Category: Time Travel

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A Thousand Miles Away

Edward Garrett finds himself washed up on the shore of a foreign land, shipwrecked! As he tries to find his way home, he becomes involved with The People, a friendly—but reserved—people who live along the coast and are being harassed by brigands from the mountains known as the Brazee.

Thinking that Marcus has brought him here for just this reason, Edward agrees to lead a posse into the mountains to try and retrieve four teenage girls who were captured by the Brazee. Edward’s greatest desire is to leave, to go find his beloved Marianne and let her know he didn’t die in the great battle by the river. In the process of freeing the girls, however, he is shot and lands in a Brazee prison. There, he is forced into gladiatorial games where the only way to freedom … is death. A futuristic fantasy in the tradition of Louis L’Amour.

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And don’t forget the two prequels to this novel: “All the Time in Our World” and “Some of the Time“!

Reading Sample

Running up the stairs of the tallest parapet of the grotesque castle that overlooked the river we in my day called the Mississippi, I was bleeding from a few minor cuts and my skin was bruised in many places, but I had never felt more alive. Nor had I felt more joyful.

Ahead of me ran Marcus, carrying his sword and with a light step as one who is running for pleasurable exercise. One might even say he carried the sword casually, though Marcus did nothing casually. All he did was carefully planned and meticulously executed. If Marcus had stopped to admire the sunset, anyone watching would have just assumed that was what he had always intended to do at that moment, for those who knew him knew that none of his steps, moves or halts were in waste.

Holding my own sword in my right hand, it’s blade still flecked with black blood for I had had no opportunity to clean it, my mind went back briefly to how we had come to be there. I say briefly for it was just a matter of steps, but the mind works in overdrive when in battle and a million thoughts may rush through a mind in their completeness in less time than it has taken me now to write this sentence.

We had crossed the great plains that I had once known as the land of Oklahoma with relative ease, though it hadn’t seemed so at the time. The logistics of moving such a great force of such disparate abilities and technologies had been one of the problems. The skirmishes we had fought against advance scouts of the Enemy had been another difficulty, though as we looked back later those battles had been like swatting mosquitoes.

As we had crossed into what had been known in my time as Arkansas and Missouri it seemed as if every valley and each forest held a new host of enemies lying in wait to ambush us. We had excellent scouts of our own, but it soon became obvious that it was not a position that promised a long lifespan. Though, as we went further, experience taught our scouts much and those who made it to the river with us were woodsmen indeed.

We came to the river fully six months after setting out on this excursion. We had been joined by additional members of the Gund Nation, as well as more Overstreets (who proved to be the best scouts for they could move through the forest more quietly than the wind itself) and even a large contingent of warriors from a people known as the T’rah’mra, who lived far to the southwest of Green River, along the sea coast. Somehow Marcus had gotten word to them and though they had set out before us it was some time before they could catch up to us. They were a people who were mighty in the skills of boat building and their service when we got to the river was immeasurable.

Still six days from the river, we had been met by a most surprising delegation. Eight men and five women—all taller than my six foot and appearing to me made of whipcord and muscle dressed in clothing that looked like something the Polynesians of my day might have enjoyed—arrived at our camp, also saying they had been summoned by Marcus. How they had received said summons none were ever clear, but Marcus greeted them warmly and assured us he had called for them. They were a people who called themselves a name which meant “Land of Wet Ground” but they were known in rumor and legend to the Gund as the Treemors.

They were somewhat darker of skin than I, but not so dark as the Cherokee or the T’rah’mra and, as I say, they were all tall. Some of them approached seven foot, though most were around six and a half. I was to find out later that they came from the deep woods that I once knew as Georgia and Northern Florida. Even with their bright clothing, they could disappear into a forest almost as well and quickly as an Overstreet.

The delegation of thirteen—a number of some significance in their reckoning—brought us the welcome news that they had a force of some hundred thousands amassed on the far side of the river, not twenty miles from the Enemy’s castle. They were the most advanced of the surface-dwelling people and maintained a primitive radio communication among their people. It was subject to disruption and had a limited range, but they assured me that they could and would work in concert with us when the time came to attack.

That time was soon. We knew the Enemy was aware of our presence and we were also certain he knew why we were coming, for he was not a being who welcomed casual visitors. While we hoped that we could maintain some element of surprise as to the “how-to’s” and “where-fore’s” of our attack, we knew that our only real hope lie in the justness of our cause. More than that, of course, was that Marcus was on our side and he had never been defeated—nor would he ever be we were sure.

I split our forces into three main divisions, though two of the divisions were—numerically—vastly superior. The smaller division—which was itself bifurcated—was our demolitions team. Half of them were to work their way to the western shore of the river and, on signal, begin to bombard the city with bombs my good friend Lomar would have relished to handle. The other half, meanwhile, had taken themselves up river approximately two hundred miles, to an ancient dam on the river that created what Marcus said was the largest inland, manmade, lake in the history of the world, larger even than the Lochs he, Marianne, Daniel and I had marveled at many years ago on our first journey. Upon reaching the dam, they would set charges and—from a safe distance—blow them and release the water of the lake.

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TimeKeeperS: Rectification

An EMP knocks out all the power in North America. As people are scrambling to get generators (or anything else) running, they begin to hear rumors. Nuclear war. Chaos. What about the President? Is she alive or did she die in the disaster?

Mary Orsen discovers that her ability to travel through time was not affected by the EMP. She has the power and the ability to go back in time and prevent the war. But she also knows that she’ll only make things worse if she doesn’t go back and change what really started it. Was it the EMP, or had it actually begun before that?

Mary consults with men who have traveled through time before: Bat Garrett and Garison Fitch. They are old now and can, however, only give advice. If the world is going to be saved, there can only be one TimeKeeper.

And Mary’s pretty sure she’s not it.

Available now on Kindle and in paperback!

To read how the TimeKeeperS got started, make sure you read “TimeKeeperS” (as well as the Garison Fitch & Bat Garrett books!) and the conclusion in TimeKeeperS:Restoration!

…

Sample Chapter

“Thank you, sir,” Marianne said as she handed the uniform to Captain Remmick. “It was an honor to wear them, especially since I haven’t earned them.”

“You may before this is over.” Remmick sat the uniform aside and looked at the attractive woman before him in her “W” T-shirt and cargo pants and thought that if he were thirty years younger—and then made himself focus on the business at hand. In a low voice, he asked, “What’s it like when you zap to other places with that device of yours?”

“Honestly, sir, it’s nothing. I mean, it’s a weird sensation to suddenly be somewhere else, but the actual travel is so quick the brain can’t comprehend it. You’re just here, and then, you’re there. It was a little disorienting at first, but now I’m used to it.” She laughed and added, “Except for jumping into what seemed to this west Texas gal like a monsoon and being grabbed by a Captain so I wouldn’t fall overboard. That one was kind of wild.”

“How is it,” he hesitated, trying to work out his words, then said, “You jumped into the middle of a spray of salt water, right? Does all that salt water get absorbed into your body? What if you zapped to a place where there was a bird, or a cat or something?”

“That’s part of why I send out the sensors,” Marianne explained. “Trying to avoid all that as much as possible. But, in reality, it’s not like I’m beaming somewhere like on ‘Star Trek.’ My atoms aren’t being disassembled or anything. I am moving through space. So I would actually bump the cat out of the way. Actually startled a raccoon once.”

“What if it were something like a desk—or a wall?”

She lifted her pant leg and showed him a bruise on her right shin, saying, “That’s from a coffee table in Amarillo, Texas. Glad it had room to move when I bumped it.”

“Another land-lubber?” Captain Remmick asked, actually smiling slightly and not as belligerent as Marianne had worried he might be.

“Um, yessir,” Marianne replied. “This is Sean Fitch, he’s—“

“One of the greatest minds of our time,” Remmick completed, extending his hand towards Sean. “I have read your papers on astronomy and, I must say, I’m a huge fan. I originally wanted to be an astronaut, but, well, I wound up here.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Sean replied. “Thank you for allowing me aboard.” He put on his round glasses, which made him look more academic and even less like his father, though Marianne knew he was quite athletic, bicycling several times a week through the mountains with his wife, Elaine.

Marianne tried to take control of the situation, though she was astounded by Captain Remmick’s suddenly deferential attitude, by saying, “Sean contacted me that he had seen something in the Kerrigan reports that he wanted me to see. I thought you and the admiral would like to see it as well.”

“Ever been on a carrier, Mister Fitch?” Admiral Pike asked.

“No, ma’am. I was in the Air Force for three years but they barely even let me out of Nevada. Don’t think I even saw a sailor the whole time.”

“So sad for you,” Pike chided.

“What do you have for us?” Marianne asked, afraid they were going to drift away again. Although, she said to herself, we’re going to change history anyway, so what’s a little lost time?

Sean plugged his Screen® into a large table that doubled as a video screen and brought up a map of the world much like the one the meteorologists had displayed previously and said, “There are several places in the world that the fallout hasn’t touched, yet. I decided to overlay what data we had from the Kerrigans with what we’ve found out about the weather patterns to see if there were any places that had corresponding fallout clearance and extra-dimensional activity.”

“Were there?” Pike asked.

Sean, adjusting the screen, replied, “We don’t have a lot of Kerrigan data, but we do have this.” He changed the display to a depiction of the Americas and the Pacific and directed, “So far, we have only detected two time incursions. There’s the one Marianne found in the Pacific, and this one in Brazil—“

“Brazil?” the two officers asked in unison.

Sean adjusted his glasses and continued, “From what I can tell from my maps, it’s an area that would normally be considered the back side of nowhere. In their state of Amazonas.”

“When was it?” Marianne asked.

“As near as I can figure, it was within moments of the nuclear attack. I think it might have been after but we haven’t had a really close pass with a Kerrigan, yet.” Sean brought up another map of South America and said, “Now, check this out. I searched the area by satellite—“

“How?” Pike asked, not accusatory but curious.

“The President gave me access to what was left of the satellite network. And my father figured out how to—ahem—establish a connection.”

“Wow,” Remmick mumbled, to receive an appreciative nod from the admiral. He snapped his fingers and commented, “Your father’s Garison Fitch, right? Nobel Prize winner and science advisor to the President.”

“Yes. Anyway,” Sean said, “Look at this: there’s a giant bulge in the land that’s roughly the size of one of our battle cruisers.”

“Theories?” Pike asked.

It was Marianne who guessed, “You think maybe it was going to take too much power to send whatever ship they used to launch the nukes to the future so they buried it in the Amazon jungle?”

“Sort of, though I wasn’t thinking of the power angle. That might actually be part of the thinking—could be all of it—but, like I was saying, this is one of the areas that has remained completely free of fallout. What if whoever did this knows—from future knowledge—that this spot will stay nuke free so they stuck their ship there in hopes of retrieving it whenever they need it.”

“Or use it as a base,” Marianne injected.

“Hmm?” Sean asked.

“We may be making wild guesses here, but what if what you say is true and this is someone from the future who is trying to destabilize the past in their favor? Aren’t they going to want some sort of base from which to operate? To stay in this time period and either monitor or even change things?”

“Why aren’t they doing anything, then?” Pike asked.

“We don’t know that they aren’t, ma’am,” Marianne told her. “They might be manipulating something, or just monitoring things. Maybe they’re just focused on building a society or a foothold in the Amazon while the rest of the world goes to hell.”

“Or,” Sean interrupted, “They just dumped the ship there because it’s an out of the way place and they didn’t think anyone would notice.”

Captain Remmick snapped his fingers and, looking at Marianne, said excitedly, “The reason the bump shows up in the earth is because the dirt had to go somewhere right? Like what you were saying about shoving the cat out of the way: they could bury the ship but it’s going to push the dirt somewhere.” Marianne nodded in agreement, which made the Captain feel inordinately proud of himself (and embarrassed by the fact).

Sean offered, “If they just hid the ship, that might be good news for us. Or, even if they’re using it as a base, that might portend well for us.” Seeing he had their attention, he explained, “They put the ship—if that’s what it is—under the ground assuming it wouldn’t be seen. And, under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have been. You could be building a couple football fields in the Amazon without anyone noticing under normal circumstances. But we noticed because of the Kerrigans. That may indicate that whoever we’re dealing with doesn’t know we have the Kerrigans—“

“Wait a minute,” Remmick objected, “How is that possible. They’re from the future. Don’t they know everything we’re doing because it’s history to them?”

Sean looked at Marianne, who answered, “Not if they’re from pretty far away.”

“What do you mean?”

Marianne answered, “None of what I have done with Edie—or what Mister Garrett did—were government sanctioned and, therefore, may never be written into the history books. We don’t know how much they might know about us. You haven’t been writing down what I’ve done, have you?” The captain and the admiral both shook their heads.

“If this were someone from, say, ten years in the future, you might be right. Our movements might be known. Maybe even a hundred years from now, unless we were to take specific actions to cover our tracks. But what if they’re from thousands of years in the future? Marcus, he was a man I knew who had, um, seen the future—and I believe him. He said there had been more than one war that poisoned the planet. We could be dealing with someone from, say, a thousand years in the future who only know the most basic details of our world—“

Sean snapped his fingers again and said, excitedly, “And they don’t know as much as they thought they did!”

“What?” several voices asked at once.

“Think about it: if these are people from a different future, who changed the past, they might know about the Kerrigans but they might not know their full capabilities because almost no one did. We didn’t. Jason Kerrigan drew up the plans but, as far as anyone knows, never built one. We only built them because you—and a me from another time line—built the ones we have, but almost no one seems to know what they do. We don’t know how the Egyptians built the pyramids and whoever it is from the future that’s causing these problems may not know how the Kerrigans work—or even that we have them. And no one has been traveling through time with Edie since the last time you did—what?—six years ago?”

“Almost seven.”

“Right. And if they hadn’t interfered, you might not have ever traveled through time again. This technology could very well have died with you and me. And I don’t mean that generally, I mean with Marianne and I. The history they have of our day might be fairly detailed, with names of all our leaders and even records of where our naval ships were. But they might not know … “ He was smiling as he paced intently, “We know Roman history, right? We know who was Caesar when and where their troops were placed, right? But we don’t know about Joe Greek over here who did experiments on cattle because he never told anyone. Maybe he invented a cure for hoof in mouth, but his kid ran off to Athens and the knowledge died with Joe. Whoever did this, they may not have had any idea that one fairly obscure astrophysicist and a private eye from Arizona—“

“Who’s even more obscure,” Marianne chuckled.

“Yeah, they have no idea that we would have any way of tracking them. Seriously, they had an almost perfect plan. Start a world war, have everyone at the time blame everyone else, then pick up the pieces—a hundred years later, a thousand.”

“Why would they think they would be there?” Remmick asked.

“Huh?” asked Marianne and the admiral in unison.

“These people from the future are the descendents of someone alive today, right? Whether it’s the people of Mexico or Canada or just some town in Kansas. How would they know that this nuclear war wasn’t going to wipe out their progenitor?”

Sean, after several moments of silence, offered, “Maybe they have a map of the ‘pockets’ as Marianne calls them and they know that the seed of their civilization sprung up in one of those pockets. Maybe they even sprung from some Amazonian tribe and the ship is there now to look after their ancestors.”

It was Pike who said, “What you’re saying makes sense—of a sort. I’m finding it hard to give one hundred percent credibility to a theory that involves time travel, but that’s neither here nor there. Even if this theory makes some logical sense, it’s still an awful lot of conjecture.”

“Then let me go to the Amazon and investigate,” Marianne requested. “It’s what I do.”

“Alone?” Sean asked, hoping to go along.

“No offense, Sean, but I was thinking that if I took anyone with me I’d like for it to be someone who speaks the language.” She smirked slightly as she added, looking at the admiral, “And I sure wouldn’t turn down a U.S. Marine.”

“Bowstring, this is First Sergeant Amelee Fitzwater—“

“Call me Fitz,” the stout, fair-haired woman said cordially if not in a friendly manner as she shook Marianne’s hand. She looked to be of Nordic descent and Marianne could see her being one of those tough women who skied all day with a machine gun on their backs as they patrolled some far northern slope.

Admiral Pike continued, “And this is Gunnery Sergeant Darrin Hollis.” He was a dark-skinned man of medium height but more than average muscles. Marianne guessed that some of his ancestors might have come from the Caribbean. As he shook Marianne’s hand, the Admiral explained, “The gunny here speaks Spanish and Portuguese and can generally make his wishes known in any South American country.

“That’s impressive,” Marianne complimented. “Study a lot or just a natural gift for languages?”

“Some of both, ma’am.”

“Call me Bowstring,” she instructed with a smile. Marianne hadn’t told the admiral—or anyone except Bat and Jody—that she didn’t need a translator, ever. When she had been sent to the future, Marcus had given her the gift of being able to understand and speak any language she would ever encounter. She had thought the gift might only be for the future, but in her years back in the twenty-first century it had never gone away. It was a skill that had served her well as an investigator, especially as so few people knew she had it. It suddenly dawned on her that, with Bat and Jody gone, no one knew she had the ability.

“Bowstring?” he asked with a smile. “What is that? French?”

“Oui,” Marianne responded.

