"Sam?" Elliot's fingers brushed her elbow and came into contact with bare flesh. A wave of awareness flashed through her as he came to stand in front of her. Pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head.
Those eyes. So vividly violet. Vividly blue.
"Haley and I had a huge argument the night before the warehouse incident. The Colonel wanted her to join Hope Alive. She didn't want to. Said she had the story of a lifetime—Theo's story. Where he'd been. What he'd been doing. The Colonel threatened to cut off any monetary support if she didn't report for work the next morning."
"I imagine that was well-received."
She nodded. Recalled how Haley had been nursing a glass of scotch inside their childhood home. The way her words had been slurred but understandable. The way she laid out exactly how the operation would go down. As if she'd already been through it. How she'd made it clear she didn't need her family. Sam had been the idiot hoping for a miracle that would never happen. "She wasn't there to rescue him. She was there for the glory. It was her ticket out of Fresno."
Think about it, Sam. What's better than a hero? A hero in the thick of a scandal. One who hasn't been missing. He's been hiding.
"Back to the way life had been before she'd started digging into his disappearance. It didn't sit well. I called her out." In a spectacularly awesome way Sam was ashamed of. "Then I passed the information on to you."
Elliot didn't say anything for a moment, his attention moving toward a pontoon approaching the marina. The two adults and three kids in life jackets aboard it. "We formed a plan you didn't stick to."
"I know." She'd told him about the warehouse. About the best time to enter. The best plan. About the possibility of Haley's words being accurate, even though she hadn't wanted to believe them. "It wasn't intentional."
"You were purposely vague about Haley's involvement. Why?"
The boat docked, the man anchoring it to a tie. "Because it meant explaining things that are better left unexplained. I—I can see the shift in time."
"What do you mean by see it?" All of his attention was zeroed in on her like the direct rays from the sun. "Like the entire process? Start to finish?"
It sounded crazy. And crazier that everyone didn't have the capability. "Yes."
"So if I move from one end of this space to the other, you can track every step I make. Maybe even predict where I'll stop?"
"No. I can't predict anything. I see it. The entire progression in an almost slow motion, every movement clear until you stop. Like..."
Ricky flashed in her mind. You've seen me come and go. As if you're in my mind too.
"But to me—" He put a hand on his chest. "It would seem like you could predict the future."
No. It wouldn't seem like anything. It couldn't. "You can do the same thing if you try. If we went back to that night right now, you could see Haley leave the house—slingshot into the warehouse."
He would see Theo tied to a chair, men surrounding him.
He shook his head. "No. I can't."
She'd seen her sister walk into the large space. Seen her greet the men holding Theo captive. Sam hadn't realized what the next twelve hours would hold. "You—"
The pound of feet against the dock and the vibration that came with it stopped her seconds before little arms and legs came barreling at her. The arms went around her legs and squeezed, a head of dark curly ringlets in plain view. "You're Miss Sam, right?" Brown eyes and a gapped-toothed smile gazed up at her.
"That's me. And you are?"
"Emma." She released Sam. "I'm five, I have one wiggly tooth that's going to fall out any day now even though my older sister says I've got a ways to go. That's her over there." Emma pointed toward an older girl—maybe seven or eight—holding a little boy with his thumb in his mouth. "I'm supposed to give you this." She pulled something from the pocket of her dress and placed it in Sam's palm. "I really like it, but a promise is a promise."
A circular medallion rested there, an "S" on the front, her birthday under the inscription.
"Ricky said you'd know what it meant."
Sam clenched it in her palm.
"Ricky?" Elliot's voice came out gruff, his body going still next to Sam. "When did he give this to you, Emma?"
The little girl shrugged. "A couple days ago. Right after we saw that girl out here all by herself."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
North Carolina—2004
HE NEEDED TO find some evidence. Something to make the shaking inside his body stop. The pit in his stomach to dissipate. Something that would right the axis in his world.
Ricky said you'd know what it meant.
Elliot had wanted to shrug the name off—the childhood nickname he'd shed sometime in high school—and chalk it up to a weird coincidence. Wanted to do nothing more than thank the little girl and figure out what both medallions meant. Why they'd reappeared now.
And maybe that would've been possible if Sam hadn't been standing next to him so still, her gaze stuck on her hand. That stillness swirled around Elliot now as if she stood next to him inside his childhood bedroom. As if she were experiencing the same shocking revelation as he dug through the junk under his childhood bed. Or at least what his twenty-five-year-old self considered his childhood bed.
Right now, in this time, his eleven-year-old self was probably somewhere at a football game with his Dad. Unaware of fourteen years of an absorption he'd completed after ensuring Sam made it to Hope Alive. An absorption he'd made out of her sight.
The younger version of himself was likely blissfully unaware of what the future would hold. That he might have a guy chasing him and Sam around. Shooting at them.
Meanwhile Elliot was stuck digging through piles of dirty socks, forgotten homework, and something sticky.
The thought of someone getting to all the answers before he could terrified him to his soul. That someone might also realize what Sam's words—I can see time travel—really meant. She could see destinations, both good and bad, actions, and who knew what else.
