Time Search

by Danele J Rotharmel

  His shoulders were slumped. His discouragement was obvious. She wanted to comfort him, but she didn’t know how.

  Zeke opened the door and waited for her to go through.

  When they’d walked to the common area, Zeke said, “Cris, I need to apologize to you.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “What for?”

  “When I arranged for Marc to take you out, I put you in danger,” he replied. His voice sounded choked. “If I hadn’t interfered, you never would have gone with him, and you never would have been hurt.”

  She shook her head. “You silly man. I’m fine.”

  “Regardless, I’m sorry.”

  “Apology accepted, but really, you did me a favor. Marc and I may’ve had some trouble that night, but we’ve been getting along wonderfully ever since. In fact, I think he’s going to become one of my best friends.”

  “Crystal,” Zeke said softly, “be careful. A man who is abusive doesn’t change overnight. It’s unlikely that he’ll change at all. A man who hits a woman may promise to stop, but he rarely does.”

  Crystal looked at Zeke in shock. “Marc didn’t hit me. He just kissed me.”

  “He kissed you against your will, and he split your lip.”

  “My lip was split by my own teeth when I was trying to turn my head away. Marc didn’t hit me. And as far as the kiss, I wasn’t blameless.”

  “Don’t say that! You can’t—”

  “Shush,” Crystal said firmly, cutting him off. “You need to listen. I’ve been thinking about it, and my actions before the kiss were extremely provocative.” She felt her face blush. “During our last dance, I was pretending to be Grace Kelly. In the movie, during the waltz, Grace kept moving closer to the professor. I could feel Marc trying to keep distance between us, but I kept moving closer just like Grace did. Grace slid her arm around the professor’s neck, and so I slid my arm up around Marc’s neck. I was so busy trying to do what Grace did that I wasn’t paying attention to the effect it was having on Marc.”

  “It shouldn’t have mattered.”

  “Maybe not, but I didn’t object when he took me out to the balcony,” Crystal confessed in a tiny voice. “If I had, the kiss never would have happened. I think that subconsciously, I wanted Marc to kiss me. I never actually thought he would, but…”

  “You may have thought it’d be nice to be kissed, but not like that.”

  “No. Not like that,” she admitted with a shudder. “But even though Marc kissed me more passionately than I wanted, he didn’t physically hurt me or grope me. And if I’d been wiser, I could have headed things off.”

  “He still overpowered you.”

  “When I slapped him, he backed off. If he’d been intent on forcing himself on me, he could have easily done it.”

  Silence fell.

  “Zeke,” Crystal said, “you’ve known Marc for years, and he’s never done anything like that before, has he?”

  “No,” Zeke admitted, “he hasn’t.”

  “Then I don’t think it’s fair to call him abusive. Trust me. If Marc was exhibiting a pattern of abusive behavior, I’d avoid him like the plague. I’m pretty good at reading people, and I believe Marc when he says he’ll never do anything like that again. Since that night, he’s treated me with complete respect. I believe he’s a good man who just made a bad mistake.”

  Zeke sighed. “You have a big heart, Cris. I hope it doesn’t get broken.”

  “If it does, it’ll be my own fault and no one else’s. But my heart’s not on the line. It’s not as if Marc and I are dating. We’re just friends.”

  “That could change.”

  Crystal snorted. “Fat chance of that. Over the years, I’ve seen the sort of girls he’s gone out with, and I’m not his type at all. The chance of us getting together as a couple is statistically less than 7.8 percent.” She gave Zeke’s hand a squeeze. “I want you to be Marc’s friend again.”

  “That’s between me and him,” Zeke said stiffly.

  “I know,” Crystal replied. “I just don’t want you hurt, and unforgiveness will hurt you dreadfully.”

  Zeke didn’t respond, but she could tell he was weighing her words.

  When they arrived back at headquarters, Crystal saw Marc shooting her an anxious glance. Giving him a reassuring smile, she knelt on her butcher paper and picked up a marker.