“And this is Lance Corporal Hector Ives, who is also fluent in Portugese,” Admiral Pike said as she introduced a strikingly handsome young man with somewhat dark skin and a shaved head. He shook Marianne’s hand and flashed a winning smile but Marianne got the impression it was more of just his natural personality than any attempt to win her.

“Ives?” she asked.

“Grandfather was Scottish,” he replied. “Married a woman from Portugal and moved to South Carolina,” he told her with just a hint of a southern accent.

Rear Admiral Pike said, “Now, if you’ll be seated, we’ll brief you on the mission. Please be aware that everything you hear in this meeting is top secret.” She added sardonically, “And some if it is going to sound insane.”

She brought up the map of South America Sean had created and said, “You’re going here. It’s a very remote area with very little population, mostly involved in mining or woodcutting. You’re going to be assisting Bowstring in the investigation of this mound here, which we have reason to believe may be tied to the nuclear launches that started the recent conflict.”

“Pardon me, ma’am,” interrupted Fitz, “Is it related to theEMPas well?”

“That remains to be seen, Fitz. That’s one of the things we hope you will find out.”

She then went into a semi-technical description of what the Kerrigans had revealed and the basic principles of extra-dimensional integration. As Pike described Edie and what it did, Marianne couldn’t help but cast sideways glances at her new compatriots. She stifled a chuckle as she saw that all three of them wore expressions mixed of equal parts awe and fear that their commanding officer had slipped a gear. She wondered how they would react if they were told the Edie units could also move through time. When Pike had finished her part, she offered, “Bowstring?”

While Marianne knew far more about Edie than the admiral, it had been decided that news of such a fantastic nature could be more easily swallowed if coming from a fleet-level officer. Now, she doubted whether it had really helped, if the expressions on their faces were any indication. As everyone looked to her, Marianne began, “As Admiral Pike has said, you may call me Bowstring. So far, our satellite recon of the area has shown no human presence. Whether that is because there is none or because the humans are underground we don’t know, yet. These are some of the questions we are going to ask—and hopefully answer. It is our goal to do this as stealthily as possible, which is part of why you three were chosen. However,” Marianne said uncomfortably, “If there are people there and they are the ones who instigated a global nuclear war … well, I wanted people who would not be averse to fighting.”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Fitz interrupted again, “But what is the chain of command on this mission?”

“Bowstring is the lead,” Pike replied without hesitation.

“CIA?” Ives asked casually.

“No,” Marianne replied, not sure what explanation to give.

Admiral Pike answered, “Let’s just say that Bowstring here is on special assignment.”

“Aye-aye,” said all three Marines, though not exactly in unison.

“Marines, let me say one more thing,” the Admiral began. “I want to remind you that this mission and everything you have heard in this room are top secret. Should you return, any mention of anything you have heard today to anyone other than one of the five of us in the room right now will be grounds for summary court martial and possibly execution. Do you understand?”

All three looked surprised, but each nodded and replied, “Yes ma’am,” in turn as the admiral caught their eyes.

“What you see on this excursion and what you experience, those things, too, must be guarded with the utmost secrecy. For reasons that I cannot get into, you will be debriefed verbally by me after the mission and no record of it will ever—and I do mean ever—be written down. Is that understood?”

“Yes ma’am,” they all agreed again.

“Then may you be granted godspeed and may you all return safely.”

All three had been told what gear to bring when summoned, which had set in the corner during the briefing. At that point, the admiral told them to use the head attached to the briefing room if they needed—each availed themselves of the opportunity—and then were bidden to gear up. As they did so, it was Hollis who asked, “How will we be inserted, Admiral? Osprey?”

“Edie,” Admiral Pike replied, a barely-disguised wink shot Marianne’s way.

The three Marines looked up in surprise, but none of them said anything. As they finished with their gear and she slung her bow over her shoulder, Marianne told them, “We’re going to be ‘landing’ about a quarter mile from the mound in a little clearing just to the north. We’ll do some recon on foot from there. Oh, and let me warn you: your first zap—as we call it—can be a bit disorienting. You won’t feel a thing, but one moment you’ll see this room and the next you’ll see the Amazon basin and there will be nothing in between. Like changing the channel on a TV.”

“Seriously?” Ives asked.

Marianne nodded, then asked, “Everyone ready?” She took Edie in her left hand, held out her right and said, “Put an ungloved hand in. We’ve got to be touching skin.”

“You’re kidding,” Fitz responded, holding her hand back, having been in the process of taking the glove off as it dawned on her what had been stated.

“Oddly, no,” Marianne told her. When all the hands were in, she looked to the admiral and said, “I guess we’ll see you in a few, Admiral. I’ll ping you as soon as we’re there.”

“Go with God,” Admiral Pike told them with a nod.

And suddenly the four of them were standing in a small clearing in the Amazon jungle. To Marianne, it was nothing, but the others gasped words of astonishment that were better left unprinted. Marianne knelt down, motioned for them to do the same, then whispered, “Here’s where the stealth comes in. Everybody got their breath?” When the Marines nodded, Marianne pointed and said, “The mound’s over that way. Watch for people and let’s see if we can find a way inside.”

“Why not just zap in?” Ives asked.

“We probably will,” Marianne told him. “But I’d like to have as much information as we can before we do that.”

“Understood,” said three voices, or variations of the word.

The jungle was light and airy, not like Marianne had pictured it in her mind (owing mostly to movies), though there were as many bugs as she had imagined. All four of them were heavily clothed and had applied bug repellent to their exposed flesh, but there were still plenty of bugs around, many who didn’t seem to have received the memo about being repelled by that concoction.

They reached a small rise and crept quietly to its crest before peeking over. What they saw was a tree-covered mound that didn’t look out of the ordinary at first glance. As they all studied the terrain, Fitz and Ives with no-glare binoculars that—in theory—wouldn’t reflect light on anyone who might happen to look their way—they could see signs that the ground had been pushed up: a revealed root here, a fresh-looking crack in the ground there. Atop the hill, the cracking in the ground was more pronounced.

“Still,” Marianne whispered, “If I didn’t know what to look for I could have walked right past this and, if anything, just thought it was a natural occurrence.” The Marines nodded in agreement. “Recommendations?”

Fitz pointed, “Over there, I’d say about two klicks from our positions, there’s a rise similar to this one. I say we split into pairs and rendezvous over there in about—how long do you think it would take us, Gunny?” she asked Hollis.

“Hard to say. Flat territory, we could be there in fifteen minutes. But we want to take some time, look things over, and this canopy could be hiding ravines and who knows what else.”

“Say two hours?” Fitz asked.

Marianne nodded and replied, “Sounds good. No communication unless we haven’t heard anything in two and a half or if there’s an emergency.” She looked at the Marines and asked, “That work for you?” She knew the wisdom about leaders making decisions and not seeking the approval of underlings, but Marianne knew she was the outsider in this group and—in their minds, anyway—not a military person, anyway. Would they believe her if she told them that, at the age of eighteen, she had led a military force of over ten thousand people? She doubted it and the irony of the thought made her smile.

They all nodded, so Marianne said, “Fitz, you know everyone’s capabilities better than I do, so how do you suggest we pair up?”

“You and Gunny, me and Ives?” Fitz replied, shrugging to indicate that it didn’t really matter.

“Sounds good. See you in two,” she whispered. Even having been around military people before, she was amazed at how quickly and quietly Fitz and Ives disappeared into the underbrush.

As she and Hollis set out, he asked, “Have you ever been in the military, Bowstring?”

She hesitated, then replied, “Yes. But, like so much lately, I can’t talk about it.”

Are you really any good with that bow?”

Marianne hesitated again, then replied, “Yes.”

Sheriff Avilla pounded on the door of the large house that still stood, remarkably close to where the airliner had gone down. “Go away!” came a gruff reply from inside.

“This is Sheriff Avilla,” she called from the front step. “I need to talk to Mister Kiko Abrams.”

There was no sound for a moment, and then the sound of a chain being removed and a bolt thrown. The front door swung open and a shotgun blast caught Julie Avilla full in the chest, knocking her back and off the porch. A second shot was fired in the direction of Deputy Harold Grimes, catching him mostly on the arm. As he screamed and fell away, Deputy Terry Killian used his service piece to fire several shots through the door.

From inside the house, screams could be heard. Killian rushed to drag Sheriff Avilla out of the way, even while calling on his mic, “Officers down at 323 Reynosa. Repeat: officers down at 323 Reynosa. Shots fired.”

He was about to repeat his call again when the muzzle of a gun could be seen coming from the shadow of the doorway. Deputy Killian lifted his service piece and fired twice, gratified to see the gun—a rifle—dropped to the tile floor of the house’s entry way. And then all went black as something hit him on the back of the head.

“What happened?” Judge Hanson asked as he struggled through the crowd to get to Dr. Whitcomb’s side.

Dr. Whitcomb, however, was busy and soon disappeared into the O.R. Judge Hanson looked like he was about to follow the doctor into surgery, but saw a deputy—Killian, he thought the man’s name was—sitting to the side and holding a bloody towel to his forehead. He lunged at the deputy and demanded, “What happened?”

“We went to serve that warrant on Kiko Abrams you gave us,” the deputy grumbled in reply.

“And then?” Hanson wanted to know.

“Well, they responded by shooting Sheriff Avilla and deputy Grimes. Me, I got away with just a knock to the head.”

Suddenly, Hanson was being slammed against the wall by Oscar Melendez, late of the Arizona Highway Patrol and now working for the Flagstaff Police Department. “You son of a b—h! You issue a warrant and then call the perps to let them know cops are coming!”

“I didn’t—“ Hanson tried to object, only to receive a punch in the belly from Melendez that doubled the judge up in pain.

It was Deputy Killian who pulled Melendez off the judge, saying, “What are you talking about, Oscar?”

“Someone had to have tipped off Abrams and his crew. Why else would they have been prepared like that?”

“Because they were thugs and knew we were getting close to them for hanging the Talifero brothers,” Killian replied.

“Or maybe he told them,” Officer Melendez retorted, lunging for the judge.

Hanson backed up a step, then said, “Please, tell me what happened!”

Melendez, still being restrained by an aching Terry Killian, said, “I was a block away when I heard the call, so I came running. I see Jimmy Abrams, Kiko’s boy, club Deputy Killian in the back with a baseball bat—“

“I wondered why I hurt there, too,” Killian injected, trying to add a bit of levity in an attempt to defuse the situation.

“I yelled out, ‘Jimmy! Drop the bat!’ He does, then he lunges for a rifle that’s on the stoop. I told him to drop that, too, but he starts to bring it up. That’s when I shot him. He crumpled and I ran up to the porch to find Sheriff Avilla bleeding from buckshot to the neck and face and Deputy Grimes is quickly going into shock. Gloria Dios we got that one ambulance running or they might have both bled out.” He spat at the judge, “Even if no one tipped them off, you don’t go after a man like Kiko Abrams with just three officers. You call us all in!”

“I wrote the search warrant but I trusted in the Sheriff to know how many people to take,” Judge Hanson defended.

Melendez swore lowly as he shrugged out of Killian’s hold. “You better sit back down, man,” he told the deputy.

“Who was inside the house?”

“I looked and I found Kiko and his boy, Danny, both shot and dead in the front foyer. Looked to me like it had been Danny that fired off the shotgun, then Kiko came up with the rifle.” Changing his tone of belligerence, he added, “You oughta give this deputy a medal, Judge. He did in one afternoon what your courts haven’t been able to do in twenty years.”

They were slumped against the wall when Dr. Whitcomb came out more than an hour later and told them, “Sheriff Avilla should make it. Her vest took most of the blast, but there was on pellet that came this close,” he held his thumb and forefinger an eighth of an inch apart, “From severing her jugular. Still, it’s going to be a few days before she can return to duty, maybe a couple weeks.”

“And Grimes?” Killian asked anxiously.

“He may lose the arm. Doctors Stanislauv and Andrews are working with him and, if we’re lucky, we can keep him alive long enough for the arm to heal—one way or another.”

Killian crossed himself at the news and Melendez muttered a brief prayer. Killian asked, “When can we see them?”

“I can take you back there now, but just for a couple minutes,” Caleb replied. “Both are out of it right now, but I’m a firm believer that patients can hear people who care even when they’re out.”

“Thanks, Doc,” Officer Melendez said as they rose and followed him into post-op.

Caleb looked over his shoulder to see Hanson still slumped against the wall, a vacant expression on his face.

“Anything?” Marianne asked, though she had an idea she knew what the answer was going to be.

“Nothing. Nobody, no door, nothing,” Fitz replied. “I take it, it was the same for you.”

Marianne nodded, as did the Gunny.

Ives injected, “We even used the infra-red scanner. Thought there might be an air shaft letting off vapors or something, but we didn’t see anything.”

“So,” Fitz asked, “We zap in?”

Marianne nodded, but pulled off her backpack so she could get into it and pulled out a small, remote-controlled car with a video camera attached. “Play time?” the Gunny asked.

Marianne shot him a dirty look, then smiled and said, “Friend of mine came up with this.” She loaded one of her sensors into the little car and explained, “We can send this car in first. Remote control’s good up to half a mile. We let this little thing look around for us, first.”

She tapped some buttons on Edie, and the little car disappeared. Handing a Screen® to Fitz and a remote control to the Gunny, she said, “This should give us an idea what we’re going in to. The car even has little headlights, but I can’t guarantee how effective they are.”

“Need a night vision camera on that car,” Ives suggested.

“Version 2.0,” Marianne quipped as they all watched the Screen®. They watched as the picture came up to show what looked like the interior of a naval ship with the lights on low. As Gunny moved the car around, they were able to see more of the room the car had landed in but, as the room had a hatch for a doorway, the little car couldn’t go out into the hallway. Marianne mumbled, “OK, so version 3.0 will be a camera attached to one of those little helicopters.”

She checked the reading from the sensor in the car on her Kerrigan and said, “Well, looks like we can go at least as far as that room. Sensor says there’s air. Everybody game?”

“Beats standing out here,” the Gunny pronounced, the other two Marines nodding.

“OK,” Marianne said, “Hands in.” A moment later, they were in what looked like a billeting room of a metal, naval ship.

Gunny stepped over to the door and peeked out into the hallway, then announced, “All clear.”

“Wait,” Fitz commanded. “Listen. Anybody hear anything?”

They all stopped what they were doing, but could hear only a low rumble—as machinery—from somewhere far off. “Something’s working down here,” Ives commented.

Fitz replied, “Sounds like a generator. Maybe it’s running the lights. There’s air in here, too. But what I’m not hearing are any footsteps.”

“Either it’s empty,” Gunny offered, “Or they know we’re here and they’re running silent.” Everyone nodded in agreement.

Marianne picked up the little car, set it in her backpack, and said, “Well, let’s find out.”

They walked carefully down the hallway until they came to a junction. As the Gunny poked his head around the corner and pronounced the way clear, Ives was looking at lettering on the bulkhead and saying, “I don’t recognize this language. I don’t even recognize the alphabet.”

Marianne glanced at his reference point and almost told him what it said, before deciding to keep her mouth shut. She wasn’t sure why she was keeping it a secret that she could read any language she needed to, but as one accustomed to covers she hated to blow hers over a sign that said, “C Deck. Billeting.” She merely shrugged.

They came, eventually, to a flight of stairs—like U.S. Navy stairs, they were closely akin to a ladder—and ascended. On the next level, B Deck, Marianne found signs for the infirmary, the galley, the laundry, and various other, common, rooms. All showed signs of recent use, but no sign of current occupation. As they came to another set of stairs, she stopped them and asked, “At a guess, how old would any of you say this ship is? I’m no expert, but it doesn’t look brand new to me. It’s also doesn’t look real old to me.”

“Equipment’s fairly current,” the Gunny answered. “Some of it’s unfamiliar to me, though.”

Fitz nodded and agreed, “I’m thinking it’s about a … twenty year old ship. Just a feel I get. I can tell some places have been sanded and repainted—like after years of salt water corrosion.”

Ives merely shrugged and replied, “I’ll defer to them.”

Marianne nodded and started up the stairs. Peeking over the top, she saw no sign of anyone but she did see a sign indicating the way to the bridge. Instructing Fitz and Ives to explore this deck then catch up with them, she motioned for the Gunny to follow her. They made their way to the bridge and both uttered words of amazement.

The bridge looked like the working bridge of a destroyer, except that the windows looked out on solid rock. The lights from the consoles were still working, and dials were still lit up. And a man in an unidentified uniform sat in a chair, slumped over a console. “Fitz,” Marianne said into her communicator, “You and Ives go ahead and come up topside to see this. Just follow the arrows on the walls.”

Soon, Fitz and Ives were stepping onto the bridge with exclamations similar to those uttered earlier. Walking over to where Gunny and Marianne were looking at the slumped figure, Fitz asked, “Who’s this gentleman?” He had a dark complexion, much like the Gunny’s, and he was young and fit—or had been in life.

Ives, looking around, said, “We saw launch tubes below decks, Bowstring. Like the kind you’d use to launch ICBMs.”

