“I know she’s sick and that you have Lorna there taking care of her tonight.”
While I know there’s a chance he might follow through with his threat to pull the trigger, what I’m trying to do is provoke him into physically attacking me. He may be heavier than I am, but he doesn’t look like he’s in all that great of shape. And I’ve had some instruction in self-defense, so at least in theory, I should be able to use his momentum to my advantage.
“Did you know Lorna is in your bed tonight?” I say, attempting to push him over the edge. “Or is that where she usually sleeps?”
A roar leaps from his throat, but instead of rushing at me as I expect him to, he turns and runs into the hall.
I shoot a glance at Iffy, fighting the urge to check her, but if I can stop this whole mess before it begins, then whatever Kane has done to her will be moot. I sprint into the hall and see that the door to my sister’s room is opened a few inches. I thrust it open and run inside.
The only one there is Ellie. As with Iffy, the noise Kane and I have been making has not woken her up. I want to check her, too, but again, the most important thing I can do right now is get my chaser back.
I head quickly into the living room and find the front door is wide open. I sprint outside and pause on the breezeway just long enough for a quick listen. Running steps, downstairs near the front of the building and growing fainter. I reach the stairway in seconds and fly down it three steps at a time and then race around the pool to the entranceway at the front of the courtyard. I stop to listen again when I reach the street, but I don’t hear running this time.
I wildly scan left and right for any sign of Kane. How could he disappear so quickly?
At the sound of a motor starting, I turn and am just in time to see a sedan pull from the curb and speed toward me. Its bright headlights prevent me from getting a good look at it until it is almost parallel to me.
It’s the Lexus sedan I searched earlier. Kane sits in the driver’s seat, his hands locked on the steering wheel. When he looks at me as he passes, there is both fear and hatred in his eyes.
I know it’s ridiculous, but I rush into the street as if I might be able to grab onto the car and jerk it to a stop. I even run after him for several seconds before my mind finally forces my legs to stop.
He’s gone, and he’s taken with him the one advantage I have in this world.
As I hurry back to the apartment, the one thing I know for sure is that I am living in temporary time. Every moment that has already occurred and will occur since I arrived back from my unsuccessful trip to Kane’s house is just a placeholder. I will get my chaser back, and I will erase all of this. It no longer matters if Iffy’s and Ellie’s and my memory will then differ. There is no other option.
Whoever Kane really is, whatever his plans are, I cannot—no, will not—let him get away with them.
I have no idea if he realizes what he’s taken from me, but whether he does or not, my chaser is basically a piece of junk in his hands. Sure, if the flap was unlocked—which it’s not—he could scroll through the menus and do some calculations, but he could never jump. To do that, he would need to rekey the machine to recognize him. That’s not a simple process, and very few know (knew/have ever known) how to do it. I know how only because my instructor Marie thought it important to train me in more than just the official curriculum. So even if Kane is a rewinder—which the evidence I’ve seen so far does not support—he’s highly unlikely to have the technical knowledge to use my device.
Still, the sooner the device is back in my hands, the better I’ll feel.
Without another chaser at my disposal, however, I’m currently like everyone else in this world, bound by the common laws of time and space. And since I don’t know how to drive a car, I’m going to need help.
I check on Ellie first. Though she’s still unconscious, her breathing sounds normal, and I am hoping whatever Kane has done to her has not harmed her in any lasting way.
Iffy, too, is still out, though she’s restless.
I shake her shoulder. “Iffy. Wake up.”
She answers with a moan, so I rock her a little harder.
“Iffy. Come on. Open your eyes.”
Her breaths become pants, like she’s in the middle of a bad dream.
“Wake up!”
I lift her into a sitting position, and immediately the pants become a moan again and then a “Wha . . .” as her eyes flutter open for a brief moment and then close.
I gently tap her cheek. “Hey, it’s okay. Wake up.”
Her lids blink a few times, and she then squints at me. “Denny?”
I have no experience with people who’ve been drugged. The only ones I’ve seen are those in movies Iffy has shown me. Coffee seemed to be something that is often given, so I carry her into the living room, put her on the couch, and run into the kitchen.
When I return a few minutes later with a cupful of French roast, Iffy has fallen back asleep. As soon as I get her eyes open again, I place the cup against her lips. She automatically takes a sip, then pulls back, her eyes widening.
“Too hot,” she says, blinking.
I blow on it.
“What am I doing . . . out here?” she asks, her voice breathy, dreamlike.
“Try this,” I say, holding the cup up again.
She takes a more tentative sip this time. “Still too hot.” Her brow creases, and she suddenly looks around in a panic. “He’s here! Kane. He’s in the apartment!”
“Was here,” I tell her. “He’s gone now.”
“He’s gone?”
I nod.
It takes several seconds for her confusion to ease enough that she begins to relax.
“Can you tell me what happened?” I asked.
There’s a delay before she looks at me. “Huh?”
“How did Kane get inside?”
She looks confused, the drug still affecting her. “Kane?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, um, front . . . door.”
