Norm nudged Jack out of his reverie. “Time for grub, Jack.”
Jack was glad for the distraction. Of course they’d win. They had to. Jack got up and shrugged on his jacket, huddling into it as they emerged from the Quonset hut into the cold English wind. A damp chill cut through all his layers like they weren’t there.
“You going to Cambridge tonight?” Norm asked, as they paused in a sheltered spot to light up.
“I don’t know,” Jack said, inhaling the smoke deep into his lungs. He’d only started smoking since he joined up, but it did calm the nerves. “You?”
“Wouldn’t mind a break,” Norm said, leaning close so he could use Jack’s match to light his cig.
“Everybody’s stir crazy,” Jack said. They were all going through the motions. Everyone had some kind of practice area rigged up. Even Fitz, their ball turret gunner, had to spend hours in the stand-alone ball, spinning and aiming until his brains were thoroughly scrambled. Jack shook his head. With Fitz, it might be more accurate to say they were getting unscrambled. And their gunners were sick of shooting every day on the butts. They all felt like they were pedaling in place. At least a trip into Cambridge would be a change of scene. He tossed his cig down and ground it out with his foot. “Let’s do it. I wouldn’t mind a break either.”
At least Norm wouldn’t try to set him up with anyone. His heart, and all the parts connected to said heart, belonged to his wife, Elaine.
With shoulders hunched against the cold, they headed for the mess.
* * * * *
Present Day four weeks later.
Once again Mel found herself sitting on a hard bench in an airplane preparing to do something she’d rather not, only this time without the option to cry uncle. It was a pity, because now she was more than ready to do it. Luckily she was still freaking stubborn, or maybe it was pride that kept her from crying like a baby. And Jack. What was it about him that kept her from wimping out? She couldn’t pinpoint the moment when she started to believe Jack could hurl her through time. Or maybe it wasn’t time travel she believed in, but the man. He had plenty of confidence layered over a soul-deep sadness.
She huddled deeper in the vintage coat that went with the rather sassy and also vintage nineteen-thirties suit of Gran’s. Neither was up to the task of keeping her warm in the cargo plane, not with the hatch open. The suit’s colors were sober, and the fit was uncomfortable, but it wasn’t the worst thing she had on. No, the top honors in awfulness had to go to what she was wearing under Gran’s clothes. There was the evil and unrelenting girdle that held up her cotton stockings. If she made it back, she’d never curse her pantyhose again. The bra was worse than the cotton hose and girdle. No wonder her mother’s generation had burned them.
So they wouldn’t get lost during the buffeting from the vortex, Mel had commandeered one of Gran’s large and ugly clutch bags and tucked in it Gran’s sassy little matching hat, along with Gran’s sophisticated street shoes, according to an old catalog Jack had showed her during her prep period, and as many other necessaries as it would hold, all hideous and time-line contamination proof—with a few exceptions she felt guilty about. The catalog claimed the shoes were comfortable, but Mel’s feet vehemently disagreed the one time she’d tried them on. The toes were too narrow and Mel hadn’t worn high heels since her brain returned to her body at the end of puberty.
Despite her dislike of the shoes, she was hoping she’d be able to hold on to the bag during the jump through time. If she couldn’t, she’d end up in the past, shoeless and hatless—and without a change of underwear. Her Doc Martens and backpack would have made it just fine, but apparently the time line couldn’t survive the contamination. It could survive her presence but not that of comfortable shoes. Clearly men were in charge of the op.
Important documents, like her identity papers, American and British money, ration card and the orders that would get her on the base, were in a money belt strapped around her middle. Arriving without those would doom the mission.
She was also carrying a computer chip, though not in her gear. No, it had been surgically implanted in the fleshy part of her tush. It was her ticket home. It seemed that returning was easier than going. The vortex would home in on her tush and suck her up like a vacuum cleaner. The ride, Jack had informed her, would be a bit rough, but she wouldn’t feel the landing, just re-emerge in her own life at some point. And if something went wrong, the chip was designed to destroy itself.
With acid. Unless the vortex vacuumed her up.
A great thing to have in your tush.
It was, however, a good match for her vintage wrist watch.
As soon as she’d arrived at Jack’s secure facility, they’d started bombarding her photographic memory with photos and information about the war. Faces of who was friendly, who wasn’t.
“You need to know the players, so you don’t impact the time line again,” Jack told her, when she asked him why.
“You’re sending me to the Germans with my head stuffed full of everything they’d need to change the course of the war. That can’t be a good thing,” she’d felt driven to point out.
“We did think of that.”
Something in Jack’s expression had worried her. Amazing. And just when she’d thought she was saturated with worry. He’d produced the watch. Mel had examined it, but found nothing about it that impressed her. It looked old, like her clothes and harmless. She shook it. It ticked back at her, unperturbed.
“What?”
“It’s a dead man’s watch,” he said. “If it’s not removed properly, a needle will inject you with cyanide.” Jack caught the watch as it slipped from her fingers. “We’ll wait to put it on until just before your jump. And we’ll show you how to remove it safely.”
“Good idea,” she’d muttered. A good thing she couldn’t forget how to take it off. But what if it malfunctioned? She shivered. If it did, she’d only know it for a couple of seconds.