Sam hadn't even appear baffled by the mention of his childhood nickname. Which only meant he'd been interacting with her.
For how long?
This wasn't right. He knew better than to slingshot or absorb at random. To meddle in lives he knew nothing about. To hand out innocent seeming riddles. If he was...
He pulled his hand out from under the bed. Found a green sucker and a bunch of black dog hair stuck to his palm.
"Gross, right?" His mom's voice came from the doorway.
Elliot turned in her direction. "I thought you'd be at work."
She stood braced against the doorjamb as if he'd visited in this manner as an adult on a regular basis. He hadn't, but she'd always been hard to surprise, details coming to her as if she'd looked into the future and snatched them. Which she almost never did. "Looking for something in particular, Elliot?"
He searched the room for something to get the sucker off his hand. Came up empty-handed. Reached for the smelly sock that was rotting under the bed. "I do not remember my room being this dirty growing up."
His mom—the version of her that was likely close to the same age as he was now—laughed. She'd dealt with a heck of lot more trauma that he had. Had bounced from foster home to foster home until she'd graduated from high school, gotten a degree in criminology, and met and married his dad. Not that you could tell from the lack of lines on her face or gray in her blond hair—even fourteen years from where they currently stood.
"That's because you are always too busy with finding the next someone you can help. I imagine that hasn't changed a lot." She reached for the stick of the sucker, removed it from his hand, and discarded it in a nearby trash can. "How's life?"
"Perfect." He rubbed at the remaining goo on his palm. He couldn't tell her otherwise. Couldn't admit that he'd jumped aboard a sinking ship he had no intention of leaving until the holes were patched.
Which was why the Colonel had knocked on his door. He'd known walking away from
something of this magnitude wasn't in Elliot's nature.
The fact that someone had actually seen Anne—in the future, where it counted—meant she was alive. Little Emma hadn't had any additional information to add. According to her, one minute Anne had been inside her campsite, the next gone. Then Ricky had shown up...
The younger version of himself was probably not helping matters. The sooner he found what he was looking for, the sooner he could explain to Sam why she needed to avoid all contact with Ricky. But would it really help?
"Have you seen a small tin box?"
His mom moved into the room. Sat at the chair he had parked in front of a desk that would someday hold a laptop, his interest in helping people wavering only slightly through his teen years in favor of friends, girls, and flying airplanes.
Right now there was a plethora of dusty Legos on the surface, a screwdriver, and miscellaneous skateboard parts. An Air Force poster hung behind the desk, the only neat part of his entire room.
He'd wanted to fly airplanes for as long as he could remember. He used to pretend his skateboard had the aerodynamics of a fighter jet. Used to push the skate ramp and the board to the limit.
"Anything particular in this tin box?"
"Proof that I'm not an idiot."
She laughed. "How old are you? Twenty-four?"
"Twenty-five."
Green eyes held his. No judgment. Just curiosity. Guarded, but there.
"How's Dad?"
She leaned back in her seat. Crossed her arms. "You tell me, kid."
The day came to him—this day—pretty clear in his head. "We're at a football game. We save a woman."
"Nearly needed saving yourself. Just got done talking to your dad a little while ago. I imagine you're getting a bit of a discussion from him right about now."
Elliot nodded. It had been more of a sermon about safety and responsibility. About protecting himself while doing whatever it is he'd do in life. One he'd never forgotten. "Have I been gone a lot?"
"Would I know if you have been?"
No. Not likely, but he'd promised to be honest. Promised to be clear about where he was, what he was doing. And to his recollection—minus a few teenage incidents—he'd always held to that oath.
But he didn't remember little Emma or the medallion. He didn't remember Sam.
A smirk covered her face. "That's what I thought." She moved to the closet, reached toward the back panel, and removed one piece of it. Pulled out a tin box—the one with an Air Force emblem across it. The one he'd always put anything important in as a kid. "You did bring a stranger home with you several months ago. She's been back quite a few times and every time is like the first one. There's something you're hoping she will remember, but it hasn't happened yet."
His heart kicked up pace. He had no memory of that either. Which was concerning. And meant that this—Ricky's visits forward—was likely happening on a parallel plane. During sleepwalking. "Who?"
"Haley Billings ring any bells?"
Everything inside him froze. There was an image of a beach. Sand. Water. A bottle. And then it faded. "Haley's been here?" He grabbed the box from her. Opened it and dumped the contents onto the wood floor. Sifted through pictures, more skateboard parts, various types of cell phones, and a bottle cap. "Has anyone else been here?"
If he'd been interacting with either Billings sister there would be... Sam's medallion. That was his proof. Proof he didn't understand or remember but there all the same.
His mom hunched next to the articles he'd scattered on the floor. "You can't remember?"
No. He grabbed the bottle cap. Flipped it over. It was for a popular beer brewed in California. His parents never drank.
The edge of a newspaper clipping peeked out from behind a playing card. He picked it up. Anne Morris and her mother were captured in the yellowed picture, their smiling faces vibrant. Alive. The words beneath depicted the girl's vocal talent. The name underneath caught his eye.
