In the Wrong Year (Double-Check Your Destination Book 1)

by Amabel Daniels

  What a…foreign concept.

  I tore my stare from them as they moved on in the line.

  By the slow ticking hands on the clock above the counter, almost an hour had passed as I sat there. Spotting that huge clockface had captivated me for a few minutes. Such a large antique hung up there like it wasn’t a priceless artifact, but common.

  I watched and tried to think of anything that could explain my jump back in time. No ideas made sense. All I could concentrate on were the last memories I was confident about, and those were sketchy at best. I’d gone out with Freddy last night, but then…

  My head began to throb, not just from the hangover.

  With every minute that inched by, I grew restless. Impatience was my biggest fault, but sitting there idle for almost an hour? I was screaming in my head to move, to do something. My stomach growled. Hunger struck and lingered. That coffee smell never faded, and I was going to drool soon.

  If I got up, where would I go? That coffee guy was my only hope for answers or a direction.

  Yet, I couldn’t sit still. I needed food, caffeine, water, answers, but most importantly, a bathroom.

  I gnawed on my lips as I snapped my focus back to the sign I’d spotted earlier, a placard—plastic, again— attached to the wall, indicating restrooms were toward the left of the bustling café.

  Maybe twenty feet there and back. If I hustled, I could get in and out. Losing my seat wasn’t an obstacle. Or would it be? This place was filling up fast. In fact, as I surveyed the dining area, I saw every table and chair was claimed.

  Well, shit. I needed this observation post to keep that coffee guy front and center in my view, and I didn’t want to stand until he was free to be approached.

  Wiggling, I knew I couldn’t hold it off. I had to go. If I lost my seat, so be it.

  “Dammit,” I muttered to myself. I shot from the chair and raced to the bathroom. Thankful there wasn’t a line, I rushed and did my business, ignoring my incredulity of the manual operation of knobs and buttons and—

  Get in and out. I refused to lose sight of that coffee guy.

  Weaving around slow-poke customers standing around and chilling like there wasn’t a time crisis, I nearly jogged back to the chair I’d been seated at.

  “Unbelievable.”

  No one had taken it. As I neared it, a woman beelined for it while holding a chill, happy baby at her hip and tugging a reticent, fussy toddler by the hand. An older girl trailed behind them, sullen and seeming bored.

  Aw, come on.

  She struggled, hefting the baby higher up in her grip and urging the little girl her way.

  Watching the mom with young girls softened my mood for a moment. I could easily envision my aunt and her sisters like that in their youth, competing for attention with their contrasting personalities.

  Damn. It. This woman needed to sit more than me, but—

  “Everly!”

  I froze mid-step and gasped at my name being yelled across the room.

  Me?

  I whipped back and forth, eyeing the growing crowd. Was there another Everly here? Did someone know me here? How?

  Heads bobbed as people moved in a lazy mass, and voices rose in a din of too many conversations. Snazzy music faded even more as I heard the blood rushing in my head.

  Well, welcome back, panic attack.

  I couldn’t see anyone specifically searching me out in the crowd, the loud voices and laughter and whirring coffee machines droning out my senses. It hit me with a drowning force as I tried to ground myself in a time and place I couldn’t possibly connect to. Being called out meant I was identified, but why, and how?

  “Ever—”

  There. That same masculine roar of a…warning? My heart raced faster at the ominous tone. Again, I sought the man calling out for me. Maybe for me.

  “Get down!” he yelled.

  Some people joined me in panic at his last yell. Strangers frowned and looked around, pausing their actions at the shouted order.

  Too much noise and commotion clouded me.

  Until a bright purple light blasted in front of me.

  I flinched and reared back, making sure I didn’t fall. Running would be faster than crawling, and escape was all I had in mind.

  Another violet blast zapped through the air, and I followed the straight bolt as it flew in front of me. Smoke sizzled in a cracked-web spot of impact on the maroon wall two feet from me.

  Someone screamed. Shouts. Feet pounded with everyone running and chairs scraped against the floor.

  All right. I wasn’t the only one seeing…light strikes? Holograms? What was going on?