  ~*~

  Gerald slowly—painfully—began freeing himself from his tomb. Pushing aside branches, he made a hole in the mound of debris. Like a bird freeing itself from an egg, he started slithering through the gap. He emerged inch by painful inch until he was shivering on the forest floor. He tried to stand, but he didn’t have the strength. Rolling onto his stomach, he belly crawled a few feet and then lay panting. Next to his elbow was a murky puddle of water. Without hesitation, he pulled himself toward it and drank.

  ~*~

  When Alex finished his devotions, he left the tranquil woods to go make lunch. As he approached the cabin, he could feel his muscles tensing. He knew Phoebe was going to try and hurt him again, and he wanted to react in love. Praying beneath his breath, he glanced around. She wasn’t by the horses or her rabbit hutch. His anxiety level rose. She must be inside the cabin.

  Setting his Bible on the porch swing, he smoothed his windblown hair and straightened his collar. Taking a deep breath, he pinned a smile on his face. As he opened the door, he called out cheerfully, “Phoebe, are you here?”

  There wasn’t an answer.

  Alex stepped over the threshold and froze. Phoebe was standing in the middle of the living room in front of an open temporal portal. His shotgun was set firmly against her shoulder, and she was pointing it toward the shimmering, blue timewave. He didn’t know how she’d found the Wave Trapper Poppa had lent him.

  Being careful not to spook her, he walked slowly forward. “What are you doing?” he asked quietly.

  Phoebe kept the shotgun raised. She didn’t look at him. “I’m ending my nightmare,” she snapped. “The attack didn’t have to happen, and I’m going to make sure that it doesn’t. God didn’t care enough to save me, so I’m going to save myself.”

  He inched closer. Through the wavering glow of the portal, he could see an empty corridor and the closed door of the TEMCO lab.

  “How are you going to save yourself?” he asked.

  Phoebe gave him a brief glare. “I’ve opened a time portal to the day when Drake and I took our field exam. While we were waiting in the TEMCO lab, Drake stepped into the hall to stretch his legs. That means, in just a little while, he’s going to be coming out the lab door and walking down the hallway. When he does, I’m blowing him away. If I kill him before our final exam takes place, he’ll never have the chance to kidnap me.”

  Alex stepped a little closer. “You can’t do that.”

  “Why?” she spat. “Because then we’ll never meet, and you won’t get your wife?”

  “I haven’t asked you to be my wife,” he said calmly. “And you’re making an assumption thinking we’ll ever be married.”

  Phoebe blinked. “You don’t want to marry me?”

  “At the moment, no,” he replied. “I will stand by you, love you, and help you. But right now, I will not enter into a marriage covenant with you.” He inched closer. “Whether we marry or not has nothing to do with why you can’t pull that trigger.”

  She settled the shotgun tighter against her shoulder. “I have the gun. It seems to me that I can shoot him if I want.”

  “No,” he said firmly, “you can’t. If you do, it will destroy you. In the Bible, there are some things that God warns us to avoid because they belong to Him. Vengeance is one of them. A human being has no right to revenge. If you take the law into your own hands, you’ll be opposing God Himself.”

  “I don’t care! What happened to me should never have taken place.”

  “I know you don’t understand why God let you face torture. I don’t either. But God knows what’s going to happen in the future.”


  “God’s a jerk! Leave Him out of this!”

  “If you don’t want to talk about God, let’s talk about Twinkles. I know you don’t trust her, but I do. She isn’t a mean person. She would never allow something bad to happen unless it led to a greater good.”

  Phoebe shook her head. “I don’t care! Just shut up!”

  Knowing that he wasn’t getting through to her, Alex changed tactics and deliberately hardened his voice. “You were trained at TEMCO. Tell me, why are time surfers forbidden to carry weapons?”

  She shrugged a shoulder.

  “Tell me, cadet!”

  She glared at him. “A stray bullet hitting the wrong person can cause a Time Tsunami that will destroy the timeline.”

  “How do you know that it’s safe to kill Drake? How do you know that he’s not vital to the timeline? God will bring him to justice. Scripture says it’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. God will make Drake suffer more than you ever could.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Twinkles knows something we don’t. If you kill Drake, whatever good thing she’s trying to protect may be destroyed.”

