The fight was really no fight at all. Caught in a crossfire, the soldiers lasted less than a minute. Although it could never be proven, Lovelle felled two of the remaining men with his five shots. This would be a good natured dispute among the men over the next 18 years. But, Manuel had taken out a third from his shorter range and Juan’s long distance barrage had been no more effective than the soldiers’ attacks on them.
With their adversaries apparently out of the fight Lovelle called Maria out of cover. They climbed into the now leaky dinghy and headed for the yacht. Their little craft had taken a single lucky bullet and a stream of water was pouring in. Lovelle was able to take care of it Dutch boy style, plugging it with a finger.
Juan gave the Cuban launch a wide berth as they hurried to the yacht. They all knew that reinforcements might be on the way so none of them needed to be told to rush. When they arrived at the yacht Maria helped Manuel stow the gear while Lovelle and Juan hooked the dinghy to the hoist. Once it was latched on they gave Manuel the go ahead to move. The yacht started to take off almost as soon as the dinghy’s hull had left the water. They finished loading the boat onto the deck while they sped toward international waters.
The Liberty, as Lovelle had named it, was a fast boat, but Lovelle didn’t want to have to find out if she could outrun one of those patrol boats. He got his wish because she was fast enough to get away from the scene of the firefight before anyone else came sniffing around. They exited Cuban territorial waters without seeing another craft.
Safely in neutral water they anchored the boat to get some needed rest. The exiles retired to the crew’s quarters and Lovelle took Maria to the bedroom where he made love to her like it was their first time. In a way it sort of was. Their raging teenage hormones, mixed with the deep passion of their love and the longing of their separation, made it seem new and exciting.
It’s funny how age creeps up on you. You don't notice you're getting older until one day you wake up and realize that you are. At 34 Lovelle and Maria were not very old. But, compared to being 16, they were ancient. Although they no longer looked at older people with the eyes of youth, they remembered doing so at one time. Lovelle remembered one particular family portrait in which his father had looked so much older than Lovelle ever thought of himself. But, he had not been. He was just two years older than Lovelle was when he skipped. But as a 16 year-old, that seemed like a very long time.
In all the years since the first skip, reliving his teens over and over again Lovelle had never given in to his raging hormones. He had never been intimate with a teenaged girl. Not even the ones who had or would become his wife. They were teenagers and he was a grown man who would not take advantage of his amazing disguise. But Maria was just like him, a grizzled old veteran with the fresh young body of her youth. It was like they had discovered Ponce de Leon’s fountain of youth and that night they made excellent use of it.
They spent the following day tossing all of their weapons overboard, and distressing a few bullet holes until they looked like part of the Liberty’s wear and tear. Then they fished until dusk. That was all camouflage to go along with the story that they had simply wandered out of American waters by accident while on a fishing charter. When they were doubtless checked out by the Coast Guard they would find the yacht registered to Manuel and that Maria was now Maria Hidalgo, an 18 year-old Cuban American out for a couple days of fun with her boyfriend.
Chapter 10
Lovelle returned to Detroit with his “new” girl in tow just in time for Thanksgiving. The story they concocted for his parents was that Maria and Lovelle had been pen pals who had fallen for each other. When she had decided to escape Cuba he had gone down to meet her and help her to become a legal emegree. It was a little farfetched, but, the truth was so much more so. Not knowing what else to do, his parents accepted them at face value. Now that she was here legally, the 18 year-old Hidalgo version of Maria was setting up her home near her loyal American boyfriend, so what else could they do.
He spent a good deal of time trying to convince his parents that she was not going to interfere with his schooling or change his plans for the future. He wasn’t sure how much they believed him, but, in time they would see him take the same path he had taken over the last four lives. They would not be thrilled as he chose not to go to college. But, they would accept as he became a successful ‘photo journalist’. It was a perfectly non-traditional job which explained his odd schedule, and weird travel habits. He always gave the appearance of someone making a good, but, not extravagant living. This time they might blame Maria for his unexpected choice, but, he was confident they would come around just the same.
***
Once things were more or less settled, Lovelle made his once per skip trip to King County Washington. This was where he would find Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer. There had been no great hurry to get there because Ridgeway had happened to have recently fallen in love. He was currently on hiatus from his murderous rampage. Unfortunately, this twisted murderer had already done most of his damage. More than 40 women were already dead by the time of the skip, many of their bodies defiled after death at the hands of the twisted maniac.
Since Ridgeway was already on the radar of the police, there was no need to make his death look like an accident. Lovelle knew from experience that Ridgeway’s death would not only end his killing, but would lead the police to solve the case. They would then assume that someone knew what Ridgeway had been doing, and had taken revenge. But, they never came knocking on Lovelle’s door.
