by Lexi Post
“You mean like if I fixed his brakes so they locked up and he crashed or something?”
She swallowed at the hate in Katz’s gaze. “Sure.”
She waited, breathless. If she couldn’t convince Katz what it was like to want something so much that nothing else seemed to matter then she had no chance of convincing Jules or possibly even Torr himself.
Katz’s sly smile at whatever vengeful thoughts she had disappeared. “But that’s different.”
Crestfallen, she shook her head. “No, it isn’t.”
“Yeah, it is. Killing off that bastard would have only changed history for the better and Rafter would know right away if it affected anything important.” Katz snorted. “Which it wouldn’t have. But the big guy in there, he’s affecting the future if he stays here, probably even our future and TWI’s future.” Katz leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, a determined look in her eye. “Do you know what Go-Lucky told me on my first time travel when I inadvertently found myself in that hospital delivery room?”
“No, you never told me.”
“He said that I couldn’t stop my father because my mom would be key to helping hundreds of abused women escape their spouses, and if she had raised me, both she and I would have died.”
Diana’s head spun with the commonalities of their experiences. “I got a similar story on my first unintended time travel when I found myself in the hotel bar just minutes before my parents walked through the lobby to take a drive along the Cape Breton coast. That very afternoon they went off a cliff. It was nothing more than a meaningless accident, but Go-Lucky told me that if they had lived, my father would have received a grant instead of a scientist who will discover the cure for skin cancer. He asked me if I really wanted to sentence all those future people to death.”
Katz narrowed her eyes, her hands forming fists. “Do you think he fucking lied to us?”
She’d thought about that question a few times herself since that first encounter with the little man. “Maybe, but after all the training we’ve been through and the missions we’ve accomplished, I think we both know that it doesn’t matter whether he told us the truth or not. We can’t go back in history and change things. We’d be just as wrong as the Disruptors.”
“But you’ve gone and freakin’ done just that for all future generations. From the day you brought Torr back, you affected dozens of lives just in this year.”
Katz’s reasoning was sound, which made her point even harder to accept. How many hospital personnel had been affected simply by coming into contact with a patient they originally never encountered? She stared at her friend, a hopeless feeling starting in the pit of her stomach.
“After you bring him back, you can always have Jane do that thing she does and make you forget him.”
She sucked in her breath. To not remember Torr? To forget all about him, his good heart, his nobility, his strength, and his passionate lovemaking would be the cruelest of punishments.
“Nay. I mean no. I do not want to erase Torr from my mind. It would be strange waking up to a stranger in my bed since he has to stay here.”
Katz shook her head, as if she’d lost her mind. Perhaps she had, but she had no idea what else she could do. He couldn’t go back now because he would change history. It had become far more complicated than simply saving his life.
Mouse strolled into the room and hesitated as if she expected it to be empty. After a moment, she continued in and sat on the arm of the third couch. She pinned Diana with her stare. “So did you send him back yet?”
Ugh! Obviously, she hadn’t sent him back! Mouse’s need to be higher than everyone figuratively and literally began to grate on her nerves. “No, I didn’t send him back. Arthur is talking to him, and I’m sure gathering a lot more information for the next one of us who goes back to medieval Scotland.”
Mouse waved her hand dismissively. “It would be of little importance unless the mission is in the Highlands, and I doubt that will be needed again.”
She put a hand over her eyes. The woman had an answer for everything, which was no surprise considering that as a librarian she’d read every book in her own library the first year she’d worked there. The only reason she’d transferred to the city library was she wanted more to read. It wasn’t as if she was a people-person.
“So, did you at least figure out who the Disruptor was?”
She took her hand away and glanced at Mouse. She hadn’t even thought about it. “Maybe?”
Katz sat forward again. “Hell yeah! You’ve identified the Disruptor from your mission?”
She grinned. It had to be Douglas. All the possible Disruptors had been in the battle except Douglas. He’d been chained in the dungeon, but he wouldn’t have been if he hadn’t attacked her, which was how she had inadvertently accomplished her mission. “Yes.” She met Mouse’s gaze head on, more confident now. “It was a man, as you have hypothesized. His name is Douglas.”
The petite woman finally sat on the couch and stared intently at her. “Douglas? I had a Douglas as one of my suspects two missions ago. What did he look like?”
She pictured Douglas as she’d last seem him, up close as he pinned her to the wall. “He had black hair that just reached his shoulders, wide-set gray eyes, thin lips, and extra high cheek bones.”
Why did he attack her and risk not saving Torr? And why did he propose? Did he know she was a time traveler and wanted to throw her off? He seemed desperate to keep her and Torr from being together. He also seemed so lonely. She must have read him wrong.
Mouse leaned forward her hands clasped tightly. “That’s him! He was a guard during the Spanish Inquisition!”
Katz joined her on the couch facing Mouse. “I had that Douglas in 1494 Italy earlier this year! I didn’t suspect the fucker because he wasn’t a woman and was so close with Piero de Medici. I thought they’d been friends forever.”
Mouse’s arm shot out across the coffee table and grabbed her wrist. “Why didn’t you bring him with you?”
