Maggie laughed. When she’d been at the bottom of that swimming pool, she had been so sure she’d never have the chance to laugh ever again.
“Let me get these ropes off of you.” He gently pushed her back so that he could untie the rope that bound her feet.
“Charles, thank you.”
He glanced up at her as he finally worked the ropes loose. “For letting you communicate with Chuck through me?” He gave her another crooked smile. “It was my pleasure. Literally.”
Maggie couldn’t keep from wincing as he pulled the rope from her ankles.
Charles looked down and saw that the rough cord had rubbed her skin raw as she’d fought to free herself in the swimming pool. “Oh, God, I’m sorry!” He pulled her feet up and onto his lap. “I wasn’t being careful—that must’ve hurt!”
“I’m okay,” she said softly. And she was. She was alive. “You know, I really thought I was going to drown. I thought …” She shook her head.
“You thought Ken Goodwin was going to kill you,” he continued her thought, “because he figured that Chuck—that I—had traveled through time to try to save you once already. If you’re dead, that gives Chuck a powerful reason not to terminate the Wells Project before it even starts. In fact, Goodwin’s probably banking on the fact that if you’re dead, Chuck’s going to work to keep the Wells project alive so that he can have another chance to go back in time and save you.”
Maggie shivered. The closet, like the rest of the house, was cold. It was November in the desert, and although the days were warm, the nights could be quite chilly. And the sun wasn’t hot enough during the day to heat this big house. “If Goodwin wants me dead, why didn’t he just let me drown?”
“Because I wouldn’t allow that. We’ve got to get you out of that wet dress.” Charles gently took her feet from his lap and moved around to begin untying her hands.
Maggie turned to look back at him. “That room they brought me to. The furniture in the room you were held in was wrecked. What did you do?”
He glanced into her eyes. “I played what turns out to be our trump card.”
She could feel her wrists burn as he tugged gently at the rope and she couldn’t keep from drawing in a sharp breath.
“Maggie, I’m sorry. Your wrists are pretty scraped up too. I don’t think I can get this rope off without hurting you.”
“Just do it. I’ll be okay.”
He did. It took several long, agonizing seconds, but then the rope finally was off of her. Her fingers were numb and her shoulders ached as she pulled her hands in front of her. “What trump card?” she asked Charles, trying to ignore the tears of pain that were stinging her eyes. She pushed her wet hair out of her face and hiked up her soggy dress as she turned to face him.
“Goodwin needs me alive,” Charles told her. “That’s how we’re going to get out of here. I’m going to hold my own self hostage.”
Maggie shook her hands, trying to bring life back into her numb fingers. “How? We don’t have enough time for a hunger strike. And I doubt threatening to hold your breath until you turn blue is going to work.”
Charles gave her a quick smile. “I haven’t quite figured out the how part yet, but I’m working on it.” He shrugged out of his fight-tattered jacket and began taking off his tuxedo shirt.
Maggie couldn’t help but notice when he glanced down at the Wells Project report still lying on the floor. It was only a matter of time before he reached for it. But right now his priorities were with her. “Come on,” he said gently. “Get out of that dress before you catch pneumonia. You can put on my shirt and jacket.”
Maggie didn’t move, and he turned around so that his back was to her. “I won’t look,” he added.
Maybe he should look. Maybe that would keep him from looking at the Wells Project report instead.
Maggie closed her eyes, still feeling the fire of his kisses. “I can’t get the zipper. My fingers …” It wasn’t quite true, but he wouldn’t know that.
She heard him turn around, felt him touch her gently as he searched for the tiny zipper pull on the back of her dress. The sound of the zipper going down seemed to echo in the silence.
There was no way he could miss the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. In fact, he probably already knew that from the way the wet fabric of the dress was glued to her like a second skin. Her breasts were clearly outlined, her nipples taut from the cold. Still, the unavoidable intimacy of her completely bare back—bare from the nape of her neck all the way down to the lace of her panties—exposed by the simple pull of a zipper made it obviously clear.