As dispassionate as Lovelle could be about his work, there was always a sense of satisfaction in it. He did not enjoy killing per se, but he could not deny there was some pleasure in the job being done. With Ridgeway the sense of satisfaction was very strong. And so was the sense of regret. Regret that he could not save all those other women. Each time, as he watched the bullet pass through the man's skull he only wished he could be there four years earlier.
On this day, as always, he waited for Ridgeway to arrive at work. He knew from long experience that he could make this shot with no risk to others. And so he placed himself a few hundred feet away in the back of his van. Ridgeway stepped out of his own vehicle and almost immediately received a round in the temple. As always he dropped like a stone. At this distance, having a clear view of the impact, Lovelle did not feel compelled to follow up. Besides, should the man somehow survive, he was sure the ensuing police investigation would still uncover his crimes. One way or the other, his murderous ways were at an end.
***
Two and a half years into this life Lovelle graduated, one semester behind schedule. He and Maria were married that following spring and relocated to Las Vegas right after. They had never dared to be married as Maria Alonzo and Curtis Lovelle. That would have been a red flag to the 7/17 club. But, with her new identity, she would only be Alonzo to the club. They could be married and still keep that fact from Baker and his friends.
Lovelle decided that he would be better off continuing to work as a sniper. It exposed him to more risk of capture, because there would eventually be a concerted police, or rather FBI, effort to find him. But, that risk seemed to be smaller than the one posed by the 7/17 club, assuming Baker stayed true to form and kept law enforcement out of the matter.. He had to assume they would continue to try and thwart him, and their foreknowledge of his targets made them a more immediate threat.
Lovelle had just come home from one of his missions when Maria walked into his study and found him crying there. “What is the matter my love?” she asked assuming something had gone awry in his work.
“I can't picture his face.” Lovelle sobbed. “Kyle… I can't picture him anymore. I'm losing him all over again.” Kyle was Lovelle’s son from his first life. It had been well over a hundred years since he’d seen him. The image in his mind's eye, once indelible, had faded to near nothing. “I don't know what's going on!” He cried. “It’s like, yesterday I could see him, and today I can't! It's
not fair!” He smashed his fist onto his desk. “It's not enough that these damn skips had to take him away, but now they're stealing my memories of him.”
Maria came to him and wrapped her arms around her husband. “Oh god my love, I'm so sorry. I can't even imagine.”
“And Jessica, I haven't been able to picture her in years. She was just a baby. I just didn't have enough time with her. It kills me!” His teeth gritted and fists clenched, “Sometimes I get so angry. All these other people, these frickin monsters, they keep resetting. I keep trying to send them to hell, but they keep coming back. No matter what happens to them. They keep coming back. But, not my babies. They're gone. God dammit!”
Maria held him closer. She had never seen him quite like this. She occasionally found him brooding, and at those times she'd learned to leave him alone. She had discovered that he wouldn't tell her what was wrong, and that he would snap out of it on his own. Stifling emotional control was his hallmark. She had never witnessed any emotional outbursts. No fits of either joy or anger, and never this sort of open weeping. She was simultaneously touched and concerned for him. She often wished for him to be more demonstrable with his feelings, but, she hated seeing him so clearly in pain.
He seldom talked of his past lives. Not the ones before he became the killer. Oh, he would answer direct questions. She knew the basic facts. The names of his wives and children. But very little of the details, and nothing about his feelings other than that it was too difficult for him to talk about. He was an open book on most every other subject. He would happily tell her anything she wanted to know about anything he had done. And it didn't matter how it made him look. He trusted her implicitly. So she knew that when he failed to share about his past loves and his loss, it was because it was too hard for him. He simply kept those things bottled up. And yet now here it was. This man whom she loved, and was so grateful to have found, was torn apart by his past. And it tore her up too, because there was little she could do. She could hold him and tell him she was sorry. But she couldn't help him. She could barely comfort him. Normally, when you lose a child, people tell you they’ve gone to a better place, or something like that. But Lovelle was not only dubious about the whole idea of heaven and hell, but, as far as they could tell, his children had been erased from existence altogether. If there was a life after death, did his children even qualify as having died. There was nothing to say to him, so she let him cry, and cry, for a long time.
After this episode, Lovelle began to share a little more. Slowly he began to tell Maria about his life. She learned not just that he had four wives, but, finally why he had chosen not to be with any of them since the third skip. How he had never intended to be with anyone but Katie, yet circumstances put him in the arms of these other women. Previously she had learned the stories of how he had tried to stop 9/11 in the second life. Of all the trials and tribulations involved in that endeavor. But now he had filled in the gaps. She now knew what he was doing in the meantime. This was the first time she learned about his failed second marriage. And it was hard for her, seeing how he had never stopped loving his other wives. It was hard for her to imagine choosing to let them all go when he clearly loved them. And yet she could not be threatened, as he had chosen to forsake the women of his past, life after life, even before she entered the picture herself.
