Time Thief

by Jill Cooper

  He slams the cell door shut and locks it tight. I grip the bars and watch him take his position to guard my cell. So, this is what protective custody looks like when you kill a senator? When I turn, I catch my reflection in a small plastic mirror beside my bed and I’m caught off guard by my appearance.

  My brown curls are cut short and my face has a bad scar running down my left cheek. It’s deep but peach in color. Whenever I had gotten that scar, it had been a long time ago and it had healed over. I touch it and when I do, a memory flashes in my mind.

  I’m ten and on the playground, and there are kids surrounding me on all sides. They call me names like latch-key kid. The kid with no mother. I remember this incident from my original past growing up with Dad. In my memory, I’d walked away, angry, but this time, I pick up the swing’s chain to hit the offenders, but I’m the one who takes a piece of glass right to the face.

  The nurse patches me up. When Dad comes running to see me, I’m struck with how worried his face is. I immediately regret what I’ve done and…

  The memory fades.

  My nose trickles four droplets of blood onto the tile beneath my feet. I blink, pushing my sleeve under my nose. My nose hasn’t bled from a memory merge in a long time, maybe because this body isn’t equipped with time travel the way I am. Because I’ve here I’ve never changed time.

  I fish my fingers under my hair and search for the port Rex had installed into me as though I am a machine, and an experiment. For the first time I can remember, I’m disappointed that I can’t find it.

  I haven’t been modified. This brain and this body has no ability to change time. I’m stuck here in a timeline where Mom’s still dead and if I’m not careful, I might be next.

  ****

  Whether this is my timeline or not, I have to deal with the consequences of it. I’ll never find a way home if I don’t survive. The hand I’m dealt is severe, maybe more severe than ever before, but I have little choice than to face it head on.

  I weigh what I know, even if it’s very little. Mom’s dead and has been for fifteen years, which meant Patricia had moved on from Rewind to a position as a senator. When she’d been at Rewind, she’d hired Rex to assassinate Mom, and Jax had worked for her. In this timeline, it seems he’s a lawyer so the only question is, if he works for her here, why is he defending me?

  “I’d like to call my lawyer,” I call out to the guard who barely looks at me. I cup my hands around my mouth and shout. “Hey!”

  He glances at me with disinterest. “Nearly lights out, Crane. You can see him tomorrow when he comes to bail you out.”

  He snickers as if he thinks that’s the funniest thing he’s heard all day. It sinks in my stomach like a lead weight.

  No one believes me. No one is on my side, so what is a time traveler to do when she can’t travel in time other than wait and listen?

  She asks questions, she studies what she has left. “Any idea why he took such a sorry case like mine? Pretty expensive suit he was wearing to associate with a lowlife like me.”

  The guard shrugs and glances down the hall both ways, as if he’s going to cross the street. “Feels bad for you, I guess. Probono. Maybe you look good to his firm. A head case and a basket case. The girl who lost her mom and her dad.”

  “Dad?” My stomach spins out of control even when I know this isn’t real. This is someone else’s dad, but it feels as real as anything else I’ve faced before.

  “You blamed Patricia James for that, too, but she didn’t make your dad a drunk and crash that car, killing that family and himself in the process.”

  I’m on my feet before I realize it. I grab the bars and peer out at him. “My dad isn’t a drunk.” The words come out of me fast and strong. They ripple through the air and I stare at the effect as it hits the poster on the wall across from me.

  I affected time. I may not have jumped through it, but I had manipulated it. I know I had, but figuring out how is another story altogether. That’s going to take time and it seems I’m going to have a lot of that on my hands.

  “Wasn’t. Isn’t. Your story never changes and I guess for that reason, I feel bad for you. Your lawyer probably feels bad for you too.”

  He’d given me more information than he realizes. I head back to the bed as he calls lights out again, and I lay on the overly-soft mattress, using my arm as a pillow. I stare at nothing and feel how alone I am.

  But there’s a glimmer of hope.

