Tony couldn’t stand it. He strode to her side and swept her into his arms. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay,” he murmured into her hair. A sense of déjà vu from their time in the attic struck him, reminded him of when he held her and spoke the same words. The same words, yet so different with her a grown woman. Her arms tightened around his back. He pulled her against him, drank in her flowery fragrance and the warmth of her body pressed against his.
Other parts of him became aware of her nearness and sprang to life. He whirled around and walked away before she saw, then winced when the movement pulled at the cut on his side. “Ouch! Get me a towel, will you?”
She ran to the bathroom. Thankfully, the pain and the reminder someone had tried to kill him diverted his body’s awareness from Charlotte’s proximity. “Will he come after me again?”
“No.” She handed him the towel. He unbuttoned his shirt to slide it underneath. “He can’t. Not right away. Theodore’s over fifty years old, so he had to have jumped at least that far back. Whenever he went, he won’t be able to return for at least a couple weeks, and then there’s recovery.”
“Then I don’t have to worry about him. By the time he gets back I’ll be long gone.”
“But Dr. Caruthers—”
“Who’s he?”
“From Cleveland. He’s a horrible man, and he’s on his way here, right now. He’ll never believe you’re innocent, no matter what I say. We have to leave.” Her voice caught. “Please, Tony.”
Tony crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t think so. I’ve tried to get answers from you all week and every time you manage to change the subject. I can hide myself.”
“But there are others! They’ve all seen the Black Book—”
“So let them kill me. If I can’t find out what I want to know, I might as well get sent home sooner—”
“They won’t kill you.” Her voice quieted and grew threatening. “They’ll hurt you enough to silence you. Then they’ll take you to the Society House and do terrible things... please, Tony...” A siren wailed in the distance.
The surgery and medication Everly said they’d used on that Fred guy. Tony’s gut clenched. He could end up like that if he hadn’t eluded Pippin.
The unease in his stomach settled like puzzle pieces falling into place. “All right. On one condition. Tell me what I need to do to—”
“There’s no time!” She leaned toward the door, as if her stance would compel Tony to follow. “We have to go, now! Please, come with me, and I’ll... ” She made a tiny choking sound. “I’ll answer all your questions. Anything you want to know.” Tony didn’t move. She gripped his elbow. “Tony... if Caruthers finds us...”
Tony mulled over his prospects. If he stayed at the Gibbons, Caruthers would force another confrontation. One Tony could lose, and wind up a mindless, drooling zombie.
Or he could leave. Alone. But Charlotte was right, there was no telling when or where he might run into another Society vigilante who would recognize him.
Or he could go with her.
She’d put herself on the line for him.
And she’d promised to tell him what he needed to know. “Where do you suggest we go?” He struggled to button his shirt over the towel.
“My brother owns some property in southeast Ohio. No one will find us there. If we hide out for a few days, Caruthers will go back to Cleveland.”
“What about you? Won’t he come back—”
“By the time he does, Theodore will have returned and recovered.” She swallowed. “He’ll protect me.”
“And by then, I’ll be gone,” Tony said.
“Yes.” She fingered the necklace beneath her dress. “If we get out of here quickly. My brother’s place is way out in the middle of nowhere, by the Clearwater River. There’s a little cabin where we can stay—”
“Yeah, but how are we going to get there? Sunday night, I’ll doubt we’ll find a taxi, or anywhere to rent a car—”
“We can take Theodore’s.”
“You mean steal it?”
“I prefer the term borrow.”
Tony’s hands stilled on the buttons of his shirt. Him? A car thief? Come on, Solomon, the guy tried to kill you. “Okay.” Pippin deserved to have his car stolen, and then some. Tony pulled on his jacket, glad it hid the bulk of the towel in case they encountered anyone.
He pulled the door open, then stopped when Charlotte dashed back to the other side of the bed. “This might come in handy.” She grabbed Pippin’s knife and slid it into her purse.