  Phoebe’s hands began to shake. “It’s not fair!” she murmured brokenly. “Why did I have to be the one to suffer? What did I ever do?”

  Inching closer, he said softly, “You didn’t do anything to deserve it, and it isn’t fair. But neither God nor Twinkles would’ve allowed what happened unless it was going to lead to something good.”

  Tears streamed down Phoebe’s face. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  Stepping in front of the gun, Alex pressed his chest against the muzzle. “Believe that I care deeply about you. Believe that I would rather die than see you destroy yourself. Vengeance belongs only to God. You can’t do this, and you know it.”

  Phoebe tried to turn the gun away, but he held the barrel against his chest with both hands.

  “If you’re going to shoot Drake,” he said, “you’ll have to shoot through my body to do it.”

  Phoebe loosened her grip on the gun, allowing Alex to take it from her.

  Covering her face with her hands, she sobbed. “Why didn’t you let me do it? Why did you have to get in the way?”

  “Because I love you,” he said, setting the gun on the floor and gathering her into his arms.

  “But I hate you.”

  “I know, but your hatred of me won’t change my love for you.”

  Yanking herself from his embrace, she ran from the cabin.

  Alex watched her go. His hands were trembling as he picked up the shotgun. Suddenly, he heard a door opening. Through the blue wave, he saw Drake stepping into the hallway. It was obvious that Drake wasn’t aware that a time portal was open behind his back.

  Alex’s brow lowered. Thinking of all that Phoebe had been through, a blinding rage overwhelmed him. He wouldn’t let Phoebe destroy herself by shooting Drake, but she wouldn’t be hurt if he shot Drake for her. She deserved to live in peace—and that monster deserved to be slaughtered.

  In one swift motion, Alex pulled his shotgun against his shoulder and took aim at the back of Drake’s head. At such close range, he knew he wouldn’t miss.

  Just as his finger was gently squeezing the trigger, he heard a still, small voice deep in his soul. “Vengeance belongs only to Me. I will repay.”

  Slowly, he lowered the shotgun and set it on the couch.

  As he watched Drake walking down the hall, the voice came again with such urgency that it made Alex’s heart lurch. “Turn off the portal, now!”

  Alex dove for the Wave Trapper. In his haste, he knocked over a chair. The Trapper closed with a metallic click. The timewave dissipated in a swirl of blue light.

  He was breathing hard. Something awful had almost happened, but he didn’t know what. “God,” he cried, “what was wrong?”

  Drake was about to turn around.

  “Why would that matter?” Alex mused. But even as he spoke, his stomach twisted in horror. If Drake had turned around, he would’ve seen him standing in the time portal.

  Alex sagged to the floor with his head in his hands. Feeling sick, he muttered, “If Drake had seen me in the portal days before we met at the hospital, he would’ve known that he had the right room. I wouldn’t have been able to convince him to leave. He would’ve entered Phoebe’s hospital room and killed her.”

  His body began to shake. “God,” he groaned, “did I shut the portal down quickly enough?”

  “You listened and shut it down in time. He never saw you.”

  Alex put a shaking hand to his forehead. He couldn’t believe the tragedy that had almost taken place because of one moment of self-indulgence. One moment of contemplating revenge, and he’d almost gotten Phoebe killed.

  Rising slowly to his feet, he picked up the shotgun and removed the shells. After a moment of thought, he hid the shotgun underneath his bed and put the shells in a drawer beneath his socks. Going back to the living room, he hid the Wave Trapper on top of a bookshelf where it would be out of Phoebe’s sight. He didn’t think that a loaded gun and an accessible Wave Trapper were a safe combination to have in his house—at least, not at the moment.

  ~*~

  When Nicole entered headquarters to take Zeke to lunch, she saw him hunched over his keyboard with sweat beading his brow. Crystal was hanging over his shoulder, reading his computer screen. Marc was hovering in the wings—obviously trying to see while staying out of the way. The tension in the room was overpowering.

  Nicole sprinted across the floor. “Was another Wave Trapper portal initiated?”