  Where the chaos and noise from before was a dull dun, pandemonium ensued now. Bodies crushed together in a mob, arms pushing out as they all fought to leave first.

  “I said”—another blast of light, this time over my head—“Get. Down!”

  I squinted, breathing faster with the adrenaline rush, trying to connect the demanding baritone to a face. Was he talking to me, or—?

  Between two girls huddling together as they tried to exit, their mouths pulled open in screams, a man shoved through. He skidded to a halt just in front of me.

  Frantically, he scoped the frenzied mass of alarmed people.

  Decked in a dark suit, he breathed hard, his body a massive wall of scary might. A funny-looking hat sat on his head, and he flicked the tip of it higher to clear his sight.

  Then another one ran up behind him, dressed in the same black gear, only a white tie instead of bold red. Hard features tightened on their faces as they sprinted toward me, their intense stares zeroing in on me.

  Me.

  Yeah, me. The girl who didn’t belong here. They were looking right at me. I had no doubt I was their prey. I swallowed hard as the taller one grinned a sinister slash of a sneer at me. His buddy raised a gun and aimed.

  I lurched toward the ground.

  Down. Roll over. Run like hell. I was getting outta here.

  Instinct drove me to duck out of his range of fire, but something else hindered my maneuver. Someone crashed into me, pushing me harder to the tiled floor.

  I felt my chest let out an oft of air as I slammed down. Screams and zipping hisses of air sounded too loud for me to hear anything that would make sense.

  Except for that man. He wasn’t yelling now but muttering a gruff whisper near my head as he leaned over me, trapping me to the floor.

  “When I say get down—” He growled and shifted as he shielded me, his hard, heavy arms strapping me down, facing away from him. “It means—”

  Zaps screeched next to my head. My cheek was pressed to the cold floor, and not even a foot away, violet flames petered out on the surface. The jagged zigzag of cracked, scorched tile was too close for comfort. I jerked at the man holding me down, enough to raise my head to see something other than the gray floor.

  “Get down!” he snapped.

  The dark-suited duo aimed at me. Us? Violet blasts shot from an arm next to my head. My…savior’s? One after the other, shots blasted out. Until they didn’t. With a nonstop tattoo of hisses, the man who’d barreled into me fired shots at the two men. They dodged and evaded the blasts, taking partial cover behind a counter.

  Slower and quieter, his shots faded until no light burst forth from the gun in his hand.

  “Of course, I grabbed the one with shit for a charge.”

  Ignoring his complaint, I kept my attention on the two men who’d pursued me.

  Their weapons seemed just fine as they aimed once more at us.

  The hand gripping the gun next to my head flung out, tossing the empty firearm to sling across the floor. His arm wrapped around my torso, and he shoved, rolling me with him. Half-shielded by his bulk, I eased away from the wide-open spot we’d fallen to.

  Underneath a table now, he pushed me back and then ran out. A long metal pipe in his hand, he climbed to his feet, arm to the side, and preparing to strike.

  A pipe? Versus light guns?
r />   I gasped, cowering under the table and staring up from the floor. He was…insane. They’d blast him! Wedging further back beneath the table, I smacked my arm into chair legs and stared ahead.

  Dammit, another person who seemed to know me that I couldn’t question. He was as good as dead, facing those two with a dinky stick to fight back!

  As soon as the man stood, his black suit jacket rumpling from his tussle with me on the floor, he raised his arm to strike with the pipe.

  I braced myself for him to be hit, but instead, the two men lowered their guns. They set their hands in their pockets.

  Then they were gone.

  I blinked. Once. Twice. Panting hard, I felt dust fluffing up against my face as I stared. Again, I closed my eyes and opened them.

  Okay. Add hallucinations into this disaster now.

  The two men weren’t there. Vacant space filled where they’d stood. One second, they were there, the next, poof. Disappeared. Others in the coffee shop looked around and at the man who’d run out to face them. This stranger who’d warned me to get down.

  He stood there, huffing hard breaths with his back still to me. Slowly, he lowered his arm, his grip firm on the steel pipe. Customers backed away from him as he stood there, facing the direction of where the two men had stood a moment ago.

