by Cooper, Jill
That’s the prison Dad is in. When the phone rings behind Mom, I know what the news will be.
But Jack the anchor isn’t done yet. He continues. “What about leaked reports that a woman was seen inside the prison with … purple hair?”
Everything in me grows still, and I turn to Mom, who is holding the receiver in mid-air. There's something I haven’t seen on her face before.
Fear.
“You know her?” I demand, walking up to her. “You know the woman with the purple hair?”
She shakes her head. “No, I…I don’t know who she is …”
“Liar,” I snarl. “It’s written all over your face. Who is she?”
She hangs up the phone. “I don’t know! Well, I have seen her. Flashes. Like a ghost. B-b-but-but I have no idea who she is.” She cries into her hands.
“Does she work with you? The Senator?”
“What do you know about my work with the Senator?” Her nostrils flare.
The FBI agents are back behind us, apparently unable to find anyone in the house, which should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. Jax and Mike are still there, but I’ve forgotten them as I stare down my mother.
“Enough,” I spit out. “Enough to know you’re into illegal research. That memory storage is nothing but a cover.”
Mom gasps. “You went through my papers? In my office? Damn it, Lara! Do you have any idea what you’ve done!”
My chest puffs up. “Well, excuse me if I needed information. I needed answers, and you never give me anything. Everything is all hugs and kisses, and oh, we’ll go on vacation soon, but you know what? Vacation never comes. You’ve been saying this for years. Years! So what’s so damn important that you can’t talk to me? Spend time with us? We were supposed to be a family!”
Mom cries into her fist, but I don't care.
“Why is working for the Senator so important that you’d throw us all away!”
Jax tugs on my shoulders. “Enough, Lara! Your mom has been through enough. Up to your room.”
I spin on my heels, wanting to wave my finger in his face. He doesn’t know what I’ve done, what I’ve given up.
“Now, young lady,” Jax scolds me with brow furrowed, peering down at me over his nose. He’s never looked at me like that. Ever.
I need to do what he says, and I have never felt so alone.
Up in my room, I swallow my pain medicine, take a few sips of water, and set my alarm. Angry as I am, all I can think about is my plan to save Molly.
I wake up in the dark with my head throbbing and waves of pain colliding into me. The red glow from the clock blinking 8:00 PM is all I can see. The ticking of my heart in my brain is louder than it should be.
I groan, fall to my knees beside the bed, and squeeze the bridge of my nose. This is it. Whatever time travel sickness is, it’s going to claim me. I feel as if someone is taking a vegetable peeler up and down my bones, exposing muscle, and then pouring salt over my open wounds.
I manage to crawl over to the desk and snap on my desk lamp after several tries. My limbs don’t want to listen to the commands I give them. I reach up, find my bottle of ibuprofen, and fumble with the lid.
The pressure in my head builds as tablets spill everywhere. I scoop some up and swallow them dry. I’m not even sure how many, but I’m in misery, and I might go insane if this agony doesn’t stop. I rest my head on the desk as tears dribble down my cheeks. I hear banging at my door and realize I've been screaming.
“Lara?” Jax bangs again.
“Daddy?”
Briefly, a vision dances just out of my sight. It ebbs and flows out of my reach like a skipping record on a DJ's turntable. My fingers grip the carpet, and as the pounding in my brain gets worse, I eke out a scream and fold forward, cowering, tearing at the fibers. I never thought pain could be this intense. My body fights the vision, part of me desperate to hold back the oncoming memory. My door is kicked open, and the crack of the wood slamming into the wall makes my brain burn.
“Oh my God, Lara!” Jax takes me by the shoulders and pulls me back onto his chest. I quake in a spasm, his touch alone enough to drive me to shrieks. “Miranda!” he screams, unaware how badly he’s hurting me.
I glance up at him and mumble, “I’m sorry.”
Those are surely my last words. His face spins, but as the world begins to dim, my brain clicks like a puzzle.
Mom screams and clutches at my legs. “Baby? Lara! How many pills did you take?”
As my consciousness begins to slip away, I can only stare up at Jax’s face. It’s older than I remember. Before, his hair was black and his eyes brown instead of blue.
But I am certain, one hundred percent certain.
He’s the shooter from the alley.
Chapter Sixteen
Mom and Jax stay with me while the ambulance comes. While I am aware of them touching me, begging me to hold on, my mind isn’t there.
It’s elsewhere, gone.
In the past.
****
I hurry determinedly down the hall of an office building between two rows of cubicles, as though I belong there and know exactly where I’m going. I am dressed in blue heels, skinny jeans, and a dark blazer. A visitor’s pass flaps from my lapel, and over my shoulder I carry my backpack. Telephones around me buzz, and people are leaned back, wearing headsets and taking calls. Must be a sales area.
I come to an office door. The brass plate in the center says Jax Montgomery. Glancing over my shoulder, I bite my lip before giving a pretend knock and slipping inside. His office has a glorious view of the Boston skyline. I quickly draw the shades, take off my backpack, and hurry over to his desk, which is covered in photos of our family and me. Seeing them, I burn with a red hot rage, but I push it down, so I can go through his desk drawers.