***
Lovelle’s missions went along smoothly through the first part of this life as his skills and tactics continued to improve. He refined his techniques and he now spent less time in preparation and in procurement of equipment. This left him time for a real life with Maria, and he began to think he should have been working this way all along. Of course, before Maria, he had no great need for extra time.
In no time he found himself far enough ahead of schedule that he could make his trip to China. His curiosity about the birthday club hadn’t waned very much in the 13 years since the bombing. His method had worked so well in the last life, Lovelle decided to repeat the performance. Once again he went to Japan to set up his backstory, then off to Hong Kong. He looked up his old translator, since he too had served him well. The man was confused to be sought by someone without any sort of referral, but, didn’t spend too much time worrying about it. He was fairly new in the career at the time and was happy to have the work.
What Lovelle found on his trip was nothing like what he had ever imagined. He had wondered for a long time what sort of rift might have caused the murders. He speculated about a number of possible scenarios. He wondered if the bombing was conducted by a Skipper with a grudge, or a civilian who had somehow learned about them. He thought maybe the Skippers at the birthday party might have been using their foreknowledge in some way that had upset another Skipper. Or maybe the opposite, that the birthday club was a militant anti-intervention group like the 7/17 club, and the bomber felt threatened by them.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to find out which theory was correct, if any. What he found was that none of the Skippers existed. Not that they were dead, but, that they had never been born. He tried and failed to track each one of them down. As far as he could determine, none of them had ever been born. It was China, and he was less sure of his information than he would normally be. But, while he might imagine it was his own error should he fail to track one or two of them down, there was no way he could have erred on all of them. They had been erased from time, and he didn’t know how that could be.
He knew for a fact that Skippers could die and would come back to life. A member of the 7/17 club had, a couple of lives back, and was still around today. So what was different about these deaths? What could cause them to vanish? Was it the way they died? Was it murder versus accident that made the difference? Did it have something to do with them all being together at the time? And did someone actually figure out that secret and purposely make the permanent kill?
Lovelle returned to Maria as confused as he had been in a very long time. He realized he had come to have some pretty strong beliefs of what skipping was all about and that confidence was shaken. The sense of immortality that had informed his behavior for so long was now gone. He wondered how that knowledge would affect his work. And he wasn’t sure how he felt about Maria and her covert connection to the 7/17 club. He didn’t know if he would ever want her to contact them again. If they ever found out she was deceiving them on his behalf how would they take it? Would she be safe? He had always worried about that, but, he had never before been concerned for her very life. Despite his belief that someday time would move on and whatever had been made of that life would become permanent, he had never been overly worried about their personal mortality. The likelihood that the life where something bad happened to them would be the final one always seemed too remote to dwell on. He was careful about what he did in each life because of that possibility, but, he didn’t let it stop him from taking risks, especially with his own life.
Maria added to his anxiety when she posited her own theory, “You said you think they were killed by another Skipper. Do you think maybe that’s the reason they didn’t come back? What if the only people who can really be killed off are Skippers, and only when another Skipper is the killer.”
“That’s as good a theory as any, probably better. But that doesn’t help me feel any more comfortable about you hanging around the club. I don’t know which is worse, the thought of them knowing they could permanently wipe us out, or the thought of them not knowing and doing it accidentally or frivolously while thinking it’s only temporary.”
“Do you think they need to be told so they don’t have an accident?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. You teach your friend how to use a gun so he doesn’t shoot someone without meaning to. You don’t do that for an adversary. They just might turn the gun on you when you’re done.” Lovelle stopped, but, Maria was frowning at him. “Look,” he continued. “I know their not really bad guys. But, they think I am. Is it really that big a stretch to think they might decide I should be terminated?”
Maria let out a short giggle. “What?” he asked.
“I’ll be back!” Maria affected a deep German accent. Lovelle rolled his eyes at the Schwarzenegger reference then continued, “And how do you think they’ll feel about you if they ever find out about us? I’d rather you didn’t have any more contact with them now. I don’t like the idea of you being around them if they thought they could kill you permanently, or if they just thought doing so might be a good way to teach you a lesson.”
Maria agreed to pull back from the group, but, gradually. She argued that any sudden move would be suspicious, and that would only lead to someone snooping around to find out why.
“Yeah, we don’t need that.” Lovelle concurred.
“You know what’s really frightening?” He asked her later.
“What’s that, love?”
“You could get hit by a bus, or fall down the stairs and crack your skull open. Hell, get hit by lightning and I would know that time would bring you back to me. But if you died in a car wreck, with me behind the wheel, I wouldn’t know if I would ever see you again.”
“Yeah, and just think, you’d have to sail down to Cuba with Juan and Manuel just to see of I’d show up.”
“Christ, what a nightmare! That’s it. You’re not riding in a car with me ever again.” He teased.
“Yes. And no more cleaning your guns around the house.” She chuckled.
Time Skip (Book 2): The Time Skippers Page 9