Time Enough for Love (8 page)

If only he had fought as hard for her as he’d fought to develop his theories on time travel …

But
what ifs
weren’t any use to him now. Chuck had come too far down his own path ever to turn back. But Charles, Charles still had a chance to choose heaven over hell.

Only Chuck was finding out firsthand just how very hard it was to let go once he held heaven in his arms.

Especially since heaven was responding to each kiss he gave her with a fierceness and intensity that
damn near took his breath away. She wanted him as badly as he wanted her. Chuck couldn’t stop his feelings of elation. He wanted to sing, to dance dizzily with her in circles, spinning and jumping and whirling like crazy until they fell, laughing, together on the ground.

But what he had to do instead was stop kissing her.

It took everything Chuck had in him to pull back. And even then, it was only the fact that they were in danger that made him stop.

“We have to get out of here.” His voice sounded hoarse.

“We can go to my place.” He could hear her desire in her voice, see it in her eyes. God, she thought he was talking about …

“I mean, we can if you want,” she added more softly, almost uncertainly.

I want, he wanted to tell her.
God, do I want.…
“No, Mags,” he said instead, “I meant whoever did this might come back. And if they do, I want us far from here.”

“Who
was
that? Who would shoot at
us
?” Maggie started to get up, but he grabbed her wrist and kept her down, her head lower than the hoods of the cars surrounding them.

As Chuck got to his feet he stayed in a crouch,
too, reaching around the car to grab the bag that he’d dropped. “Not us—me.” Taking her hand and staying low to the ground, he started moving between the cars.

“But why?”

She figured it out herself, and as he answered they spoke in unison. “The Wells Project.”

She was quick to add, “You said the men from Wizard-9 didn’t follow you here. You said they couldn’t.”

“I didn’t think they could. I
know
I disabled the prototype.” Chuck frowned. “I also know they destroyed my lab at Data Tech. I assumed the working model of the Runabout and the other equipment were in there at the time.” He glanced back at her. “And you know that old saying about the word
assume
.”

“You mean, when you assume, you and me get a bullet in the ass?”

Chuck had to laugh. Somehow the direst, most serious thing that could have happened
had
happened. Wizard-9 agents had followed him into the past, using techniques he himself had written about to find him. The ripple effect. Or the displacement theory. It was possible to trace the Runabout as it traveled through time using either of those theories.
Neither was one hundred percent accurate, but obviously Wizard-9 had been close enough.

But despite the danger, Maggie had still managed to make him laugh.

Still, the situation was extremely sobering. The latest working model of the Runabout could hold four travelers for each leap in time. The technology was still in its early stages, and for the first time since the Wells Project went on-line, Chuck was grateful for that. Even in this advanced version of the Runabout, the energy source required at least ninety-six hours for its various components to cool and reset before another jump through time could be made.

He had to figure it had taken the Wizard-9 agents a full twenty-four hours to track him here to the mall. It had probably taken them a whole lot less than that, but he estimated high just to be safe.

That left him only seventy-two hours. After seventy-two hours, he’d be a dead man. After seventy-two hours, Wizard-9 would be able to make another leap through time. This time, they’d arrive before him, and when he made the jump, when he arrived naked and disoriented in Maggie’s backyard, they’d be there waiting. And they’d kill him.

Maggie tugged on his hand. “My car’s over this way.”

He shook his head. Seventy-two hours. God, the clock was ticking. “We can’t risk taking it. If this
is
Wizard-9, then they’ve already found your car and rigged it with some kind of tracking device. Or a bomb.”

“A bomb!” Even Maggie couldn’t make a joke about that. “Like … a
bomb
?”

“A bomb,” Chuck told her. “Like the one they planted that took out most of the White House.”

“If they could find my car in this parking lot, then they’ve surely found my house,” Maggie said.

“That’s right,” Chuck said, moving down the line of parked cars, looking quickly at each one they passed. “We can’t go there.”

“Where are we going to go?” Maggie asked. “An even bigger question: if we can’t take my car, how are we going to get there? Wherever
there
is.”