The sirens grew nearer as they slipped out the door, down a service stairwell and out the back entrance.
The car’s deep maroon finish gleamed, even in the dim light cast by the parking lot’s single street lamp. Shiny and new, a chrome emblem on the car’s side told him it was a Packard, and judging from the size of the engine compartment, a well-powered one. Catching time-criminals must pay well.
They had one more problem. “Keys?” Tony asked.
“Key— oh, no, I completely forgot!” Her crestfallen expression lasted only a second. “But maybe I can get it started without one.”
“You mean hotwire it?” He glanced around the lot. Deserted.
“It seems our best option, don’t you think?” She yanked open the driver’s side door. “Keep a lookout while I see what I can do.” Tony walked around the car and ran his hand over the smooth fenders while she fumbled around beneath the dash. Hell, he didn’t have a clue how to hotwire a car, yet she acted like anyone could do it.
“Fiddlesticks!” She raised up. “I can’t see a blasted thing! Grab the lighter out of my pocketbook, will you? It’s in my cigarette case. Oh, and bring Theodore’s knife, too.”
Tony dug into her purse and located the filigreed, silver box beneath the knife. He returned to her side and thumbed the flint wheel.
“Over here.” She held out a hand, and he placed the knife’s handle in it. She groped under the dash and scraped the insulation off a wire. “Tony? Theodore keeps a toolbox in the back—he should have a pair of pliers in there.” Tony got them for her, then flipped the lighter again.
The knife’s polished silver caught enough light he could read the etched letters beneath the symbol. “What’s the number for?”
“Number?”
“On the knife.”
“Oh that. It’s the year Theodore passed his Second Rite. The Society likes us to carry knives for self defense as opposed to firearms. Less likely to be anachronistic in the past.”
“What’s the Second—”
The car roared to life. Charlotte pulled her head from beneath the dash, straightened, then slid into the driver’s seat. She pulled the car door shut without slamming it. Tony did the same on the passenger side, his question forgotten.
“We’ll make a quick stop at my house to pick up a few things, then head for my brother’s,” she said. “I might be able to start a car without the key, but the padlock on the fishin’ shack is another story.”
Fishin’ shack? Oh, God. It was all coming true. As much as he’d fought it, as determined as he was for it not to happen. What was it she’d said the first evening they spent together? Some things are simply fated to be. Was their doomed relationship one of them?
Fishin’ Shack, read the childish, hand-lettered sign next to the cabin’s door. Charlotte unlocked the door and pushed it open. Rusty hinges squealed.
Dust swirled in the shafts of sunlight streaming in through the window. Tony carried in the box of provisions they’d bought with his 1929 money, then took a moment to catch his breath. Luckily, the half-mile trek through the woods from where they’d parked Pippin’s car had all been downhill, but it was still an effort, burdened with the food and supplies.
He gazed around the cabin. Shack is right. Its single room wasn’t much bigger than his apartment’s second bedroom. A dusty, but not unpleasant dry lumber smell permeated the air. A tingly sensation slid down his throat, an odd mix of trepidation and desire at the t
hought of sharing such close confines with Charlotte.
He set the box on the handmade wooden table. Two upturned barrel halves served as chairs. A metal tackle box rested in the front corner, along with a pair of fishing poles, a rusty shovel, and a straw broom. An ancient, wood-burning stove hulked in one back corner, and in the opposite one, the bed.
One bed. Little more than a low box containing a bumpy mattress, probably straw-filled. Charlotte would sleep there. Alone, Tony told himself. But with or without her in it, the bed looked inviting after driving most of the night.
He realized the tenseness that had gripped him for most of the ride was gone. As tricky as it had been to locate the place with the benefit of Dewey’s hastily-scrawled map, the likelihood of the Society tracking them down was slim.
He unpacked the cans of food, sliding them onto a shelf by the stove. “What if they go through property records and find this place belongs to your brother?”