“Cold?” Jack asked, drawing her back to the present. He sat across from her in the belly of the plane, buried in enough expensive clothes to keep his old bones comfortably warm. She’d never asked him where his money came from or who had funded the time travel research. Or if they knew about the mission. Or how it all worked. It wasn’t need-to-know when she had a brain that couldn’t forget. And she’d had plenty of other stuff to think about instead.
“A little.” Scared out of her mind is what she was. The past weeks had passed in a breath-stealing rush, while still managing to be slow. How ironic to have both too much and too little time on her hands.
No surprise, some events from the past few weeks were burned into her brain.
For instance, there was the day Jack went over the time line of events with her, starting a month prior to the last mission. He showed her a map of the places in London that had been bombed, so she could avoid those and gave her some suggestions about places she might find lodging. She loved that night. He didn’t have to tell her that that would be only one of many challenges. War-time London had been a crazy place.
“You shouldn’t go to the base until a day or two before the mission.”
“Why not?” Mel asked.
For the second time since their first meeting, he avoided her gaze. “You didn’t fit in.” A sort of smile flickered across his face. “I was suspicious of you back then. I expect I will be again.”
“But, isn’t all this stuff supposed to help me fit in?” She gestured toward the piles of papers she’d been scanning into her memory and the period clothing.
Now he grinned. “Clothes may make the woman, but they can’t change who you are and when you were born. Women were…different back then, Mel. Even the way you walk gives you away.”
“What’s wrong with the way I walk?” Mel shifted her hips and Jack laughed.
“Nothing.” He looked wry and reflective. “Nothing at all. But it’s nothing like women walked back then. For one thing, you’ve still got that SEAL edge. It challenges. Not some
thing women did a lot–at least not in an I can take you kind of walk.”
“Oh.” Mel smiled slowly. “Well, I can. Can’t change that now.”
Something sparked in his eyes. “Wouldn’t want you to. It’s one of the things that makes you so well suited to this mission.”
The mission. She’d wanted to know what drove people like her father and grandfather. People like Jack. Soldiers and cops. People who put themselves in danger for the benefit of others. The question had propelled her into her career as she sought to understand her grandfather, in hopes it would mend that rift in her heart. Now she knew how little she’d gotten it. Going through the training, all of it had still only put her on the edges of the fire. The view was good, better than turning a blind eye. But in the end, the only way to know about something was to do it. Like the Garth Brooks song, she’d stood outside the fire.
Now she was getting ready to jump into it.
Without a parachute.
And with the growing feeling there was something in the past that Jack hadn’t told her. She hadn’t been able to put her finger on where the feeling was coming from. Jack had been friendly, but distant. Brisk and professional. Informative–but not. And all through the prep and briefing, she’d felt his eyes on her, known the minute he looked away. It was as if they were connected by an invisible line of tension. It was weird and unsettling to meet that gaze and see knowledge in them that she didn’t yet have. One night at dinner in the cozy, very masculine dining room that made up part of his living quarters in the complex, she asked him flat out what it was.
“What do you mean?” His face closed like a book and became excessively polite in the subdued lighting that reflected gold off the rich wood of the table. The good smells of great food lingered in the air between them and almost made her forget why she was here. Almost.
“What aren’t you telling me?” All she’d learned, all she’d felt began to come together in her head. She picked up the cut crystal glass and took a sip of water. “We screwed up the time line, but more than that is driving you, isn’t it?” When he didn’t answer, she added impatiently, “Jack, I have to know. Or it could happen again.”
He looked at her then, and for a moment, his eyes opened to hers, giving her glimpse of hell before he shuttered those windows. She could see him consider and decide, but until he spoke, she didn’t know what he’d decided.
“Your last…visit…ended badly,” he admitted. She arched her brows and he added, “Your mission was to save Ric and you did…but…” he hesitated, his gaze leaving hers briefly before returning to give her another glimpse into his personal hell. “You…died.”
She stared at him. Died? I died? Her brain couldn’t process it. How could she be dead when she was alive?
“And now here you are,” he said.
Mel was quiet for a moment, processing this new information, or at least trying to. “Wouldn’t it be better if I didn’t go back again? Wouldn’t my not going change things without intervention?” She really liked that idea.
“Don’t you think I haven’t thought of that? And everything else I could in the last sixty years?” He shoved his hands through his hair, wreaking charming havoc. “You already went. We met. You died in France. It happened. It’s done. It’s already your future.” He pushed back his chair and stood up, pacing away from her to the window that overlooked the paved inner yard of the compound, before turning to face her. “If we do nothing, it’s entirely probable that who you are now will cease to exist when who you were returns to the future. In the future, in the past, you jumped today. And three weeks from now, on Christmas Day, is when you’ll return. Unless you change the outcome.”
“How can I guarantee I won’t be killed again? I’m going to a freaking war.”
“You can’t entirely, but you died when you tried to save us. If you don’t do that again, if you let events play out the way they’re meant to, you should be all right.”
