Just in Time: Portals of Time (2 page)

Celeste frowned. “He may not be ready to witness the rest.”

“We have no choice.” As usual, Alisha spoke without emotion. “Time’s running out, pardon the pun. Proceed,” she instructed the computeller.

“Jess Cromwell is murdered in 2014.”

“How?” Jess asked, his voice gruff.

“Vehicular accident. People of the time period call it a hit-and-run. That is when the perpetrator leaves the scene of a crime.”

“Damn. That sucks.”

Alisha shook her head. “Don’t look at me. I have no idea what that idiom means.” As an archeologist, she’d come along to acclimate Celeste and Dorian to this society. She was expected to know idioms and slang, but some terminology escaped her.

“Poor Helen.” The man wiped his face with a white cloth taken from his pocket. “Christ. I’m starting to buy into this.”

Alisha gave a slight nod. “We’ll show you more to fully convince you.”

The computeller played videos of newsprint articles about Cromwell’s death. But there were omissions in the timeline because many of the chips from 2014 had become corroded. Consequently, they didn’t know the exact date of his demise. “I still can’t believe it.” He looked up at them. “How can I?”

“He needs more motivation,” Alisha said. “Let’s try this.” She forwarded ahead to events after his death.

Cromwell’s face reddened. “What the fuck?”

Fuck. A derogatory term for joining
.

He glared at the screen. “I don’t have a daughter.” His pleasant, now-confused features hardened. “If this is some kind of joke, then it’s cruel, given how much Helen and I wanted a child and couldn’t have one.”

“You’ll have one, Dr. Cromwell.” Celeste’s voice was soothing. “By these calculations, your mate will conceive in her womb soon.”

“Now I
know
I’m having delusions.”

“Listen further.”

There was a snippet of a ceremony.

“Helen married somebody else?” His tone indicated umbrage, another thing Dorian didn’t understand. “How long after I’m gone?”

“Five yearlings…years.”

“I guess that would be okay.” He sighed. “Look, this isn’t proof. These videos could all be fabricated. It’s too unbelievable.”

“You died, Dr. Cromwell.” Alisha’s voice was curt. “And we believe the person who engineered your demise did so in order to preclude the completion of your research on the safe extraction of natural gas from the earth. Your findings led to a myriad of other developments in the eradication of carbon emissions from the environment.”

“Look, lady, if I died, somebody else would take up my research. As much as I’d like to think I’m indispensable, fracking is increasing our energy supplies, with a lot of big money behind it.”

“You’re incorrect. As I said, your research was special in its containment of methane emissions in a way no one else would discover. But the work you did was stopped by your death, and before someone else could pick up the threads or recreate it, a horrible environmental accident occurred and there was widespread contamination of the ground and water. Thousands of people were sickened or killed. All research on natural-gas extraction was halted, and soon after, the oil companies lobbied the governments of most countries and convinced them this area of energy drilling was too dangerous.”

“I’m so close to a breakthrough. Didn’t people care about what I left unfinished?”

“They were brainwashed, greedy and believed what was most beneficial for them. The dangers of climate change would just start to be taken seriously, and special interest groups would convince the population it was a hoax. That, and your fairly insane electoral process to choose leaders were corrupted so badly, the underminers were successful.”

“Dr. Cromwell,” Celeste said softly, “someone murdered you over your research.”

“My brother was right, then.”

“Your male sibling?” Dorian asked. “He’s in agreement with us?”

“Luke’s been telling me I’m in danger. I’ve been getting warnings.”

“Yes, through an archaic communicative method called email. To date, you’ve received four. Soon they will stop.” Dorian took pity on him. “It makes sense to conclude the sender has some connection with petroleum.”

“An employee of an oil company is warning me of this threat to my life?”

“The sender writes to you as [email protected]. He or she obviously knows someone intends to terminate you because of your research. Perhaps the sender is the one who must kill you if you don’t heed the warning.” Alisha hesitated. “This was his last bullet.”

“Excuse me?”

“I may have gotten the idiom wrong. His last…shot at stopping you?”

Sighing heavily, Cromwell leaned back in his chair.