  I can affect time and that means my ability isn’t dead. It’s still there and with time, maybe I can harness it. If I live long enough to figure out what’s going on.

  And manage to escape.

  ****

  “Rise and shine, Crane.”

  My eyes startle open and I’m disheartened to still be in a prison cell. I slide my legs off the cot and sit up, my elbows resting on my knees. The guard bangs his baton on the bars of my cage before sliding a breakfast tray in.

  He stares me down. “You better eat it before it gets cold. Wouldn’t want you to suffer, would we?” He smiles at me as he continues back to his post and I grab the tray and slide it over the bed toward me.

  I sigh and inspect the oatmeal, with raisins and brown sugar on the side. I’ve been served worse than this when I’ve been prisoner before. There’s even a side of red Jell-O—something Rex had given me every day to eat for the two years he’d kept me prisoner. The sight of it raises my blood pressure. Red is everyone’s favorite flavor, or so I have heard on some commercial. It has to be just a coincidence, but it doesn’t feel like one.

  “Hey,” I start to say but something beneath the bowl catches my eye. It’s a piece of blue paper, only a corner of it sticking out.

  I wiggle the paper free from beneath the bowl of oatmeal and unfold it. Holding my breath, I take in the sight of the Rewind Corporation letterhead. My heart sinks to see that penmanship I know so well:

  You’ll never be free. Now, here, I have you once more, in my cage.

  Catch me if you can, but now the rules have changed. Everything is different. Just try to see if you can figure it out.

  Rex. My blood boils as I take in a sniff of his cologne. He must’ve sprayed it on the paper just to twist the knife a bit more into my back. There is no sense in denying that he has me right where he wants me. Locked up and playing his game, by his rules.

  But, where is he? He is close by enough to be influencing those around me. So why not show himself? What game is he playing?

  ****

  Over the last year, I’d come to terms with the fact that the game might never really be over. Rex likes to toy with me. He gets a sick pleasure out of making me suffer, getting revenge on me for ruining his life, for killing him in multiple timelines. It has been like living with a ticking bomb over your head, Cassidy and I had been vigilant, but we never saw this coming.

  We’d thought we could cut it off at the pass, but it seemed we’re wrong.

  The guards let me outside in the yard while everyone else eats lunch. I walk through the grass and toward the fence. I can see the traffic on the freeway and the heavy smell of the fumes is thick. When no one is watching, I pluck a blade of grass. I cup my other hand toward it—slowing time like a forcefield around it—and watch it levitate. It spins like a ballerina in my hand until I’m satisfied my power’s still with me.

  It is. It churns in my gut, stretches all the way down to my toes and up to my head. When I try to leap backward or forward, nothing happens except an earth-shattering headache that rocks me to my knees.

  My nose drips blood as I push back up on my feet. I stumble and nearly fall, and I grab the chain-link fence, gripping it tight with my fingers until I’m stable again.

  “Let go of the fence, Crane!” the guard yells and begins a mad dash toward me. “Hands in the air. Now!” He draws his gun on me, but why is he so upset? It’s not like I can just leap out of here.

  I hold my arms up. He grabs me and slams me down to the ground. I choke on a mouth full of d
irt as his knee wedges tightly against the base of my skull. My heart pounds and my eyes focus on the fence that ebbs and flows like it’s made of jelly. The individual links I had grabbed, fold like they are foam. As a breeze blows by, they sway.

  “You hear me? You stay in the middle of the yard. No approaching the perimeter!” The guard rolls me over and punches me in the nose. I groan and cover it as the pain cascades across my face.

  “Hear they say you’re tougher than that.” He yanks on my arms and pulls me up to my feet.

  “Having an off day, I guess.” I glance back at the fence as he forces me up and pushes me back toward the prison. Whatever had happened to the fence isn’t visible any longer. It looks like a normal metal fence now, same as any other.

  But I’m beginning to wonder how real any of this is. If I know Rex, there’s more going on than meets the eye.