She easily broke the woman’s hold. “He was chained in the dungeon and guarded. Not exactly an easy abduction. Besides, I didn’t know until Torr was run through that he was the Disruptor.”
“I wish we could go back to the same time period.” Mouse sat back as she focused on the Disruptor puzzle. “This is huge. Jules is going to be thrilled. How long had this Douglas been there?”
She reviewed everyone she had suspected. “He arrived two weeks before me.” Was that why he was lonely, because he stayed in a time period for so long?
The other woman steepled her hands, and her eyes grew shrewd. “That means they intervene a month before. I should set my start time four weeks earlier on my next mission. Then I can catch the Disruptor when he arrives. Of course, that’s only one of them, but it’s a start. We can have Arthur transfer his image to all of us and the next one to find him at their assignment can bring him here.”
Katz elbowed her. “Wait. If this Douglas is a Disruptor, why didn’t he simply time travel ahead of time to escape?”
That was a good question. “Maybe because he was being guarded and there were other prisoners there?”
“If that’s so…” Mouse brought her index finger to her mouth and began to chew on her nail, “…that means they are being careful about not letting people see them disappear. They don’t want to mess up the Timestream too much. Interesting.”
She looked at Katz. “But if they are men, maybe they can’t time travel. What if they use a woman who is like us to transport them? It never occurred to me until I brought Torr forward. I just assumed they were all women time travelers like us. Douglas never left the castle alone, but that doesn’t mean a woman couldn’t bop in like Go-Lucky does with us.”
“We need to get this information to Jules. If he is a time traveler, we will need to know how to keep him from escaping through time.” Mouse stood. “Where is Go-Lucky?”
Katz flopped back against the couch cushion. “He’s with Sedona.”
<
br /> “Ugh, that could take forever.” Mouse paced the confines of the room. “All hell is breaking loose, and we can’t even contact our boss. This operation boggles my mind sometimes.”
She watched Mouse’s energetic walk for a moment before responding. “Nothing’s breaking loose. We figured out more about the Disruptors, that’s all.”
“That’s all?” Mouse stopped at the end of the room, her petite figure almost shaking with excitement. “I don’t think so. You brought a Highlander into the twenty-first century. He may be nothing but muscles, but he could still mess up the future.”
Nothing but muscles? By God, that was it.
She stood and advanced on her fellow agent, halted six inches away, and towered over the smaller woman. “I have no idea why you have such a chip on your shoulder about me, but leave Torr alone.” She threw her arm out to point toward the door, noting that Mouse flinched at the action, but too angry to care. “Now get out of here. This room was made for teammates. For all your brains, you still haven’t learned how to be a team member.”
Mouse’s wide eyes and stunned expression gave her a certain satisfaction, but as the woman recovered, Diana caught the hurt in her eyes before she scowled. “Not a problem. I need to add this additional information into my database anyway.”
After Mouse exited the room, she slumped back onto the couch. Now what had she done?
Katz stared at her wide-eyed. “I’ve never seen you stand up to her like that. Freak, you’ve got it bad for this man.”
“I do. And it’s forever love, Katz, and we certainly know a lot about forever, don’t we.”
…
That night, Diana lay on a twin bed she’d had moved into her room when Torr made it clear he’d rather sleep on the floor than in her bed if she slept there. Though she’d brought him food he was used to, he didn’t speak to her unless absolutely necessary. Her only hope was that after a time, he’d forgive her.
Since she wasn’t in her own bed or with the man who always helped her sleep through the night, unless they were making love, she was wide awake. It had to be about two in the morning. The digital clock sat on the nightstand on the side of the bed and from where she slept, she couldn’t see the time over his large chest.
It didn’t matter anyway. There was nothing she could do about the fact she was awake. There was no wall-walk where she could look out over a field as the moon came up. Instead, she tried focusing on the sound of the waves as they crashed on the rocks that protected the beach. Spindrift Cove, where Stonehaven rose from the rock on which it stood, was protected from the waves, but not from the spray during a gale. Tonight, there was no storm outside, only inside her heart.
Her entire TWI family wanted her to take Torr back. She hadn’t expected that. Not that she had given it any thought when she’d whisked Torr from the battlefield. She understood why they thought that, but she’d hoped they could offer a different solution or at least a little support, like Fergus gave Ian or like Kerr gave Torr.
The hardest of all was Torr himself. He still insisted he needed to go back. He didn’t believe her about the time travel or even about how she felt about him. Even if he did forgive her one day, would he ever love her? A feeling in her gut said no.
“Diana.”
Oh, Shakespeare. It was Jules, speaking inside her head as usual. Seriously, what was wrong with a phone? It wasn’t as if she could mind-speak back. She still needed to talk aloud to answer. Quietly, she crawled out of bed.
“Diana. Are you awake?”
Grabbing her robe, she threw it on as she tiptoed out of the bedroom. “Yes, Jules. I’m awake.”
“What the hell have you done?”
She sighed as she padded into the Blue Room. Obviously, Mouse had given a full report. “I’ve done a lot, but none of it appears to be of any use.”
