The Time-Traveling Outlaw (18 page)

Her head spun just trying to wrap itself around the idea, paradoxes that couldn’t resolve. But the one thing she understood loud and clear was that he meant to be with her for the rest of her life, and that was all she needed to understand.

Sally threw her arms around his neck, pulled him close, and drew him in for a kiss.

And that’s when he disappeared.

No!
he thought as he was ripped away from Sally’s embrace, engulfed in white light. The sensation was different this time, softer, warmer, and less disorienting. While his mind floated between the centuries, he felt a mixture of dread and anticipation. 

What if he hadn’t changed things at all? What if the watch had somehow made it into Tidwell’s hands, but he still worked for Sturgess at the prison?

But when the world solidified, Logan found himself sitting in a room much smaller than the dark warehouse he had first set out from. Everything was white, so bright he squinted at first. He lay in a soft, gelatinous chair that seemed to gently grip his body, but there were no actual restraints.

And as he looked around, he saw two men there. One he recognized, though he was thinner, with no facial hair at all this time. He was still wearing the white lab coat.

“Sam?” Logan whispered, his voice hoarse.

Sam’s eyes grew wide. “You know me?” he asked. “Astonishing. From my perspective we’ve never met. But you’ve met me in another timeline? You’re Logan?”

“Yeah,” Logan said, nodding his head. He looked down and realized he was clothed, the ruffled cotton shirt, jeans, and boots had come with him across time. He looked over Sam’s shoulder at the other man, at first fearing it might be Sturgess. 

But the man was young, maybe in his early twenties. He had short blonde hair and hazel eyes. He smiled nervously at Logan, looking at him with a weird intent, as if he were searching his face for signs of something.

Sam looked over his own shoulder at the young man. “Oh,” he said. “Right. Well, of course you two have never met in any timeline. Let me introduce you to Dylan Carver. He’s your great, great…I don’t know how many greats, but he’s one of your descendants.”

Logan felt his heart thump hard in his chest. He climbed out of the squishy chair and stood shakily on the carpeted floor. The young man, the one Sam had said was Dylan Carver, put out his hand to shake. Logan looked down at the hand, then wrapped his arms around the young man and hugged him tight. 

Dylan hugged back. “It’s good to meet you, sir.”

Logan pulled back, gripping the boy’s shoulders. He felt tears standing out in his eyes. “You look like her,” he said.

Dylan smiled. “Your wife?” he asked. “Sally?”

“Yeah,” Logan said. “Though we’re not officially married yet.” He laughed at the absurdity of using the present tense to refer to something so long ago. Then it struck him. “You did it. You really did it.”

“Oh, the watch?” Dylan said, nodding to a raised pedestal near the chair. Logan turned and saw it, the old silver pocket watch that having gone from 1861 to 2026 twice was now over three hundred years old. “I didn’t really do much, to be honest. My mother gave me the watch. She told me what she knew, which wasn’t much, actually. I just looked Doctor Tidwell here up on the internet. He was easy to find. I had no idea this was going to happen, though.”

“Neither did I,” Tidwell said. “I thought the first time someone would time travel, I’d be sending them from this time to that, not pulling them here from there.”

Logan looked around. This place didn’t look like a prison. “Where are we?” he asked.

“We’re in my lab,” Sam said. “At the University of Texas at Lockdale.”

Logan laughed. This was a pleasant change. Then he saw the computer sitting on the desk behind Sam, and he suddenly needed to know very badly what else had changed.

“I’m sorry,” Logan said. “It’s good to meet you Dylan. And it’s good to see you again, Sam. Even if you don’t remember me. But can I use that?” He nodded at the machine. “I need to check some things.”

“Sure,” Sam said, moving out of the way. “Help yourself.”

Logan sat down at the computer, launched the browser, and pulled up the search engine. A search for “Natalie Carver” didn’t yield anything related to his Natalie. So he tried her maiden name, and there it was, on the first page of results, seven from the top: a wedding announcement. She’d gotten married to someone named “Holden Wescott.” He sat back in the chair in disbelief.