Marianne looked at the controls and said, “So, this ship zaps to the Pacific, starts a world war, then zaps here. Maybe their system is different from ours and someone had to remain behind to send the others off and this guy drew the short straw.”

“So he takes cyanide or something?” Fitz asked.

“Something,” Marianne shrugged. She sniffed, then, and asked, “But why doesn’t he smell?”

She was on the far side of the bridge, walking around and studying some schematics that appeared to be of an Edie-like device which were on a screen, and mumbling, “If this guy’s been dead for close to three weeks, shouldn’t this whole room smell to high heaven?” A phrase in the schematics registered on Marianne and she started to snap her fingers in recognition.

“Maybe he hasn’t been dead that long,” Ives commented. He reached over to feel of the man’s skin and said, “Guys, he’s still warm!”

Fitz barely had time to say, “Don’t move him!” before the console the man had been slumped against exploded.

Marianne felt herself slammed against the wall. A moment later, she was trying to raise herself up to find that her left arm was broken, and maybe her left leg as well. She raised her head and could see that Ives was dead. At least, his head was, as it was no longer attached to the rest of him. She could make out the remains of both the Gunny and Fitz. And then she heard a low rumble. It took her brain a moment to figure out what she was hearing.

“The ship is being scuttled,” she mumbled.

With her right hand, she pulled out Edie. Struggling out of her backpack, quiver and bow she pressed the sequence for a pre-programmed trip. She disappeared just before the ship exploded in a fiery, underground inferno.

Three years before the conflagration in the Amazon, almost two years and eleven months before the EMP, a young woman with broken bones, torn clothing and burns was found outside the emergency room of the Rapid City Regional Hospital on a cool September morning. Finding no ID on her—just her clothes and a watch—they began treating her immediately under the name Jane Doe.

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TimeKeeperS

When Bat Garrett wakes up one morning with the wrong wife, he knows something is wrong.

Jody’s dead. His grandson Edward is dead. A young woman named Marianne went to the future by herself.

Everything is wrong and Bat is the only person who remembers how things used to be, when they were right. But it’s not just a memory. Bat can see that other life. Bat is caught in a dual reality and most everyone–in both realities–thinks he’s going crazy. But Bat is convinced that only one of the realities is the way things are supposed to be, so he sets out to find out what split reality and do whatever he has to do to make it right. Even if it means teaming up with Garison Fitch.

No, not the Garison who lives in Colorado. The one who lived and died in the 1700s. Bat has to get to that Garison to straighten everything out.

Available now on Kindle (click here to order) and in paperback!

And don’t forget to read the next step in the saga: “TimeKeeperS: Rectification“ and the conclusion “TimeKeeperS: Restoration“.

…

Reading Sample

Garison had taken the man’s hand when it was offered, but now he let it go as if it were on fire. Regaining most of his composure, he peered at the man with rapt interest and asked, “Bat Garrett?”

The man looked nervously at the three women, the one fair and blonde, the one dark and the one with red hair, but all with striking good looks, then said, “We met, um, back when you were coaching baseball at Sul Ross University.”

Garison could not hide his surprise as he repeated vaguely, “Sul Ross?”

“It’s in Alpine,” the newcomer said, by way of explanation. “Texas,” he added.

Garison suddenly slumped back into the large, padded chair behind his desk, muttering, “Alpine.” Then, again, more softly, “Alpine,Texas.”

Helen, rushing to her father’s side in near panic, couldn’t help but ask, ”How could he know, Pop?”

Heather’s lawyerly mind kicked into gear and she confronted the newcomer with, “If I find that you have broken—“

“Broken into the Anglican Church and read the manuscript? Oh, wait, you haven’t left it at the Anglican Church, yet, have you? It’s still in the house somewhere, isn’t it?” As Garison Fitch and his daughters looked at him suspiciously, the man who had introduced himself as Bat Garrett reached into his pocket and produced a coin, flipping it to Garison. As Garison caught it deftly, the man instructed, “Take a look at who’s on that coin. And the year.”

As Helen continued to gaze piercingly at Garison, Heather looked at the coin in her father’s hand and muttered, “That looks like—“

“George,” Garison completed. Then, “1975? That’s the year I was born.”

Helen injected, “He could have read the manuscript and manufactured that.”

“That’s what Heather said you’d say,” the man replied with a smile. Looking at the Heather in the room, he explained, “The other Heather. The one you were named for. So she wanted me to show you this.” He pulled a small picture frame from the leather satchel he carried and passed it across the desk to Garison.

Garison took it suspiciously, almost insolently, but then he saw the picture in the frame and his voice caught with a gasp. He finally managed to say, “Heather.”

The Heather in the room reached out to still her father’s shaking hands and looked at the picture in the frame. She turned her eyes to the newcomer in the room and asked, “That’s Heather? His other—the woman I’m named for?”

Bat hesitated, but not as one who is trying to think of a lie. He finally managed to say, “Yes.”

Helen gently drew the frame from her father’s hands and looked at the picture. In her best lawyerly voice—owing to living in a family of lawyers—which she sometimes affected to keep the emotion out, she asked, “This is what you call a—a photograph, isn’t it?” At her father’s nod, she took a closer look at the picture and said, “She—she looks kind of like Jody, doesn’t she?”

“No she doesn’t,” the newcomer said, then blushed and, shaking his head said, “Oh, you mean the Jody in this room. Yeah, they do kinda favor, don’t they?”

Garison nodded as a low laugh emanated from his chest. “She has from the day she was born. I mean, Jody looked like Heather from the very first.” He looked at his daughter Heather, and told her with a smile, “When your mother suggested we name you Heather, I thought it would be a grand, divine joke if you looked like the Heather of the future. You never did, though. You’ve always been your mother in dark colors. But when Jody was born—I mean, from the day she was born … “

He swiveled his chair and looked out the window for a moment, then shook his head and jumped to his feet. He came around the desk, almost bowling Jody over, and extended his hands, asking warmly, “Bat Garrett? Is it really you?”

The newcomer pulled Garison into hug—which surprised everyone in the room—and said, “I wasn’t sure I could find you. But, all in all, it wasn’t really that hard.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Well, I mean, I guess it was—once you get past the whole time travel thing. Once past that, though, I just had to follow the directions on the old map and they pointed me right here.”

“So where have you been? Anthony said you came by earlier. You could have waited.”

“I know, but, I really wanted to see the eighteenth century.”

“You took an awful risk.”

Bat laughed and assured him, “It’s OK. I didn’t stomp on more than a half-dozen butterflies.”

“Butterflies?” Heather asked. “At this time of year?”

“It’s a reference to—oh, never mind,” said her father. He turned back to Bat and asked, “I’m not sure whether to ask why you’re here or how you’re here.”

“How’s easier to answer,” Bat told him with a smile. “You want to take a walk and I can tell you what I know?—which may not be as much as you would like to know, but I’ll do my best.”

“I’d like that,” Garison replied. Then, “Would you like something to eat?”

Bat hesitated, then told him, “I packed a lunch and ate it just before heading into townbut that sure does smell good. I think I could eat a bite, if you’ve got it to spare.”

“Certainly,” Helen said, fixing Bat some food on the plate she had been using for herself. “Sorry that I only brought four plates.”

“How could you know I would be here?” Bat asked with a chuckle as he took the food. Then, “Thanks.”

Garison leaned close and asked with a smile, “You didn’t happen to bring anyTabascosauce with you, did you?”

“Of course. I always travel with condiments,” Bat told him. Then, at Garison’s hopeful look, added, “I’m kidding.”

“Well, then why come back at all?” Garison chided.

“You know, I always liked you better than the other Garison,” Bat said, gesturing with a steak wrap he had built. “The one in the future’s too serious.”

“Does he look like—like my father?” Heather asked, anxiously, for the first time in her life believing that her father’s story might be true.

“Exactly like.”

“I want so badly to start asking everyone questions,” Bat told him as they walked the dirt streets ofAlexandria. “’Did you fight in the war?’ ‘How’s the Constitution coming?’” He saw a man walk by, followed by another man with dark skin, and added in a low voice, “’How can you possibly think enslaving another human being is an acceptable practice?’”

Garison nodded and said, “I have lived for more than forty years with those thoughts. How to bring indoor plumbing to everyone. To build an internal combustion engine. To end slavery. I’ve talked to George about that quite a good bit. And others. I’ve found a willing ear inAdams. George tells me he will free his slaves upon his death. It’s a start, but,” he was silent as a person whom he knew passed nearby, then added, “It is not enough. I am known as an abolitionist, and I’ve been working on the issue but—but you didn’t come here to talk about that. Why did you come here?”

“Let’s talk about how and that’ll get us to why.”

“Fine. But not here. Not in the open. Let’s go to my house.”

“I guess we could have talked in your office. You being a lawyer, people are probably used to you visiting with weirdoes.”

“Oh, they think I am the weirdest of all,” Garison chuckled. “But mainly, I want you to meet Sarah.”

“I’ve always wanted to. You know: my son married your Sarah. I mean, the Sarah in the future.”

“Is that so? How did I—how did the other me take that?”

“Not good at first.” He slapped Garison on the back and added, “By the time they celebrated their twentieth anniversary, he was pretty much used to it, though.

“Oh, um, will I get to meet Bat? The one you named after me? Thanks, by the way.”

“He is off surveying, in theOhiocountry. He gets back this way when he can, but he’s always had a touch of the wanderlust.” Garison laughed ruefully, “More than a touch. He and Darius—who is his nephew and I’m guessing you may have heard about—have always liked the far lands. Maybe it’s because of all those stories I used to tell them about where I grew up.”

“Kinda wanted to meet him. Henry’s a congressman, isn’t he? And Justin’s in shipping, right?”

“You have done your homework,” Garison complimented. “Justin would prefer to be a woodworker, but his talent along those lines is limited. As we might have said in the twenty-first century, the shipping is done merely to support his woodworking habit.”

“We thought it best that I study up for this. And Jody, she works for you, doesn’t she?”

“She could be one of the finest lawyers in the country. Heather already is. But Heather stays here because her husband works with Justin and she is, at heart, a homebody.”

“And Jody?”

Garison shrugged, then answered, “For all her independence, Jody thinks it is also her job to look after me in all matters.”

“That’s great.”

“And do you have any other children? Besides the one who married Sarah? Did she turn out as pretty as her mother?”

“Prettier, if you can imagine it.”

“I don’t believe I can.”

“We—Jody and I—had two more children, actually. Eryn, she married a minister named Douglas Joens and lives inFlagstaff, near us. Homeschools. I think she looks just like Jody—my Jody—but no one else ever sees it.”

“It’s a father thing,” Garison nodded.

“And then there’s the baby of the family, Lori. She’s married to a fellow named John. He manages a church camp about halfway betweenLa PlataCanyonand Cortez and she just became a junior partner in your—I mean, the other Garison’s—law firm.”

“You don’t say,” Garison beamed with admiration.

“And Sarah—the future Sarah. Did she have kids?” he asked with interest.

“Yes. Gave us three beautiful grandsons. Only sad thing about that is that we all wondered if a daughter of hers would have continued the family looks. But it would have been hard to top Sarah, so maybe she was a good stopping place.”

Garison smiled happily and recalled, “I can still see her playing in the yard when she was a toddler. Did you ever read about the time she saw the little tree?”

They came to a large, frame house on a quiet street. There was a small oak tree growing in the yard. The lawn was manicured, though being autumn the grass was mostly golden with few shoots of green still holding tenaciously to the cooling ground.

“It’s a nice place,” Bat commented, charmed by the antique rusticness of what was, in reality, one of the finest houses in town.

Before Garison could reply, a petite blonde woman stepped out on the porch. With a warm smile, she greeted, “Welcome Bat Garrett.”

Bat stopped in his tracks, then continued up onto the porch and offered his hands, saying, “And you’re Sarah Fitch. How do you know who I am?”

Sarah smiled and, after looking from side to side, told him in a whisper, “Helen called me as soon as you left the office.”

“’Called’?”

Sarah took him by the arm and, leading Bat inside told him, “Garison hasn’t left the eighteenth century completely unsullied.” She whispered, “I believe you call it a radio.”

Turning toward Garison, Bat asked with a forced chuckle, “I really hope you’ve invented toilet paper ‘cause I’m still shuddering from one near experience with what you call a privy earlier this morning.”

“It was one of my very first things,” Garison replied as he followed them into the house.

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Some of the Time

an Edward & Marianne story

Garison Fitch’s grandson, Edward Garrett, and his young wife Marianne, have been living back in the twenty-first century for four years now. Marianne has won a gold medal at the Olympics … and Edward? He’s been stuck in a dead-end job, dreaming of the days when he led armies and walked the lands of the far future with Marcus and Daniel. A parade in Marianne’s honor in their hometown is cut short by a storm-an enormous storm like only Edward and Marianne have seen before.

When it subsides, they are back in the future they once knew, even closer to the end of the world than before. But Lasten-who they knew before as an old man-is now a young man and the land of Nid is populated as it had been in his youth … and led by a madman who believes his society is dying and, so, must be put out of its misery. In the course of trying to save the future-and discover why they have been summoned out of their own time-Marianne and Edward discover a whole new culture and race of men most people believed was only a legend until the Garretts burst through with irrefutable evidence that the legends are true. The world will never be same, but can it survive the change long enough to make it to the end of time itself?

Order today for Kindle or Paperback!

And don’t forget book 1 in this series, “All the Time in Our World” and the finale, “A Thousand Miles Away“.

…

Reading Sample

They were halfway through the parade route—traveling slowly along North First and gaining a whole new understanding of why the Cowboy Band had to stretch their legs periodically—when they felt the first drop. By the time they turned north to head back up Pine, it was beginning to sprinkle.

No one seemed to mind, though, as Edward was right that it rarely ever rained that time of year and it had been a dry summer so far. If anyone had brought an umbrella they weren’t unfurling it, yet, and most of the spectators weren’t even seeking cover.

The bands were not at their best for they usually didn’t play in public this early in the season. But it had been deemed a momentous occasion that a local girl had won an Olympic gold medal and everyone—especially the downtown merchants—had thought a parade through downtown was an excellent idea. Abilene hadn’t had a bonified celebrity since Clint Longley almost a century before and it seemed like it was about time. So every church, civic organization and fraternal order had been encouraged to quickly come up with an Olympic-themed float and enter it in the parade. For such a hastily thrown together event, it had turned out quite nice.

Except for the rain, which, by North 5th, was coming down hard enough that some people were beginning to wonder if seeing an Olympian were really worth the trouble. By North 8th, the Cowboy Band was pretty much running to get to shelter and Ranger Rangerettes were just streaks of running makeup.

“This is fun,” Marianne laughed as they hunkered down in the seat and the roof of the convertible closed over them.

He smiled at his wife, so beautiful to him even with her hair plastered to her head and shoulders, and said, “This can’t be good for the meticulously redone interior on this car.”

By the time they got to the civic center, the rain was coming down in buckets and the owner of the car quickly appeared in a state of panic and mumbling something about, “Never again!”

“Do you two need a ride somewhere?” the banker asked.

Edward started to say that would be appreciated, but Marianne interrupted, “I kind of like walking in the rain myself. And our car’s just over there by Thornton’s anyway.”

Edward nodded, then added, “And I guess Joly’s supposed to be around here, too.”

“Surely he’s not going to go through with anything,” Marianne told him. “Come on. Let’s just go to the car.”

They were already so wet that walking in the rain was not uncomfortable. It was rather liberating, once one got used to it. As they stopped at the corner, Edward pulled Marianne into his arms and kissed her. He had read books about how romantic it was to make out in the rain but had never really done it. He admitted it was pleasant, but he always thought kissing Marianne was pleasant—and sometimes it had been more pleasant than this time.

Just then a gust of wind blew past them, chilling them in their wet clothes and so powerful Marianne thought it was going to knock her down—off balance and on her tip-toes as she was. They held each other tighter, waiting for the wind to die down, but it merely picked up force. Still holding tightly to Marianne, Edward reached out and grabbed the street sign nearby for support.

Then, suddenly, the wind stopped. And the rain.

And it wasn’t cloudy anymore.

As they looked around, still holding each other tightly, the same thought came to each of their minds and they spoke in chorus, “We’re not in Abilene, anymore.”

“Yes we are,” he suddenly added. He pointed out a red spire to their south and said, “There’s Lasten’s castle.”

Her hand went to her mouth as she let out a sound of exuberant excitement. Then, grabbing his hand, she set off running across the fields, saying, “Come on!”

There was a slight rise between them and the castle and when they topped it they paused to take a look at the castle. They were surprised by what they saw.

The castle itself looked virtually the same as it had the last time they had seen it, but now it was surrounded by a sizable village. At a guess, Edward thought it might contain as many as two thousand people. And the castle itself, if every room were used, could probably hold at least a couple hundred people and perhaps more.

It was a thriving town, with much hustle and bustle. And unlike the drab, dreary towns they had seen on their last visit to the area, it was bright and cheerful. Banners hung not only from the castle walls, but also from many of the buildings about the town. Even the smaller homes—huts, really—had a fresh, newly built look to them.