“Now, what’s that supposed to mean?”
She curled up on her favorite couch. “It means my heart is breaking and no one cares. It means when I find the one man I can love, he doesn’t trust me anymore and wants to leave. That’s what I mean.” She couldn’t help the tears that started to fall. Having everyone tell her saving Torr was a mistake and now having to face her boss with what she’d done was too much.
“Okay, lady, just calm down.”
“Why? I don’t care.” She slammed her fist into the cushion next to her. “I can’t have found him only to let him go. No one understands.” She was crying in earnest now, her nose filling and her throat growing sore.
“I understand.”
“You do?” She wiped her nose with her sleeve and sniffed. Sympathy and understanding? From Jules? She hadn’t expected that.
“Yes. I know forever love. That’s why it’s so hard for me to ask you to send the man back.”
Ask? Jules never asked. “Why? If you understand, then you know I can’t.” It came out as a whimper, a cry from deep in her soul.
“Diana, we don’t know what his presence will do to the future. We can only look into the past. He could have a child that would rule the world only that was not how it was supposed to happen.”
“I can stay on the hormone shots.”
“That was just an example, wiseass. He needs to go back to Scotland and live out his life with no contact with his clan and no participation in the fight for Scottish independence.”
That would be worse than death for Torr. His family was his life. She threw herself full length on the couch. “What’s the difference between that life and him staying here?”
“If he’s in his past, we can monitor any problems, but we don’t know about the future.”
“So you’re saying that if we could see into the future of the Timestream, he could stay?”
There was silence.
She stared up at the blue ceiling and wondered for the first time how much Jules actually knew. “Jules?”
“I’m here. The simple answer to your question is yes. But even if we could, would he want to stay at Stonehaven?”
And there was the true crux of her dilemma. She covered her face with her arms as new tears welled in her eyes. Because she loved Torr, she couldn’t make him stay if he didn’t want to. He never claimed to love her, and now he was pissed at her. But he did love his brother, his king, and his clan even though he couldn’t be a part of them anymore. Her gut twisted at what choice he’d make if he had one. She moaned, a harsh sound torn from the depths of her heart. “I don’t know what to do.”
“We are dealing with the history of the world here. No matter how you feel personally, your gift is meant for a bigger purpose. What? Oh shit! Diana, I need to go. I know you’ll do what’s right. You always do.”
Diana sat up, pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins. Always. Jules was right. She always did what was right until she’d brought Torr home. Maybe she was on a wrong streak. Maybe she liked the wrong side. Her conscience kicked her in the gut. She had completely ignored it the moment Torr went down in the battle, pushing it away and following her heart, but Jules’s words echoed in her head far stronger than anyone else’s. “We are dealing with the history of the world, here. No matter how you feel personally, your gift is meant for a bigger purpose.” It was so close to what her mother used to say when she was disappointed in her that it pierced her soul. “Sweetie, you’re meant for something better, something bigger.”
She laid her head on her knees. She always did what was right because that’s who she was and how she was raised. The few times she strayed, her mother had reeled her back in. She’d always hated that disappointed look in her mother’s eyes.
She unfolded herself from the couch and padded down the hall to her bedroom. A tiny piece of her rebel self tried valiantly one more time. Maybe Torr would want to stay once she explained everything.
Opening the door, she found the object of her thoughts standing before the window, his naked backside sending a bittersweet flush through her. “Torr?”
He turned, his face in sh
adow, but there was enough moonlight for her to see the rugged outline of his body. The female at the core of her melted at the sight.
“Where were ye?” His rough, concerned voice caused hope to rise within her.
“I had to talk to my boss.” She held up a hand, knowing what he would say. “Jules knows I’m sometimes awake in the middle of the night, just as you do.” She walked forward as she spoke, unable to resist being close to him.
Torr appeared to study her. “Ye did not wake when ye slept in my bed.”
She gave him a half smile. “That’s because you wore me out.”
His mouth quirked, but he turned back to watch the moonlit waves.
“Torr, will you ever forgive me?” She held her breath and when he didn’t answer, she couldn’t bear it. “I only wanted to save your life.”
He shook his head then stopped, speaking to the window. “My life is with my clan. I must return to them.”
He wouldn’t believe he was in a future time or he simply ignored it. “You’re dead to your clan. You have no life with them anymore. I told you. When I—”
“Enough.” He turned to face her, his body radiating tension that she ached to calm, but she feared his rejection of her touch. “You tricked me into caring about you. The only thing I care about now is going home.”
Hurt, frustration and anger swirled inside her heart. “And that I love you means nothing?”
He didn’t say a word.
Her heart broke. She’d always known Torr wouldn’t love anyone else, but she’d believed he cared, and she’d killed that.
“Diana, I need to go home.” His voice had softened as if he was sorry she loved him.
She couldn’t handle being pitied on top of everything else. “Fine. I’ll take you home in the morning.” As if by simply saying the words, her mind eased. It was the right thing to do, yet her heart squeezed so hard, she put her hand to her chest as if she could somehow keep it together.