  Pushing at her unruly bangs, Crystal nodded. “It stayed open for eight minutes and seventeen seconds before it closed. Zeke is checking to see whether Drake’s DNA profile was detected. If Drake has stolen a Wave Trapper and traveled into the past, we’re in the suds. We’re not ready to follow him. We don’t know his real name or his destination.”

  Removing his glasses, Zeke leaned back and rubbed his eyes. “It was another false alarm. I need to narrow the warning system’s parameters. I don’t know what’s going on, but something benign keeps tripping the alarm.”

  Squeezing his shoulder, Nicole said softly, “You have a migraine, don’t you?” Seeing the uneven dilation of his eyes, she asked, “Did you give yourself an injection to stop the pain?”

  He nodded. “About an hour ago.”

  “It didn’t work, did it?”

  Zeke didn’t reply.

  “Come on, mister,” Nicole said in a businesslike voice. “Let’s go. You’re on sick leave until the migraine passes.”

  Zeke pushed at his glasses. “If you give me a few minutes, I can adjust the warning system and put an end to the false alarms.”

  Looking at his determined face, she nodded. “You have thirty minutes, starting now.”

  Zeke turned back to his computer. His hands flew across the keyboard. Crystal and Marc went back to their desks while Nicole sat by Zeke and watched him work.

  Twenty minutes later, Zeke sighed. “That should do it,” he said. “The alarm should only sound when Drake’s DNA profile is detected near an open temporal portal.”

  “Good,” she replied. “Let’s get you home.”

  He hesitated. “I really should stay and work.”

  “Nonsense,” Crystal said firmly, rising from her chair. “Marc and I have things under control. If you don’t take care of that migraine, it’ll turn into a monster.”

  “I’m not sure…” Zeke murmured.

  Nicole studied his face, it was obvious that he was in extreme pain but was too stubborn to admit it. She looked at Crystal. Crystal nodded in agreement. Together, they each took one of his arms and pulled him from his chair.

  He laughed. “I guess there’s no use arguing with two determined females.”

  “No use at all,” Nicole agreed. “I’m taking you home, and we’re pulling the shades and hunkering down until you stop hurting.”

  Zeke handed
Crystal a small, red box. “Keep your ears open for the alarm. When you leave headquarters, you can monitor the warning system with this device. If Drake travels through a portal, let me know immediately.”

  “Don’t worry,” Crystal said. “Marc and I can handle it.”

  ~*~

  With blurry vision, Gerald stared at a dark stain that was discoloring the ground a few feet away from him. He shuddered, realizing that he was looking at a pool of dried blood. The dark spot marked where he’d been attacked. Turning his face, he crawled a few feet, pulling himself further away from the horrifying sight. The movement caused pain to sear through every inch of his body.

  He needed to get to the road. He just didn’t know how he was going to do it. He’d have to crawl, and the road seemed a million miles away. Even as he thought about giving up, he remembered Maria. He pictured her brilliant, black eyes and glossy hair. The sound of her laughter. The feel of her lips against his own.

  “I have to get back to her,” he murmured. “I have to tell her how much I care.”

  Gritting his teeth and biting back a groan, he pulled himself toward the path.

  30

  After putting the finishing touches on lunch, Alex went outside to find Phoebe. He shaded his eyes against the sun as a pickup pulled into the driveway. His face broke into a smile when he realized that it belonged to his neighbor, Russ Elton. The knot in Alex’s stomach loosened. It was good to see a friendly face.

  Rolling down his window, Russ shouted, “Hello, stranger.”

  “Hello, yourself,” Alex replied cheerfully, leaning against the hood of the pickup. He pointed at the crate of white ducks in the back. “Have something for me?”

  “Sure do. I received another shipment of animals this morning, and the ducks were among them. As arranged, I brought you six.” Russ chuckled. “If you want some peacocks, let me know. I’m thinking of getting rid of mine. They make a horrible racket. If their tails weren’t so pretty, they’d already be toes up and plucked for Sunday dinner.”

  Alex laughed. “No peacocks right now, thank you.”

  “How ’bout an ornery llama? The silly thing keeps spitting whenever I walk by her pen. You’d think she’d realize that I’m feeding her and be polite.”