She could hear him swallow, hear his quiet breathing. She could hear her own heart beating in that fraction of a second between her decision and her ability to act.
And then Maggie acted. She pulled the dress off, stepping out of it as it sank in a heavy wet pile on the floor. She didn’t know if Charles had turned around to give her privacy, but she had to guess from the way he wrapped his shirt around her that he hadn’t.
She turned to face him, pulling the shirt off her shoulders.
He was wearing only his tuxedo pants, and he looked like some kind of exotic male stripper. And she—she was wearing only slightly more than he had been wearing that day, seven years in his future, when she’d first set eyes on him.
Chuck had wanted her to seduce Charles. He seemed to think that Maggie would have no trouble at all, that Charles would be unable to resist her. And from the sudden volcanic flare of heat in Charles’s eyes at the sight of her wearing only the white lace of her panties, it seemed as if he was right.
But Charles was not just a man. He was a brilliant man. And the crooked smile he gave her was rueful. “Boy, you really don’t want me to look at that report, do you?”
Maggie felt herself blush as he reached for the shirt in her hands and held it open for her. Closing her eyes in embarrassment, she slipped her arms into the sleeves. He turned her to face him, and began buttoning the front, as if she were a child.
“Now would probably be a good time for you to tell me exactly why you don’t want me to read that report,” he continued.
“I’m not sure I can speak and die of embarrassment at the same time,” she told him.
He caught her chin with his hand, tipping her head up, and she opened her eyes to find herself looking directly into his eyes.
“I think I’m probably going to spend the rest of my life regretting that I didn’t seize the moment and take advantage of you.” He smiled crookedly. “God, I don’t just think it—I know it.”
For one brief moment Maggie was certain that he was going to lean forward and kiss her again. But instead of covering her mouth with his, he released her, stepped back, and put some distance between them.
“But you belong to someone else,” he continued quietly. “Someone that I’m not—not yet, anyway. And as much as I’d like to let you … distract me, it wouldn’t be right.”
Maggie turned away, picking up the sodden mass of her dress, trying to hide the emotion that surged through her at his soft words. She hung her dress over one of the bars that stretched lengthwise across the small space. “Funny, I was just thinking how like him you are.” She turned to face him. “You have to promise me that if … something does happen to me—”
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you—”
She took a step toward him. “Charles, they have guns and we don’t. Think about it. If Chuck doesn’t storm the gates, trying to get us out, and if you don’t read the Wells Project report, I’m willing to bet that by the time the sun sets, Ken Goodwin will stop trying to persuade you to see things his way—he’ll start using force. And the first thing he’ll do is take me out of the picture—permanently. And Chuck will want to find a way to go back in time again, to save me. Again.”
Charles reached for the report, still lying on the floor. “So maybe I should do what Ken Goodwin wants.”
Maggie moved faster, putting her foot on it before he could pi
ck it up. “I’m afraid if you read this, there’ll be no turning back. I’m afraid once you understand the theories and the equations you used to make the Runabout work, you won’t be able to change your entire destiny with just one simple decision. I’m afraid that what you learn will take you past the point of no return.”
Charles sat down on the floor, leaning back against the wall and tiredly taking off his black dress shoes. “Maggie, you have no idea how badly I want to look at that report.”
She sat down next to him. “Really? Even knowing that in seven years you’ll be willing to trade your entire life for a chance to walk away from the information that’s in there?”
He was silent.
“If Chuck were here right now,” she told him, “he’d be urging you to take all of your theories on time travel and just let them go. He’d tell you that you have the power to end this once and for all. Right here. Right now. All you need to do is make that decision. No, you won’t work on time travel anymore. Yes, you’ll go back to school, finish up your medical degree, and start working full-time on finding a cure for AIDS. Or cancer. Or something. Something good. Something that can’t be used as a weapon by unscrupulous people.”
