The Time-Traveling Outlaw (8 page)

He looked her straight in the eyes. He wasn’t the oldest lawman in the state, but he was getting up there. He’d dealt with a bellyful of bad people in his life, and she knew he had a pretty keen eye for sniffing out lies. She saw his eyes soften as he realized she was likely telling the truth.

“Aw, hell,” he said. “I’m sorry, Sally, but I’m still gonna have to search every inch of this place. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be—”

“—doing your job,” she finished. “I know, Sheriff. It’s fine.” She cinched the sash on her robe tight. “I was about to make some coffee. Is that all right?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “You go right ahead.”

She began to fill the kettle, then turned to look over her shoulder. “Would you like me to make some for you and your men? Maybe fry you up some eggs as well?”

“Oh, come on now, Sally,” he said, actually blushing a little. Here his men were sniffing in every little corner of her house and barn, and she was offering to cook them breakfast. “You don’t need to go to any trouble.”

“It’s no trouble, Sheriff,” she said. “My hens are plopping out more eggs than I can eat by myself. And Sturgess has seen to it that no one in town will buy anything from me. Someone might as well eat them.”

He gave her a smile and a little shake of the head. Then he pulled up a kitchen chair and sat down. “I don’t think you know where he is,” he said. “I can see that. But I reckon you’re not too upset to learn he’s out.”

Sally put the kettle on and got out her frying pan. “No, I’m not,” she said. “Would you mind much telling me how it happened?”

Hoskins let out a little laugh. “Why not,” he said. “Damnedest thing I ever seen. I stayed at the office myself til just past midnight. He was in his cell then. I know that for sure. He was sitting up in the cot, his back propped against the wall, one knee up. Looked relaxed, like it wasn’t his first time behind bars.”

It wasn’t, of course, but Sally didn’t offer up that information. She could see him in her mind, sitting there in the cell.

“I wanted at least two men there at all times,” he went on. “Pete took over for me, and we actually had two other men there through the night. They were sitting not ten feet from him, playing cards. Pete got up to take a p—, um, to relieve himself at some point. He figures sometime between three and four. And they said he was just gone. The cell was empty. No, that ain’t right. Not quite empty.”

Sally paused cracking an egg and turned to the Sheriff. “What do you mean?”

Hoskins was shaking his head. “His clothes,” he said. “They was laid out on his cot like he was getting ready for Sunday service, just like he’d been lying there. His hat was on the pillow, his shirt below that, and his pants stretched out, the boots tucked into the legs.”

Yes, Sally thought, that was strange. But then, she found herself not being nearly as surprised as she would have expected. Everything about Logan Carter had been strange.

“What do you think happened?” Sally asked.

Hoskins took off his hat and scratched his head. “Well, near as I can figure, the prisoner took off his clothes and placed them on the bed in the manner I just described. Then he somehow squeezed through the bars and made his way out of the building.”

As he said it out loud, Sally could tell he didn’t believe his own theory. It was outlandish.

“He’s a big man,” Sally said. “How do you figure he squeezed through the bars?”

Hoskins put his hat back on his head. His brow was knotted the whole time. He didn’t look comfortable at all. “Maybe he greased himself up. We served him beef roast and mashed taters for an evening meal. Miss Popper fixed it up and brought it over. He didn’t touch it, or so we thought. Maybe he rubbed the meat on his chest and legs. There’s no window in that cell, so he had to get through the bars.”

“All without any of your three men seeing him,” she said. “Sitting ten feet away.”

“That’s right,” he finally looked her in the eyes. “Like I said before, it’s the damnedest thing I ever heard of.”

Sally turned back around to crack the egg in the skillet. It sizzled, the whites bubbling up along the edges. She felt a smile form on her lips. She just couldn’t help it. 

What was the first thing he had ever asked her? What year was it?

Yes, she had to agree with Sheriff Hoskins. This was also the damnedest thing she had ever heard of. She cracked another egg and wondered exactly where Logan was.