And there were children. Lots of children were running about and playing among the buildings and on the large greens before the castle gate.

Behind the castle the town rose to the crown of what Edward and Marianne in their time had known as McMurry Hill. Edward looked at the scene before him and commented, “I think we’ve been away more than four years.”

Marianne nodded, then began dragging him into the town, saying, “Come on! Let’s see if we can find Lasten.”

“You think he’ll still be alive?”

“The question is whether he’ll remember us. If this is after the last time we were here, then he won’t.”

“Right,” Edward nodded, understanding precisely what she meant.

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All the Time in Our World

an Edward & Marianne story

by Samuel B. White

Synopsis

Two nervous west Texas teenagers on their first date are suddenly engulfed in a horrific thunderstorm and take shelter in an old barn. When the storm subsides, the barn is gone … and so is everything else, except their bicycles. They ride their bikes on a mysteriously well-maintained road in an otherwise barren land to an ancient castle whose single resident claims to already know them. Edward and Marianne have been whisked thousands of years into the future and their only hope of returning to their own world and time is to follow a mysterious traveler named Marcus and a hulking warrior named Daniel into a battle for the soul of all mankind. Over almost a year’s time and more than a thousand miles of travel, Edward and Marianne are trained “physically and mentally” to put together and lead the army that will fight the battle for the beginning of the end of the world. As Edward is taught to be a general and a sword-fighter and Marianne learns to use a bow and lead as well, they begin to learn that their greatest asset just may be each other.

Order on Kindle or paperback.

And be sure and check out the sequels: Some of the Time and A Thousand Miles Away.

…

Reading Sample

Prologue

A wide plain baked by sunlight.

The lone figure touches a parched tongue to chapped lips and realizes the action no longer seems to have any effect.

She casts a fearful glance up at the sun. She can’t make out its orb, just a brighter spot in the already glassy sky.

It has moved some since last she looked. Still a long way from the horizon, it promises many hours of blinding light.

Still, she doesn’t look forward to night, for at night she cannot work.

She looks down at the sheaf of papers in her hand. Why is she still working on them at all? What could it possibly matter?

She has asked the question out loud many times, but not this time. She knows why she continues to work. She works because she has to. She can do nothing else.

Is it only days now? She tells herself that people have thought that before. She leafs through the pages and her hazel eye stops briefly on a name. She knows the name. She knows what’s on the paper so well that she feels as if she knows the person the name belonged to. He lived back before the world’s middle age, but she would wager that he wondered if the days were almost spent.

Was he wrong?

Her great-grandmother used to tell her that the ending wasn’t just at the end.

Chapter One

Beneath the canopy of pecan trees lay two young people, a chaste distance apart an observer might reckon them, yet closer were they in their own minds than they had ever been to another. They were in the spring of their lives, and a rare occasion it was for their spring coincided with the calendar’s.

He thought about moving closer, but wondered if he could, for he was possessed of that awkwardness that comes from not knowing where one stands in the eyes of the desired and fearful that the standing was further away than hoped. His hand moved closer to hers, but almost imperceptibly so.

She didn’t perceive it. A young woman of light brown hair which tended to grow lighter in the summer months, she possessed the body of a somewhat younger girl, though her body was starting to portend the curves which would come later. She was the younger sister of a woman who drew men’s attention and had never drawn any herself—or so she would have said—yet she was one of those women upon whom age would smile, making her more attractive as the years went by; which was a process that was moving far too slowly as far as she was concerned.

She didn’t perceive the slight motion of his hand because she was too busy thinking about him. She had known him since grammar school, had been his friend, but had only recently noticed him. As she thought of him, she thought he was a handsome young lad, or—perhaps—that he was becoming handsome. He had sandy brown hair that he wore a bit long for the day and a mostly clear complexion around an intelligent smile. Standing, he was tall and lanky, if not actually skinny, with an athlete’s ease of movement combined with the unexpected bursts of clumsiness so prevalent in men of his age.

The pecan trees provided such a canopy overhead that the sky was only visible in small patches. Mockingbirds chittered in the trees, mocking each other most likely. A frog’s call grated in the air, adding to the soft din of families on picnics, and the ever-present crickets whose noise was an underlying constant. Learned men who studied the sounds of the frog would have studiously debated whether the sound were the sound of the frog searching for a mate or flies, but the more mundane answer was probably that the frog just did not like silence. In the distance, another mockingbird spoke, perhaps mimicking the frog.

Neither frogs nor birds took any notice of the young couple who lay on the thin blanket beneath the pecan trees. Neither did the people who ate their sandwiches from plastic bags or tossed a plastic disk back and forth on the warm and windless west Texas day. Had they looked, they might have noticed that the young man was nervous. Nervous, yet underneath—or perhaps overriding—that emotion, he was ecstatic.

Near the old wooden bridge they lay, the waters of the creek already dry for the year, but the young man smiled because beside him lay the woman he had dreamed of for years.

Neither would be mistaken for movie stars. Walking together they would have drawn little to no notice for they turned heads with neither unbelievable good-looks nor eye-catching ugliness. They were the type of people who were easily overlooked by an appearance-conscious world.

This is the way it’s supposed to be, he thought. Hanging out in one of your favorite places in all the world—at least, the small part of the world he had actually seen—with a girl you were … crazy about.

He didn’t know if he were in love with her. He had been given—and occasionally listened to—all the lectures about love versus infatuation and he knew enough about love to know he didn’t know much about love. And what he knew about love and about himself was enough to know that what he felt probably wasn’t love … at least not yet. It wasn’t exactly infatuation, either, he thought. Infatuation was short-lived and he had known her way too long to be infatuated. He liked her, and she was pretty, and she seemed to like him. Enough to go out with him, anyway, which was a good sign. But was it love? Would it turn into love?

He knew better than to even ask such questions. Asking such questions always led to trouble, he knew, because girls never thought the way guys did and when girls found out a guy was thinking along those lines, they always seemed to be way ahead of him on the idea or way behind and the difference led to crashing problems. So Edward lay back and vowed not to voice what he was thinking—even if he could, which was doubtful, considering how much of it consisted of incomplete sentences.

Still, he felt like he had to say something. Like most teenage boys, he thought that to sit in silence for any great length of time was a mistake. Or maybe he had never thought about it at all. He was just going on instinct and instinct said that if you sat silent around a girl for too long, she’d eventually start thinking about other things (meaning: not him) and that couldn’t be a good thing because soon (of course) she’d be thinking about some other guy and—

“I love it here.”

“Hmm,” Marianne replied.

Marianne was thinking that this really was a beautiful place and she couldn’t believe that she had lived this close to it for so long and had never explored it before. She was also thinking that she enjoyed the company she was sharing it with and wondering if it would be a mistake to tell him so. She knew that if you told a guy you were enjoying the time spent with him, he usually made a logic leap to the idea that you were madly in love with him and, so, were either after him and were someone to be avoided or were ready to set a date.

She knew better than to dare speak what was actually on her mind. She was thinking that it wasn’t just that this was a good date, a better than most date, it was that this had so far been a great date. Not because it was exciting or thrilling or the most romantic thing she had ever heard of, but because she was getting the idea in the back of her mind that she was enjoying herself more with this guy than she had with any other guy in … forever. She was starting to see herself wanting to date this young man on a regular basis but could she tell him that now without completely ruining everything? She doubted it.

So, in spite of what initially seemed a major setback, the day had gone better than either could have predicted.

It had all started a couple weeks previous, towards the end of the school year. Edward had ridden his new twelve-speed to school even though he knew that in the minds of most of the people at O.H. Cooper High School there were only two kinds of people who rode bikes to high school: dwizzles who either weren’t old enough to drive a car or weirdoes who rode a bike for some sort of exercising fun. Exercising was highly touted at Cooper High School among the constituents, and even bicycle riding, but only as a recreational activity, never as an actual mode of transportation.

When he had left home that morning, the idea of biking all the way to school had seemed like a good one. He had been riding out in the country and getting in shape and the five or so miles to the school had not been daunting. As he had drawn closer to the sprawling campus at the end of Sayles Boulevard, though, trepidation had begun to set in. Could he get to a good place to lock his bike up without his friends seeing him? What would they say if they did see him? Many of them knew he rode his bike out in the country—but to school? What sort of humiliation might he be setting himself up for? Was it too late to ride home, hop in the car and get to first hour on time?

He figured the only way to deal with it effectively would be to just brazen his way through it. Pretend like it were something he did every day. Maybe even look disdainfully on everyone who didn’t ride their bikes to school. Yeah, that’d be the way to do it, he thought. Attitude was everything.

So he had pulled up to the bike racks and climbed off like he did it every day and reached for the lock as if that were something he did every day. He remembered all the times back at Jefferson Junior High anyone had forgotten to lock their bikes at the bike rack. Rarely were bikes stolen, but the owner generally came out of class to find his mode of transportation dangling from the branches of the nearest tree. It had never happened to him, but he had seen it more than once and had been everlastingly grateful the one time he realized he hadn’t locked up his bike that no one had caught the oversight.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone else pull up to the bike rack. His first thought was that this was good because it would make it look as if he weren’t the only person riding a bike to school that day. With a rapidity to rival the greatest minds in the world, he instantly jumped to the idea that it could be one of the dwizzles or weirdoes, in which case he didn’t want to be seen riding a bike to school like one of them. Now, the only thing for it was to just walk away and pretend he hadn’t noticed anyone else pull up and make sure that—if anyone were watching—they’d know he was walking away without being aware someone else had pulled up. It was all a part of the high school dance he stepped to every day of his life and these moves and motivations didn’t seem to him as ridiculous as they probably do to the reader.

He slung his backpack full of books he rarely opened over his shoulder and was about to step away when a voice asked, “Edward?”

He thought of a dozen people who could be calling him by name right then and none of the faces which jumped to mind were pleasant ones. Maybe nice enough people, granted, but not the kind of people he wanted to be seen walking away from a bike rack with. This was high school, after all, and in spite of what the psychologists might say, image was everything.

But there was no getting out of it now, so he stopped and casually turned his head, making sure that anyone who might be watching would know for sure that he was doing this casually. His momentary surprise at seeing he was not being addressed by either a dwizzle or a weirdo was quickly overcome by the normal teenage boy fear of being addressed by a girl.

“Hey, Marianne,” he replied, trying to sound casual but afraid his tongue was sticking to his mouth like it usually did when addressing someone—anyone—of the opposite sex. Being the girl, his tongue was only following the lead of his flash-frozen brain.

“I didn’t know you rode a bike to school,” Marianne smiled.

“This is actually the first time I’ve done it since Jefferson.”

“Ever get yours thrown into a tree?”

“No, I missed out on that.”

“At Lincoln they just stole your bike if you left it unlocked. If the police ever found it again, it always seemed to be somewhere out by Phantom.”

“Ever happen to you?”

She gave him something between a smirk and a shrug that indicated it probably had.

Edward and Marianne had gone to elementary school together for fourth and fifth grade back at good ol’ David Crockett Elementary and he had had a crush on her almost since the first day she walked into Mrs. Landers’ class. In the two years of elementary school, he had had the nerve to actually talk to her maybe three times. Then junior high had rolled around and, even though he could see her house from his, he was in the Jefferson district and she went to Lincoln. He had seen her a few times over the next three years—in the neighborhood or at a store—and they always spoke cordially, though never had much to say.

He had just about forgotten his crush on her until high school. He had had plenty of other unrequited loves during middle school, after all. Freshman year he had just seen her at a distance and that had been that, sort of. His old crush for her had been in the back of his mind, but had never really been fertilized.

But sophomore year they had both wound up in Miss Gober’s geometry class and, sitting there day after day, he had fallen for her all over again. He had finally talked to her, and—as part of a group—they had even headed over to the mall or Taco Bueno for lunch a time or two. But he had never once gotten the impression she was the least bit interested in him, so he had never asked any questions that might give him the answers he wanted and sophomore year had ended and that had been that.

Junior year had been little different. They had no classes together, but they had many friends in common and so were found in the same group now and again before school, during lunch, at pep rallies and the like. He had spoken to her a few times, though it would be hard to call any of the encounters a true conversation. For one, it was almost always amidst a group so there was no chance for truly close discussion. He had daydreamed what he might say, but had always found a reason not to say it. Someone else walked up, they were in a crowded place, the earth was orbiting the sun. There was always a reason.

They were seniors now, would be graduating from good ol’ Cooper High in a couple weeks, and here he was finally with a chance to talk to her and a five minute window in which to do it. And it had only taken him nine years. With a sense of melodrama that only a high school kid who thinks every moment in time has led up to the one in which he now occupies, it occurred to him that if he didn’t talk to her now he probably never would. She’d go off to college and he would too and they’d probably never come back to Abilene and … he had to say something.

“You bike?” was all he could come up with.

“Yeah,” she shrugged.

He thought about saying that that explained why she had such great legs, but he didn’t and realized it was probably for the best. Not only was it inaccurate (because he had thought her legs nice for as long as he had known her and that probably had nothing to do with the bike), but he also knew that lines like that only worked in old movies and only served to make the user sound like a letch in real life.

Looking for some way to continue the conversation, it suddenly occurred to him that, living two blocks away from him as she did, she had probably taken the same route he had to get to school. “Pretty long ride from our part of town, huh?”

She shrugged, “I like it, though. Gives me some time to think and plan for the day.”

“Kind of bites going home though, doesn’t it? After a long day here.”

“Not really. In a way, it provides a good wall between school and home. Once I leave here, I’ve got a good half hour to put everything about school behind me. By the time I get home, school’s another world.”

Barely hearing her as he steeled his courage, he asked, “You ever go for long rides? Like out in the country?”

“Not really. I’ve thought I’d like it, but I guess I was worried about being a girl alone and all that.”

“I hadn’t thought about that, but I can’t blame you. What about riding with someone? I mean, well, um, ah, I like to ride out to the State Park and I was, uh, wondering if you’d like to do that, too, sometime. Together, I mean.”

“You know, that might be fun,” she replied cheerily. “The State Park, isn’t that out by Buffalo Gap?”

His heart was beating so hard he figured it probably showed through his shirt and his mouth was as dry as new sandpaper. Untying his tongue, he managed to ask, “Are you free this Saturday?”

“Ah, no,” she replied. Then she quickly added, “My mom and I are going down to look at Texas A&M. We’ve had it scheduled for a couple months.”

He figured his window of opportunity had closed with a resounding thud just then, but she told him, “I could go the next Saturday.”

His heart had almost exploded (as well as his head) just then, but he managed to say something unintelligible that was roughly affirmative and they promised to get together the next week and plan out the trip.

They had peddled the twelve miles out to the State Park with the intention of taking a nice dip in the spring fed pool when they got there. They had arrived to find that the pool was not open yet because, it had been discovered, a pipe had ruptured during the winter and hadn’t been discovered until earlier in the week. Men were hard at work on the problem and a park attendant was assuring everyone who came by that the pool would be open the next week, but that didn’t suit the needs of the people who had driven all the way out to go swimming, let alone those who had bicycled out.

This had been a tremendous blow to Edward. He wasn’t a particularly good swimmer, but he had looked forward to seeing Marianne in her swimsuit. Not that that was the only reason he had asked her on a date like this, he reminded himself, but it had been a looked-for perk.

So they had peddled down to one of the tree-shaded picnic tables and eaten their lunches and tried not to let the other person notice just how close they were to exhaustion. They were both hoping and praying that the other person would not suggest turning around and riding back into town, yet. After lunch, they had spread out the sheet they had brought and—in completely chaste fashion—lay down on it to rest and talk.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but as they lay there Edward began to think that he might never be able to get up again. So he sat up and pulled his knees to his chest a time or two to stretch his hamstrings. As he did so, he looked over at Marianne.

She was either asleep or had her eyes closed against the bright Texas sunlight that peeked through the pecan branches overhead. Either way, she couldn’t see him staring at her. Even then, he only took furtive glances, then quickly looked away lest she—like some forest animal—could somehow sense his staring.

He wondered what it was that he had always liked so much about her. There were prettier girls at Cooper. Heck, there had been prettier girls at Crockett. So why had he always had this crush on this particular sandy-haired young woman? Her face was pretty, but she was no model. Her figure was attractive but a little on the slight side. She had really nice legs, but she hadn’t in elementary, so that couldn’t have been it.

Maybe it was her smile. Her mouth might have been considered by some to be a little large, but she had a great smile. And she smiled a lot. Maybe that was it, he thought: maybe it was because Marianne almost always seemed happy. Even in those moments when, like most high school students, she complained about the world around her, there was an air of humor and hyperbole behind all the angst.

Suddenly proving that she was awake and had somehow noticed his stealthy glances, she asked, “What?”

“Hmm?” he asked, shaken from his reverie.

“You keep looking at me funny.” Reaching up a hand to check, she asked, “Do I have something in my hair?”

“No,” he replied, blushing.

“Then what?” she asked, sitting up, stretching her legs much as he had.

“Nothing,” he replied shortly, maybe a little too guiltily. Hoping to quickly change the subject, he asked, “You ready to head back?”