  “Dammit!” he said and dropped the pipe. It clattered to the tiles, and as it rolled away, I realized it was just a chair leg. He must have busted it off as he got up?

  While people still panicked and backed away from him, I took faith in my grip on sanity that the men and women near us looked just as confused at a couple of men vanishing. So, I wasn’t the only one to witness humans disappearing.

  Hell, I fell back in time fifty years. Bodies pulling a disappearing act shouldn’t be too farfetched in my current state of mind.

  Before I could think further, I watched the man spin back to face me.

  Dark hair shifted off his forehead in the momentum of his pivot, revealing a lean face of sharp angles. Stubble coated his jaw in a ruthless sign of rogue indifference, but his stern stare and scowling lips advised he wasn’t very pleased. Was he peeved? Mad? I couldn’t tell, but he sure as hell wasn’t happy.

  He dropped to one knee, narrowing his dark eyes at me as I remained hidden under the table. “Everly?”

  Damn, he was impatient too.

  He’d warned me to get down and guided me out of the way of harm. But his attitude rubbed me the wrong way. So, he might have saved me there, but who was he? Not the boss of me, that was for sure.

  I noticed he wore the same style of a dark suit as the other two had, and my trust faltered even more. I was dressed from my time, those around us were in skintight old stuff of 2020. This guy and the two he’d faced? They were dressed altogether differently like they’d come from a black-tie event. Something…entirely different from here.

  “Come on.” He glanced up and around the crowd. “Before the cops get here.”

  Cops. I’d never avoided law enforcement. I’d never had a particular reason to. But the arrival of any authority would be sticky. They’d ask questions, for one. And I had no answers.

  I stared at the man, weighing whether I should trust him. Here, now, I had no one and nothing to trust, not even myself, as I worried I was going insane.

  He’d shielded me, and he knew who I was. That should have been enough to convince me. With the craziness of the memories I could recall, my judgment was skewed.

  “Everly, please.”

  A plea? Begging? Why was he so desperate for my cooperation? Yet, I couldn’t deny the fact he was asking me rather than forcing me along. That had to stand for something.

  In the still frantic crowd, I caught words that propelled me to scramble out from under the table.

  “…I think someone called the police…”

  “…911, there’s been a…shooting?”

  “…We’re at Java Hut on Mission Avenue. There’s a man here with a gun…”

  Multiple people spoke on their smartphones, fear etched on their faces.

  “Now!” the man urged me again.

  Man, was he pushy. But, hell. What other choice did I have?

  Standing, I hurried toward him.

  “He’s running!” someone hollered from the café. “Somebody, stop them!”

  “Let’s go,” my rescuer said, taking a harsh grip on my hand and sprinting toward the door.

  Chapter Four

  I followed the man outside. We ran and ran and ran. Even as we fled the coffee shop, I couldn’t forget the shock of different buildings surrounding us, all these trees! Given how unfamiliar everything was, I couldn’t estimate how far we’d gone or where he was leading me, but it felt like miles.

  My lungs burned from the cardio, even though the air was so clear. Maybe it was too clean that my body was unable to process the oxygen this way?

  My feet. Oh, those poor things. All this pavement—my shoes were useless to protect me against the sidewalks and roads. Running—even walking—was overrated when hovers could take us from one place to another. But that was in my time, not here.

  How much—

  “Okay. That’s good enough. A couple of blocks should do.”

  A strangled, choked cough left my lips at his announcement. A couple of blocks? That was it?

  Risking a turn back, I panted with relief. No one chased us. A horde of coffee drinkers didn’t mob after us, and no officers or drones gave pursuit either.

  Overhead, the sky darkened more, the vivid blue from earlier phasing into a grayer blanket that promised rain.

  The man heaved a deep breath as though he was struggling with the impromptu exercise as well. Slowing to a fast walk, then even slower to a tamer pace of strolling, I yanked my hand from his grip and studied him.

  “What’s going on?”

  I had so many questions, but that one seemed bluntest and all-encompassing. Daydreamer I might be, but I preferred direct questions when I had to put up with others.