“They won’t. Technically, it belongs to his in-laws, so there’s no direct connection. It’ll be the perfect place to hide until you start to feel...” She slowed in her unpacking.
“The pull.”
“Yes.” Her voice sounded strained. “By then, Caruthers will have concluded we’re not in Dayton anymore, so we can go home and you can jump from there.”
“What about Pippin? Won’t he be ticked at you for helping me?”
“I’ll... talk to him. Hopefully...” She ran her finger around the edge of a can she’d just unpacked. “I’ll make him understand. He won’t let them hurt me.” She reached up to put the can away.
“You don’t sound too sure.”
She paused, her hand halfway to the shelf, and set the can back on the table. “I’m not. But it’s the best I can hope for. He’ll be hurt and angry, but Theodore loves me.” Tony stopped mid-stride, his shoulders drew back. “Not like that,” she said. “More like a prized student. Or the daughter he never had.” She put the tomatoes on the shelf, then the remaining can of corn.
She regarded the canned goods, hands on her hips. “Well! I don’t know about you, but I’m famished.” Her voice held a false lightness. “Let’s get some dinner started.”
“Sounds good to me.” Relieved at the change of subject, Tony walked to the stove and grabbed the axe. The wood bin beside it was empty. “Looks like we’ll need some wood. I’ll see what I can chop up.”
He found a dead tree not far behind the cabin. Before long, he’d worked up a sweat. Had chopping wood been so hard when he was in the Boy Scouts? He couldn’t remember. Then again, he’d had the other guys and a scoutmaster working with him.
He stopped, whipped off his shirt and blotted his forehead with it. Boy, was he out of shape. The cut on his side had split open and was bleeding again, though it only stung a little. Movement from the corner of the cabin caught his eye. Charlotte leaned against the cabin’s back wall, a bemused smile on her face. “Having trouble?”
“No.” He gritted his teeth and swung the axe.
Charlotte collected the wood he’d already chopped. Relief slid over him when she disappeared around the corner with it. Using a heavy tool would be safer without the distraction.
How would they occupy their days without the restaurant? No radio, no newspapers. Not even the chessboard or her projects. Nothing but each other’s company.
He hoped to God it didn’t rain. If the weather trapped them indoors, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep his hands off her—
Like hell. He swung the axe harder than he needed, and splinters flew from the wood. They were both adults. He wasn’t nineteen, he could control himself. If nothing else, he’d spend the week with the worst case of blue balls he’d had since he was in college.
He forced his attention to the downed tree, made himself focus on where to make the next cut. Before he knew it, he’d chopped the tree into pieces, and it lay in a neat pile.
He grabbed his shirt and wiped his forehead again, the muscles in his shoulders already protesting. Without a lawn to mow and yard work to do, he’d forgotten how cathartic physical labor could be—especially the kind where he didn’t have to think too much.
Charlotte had a fire going in the circle of stones in front of the cabin by the time he brought her the rest of the wood. “It’s nice out, and the stove will make it too warm inside,” she explained.
“That’s cool.” He dropped the wood, then draped his shirt over the pump and pulled his undershirt off. “Man, I haven’t worked like that in a long time. I’m going to go take a dip in—”
Charlotte gasped.
“What’s wro— oh, this.”
Her gaze lit on the backward L-shaped scar in the middle of his chest, then darted up to his neck for a brief second before she looked away. “I’m sorry, I’m being terribly rude.”
“It’s okay.” He dropped the undershirt on the pump and sat on the cabin’s front step. “Happened in Mexico. After I- after the first time I went back in time.”
She sat beside him. “Where—or rather, when—did you go?”
Tony cracked a wry smile. She sounded like Everly. “Back to before the Europeans came, when the natives actually used the temples. I’d say over a thousand years.”
“A millennium? Mercy!” She clapped a hand to her breast. “My word, I didn’t know anyone could go back that far. Though I’ve heard it’s easier in locales with a great deal of inherent spiritual energy. The power that must’ve taken... how long did you need to sleep off the jump?”