He came back and sat down, taking a seat closer to her. His straight back was reflected in the mirror over the sideboard behind him. Despite the obvious disintegration of his body, she warmed at his proximity. He smelled good and there was a fineness, an honor about him, that was more potent than youth. And if all went well, she was going to meet him in his youth, in his prime. Oh my.
“I was going to talk to you, but closer to the jump. I was trying to find a way…” He hesitated, shaking his head. “It’s not easy to tell someone they died sixty years ago.”
It wasn’t easy hearing it. It erased the warmth like a candle snuffed out. “Is there anything else? Any more surprises?”
He hesitated. “I’ve tried to figure out the best way to handle, well, me. Last time you told me the mission. Maybe that was a mistake, but I don’t want to tie your hands either. I am—I was a suspicious bugger. If you can keep your distance and let events play out. If you can’t, well, don’t tell me until you absolutely have to. Or more than you have to.”
Mel frowned. There was a flaw there if she could just feel her way toward it. Then she had it. “What’s to stop you from trying to build your machine and save Ric again, Jack? I don’t think I want to spend my life replaying this same scene over and over again.”
Jack sighed. “In both time lines, I’ve acted out of guilt, first because Ric took a bullet for me, then because you died. If you can stay alive, and take Ric out of the guilt equation, I won’t have any incentive to mess with your time line.”
“And how do we take Ric out of the equation? Do you want him off the plane—“
“No.” Jack’s tone was almost sharp. “It needs to play out as close to the original time line as possible.” He rubbed his face, and then looked up, his expression rueful. “I didn’t want to see Ric the way he was. I’m not even sure why. Maybe it’s one of those guy things. If you help me put my friendship with him in proper perspective, I’ll be able to deal with his death and resist the urge to meddle with time.”
Mel frowned. “But if you don’t create time travel…how will I get back to the future?”
He sighed again. “It’s all theory, Mel. We don’t know what will happen. We just have theories…”
“And your theories tell you…what?”
“It may be that this time line won’t change until after you return to the future and it will be as if none of this happened. You’ll wake up at home, with your life restored and no memory of me or traveling through time. I’ll just be someone your grandfather flew with, someone he knew in the war.”
“Or?” She knew there was an or waiting out there. A big one. It was an orb throbbing in the air between them.
“You could become a time orphan. Stuck in the past, lost in time.”
“Stuck in Occupied France, you mean, and about to get captured by the Germans—with your dead man’s watch as my only recourse.”
He met her gaze steadily. “That’s right.”
“I…see.”
He seemed to shrink a bit, and for the first time, Mel realized how old he was. She covered his hand with hers, felt it quiver at her touch. Close up, she could feel the waning of his strength, feel his life force slipping away.
“You’re dying, aren’t you?”
“We’re all dying, Mel.” He smiled, his expression almost relieved. “But I won’t go before your send off.”
“I,” she wanted to say something, but she didn’t even know what.
“I know,” he said. “Just…don’t fail.”
Her smile wavered. “You know how stubborn I am.”
He’d smiled at her then, the cocky one that curled her toes in her shoes and he didn’t look old at all. Her body warmed as his confidence washed through her.
And brought her to this place, this time, what she was about to do. She blinked away the past, which was ironic, since she was getting ready to head into it. This was not only going to be hard, it was going to be confusing.
The plane rumbled as it banked, then straightened. The technicians traveling with them jum
ped up and started fiddling with the dials on the time machine. It was small and very space-age looking and hanging above the hatch where the vortex was supposed to form.
“It’s almost time,” Jack said. He looked at her as if he were trying to memorize the moment. Meeting his gaze, she felt isolated from the sudden burst of activity. They were two people caught in a bubble. His eyes tried to tell her something, while at the same time trying to hide it from her. She wanted to solve the puzzle, but there wasn’t time. There was only time now for the mission.
She stood up. As hard as her SEAL gear had been, in some ways it was easier than the late thirties get-up, though the stocking clad feet were easier than the webs, except for the punishing cold. Toes could dig into the metal floor, but the clothing felt odd and constrictive. She actually missed her fatigues. As she made her way toward the open hatch with Jack’s time machine hanging over it, hanging over her, and hanging on to the clutch bag, the final briefing played in her head.
“You’ll feel yourself falling and then spinning. The buffeting will be considerable and fairly prolonged. Then you’ll integrate into the past. You’ll be a part of it. They tell me you won’t even feel a jolt. You’re just there.”
That’s why they’d targeted London. She wouldn’t be as noticeable appearing there. They hoped. That was assuming she didn’t end up splattered all over present day London.
One of the techs reached out to help steady her as she stopped by the hatch. She looked down. Clouds obscured the city below. She had only their word London was down there. For all she knew, they were dropping her into the ocean. It was truly a jump into the unknown.
So now she knew, or at least she was starting to understand, what drove people to face unknown danger. Or even known danger. It wasn’t about being brave or a longing to do deeds of valor. Because she wasn’t feeling either of those things right now. It was about the people she loved, keeping home and hearth safe. She didn’t know the family their meddling had cost her. She didn’t know what impact, what ripples in time their actions had caused. She may never know. She did know Gran, and through her, Norm. If she could find a way to bring them back together, well, that was worth risking everything for.
Out of Time Page 4