He felt overwhelming relief that she was still alive, but in this timeline they’d never fallen in love, never gotten married. He shouldn’t have been that surprised. If he could change all this, was it really so shocking that his relationship with Natalie would also be changed? Maybe not, but it still hit him like a ton of bricks. 

Holden Wescott. Sounded like a rich asshole. He leaned forward again and pulled up the engagement photo. The guy didn’t look like an asshole, but Logan couldn’t help feeling jealousy rise up in his throat.

“Who’s that?” Dylan asked.

Logan cleared his throat. “That’s, uh…that’s someone I used to know.” He looked through the image results and saw a picture of Natalie in a nurse’s uniform. He went to the link. Dallas Presbyterian Hospital. That was where she worked now. 

He turned to Dylan. “Do you have a car?”

“Yeah,” Dylan said.

“Do you mind taking me to Dallas?”

Dylan smiled, and he saw her in him again. “No problem, man. Anything for family.”

“Good,” Logan said. “Thanks. Just let me check one more thing, and then we can go.”

He turned back to the computer and typed in: “Holden Sturgess.”

The first result that popped up made him smile. It was a news report about a suspect in a credit card fraud case. He’d been caught by the police with over fifty thousand credit card numbers that obviously didn’t belong to him. The story was from two years ago, but with a little more searching he found another about the court case. Accompanying the story was a mugshot. He just looked sad now, his stringy white hair in disarray, his face sunken and pale. But he still had those beady black eyes, and they looked as mean as ever.

Sturgess had been convicted of multiple counts of fraud and sentenced to twelve years. He was serving his sentence at Wicklehut Penitentiary. A quick search for Wicklehut showed it in the next county over, instead of where he was sitting.

“Is everything all right?” Sam said.

“Some things are very right,” Logan said. “But I need to visit someone. Then I’m going to need to you send me back.”

“What?” Sam said. “You went to all that trouble to make sure I’d retrieve you from the past, and now you want to go back?”

“I have to,” Logan said. “Or else he’ll never be born.” He pointed at Dylan. “And we’ll never be able to have this conversation. Then if I were you, I’d scrap all this and never tell anyone about it. It almost got you killed. Come on, kid,” he said to Dylan. “Let’s go.”

They left Sam sitting at his desk with a worried, puzzled expression on his face.

Lockdale was a two-hour drive from Dallas. Dylan’s car was a red Toyota Sempra, a model he’d never heard of. The university looked like most medium-sized colleges, with cured landscaping and modern architecture. As they got in the car, Logan smiled again at the thought of having replaced the prison where he’d spent six years with a school. 

On the ride to Dallas, they asked each other questions and tried to fill each other in on as much of their stories as possible. Dylan was a student himself, in his sophomore year, pre-med at SMU. He’d talked with Tidwell on the phone several times, and delivered the watch about six months earlier. Tidwell had called him when he thought it might actually work, that he might actually have a reading on Logan’s temporal signature, and he’d promised to wait for Dylan to drive up for the weekend.

“I thought he was crazy, honestly,” Dylan said. “I kind of thought our whole family was crazy, too.”

“I don’t blame you,” Logan said. “It all sounds crazy.”

Then he told Dylan what he could, about his old life in the other timeline. About Harken Sturgess, the robbery, Natalie’s death, going to Wicklehut, and being sent back. He recounted everything he could about his time in 1861, finishing just as they entered the Dallas city limits. 

He sat there in the driver’s seat, taking it all in. “I wouldn’t believe any of that,” he said. “Unless I’d just seen you materialize in a chair back in that office.”

The car’s guidance system told them the route to follow to get to the hospital, and for the next twenty minutes, they sat in silence.

When they pulled into the hospital parking lot, Logan started to get out of the car. He paused when he saw Dylan wasn’t unhooking his seatbelt. 

“Are you coming in?” Logan asked.

“Nah,” Dylan said. “You need to see her one more time, talk to her. Better if I just wait in the car.”

Logan reached out and put his hand on Dylan’s arm, squeezing. Then he got out and went inside.

He asked for Natalie Wescott at the information desk on the first floor. The woman there told him she was on duty, on the seventh floor.