Looking at him as if still hoping to discern what had just been going through his mind, she replied with a laugh, “No. I’m wishing I had brought my mother’s cell phone so I could call her to come pick me up.”

He reached into his backpack and offered her his phone. “I always bring it,” he shrugged. “In case I get caught in a storm or have a wreck or something.”

She pushed the phone away and said, “I was joking. I have one, too. I just hate using it.”

“Really?” he asked, truly surprised. He thought he used his phone less than anyone he knew, but he still never went anywhere without it.

“My mother’s always told me that phones were a replacement for true inti—friendship. I guess her words soaked in on me.”

“Your mom sounds a lot like mine.”

She looked around and commented, “It’s so beautiful here. Like we’re in a whole ‘nother world from Abilene. Are there nature trails and stuff like that here?”

“Yeah. Some good ones.”

“Well, sometime—when I’m in shape—I want to come out here and walk around and take a dip in that pool.” She looked at him with that familiar twinkle in her eyes and said, “But today, I better head back while I can. ‘Cause if I stay here one more minute, I’m going to be here until the paramedics come for me.” She held out her hands and asked, “Help me up? ”

He bounced to his feet as if he were sitting on springs and took her hands in his. As he pulled her up, she grimaced and told him, “I feel like a little old lady.”

As he held her hands for that moment, he thought of all that he wished to tell her. How he had had a crush on her for nine years now. How he had sat out on his back porch looking across the park, just hoping she’d come out on the porch of her house so he could wave hello. How he’d sat there all the way through geometry wanting to ask her out. But all he managed was, “I’ll fold the sheet.

They loaded up their backpacks then and got on their bikes. As she groaned at the first pressure to the peddle, he asked, “You sure you don’t want to call?”

“I’m fine,” she laughed.

“That you are,” he wanted to say, but wisely didn’t.

The little hill getting out of the park was hard on their legs. Even his, for though he often rode far more than twelve miles in a day, it was usually in a straight shot and not with a long idle time in the middle. Once out of the park and onto the highway, though, they both began to feel their legs loosen a bit and the prospect of the ride back was not nearly so grim. It was a beautiful day, after all. Not as hot as usual for that time of year, a little bit of cloud cover, and every now and then a touch of a welcome breeze.

They were about halfway to Buffalo Gap when they felt the gust of wind coming up behind them. Edward turned to call back that that ought to help them get back home a little quicker … and then he saw the cloud.

It was a dark cloud. The darkest he had ever seen. It roiled and billowed like the front edge of an alien invasion from an old 2-D movie. It was filled with lightning and the air was suddenly filled with the roar of thunder and before he could tell Marianne to look out or anything (he wasn’t sure what he could have told her), the cloud had caught up with them and they were being pelted with cold, hard rain drops the size of June bugs.

In a matter of seconds, he could no longer see fifty feet ahead of him and had to look hard to make sure Marianne were still with him. He let her pull up alongside and called out over the noise, “We’ve got to find some place to pull over!”

“You lead, I’ll follow!” she shouted back.

There was a bar ditch beside the road, but he figured that would soon be running brim-full with water. So he peddled on a bit until he found a place to pull off. He saw a shelter through the rain and made for it even though at first glance it was just a darker place in the darkness. The going was tough and the road was a washboard, but he finally pulled into what appeared to be an old barn. It was empty, but the smell of manure was fresh in it, so it wasn’t completely out of use.

Marianne pulled in right behind him, soaked to the skin. Even in the midst of a near crisis, the teenage boy side of his brain remarked that he was getting to see her swimsuit after all, but he quickly swatted the thought away and set about closing the big doors.

He was trying to work up the nerve to suggest they get into the loft, where there might be dry hay, when he turned to find her already climbing the ladder. He scampered up after her and found her sitting against a post, trying to put her hair back into a pony tail. She said something to him, but he couldn’t hear her for the sound of the rain on the metal roof.

Edward came closer and asked, “What?”

“I said, ‘It’s kind of loud in here!’” she laughed.

He sat down beside her and thought about saying something about how he’d always liked the sound of rain on a metal roof but figured saying it would spoil the moment because he would probably rupture a lung getting it out loud enough. He took her hand as he leaned against the railing of the hay mow and she didn’t seem to mind so he figured he was in the midst of the best day of his life.

She leaned up against him and said, loud enough for him to hear, “My legs really didn’t need another stop. If this lets up, I may not get going again.”

He made certain the cell phone was still in the backpack and said, “We’ll call as soon as it’s quiet enough for someone to hear us.”

She laid her head against his shoulder, nodding as she did so, and he decided that this was undoubtedly the best day of his life. To have a girl—not just any girl, but Marianne—fall asleep against his shoulder while sitting in a barn on a rainy day … well, it was just something he contemplated with joy right until he fell asleep, too.

It was a pretty good day for Marianne, too. She had never had a crush on Edward, but over the years she had come to have a fondness for him that she realized she didn’t have for any other guys. Until the day he had asked her out, though, she had never really given any thought to going on a date with him. If asked to name her ten best friends at school, he might have appeared on her list, but if asked to name the ten boys she most wanted to date, he would not have appeared. And now she was thinking he might have just jumped to the top of that second list. She asked herself why. Why did she like him? Why had she never realized it before?

He was tall and a tad gangly, but sort of cute. And she had always enjoyed talking to him on the few occasions she had given it a shot. But, she told herself, she had been sucked into the culture of her time and had spent an embarrassing amount of time swooning or pretending to swoon over the same guys the other girls presumed to pursue.

Marianne and her friends had often made up lists. Sometimes lists of movies or favorite songs, but most often lists about guys. Best hair. Best face. Best derriere—though that was not the word they used. She could not remember Edward being on any of those lists even though, as she glanced at him, she realized he was fairly attractive. To her own embarrassment, she could not remember having suggested him for any of those lists. Was she really as shallow as that?

She hadn’t dated much since turning old enough for her mother to allow her out of the house without an armed guard, but when she had, she had been singularly unimpressed with most of the guys she had gone out with. They were either obsessed with themselves or sex and had quickly grown boring if not outright boorish. Yet here they were in a hayloft and rather than try something, he had held her hand. She realized it might sound silly or juvenile to some, but to her it was incredibly sweet.

So here was a nice guy, who she had somehow always known had liked her, who was rather cute, and she had also known that his character was a level or two above most other guys she knew. Why, then, had she waited until senior year to finally decide she liked him, too? And not just senior year but the last week of senior year?

After agreeing to the date, she had mentioned it to some of her friends. While not met with derision or disdain, none of her friends had been particularly impressed. But, as she had started telling them how much she was looking forward to it, she had slowly come to realize just how true that was. Without exaggeration or hyperbole, she had begun to tell her best friend, Shelinda, about Edward and had started realizing then that she liked him—liked him more than she had ever known.

It was with these thoughts that, much to her own surprise had she given it any consideration, she fell asleep.

She was asleep on him for a few minutes before he realized it.

“Edward,” he heard a nervous and scared voice saying.

“Yeah?” he asked, coming awake but not yet opening his eyes because the sun was so brilliant. The realization that the sun was so bright—when the last he remembered, he was in a darkened barn—made his eyes fly open. Marianne was standing next to him and he jumped to his feet beside her.

There was no barn. No rain. And, as far as he could tell, they weren’t anywhere near Buffalo Gap. The row of palm trees made him think they weren’t even in west Texas anymore.

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Lost Time – The Legend of Garison Fitch – book 3

Book Three of The Legend of Garison Fitch

Jason Kerrigan and Brownwyn Dalmouth are pilots with the Republic of Texas Army Air Corps. A world war is going on and bombs have just brought an end to Crockett Air Field in south Texas. Jason and Bronwyn, though, are called away from the battle to be test pilots for a new aircraft that-they’re told-will bring the war to an end. The experimental craft lives up to expectations in early tests, but then it lands them somewhere it never should have sent them. Another place? Another time? Another dimension? Somehow, they’ve taken a trip to the future and changed the past. Or did they? The answer to their change of reality may be known to a Justice of the Peace in Colorado named Garison Fitch. To figure it out, though, Garison may have to team up with his least favorite person: Bat Garrett.

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Reading Sample

When he woke up he was laying face down in the dirt and couldn’t remember how he got there. There was a horrible pounding sound in his ears that was more than just a headache from having been knocked to the ground, but he couldn’t recognize it right off.

He couldn’t recognize anything, he almost realized. The truth was that even when he woke up, he wasn’t really awake. While he might not have a concussion, he was certainly disoriented.

He had enough sense to know that laying down in the dirt wasn’t what he normally did, so he decided to change things a bit. He positioned his hands underneath himself and realized he was pushing gravel. Gravel on tarmac, actually. So he raised himself to his knees and looked around.

What he saw was chaos.

Where once had been buildings, there were smoking ruins. On a military base that had been governed by rules of order and decorum he saw only disorder and panic. The few living people still inhabiting the base were trying their best to walk, crawl or drag themselves to a place that was safe from the bombs. None of these people were visible to him at the moment, though, because of the smoke from the bombs and the fire from the buildings.

That’s what he was hearing, he suddenly realized. The pounding in his ears wasn’t just from the headache (though that was undoubtedly part of it) it was from the bombs.

Overhead, through the fog of dust and smoke that threatened to choke what little life was left, he could see the shadows of the planes. He counted at least three big ones and maybe a dozen fighter planes. It was hard to be sure, though, as they were moving so fast and the visibility was so bad.

He put his hands to his ears not so much to see if they could deaden the sound–he knew that was too much to hope for–but to see if his ears were bleeding. Between the sounds of the explosion, the roar of the low-flying planes, and the whistle-scream of the bombs as they fell, his ears were hurting. He was not only surprised that his hands came away blood free, he was a little surprised that they came away without actual pieces of his ear-drum.

He tried to get to his feet but the concussion of another bomb knocked him back down. He realized quickly that it must not have been too close, for he was still alive. So he raised himself again to his knees, and then his feet. Making a cursory check of his body to see if any bones were broken, he satisfied himself that he was suffering only from a few scratches and a lot of dirt. An attempt to brush himself off (in retrospect he couldn’t imagine why he cared how dirty he was), he brushed his hand across a piece of glass that had been embedded in his uniform and received his first real injury of the day. Fishing out a handkerchief, he wrapped his hand as best he could, ignoring the tableau of standing by himself in the middle of a bomb zone taking so much trouble to treat something so relatively innocuous.

Crockett Army Air Base, his home for the last sixteen months, was being bombed out of existence.

The day had begun ordinarily enough for Captain Jason Kerrigan. Early morning run with the enlisted men, cold shower, then breakfast in the officer’s mess. He had eaten quickly because he had a meeting with General Wright at 0800 and, while Wright was a notoriously lenient commanding officer, Jason wasn’t about to be late for this meeting.

Jason Kerrigan was twenty-six years old, just over six foot tall, and had jet black hair. He was somewhat dark complected, though not overly so, and his build was strong if not imposing. He was a handsome man if not possessing of movie star good looks. In all, he was a pleasant-looking man who one instantly liked but could almost as quickly forget.

Sergeant Carol LeMans had saluted him at the door and told the general by intercom that the captain had arrived. So he stood at ease, feeling like a little kid who had bent sent to the principal’s office, and waited. He looked around at the cinder block walls out of something that couldn’t quite be called interest. The walls were of the standard military color euphemistically known as “olive” and were decorated with a few plaques commemorating the base and the obligatory picture of Sam Houston. It seemed like he was waiting a long time (it was just moments) before the general called him in.

The two officers saluted, then shook hands as the door closed behind them. Jason could tell by the look on the general’s face that the news he was about to receive wasn’t good news. He almost blurted out something to convey his disgust, but remembered where he was and who he was with and kept his peace.

“Won’t you have a seat?” General William Wright had offered. The General was a young man, younger than Kerrigan, even, but he had received a battlefield promotion to Captain two years ago at the Battle of Matamoros, then a jump to Colonel six months after that when he had single-handedly turned the enemy attack at a battle near Thibadeaux. Four months later he had been given command of Crockett Army Air Base and a Generalship to go along with it. He was an excellent officer and bright young man who also owed a large portion of his placement to the fact that the world was at war and fighting men–especially intelligent fighting men–were hard to come by. He was easy-going and lenient, but he knew exactly what he wanted and how to convey it at all times for all that. He also knew that at any other time in history he could have risen no higher than captain in such a short time and meant to do all he could to take advantage of the “blessing” of the war that went on around him.

“Thank you, sir,” Jason said as he sat down. The chairs were big, comfortable, leather chairs and completely incongruous with Crockett. But he guessed they were congruous with a general’s office (and very heavy) so they stayed in place even with the general changed.

Knowing his face had already given away the news, General Wright said, “Your request for a transfer to the front has been denied, Jason.”

“Any reason why?”

General Wright looked like he was about to say something else, then sighed and replied, “The same reason they always give. You’re a crack pilot and we’re going to need you if–”

“If this God-forsaken stretch of desert ever becomes the hotbed of frontline activity they expect it to become.” Jason wasn’t in the habit of interrupting his superior officers, but the frustration had welled up and canceled out his good sense.

“You seem to have this memorized,” Wright smiled.

“Unfortunately. Sir. You’re the third commanding general I’ve heard it from so far.”

“I’m really sorry, Jason. I put all the influence behind this request that I could.”

“Yessir, I’m sure you did.” Jason believed the young general, but he was afraid his voice gave away the fact that this was the third time he had heard that from a commander, too. He looked out the window absently for a moment, watching the fighter planes take off, and said, “Don’t they know you’ve already got two full squadrons of crack pilots wasting away down here?”

Wright stood up and walked over to the window, motioning for Kerrigan to join him. “There goes the 187th now,” he said.

“And I’m better than every one of them,” Jason mumbled. At the General’s glance–which contained a bit of a smile–Jason emphasized, “I am. I mean it, General. They’re all good pilots. I’d fly with any one of them. I have flown with most of them. I’d take any one of them in the 27th with me. And I’m rated on almost every fighter plane we’ve got, from the little scrubs to the big hawks. And you know full well I can outfly any one of them and ought to be somewhere where my skills can be put to use!”

General Wright pointed at the last fighter plane to take off and said, “What about her? Think you could outfly Lieutenant Dalmouth?”

“Yessir. Without a doubt.” Venting his frustration again, Jason said, “And that’s another thing. If we’re so short on pilots that we’re having to rewrite the laws and allow women into combat, then how come they won’t send me where I’m needed? I’m tired of training these new pilots. I want to be out there where I can do something.” Kerrigan watched the last plane soar up into the air and spat, “She’ll probably be sent to the front before I am!”

“Technically, this is the front, Captain.”

“It’s the back of the front, General, and you know it. I’m sorry, sir. I know I shouldn’t talk that way, but–” Jason straightened up all of a sudden and asked, “Permission to be excused, sir?”

“Granted,” the general replied as he returned the salute. As Kerrigan was reaching for the doorknob, though, he said, “Jason?”

“Yessir?”

“I know I’ve told you this before, but I’ve seen the front. And I know how you wish you were out there. I know it sounds glorious when you hear people like me talking about it. The battles, the heroism. But, well, I remember watching one of my best friends–known each other since high school–get literally cut in two by a bomb. The only thing that saved my life was his. I still see that at night.” He sighed, then said, “But I wish I were back out there, too, sometimes. I’ll keep trying to get you there.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jason said as he left.

General Wright turned back to his window and watched at Kerrigan crossed the tarmac, heading towards the hangers. That was Kerrigan. A day off after forty-eight hours on, someone else patrolling the skies, yet there he went to check out his plane and hope against hope he’d have a reason to fly it that day. Wright sighed, knowing no one ever had a reason to do an emergency take-off at Crockett, and turned away from the window.

He never heard the bomb that took out the command center.

Her hair pulled back tightly into a ponytail and tucked into her collar so that she could get the leather helmet and radio-phones over her head, Lieutenant Bronwyn Dalmouth pulled back on the stick and launched herself into the sky. She loved that feeling. There was nothing like it. And even on a day like this, that promised nothing but another patrol around lifeless skies over an almost lifeless desert, she was thrilled.

She loved the feel of the plane around her. With her hands on the throttle and the steering mechanism, she could feel every little wind current, every little wisp of a cloud. She loved the response of the airplane and was confident she could set a gliding record in it if she had to just because she knew it so well. Even her instructors had said it was as if she were one with the airplane.

She pulled up next to her wingman and looked to her right, lifting her hand to give him a thumbs up. Her eyes focused on his smiling face in the cockpit as he was just about to return the signal when his head exploded in a rush of blood and gore against the cowling. Her mind didn’t even have a chance to react to the horrific sight before his plane began to billow smoke and begin its death dive into the countryside below.

Rather than doing what almost anyone else would have done when operating on sheer reflex, she pushed forward and went into a dive herself. Going under the enemy fighter’s guns, she looped around behind him and put about twice as much lead into his fuselage as was needed. As the enemy went into a death dive, she followed to make sure he died, then pulled up at the last second to rejoin the battle above her that was already all but over.