He glanced back at her. “We’ll have to borrow someone else’s car.”

Maggie dug in her heels. “
Borrow
someone else’s car? It’s not as if we’re going to find one with the keys in the ignition,” she said. “What are you going to do? Hot-wire it?”

Chuck nodded. “Absolutely.”

“I
CAN’T BELIEVE
you know how to hot-wire a car.”

Chuck glanced away from the road and over at Maggie, his face dimly lit by the green dashboard light. “It’s all a matter of understanding how things work.”

It was obvious to Maggie from the ease with which Chuck had started the engine of this white, late-model Taurus with only the Swiss army knife he had in his pocket, that he had a clear understanding of how things worked.

It was obvious, too, that he had an understanding of how to
keep
things working when he not only switched license plates with the car next to the white
Taurus, but stopped in another badly lit corner of the parking lot and quickly switched plates a second time.

It was likely that while someone coming out of the mall would notice that their car was missing, they probably wouldn’t notice that their plates had been switched. And while the state police would be on the lookout for a white Taurus with the original plates, they wouldn’t be looking for a white Taurus with this third set of plates.

Chuck glanced at her again, and Maggie realized she was staring at him, but she couldn’t seem to stop. His face looked angular in the shadows, his cheekbones in sharp relief.

There was more than mere age that made him look different than Charles. There was a hardness to his mouth, an edge to him that made her wonder with a shiver just where he’d draw the line in his quest to set things right.

They were traveling north on Route 17, heading up into the mountains, toward Sedona and Flagstaff. The tires of the car made a low humming sound on the highway as they moved at a speed slightly over the limit.

They’d made only one stop—right before they left the city limits. Chuck had pulled up to a roadhouse-style bar, and he and Maggie had gone inside.

They weren’t there to quench their thirst. No, in just a matter of minutes after walking into the place, they were seated at a table in the back, across from a man who looked as if he hadn’t bathed since Jimmy Carter was in office. As Maggie incredulously looked on, Chuck paid a hundred and fifty dollars cash for a deadly-looking handgun, a shoulder holster, and a box of ammunition.

The two men shook hands, and then—cool as a cucumber, as if he wore an illegally obtained, unregistered handgun underneath his jacket all the time—Chuck slipped the leather straps on over his shirt. Somehow he knew how to fasten it all together to make it work as a holster. He checked the gun—for what, Maggie didn’t know; to see if it was loaded?—then slipped it into the holster, putting his jacket back on to hide it. The box of bullets went into his pocket.

Maggie didn’t say a thing.

Chuck suggested they make use of the facilities before they hit the road again, and when she came out of the ladies’ room, he was talking on the pay phone. He hung up as she approached. He didn’t tell her who he’d called, and she didn’t ask.

She didn’t say a word as they walked back out to their stolen car. She still didn’t speak as once more
he used his knowledge of how things worked to restart the Taurus.

Now, though, she cleared her throat. “Where are we going?”

Chuck glanced at her. “Maybe you should close your eyes, try to get some sleep. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

“Yeah, right. I always get the urge to take a nap after nearly being gunned down at the mall.”

He looked at her again, longer this time. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I got you involved in this. I should have stayed far away from you. If I’d been thinking straight, I would have realized that Ken Goodwin would never let something like the Wells Project be destroyed.”

“Ken Goodwin?”

“Out of all the Wizard-9 agents I dealt with, he seemed to be the one in charge. If he’s here, if he’s behind this …”

“What?” Maggie prompted softly. “Talk to me.”

His eyes seemed to flash as he shot her another quick look. “This whole situation has just gone from difficult to near impossible. Goodwin knows that I need to get close to Charles to keep him from developing those time-travel theories.”

“Charles!” Maggie said suddenly, turning in her
seat to face him. “Wizard-9 can get to you through Charles. If they kill him, you’ll be dead too.”

“No, that’s not a problem.”

