I OPEN MY EYES and see snowflakes, lit by the streetlight, falling around my feet; see my long skirt.
I’ve made it back to 1954.
Ethan!
Maybe there’s another trip left in the link. I jam my bloody gloved hand in my pocket, pull the link out, and press the button over and over—but nothing happens. The battery’s completely dead. Even if, come sunrise, I hook it up to the solar recharger in the purse, I’ll still be hours from returning to 2035.
Meanwhile, the minutes just keep marching ahead in our two linked times.
I can’t save Ethan.
Was Kyung able to, eighty-one years in the future? Could she get the chest tube in? Was that enough? Did the bleeding stop?… The questions cycle through my mind, faster and faster, till they merge into one giant ball of dread.
“Bix?”
I look up, see Worthy and Dorothy right where I left them when I jumped. The two are staring at me—or rather, at my suddenly blood-soaked sweater and surgical gloves.
Dorothy, ever adaptable, takes the strange sight in stride and is already creeping toward my purse on the ground nearby. “Get away!” I roar as I snatch up the bag, and the frightened woman takes off down the street.
Worthy’s oblivious to his suspect getting away, eyes only on me as he runs up. “We need to get you to a hospital. Now—”
“The blood’s not mine,” I say, pulling off the gloves.
“It’s not? Oh thank God,” he says, and hugs me tight. “Wh … what happened there?”
So, so much. “I need to go back,” I say.
“To 2035?” he asks.
“No. To Hanover.”
As we drove, I told Worthy everything I learned in the future. Of the Tabula Rasa and what I could uncover about my checkered history with it. Of Stokes being Paul. Of the Guest and its origins. Of Ethan and his unknown status. Finally I told Worthy what he most wanted to know—why the fuck I would ever reenter Hanover.
Mary and the location of her virus sample that could save millions from death.
And now we’re both silent, lost in our own thoughts as we head back over the frozen Key Bridge.
We stop just on the other side of it, in Rosslyn, where he gets us a room at the Rosslyn Motor Inn, a dive motel just down the street from a billiard hall and brothel. Worthy puts enough money down for a week of no questions asked.
While he makes calls from the pay phone up the street, I strip off my bloody clothes and step into the steamy shower.
I emerge from the bathroom in a big shirt borrowed from Worthy’s dry cleaning, just as he walks in with two brown paper bags.
He looks at me and smiles. “You definitely look better in that than I do.”
“Thanks. How did it go with your lineman friend?”
“It’s done,” he says, putting the bags down on the table. “Pete’ll make sure telephone service to Birchwood Lane is down as of seven a.m. tomorrow. With the full force of the storm hitting later tomorrow, there’s no possible way it gets restored till the next day. Paul, I mean Stokes, won’t be getting any calls from Hanover.”
“Impressive.”
“Well, he owed me one,” Worthy says.
“You’re far better at extortion than I would have predicted.”
“You and me both,” Worthy says, producing a couple of cold beers from one of the bags. He opens them with the bottle opener on his key chain, passes me one, and we both take a long pull. I try to focus on how amazing the cold beer tastes and not on what it reminds me of: that day at the quarry with Stokes, Kameron, and Theo. And all my still-unanswered questions. “Hungry?” Worthy asks, pulling a sandwich wrapped in wax paper from the other brown bag.
“Starving,” I say, and take it over to the bed.
“From the house of ill repute up the street,” Worthy says, sitting down with his own sandwich next to me. “Their pastrami on rye is apparently top-notch.”
Between the time travel and losing both Worthy’s dinner and Kyung’s protein bar in 2035, my need to nosh is off the charts. I utter a quick thank-you before diving into my bordello sandwich.
“Oh, almost forgot, I bought these off the ladies for you.” Worthy pulls a worn navy coat from the second bag, followed by a green dress. The dress is exactly what you’d expect of one scored from 1950s hookers—in a word, it’s suggestive. “They called it a sweater dress,” he says. “Not sure if it’s the right size.”
Not a problem. This dress was built to be flexible, designed to accentuate any and all curves. But it’s got long sleeves that’ll cover my stitched-up wrist and no bloodstains, so it’ll do.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Maybe we’re rushing this. Maybe we should wait—”
“There’s no time,” I say. “According to her death certificate, Mary Pell slips in the shower and dies tomorrow night. So, when Hanover’s reception desk opens at seven a.m., I need to be there—as Dorothy Frasier.”
“And what if you’re not fully past the regression? The repatterning?” he asks. “What if once you’re back in there, the doctors and staff are able to control you, convince you—”
“I’m over it completely. Spell broken. Go ahead, ask me to fetch your slippers. I’ll refuse,” I say, shoving the recent memory of freezing at Kameron’s command back into the tansu drawer it’s trying to escape from.
