The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance (25 page)

“They’re
never
wrong,” the other man said.

“No, but . . . but sometimes there’s a glitch and someone fated to die doesn’t. This poses a threat to adversely affect the future. It’s our job to ensure that doesn’t happen.”

I licked my dry lips. “You sound completely crazy, you know that?”

“Turn the light on, Harris,” he said. “She’s terrified. There’s no reason for us to scare her more right now.”

Harris snorted. “Terrific. Our best agent’s going soft on me over a random blonde?”

“No,” he said immediately. “Just do it OK?”

“Won’t change anything.”

“Just fucking do it.”

“Whoa, OK.” A chuckle. Then a switch was flicked and light flooded the room.

I squinted and looked around. I had no idea where we were: a generic room of some kind that only held the chair I sat in and the two men in front of me. Both were dressed in black. One was middle-aged, blond, with weary-looking grey eyes. The other was younger, dark-haired with light blue eyes. Both were tall, muscular and looked very dangerous.

It was all I could do to keep my teeth from chattering at the sight of them as they looked down at me tied to the chair.

It was strange, but the dark-haired one looked vaguely familiar. Where the hell had I seen him before?

“I don’t have any money,” I said. “So this is a waste of your time if that’s what you’re looking for.”

He shook his head. “We don’t want money.”

“What we want,” Harris, the blond one, said, “is to get this finished so I can get home. I have vacation time coming to me.”

The dark-haired man scowled at him. “Have a little respect, would you?”

Harris held up his hands. “What is with you tonight, Adam? You’re acting bizarre. This is just another job.”

That’s
who he reminded me of. The little boy from last week. Adam was his name too. Same black hair, same blue eyes. However, this guy was a whole lot more than seven years old – by at least twenty years.

“What happened with the bus?” Harris asked. “How’d you miss getting creamed?”

“Somebody grabbed me. Pushed me out of the way.”

“Really?” His eyebrows went up. “Well, that’s unlikely.”

I scowled at him. “Unlikely or not, that’s what happened. But what difference does it make? And these Books of Fate . . . I don’t understand why it makes any damn difference. I almost got hit but I didn’t. So what?”

“Because you being alive right now when your name is on the list to die today is wrong. It has the potential to screw up the future.”

“Says who?”

“Says us,” Harris said, then he grinned. “Because that’s where we’re from.”

I gaped at him. “Sure you are.”

“I know it’s hard for you to believe, Sophie, but it’s true,” Adam said. “We are from the future. We’re part of a government organization that regulates fate, according to the Books, and controls any potential fluctuations that affect the future. It’s an important job and one we must take very seriously.”

Something slid behind his gaze as he said it despite his confident words. Regret? Why would he feel regret about this?

Then it dawned on me what these two crazy men were getting at.

“So because the bus didn’t kill me,” I began, my voice barely audible, “because I didn’t die on the day your so-called Books of Fate said I would, you’ve been sent here to finish the job?”

“Holy shit,” Harris said, amused. “And they say blondes are dumb. This one’s a regular brainiac. Impressive.”

I was shaking now, harder than before. “You’re going to kill me?”

“That’s the general idea,” Harris confirmed. “I’ll make it quick, though. I promise.”

“But . . .” I swallowed hard. “But why would you even bother to explain this to me? Why wouldn’t you just kill me outside the gallery?”

“Because it’s policy to explain what’s going on first,” Adam said. “It’s an important part of the process – for you to understand why we have to do this.”

“I
still
don’t understand. This is wrong and you have to know that.” I shook my head and felt hot tears slide down my cheeks. I felt utterly helpless tied to the chair. These men planned to kill me and I couldn’t even fight for my life.

“What I want to know is who yanked you out of that bus’s path this morning.” Harris pulled a gun out of a shoulder holster under his black coat. “It’s a fucking mystery to me. It’s as though they knew what was going to happen.”

Adam looked at him. “You think it was one of us? Somebody with access to the Books of Fate? And they might have travelled back in time to save her?”

I couldn’t keep my eyes off that shiny silver gun Harris now held with ease – the one he was going to end my life with. Fix the mistake. Erase the budding artist before she’d even had a chance to live just because her name was listed in a book somewhere in the future.

It didn’t matter if I believed them or not. My belief in time travel or fate didn’t change what was going to happen here one little bit.

“Yeah,” Harris said, grinning. “But that would be a really stupid move, wouldn’t it? And what would the motivation be?”

“Don’t know.” Adam shook his head. He’d barely taken his eyes off me since the lights came on. “Maybe somebody who’s started to doubt our missions. Somebody wondering if we’re sent out as an easy answer to a difficult problem. Somebody who has begun to question exactly what fate is and why we need to kill innocent people just because we’re told to. Somebody who never questioned these things until he saw the name Sophie Shaw in the Books and it jarred him out of his obedient daze enough that he travelled back twenty years through time to pull her out of the way of that bus.”

My eyes widened a little during his insightful speech.

Harris turned to look at Adam, his shaggy eyebrows held high. “That’s one hell of a hypothesis. But whoever that agent might be, he’d be in deep shit if he was ever caught. You know the penalty for fate interference, right?”

Adam’s jaw set. “Of course I do. I’ve seen others executed because of it.”

“Besides, it doesn’t make a difference anyhow. We’re here to put things back the way they’re supposed to be. So if you’re finished gawking at our pretty little target, that’s exactly what I’m going to do right now.”

I clenched my teeth as he pointed the gun at my head and pulled the trigger.

But Adam kicked Harris’s arm just in time and the bullet embedded itself in the wall behind my right shoulder rather than in my forehead.

