The Last Time I Saw Her

by Karen Robards

  Charlie felt a rush of air, a shifting of the ground beneath her feet, and then the metal inside the chalk outline drawn on the garage door seemed to dissolve into swirling darkness.

  Taking a deep breath, she walked into it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Trulio’s Bar and Grille.

  The bar’s name hung in big red neon cursive letters that glowed against the white painted wall of the long, low building that Charlie found herself in front of. She was in a paved parking lot that was surprisingly full of cars. It was night, or, actually, from the feel of it, the early hours of a morning. The weather was hot and clear—summer. A nearly full moon glowed palely in a sky studded with tiny stars. Smells of barbecue and car exhaust and fresh-cut grass hit her nostrils. The building’s windows spilled light over the asphalt. The muffled strains of some popular song filled the air.

  Glancing around—yes, this was real, as real as the driveway at dawn she’d just left—Charlie went up the shallow steps to the door, pushed it open and walked inside.

  Then she stopped for just a moment to get her bearings.

  The place was a combination bar and restaurant. Blue-collar and rowdy, it was packed, with the booths lining the walls all taken and patrons crowded three deep around the bar. A waitress took an order at one table. Another, carrying a heavy tray, pushed into the dining room through a swinging door, obviously coming from the kitchen. It smelled of grilled meat and booze.

  Charlie looked toward the bar. Dark, gleaming wood. A long mirror fronted by a jumble of bottles and glasses. The bartender, a heavyset man with dark hair, filling a mug with beer from a tap. So crowded that at first it was difficult to spot her quarry.

  But he was tall, he was blond, and he was loud.

  “Hey, Billy, bring us a couple more,” he called to the bartender. The deep, drawling voice that cut through all the background noise was so familiar that Charlie’s heart clutched. There he was, long body planted on a bar stool, knocking back a drink as he talked to a pretty, dark-haired woman who was perched on the stool next to his.

  Candace Hartnell. Twenty-five years old. Dressed in a blue jean miniskirt that left most of her long, slim legs bare. Clingy red tee with a deep scoop neck that wasn’t shy about how much cleavage it revealed. Strappy, sexy high heels. Leaning toward him, flirting for all she was worth. Laughing, drinking, clearly in major lust with the guy buying the booze.

  With no idea how this night was supposed to end.

  Charlie’s eyes narrowed as she watched Michael’s hand slide up Candace’s tanned and slender thigh. She couldn’t help it. It was a purely visceral reaction.

  It occurred to her that right here, right now, Michael was thirty-one years old. A year younger than she was. Feeling no pain, and out to get laid. They weren’t exactly each other’s types at the best of times. And she had dressed that morning with her professional persona in mind and, thus, was wearing a tailored long-sleeved white blouse with black pants and low-heeled shoes. Her hair was secured in a ponytail at her nape, and her makeup was minimal.

  In other words, Sex Kitten R Not Us.

  Too bad. He was leaving that bar with her if she had to drag him out by his hair.

  The waitress who’d been taking the order at the table walked by. Charlie touched her arm.

  “Excuse me, could you call me a taxi, please?” she asked. “I’ll be at the bar.”

  The waitress nodded. Charlie would have tipped her, but, wait, she didn’t have any money.

  “Ten dollars when it gets here,” Charlie promised. Michael would have to pay. Whether he liked it or not. “Come and find me.”

  The waitress’s eyes widened. “Shouldn’t be more than five minutes.”

  “Thanks.”

  With that taken care of, Charlie girded her loins and marched up to the bar. Thrusting herself between Candace and Michael, she got right up in Michael’s face. He blinked at her in surprise. The sky blue eyes, the outrageously handsome face, the shock of tawny hair, the big, muscular body in the white tee, jeans, and boots that he’d been wearing on this, the last free night of his life—it was all there. He looked younger, happier, less touched by darkness and pain, but otherwise exactly the same. He was even wearing his watch—the one that she’d been clutching when she’d stepped through her garage door into that swirling darkness. A surprised glance down at her arm told her that she no longer had it. Of course: he hadn’t lost it yet. Her chest tightened at the knowledge. To have him alive in front of her like this, to feel her body brushing his and know what was going to happen to him if she couldn’t stop it, was both heartbreaking and galvanizing.