“If I do that,” Charles said quietly, “if I decide right now to do that, you won’t ever see Chuck again.”
Maggie felt her eyes fill with tears. “I know.”
“What if there’s some way we can make this work?” Charles turned to face her, taking her hand and lacing their fingers together. “What if there’s something Chuck’s overlooked, something he hasn’t come up with, some way we can stop Wizard-9 and still develop my time-travel theories?” he asked. “Maggie, I want to talk to him. I want to figure out a way to get us safely out of here so we can meet him somewhere and try to figure this out.”
Maggie looked into the dark brown intensity of his eyes. Chuck’s eyes. “Why is this so important to you?” she whispered. “Why do you want to develop time travel so badly? What happened that you want so desperately to go back and do over?”
As she watched, she saw him take an emotional step back, away from her. His face was instantly more reserved, his eyes almost shuttered. He wasn’t going to tell her. Maggie knew he wasn’t, and she got good and mad.
“You’re exactly like him,” she said, pulling her hand away. “Too damned bottled up to share even the tiniest piece of yourself.” She wanted to hit him, so she moved away to avoid the temptation, scooping up the Data Tech report and hugging it close to her chest as she sat in the farthest possible corner of the tiny closet. She glared at him. “Well, guess what, Charlie boy? I’m probably going to die for you tomorrow, for the second time around. You can at least show me the courtesy of answering my questions!”
The shuttered look was replaced by shock. “The second time …?”
“I already took a bullet for you,” she told him flatly. “Seven years from now. Only this time around, it’s probably going to happen tomorrow. The least you could do is talk to me and tell me why I’m going to die.”
He was struggling to understand. “You knew you’d already been killed once, and you still stuck around to help Chuck? To help … me?”
Maggie tipped her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. “Yeah, love’s a funny thing, isn’t it, Charlie? I’m in love with Chuck.” She opened her eyes and looked at him. “And I love you too. You’re him, you know. Part of you is Chuck—except for the fact that you don’t happen to love me.” She laughed, but it came out sounding more like a sob. “How could you love me? You don’t know me. But just think, if I had seven years, I could probably make you love me as much as Chuck does. Of course, it would probably take another seven years more for you ever to admit it!”
Charles was silent.
“Please,” Maggie said. “Give me something. Close your eyes and find that part of you that could maybe love me in seven years. And then tell me why finding a way to travel through time has ruled your life since you were a child.”
Charles didn’t move. He didn’t even blink.
Maggie closed her eyes again. She couldn’t bear to look at him as she waited for him to say something, anything. Or nothing at all.
He cleared his throat. “I’ve … I’ve never told anyone.”
He was either going to keep going, or he was going to stop. Maggie sat absolutely still, waiting to see which it was going to be.
Charles cleared his throat again. “When I was seven years old, I … um, I realized that life was made up of linear paths. If you took one, you missed the others, and … vice versa.”
He paused, and she knew he was struggling to simplify, to make his words ones she would understand. “It occurred to me that all along these lines or paths were these … moments. Moments in time that either kept a person on track or pushed them onto a totally different path. Sometimes these moments—or decisions, if you will—seem utterly trivial, but the changes they trigger are … immense.”
He took a deep breath. “From everything you’ve told me, it seems as if my decision to continue or to stop trying to make a working theorem for time travel is one of these moments. Quiet. Seemingly insignificant. Yet from everything you told me—the bomb at the White House, Wizard-9’s interference, your own death—” His voice broke and he stopped for a moment.
Maggie opened her eyes and looked at him. He was staring down at his stockinged feet, his eyes out of focus, his jaw clenched, mouth grim. He looked up and met her gaze. “It seems the changes this decision will bring are extremely severe—unless we can somehow alter the path again and take us all in an entirely different direction. Unless …” He looked away from her, his eyes narrowing in concentration as he became lost in his thoughts.
