“I am human, just the same as you. I just have a tattoo done with very special ink, and a pair of glasses that allows me to identify anyone else with one.”
“And all members of the Society have one of these tattoos?” I removed the glasses, turning them over in my hands, examining them.
“Not all of them, but several of those who are no longer a part of the Society do. I wear the glasses to identify potential enemies. Morrison doesn’t have the mark, but when I went to his apartment after I left you here, I found out he’s been researching the Society for over a decade.”
“The police said that he had been following me for some time now, they didn’t say anything about the Society.”
“That’s because I cleaned anything related to the Society out of his apartment. I left enough for them to lock him up for following you. They think he was watching you for more than six months, though he only started following you about three weeks ago.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s when his first photos of you were taken, I made it look like he’d been following you longer for the police. I noticed him following you a day before the first pictures, but I just thought he was some random sicko and moved on because other concerns cropped up. I should have stopped him before that ever happened, I’m so sorry.”
“What other concerns?”
“The people with tattoos like mine that have been following you.”
“Are they the ones who tried to grab me coming from the Police Station?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
“I’m guessing that I’m missing some huge chunks of information here.”
“Yes.”
I yawned and stretched. “So what happens now?”
“Tonight, you sleep. Tomorrow, I will tell you more and we will start looking for answers.”
I yawned again, “Just more? You’re not going to tell me the rest?”
He inhaled and exhaled deeply, “There will still be too much to cover it all tomorrow.”
The clock caught my attention for the first time in hours, it was 3:06 a.m. and as if by mere awareness of the time, I found my eyelids drooping. “Then I’d best go to sleep. Am I safe here, for the night?”
“Yes, I will be watching, though the surveillance you’ve had installed on the building is a good deterrent. They don’t want to be caught on camera, which is getting harder these days.”
“My friend, Jayden, is coming in the morning,” I informed him.
“I know,” he smiled. “I can’t wait to hear what she comes up with.” His expression quickly grew solemn, “You will have to cancel your plans with Bailey though.”
“That may be difficult.”
“Well, you’re not going to be here to go out to dinner. You’d better give him a reason than have him call out the National Guard to look for you.”
“You’re right.” Besides, I was running out of fingers to count how many times he’d cancelled on me in the last few weeks. “When should I expect you?”
“Late afternoon, probably around four or five o’clock. We’ll be taking your car.” He left me sitting on the couch, and opened the door to the balcony, “Now, go to sleep. You need some rest.” He closed the door and vanished.
I blinked my eyes and he literally disappeared from the balcony. He didn’t jump or climb, he was just gone. The more I knew about him, the more a mystery he was, and the more I wanted answers.
Turning out the lights before I plopped back down on the couch, I sighed and pulled my blankets over my lap. Artemis was next to me within seconds, rubbing her face against my left arm.
I hooked my arm under her and pulled her onto my lap where she immediately commenced purring. “He said I should sleep, Puss, ha! I’d like to see him try to sleep with all of the things he has and hasn’t told me, flying around in his head.”
Artemis turned her face up toward mine, “Merrrow.” She obviously agreed, but I knew I should try to sleep anyway. We rearranged ourselves so that I lay on my side with her curled up against my belly.
The rhythm of her purr and the wine worked some kind of magic over me, and despite the odds, I soon drifted off.
CHAPTER 8
09/24/2006
Wake Up Call
There was a loud pounding sound. My eyes flew open, instinctively looking directly at the clock. It was 8:04 a.m., on a Sunday no less, and someone was pounding on my door. I made the logical assumption, Jayden was back.
Normally, this wasn’t the most logical assumption, as Jay wasn’t a morning person. But, since she marched off on a mission the night before, and had a crazy addiction to coffee, it was likely she didn’t sleep. I figured she would crash out on my couch as soon as she spilled whatever she had found.
I was still bra-less, and wearing the same t-shirt and sweats as the night before, but I shuffled across the room to let her in anyway because it really didn’t matter. We’d crashed with each other enough over the years, it wasn’t like I had to get presentable.
“All right, all right already. Impatient hag,” I grumbled loud enough for her to hear as I opened the door. Jayden was not on the other side.
A man with sunglasses, wearing a trench coat, stood there smiling. “I hope you’re not disappointed; I believe you were expecting someone else.” He was not Michael. “Samantha, how wonderful we finally meet face to face.” Before I knew what was happening, he shoved me so hard I fell back and hit my head on the kitchen breakfast island, before collapsing on the floor.
He was in the door and had it bolted again as I scrambled to my feet. He merely stood there, barring my way to the door. His attire suggested he came from the Society, as Michael did, but his demeanor made it obvious he was no friend. I decided he must be one of the defectors. All the same, I asked my new favorite question, “Who are you?” Just for good measure I added, “And what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Your father’s a very old friend,” he sneered. “You may not be aware of this, but there are a great number of people who depend on him, aside from you and your mother.”
“You’ll be sorry then to hear he passed away, more than sixteen years ago,” I edged my way around the island into the kitchen area. Think Sam, think. “It’s so nice of you to come calling though. You must not have been that close? Seeing how it’s been so long.”
I wanted to bolt right then for the fire escape from the balcony, but something held me back. Here was another stranger with a mystical connection to my father. He was dangling it as bait right in front of me, and damned if I wasn’t swallowing it whole.
“My dear, your father is the one who ran away from his friends.” The stranger took a careful step forward, “He made occasional contact, on his terms, but when we had not heard from him for so long we had to come find him.”