I don’t find what I’m searching for there, but I do manage to gain access to his computer with his password and find one of the documents I need. While it prints, I run to the filing cabinet and search those drawers one at a time. Coming up empty, I move to the larger cabinet against the wall and find a manila folder under a stack of papers.
Bending down, I balance it on my knee as I flip through the records—Names, dates, everything I need. I also find black and white photos of Dad—my real dad, John Crane—taken with a long lens. They are surveillance photos, ones of my mom on her daily walk to work, the day some unknown person saved her, and my life changed forever. The day I lost my dad.
I’ll do anything to get him back.
Anything.
I have to try.
Running back to the computer, I stick in my flash drive. Rewind must be stopped. I copy over every file I can find about their mind-scrubbing technology. Although new, they will perfect it with time. They will use it on people.
I can’t let that happen. Jax, my Mom, the Senator, I am going to bring them all down. What first started as an investigation about my dad has now turned into a crusade. It’s bigger than me and my dad. It’s about a million people’s lives and what will happen if the Senator keeps her power.
But I’ve connected the dots. The Senator is responsible for trying to have my mom killed because she wanted to leave Rewind. And when that failed, she framed my dad. Afterwards, Mom changed her mind about leaving Rewind and fell deeper into research, trying to bury the pain of what John Crane did to her. And through it all, the responsible party wooed and married her and became my stepfather.
They all deserve to burn in hell.
The doorknob turns, and I pull my flash drive free. I won’t be safe with the data until I get it to Joyce Meyers, so she can bring it to the press. I run to the printer and shove the papers into my backpack. As Jax steps into the room, I finish zipping it up and sling it over my shoulder. Steadying my breath, I brush my perfectly straight hair out of my face.
“Hi Daddy,” I say and grin from ear to ear.
Jax masks his surprise with a smile and comes over to kiss my cheek. I do my best not to grit my teeth
or clench my jaw. He always notices stuff like that. “Well, I didn’t know you were coming today. We have a lunch date I forgot about?”
I shake my head. “Nothing official. Only here to apply for the internship next year.” I hold up the badge I’m wearing around my neck.
His face lights up with pride, and he sits on the edge of his desk. “We’d be lucky to have you here. You are a chip off the old block.”
I smile and nod, something I’m good at these days.
“Why don’t I take you to lunch anyway? We don’t get to do it enough anymore.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder and gives me a squeeze. I remember when I loved it. I remember when I loved him, but all I feel now is betrayal, and when I tried to talk to Mom, she blew me off as though I were a liar, a freak. All I want is to know the truth. My dad—the man I only remember in flashes—deserves to know too.
“I’d love it,” I say, and we link hands as we leave his office. I watch him in my periphery, but my eye is trained on the prize.
It’s almost time to put my plan into motion.
****
Consciousness slams back into my body. With my eyes closed, I hear the soft hum of machines and sense the presence of people around me. I try to process what happened, what I know.
The Lara I was pieced together the details of Mom’s attempted murder and knew she could find a trail back to her stepfather. All those memories of Jax loving me and tucking me into bed cut me like a knife.
But why?
Why do that to us? Why marry the woman he wanted dead and then keep her alive all these years? Why have children with her? Why be so kind to me? Was he too working for Senator Patricia James and keeping an eye on my mother, so she wouldn’t step out of line?
Did he ever really love me?
It can’t matter. My real dad has spent the last ten years of his life in prison, and I have to get him out. I have to finish what Lara started even if it means pissing off my mom, who let’s face it, is pretty mad at me to begin with.
The first step is for me to get out of here somehow and get to Lara’s stash, so I can piece together her plan and whether she let anyone in on her secret. More than once Donovan has referenced the plan, but I thought it was a shallow reference to the prom. What if I was wrong? What if I was wrong about everything?
I try to raise my eyelids, which feel weighted with stones. At first, my vision is blurry, as if I’m peering up from beneath water. My parents are talking at the foot of my bed. Out the window beyond them I see what appears to be the dawn sky with a trace of morning in the clouds.
How long was I out, and how has my injury inconvenienced Molly’s kidnappers? If there was a kidnapper at all. Given the circumstances, I have no choice but to suspect Jax was involved.
My hand creeps up my face to the oxygen tubes inside my nostrils. How far has my health deteriorated? I must have given my mom quite a scare. I only hope I have enough time.
“Mom?” I finally croak out, sounding like an old man.
Her head jerks towards me, and she rushes to sit beside me. In one hand, she has a death grip on a tissue, and with the other she strokes my hair.
“Lara, baby?” I don’t think she can say anything else as her body appears rocked with emotion. When she leans down to hug me, I cherish it.
“I’ll get the doctor.” Jax says and steps out into the hall.
I grip Mom’s arms as she hugs me, burying her face in my hair. This is the closest I’ve felt to her since I changed the past. Part of me cherishes it, and another part wants to keep my distance because I don’t know how long it’s going to last.
“I’m sorry.” I edge the words out of my mouth like a reluctant jumper. “About Molly. About—”
She shakes her head, eyes squeezed shut. “You didn’t know. It wasn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have … I shouldn’t have made you feel like it was your fault.” Her voice quivers, and the tears in her voice make it almost impossible to understand her. “I’m the one who is never around. It’s my fault. Mine.”
