Double-Back (Jake Waters Book 3) (12 page)

"We've got to sort this out," Paul said in a voice that made it clear he was not about to be dissuaded.

Paul, Jeff and Natalie had gathered in her apartment, the two men having just arrived together, only a short time earlier.  Natalie noted the fierce light in Paul's eyes, and realized that he'd had a rough time while he'd been away, and now wanted some serious answers.

Several inches taller than Natalie, Paul had the darkest brown hair she'd ever seen.  It wasn't black, but it almost could be considered such.  He wore it stylishly trimmed, as though he were an executive or an up and coming assistant to one of the many politicians that populated this city.  He was broad in the shoulders, almost so much so that his carefully projected image of the young professional was brought into question.  His body was toned and strong.  She'd never known anyone with fingers so powerful as Paul.  Most noticeable, especially now, were the pale blue eyes that bored into her own.

Her brother Jeff looked more the person he really was.  His clothes suggested he was a rough and tumble person, and one not to be messed with.  Natalie could spot the outline of the handgun her brother always carried, despite the careful efforts he made to keep it hidden.  His light brown hair was longer, and less well groomed.  Of late he'd gone back to sporting a short beard.  It made him look much different, and more importantly, hid the white scar tissue that ran along his jaw line on the left side, a souvenir of a knife he'd carelessly overlooked when shaking down members of an opposing faction within the Mob some years earlier.

"What do you mean?" Natalie asked, but she knew where Paul was headed.

"Jeff told me about the little problem you had a while back," Paul said, his eyes steady on her.  "You never mentioned that little incident to me.  How you called on Jeff to help you dispose of the body of someone else who could reveal things you'd rather not have come to light.  Now you have this other problem, more significant since it involves a possible investigation by the FBI.  All this time I believed you were some kind of a genius, supposedly working on a medical cure that would benefit millions.  Hell, my own brother is a diabetic, and could hopefully be helped by what you are doing.  Now it seems, you might be more like me after all.  I want to know how this all got started."

So Natalie told them. She explained how she had found herself in a boring job that offered her little chance to challenge herself, when the professor had offered her an opportunity to be a part of his discovery.  Then the near fatal heart attack, and how she'd used the situation, and her ability to make off with the research and claim it for her own.  How she'd managed to situate herself in the firm, become the lead researcher and the supposed discoverer of the serum, and then the surprise visit by the former student of Professor Morris who had made a point of casting suspicions on her.  Suspicions that would have destroyed all she had worked for.  So once again, she'd used her ability to Backslide to remove the problem before it could become an issue.  Then the warning from Chuck regarding the FBI agent, which she clearly had handled poorly.

"So, two people are dead because of your actions, if I'm to believe your version of things?" Paul asked.  "And in both cases you used this unexplainable ability of yours to accomplish all of this in a manner that made everyone unaware of what you were doing?"

Natalie nodded.

"Why didn't you simply do something like that this time?  Couldn't you have jumped back a couple of days before the phone call, and simply bumped off this CFO of yours?"

"In hindsight, that's the way I should have handled it," Natalie admitted.  "I was caught off guard by the situation, and didn't want an unexplained murder or disappearance at the company, for fear the resulting attention it would bring to the company might somehow result in a far too careful look at my own background.  I'm not certain what kind of things might be uncovered if one elected to look carefully, and it is well known Anne and I didn't get along very well.  I also wasn't really sure how to dispose of a body without some help."

"But you wanted us to knock her off after this Carlson was gone," Jeff pointed out from where he lounged on the large sofa.

"Over time, I came to realize that killing Carlson would not be enough.  Anne might see that as somehow related, and would be unlikely to keep her suspicions to herself.  She'd almost certainly find a way to spread her beliefs around, and might even elect to contact the FBI more directly, perhaps suggesting Carlson's death was related to her concern."

"So, given this magical power of yours, it shouldn't be too late," Paul said.  "Why don't you simply jump back in time, and have us take care of this before it becomes so complicated?"

"The time has passed," Natalie said unhappily.  "I can't shift my memories back that far."

"I don't understand," Paul said.  "You can shift back in time, but only a little ways?"

Clearly he hadn't understood much of what she'd told him the other day.