“You let him in?”
She squeezes her eyes shut before stretching them wide for a second and then shakes her head. “Not me. Ellie was up. We were talking when he knocked. Said he was with the police. She . . .” Her head dropped as she ran out of steam.
“She got to the door first?” I asked.
A nod.
This wouldn’t be the first time Ellie rushed to answer the door before anyone else could get there. It’s a moment of excitement in her usual, boring day.
“He shoved his way . . . in,” Iffy whispers. “Asked where you were.”
“What did you tell him?”
“To get out.” She starts to lean against me, but then sits up straight, her eyes widening again. “He asked about . . . about your chaser. Wanted to know if you had it with you.” She takes a breath. “Had to tell him. He . . . pulled out a gun, pointed it at Ellie. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.”
She puts a hand on the couch and tries to push herself up. “We have to check on her.”
I put an arm around her. “She’s okay. She’s sleeping.”
“You’re . . . sure?”
“Uh-huh.”
Iffy relaxes a little. “He made me give, um, give her some of her sleeping pills.”
“Do you remember how many?” I ask.
“He said four, but only gave her . . . two. Dropped the other two under her blankets.”
“He made you take some of them, too?”
“Gave me the same. I spit most of them out when he wasn’t looking.”
“I need you to wake up. Can you do that?”
“Am . . . awake.”
“I mean really awake. I need your help.” In as few words as possible, I tell her about my encounter with Kane and how he’s gotten away with my chaser.
The last part is what finally seems to get her heart pumping again. She grabs the cup of coffee and downs the whole thing.
We discuss our options and come up wi
th the outline of a plan that is 90 percent desperation, but neither of us know what else to do. We figure that Kane is either still in San Diego or is heading back to Los Angeles. There is just no way to know for sure. But what we do know is that the old woman is in LA, and she’s clearly important to him. He has to return to her at some point. At least, that’s our hope. So that’s where we decide to go.
Since Iffy is in no condition to drive us north, she calls the only other person who knows my secret, and convinces RJ to help us out.
We are heading up the coast on the I-5 freeway in just under thirty minutes. I’m in the front with RJ, while Iffy is in the back, Ellie’s head in her lap. As much as I would like to leave Ellie at the apartment, there’s no one we can trust to watch her there. LA is a different story, though.
It’s not long before Iffy is leaning back in her seat, lightly snoring, essentially leaving RJ and me alone together for the first time.
Initially, we simply ride in silence. It’s as we’re passing a sign for an upcoming exit to the town of San Clemente that he finally says, “What’s it like?”
My head has become so filled with thoughts of Kane and why he has forced himself into our lives that it takes me a moment to realize RJ has spoken. “What’s what like?”
“Alternate earth. Where you’re from.”
I look out at the road ahead. “This is alternate earth.”
I sense his confusion long before he says, “What do you mean?”
I purposely kept details light during our previous talk. After all, seeing the shuttle land and being in the opening night audience of Star Wars meant there wasn’t much more I needed to do to convince him of the chaser abilities.
“This world right now isn’t the one that’s supposed to be. There was a change in the time line. An accident.”
“Wait. I thought we were talking about parallel worlds. Isn’t that where you’re from? Isn’t your world still out there?”
“No,” I say, though a more accurate answer would be, “I don’t think so.”
“Then what happened to your world?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Though I know he wants to ask more, he’s apparently understood from the tone of my voice that I don’t want to discuss it, and we fall back into silence.
I’ve read some on the theory of parallel worlds. As far as I know, it’s not a concept that was ever developed in my world. It was certainly not something we were ever taught. Here, though, it’s seen as a real possibility.
If I were merely stepping between the worlds, it would certainly remove the guilt over the millions (billions?) of erased lives I know I’ve caused. But while the parallel world theory might very well be true, the world that fills this particular cosmic groove is the one that should be occupied by the massive British Empire and the Upjohn Institute, the same world where my sister once died from cancer and where I should have accepted my lot and become a librarian. I made the change to this time line. I played god with this world. Because of me, Iffy’s and RJ’s reality has crashed the groove.
Perhaps there is a parallel world out there like the one I was born into, but it ends at the similarity. It is not mine. I’m not a scientist and can’t prove any of this. But I know at my very core that this is the truth.
Before leaving San Diego, Iffy made one other call, and it’s to the Los Angeles home of its recipient that we head first.
We reach the old Craftsman house in the middle of Hollywood a little after 1:00 a.m. With the exception of the porch and the living room, the rest of the home is dark. The old wooden door opens as we pull into the driveway, and Marilyn Bryant, Iffy’s former landlord, steps onto the wide stone porch.
RJ helps me ease my sister out of the back, but I carry her across the yard alone. Iffy follows behind, carrying the bag of Ellie’s things we threw together before RJ picked us up.
Marilyn meets me at the top of the steps and lightly caresses Ellie’s cheek. “She looks better than the last time I saw her.”