  The door buzzes open and another guard greets us. “So much for Ms. Crane’s tenure here. Her fiancé paid her bail. We’re to fit her with an ankle monitor and see her on her way.”

  My fiancé. Donovan.

  I sigh, relieved that some things remain the same. The guard takes me to a private room. “You go home, you go to work, but you break the law and you’re right back here. Lover boy won’t get his money back, either.”

  That doesn’t worry me. “I won’t do anything rash.” He hands me a plastic bag filled with my personal effects—which I’ll inspect later to see if they offer any clues—and he leads me outside. I expect to find Donovan outside. He may be angry about the death of his mother, but he had still come for me.

  That has to mean something.

  Instead, leaning against the brick wall of the jailhouse in a leather jacket, a red t-shirt and a pair of loose fitted jeans, is Rick.

  Chapter Nine: Lara Crane

  Rick Miller—my high school boyfriend before I had changed time and saved my mother life—embraces me. He sighs with relief. “Thank God. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get to hold you again.” His voice is lace with love and compassion. It’s a distant memory from our days together so long ago.

  But I do remember and part of me feels like I’ve slipped back into a cozy robe. A piece of my childhood reclaimed. My free hand hugs him back loosely. I’m taken off-guard to see him again and my heart wishes bitterly that he was Donovan, no matter how nostalgic I’m feeling for the past.

  I don’t say anything as we pull apart and he inspects my face. Gingerly he touches my cheeks. “The guards haven’t been easy on you.” I’ve seen the rage of anger on his face before and it’s never led to good places for him—or us.

  “I’m all right. I just really want to get out of here.”

  Rick sighs and his eyes soft. “Your lawyer will want to know. He can press charges or something like that. I’m no legal expert, but they shouldn’t be hurting you like that, Lar.”

  “We can talk about it later. Can we just go?” I glance back at the jail as I walk further away nerves roiling in my belly.

  Rick nods and slings his arm around my waist. “Home is waiting for you just as you left it. We’re going to fix all this. We just have to be patient.”

  Patient. My middle name.

  The car is an old sedan junk box. There’s black paint but there’s more rust along the bottom of the body than anything. Inside the leather seats are torn and the engine barely rolls over as Rick starts it. There’s no question that he hadn’t come up with the money to bail me out himself. Had Jax helped him, even though he had no personal attachment to me anymore?

  I want to ask Rick, but instead I watch him fish through my plastic bag of belongings until he found a small diamond ring. “I’ve been waiting to do this all day.” He slips it back on my finger and I gaze at it, slack-jawed. The diamond’s so small, you can barely see it, and it has no sparkle.

  But Rick looks at me in a way that would make a girl sparkle all on her own. I wish I was the Lara who still loved him. Instead, I swallow the grief rising in my throat and force a small smile.

  “Ready to get out of here?”

  Was I ever? But where he was taking me, could never be home. I didn’t belong here anymore and I was desperate to get back to my family.

  *****

  The drive takes us back to where I had come from. The run-down apartments of the ghetto in the heart of Boston’s inner city. I’d lived three buildings down when I’d been raised by a single father after my mother had been murdered. I’d changed all that when I’d gone back in time to save her.

  Instead, Lara Montgomery had been raised by her mother and a powerful and wealthy man with dangerous connections to a megalomaniac senator and an even deadlier secret.

  Lara Montgomery had grown up in a bedroom bigger than the apartment I share with my dad, and she’d never known what it was like to hear the couple in the next apartment having sex, or sleep in a drafty apartment in the middle of winter.

  But I did, and now I was back.

  Should I feel guilty for jumping into this life or should I feel relieved? I feel both as I follow Rick up the stairs to our apartment. The floorboards between the apartment creak as we make our way to our door. He slips the key in and gives it a shove because it sticks. I shouldn’t know that, but the longer I’m here, the more memories I’ll begin to absorb as truth.