He lay on the cot in the jailhouse, thinking to himself just how stupid it had been to go straight at Sturgess. But he’d had to see the man for himself. Now he had, and there was no doubt. Harken Sturgess was a direct descendent of Camden Sturgess. How many generations was that? Seven? Eight? 

It didn’t really matter, did it? The idea that he’d run into another Sturgess, this far in the past, seemed beyond coincidental. The universe or God or something was trying to tell him something. He hadn’t been sent here by mistake. 

And yet, he may have already screwed everything up by being an idiot. How had that little man, Winston, gotten the drop on him? However it had happened, it damned sure wouldn’t happen again.

“Full house!” one of the men yelled from the table just a stone’s throw from the cell. Three of them sat at a small round table, a lamp hanging from a hook on the wall. 

“Dammit, Pete,” another one said. “That’s three hands in a row.”

Pete had a long, scraggly black beard, and it shook as he laughed and plucked the money from the middle of the table. “Maybe we ought to play something more your speed,” he said. “How bout a nice game of checkers?”

“Just shut up and deal.”

Logan watched them, their shadows flickering against the far wall. He didn’t know what time it was. Late, that was all he knew. He pulled the brim of his hat down over his eyes and put his chin on his chest. Maybe even with the noise of the men he might still be able to get a little sleep. He’d reevaluate his position tomorrow. It certainly didn’t look good, but maybe he could figure a way out of this mess.

As he began to nod off, he thought of Sally. He’d been wrong about her. Superficially she was like his Natalie, but once he’d gotten to know her a little, they were worlds apart. Sally had a strength in her, a kind of fire, that he didn’t think he’d ever seen in a woman. Here she was, living at the edge of a new civilization, her husband brutally murdered. And she was hanging on. No, not just that. She was fighting for what was hers. 

On top of all that, she was beautiful. He could see her long blonde hair, her wide hazel eyes, little flecks of green in the iris. He could see, and almost taste, her soft, red lips. He regretted not doing something when he had the chance. There had been a dozen different moments since he’d arrived that he could have moved close to her, taken her in his arms, kissed her long and deep. He could feel his hands on her body, pressing her tight into him. He would have cupped the back of her neck, tilted her head back, and kissed her soft, white throat. He would have—

A bright white light lit the backs of his eyelids. He felt a horrible, familiar ripple of static electricity permeate his body, down to the tips of his fingers and toes.

It’s happening
, he thought.
They finally found me
.

Then that thought was washed out by a flash of pain, radiating out from his spine. He arched his back and began to scream, but the light filled everything.

He awoke, lying in a chair, his whole body aching. His teeth chattered, not from cold, but from the twitch of his muscles. He was shaking all over.

Logan felt someone grab his right arm, and half a second later the same sensation on the left. They were pinning him down, and he was too weak and disoriented to resist.

“Can you hear me?” a voice said, sounding distant.

He opened his eyes, everything a blur. Blue-white fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.

“Carver,” the voice said again, louder this time. “Can you hear me?”

He squinted at the overhead lights, though the place where he was now was mostly dark. A face came into view, round and fat. The man wore glasses. Curly hair covered his chin. It took Logan a few moments to recognized him, because he was different. The details were off.

“Sam?” Logan said weakly. 

The fat man’s face spread into a grin. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that’s right.” Sam stepped back, and to the right Logan could see two more figures: a short Japanese man dressed all in black and…him.

“Welcome back,” Sturgess said, a feral grin spreading across his face. Then he turned to Sam. “Can he hear me? Is there any brain damage?”

Sam pulled a pen light out of the pocket of his lab coat. Had the pocket been on the other side when Logan had last been here? With a click of the thumb, the light came on, and Sam propped open Logan’s right eye with his thumb and forefinger as he waved the light across his field of vision. Logan flinched, but restraints held his arms and legs now. Sam did the same to his left eye.

“Pupil response is normal,” Sam said. “Give me some time to run some diagnostics.”

“I hear you just fine,” Logan said. He’d thought about keeping his mouth shut, but he couldn’t resist. 

Sturgess took a step forward and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Incredible,” he said. “Who would have thought you would have been the first success?”