Captain Jason Kerrigan didn’t know how long he had been out but it was long enough for Crockett Army Air Base to be virtually wiped off the map. He looked at his wrist, but his watch was gone. It was probably nearby, he thought, but he didn’t want to look for it. The hangers were burning masses of twisted metal. The airplanes that had been parked out on the flight line looked like a giant child’s uncompleted model kit and a brief glance told Jason there wasn’t a one of them that was flyable or even repairable.

Whoever had planned the bombing raid had known exactly what they were doing, that was for sure. The runway and the flight line were crater-filled and basically useless. The command center was a smoldering ruin, as was every other building on the desert base. Even the infirmary, which had been marked on its roof with a nice big red cross in a white circle, was leveled. It was as if . . .

His steps suddenly got a sense of purpose as he realized that this wasn’t just an “inflict damage on the enemy” bombing run. This was a “wipe them out so completely they can’t even call for help” bombing campaign. Such a campaign would most likely mean that something–something like invasion–was to follow. This was a long way from the sources of power, but that might be just the reason it had been chosen.

And now the sound of the bombs was dying out for there was nothing left to bomb. And the secondary sound he had barely acknowledged–that of the bombers and their accompanying fighters–was dwindling off into the distance. They were heading back to the south, their mission accomplished.

It suddenly occurred to him to wonder what had happened to the 187th. He looked up into the skies and could see the smoke trails of airplanes that had been heading for the ground in an unplanned landing. They must have been caught completely by surprise, he thought. He hoped at least some of them had been able to eject and would be even now trying to make their way back to Crockett.

What would he do with them or for them if they got there? he wondered. Even what little medical skills he had been given as an officer required some sort of implements and bandages. He had nothing but his clothes, which he supposed he would soon be ripping into bandages.

He also thought to hope that someone of the 187th –one, even–had gotten away and was able to get to somewhere to radio for help. If a ground attack were massing on the other side of the river, just waiting for Crockett to be out of the way, he wondered if reinforcement enough could be supplied in time. Whatever he could do, then, needed to be done quickly.

He saw movement through the smoke towards where the motor pool had once stood and started walking in that direction. Whoever was over there had apparently seen him at the same time and was walking towards him. At fifty feet, they were finally able to make each other out. The form in the smoke said, “Captain Kerrigan? Is that you?”

“Corporal Luis?” Jason returned.

“Aye sir.”

As they got closer, Jason asked, “Have you seen anybody else, Corporal?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing, sir. But no, I haven’t seen anyone.”

Jason stopped and looked around, hands on his hips. “Do you have any idea how long ago this happened? I woke up on the ground with my watch missing.”

Corporal Montoya “Junior” Luis, a wiry, dark-skinned young man with perfect teeth, looked at his own watch and said, “At least half an hour ago, sir. Not much more than that, though.”

“Where were you when it happened? How’d you survive?”

Corporal Luis looked embarrassed as he said, “I was in the head, sir. You know, that one on the back of the motor pool. One of the blasts blew a bunch of stuff up against the door but didn’t break the window, somehow. Took me the better part of fifteen minutes to break out that tiny window then squeeze through. When I saw what was going on, I just took cover under a wall that I think used to belong to the enlisted mess and waited for a chance to start looking for another survivor. You’re the first I’ve found, sir.” He quickly added, “But I haven’t looked much, yet.”

Jason looked down with his own embarrassment and said, “I somehow survived a walk across the flight line then slept through the rest. I was just walking towards my plane and then–boom–next thing I know I’m waking up face down on the tarmac. There were bomb craters all around me and pieces of blown up airplanes that had to have passed right over me after I fell. Don’t know why I’m not dead.”

“What do we do now, Captain?”

“First priority is survivors. You head that way, along the west side of the flight line, and I’ll take the east side. Any survivors that can walk, start them towards the motor pool. Any that can’t walk, leave them where you find them until we can try to round up someone with medical experience. Unless we have no choice, we’ll try not to move them until we’ve at least got someone with corpsman training to help.” He started to walk off, then said, “And Corporal, if you spot any kind of communications equipment, see if you can call for some help. Let someone know what happened here.”

“What about the 187th? Surely they’ve gone for help.”

“If any of them survived, yes. But right now, as far as we know, Corporal, you and I are the only two people alive in this part of the world.”

“Except the enemy, sir.”

“Yeah, there’s them. But I think they’ve left . . . for now.”

“Finally got you on the run!” she announced triumphantly.

But then the adrenaline began to wear off just a little and rational thought began to creep back in and she knew they weren’t running. Not from her. Not a whole squadron of bombers and half a dozen zeroes. They weren’t running from her or anyone else.

They were going home. They were going home because they were done with what they had come to do and there wasn’t any reason to stick around. She was just a whispering gnat of an annoyance that wasn’t even worth expending the fuel or lead on.

She thought about chasing at least one of them down and making him sorry for turning his back on her, but she knew they were already out of range. Especially if she had any hope at all of making it back to Marathon or anywhere else. She could no-power further than anyone in a Comal 38, but not that far.

With tears in her eyes, she turned around and started west. Maybe, she told herself, she could catch some sign if anyone else had made it. She was pretty sure all the planes were gone, but she had seen at least two chutes and possibly a third, though she hadn’t been able to tell whether it were one of her friends or not. Maybe she could mark their spots for ‘em and hasten the job of the rescue teams.

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Saving Time – The Legend of Garison Fitch – Book 2

Book Two of The Legend of Garison Fitch

Two years ago Garison Fitch traveled through time and rewrote history. An accident in the eighteenth century created a whole new world, and even gave Garison a wife he had never met before. Now, he’s got a daughter and he’s coming to enjoy this world he created. Until he’s attacked by men masquerading as Indians, and a funeral procession from out of the past enlists his help, and a tree grows from sappling to full-grown in a matter of minutes, threatening his daughter’s very life. Time itself is unraveling and Garison’s trips through time seem to be the cause. Garison must go back in time once again and keep himself from making the original trip that started the problem. But he can’t use his time machine to go back. How does one sew up a rip in time?

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The Legend of Garison Fitch begins in “First Time” and concludes in “i“. Read all three books!

…

Reading Sample

Prologue

June 12, 1897

The concussion rocked the walls of La Plata Canyon far away from the blast site. There, fire and smoke careened out of the hole and added more soot to the already blackened cave mouth. Deep within the mountain, one could hear the rocks reestablishing their equilibrium. It was as if the mountain were alive. To further the illusion, one could hear the mountain rumbling long after the blast, like an awakened grizzly settling back into sleep.

Jeb stood up from behind his barricade and watched as the last of the smoke seeped out of the mine. It looked like a fire-breathing dragon sleeping, snoring smoke through one open nostril. Jeb liked the thought for he remembered fairy tales from his childhood which told that dragons’ bellies were covered with gold and jewels. Jeb grabbed his lantern and pick and prepared to head back into the dragon.

Jeb had been prospecting for over thirty years. He had missed the big strike in California, shown up too late for the one in Alaska, and was just barely in the right century for the Colorado strikes. He had been late for the strike on the Blue, just missed the boom on the Tarryall, and had shown up in La Plata Canyon about twenty years late. And while some might argue he didn’t know it very well, prospecting was the only life he knew.

Not that he hadn’t had a couple moments of glory. For three days once he had been a millionaire–on paper. That had been up near Tincup, or was it Alma? He couldn’t rightly remember. But three ladies depicted on stiff paper had forfeited his millions to a man holding four monarchs depicted on similarly stiff paper. Jeb always held that it had been a blessing–that all that money had encumbered him–but the truth was that he sometimes wished he’d never gotten into that last hand. Jeb’s life could be summed up with the phrase, “If only I’d left earlier.”

On the other hand, he’d never stayed too long. That was something, he guessed.

Down in the bowels of the mine shaft, he set his lantern on a ledge and set about to survey his most recent prospects. He had won the claim in a came of three card monte; which should have tipped him off. If the claim had been worth anything, the dealer (whose winning streak had reached uncanny proportions) would have held onto it. Jeb was beginning to suspect–no, be assured–that the dealer had lost on purpose.

Jeb had found the claim easily enough, having been late for the La Plata Canyon once before in his life. The claim was located near where the Lady of Spain Mine had once stood and that gave Jeb hope. The Lady of Spain had struck a pocket of gold and its owners had been richer than the dreams of avarice–until they hit the other side of the pocket. They blew their fortune trying to reestablish a vein that didn’t exist, and the Lady closed down. Jeb was hoping he might find just enough gold to get him a stake. With that, he could head to South America, or maybe even Alaska again. There was a valley he had seen when he had been there before that he’d been aching to try again.

As the dust settled in the area most recently blasted, Jeb swore. He knew better than to expect the mother lode to just appear before his eyes, but he had hoped for something promising. Anything. The early returns weren’t good.

He began sifting through the rocks, clearing a space to put up some more shoring timbers, when a glint caught his eye. He picked up the rock in question, and–holding it close to his lantern–spied just a hair of gold. He eyed it closely, not wanting to trust even his own sight until he was absolutely sure. This mine had disappointed him before, and he wasn’t going to get his hopes up again.

After roughly an hour of work, he had collected maybe twenty pounds of ore with traces of gold. He had even found where along the wall they had come from, but he hadn’t located the vein. But, even though it would mean putting a bend in his shaft where he hadn’t intended to have one, he figured it would be worth a look-see. The current path of the shaft sure didn’t seem worth sticking to.

The end of the day proved that there was a very thin vein of gold in the new direction, but it wasn’t enough for Jeb to get rich off of. In fact, it was probably just enough to make him poor–what with the expense of digging it out.

As Jeb sat in his shack, picking at the little gold he had found, he wondered if it would be enough. He knew it wouldn’t get him to South America or Alaska–or even California–but then again, it might. He had known men to get a lot further on a lot less.

Word had it there was a greenhorn easterner over in Durango who was buying up old claims. “Speculating” they called it. Jeb had heard that the city dude had bought Shorty Dillon’s worthless mine for far more than Shorty deserved. If the greenhorn were still around, Jeb thought, and if he could convince the man that his claim was worth something. It might mean salting the claim, but all’s fair, right? he thought absently.

The more Jeb thought of the idea of leaving and getting on the trail again, the more he liked it. Jeb decided he needed some supplies, anyway, and might as well head into Durango and see what he could find out. He tossed a crust of bread over to the marmot that often hung around near his door, then turned out the light for sleep.

Jeb awoke to a sound he had never heard before and, just for a moment, figured it must be Satan coming with some hell-spawned machine to take him away. He had done a sight worse than salt a claim in his life, after all. It was a powerful, low, rumbling sound, like the machines at the smelter–only more refined, more steady. To Jeb, that made the sound more ominous.

He sat up in bed and grabbed for his rifle. Slipping on his boots, he stepped outside into the night wearing only his dungarees and flannel underwear. He was shaking in his boots and sweating even though the night was as cool as any in a month. Slowly, he slipped outside.

The noise was coming from some sort of machine, all right. Jeb slipped on his spectacles for a better look–even though they weren’t much help in the moonlight. Whatever it was, it wasn’t much longer than a buck-board, but it was made of metal and glass. It ran on four black wheels with silver centers that gleamed in the moonlight. But what fairly took Jeb’s breath away with fright were its eyes. It had two eyes in front that shined brighter than day, lighting the way ahead of the beast–or machine, or whatever it was.

The beast began to turn in Jeb’s direction and he dove behind the woodpile as the bright lights swept near where he had been. There were trees between he and it that might have blocked him from its sight, but he didn’t want to take chances. It occurred to the back of his mind that he had no idea where the woodpile had come from, but the thought died of loneliness.

The beast rolled a short way through the forest then came to a stop maybe fifty yards from Jeb’s shack. Against his better judgement, he decided to crawl closer and get a better look. If he were going to die or get carted off to Ol’ Scratch’s hideout, he aimed to see what would be carrying him. Holding his breath, he moved toward the machine–creeping through the forest quieter than a cat.

He got close to the beast just as the light in its eyes went out and the fearful rumbling stopped. Then he watched in horrified awe as the sides of the beast opened up–almost as if it had doors built into its rib-cage–and two people got out. Jeb all but stopped breathing as he saw what appeared to be a tall, dark-headed man, reach back into the beast and pull out a blonde-haired little girl. She was little more than a baby. The man said something to the person who had gotten out of the other side of the beast and the reply–though Jeb couldn’t quite make out all the words–sounded as if it came from a woman.

The trio began to walk away from the beast and it was then that Jeb saw they were walking towards a house. It was a great log house, with a light on the porch that didn’t flicker and another light or two inside. Something in Jeb’s brain registered that the lights were coming from those new-fangled “bulbs” he had seen in town, but that wasn’t what occupied his mind. What occupied the parts of Jeb’s mind that hadn’t been completely frozen with fear was the idea that a house was there at all. He had walked that land just the day before and nothing had been there–not even a stick of cut wood. And now there was a house and people and–

Not planning his actions too far in advance, Jeb carefully skirted the fierce beast and walked up to the porch of the house. The yard was carefully cut, there were flower bushes planted all around, and the walkway to the front porch was made of some sort of perfectly laid and cut stone–as if of a single giant slab. All around was evidence that the house had stood for not just hours, but years.

He crept up to a window and saw that the woman somehow made the whole interior of the house light up by touching a little square on the wall. Jeb fell backwards from the window, his hair literally standing on end. What sort of magic was this? When he had caught his breath, his curiosity got the better of him and he peeked in again.

The man and the little girl were nowhere to be seen, but the woman was standing not ten feet away from Jeb. She had dark hair that hung half-way down her back and she was, Jeb thought, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. He gulped as he looked at her. Not only was she beautiful, she was wearing the least clothes he had ever seen on a woman who wasn’t dancing in a saloon. She wore a blue cotton shirt with no discernable buttons and britches that looked as if they had been cut off at mid thigh, revealing a more shapely pair of legs than he had ever seen before. He swallowed hard again and rubbed his eyes to make sure it wasn’t all an illusion.

The woman bent over a little table and picked up a little black box. She held it before her and, suddenly, a large black box on the other side of the room seemed to spring to life. It glowed with a thousand colors and sound came out of it. Jeb watched in horror as the woman somehow manipulated the big box with the little box. His breath now only a memory, he saw the faces of people who were trapped in the big box. Some were laughing, some were crying, and some seemed to have somehow been drawn. Like moving art.

The box went dark as suddenly as it had lit up and Jeb screamed. It was a heartfelt scream from the bottom of his soul as it escaped his lips. Clutching tightly to his rifle, he fled as fast as his old legs would carry him. Back to the shack he went, just barely remembering to avoid the horrible hell-beast the demon people traveled with. As he skirted it, he prayed it wouldn’t come to life and eat him.

Reaching his shack, he bolted the door, piled whatever he could find in front of it, then sat cowering on the bed with his gun cocked and ready. When he finally fell asleep, it was to visions of the beautiful woman coming to him. She wore next to no clothes and beckoned him with long-nailed fingers and a sultry gaze. He fought against her advances for he knew she had come to take his soul and trap him for all eternity in her box.

When morning came, Jeb was surprised to find himself still alive–and not living in a box. He gathered up what he could carry, including some of the gold, and headed for his mule. He hastily loaded the animal up and started for town.

He cast a glance at where the house had been the night before and found only an empty meadow. Taking an earlier than usual swig from the flask in his pack, he steadied his nerves and decided it was time to get shut of La Plata Canyon. He’d heard a man named Stillwell say the place was haunted, and Jeb was thinking the old prospector had been right. If he could sell his claim to that greenhorn–Wilson, he thought the man’s name wasfine and dandy. If not, he’d just cut his losses and head for Leadville or Georgetown.

He was sure it hadn’t been a dream. The valley was haunted and he wouldn’t spend another night in it. Let someone else deal with the demon woman.

…

Chapter One

With gloved hands, Garison looped the newly strung strand of barbed wire through the come-along. Nodding to Heather to back away a bit, Garison began to work the lever and bring the two strands closer together. He had almost lost an ear one time when a line of barbed wire broke and he didn’t want her near in case the incident repeated itself.

“A hundred years ago,” Garison told her, “We would’ve had to do this all by hand. Working and pulling until we got the new wire tight enough to nail down–then it would still have been far looser than we can get today.”

“But you said the tightness in the wire also contributed to it’s demise.”

“‘Demise’?” he chuckled.

“Breakage, whatever. You knew what I meant.”

He nodded and said, “To an extent. This wire’s a lot stronger than anything we would have been stringing a hundred years ago. My point is, though, with all the things I’ve invented, I’m not sure I’ve ever invented anything just as flat-out practical as this come-along.”

“That’s not true. If you could ever get The Box licensed, that would change the world.”

He winced slightly and reminded her, Please don’t say that. I’ve already changed the world once, remember?”

“That was an accident.” Trying to cheer him up–or at least get the conversation on another track–Heather told him, “If you could license The Box, the world would never know another energy crisis. Besides that, it’d probably just about get rid of smog. And think of all the waste we produce now that The Box could eliminate.”

He nodded, but remarked, “And think of how quickly Garison Fitch would be eliminated.”

“What?”