  If I stay long enough, this will begin to become more real than the world I have left behind. It has happened before and that was when I had come to fall in love with Donovan, leaving behind my feelings for Rick.

  What if it happens now, but only in reverse? The idea terrifies me. Sickens me.

  We go inside the small apartment. It’s a small living-room-and-kitchen blend with a set of mismatched table and chairs. The television in the living room is still on, but the picture is broken up by static as the subway thunders by. The vibrations from down below travel up to my feet and I try to take in the sights of home.

  This is our apartment. This is my life for now. I can’t let Rick know that anything is different—not that he would ever believe me.

  “I’ll boil some water for tea. I’m sure you’d like some.” Rick goes through the motions in the kitchen, setting out two blue mugs, and turning on the leaky faucet to fill the kettle.

  “Please.” I like coffee more than tea, but I’m willing to grin and bear it.

  The apartment is drafty so I zip up my hoodie as I hear a bark coming from the bedroom. Curious, I lean to peer around the corner to see what it could be.

  “It’s only been a few days, but he’s missed you something fierce.”

  He?

  The bedroom door bangs open and an old dog limps out toward me, running as fast as he can. His tail is wagging and his tongue is hanging out of his mouth, but there’s no mistaking the twinkle of his eye.

  I go on bended knee in front of him without pausing to think about it and open my palms to him. He places his front paws on them like he always used to. “Sparky,” I whisper.

  He licks my tears away and nuzzles my cheek. It’s him. Really him. The dog I’d grown up with. The dog Dad had bought me because I’d been so lonely and afraid.

  Sparky whines, happy and relieved to see me. I wrap my arms around him, nuzzling my nose so deep in his dog hair that I can smell nothing but him.

  I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him. I really had come home.

  ****

  Rick makes us dinner and it’s some of my favorites from childhood. Mac and cheese with peas and carrots and garlic toast on the side. I cover mine in ketchup and Rick adds extra shredded cheese to his. We eat, cozy under a blanket, and stream some movie on the television, but I can barely concentrate.

  I stuff my face full of dinner and then nurse my second cup of tea, all the while Sparky lays his head on my lap, gazing longingly up at me. I scratch behind his ears leisurely, aware that while none of this is my life, maybe it is supposed to be.

  Maybe this is what my life would be if I hadn’t left it all behind to change time.

  Rick lays h
is arm over my shoulder and his fingers stroke me through the thick hoodie I wear. I stiffen slightly but try not to make my discomfort so obvious. I don’t look over at him because I don’t want him to know what I’m thinking and I’m afraid if he sees my eyes, he’ll know.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I’ve heard that tone in his voice before. Maybe a hundred times when I’d been planning to go back and save my mom from death. It’s not the voice of reason. Instead, it’s the voice of someone who believes I’m hiding something.

  Before he had been right. Rick couldn’t be right again, could he?

  “You know I didn’t do this. I know I’ve been mad…for a long time.”

  He shifts to face me and looking at him seizes my emotions up inside. “You talked about hurting Senator James more than once,” his voice ebbs with fear. “I thought I talked you out of going to see her after your dad’s accident, just like I talked you out of not going back in time to save your mom.”

  So, that’s what happened. We’d had that conversation more than once, but it seems in this timeline, Rick had been successful. I inhale sharply and hold my breath without realizing it.

  “Am I wrong?” Rick’s eyes narrow for a brief moment. “Did I talk you out of hurting her?”

  “Of course, you did.” I’m unconvinced and my voice gives me away, but I can’t be sure of something I don’t remember. “I couldn’t kill anyone, Rick. Not in cold blood,” but even those words are a lie.

  I’d killed my uncle Rex in cold blood once before, and I’d stood by and watched Cassidy kill another version of him. It was a little different though than gunning down the senator. With purpose and vengeance, Rex had set out to destroy my life. If Patricia James had killed my father and had then made it look like a suicide, is that any different? My life has been destroyed, or at least this Lara’s life into which I had jumped.