Harris turned to him with a frown. “What the hell do you think you’re—”

Adam swung the heavy flashlight, hitting Harris across the side of his head. The blond man crumpled to the floor unconscious before Adam’s blue-eyed gaze returned to me.

“OK,” he said, “so I’m thinking that’s why my name was added to the book today as well. Jesus. I just signed my own death warrant.”

It sounded as if he was talking more to himself than to me.

“What?” I managed.

Adam’s eyes flicked back to his partner. “I honestly didn’t plan to do that. I thought I might be able to talk him out of it, but I should have known better. He’s stubborn.” He smiled a little, but it looked shaky. “Then again, so am I.”

“What is going on?”

“That is a very good question, but one I can’t answer right now.” Adam threw the flashlight to the ground and then began to undo my bindings. The ropes fell away from my sore wrists. “There are other agents stationed outside. When Harris and I don’t report in very soon, they’re going to come looking for us. We have to get out of here.”

He held his hand out to me, but I didn’t take it.

“Come on,” he said. “There’s no time.”

I shook my head.

His dark brows drew together. “I know you don’t trust me, but you have to. I’m not going to hurt you. I swear I’ll protect you.”

“Was it you?” I asked. “You’re the one who pulled me away from the bus today, aren’t you?”

His chest moved under his black coat to show he was breathing hard. “That was me.”

“And everything you just said to Harris—”

“Was how I really feel. Yeah. Now come on, or saving your ass twice today isn’t going to mean a damn thing.”

I took his hand and he practically yanked me out of the chair to my feet, then roughly pulled me behind him as he kicked open the door. We hurried down a hallway leading to a staircase.

“Who are you?” I asked him.

“Name’s Adam. Adam Rizer.”

“And you’re from the future.”

He looked at me sideways. “I am.”

“And you just knocked your friend unconscious in order to save my life.”

“Looks like.” He shook his head. “Although, Harris wasn’t exactly somebody I considered a friend. When you’re in my line of work, friends can be a liability.”

“Being a cold-blooded assassin must be hard work.”

I tried to keep up with him but he moved very fast. I didn’t have much of a choice, though. He had my hand clutched in his so tightly that if I fell, he’d still be dragging me along behind him.

“We’re called auditors, not assassins.”

“Of course you are. Such a bland government title for something so horrible.”

He eyed me. “Yeah, well, it’s not exactly the same as painting pretty pictures of people having sex, but it pays the bills.”

I glared at him. “Is that what you think I do? Paint dirty pictures?”

“Of course not. They’re supposed to represent true love, right?” He said it sarcastically. “The fact that the people are naked just helps raise the collectible value.”

Despite my gratitude for his saving my life, I didn’t like his tone. It was hard enough to get respect in the art world without somebody else labelling my work pornography. Although, I suppose without that notorious reputation, I wouldn’t have gotten half as much press as I’d received since getting out of school.

We headed down another floor and I tried not to twist my ankle as we quickly rounded each corner. “I don’t care what you think.”

“If it’s any consolation, the work of Sophie Shaw will be very sought after a couple decades from now. I saw one recently for nearly a hundred grand.”

A hundred grand? I remembered what Anna said to me earlier that evening. That if I was dead, my paintings would be worth way more. Looked like she was right.

“Adam, you have to—”

“Shh,” he commanded. We’d reached the bottom of the stairs of whatever building we were in. He had a gun drawn and, with his back flat against the wall, he peered out of a window to the side of a set of doors.

“They’re out front,” he said. “This is the back exit. I think we have the chance—”

“Adam!” an angry voice bellowed from above us. “Where the hell are you?”

It was Harris. He was awake and he sounded mad as hell. The sound of hard-soled shoes thundering down the stairs echoed around us. Without waiting another second, Adam pushed the door open with his shoulder and we burst outside.

“Stop!” Harris shouted.

I heard a gunshot. Then another.

“Watch out,” Adam snapped, wrapping his arm around me to pull me out of the way. Part of the door frame splintered off as the bullets made contact.

Relying on instinct only, I ran with Adam away from the building and down an alleyway. Several alleyways, in fact, until I was hopelessly lost. It was dark and cold and my feet were burning from running in my heels. I was exhausted and scared and shaking like a leaf.

“Please, stop,” I begged. “I can’t go any further.”

“No, you’re right.” Adam looked around, before putting his gun away. “This is a good place.”

“A good place for what? I need to go home. I need . . . I need to go to the police.”

He shook his head. “They can’t help you.”

“What do you mean they can’t help me?”

“They’re in on this. They
know.
Maybe not all of them. But the right people know about auditors from the future. It’s fully condoned. They understand why the future must be kept pure. If you go to them, they’ll hand you right over to Harris and the others with no questions asked. They get the list of any problem cases just like we do.”

“The present and the future working together for a common goal.”

“Pretty much. The only thing separating us is twenty years.”

“What about the past – all the horrible things that happened then? Why didn’t you kill a few bad-asses – dictators, serial killers – who hurt a lot of people?”

“Because it wasn’t in the Books, of course,” Adam replied simply, his jaw tight. “We only take care of the glitches. Otherwise, the past and the present stand as they are. As they
were.”

“So you’d kill me but you wouldn’t go back and kill Hitler because that wasn’t your assignment.”

“We have to operate within a two decade time frame, but even if we could go back further, you’re right. We wouldn’t have killed him without a direct order like yours. But I
didn’t
kill you, did I?”

My head ached even attempting to wrap my brain around everything, but I tried to think. “I need to go home. Grab a few things. Then I can go into hiding for a while. Maybe I’ll go to Mexico or Brazil or—”