  Taking a breath, she met his surprised blue gaze again and let fly.

  “You leave me home alone with our kids while you go out trying to pick up women in a bar?” she yelled, stabbing her finger into his chest for good measure.

  He reared back, looking at her like she was nuts.

  “I had to get my sister up to watch our three little angels while I came out and found you,” Charlie raged.

  Michael gaped at her. “What the hell?” he said.

  All around them, people were turning to look.

  Under less dire circumstances Charlie would have smiled at the expression on his face. But these circumstances were dire.

  “Honey, he’s taken,” she said over her shoulder to Candace Hartnell, who was looking as horrified as Michael was looking dumbfounded.

  “Sorry. I had no idea—he never said he was married.” She slid off that bar stool and skittered away like her skirt was on fire.

  Yes. Charlie gave herself a mental fist pump. Mission partly accomplished. Next order of business: get him out of there. Charlie stayed where she was, leaning against the bar, sliding her hand up Michael’s thigh.

  “Now you’re mine, handsome,” she purred.

  Michael’s hand clamped down over hers, holding her hand in place on his thigh.

  “Sugar, this ain’t going anywhere,” he drawled. He had a good buzz going, she could tell from the brightness of his eyes. “Psycho librarian types aren’t exactly my thing.”

  Leaning close, she murmured, “How do you know until you try?” She slid a hand behind his head and kissed him.

  Deep and hot and slow.

  And there it was: the chemistry. The blazing sexual attraction that had always been there between them, the blistering passion, the fierce pull of desire.

  It wasn’t a fluke, and it wasn’t a result of them being flung together by circumstance.

  It was, she decided as his arms came around her and he pulled her tight against him and took control of the kiss, fate.

  A touch on her arm. “Your taxi’s here, Miss.”

  Charlie broke the kiss and looked around at the waitress. Michael’s arms were tight around her waist. Her arms were around his neck, and she was nestled between his spread legs. The evidence of his arousal was right there between them, hard and unmistakable as it pushed against the notch at the apex of her legs.

  “I need ten dollars,” she said to him. He looked at her. His eyes were glittering. His face was flushed. He let go of her to pull out his wallet.

  She took it from him, extracted ten dollars, and handed the bill to the waitress.

  When she turned back to him, he was watching her. Naked lust gleamed in his eyes.

  She smiled and ran a thumb over his lips. He caught her wrist, kissed her thumb.

  “Come home with me,” she said.

  He nodded and stood up. She gave him back his wallet, and as he put a twenty down on the bar she spotted a permanent marker and scooped it up. Then she took his hand and led him out of the bar.

  When they stepped out into the fresh night air, he seemed to sober up a little bit. Having caught sight of the taxi, she was pulling him purposefully toward it. They were almost there when his hand tightened on hers and he dug in his heels. She stopped—she didn’t have any choice—and turned to frown at him. He pulled her back against him, back into his arms. The feel of h
is big, muscular body against hers was so sexy and at the same time so achingly familiar that she could have cried.

  “Hey, psycho librarian, I don’t even know your name,” he said.

  “Charlie,” she answered huskily, looking up at him. Then she went up on tiptoes and kissed him, a lush but brief kiss because she was afraid she was running out of time. Breaking off the kiss, she stepped back and took his hand. Flipping the lid off the permanent marker, she started writing on the smooth inner flesh of his forearm.

  “Hey,” he said, but he didn’t pull away, merely watched curiously as she wrote on his arm.

  “This is my name, and address, and a date,” she told him. She’d written only her first name, because it occurred to her that if he tried to find her before five years had passed the outcome might be bad. The address was her house in Big Stone Gap, and the date was five years and one week in the future. “You come to this address on that date. I’ll be there.”