“I never had a chance. They killed me before I went into recovery.”
She listened in rapt attention as he told her about his experience with the ancient Mayans.
“Good Lord, that’s horrifying! It makes my first jumps tame in comparison.”
She reached out and trailed a finger over the scar on his chest. He didn’t move. He almost forgot to breathe. Shivers shot through him. Were they from the terrifying memories, or her touch?
Charlotte slowly shook her head. “You’ve been through so much.”
Tony forced himself to speak. “Yeah, it’s incredible how we heal if we get hurt in the past...” The words stopped, forgotten, as she slid her hand around his side to his back and pulled him close.
Unable to stop himself, he wrapped his arm around her, crushing her against him. Her lips parted, and he slid his other hand around the back of her neck. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes as he leaned down to capture her mouth with his.
He never wanted to stop kissing her. Never wanted to stop touching her. Her body pressed against his was a salve for all his wounds, physical and otherwise. He ran his hand down her back, wanted to slip his hand between the buttons of her dress, wished it didn’t fasten so tightly. Her skin would be softer than the smoothest silk. He wanted to feel for himself, to touch it, to rub her all over. He ran his hand over her dress, up and down her back and to her side. As if of a mind of its own, his hand moved closer to where she pressed against his chest, and cupped her smooth, round breast. She trembled and pulled back from his kiss enough to let out a tiny sigh.
Tony pulled his hand away.
“Don’t,” she said.
“You want me to stop?”
“No,” she whispered. “Don’t stop.”
He slid his other hand off her back and stood. “I think I’d better, or... I might not be able to.” He studied the fire, the woods, the sky, anything but her.
But it had been so long. Come on man, time to get back on the horse, he heard in Bernie’s voice.
“We can’t do this,” Tony said. “It’s not right.” Sorry, Bernie. “I’ll only be here a few more days, then...”
She looked down, but not enough to hide the flush in her face. “You’re right, of course. I- I guess I’ll start dinner.”
“What can I do to help?”
“I can take care of it.” She rose, slipped inside the cabin and returned with a cigarette.
Tony didn’t look away quickly enough to avoid seeing her l
ush, red lips close around the cigarette, lips he’d been kissing a moment ago, lips he desperately wanted to kiss again, before he moved on to other places—
He grabbed his shirt off the pump. “I’m going to the river.” The closest he could get to a cold shower.
A cold dunk in the river wasn’t enough to get his mind off Charlotte, so after his bath, he hiked downriver to the dam site. When he finally returned, Charlotte sat perched on the cabin’s front stoop. Only the bowl of stew in her lap stopped him from scooping her into his arms, and it was an effort to merely sit beside her after he served himself from the pot on the campfire.
He tried to concentrate on the delicious beef stew instead of the press of her hip against his. “This is awesome. Even my mom’s isn’t this good.”
Her answering smile chased away the lingering awkwardness. “We get a lot of compliments on it at the restaurant.” Her mirth dissipated. “Or did.” She stared into the campfire.
The bite of stew solidified in Tony’s mouth. Did. Because he’d gotten her fired. They’d talked about it in the car. She’d insisted Tony had done the right thing, had thanked him for defending her honor, but he still felt guilty. His so-called defense had cost her her livelihood.
She dropped her spoon into her bowl with a clank. “Tony... don’t. I told you, I hated that job. I’ll find another. It will be all right.”
He met her gaze, then took another bite. Jobs weren’t easy to come by in these times. He ate the rest of his stew in silence, then remained on the stoop while she ate a second bowl.
She ladled the soup into her mouth with gusto, yet managed to look ladylike. He realized it was one of the things he liked about her—no comments about how she’d have to do an extra hour on the treadmill, or how the second helping would go right to her hips. Charlotte enjoyed food for the pure pleasure of it.
She caught him staring. “Penny for your thoughts?”
I want you, God, do I want you. But instead he said, “My thoughts are worth more than that aren’t they?”
Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) Page 23