Until now, we could have claimed we got lost while taking a pee. This..." I shook my head. "No, Carrie. This is breaking and entering.”

  Carrie snorted and then started skipping. Away from me.

  "Where are you going?" I hissed.

  She waved over her shoulder, covering distance like an effing gazelle. In seconds she was beside the launch pad. A minute later she was knocking on the Fixed Service Structure Tower.

  I was equal parts impressed, jealous, and out of my mind with worry. I gnawed on my bottom lip.

  "You coming?" she mouthed, stroking the scaffolding as though it was the bunched muscles of one of those airboat captains she’d talked about yesterday.

  I shook my head and took a step backwards. Away from her.

  The look of disappointment on her face was brief but telling. I was never an adventurer like Carrie.

  She smiled softly, forgiving me my foibles so easily. And then let go of the tower, taking a step back towards the fence line.

  Then she stopped. Her head turned sharply, then cocked at an angle to the side, as if better to see something. She raised her hand to her eyes, as though to shield herself from a bright light. But I couldn't see any light from where I was standing. I couldn't see what had made her pause, at all. Then she took a step forward. Slowly. Hesitantly. Reluctantly, but not.

  As though she was being drawn inexorably towards something. Something only she could see.

  "Carrie?" I said, not nearly loud enough for her to hear.

  I watched as my sister took one more step.

  And then I watched as she walked completely out of sight. Not behind a structure. Not hidden by shadow. But simply out of sight.

  My breath held. My chest tightened. The wire on the fence dug into each finger on my hands.

  Sounds seemed distorted, but I could have sworn I heard a roar and then utter silence.

  "Carrie!" I shouted in earnest now, diving for the hollow.

  This Wasn’t Happening

  Mimi

  My butt was too big; I could feel the wire from the bottom of the fence tearing my jeans. Holes appeared on my knees where I used them for leverage, shuffling and squirming like a landlocked eel. I grunted and groaned, spitting the odd expletive out with the odd bit of sand along with it. Who'd have thought Florida soil could be so vexing?

  Dragging myself out the other side, I thanked Carrie's digging skills and cursed the soil composition in this part of the world. Easy to dig. Just as easy to collapse again. But I'd made it. And I was on Launch Pad 39A. I dusted myself off and then started running.

  In seconds, I'd made it to the spot where Carrie had disappeared. Searching frantically, breathing erratically, sweating profusely. And finding absolutely nothing to indicate where she had gone to.

  Not. A. Damn. Thing. At. All.

  "Carrie?" I called out, albeit quietly. I have no idea why I was whispering. "If this is some kind of joke..." I didn't finish the threat. It didn't feel right to.

  Nothing about this place felt right.

  Which was ridiculous. This was the place. The launch pad. Apollo 11 had flown from here. Not on wings, but a rocket. This spot. Right here.

  And I couldn't even enjoy it.

  Panic had taken hold.

  "Carolyn Abigail Wylde!" I snapped, walking the same area again and again. "This
is not funny!”

  There was no reply.

  "God damn it, Carrie," I said, my voice cracking. I started searching farther afield. Walking beneath the massive FSS, and then its neighbouring RSS. Both the Fixed and Rotating Service Structures hid nothing. Minutes ticked by as I scoured every inch of the launch pad, long minutes - it was effin' huge! - getting up close and personal with a site not too many people got to see so intimately.

  But as much as I would have exploded with happiness under different circumstances, it was sheer angst that propelled me across the pad, down onto the crawler-transporter platform area, and even up into the tower itself.

  Finally, I had to face the truth; a not unusual hardship for a scientist, even one who refused to finish her doctoral degree. But this truth lacked reason. And without reason what was I?

  Carrie had gone. Like my parents had gone. Simply vanished.

  I walked slowly back to where I had last seen her, staring sightlessly down at a non-descriptive concrete slab.

  This didn't make any sense. But I had no alternative hypothesis to work on. Not even an effing clue where to start.

  I sank to my butt on the surprisingly warm concrete and tried, for the hundredth time the past few months, not to bawl.

  And that's where they found me.

  Their arrival was heralded by a spray of grit from spinning tires and blue flashing lights on top of an oversized vehicle. It skidded to a stop several metres away, the world skidding to a stop along with it, and two bulky figures jumped out as though they’d trained for this exact moment...Repeatedly.

  My hands were in the air before the first gun was levelled on me; a deeply unnerving sensation taking hold in my gut. Those guns were real.

  "Don't move!" one man ordered. I froze. Hell, I might have danced the Macarena if he'd asked it of me right then. "Where's the other one?" he yelled, making me want to flinch and ruin the whole not moving part of this scenario.

  "She's g..gone," I managed to stammer, my hands still held aloft, my neck craning to look up at the approaching threat.