Logan looked at Sturgess. His face was the same, with his slicked-back hair, wolfish features, and dark eyes. Logan dropped his gaze to the man’s suit, the same gray pinstripe as before. But something was different. The tie! Before it had been yellow. Now it was a deep maroon.

Logan’s head was beginning to clear, and a realization was beginning to seep in. He had gone to the past, and when he had returned, the world was different. Just how different, he didn’t yet know. The changes so far were small, but distinct. The style of a beard. The color of a tie. And yet, he had only been in the past for about a day. What if he could stay longer? What if the changes he could make could be more significant?

He looked at Sturgess’s face, so much like his ancestor, and the seed of an idea began to germinate in his mind.

“Run your tests,” Sturgess said to Sam. He then nodded at Kazu before looking back down at Logan’s naked body. “And cover him up.” Sturgess walked away from Sam and Logan, the familiar sound of his heels clicking on the concrete floor. His man Kazu gave Logan a quick glance, then fell in behind him. They walked perhaps twenty paces away, out of the light that fell in the center of the warehouse. There they stood in darkness, facing each other and whispering.

Sam began to place monitoring pads across Logan’s body, first on his forehead, then his chest. 

“They’re deciding what to do with you,” Sam said. “You’ve made it quite difficult by coming back alive and sane.”

“Glad to disappoint them,” Logan said. “What about you? You don’t look too happy, either.”

“This is my life’s work,” he said. “It finally worked, so yes, I should be pleased.” He attached pads to Logan’s thighs.

“But?”

Sam’s eyes flicked to the two men talking in the shadows. “Just please be quiet while I take these readings.” He took a tablet from a nearby table and began to type on it.

Logan realized if he was going to do something, he needed to do it now. It was entirely possibly they would just gather as much data as they could and then dispose of him. He had been a success, yes, but they might be able to get enough information to help them going forward. Maybe they didn’t necessarily need him. Even if they didn’t intend to kill him, there was no way they would send him back, and he desperately needed to go back. He needed to see her again, but now there were also things he needed to do, one in particular.

“Took you a while to find me, huh?” Logan said.

“Please,” Sam said, looking back over his shoulder before typing more on the pad.

“Which is funny,” Logan said, “because the first thing I did when I got there was to put my finger down my throat and make myself throw up that pill you made me swallow.”

Sam let out a little snort. “That’s not how it works,” he said. “The entangled temporal particles had already dispersed throughout your system.”

Logan had known more than a few geeks and techs in his life, and one thing they all had in common was that they loved to explain what they were working on. They just couldn’t help telling the world how smart they were. 

“How
does
it work?” Logan asked.

Sam glanced back at the men one more time, but there was a sparkle in his eye. Logan could see he had him on the hook. 

“Okay,” Sam said. “Basically it works like this. We have to find an object from the time period we want to visit. Every atom in your body is as old as the universe itself, but if enough atoms exist in a centralized space in a particular time period, they act as a sort of temporal anchor. Do you see?”

Logan wasn’t sure he did, but he nodded anyway. “Yeah. Go on.”

Sam put the table down and rubbed his hands together excitedly. Working under Sturgess, he probably didn’t have many chances to explain his work, and it was probably killing him.

“The object needs to be large enough to have a critical mass of atoms that coexisted next to each other for a particular stretch of time,” Sam went on. “What I do is, I then extract a small number of subatomic particles from the anchor, and essentially entangle them with the atoms in the subject’s body. The temporal disjunction between the particles from the anchor and the subject’s own temporal signature naturally generates a temporal displacement field. Just a small amount of energy introduced at the edge of the field causes the subject to flicker out of this time period and into the time of the anchor.”

Logan thought he might understand now, at least enough. “And the anchor is how you found me again, and brought me back?”

Sam’s eyes lit up, like a teacher realizing their pupil finally grasped a particularly difficult lesson. “Yes!” he said, raising his voice without meaning to. Sturgess and Kazu looked over.

“Everything all right over there?” Sturgess called out. 

“Yes, sir,” Sam said, the grin disappearing from his face. He picked the tablet back up again and put his head down.