Haley Billings. Fresno Bee Freelance Writer.
And then the picture came back into focus. The mom. The girl. The background. The man just far enough in the distance to be unrecognizable. But his lapel pin...
The ruby had caught the light, with a speck of white on the picture to prove it.
Ryan.
There was another man next to him, a military cut visible even with the camera distortion.
Elliot stood. "What did Haley say?"
A scoff filled the room. "It would be easier to cover what she didn't say. She spent the better part of the visit trying to get kicked out of the house, but she wasn't drunk and out of control so that's a plus."
"She was on my couch this morning."
His mom folded her arms across her chest. "She mentioned something about that."
"She asked me for money, a place to stay, and to watch out for her little sister."
"Samantha?"
He held up the clipping. It unfolded and revealed additional pictures. The last one had a clean-shaven man with blond hair in the same military cut as the main photo. Theo Trenton was taller than the women in the photo, his arm around Anne, his hand touching Claudia's shoulder. The article promised a follow-up expose titled, Things We Never Say. "Have I mentioned this? This girl?"
She grabbed the item, worry springing to life in her eyes.
Anne wouldn't have even been born at this point. And he refused to believe the clipping was random. "You gotta talk to him about this. About all of it. Sleepwalking, slingshotting that often... It's dangerous."
A burst of air left her lips. "So you want me to talk to the eleven-year-old version of yourself?"
"Uh-huh."
"Maybe tell him he's messing up the future. That he's getting in the way. That—"
"No." He needed to slow down. See the big picture. Not every situation could be helped.
"Good." She handed the clipping back. Stood. "Because it won't work and your dad has likely already covered those grounds."
He pointed to the picture with Theo. "This man is dead. Probably because of something Haley did. Sam followed her into a burning building and almost got killed." He still didn't understand how she'd survived the collapse of the building. She shouldn't have. Every medical and emergency professional he'd come across after the incident had agreed. Sam was lucky to be alive. Lucky Elliot had found her at the exact moment he had. "He shouldn't interfere. It's dangerous."
"You keep saying that like I don't get it. Like you don't understand that danger has never really stopped you. Or me. Or Sam, I imagine."
It stopped him now.
Maybe stopped wasn't the best word. It slowed him. Made him calculate every situation that could occur. He'd had too many close calls to do otherwise. But when he'd been eleven...
Had he—had Ricky—been inside that warehouse with Sam? Was that why she'd never disclosed details he'd needed for closure? She'd been protecting...him. "Mom."
"Why are you here? Don't get me wrong, I enjoy knowing you've survived past this year. But you of all people know what an absorption can do. What sleepwalking can do."
He did. Which is why he'd chosen this time—this day—when he'd known his younger self wouldn't be present. He had maybe thirty minutes to get what he needed and get out. "I'm working a missing persons case."
"You a cop?"
"No. It's for a foundation."
"Hope Alive, right? Run by the Billings family—part of it anyway. The mom died when the girls were little. Haley is a mess of her own doing. The dad lives for the next person the foundation can save, not realizing who he is trying to save is already long buried. Samantha is..."
Beautiful. Smart. Brave.
The words popped up in his mind. Conjured the way she looked when he told her he suspected Claudia Morris was alive. When she realized he could travel in time. Like she was hearing something far beyond the words leaving his lips.
Can you see time travel?
Elliot would've rather faced the enemy on the front lines than as
k that type of question. But she'd done it. Put herself out there.
"I used to hate when you would do that."
"No hiding anything?"
"No."
"Then be honest with yourself, Elliot. Do you think you found this family or did they find you? Why did Haley pick your home to crash in? You think she just slung herself to the nearest house?"
"It was calculated." He knew that. Of course he did. The coincidence was too big otherwise.
"She might be looking for answers same as you."
"It's not that simple."
"You and I both know it's likely she's engaged in some type of illegal activity. It's only a matter of time before she gets caught. Or before something worse happens."
It would destroy Sam. Sam, who already had suspicions about her sister. Who would step in and try to save Haley if at all possible.
And after his morning, that wasn't really theory anymore as much as a developing fact. Haley was in trouble. Plain and simple. A product of her poor decisions. "A man had a gun aimed at her forehead this morning."
His mom's jaw tightened, the only sign she didn't like any of what they were talking about. She didn't tell him this was all a bad idea. Try to persuade him to leave both Haley and Sam behind. "You said she asked you to keep an eye on Sam. Why today. Why this year, Elliot? That could be about the day or it could be about—"
"No." Anxiety started a sudden stab right through him. Had someone threatened Sam specifically or was Haley being cautious?
"Haley is a wild animal. If she's asking for money and has people willing to kill her, those same people could know who her family is. What's most important to her. Right now she would eat her young for survival and be halfway done before the full implications set in."
The number of times she'd talked about her sister while inebriated sprang to life. Haley had spent the better part of two years in that state. How much information had she given up? "Sam said Haley was attacked—" He couldn't think about the situation in any other terms than that. He didn't like it. Wouldn't like the thought about anybody. "Two years ago while investigating a story about a war hero." He pointed to the clipping of Theo. "She almost didn't make it."
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