  He was frowning at her.

  “Sweet thing, in five years I could be on the other side of the world.”

  Having finished, she stuck the marker in her pants pocket and looked up at him.

  “Let’s get in the taxi,” she said. In case she ran out of time, she wanted to make sure he didn’t go back in the bar. She tugged him toward it.

  He went, but said, “My car’s here.”

  “You’re drunk, and I can’t drive.”

  “I’m not drunk.”

  Her patience frayed. They were at the taxi now, and, with a brief “Hi” for the driver, she opened the back door. “Michael. Just get in the damned taxi, would you please?”

  With the urging of the smallest of shoves from her, he got in, and she slid in beside him. Closing the door, she breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Where to?” the driver wanted to know.

  “How close is the nearest hotel?” Charlie asked him.

  “I thought we were going to your place,” Michael said.

  “Hotel?” Charlie prompted the driver, then, to Michael, she murmured throatily, “Hotels are so sexy.”

  “Right along this road,” the driver said. Charlie could tell from his tone that he’d heard her comment to Michael. If she’d been able to see his face, she was sure she’d have just watched it turn red.

  She said, “Take us there.”

  The taxi took off.

  Michael was looking at her. His eyes gleamed at her through the darkness that shrouded the backseat. He was much bigger and stronger than she was, and she’d had ample evidence of his self-defense skills, so she was pretty sure he didn’t feel threatened. But apart from the hot-and-heavy, let’s-get-it-on vibe he was putting out, she thought she detected a degree of wariness.

  “How’d you know my name?” he asked. He was holding her hand, but his grip was a little tighter than loverliness called for.

  “I’m going to tell you something that is going to sound impossible,” she said. “But it’s true. I need you to listen, and I need you to do what I tell you.” Lying, she improvised to add a little extra oomph to her words: “Cap and Hoop and Sean sent me to you with this message.”

  “What?” he practically yelped, and dropped her hand.

  “I’m from the future,” Charlie said, keeping her voice low in hopes that the driver would miss most of what she was saying. “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s not. To prove it—”

  She bent close, whispered her knowledge of how Sean had died in Michael’s ear so that the driver couldn’t overhear. When she finished and sat back, he stared at her, clearly stunned. Increasingly conscious of the clock ticking, Charlie couldn’t give him time to process. Instead, she plunged on.

  “Detective Foster of the Mariposa Police Department is a serial killer who was going to kill that girl you were talking to tonight and frame you for her murder and his previous murders,” Charlie said. Michael was looking at her now like she was a bomb he feared might be going to explode at any moment, but she didn’t care. “If you had stayed in that bar, if you had gone home with her—her name is Candace Hartnell, by the way”—she knew he didn’t know it at that point—“she would have wound up dead, stabbed to death, and you would have found yourself on death row, convicted of her and six other women’s murders. You would get killed in prison.” No need to go into the whole he-then-came-back-as-a-ghost-and-she-was-there-now-trying-to-save-his-soul thing, she decided. That was unnecessary for her purpose, and would probably be too much information for one sitting. “You need to get out of this area. Move somewhere else and start over. Do not pick up any girl in any bar within a hundred miles of here. Do not pick up any girls, period, within a hundred miles of here. Just go. As soon as possible.”

  A tingly feeling was spreading over her skin, and Charlie was afraid she was almost out of time.

  “I think I’m getting ready to disappear,” she said. “Check yourself into the hotel and stay there tonight. Do not leave it for any reason. Then tomorrow, pack up your things and go. Start over somewhere else.”

  “Somebody put you up to this.” Michael’s face was hard now. He was looking at her like he didn’t believe her at all.

  The tingle was increasing. She was starting to hear a humming sound.