As he finished cranking and began to tie the two strands of barbed wire together, he explained, “Even if I got the thing licensed, I wouldn’t stand a chance. We’re talking about a self-contained nuclear fusion reactor small enough to fit into the trunk of a compact car but powerful enough to supply all the electricity Denver needs. The oil, gas, and electric companies would never let me make it even if the government licensed it.”

“But all the good it could do–”

“Doesn’t compare to all the money they’re currently making. Almost twenty years ago a guy in El Paso figured out how to make his Lincoln Continental get eighty-five miles to the gallon–with the air conditioning going. It was environmentally safe and easily manufactured.” Garison looked at Heather with a rueful smile and asked, “What happened to that car?”

When she shrugged, Garison told her, “The guy sold the plans for the car to one of the major oil companies for several million dollars so that they could ‘research it’. That was the day it was guaranteed that car would never see the light of day. Oil companies are in the business to make money and a fuel efficient car would kill them. Remember the Tucker automobile? What do you think would happen if I suddenly showed the world that the oil, gas, and electric companies can all be circumvented by an inexpensively produced unit they could install themselves in the back yard?”

Just when Heather was afraid her new track would be more disastrous than the previous one, she decided to ask anyway, “So what happens to The Box? You’re not just going to bury it, are you?”

He shook his head and said, “Not entirely. I applied for a permit to convert our house over to a generator.” He smiled and added, “I’m just not going to tell them that my little generator has more power than the entire La Plata County Electrical Co-Op.”

Heather laughed and Garison thought to himself how much he had come to love that laugh in the last two and a half years. Hers wasn’t a loud laugh–Heather was rarely loud about anything–but it was a laugh that seemed to fill her whole body. Her mouth, her eyes, and–somehow–her entire self laughed together.

Heather Dawson Fitch was an uncommonly beautiful woman. With long, dark hair and the face of an angel, she could have been a model or an actress or–Garison thought–anything she wanted to be. An All-American volleyball player for Southern Methodist during her pre-law years, she had remained athletically active since and, when she had given birth to their first child eighteen months before, she had quickly regained her figure. Now, unless one saw her with her daughter in hand, one might think she had never given birth. With young Sarah sporting the blondest hair imaginable, many who saw Heather guessed her to be watching someone else’s child. However it is that mothers are supposed to look, Heather didn’t strike most people as looking like one.

Garison, however, was an obvious father. Though he, too, sported dark black hair and a matching mustache, he positively doted on little Sarah. A big man who might have appeared incapable of tenderness at first glance, Garison had to be reminded by Heather that Sarah wasn’t made of china. He also had to be reminded not to spoil her, but that lesson often went over his head. Like his first daughter Helen–dead almost two hundred years when Sarah was born–Sarah had quickly learned that her father was tightly wrapped around her stubby little fingers.

Garison looked at Heather standing there by the fence row, grabbing her hammer and preparing to nail the latest strand of wire into place, and winced slightly. He had no doubt that Heather could do the work, but all morning long she had been working far too hard. Each fence staple was hammered in with a vengeance and the next one was attacked in record time. He had tried to get her to take it easy, but she would only slow down for a few minutes before stepping the pace up again.

“I know you hate the idea of ‘man’s work’ and ‘women’s work’,” Garison began, “But I still don’t think this is the kind of work for you. Call me a sexist pig, but this seems like awfully rough work for a woman.”

“Well, sexist pig,” Heather laughed, “I enjoy it. I never got much chance to work with my hands as a child. I like helping you with your wood-working and stuff like this. This stuff, especially, makes me feel like a cowboy or something.”

“Believe me,” he chuckled in assurance, “No one will ever accuse you of being any kind of a boy.”

Garison started to admonish her about working too hard again, but he knew it would do no good. He knew Heather was working so hard because Sarah was staying two nights with her grandparents in Denver and Heather was trying to take her mind off her worry with hard work. Garison knew it wasn’t working because Heather’s work was getting harder and harder. He just hoped he could find some more work for them to do when the fence was done or he was afraid Heather might have a nervous breakdown before having a physical breakdown. He figured a physical breakdown might be easier to recover from.

They were conducting what was a yearly ritual for most of the residents of the La Plata Canyon–and, indeed, almost all of the rural west. While barbed wire could withstand the elements for quite a few years, it couldn’t withstand the sharp hooves of deer and elk. As they jumped the fences, the animals would often clip the top strand with hooves as sharp as any wire cutters. The result was broken top strands that had to either be repaired or replaced all around the property every year. If not for the fact that his barbed wire helped to keep neighboring livestock out, Garison had thought more than once about just letting the wire go. But, like Heather, the work kind of made him feel like a real, old west cowboy, too.

He was about to say something when they heard a car coming from up the canyon. They both looked up, as vehicle traffic in La Plata Canyon was fairly rare. They knew the vehicles of everyone who lived in the canyon and often waved when they saw someone they recognized. Heather had once groaned that they had become true country hicks–looking up at the sound of passing motorists–but the truth was she loved the friendliness after growing up in Dallas’s most haughty suburb.

They looked at each other with interest when they saw that the car going by was an old one. While Garison wasn’t a car buff exactly, he knew enough to spot that the car was from the late 1940s. He was about to remark as such, showing off his limited knowledge of vintage autos, when Heather said, “1947 Hudson and Terraplane. I haven’t seen one of those in years. Looks like it’s in great shape, too.”

“I’d say so,” Garison nodded in more agreement than he really had. He was still marveling at the fact that Heather knew the car.

Heather caught the look on his face and snapped playfully, “What? Did I wound your chauvinistic pride? Don’t think women can be motorheads?”

“No,” he hastily replied, “But in the two and a half years I’ve known you, you’ve never said anything about cars. I mean, what little work we’ve had to have done, I did it or we took it in. I thought you were just into planes.”

“I am,” she laughed. With a chuckle she added, “My brother Hank’s a car freak and I went to just enough old car shows and a few junk yards with him to pick up a little. He had a car like that at one time.” Heather looked down the road where the car had already passed around a bend and added, “Although his was never in that good of shape. He would have liked to have seen that car. Someone’s really been keeping it up.”

At the sound of another car coming from up canyon, Garison looked up. He remarked with surprise, “He’d probably like this one, too.”

Heather turned her gaze in the same direction as Garison’s and asked, “Is there an old car rally up canyon somewhere?”

“Not that I know of. Who would hold an old car rally up there where the road becomes dirt? Not the best way to protect your custom paint job.”

The car in question was a hearse. It had a big Pontiac symbol on the hood and looked to be from the same era as the previous car. And, like the Hudson, it looked to be in excellent condition. Almost new, in fact.

Just as Garison was about to ask what year it was, Heather told him, “By the grill work, I’d say this one’s from about ‘46. That hood looks a little strange, but maybe it’s because it’s a hearse. I’ve never seen one of those before. Not from that era, anyway.”

As they were looking at the hearse, it pulled to a stop in front of them. They watched with interest as a tall, solidly built, middle-aged man got out. He smiled up at them and ascended the short incline between them and the road.

At the fence, he extended his hand and offered, “Stuart Jameson, at your service.”

Garison pulled off his right-hand work glove and took the man’s hand. He suddenly realized the man had the largest hands Garison had ever encountered. The man’s hand wrapped completely around Garison’s own rather large paw almost as if taking an adolescent’s hand. For a brief moment, Garison thought the man could probably touch Heather’s elbow while shaking her hand. Besides just the hands, though, the man was big–probably six-four or better, Garison mused.

“Garison Fitch,” he returned. “And this is my wife, Heather.”

Stuart Jameson nodded and said, “I hate to impose on you like this, but I’m with Holt & Jameson, the funeral parlor in Durango. Anyway, we just interred a young man on his parents’ property and, well, my man hasn’t shown up here with the digging tools. I wonder if I might trouble you to help me, um–I really hate to even ask this. Could you, um, help me fill in the grave?”

He had a deep voice, much like what one would expect the voice of God to sound like. It was deep and sonorous, yet oddly soothing. Every word he said was in the tone of voice one would use when comforting bereaved loved ones. It occurred briefly to Heather to wonder if he talked like that all the time. She guessed that he did since he was talking that way to ask for help filling in a hole.

Heather and Garison shared a puzzled look, then Garison replied, “I guess so.” They picked up their shovels and followed the man to the hearse.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to all squeeze into the front seat,” he apologized.

“No problem,” Heather quickly answered, shuddering as she even thought of riding in the back of the hearse.

Walking to the car, Stuart Jameson was whistling something Garison couldn’t quite place. After a moment, he realized it was “American Patrol”. Odd, he thought, that the man would whistle a tune from the same era as the car.

As they got in and Stuart started the engine, Heather complemented, “This car is in remarkable shape.”

Jameson cast her a somewhat puzzled look, but replied, “Thank you. I only got it a year ago–so it hasn’t seen much use. Ordered it direct from the factory.”

“Doesn’t look like a kit,” Heather mused, drawing another puzzled look from Jameson.

Garison was only listening with half an ear. What he was paying attention to was the fact that the man’s clothing was fantastically out of date. Jameson was wearing a conservative brown suit, but the lapels were too wide, the tie was too short, the pants were cut all wrong and the material was some sort of heavy woolen weave that looked like it would weight fifty pounds. Below the pants the man wore brown leather shoes that were polished but obviously worn. Even in their worn condition, though, Garison couldn’t imagine that they were comfortable. The thought popped in his mind that they were the type of shoe formerly referred to as brogans, but he wasn’t sure.

He was shaken from his study of the man’s attire by a quick turn to the right. Garison looked up in surprise to find that they were taking a dirt road that followed along just outside his northern fence line. He had walked the selfsame road just two days before when checking his fence and it hadn’t been in nearly as good shape. He figured someone must have grated it for the funeral, but was surprised he hadn’t heard the equipment doing it. The sound of machinery often carried well in the La Plata, partly because it was so incongruous.

They pulled up to a little clearing neither Heather nor Garison recognized and got out. At the edge of the clearing, a small man in another outdated suit stood next to an open grave and a pile of dirt. He was tapping his foot and looking impatient, until he saw Heather. She was just dressed in faded (if tight) blue jeans and an old sweat-shirt, but he gulped and watched her legs like he’d never seen such a sight. Heather noticed the look and edged closer to Garison. She was used to men watching her, but this man was looking at her like she was a space alien . . . or a chorus girl.

“If you could just give me a hand,” Jameson said, taking Heather’s shovel and motioning for Garison to join him. Garison nodded and began tossing dirt in on what certainly looked like a casket. They could hear the hollow thump of the dirt on the wood and the sound gave Heather an uneasy feeling. For his part, Garison was noticing that it was a wooden box, and not the fancy metal ones he was used to.

Heather watched for a bit, then opened, “If you don’t mind me asking, who are you burying and why are you burying him here? Him or her. It’s so far from a cemetery and all.”

Jameson first said, “Harris, spell Mister Fitch for a bit, won’t you?” Harris nodded and took the shovel like someone who had never worked one before. He was little help and Garison was thinking Heather could have done a much better job.

Jameson explained, “It is a young man in the grave, Mrs. Fitch. His name is–was–Guy Wilson and, sadly, he was killed in France during the war.”

“What war?” Heather asked suspiciously.

Harris looked up with surprise and spoke for the first time, “World War Two, of course.” He said it like he was talking to someone who had to be a moron.

Heather looked from Harris to the grave and queried incredulously, “And they’re just now bringing his body home for burial?”

Jameson nodded and replied, with practiced sadness, “Things move slowly after such a devastating conflict.”

Taking the shovel back from the slow-working Harris, Garison said, “But this has to be some sort of a record.”

Jameson shrugged and said, “I just hope he’s the last for me. I have buried far too many from this conflict–or arranged memorial services for those whose remains were never recovered. A sad, sad business.”

Heather mumbled, “I don’t think there’s much chance of any more coming home. Not if they haven’t come home by now.”

“Let us hope so,” Jameson nodded. Heather and Garison shared another puzzled look. After all, did he really expect any more bodies from World War II to be found sixty years late?

“So, why here?” Heather reminded them of the second part of her earlier question.

“Ah, yes,” Jameson nodded. It was a warm day and he stopped to remove his coat and wipe the sweat from his brow. It drew both Garison and Heather’s attention that he still wore his tie. He finally told her, “This land is owned by the Wilson family; as you probably know, since you live nearby.”

“Actually, I didn’t,” Garison told him. “I mean, they call it the Wilson place, but no one’s lived here as far back as I can remember.”

Jameson nodded and continued, “The Wilson’s haven’t lived here in, oh, must be ten years by now. The family had lived here for many many years–since Carlton Wilson struck gold here back in the late 1800s, in fact. Guy and his brother John grew up here–in the old house up the road.”

Heather and Garison shared a look that meant, “What old house?”

Jameson looked puzzled by their question, but went on, “But when the boys graduated from high school and left home, Lydia talked Harold–he was Carlton’s grandson, I believe–she talked him into moving to Denver. They haven’t been back until today, I believe. You may have seen their Hudson going down the road ahead of me. I believe Guy had said he wanted to be buried in La Plata Canyon. Boyhood memories of happiness here, I suppose.” He said this in a voice that conveyed infinite sadness and sympathy.

“Interesting,” was all Garison could say. Heather just nodded, confused and bewildered.

When the grave was filled in, Jameson looked at his watch and said, “I can’t imagine what has happened to Phil. It’s not like him to be late. I hope he hasn’t met with any misfortune. He was supposed to be here by three, and here it is almost four.”

Heather looked at her own watch and said, “It’s not even noon, yet.”

Jameson smiled and offered, “Your watch must have stopped.” Showing her his own watch, he said, “I have fifteen ’til four–and my watch is running.”

“So’s mine,” she returned, shaking her watch as if that would change anything.

Garison looked at his own watch and said, “Huh, mine matches Heather’s. You sure yours is right?”

Harris looked at his watch and showed haughtily, “See, a quarter of four.”

Garison shrugged, then put his shovel over his shoulder and said, “Well, we’ll keep an eye out for him in case he shows up later. Folks always have trouble finding our house even when I give them directions. Maybe he just got lost in the canyon. Took the wrong dirt road or something.”

“Perhaps,” Jameson nodded. Harris made a motion that indicated he thought Phil had had to much to drink for lunch, but Jameson shook his head and said, “No, I don’t think so. He’s been dry ever since he came back from the south Pacific.”

“Why was he there?” Heather asked.

“It’s where the Navy sent him,” Jameson replied, wondering if Heather and Garison might possibly be mental. “In fact, I think he was on Iwo Jima.”

“That was a while back,” Heather mumbled, though something about the whole conversation bothered her. It was as if she and Jameson were having two spearate conversations that sort of met in the middle–but didn’t.

Jameson extended his massive hands and shook those of Heather and Garison. He smiled and said, “I certainly appreciate your help, Garison, Mrs. Fitch. Sometime when you’re in Durango, allow me to buy you dinner.”

“That’s not necessary,” Garison shrugged.

“Yeah, we were planning on spending the day digging and working, anyway,” Heather smiled, though still uncomfortable about the whole interchange. “This just took us away from working the fence.”

“Ah, I’ve taken you away from your work,” Jameson apologized.

“That’s fine,” Heather smiled. “No one ever got mad about missing out on stringing barbed wire.”

Jameson nodded with a deep chuckle and reminded, “Well, the offer is still open if ever you’ll take me up on it. Thank you again. Now, can I give you a ride back?”

“No, thank you,” Garison replied. “We can walk back. I want to look at the fence again, anyway. We may have to get a surveyor out here for a couple sections.”

Jameson nodded as they set off.

When they were out of earshot, Harris remarked, “Where’d they get those clothes?”

Jameson shrugged and said, “I have no idea. Mrs. Fitch certainly fit well into those dungarees, didn’t she?”

“It was shameful,” Harris replied snootily.

“Not so shameful that you refused to let your eyes bug out at her every move, I noticed.”

Harris harrumphed and walked to the hearse. Jameson chuckled and followed along behind. He hated to admit it, but Mrs. Fitch certainly had fit well into those jeans. And there was something about that torn patch on her thigh . . . He checked his watch and wondered if his wife were home, yet.

When they were out of earshot, Heather asked, “What did you think of those clothes?”

“Little outdated, weren’t they?” Garison nodded.

Heather, her voice low, agreed, “Very. I don’t know fashion as well I do cars, but I’d guess those suits came from about the same era as the cars.”

“That’s what I was thinking. And I don’t know if you noticed it, but that guy was whistling an old ‘big band’ tune. Granted, music’s eternal, but–” He stopped walking just as she did and asked suspiciously, “Are you thinking now what I’m thinking?”

“I am if you’re thinking about sneaking back, waiting until they’re gone, and finding out what was buried back there.” He nodded and she looked at her watch, suggesting, “Let’s give them a few minutes then slip back.”

They walked quietly through the woods back to the little clearing. They hadn’t heard the car drive away, but they hoped it had. If not, they figured they might spy for a while and see what the two men did alone.

They crept up to their fence and slipped through onto the old fenceline road.

There was no hearse, no funeral director, no Harris, no grave, and no clearing.

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First Time – The Legend of Garison Fitch – Book 1

What if history didn’t happen that way the first time?