“No, Mom—” I shake my head, wanting to tell her everything that’s wrong—why Jax is married to her.
“To think, you took all those pills because of me, of how I treated you.” She blinks and laughs bitterly, such as when your emotions are so strong, you have no options left. “You’ve said before how I make you feel, but I never knew … how true it was.”
“Mom.” I gain strength as she takes a deep breath. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I only wanted to stop the pain. My head …”
She nods quickly, seeming to know the answer I’m about to give, but the lines on her face tell me she doesn’t believe me. She really thinks I was going to kill myself. All these years with me and she doesn’t know Lara Montgomery at all. But my dad, John Crane, he’d know I never give up. No matter what.
The door opens, and a doctor comes in with Jax. Mom stands and shakes his free hand. In the other he carries an X-ray. He smiles at me, the type of smile you never want to see. Forced, required. One you give someone sick, not someone about to get better. But at least my head is no longer splitting in two, giving me hope that all this might be coming to an end. Which, considering I have a baby sister to rescue, a father to free, and a stepfather I need to prove murdered my mother in another timeline, is a good thing.
I tune out their conversation. The doctor slides my MRI Scans against a backlit frame, and I watch the picture of my brain glow to life. Something about it stills the room. Even though I have no idea what I’m looking at, my heart is in my throat, preventing me from swallowing. I can barely even breathe.
Mom’s eyes twitch, and her hand covers her mouth. “That’s not possible,” she mutters to herself.
“Impossible as it is, I wish I could give you better news. I’m sorry, Ms. Montgomery.” The doctor’s eyes are on me, and the sadness in them says my diagnosis isn’t good, that I don’t have much time left. But I don’t believe him. I can’t.
“The bleeding in your brain is severe. I’m not sure if I can stop it. A neurosurgeon is on his way. He’ll see you as soon as he gets here.”
I go numb. Even my fingers won’t work right. I nod my head and glance at my grief-stricken mother before my eyes fall to Jax. His face is crestfallen and his eyes moist. I can’t help but wonder why he worries so much whether I live or die. I’m not his, and all of this is his fault anyway, so why care so damn much?
“The IV drip should keep you comfortable until the specialist arrives.” He pauses, but no one moves to speak. Does he expect us to thank him?
I shouldn’t be surprised at my brain injury. I signed up for it the moment I jumped into the past. I have no one to blame but myself, but I’m still angry I didn't get the fairytale I wanted.
The silence is interrupted as the door shuts behind the doctor. No one moves or speaks. Jax grips my foot. His eyes are intense as they lock with mine, and his chin trembles as he strives to regain control.
“I would like some time alone with Lara,” Mom says with a hushed voice, as though speaking over a grave. Her face has gone cold as ice, practically unreadable. “Head home, in case the kidnapper calls.”
Jax blinks, surprise lighting up his face like a freeway sign. “I can’t leave.”
Mom folds a corner of my blanket repeatedly, her head ducked too far down for me to read her expression. “Think of Molly. We can’t abandon her. Please, Jax.”
The silence multiplies the space between us until I feel stranded in the middle of a desert. Jax walks over. I try my hardest not to look at him, but I finally let him grip my hand as I turn my head. I am perplexed by his concern for me. He pivots and leaves without a final word. It’s better that way I tell myself, but it still stings.
Mom stands up and goes to the wall, staring at my brain scan. I hold my breath as her finger traces over the gaps between my hemispheres, signifying small pools of blood.
“I’ve seen this before.” Her voice is high, unnatural, barely holding her emotion together.
“I’ve seen this a million times, so why don’t you tell me what you’ve done.”
Licking my lips, I consider how I should play it. “I’m not sure what you mean.” Denial still seems my best alternative.
She spins to me. Her face is harried, as if she’s spent all night pacing in the wings. It’s possible she has. She’s at my bedside in a moment’s breath and gripping the sheet around my body.
“I work with time travel for a living, Lara. I’ve seen the case studies for those that tried to change their past.” Her arm reaches straight out to point at the wall. “And that is it. I’ve watched them suffer, and then I’ve watched them die. So why don’t you tell me ... ” Her eyes are a blaze of anger, but her lips scrunch, “… if it was worth it.”
My eyes fall away to the bed, and I shake my head as she sits beside me and takes me by the shoulders. “I didn’t—”
“You hate our life with Jax so much you’ve invented this story. You think of your father as an innocent cub, but was it really worth your life being over?”
I remain silent, and she shakes me.
“Lara Montgomery! Answer me!”
I look up at her, and rage builds in my chest so intense I think I might choke on it. I grit my teeth and whisper, “My name’s Lara Crane, and I’m not who you think I am.”
Chapter Seventeen
The color drains from Mom’s face, and she sits on the seat beside my bed. It makes sense she would assume I’m her Lara, out to prove to everyone John Crane was innocent of murder. Now I know a very important fact: Lara told Mom about her suspicions that Jax framed John Crane.
But did Mom tell Jax or had it been a secret between us?