We had to bring Ellie to a hospital in LA for a special test not long after I brought her to this time line, and we had spent the night here at Marilyn’s. While it hadn’t been the easiest of trips for my sister at the time, I’m thankful now that we’d taken it. Ellie knows Marilyn, so when she wakes and sees that neither Iffy nor I are here, she won’t completely panic. At least I hope.
“Where would you like me to put her?” I ask.
“She’ll be using my room.”
I hesitate. “There’s no need to put yourself out. There must be someplace else she can use.”
“Don’t worry. You won’t be putting me out. I promise. Besides, she’ll be most comfortable there.”
“Thank you,” I say and carry Ellie into the house.
As I am tucking her into bed, Iffy gives the bag to Marilyn and goes over my sister’s pill schedule.
When she’s finished, I say, “I’m not sure how long we’ll be gone. Hopefully, we’ll be back first thing in the morning, but—”
“But you might get delayed,” Marilyn finishes for me.
“Yes.”
The truth is if everything goes as planned, we won’t be back at all, because I’ll use the chaser to stop Kane before we’d ever come to LA.
Temporary time, remember.
“Ellie will be fine,” she says. “Just tell me you two haven’t gotten yourselves involved in something stupid.”
“We haven’t,” Iffy says.
RJ is waiting for us in the car when we return. “Where now?” he asks.
I pull out my phone and bring up a premarked map. Touching the digital pin that points to Kane’s house, I say, “There.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
At my instructions, RJ parks around the corner and up a block from Kane’s place.
As much as I would like Iffy to stay in the car with her friend, I know I may need help, so we leave RJ alone and make our way down the street.
The faint whomp-whomp-whomp of a helicopter fades in and out over the valley and soon disappears completely. Just before we reach Kane’s street, a set of headlights turns onto the road at the bottom of the hill in front of us.
Not wanting to take any chances that it might be Kane, Iffy and I duck behind some rubbish bins at the curb. Instead of turning at the intersection, the car keeps going straight and drives right past us without slowing.
After a quick check to make sure no other vehicles are coming, we make our way to the corner and turn down Kane’s street. Pausing, I scan ahead. Like I’d previously observed, Kane’s garage door is closed. Though I can’t see much of his house, what I can see appears dark.
I motion for Iffy to stay close and then jog down to the garage. The door is old and warped just enough that there is a gap between it and the cement wall. I shine my phone’s flashlight through the crack to see if the Lexus is inside. The angle isn’t great, but it appears the space is empty. Out of habit, my hand starts to move toward the satchel I’m not carrying so I can use my chaser to hop inside and know for sure. The reflex is just another demonstration of how reliant I’ve become on the device.
I silently chastise myself and then whisper, “Let’s check the street and see if he’s parked nearby.”
While there are over a dozen cars lining the road, none is Kane’s. Given that there are still plenty of open spots available, I think it unlikely he’s left the Lexus on another street.
Yet again, it feels as if the world has dropped out from under me. I’ve been counting on him being here, and am now wondering if we’ve just made a huge mistake leaving San Diego.
The dark corners of my soul are whispering that I’ve lost my chaser forever. I could live with that, I guess, but only if I knew the box had been destroyed and no one else could ever use it. And though I’m still convinced Kane doesn’t possess the knowledge to rekey the device so it’ll work for him, I can’t help wondering, What if he figures it out? Highly unlikely, I know, but not impossible.
Will the world sudd
enly change again?
Will Kane create a break far enough back in time that it will erase me?
And what of my sister?
And Iffy?
And Marilyn and RJ and everyone else?
In my downward spiral, I’ve lost all sense of where I am. It’s Iffy’s hand slipping into mine and her words “Let’s check the house” that start to bring me back.
I blink until the fog in my mind clears enough for me to see Iffy looking at me.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “He’ll show up. And if he doesn’t, wherever he is, we’ll find him.”
She’s right, of course. While the weight of all humanity is my constant companion, I can’t let it overwhelm me. I need to stay focused. After all, the world around me is still as I made it, and until I suddenly wink out of existence, I must do all I can to get my device back so that the time line remains intact.
We head over to Kane’s house and quietly take the steps up the side of the garage to the raised front yard. I can see now that the whole house is dark. I study the front windows for signs of movement, but there are none. There is something odd about the front door, though. Right in the middle at eye level is a square patch that’s lighter in tone than the rest of the door. When I last stood next to that door, there was no light patch.
As Iffy starts toward the left side of the house, I grab her arm and motion for her to follow me to the small front porch. At the base of the steps, I hold up a hand, telling her to stay, and then quietly make my way up. As I reach the top, I flick on my phone’s flashlight again, and use my hand again to focus the beam, this time so that it doesn’t spill through any of the nearby windows.
The patch is a piece of paper that has been folded in half and taped to the door. Written large on it are two words:
DENNY YOUNGER
I yank the paper down, quickly unfold it, and read the message inside.
You will call me at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning. Don’t waste time trying before then because I won’t answer.
Stay in Los Angeles.
Instead of a signature, there’s a phone number.
Destroyer (Rewinder #2) Page 7