Celeste crossed to him and knelt down. Again, she touched his hand. Again, she trembled. “We’re prepared to show you what the time where we come from holds, Dr. Cromwell.”

He cocked his head. “Is that why you want to save my life?”

“Yes, we believe that if you do
not
complete your research, the pollution of the future will spiral out of control, and mankind will be doomed.”

“My research prevents that from happening?” he asked again. He needed assurance.

“It’s the basis for other research, yes, that prevents future destruction.”

A slow smile spread across his face. “Man, I’d like to believe that.”

“Then let us convince you.”

Again he was thoughtful. “Wait a minute. Are you sure you can change the course of the future?”

“Ninety-nine point one percent sure,” Alisha quoted.

“Then what the hell? This is one great dream…a daughter, my research changing the course of history.”

“It will be if you don’t die,” Alisha said soberly. “If you do, that dream turns into a nightmare for all of humanity.”

HIS FRUSTRATION LEVEL
going through the goddamn roof, Luke Cromwell stared hard at his brilliant brother. He felt that way often with Jess, and had from the time they were young. “You’re kidding, right?”

Jess fidgeted. Now, when he was nervous, he worried the wedding band on his left hand. When they were kids, he’d scratched his head. “What’s the problem? You’ve been after me to do something about those emails, and I am.”

“Hiring a bodyguard without consulting your brother, who’s a Lieutenant in the Special Investigations Unit of the NYPD, is ridiculous. Why the hell would you do something like this without my help or at least my advice?”

His brother’s face flushed. “I didn’t. Vista Institute did. They fund my research, so I told them about the emails—after you got on me about them so much.”

Luke remembered the conversation…

You have a beautiful wife. Be a shame to leave her alone. Wise up, will you little brother? Let me track down these warnings or whatever they are
.

His chin raised, Jess continued, “They’ve worked with her company before.”

The comment made his blood pressure spike. “Her? Your bodyguard’s female? You’re going to spend all your waking hours with another woman? Oh, I’ll bet Helen will be overjoyed when she learns of the threats
and
of that little fact.”

Jess gave a goofy smile that Luke didn’t understand. “Helen will be fine once…” He didn’t finish, just crooked a shoulder. “She’ll worry less now that I have protection.”

“I was thinking of jealousy. The green-eyed monster.”

“Helen, jealous? Come on Luke, we’ve been together since high school. Why would I ever stray?”

Precisely
because
you’ve been together since then.
But Luke didn’t voice that opinion. He knew he was overprotective of Jess, and also that his own failed marriage—thanks in part to that monster he’d mentioned—had made him cynical. Plus, Jess and Helen were closer than any couple he knew. Not being able to have kids had created a deep bond between them. “Let’s table that. What’s the new bodyguard’s training, background and skill level?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I told you, Vista took care of all this.”

“Then, I’ll find out. All I need is her name and date of birth to run a background check.”

“No, Luke, I don’t want you to interfere. The company’s concerned enough about me and my research that they’ve provided me protection. They’ve checked out her credentials. I don’t want you to go any further with her.”

Stung, he steepled his fingers. “Fine. You don’t trust my judgment, the hell with it.”

“I trust your judgment. But the situation is under control. Let it go.”

“Sure.” He pushed his chair away from the desk. “So, when do I get to meet her?”

“She’s outside. In the reception area.”

“Now?”

“Yeah, she started today. She got into town two days ago.” Jess stood and walked to the door. Before he opened it, he looked over his shoulder and said, “Be nice.”

Not on your life
. “Always.”

Briefly, Jess stepped into the hall, then came back with his bodyguard. Jesus, this was worse than Luke had anticipated. The woman was super attractive. Not his type, though, because she was a little too tall and muscular—he liked his women petite and curvy—but she had a face that could stop traffic. Her hair wasn’t his preference, either—too short—but it shone under the overhead lights. Nice eyes…

“Dorian Masters, meet my brother, Luke Cromwell.”

She strode into the room stiffly, as if she was uncomfortable. Wearing a stark black suit with a crisp white shirt, she spoke first. “Lieutenant Cromwell.” She stuck out her hand, he took it, and she gripped his so tightly it would hurt a lesser man. “My pleasure is to meet you.”