  Time was up. She knew it. Grabbing his hand, Charlie said fiercely, “Every word I’ve told you is the truth. In the future you and I are in love, and I’ve come back here tonight to try to save your ass. You—”

  Just as quick as that, a blackness darker than the darkest night enveloped her like a blanket. The humming noise turned into a roar, and Charlie felt the earth fall away around her. Her head spun; her stomach dropped.

  Then she fetched up on her driveway.

  Standing in the cool air of a brightening dawn staring at the solid white metal inside a chalk rectangle drawn on her garage door. Weak-kneed and trembling. With no idea if what she’d done had succeeded in saving Michael or not.

  “Dieu merci,” Tam said devoutly. Thank God.

  Charlie turned, saw Tam, and stumbled out of the charmed area into her friend’s outstretched arms.

  Nearby, one of Mrs. Norman’s roosters began to crow.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Michael didn’t show up.

  The date Charlie had written on his arm came and went, and there was no sign of him. No word. Tam sent out psychic feelers into the universe, but couldn’t pick up a trace of him.

  Charlie even tried Google. Google couldn’t find him, either.

  That was bad.

  She started to feel this giant emptiness in her chest, like there was a hole where her heart had been.

  The time travel had been real, not a hallucination brought on by Tam’s spell or something like stress. She knew that because during that journey she’d lost his watch. She could only suppose that wherever he was he had it now.

  She had succeeded in keeping him from being killed in prison. She knew that because his grave in the graveyard of the First Baptist Church had disappeared.

  When she checked the prison records, there was no mention of his name.

  There was, however, a Dan Foster, formerly a detective with the Mariposa Police Department, on death row.

  A new subject for her research, if she’d been going to continue working at the prison.

  She wasn’t. As she had promised Michael, she was going to take a break and write a book. She’d already found an agent and been offered a contract with a sizable advance.

  It was because of the NARSAD, she knew. That was still a huge deal, and she was still thrilled to have won.

  Tam was planning to accompany her to the award ceremony, and Tony and Lena and Buzz would be there as her guests. She was glad they would be with her on what would be one of the most important nights of her life: they were, all of them, family to her now. Tam and Lena had taken her shopping after double-teaming her to deplore what they described as her nonexistent fashion sense. She’d let them pick out what they liked: her only proviso was that the dress couldn’t show too muc
h skin, and it couldn’t be bright.

  They’d settled on a form-fitting black lace evening dress.

  She packed up her office at the prison. She checked in on Paris and Bree and the rest of the kids, and was pleased to hear they were recovering and doing well. She meant to keep tabs on them for the foreseeable future because, well, somebody needed to, and she felt responsible for them after what they’d been through together. She even stayed in phone contact with Rick Hughes, who’d awakened in her house with the most distressing condition: he’d lost nearly three full days from his memory. Doctors told him he was most likely suffering from hysterical amnesia, and blamed the stress he had endured during the kidnapping.

  He kept asking if he could come up and they could get together for a meal and a chat, but Charlie wouldn’t agree. Tony had had FBI investigators confirm the fact that he and Michael were identical twins, that they had been adopted separately, and that Hughes’s parents had kept the truth from him. They’d even altered the date on his birth certificate to coincide with the date they’d brought him home. At some point, that was information Hughes probably needed to know, but Charlie didn’t feel like it was up to her to enlighten him. The truth was, she didn’t think she was ever going to want to see Rick Hughes again for the rest of her life.

  To be in the presence of someone who looked so much like Michael and yet wasn’t Michael would cause her more pain than she could endure.

  Which was what she was doing: enduring. She was going on, because she had her life with many good things in it and she was a survivor. Trading Michael’s memory of her, of them, for his life was something that she would do all over again, every single time the situation came up.

  Now she just had to learn to live without him.

  —

  The NARSAD banquet was held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Dinner was first on the schedule, followed by the awards presentation, and then dancing. It was a black-tie affair, crowded and glittering, with a live orchestra and so many luminaries that Charlie was dazzled way before her name was called to receive her award.