“What happened when you were seven, Chuck?” she said softly, gently. Chuck. She’d gone and called him Chuck. The name had slipped out.
Her mistake hadn’t gotten past him. She saw his awareness in the flash of his eyes, in the slight twisting of his lips into a half smile.
He didn’t want to tell her. He shifted his position. He ran his fingers through his hair. He looked at the walls in the closet, the floor, the ceiling. He chewed on the inside of his cheek. He scratched his ear. He stopped himself more than once from drumming his fingers on the floor.
“Another moment,” he finally said through clenched teeth, glancing briefly at her. “It was another one of those goddammed life-altering moments.”
Maggie moved so that she was sitting directly across from him. She stretched out her right leg so that her bare foot was resting directly on top of Charles’s left foot. The physical contact seemed to ground him, and for a moment he just sat there, eyes closed, absolutely still, as if gaining strength from her touch.
“I was reading a book.” His voice was so soft, Maggie wasn’t sure at first that he’d really spoken. “The Lord of the Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien. I was three chapters from the end, and I didn’t want to put it down.”
He paused, and Maggie held her breath as she realized that his eyes were shining with unshed tears.
“My little brother,” he said. “Steven. He came into my room. He wanted to play Chinese checkers. But I only had a half hour before my calculus tutor arrived, and I wanted to read, so I told him no. I couldn’t play with him. I didn’t even look up from my book to talk to him—I just told him to shut the door on his way out, and he did. About twenty minutes later I heard sirens and then Danny MacAllister, the kid from down the street who delivered the newspapers, he pounded on our front door, and God, it was Stevie. The sirens were for Stevie. He was riding his new bike, crossing New Amsterdam Road, and he got hit by a truck. He was killed instantly.”
ELEVEN
“OH, CHARLES, NO,” Maggie breathed.
“I don’t know what he was doing. He wasn’t supposed to ride his bike anywhere but around the cul-de-sac. He must’ve been mad at me—” He broke off.
“I don’t know what he was doing,” he said again, softer this time. “I never knew why he did t
he things he did. He was so emotional. So … illogical. He was five, and he couldn’t even read Dr. Seuss yet. He wasn’t ‘gifted,’ but he didn’t care—he was just this happy little silly kid. Everyone loved him, especially me. Everything was so easy for him. My father would play catch and laugh with him out in the backyard, and then come inside and shake his head at me for making careless errors in my calculus assignments.”
Now that he was finally talking, the words seemed to spill out. “I used to sneak into Stevie’s room at night and climb into his top bunk and ask him what he was thinking about, and he would say something like duckies or bunnies, and I would lie there and try to be him. I’d make shadows on the walls with my fingers, the way he did, and I’d try to push aside all the numbers and physics equations in my head to make a little room for duckies and bunnies.” Charles laughed, a short burst of not very humorous air. “But I never really could.”
Maggie’s heart was in her throat. She could picture Charles—Chuck—as that terribly intelligent and gifted child, with eyes far too old and sober for his skinny, seven-year-old face and body.
“And just like that, Stevie was gone,” he continued. “One game of Chinese checkers. That’s all it would have taken to keep our entire family from being destroyed. But I wouldn’t play, and my brother died.”
His voice broke, and he stopped, turning away from her so that she wouldn’t see the sheen of tears in his eyes that threatened to overflow.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said, moving closer, wanting to reach for him but afraid of being pushed away. “Didn’t your mother and father tell you that?”
“My father left town,” he said, his voice curiously flat. He held himself away from her, his shoulders stiff. But try as he might, he couldn’t stop the tears that flooded his eyes. One escaped, and he brusquely, almost savagely wiped it away. “I never saw him again. And my mother … She lost it. Literally. She went into a hospital and wouldn’t get out of bed. She died about four months later. They wouldn’t tell me what she died of—I’ve always assumed she managed to give herself some kind of overdose of sleeping pills.”
Time Enough for Love Page 12