Garison Fitch was a scientist and something of a celebrity in the Soviet Americas in the early 21st century until dropping off the map to pursue his theories in the remote La Plata Canyon.

An experiment with such travel surprised him when he landed him in 1744. There he discovered a primitive world of somewhat suspicious people, but a freedom he had never experienced before–which may have been most frightening of all.

When he tries to rid himself of his time machine by sending it into the future, however, it took him with it. Now, he finds himself back in the twenty-first century where a woman he has never met claims to be his wife and the country he grew up in is gone, replaced by something called “The United States of America”.

Should he live in this new world, or try to travel once more through time and return the world to “normal”? As he becomes convinced he can’t return to the past, he’s not really sure if he can live in this new world he created, either.

Order today on ebook (in many formats) or paperback!

The Legend of Garison Fitch continues in “Saving Time” and concludes in “Lost Time“!

…

Reading Sample

With a flash of light and a complete absence of noise, Garison found himself swept out of the eighteenth century. He had just begun to have the beginnings of a thought that would have turned into wondering where he was going when the trip ended. In all, he had traveled for a length of time that would have registered on his body as less than a nano-second. To the world, however, the trip took longer. Still, it was not as long as Garison would have guessed it to be.

Garison and the interdimensional machine-come time machine reappeared in his laboratory inColoradoapproximately one point three seconds after it had left. With a pop that signified the nuclear core had just melted all the circuits then collapsed in on itself into a ball of radiation with a half-life of a few millennia, Garison found himself dressed for the seventeen-forties and standing in the early twenty-first century.

He was suddenly assaulted by a woman who threw her arms around him before he could get a good look at her and exclaimed, “It worked Garison! It worked! You were gone and now you’re back!”

There were so many thoughts and so much confusion going through his head that all he could do was stand there limply while she hugged him tighter and tighter, kissed him on the cheek, and went on and on about how proud she was of him and how she just had to congratulate him and how she wanted to hear all about it.

When she had worked her way across his cheek and was on the verge of kissing his mouth, he finally got his wits about him enough to push her away and stand back a pace himself. He backed into a bench and turned to look, momentarily surprised to find a work bench where there wasn’t supposed to be one. He also spotted the tarpaulin under his feet, and kicked it away in anger.

The woman looked at him strangely and asked, “Garison? Is something wrong?”

He looked around the room without answering. It was his lab all right, but it was different. The windows were in the wrong places, but only by a foot or so. The workbenches had been moved and the place was, well, decorated differently. His lab had been strictly utilitarian while this one had curtains on the windows and some sort of wall-paper border half-way up the walls.

But, he told himself, the cameras are in the right place. There were four video cameras, one mounted in each corner of the room, but their lights were showing red instead of green. While the workbenches were in different spots, the tools on them were laid out just as he would have laid them out and there was the right number of workbenches.

Then he looked at the woman. She was beautiful. She stood almost as tall as Garison, probably five-eleven or six foot he estimated. She had shoulder-length black hair, done in loose curls such as the women had worn in the twenty-first century he remembered. She had green eyes like Sarah’s, but was dark complected like someone who spent time out in the sun. Her figure was astounding, and quite shocking in a sweater and form-fitting pants made of, it looked like, the sort of material he had once seen warm-ups made of. On her feet, she wore white leather tennis shoes much like the shoes he had once worn himself.

He looked up at her and noticed that his confused scan of the room somehow troubled her. He looked her over from head to foot once more and asked, “Who are you?”

The look of confusion turned to fright as she stepped forward and started to put a hand to his head, “Are you OK, Garison? Did you hit your head?”

He brushed her hand away angrily and stepped to the side. “No, I didn’t hit my head. I’m fine. Who are you?” In fact, he thought to himself, the concussion symptoms of moments before and the dizziness were completely gone.

She looked as if she still wanted to touch him, but kept her distance. Then, it was as if she were seeing him in a whole new light as she said, “Wait a minute, you’ve changed. How did your hair get so long in two seconds? How did you grow a mustache that quick? And those clothes? Except for that jacket, you look like you’re…from the revolutionary war or something. And you look older.” She looked extremely concerned as she implored, “Garison, what happened?”

He demanded more forcefully, pronouncing each word carefully and distinctly, as if she might not have heard him before, “Who are you?”

“Heather,” she replied, as if it were something he should know. She took a step closer, but he took a step further away, backing down the workbench, keeping one hand on the cabinet as if it would steady him.

“Heather? Heather who? I don’t know a Heather. What kind of name is that, anyway? A plant name?”

“You don’t remember me?” she asked, seeming totally at a loss—and looking genuinely worried.

“Why should I?”

“Heather Fitch,” she told him. “Heather Dawson Fitch.”

“Fitch? You’re not related to me. Just what are you trying to pretend here?”

She reached out to touch him again and again he slapped her hand away, this time with more force. As she brought the hand back, seemingly shocked that the slap had stung, she said, “I’m not just related to you, Garison. I’m your wife.”

“My wife?” he replied with a forced laugh. He stood there and stared at her, wondering what this woman’s game could be. A spy? he wondered. The KGB had been known to use some pretty elaborate schemes to learn information, but he had never heard of one like this. Did they think just sticking a stranger in his lab who claimed to be his wife would make him tell some secret? There had to be more to it.

“All right,” he smiled, “What’s going on? Who put you up to this?”

She reached out again and asked, “What happened to you, Garison?”

He stood there rigidly as her fingers reached out and touched the side of his face very lightly. Did she really think that the touch of a woman would make him break down? He almost smiled as he thought of the futility of her actions. Still, he wondered what the point to her actions were. She seemed to have a point, but he couldn’t imagine what it might be.

She came a little closer and looked intently at him. After a moment, she touched the corner of his right eye and asked with something that sounded like genuine puzzlement, “What are these?”

In spite of himself, he mumbled, “Huh?”

“These lines around your eyes. You never had these before.” She pivoted slightly to look at both sides of his head and said, “And you’ve got gray hair that wasn’t there before you left. How do you turn gray in a couple seconds?”

“I’ve been turning gray for—who are you? Tell me the truth!”

“I’m Heather Fitch. I’m your wife.”

Garison had to give the girl credit for acting. She certainly seemed convinced of her part even if her part were ridiculous. In fact, it actually seemed like she believed what she was saying. Could it have been possible that she had been brain-washed or something into believing what she said? If so, he wondered, what was the point? She had to just be a very good actress, he thought. The whole charade was too stupid to accomplish anything.

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TimeKeeperS-Restoration

Marianne Whitcomb is happily married to a doctor. She has two sons. The traumas of her past travels through time are mostly behind her.

But then, she makes eye contact with a stranger in the grocery store and he quickly looks away. Where does she know him from? Does she know him? Is it from this time, or another?

The mystery man slips from her mind when she is contacted by Kellie, the biological sister of the other Marianne–the one with almost-identical DNA who now lives several thousand years in the future. Kellie needs a kidney. Marianne remembers her own sister Kellie and finds herself so desperate to have her back that she’ll even take a replica.

And in another millennia, the last dying remnants of the Winauwan empire are planning a stroke that will wipe out not just Edward and Marianne, but all of civilization. They intend to rise from the ashes and the blood and rule. Only one young mother stands in their way.

This is the 3rd book in the series and it’s now available now for Kindle and paperback!

Book 3 in the TimeKeeperS series!!

Book 1: TimeKeeperS, Book 2: TimeKeeperS – Rectification, Book 3: TimeKeeperS – Restoration

…

Sample reading

Marianne fed a twenty-dollar bill into the register and then waited for her change. She smiled to herself, thinking the machine was probably confused about being fed actual cash.

As she waited, she looked up, absently scanning the people around her. It was a habit long-engrained in her from her work as an investigator—and from even before that, in her “other life”—and rarely brought any results. Oh, she usually spotted friends quicker than they spotted her, but other than that one time a couple years before when she had spotted her client’s wayward husband picking up a pizza, her scans were benign.

This day, though, she caught a man’s eyes at—she believed—the exact moment he had spotted her. She didn’t recognize him at first, but the way he furtively looked away got her attention. It wasn’t just the look of a married man who has been caught ogling a woman. Marianne was no longer an ingénue, and her body showed the effects of two children, but she was still thought attractive—especially by men of that age. Men in their fifties or sixties who told themselves they passed for forty-five or thought a woman in her late thirties would be attracted to a man of their … experience? Maturity?

This man, though, upon seeing Marianne had quickly looked away, and his skin tone had changed, growing darker. As Marianne took her change without even looking at the register, she cast another glance at the man. Mid-sixties, she guessed, with a fringe of dark hair and a few long strands combed over a suntanned pate. A little overweight but not obese. He was wearing casual clothes and his tan covered his arms but there was a hint of a white line right below his shirt—which was just a simple T advertising a local body shop. She told herself immediately that he did not work at the body shop but probably did work outside. Gardner? No, his head would have been either covered with skin cancer or he would be wearing a cap. They made the highway crew wear long-sleeve shirts anymore, so not that job. Maybe, she reasoned, he worked inside but spent his off hours on the golf course. She thought that a more reasonable explanation than boating or fishing, for those guys tended to burn, not tan.

She casually walked out of the store, noticing from the corner of her eye that he made sure not to look directly at her. It was then she realized there was a heavy reflection in one of the windows to the left of the door and he was looking at her that way. When he realized she had noticed him, he quickly turned away. As she watched him walk, she noticed he never moved his left arm, as if it were just limp. She didn’t want to stare too hard, though, so it could have just been a false impression.

“He’s someone who knows a little something about stealth,” Marianne commented to herself lowly. Ex-military? she wondered. A spy? If so, she thought it had been a long time for him as a pro wouldn’t have been spotted at all with that reflection.

The next question in her mind was to wonder if he were always furtive and just the act of making eye contact with anyone had spooked him, or had he been spooked by Marianne? If so, why? A past case? Marianne had a good memory for faces—and usually names—and the man didn’t mean anything to her right away. As she got in her car, she watched him through the mirror and saw him go out to a plain, blue car, probably ten years old, and drive away. She thought about following him, but knew she had no good reason to. She also knew that one of the hardest things for most people to disguise was their walk and she was certain she had never seen this man’s walk before.

So what had spooked him? She knew that the simplest explanation was that, for just a split second, she had reminded him of someone else. Marianne was of average height and build for her age, and while she wore her hair longer than most women of her years, she had been mistaken for other people before. It was part of why she had been such a good investigator: she almost never stood out from the crowd. Knowing that was the most likely explanation didn’t stop her from thinking, though, because the second-most-likely scenario was that she had crossed his path at some point in the past as an investigator. Perhaps he had been one of the clandestine lovers of someone Marianne had been investigating for a divorce case. Maybe he had been on the periphery of a bank investigation and never caught, but should have been.

Something, after all, had spooked him, for it occurred to Marianne as she drove away that his walk had been too casual, the walk of someone who doesn’t want to look nervous while also checking their surroundings with a keen eye. Yet, she didn’t recognize that walk.

She puzzled about the matter all the way home, then got out of the car anxious to see her husband and children. She would have been happy to see them, anyway, but she knew herself and her propensity to dwell on minutia. It was what made her a good investigator, but it was also something of a curse at times. Thus she was hoping that a romp in the yard with the kids would take her mind off of what was probably just an odd moment. Even if the man recognized Marianne from something in the past, it would probably never come up again.

She was momentarily chagrined, then, to find the house empty. She was just about to grumble when she saw the note on the counter. It was from her husband and said the family was at the neighborhood park. Marianne had intended to start supper as soon as she got home, but decided she would rather go be with her family. Not just because it would be fun, but because it would be distracting (she hoped).

Putting the recently-purchased cheese and sour cream in the fridge, she locked the door and set off down the street.

The park was just a couple blocks away and she quickly found her family there. Her two boys waved but took little more notice than that for they were quite busy on the jungle gym, fighting bad guys or slaying dragons or whatever it was they were doing. Her husband, Caleb, gladly came over and gave her a hug and a kiss. “Hope you didn’t mind,” he said as they held hands. “I just didn’t want to be cooped up in the backyard.”

“Don’t mind at all. You realize this means I’m probably not going to fix enchiladas for supper so, if you want some, we’re going to have to go eat at Jose’s,” she replied, quickly adding, “Hint, hint.”

“Sounds good to me,” he told her. As they sat down on a nearby bench, Caleb told her, “I had the weirdest dream last night.”

“You?” she laughed, elbowing him in the ribs. “You never have a dream!”

“That’s part of what makes it so weird. The thing is, I usually just don’t remember dreams. I wake up knowing I just had one, but two seconds after waking I couldn’t tell you what it was about. Anyway, I remember this one—or part of it. I just remember that I was at the hospital and I was walking past the lobby and glanced in at the waiting patients—always curious if any of them are mine, you know? Anyway, out of the corner of my eye I see this … shadow. Like someone peeking at me from around a corner, but I looked and couldn’t see anyone. Just the normal hospital people, anyway.

“It kept happening, though. I’m sure I woke up more than once and then I’d go back to sleep and it would happen again.”

“Did you ever see who it was?” Before he could answer, she posited, “Maybe Batman? Sounds like something he’d do.”

Caleb smiled in response, then said, “I don’t think so. Right before I woke up this morning, I finally got a glimpse of the person. And here’s the really weird part—well, all of it’s weird. Anyway, it wasn’t like he was stalking me or anything. When I finally saw him, it was like we had just been going down opposite hallways but would never cross open spaces at the right time. But then we did, and I got a good look at him.”

“Anyone you know?”

He shook his head as he said, “I don’t think so. I mean, he wasn’t real distinctive. I mean that in two ways. It was a dream, and even when I do dream I rarely see things clearly. It’s like everything’s out of focus. But also, he wasn’t a distinctive person. Just an average-looking person.”

“Okay, now you’re in my wheelhouse,” she laughed. Pretending to hold a notebook and pencil, she queried, “How tall was he? What color hair? Did he walk with a limp?”

Caleb laughed along with her, but then actually searched his memory and said, “He didn’t have hair, I remember that. I mean, he had some along the sides but he was balding. Average build, maybe a little on the heavy side. I think he was older than us. Probably late fifties, maybe early sixties. Dark complex—no, I remember thinking he was just tan, like someone out in the sun a lot.”

“Um,” she asked, trying to keep the surprise out of her voice, “How do you know that?”

“It’s weird that I would notice this, especially in a dream, but I remember seeing that he had a farmer’s tan. He was wearing short sleeves, but there was a white band on his upper arm like he’d been outside a lot but usually wore his sleeves just a little—Honey, are you all right?”

She shook her head as if she’d just come up out of water and said, “What? Yeah. Just fine. This is … this is really strange.”

“What?” he asked, knowing her well enough to know that she meant more than just the fact that he had actually remembered a dream.

“I think I saw that guy today.”

“What guy?”

“The guy from your dream.”

“Oh, come on,” he retorted with a laugh.

“No, I mean it,” she said, then described the encounter at the grocery store.

Caleb finally told her, “Sure, they sound similar, but we both described a man that could be a quarter of the men in this town. Neither one of us got a good look at any distinguishing features, no tattoos or anything.”

“I know,” Marianne said with a nod. She watched their boys play for a bit, then said, “Something about that encounter—and it wasn’t even really an encounter, just a glance. Something about it is just sticking in my mind. More than it should by any logical reasoning.”

Caleb put his arm around his wife’s shoulder and said, “He probably did know you from a case. You’re probably right that he was on the periphery in some way and he’s lived in fear ever since of being roped in. And I know your mind, Honey: you don’t remember him now but sometime tonight, you’re probably going to wake up and remember that you did see him in relation to some client you worked for ten years ago.”

“Yeah, I know,” she agreed with a shrug.

“You’re leaving out another possibility.”

“What?”

He smiled as he squeezed slightly with the arm that was around her, “You always talk like you’re this Plain Jane, but I happen to still be convinced that you’re the prettiest woman in town. It’s very possible you just happened to look up and catch a married man who thought he’d been caught admiring your legs.”

“I doubt that,” she replied with a shrug, though she took his hand.

Caleb decided not to press the point, partly from exasperation at having pressed it so many times before. He truly did think his wife was beautiful, and thought she was more beautiful after almost ten years of marriage than she had been when he first met her. For some reason, though, she had always been convinced that she was no better than average and could blend into anonymity at any time. It frustrated him so that he sometimes had to remind himself not to speak harshly to her about it. He was a doctor, and though he had never studied psychology, he was convinced there was an underlying cause that he had never been able to diagnose. Something from her childhood, perhaps, but something.

As he sat there looking at her profile as she watched their boys, he was reminded all over again just how pretty he found her to be. The long hair, the smile some might have said was a little wide but he had never thought so, the green eyes. And her figure … he smiled to himself because if he started thinking too much about her figure he was going to have to figure out some way to keep the boys occupied while he swept her off to the bedroom.

“Now what are you smiling about?” she asked suspiciously, though with a twinkle in her eye.

Trying to be as innocent as he could, he shrugged and replied, “Oh, just looking at you.”

“I guess that’s better than having you look at me and laugh,” she commented sardonically, though the twinkle was still there.