On the way to the hospital, he had mostly concentrated on listening to Dylan, then telling his story. But he couldn’t help notice all the little things that were different. He’d been to Dallas several times, but the roads seemed different. Billboards were advertising soft drinks and fast food that he’d never heard of before. He felt like a stranger in his own time. But then, it wasn’t really his time, was it?

The elevator opened to the seventh floor. He stepped out looking at the little placards with names and arrows. This was the oncology ward. She’d always said she wanted to work with cancer patients. He didn’t understand wanting to do that. It sounded horrible and depressing. But she’d said she wanted to help people in the worst situations, to help make them better, to give them hope. And that made him love her all the more.

A nurse in powder blue scrubs was walking down the hall, looking at a clipboard, and he almost didn’t recognize her. Her hair was different, cut short. And even though she looked tired, there was a beauty around her that he almost couldn’t recall, from a time when she was happy and healthy.

“Natalie?” he said as she passed. 

She stopped and turned to look up from her clipboard. Her eyebrows narrowed. “Yes, sir?” she said. “Can I help you with something?”

He’d known she wouldn’t recognize him, but he’d somehow also expected her to, needed her to. The lack of recognition, the lack of love in her eyes felt like a punch in the gut.

“I’m just…” he began, realizing he was an idiot for not planning how this was going to go better. “Would you like to have a cup of coffee?”

She smiled, little wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. “Do I know you?” she asked. 

“Yes,” he said instinctively, then: “No. I mean, not really.”

She laughed, not sure what to make of that. She looked him up and down. “I mean, I do kind of dig the whole retro cowboy thing,” she said. “But…” she lifted up her hand and wiggled her wedding band at him.

He took a step closer to her, then realized maybe he was coming off as a stalker or a weirdo. He took a half-step back. “I was just hoping you could answer a couple of questions for me.”

She was still smiling. She didn’t seem creeped out. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “But I’m really busy.”

“Logan,” he said. “My name’s Logan. And this will only take a minute. Please.”

She sighed, but didn’t look really put out. She liked him. He could see that in her eyes. He should have at least expected that, too. They’d fallen in love once, after all.

“Okay, Logan,” she said, looking at her watch. “I’ll give you twice that. Two minutes. Shoot.”

“Are you healthy?” he asked. “I mean, have you had any issues with your heart, or have you had it check out?”

Her smile faded. She put one hand to her chest, just over her heart. “How do you know about that?” she asked. “Who are you?”

His mind raced. He needed to know, and he didn’t want her to walk away. “I’m a friend of a friend.” Which was true, in a way. 

“Which friend?”

His mind raced, trying to remember her best friend’s name, the brunette she’d roomed with in college and stayed in touch with. He hoped they were still friends in this timeline. “Denise.”

Her face relaxed. He could see she was still a little skeptical, but someone would have to be a real nut job to hunt down her friend’s name as well. And he was hoping she didn’t think he seemed like a stalker.

“I’m fine,” Natalie said. She reached up to the neckline of her scrubs, and in a strangely intimate gesture, she pulled it down far enough for him to see the top of a scar. “I had surgery last year. The doctors say I’ll be fine.”

“That’s great,” Logan said, feeling the tears standing out in his eyes. “That’s really great, Natalie. I just want to ask you one more question. Then I’ll leave you alone.”

“Okay,” she said, taking a half-step closer to him and lowering her voice. There was no one in the hall but the two of them.

“Are you happy?”

She smiled, opened her mouth to answer, then closed it. He could see she was really thinking about it, considering the question.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she said. “I haven’t even told Holden yet.” She placed her hand over her belly. “I’m pregnant. I always wanted a little girl, but I really don’t care either way.”

Logan blinked away the tears, one slipping down his cheek.

“So yeah, I'm very happy,” she said, a smile spreading back across her face. He loved that smile. It could drive away the darkest shadows, and it made him feel good all over again just seeing it. 

“Thank you,” he said. He wanted to take her in his arms and hug her one last time, say goodbye. But he didn’t want to push. “I’ll leave you alone now.” 

He turned and pushed the elevator button. It opened immediately and he stepped on. 

“Wait,” Natalie said, but the doors were already closing. He turned away as they slid closed. He wanted the memory of her smiling to be the last he had of her.

He got back in the car.

“How’d it go?” Dylan asked.