“I’m serious, Bix. Those ECT shocks wiped my entire visit from your memory. And it didn’t come back for a very long time. What if Dr. Sherman insists on restarting the protocol? One treatment and everything you know about the future, Dr. Pell, her viral sample—everything you know about us—could be erased.”
“Sherman won’t treat me without speaking to my husband first, and that’s not going to happen tomorrow, thanks to your phone company friend.”
There’s a good chance I’m right about that.
Only we’re talking about Stokes here, so there’s at least a decent chance I’m wrong. If that prick’s figured out I know I’m Bix … But no point in concerning Worthy with worst-case scenarios.
I know—pretty hypocritical in light of my recent demands for total honesty from loved ones.
You’re doing what needs to be done. Stop apologizing.
“I could go there myself,” Worthy starts, “convince the superintendent to—”
“No! You can’t just roll in guns blazing. The only way I get anywhere near Mary Pell in time is as Dorothy Frasier. They can’t know I’m not her till after I’ve gotten Mary to tell me who she’s stashed that sample of rat virus with.”
“Let’s just say you do that, reach Dr. Pell in the Unit, somehow convince her you’re from 2035, then get her to give you the information those scientists in the future are after. You’ll still be alone in Hanover, under lock and key and overseen by people who think you’re insane—some of whom are dangerous. You’ll have no rights. No gadgets in your pocket to magically transport you to some other time. No weapon to defend yourself.”
He forgot no future tech with me to convince Mary Pell I’m not some doomsday-spouting nutcase. Not great.
I can do nothing about my proof.
But I can do something about the weapon. I pick up Worthy’s key chain lying on the table. On it, next to the bottle opener, is a tiny yellow pocketknife. Inscribed on it are the words: STONE CONTAINER CORP. CORRUGATED SETTING DISPLAYS. It’s a box cutter, no more than two inches long and an eighth of an inch thick. But sharp. It’ll do.
Do what?
Don’t want to think about that right now.
“This could work,” I say.
Worthy’s dubious. “You think you’ll be able to get people to do what you say by threatening one of them with a box cutter?” he asks.
“Unfortunately I do,” I say as I wrestle the thing off his key chain. “In September 2001, men hijacked airplanes—”
“Airplanes, plural?” he asks.
I nod. “Four of them, using box cutters. Managed to fly three of them into buildings. Very big buildings, full of people. Thousands died.”
Worthy stares at me in disbelief.
I carefully lift the pink inner sole of one of my loafers, slip the pocketknife in, and re-cover it. But the thing won’t lay back down flat. “Crap.”
“Give it here,” Worthy says as he pops a couple sticks of bubble gum into his mouth. After chewing them, he carefully places the sticky wad under the inner sole and smooths it back down. Now it doesn’t move.
I put the shoe on and try it out. “Wouldn’t want to run a marathon in it, but it’ll work.”
“I still don’t like this plan,” Worthy says, “leaving you to fend for yourself in there.”
I sit back down next to him. “Worthy, I need that time alone in Hanover, to get what I came for. No notifying authorities. No cavalry.”
“You’ve got twenty-four hours, then I’m riding in like the Lone Ranger and getting you out.”
“Deal,” I say.
It’ll all be over, one way or another, by then.
Worthy’s leg is touching mine, and he’s looking at me with those blue eyes … And even though I know, I know, this is precisely not the time for this, I am having some feelings. Large and unruly ones, like a wild animal has somehow gotten inside me and is knocking around, dislodging things near my heart … which is beating so, so fast now—
Go ahead. It’ll help get rid of the jitters.
So you’re ready for tomorrow.
The voice is all in favor of me bedding Worthy. A little missionary for the mission.
He’s right there, inches away. I could so easily lean over and plant my lips on him. In seconds, between kisses, he and I could be fumbling with buttons, zippers, and belts, sweeping cheap motel bedspreads to the floor, taking in the glorious sight of each other naked—
But there’s a problem.
With Paul—and Stokes, and others before him, I’m guessing—jumping into bed was easy. We were using each other to blow off steam, have a little fun.
Forget one of you was a virtual prisoner of her house …
True. But even given the truly sick situation at its heart, sex with Paul felt comfortably transactional. There was a quid pro quo tidiness to it.
This is different. This is messy.
Already it feels like gossamer threads are weaving through me, ligatures beginning to bind me to something I can’t even fully see. So many reasons not to sleep with Worthy. I do not need another man in my life who could possibly screw up this mission. Blind me. Weaken me.
But the biggest reason is this: I never again want to feel what I felt that day the marines came and ripped me from my mother. Or hours ago, when I held my maybe-dying brother in my arms. I never want anyone to matter so much to me that I could suffer that kind of devastation again.
No. This can’t happen.
So I get up, go and sit at the table with my beer.