  His tall frame gave him a fast stride, and I struggled to keep up. Asshole couldn’t wait up after all the trouble he’d gone to for saving me? Wasn’t I supposed to be a priority, not left behind?

  On his feet were dressier—impractical—shoes that shone with polish and clapped hard at the ground. Sure, confident smacks as we distanced ourselves from where he’d, well, he’d appeared. As he swung his arms and strode on, the black fabric of his jacket and pants pulled over muscles beneath. A lion trapped in finery. Unusual finery…clothing unlike now, or before. Later? My time would be later. Fifty years later.

  He glanced at me, one dark slash of a brow hiked up before he surveyed our surroundings again.

  “Who are you?” I licked my lips, wetting the cracks from them being chapped. The flood of questions spewed forth with his broody silence. “Who were those guys? Why am I…here? Or now? What were those purple things? Am I—”

  His groan was a long one. A growl of frustration. “One at a time.”

  Oh, don’t be an insufferable dick. At least he wasn’t out-right refusing to answer me. “Time. That’s funny. What time is it?” I wiped errant wisps of hair from my eyes and couldn’t help but look back once more in the direction we’d come from. Coast was still clear. Without immediate danger, I had to get some clues. “Because the last I knew, it was 2071. Not—”

  “2020. Yeah. I know.”

  His agreement—even if it was snippy—that I’d fallen back five decades was startling. That it had happened, and he was aware.

  “It was an accident.” He cleared his throat, but he didn’t lose the raspy growl to his words. “So…I guess I’m sorry for that. I didn’t mean to send you here.”

  Spluttering for a response, I tried to compute exactly what he’d said. He sent me here? This wasn’t some cosmically violent hangover? This was his fault?

  “You guess you’re sorry?” God, whoever the hell he was, he was getting on my nerves. Can’t hack a real apology?

  “I
didn’t mean to. Not— Well, it’s not easy to explain.”

  He almost could have convinced me he was sorry if he wasn’t scowling. When he rolled his eyes, I bristled for an argument. I was in 2020 by accident? “I don’t care how difficult it is to explain, I deserve to—”

  I ducked as he raised his hand, prepared for him to strike out at me. But…that wouldn’t make sense. He’d saved me back there. His move was only to run his fingers through the long unruly mess of hair that might have been slicked back earlier. He’d hissed with the movement, a sharp intake of air that hinted at pain.

  “It’s…” He frowned at me, slowing his pace even more. Then casting his stare above and around, he seemed to consider the city again. A long blink hid his whiskey eyes. “Wait… 2020? I sent you back to 2020…” A choked cough slipped past his lips. “Uh…my bad.”

  We’d ended up near small greenspace—something like a five percenter’s private lawn from my time. Fenced in, sprinklers spritzing out water, lush grass for them to flaunt their wealth.

  Only this spot wasn’t barricaded or guarded. A bench stood, inviting…anyone to come by? Wow. How uncharacteristically welcoming.

  They’d let anyone sit here? Without charge? No way! I grinned, so charmed by the generosity, in the city, no less.

  “What’s the date?” he asked me, yanking my focus from the bench.

  I thought back to the milk jug—in plastic! “Uh, January fifth?”

  Lips twisted, he scrunched his brow more. “Huh. January?”

  I shrugged. Hell I if really knew. The tepid warmth felt like a Florida winter, regardless of the decade.

  “Well. At least it’s only the first month of the year. Before…” He rolled his hand as though prompting ideas. “Before the shitshow really starts.”

  I was walking through history, and it was one I was aware of but not that knowledgeable about. 2020 was always the butt of all jokes. Aunt Helen never failed to sport a scowling smirk at teases about this year, an instant grimace. For so long, I’d assumed it was one of those “adult” kinds of humor that my aunt wasn’t receptive to. Once I’d suffered through school, I’d gotten the basic summary of history. 2020 sucked. First, there was a virus? Some kind of political showdown? Toilet paper shortages, maybe? A tiger lord? Fires and floods and—yeah, 2020 had always sounded like the end of times.