"It's not really time travel, although it kind of seems like that," Natalie protested automatically.  "It's only my knowledge of the days I jump over that gets sent back to myself at an earlier time.  I can choose to act on what I know is coming, and thereby effectively change what happens.  If I knew someone was going to shoot Jeff, for example, I could warn him, and make sure he wasn't anywhere around, and thereby save his life.  And to answer your question, I can only reach back a short distance.  I've never been able to reach more than a week, and that has such horrible side effects that I never attempt it anymore.  I don't know if it is an indication that the process is dangerous or not, but the longest jumps I usually attempt are about four days.  I prefer to restrict things to a day or two, but sometimes that isn't possible.  Even a couple of days leaves me wool-headed."

"Can you make a number of these jumps close together?" Paul asked.

"Yes.  One day I had to make three jumps the same day.  They were all short, a matter of less than an hour each, but by the time I was done, my head was reeling and I could barely think.  I'm certain I couldn't have made another jump that day if my life had depended on it.  It took two days and a lot of aspirin for my head to settle down."

"So you have some very specific limitations with this ability," Paul mused.  "Are there any other restrictions that you are aware of?  Is there a distance problem?"

"I don't understand?"

"If you fly to Los Angeles, and then wanted to, what do you call it, Blackslide to a couple of days earlier while you were still in Washington, could you do it?"

"I honestly don't know.  I've never tried anything like that.  I don't travel very much, and when I have, my mind hasn't been on Backsliding.  I really don't like to use the ability.  It frightens me somehow.  It's not natural, and I fear there is a price to pay that I still don't understand."

"How come you can't bring anything with you?" Jeff asked.

"I don't know, but it is a bit of a frustration.  I have a decent memory for facts that relate to things I understand, but just a list of simple facts can be a problem.  Once I misremembered a phone number when I looped back."

"Let's say all of this is real," Paul said.  "You showed us a couple of things the other day that were pretty convincing, and I have something I want you to try later to convince me further.  I believe you know things that you haven't told us about our recent problems.  What exactly happened with the kidnapping you had us abort, and then the planned sniping?"

"We were caught," Natalie admitted.  "Both times they were waiting for us?"

"What?" Jeff said.  "What do you mean we were caught?  We never followed through with the plans!"

"Actually, we did," Natalie explained.  "Both plans were executed, and both times Carlson and her FBI friends were waiting.  Both times you were arrested.  Well, actually the second time, when we decided to simply shoot her, Jeff wasn't there, so he wasn't caught."

"Why don't we remember this if it happened?" Jeff objected.

Paul was frowning and nodding his head as well.

Natalie sighed.  She'd explained it, but they didn't really understand.

"Look," she said, grabbing a yellow pad and drawing a line on it, with a large cross to mark a point.  "Pretending this is a time line of events.  The dot is where the kidnapping took place, okay.  Here to the left, you know we are planning it, and after the dot, you know we have actually made the attempt.  Now here, at a point after the attempt, you and Jeff were captured.  You know that the plan failed.  I didn't get a call from you as planned and you were late showing up, so I knew something was wrong.  At this point we all knew we had failed, but each of us knew things a bit differently, depending on where we were."

She looked at them to see they understood.

"Okay, so I did a BackSlide to here, a couple of days earlier when we were still planning.  At this point, what were your memories?  You knew we were planning, but for you, none of this had happened yet.  For me, I had those memories, but I'd just been given the memories of the upcoming three days.  I knew what would happen.  It was as if I'd lived it."

"You never told us that!" Jeff objected.

"I didn't want to reveal my ability, and doubted I could convince you if I had.  But I knew that going ahead was going to be a disaster, so I made up a story and made us change our plan."

"That's when you decided we should simply kill her," Paul said.

"And you are saying that didn't work either?" Paul asked.

"They were waiting for you once again," Natalie said.  "That's when I jumped back to yesterday, and told you to call it all off."

"How could they know?" Jeff asked.

"I don't know, but there has to be some kind of a leak with some of the people we have been using to set these attempts up," Natalie said.

"It's very strange," Paul said.  "They know these attempts are being planned, but they don't know who we are.  If they did, they'd be all over us right now.  I'm still having trouble trying to picture how this works, but something doesn't make sense."

Natalie objected.

"Whoever is betraying us, we are back before we made the attempt, so they haven't been informed what is supposed to happen.  Whoever is the leak, hasn't had a chance to learn of our plans or to inform anyone, so they aren't looking for us.  Don't you see?"

Paul shook his head as if to clear away a fog.

"Not entirely," he admitted.  "You are saying there is no chance of us being under suspicion, because we haven't put anything into motion as yet?

Natalie smiled.

"Exactly."