“But the way you explained it to me—”

“They won’t risk hurting Charles,” Chuck reassured her. “They need him alive to develop the time-travel theory. My bet is they won’t even get near him, for fear of interfering with the natural course of events. No,
I’m
the one Goodwin needs to get rid of. If I get within fifty feet of Charles, Wizard-9 is going to be there to stop me cold.”

“What about me?” Maggie asked. “I could approach Charles—”

“No. They’ll be looking for you too. They know who you are. They know what you did in the future.”

She studied his profile. “What exactly did I do?”

Chuck was silent, his eyes fixed on the road ahead of him. When he finally spoke, his voice was almost unnaturally matter-of-fact. “I told you what you did. You warned me. You saved my life.”

“How?”

He shifted slightly, impatiently in his seat, glancing briefly at her. “You said, ‘Chuck, look out!’ You know, Mags, when we’re talking, I can’t think, I can’t plan. I need to think this through and figure out what Goodwin would expect me to do. And
then I need to figure out if I should do that, or do the opposite, depending on whether or not he’d expect me to second-guess him and—”

“Okay, okay! You’ve convinced me. I’ll shut up.” Maggie’s voice shook very slightly as she added, “I’m sorry.”

“No.” Chuck’s voice was barely audible over the hum of the engine. “
I’m
sorry. I’m sorry for getting you into this. And I’m sorry I can’t be the man you need me to be.”

Maggie reached out, lightly touching his denim-clad leg. “I think if we want to stay alive—and I don’t know about you, but I sure do—you’re exactly the man I need you to be.”

Chuck didn’t say anything. He didn’t even look at her. But he did take her hand, intertwining their fingers.

They headed north into the Arizona night in silence, holding tightly to one another’s hand.

They had to walk from the bus station to the motel in the early-morning sunshine. It wasn’t more than a few blocks, but to Maggie, it seemed like a thousand miles. It had been years since she’d pulled an all-nighter like this one.

They’d left the stolen car at the Flagstaff airport
and had taken a shuttle across town to the bus station. They’d had to wait nearly three hours for the next bus heading back to Phoenix.

As they’d snacked on candy and cans of sodas from the vending machines in the bus station, Chuck had explained why they were heading back south—doubling back on their six, as he called it.

They had to return to Phoenix because Charles was there, because he was the key to changing Maggie’s future and Chuck’s past. Ken Goodwin and his agents from Wizard-9 would expect them to return, but Chuck was banking on the fact that Wizard-9 wouldn’t be ready for them to return this soon. Over the course of the next twenty-four hours Wizard-9 would set up roadblocks and spot inspections on the routes leading into the city in an attempt to intercept them.

But by then, Chuck and Maggie would have already returned to Phoenix.

Maggie had pointed out that it was possible Wizard-9 was as adrift and as out of place as Chuck was in this time frame. Maybe they wouldn’t have the resources or connections needed to authorize the setting up of roadblocks. But despite their botched assassination attempt, Chuck seemed to think they were capable of anything.

He was determined to return to Phoenix as soon as possible.

The stolen car was left in the airport as a false lead. When they found it, the agents from Wizard-9 would waste valuable time and manpower attempting to pick up Chuck and Maggie’s trail in the Flagstaff area.

But their trail would long be cold.

Chuck had briefly considered leaving Maggie safely hidden up in the mountains. But Maggie didn’t even have time to protest before he told her he’d rejected that idea flat out. Apparently, where Wizard-9 was concerned, there was no such thing as
safely
hidden. The only way Chuck could guarantee her safety was if he was with her.

It was also there, in the late-night quiet of the Flagstaff bus station, that Chuck had told her that kiss they’d shared in the mall parking lot had been another mistake.

The clock on the wall of the motel lobby said 8:30
A.M.
as Maggie watched Chuck fill out the motel registration form. He paid in cash, and a few minutes later they unlocked the door to a room.

One room.

A single, solitary room.

Chuck entered first, tossing the bag with the dress in it onto one of the two double beds before he
turned to switch on the heater. The November night had been cold and a chill lingered in the room.

Maggie stood in the doorway as the old machine underneath the front window wheezed to life. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”