“Yeah, you, too.” He drew back his hand. “Have a seat.”

Glancing around the office, she dropped down onto the chair across from Jess’s. She winced a bit when she sat and rubbed her fingers on the wooden arm. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes when she spoke to him. “Jess has told me a great deal about you.”

“Funny, he told me nothing about you.”

“Why is that humorous?”

Odd
. “Just an expression.” Alerted by the strange comment, he studied her. “So, tell me your background. If you don’t mind, I’d like to know who’s watching over my little bro.”

A question in her eyes at his statement. “I anticipate you’re concerned about his welfare. I’ll inform you of my history. I was born in Virginia, which is just outside of Washington, D.C.”

No shit.

“Shortly after, my family moved to South America as missionaries. I attended a private boarding school there and spoke primarily Spanish. We returned to the United Amer…the United States of America when I was eighteen so I could receive further education.” She gave him the satisfied expression of a child who’d successfully recited her catechism. “When I completed eight yearl…years of education, I formed my own private protective agency, Masterminds, which was hired by the Vista Institute to guard Dr. Cromwell. He’s received warnings about his safety.”

Masterminds, as in Dorian Masters. Cute. “Warnings, which up until now, he ignored.”

Her dark brows knit. “I assure you those threats are real. He’s in grave danger.”

Luke held up his hands, palms out. “Hey, lady, you’re preaching to the choir.”

Though Dorian had no idea what that meant, she tried to hide it. Alisha had warned her not to show reaction to phraseology she didn’t understand. The idioms of this time period were going to be a problem. Dorian could never learn them all, so she had to ignore what she could.

However, she hadn’t anticipated keeping who she was a secret from Dr. Cromwell’s family. It had taken hours of re-explanation and review of the history chips, but once they convinced Dr. Cromwell who they were, he’d been adamant about secrecy…

“Helen will freak out if she hears I’m going to be murdered. We only have each other. She lost her parents at a young age, so my family took her in. And if she does get pregnant, I don’t want her upset by this. It’ll be bad enough when she finds out I kept the threats from her. We can’t tell her I’m going to die. We don’t have to, if you stop this…plot. We’ll just say you’re my bodyguard. Maybe later we can fill her in…”

“Dorian, Luke asked you a question.”

“Repeat please.”

He hesitated. “Why don’t you outline for me the way this is going to shake out.”

Oh, dear.

“We have a plan for protection all in place, Luke.” Jess was cuing her, she realized.

“We do. I’ll move into his spare sleeping space until the identity of the email sender and the plot against Jess is uncovered. I’ll accompany him to work and to other functions.”

“So his protection will be out in the open?”

Jess answered. “No, we’re going to say she’s Helen’s cousin and came here to take a job as my assistant in the lab.”

“And live with you?”

“She’s from out of town.” Under his breath, Jess said, “Way out of town. She doesn’t know anybody here.”

“What about going out at night?”

“We ought to be able to work the cousin thing in that way—we’re showing her around town.”

In his peripheral vision, she saw Luke watching her so she stifled the urge to fidget. She was used to dealing with powerful men in her life’s work. But she never truly understood them, because other than professional contact, and joining, of course, men and women of the future didn’t have interaction. As they apparently did in this time period, she’d learned from the chips.

“No offense, Ms. Masters, but I don’t like that I was left out of this decision.”

That
decision
had surprised her, too. She assumed they’d at least tell the brother, if not his spouse, and avoid more subterfuge. She’d suggested Jess do that…

“We should inform your sibling.”

“No. He’ll never believe you. If he didn’t see with his own eyes what I saw, he’ll doubt you. He’s always been the skeptic of the family. It’s why he’s a good cop. He’ll buy the bodyguard idea easier, believe me…”

“Ms. Masters?” the cop said now, bringing her back to the present.

“I’ll protect your brother with my life, Lieutenant. I swear on the godheads.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh. The term is from an ancient religion I follow.” She might have followed a religion if the universe hadn’t lost its faith, along with its air and ability to reproduce.