"So what do we do now?" Jeff asked.  "It seems to me you still have your problem, but we can't act because we aren't certain who is ratting us out."

"We need to understand more," Natalie agreed.  "There's something strange about this whole matter.  I was hoping we could spend a few days checking out this Carlson, who she works with, and who she trusts.  We might also try to monitor Anne, my CFO, and make sure there is no contact between the two of them.  That might also tell us something.  Once we know who all the people are, we might have to grab someone else, and ask some pointed questions."

"Anything we decide to do, we're on our own," Paul said.

"Your uncle has forbid you to use Organization resources?" Natalie asked.  "You didn't tell him about my ability, did you?"

"Are you kidding?" Paul asked.  "He'd think I'd lost my mind.  I need him to consider me a smart, savvy individual, who could conceivably be a possible heir to the organization.  Telling him something crazy sounding like you having the ability to time travel, isn't in my best interest.  He did indicate that I shouldn't use any of the Organization's people without his permission.  He actually liked the idea of someone whacking Carlson.  She's been a problem for us in the past.  But he wants to know what is happening and have the final say.  But I am thinking we need to limit awareness of what we are doing.  We have to be certain there is no possibility of a leak.  We haven't time to try to figure out where the problem might have been."

"How are we going to investigate Carlson without help?" Natalie asked.

"I have some people who I can use.  They don't have to know why, and they owe me.  They are also different people than before, so there is no chance of the same thing happening."

"How long will this take?" Natalie asked.  "I don't know when Carlson might contact Anne, and then things will become even more complicated.  The issue might become an official case."

"No more than a day or two," Paul assured her.  "But first, I want you to try a little experiment I thought of.  If you can do this, I'll be more convinced of what you claim you are doing."

Saturday, May 7

"The computer is flagging far too many 'possibles'," Jake complained a couple of days later. 

Even though it was a weekend they were at work.  They were seated at a table in Susan's private meeting room, just off her office.  Shaun had set up an additional computer where Jake could examine anything the computer spit out.  They were logged in so that no one would sense them on the network.

"That's the problem with a sketch versus a photo," Jim explained.  "Shaun said we might have trouble because of that.  He had to widen the tolerances in order to account for the fact the input isn't a true representation of the person we are seeking."

"I think he needs to tighten things up," Jake suggested.  "I've gone through over three hundred individuals the computer kicked out, and none of them are even close."

Jim Laney shrugged understandingly.

"I can't see any other option.  You have to do the sorting, since you are the only one of us that has actually seen pictures of these people.  Susan and I will look at any you flag, but looking at the rest would only take us away from the other tasks."

Susan and Jim had been spending their time sorting through past and present cases, separating them in the most likely candidates for some kind of retribution.  In some, the individual prosecuted was no longer living, but that didn't guarantee that a surviving family member might not have elected to take action.  Only those where the incarcerated individual had died within the past year were considered worth reviewing in depth.

Cases where someone had been released from jail in the past year were also flagged as higher level possibilities, whereas those where the guilty parties where still in jail and had been for some time were considered lower priority.  All cases less than a year old were  also placed in the most likely category.  Even with the sorting, they were building up a significant pile of cases to try to sort through.

"I'm not sure how we tackle these," Jim admitted, as he brought an additional armful of folders and placed them on the table opposite where Jake sat.

"I sense there is a kind of urgency in these people's actions," Jake replied.  "It's got to be more than simply a grudge driven action.  If that were the case, then when the kidnapping failed, I would have expected those behind the attempt to stand down, consider what had happened, and take their time planning how to proceed.  Instead, almost immediately, they implement an alternate plan.  That suggests they feel the need to eliminate Susan before something can happen."

"If that is the case, then we should expect the situation to still be a problem, and for them to make some other move," Jim said.  "We should also look at these potential cases with a deadline in mind."

"It's too bad we can't mobilize a number of agents and have some of these people monitored for any sign of unusual activity," Jake noted. 

Susan had just stepped into the conference room and overheard the last of their discussion.

"If we find something we consider worth following up, the Director agreed to put someone on it.  He'll make certain those doing any checking are unaware that we are the ones asking."

"What about those friends of yours?" Jake asked.

"They are available for selected tasks as well," Susan replied.  She had contacted a couple of retired agents she knew well, and who she believed could be trusted.  If there was any checking to be done where they wanted to keep the Bureau officially out of the loop, they could call on them.  Jim Laney also suggested a Philly cop he knew, and Jake had a couple of friends on the West Coast they could tap.  Jake's usual approach of poking into something, and then Back-Tracking around it, was an approach they were hesitant to employ this time.

"Did you find something?" Jim asked, seeing that Jake was staring at the computer monitor in front of him as he talked.

"I don't know," Jake admitted.  "This guy could be one of them.  Unfortunately, he's the one I didn't get that close a look at."

Jim and Susan hurried over and looked over his shoulder.

"He hasn't got the beard," Jake pointed out, "and that makes it harder to tell.  He probably wears the beard to mask that scar."

"John Smith," Susan scoffed.  "I'm sure that's not his name.  He looks more like an Antonio to me.  Where did this photo get taken?"

Jake scrolled through the data.

"New York City," he said finally.  "It's a couple of years old.  He was picked up on suspicion of being involved in a shake-down of a shop owner."

"Do you think we should have this one followed up?" Susan asked.

"I can't really tell," Jake admitted, "but it's as close as we have come.  It would be interesting to find out his real name and where he is now.  It'll probably turn out he's in jail somewhere and can't be our guy."

"I'll ask the Director to put someone on it.  There has to have been several unexplained murders in New York the last couple of days that he can become a suspect for.  That would give someone a justifiable reason to be looking for him, and not lead back to us."

Jake pushed away from the monitor.  There were no more 'possibles' to sort through at the moment.

"Are you still insistent on going home tonight?" he asked Susan.

"I need a change of clothes," she said.  "I think it is safe enough, especially since I am forewarned, and you plan on being there ahead of me.  If anything happens, you can Back-Track to now and I'll change my plan and we'll set a trap."

They had decided that Jake would leave separately and early, and slip into Susan's place.  He'd also spend the night in the guest room, just as a precaution.  Norm wasn't due back for another couple of days, something Susan was a little stressed about.  She hoped they could have a breakthrough in the case before then and avoid the need to talk to him and formally take him off the persons of interest list.

"What if these people simply drop their attempts against me?" Susan asked.  "Then how do we proceed?  There is a good chance we aren't going to find a lead, and they could wait weeks or months before attempting a move again."

"As I mentioned to Jim earlier, I think there is an urgency about their actions, which means whatever prompted their initial attempts remains in place.  They will be under pressure to resolve this whole thing."

"They'll be more cautious," Susan said.  "The last two failures will have them worried and concerned.  They are probably keeping an eye on me, and by association both of you.  Maybe Shaun as well.  We don't know how they get their information."

"Do you think they might attempt a snatch again?" Jim asked.  "If they can't get to you, grabbing Jake or myself might give them a chance to ask questions about what we know."

"I don't think we can ignore the possibility," Susan said pondering.  "What do we do if they make an attempt?"

"We need to be equipped with a signaling device that whoever is snatched can quietly activate to alert the rest of us something is underway," Jake said.  "I think that I then immediately Back-Track again, so I can preserve my memories of the attempt.  It's getting to be a real annoyance reliving all the in-between days, but it's the only way I know of.  Then, knowing what is going to happen, we discretely prepare the area where it takes place with cameras and video.  That could give us better indications of those involved."

"It sounds like you want to allow the attempt to continue unchecked," Susan said.

"Until we learn something of use in identifying these people," Jake confirmed.  "We won't attempt to capture them.  We'll be listening in and watching, and hopefully tracking them wherever they take whoever they grab.  The minute we have key information, I Back-Track again, we avoid the event or set a trap for them.  Either way, we know something that reveals who they are."

"Aren't we forgetting they have their own Back-Tracker?" Jim asked.  "What if their person elects to Back-Track before you during this event?  What happens then?"

"Then we lose whatever we hoped to learn," Jake admitted, but unless their person Back-Tracks farther than I do the first time, we still know of the attempt.  But why would they do that?  It would defeat their entire plan?  With everything going as they hoped, there is no reason for them to abort the effort and Back-Track out of it.  They might as well have never made the attempt."

"And if they find our tracking devices and cameras?" Susan asked.

"Then we'll Back-Track and locate the electronics somewhere else.  But we'll have to try to be clever in the beginning.  I'm certain you have people who can come up with something they are unlikely to find."

"I'll call Tony," Susan said.  "You remember him.  He is someone I trust, and he would have access to some things I'm sure our people wouldn't even know about."

Jake smiled.  He hadn't seen Tony in a while.  He was someone else they might want to bring in, assuming he was available.