“We? Is someone else here?” There had to be something I could use as a weapon. Nothing happens in Novica, I’d never contemplated arming myself before.
“No, it’s just me for now. Your friend - Jayden, isn’t it? - won’t be joining us here, but we’ll be with her soon enough.”
I started backing my way into the kitchen. “You’re crazy if you think I’m going anywhere with you.”
He smiled as he lunged toward me. I pulled out the silverware drawer and grabbed a steak knife just before he crashed into it. On my way past the refrigerator, I threw the freezer door in his face, and then made a break to run across the room.
Leaping to jump onto the seat and over the couch, I landed with my right foot, but he caught my left in the air. I twisted to try to kick him, but only succeeded in landing flat on my back, knocking the air from my lungs and the knife from my hand.
He dropped to his knees and straddled my midsection. I flailed and kicked, but he was much stronger, and had the dominant position. Pinning my wrists over my head, he leaned over so that blood, dripping from a gash on his forehead and his nose, splattered onto my face and hair. I had a sensation of the air being sucked out of the room as I tr
ied to breathe.
“What the-” My assailant lifted his head, but before he could turn to look behind him, someone pulled him off of me and slammed his head into the coffee table, rendering him unconscious in a heap on the floor.
Michael turned and extended his hand toward me, “If you wanted to head out earlier you could have said so last night.” He smirked, and I accepted his hand. “You okay?” I nodded, unable to speak, taking note that there was blood on his knuckles, and bruising forming on his left cheek that must have come from a recent scuffle. “Get dressed. We have to get out of here.”
He had literally appeared from nowhere; the doors and windows were all still closed and locked. “Is he?” Dead, I wanted to know if he was dead.
“Maybe, I don’t think so.”
I felt a little dizzy, but walked stiffly to my closet and with my back turned, I pulled off my t-shirt. “He said they have Jay,” I told him while I put on a bra and a clean shirt; the effort told me I was going to be more than a little sore from that fall.
“I know.” I could tell he had turned around by the way his voice bounced back to me and I knew that he was blushing by his tone. “I’m sorry; the others grabbed me just before they got her. By the time I fought them off; they had Jayden in the car and were driving away.”
“Do you know where she is?” I was hoping more than asking. I grabbed underwear and socks before heading to the bathroom to wipe the blood from my face. I left the door open, momentarily, for his response.
“No, but I know where to start looking.” Then I kicked the door shut.
The thought of anything happening to Jay because of me made me sick; I threw up in the toilet and flushed. Then I gave my teeth a cursory brushing, and put my bloody hair in a ponytail. I cleaned my face as best I could with a washcloth. The jeans I wore the day before were on top of the hamper, I pulled them on last before I was ready to re-emerge.
When I opened the door, he was scooping Artemis out of her cat tree and into a backpack I recognized from my closet. “You have some serious explaining to do.”
He situated her on his back. “We don’t want to leave her here.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about, but we can go with that first.”
“They will be here any second to clean up their mess, though it should be safe to come back in a few hours. We’ll probably be gone longer though.”
“Who are they?”
“Sam, no time now, to the car,” he tossed me my keys and handed me my purse when we met at the balcony door. “Your phone’s in the purse, let’s go!”
I kept my Blazer parked in a carport downstairs and behind the building so we took the fire escape. I didn’t care that I couldn’t lock the sliding glass door since they would obviously get in if they wanted to. We ran across the narrow alley and I got in the driver seat while Michael got in the front passenger side with Artemis.
“Where are we going?” I noted the clock on the radio read 8:48 am.
“Head up the 39 for now.”
“Toward the canyon?”
“Yes.”
We wove through the streets of Novica, turning onto the State Route 39 at the north end of town. Michael was continuously checking for signs that we were being followed, which we apparently weren’t.
When we came to a stop that I knew to be four lights away from the mouth of the canyon, he handed me a pair of sunglasses that looked much like his, only slightly smaller. “These are yours.”
“Should I put them on now?”
“You should keep them on as much as possible.” I slipped them on, finding they fit perfectly, as though made for my face. “And run from anyone you see with a mark on their forehead, unless I tell you otherwise.”
“So there are some we can trust?” The light turned green.
“Your father had more friends than enemies, though most of them probably don’t know what to believe anymore. There are a very select few that I have known for some time, and who I know are not a threat, though most all of them are concerned with the depletion of their supply of the dried fruit.”
“I suppose that would be a concern.”
“I, however, am more concerned with the fact several of them have turned up dead recently.”
I braked for the next red light, “Did they run out of fruit early?”
“No,” we stopped and I turned to look at him. “They were murdered.”
A car entered the east side of the intersection, heading west, and Michael stiffened. I could feel the driver’s stare through the windows, despite the tint that was at least ten shades darker than what passed for legal. Michael said, “Change of plans, turn right here.” The urgency in his voice told me to act now, ask questions later, so I did.
“Turn again on the next street, and park in the first place you can find,” he instructed.
I turned off onto a residential side street, and parked two houses down under a tree. Michael hit the door lock button, grabbed the keys from the ignition and pulled the back pack strap over his shoulder. He pushed up his left sleeve, revealing three watch-like devices. The time must have been included somewhere in the digital display, but there were too many complications going on in that tiny space for me decipher what they meant just then. “Loop your arm through mine, and don’t let go.”
As Michael turned a dial on the middle device, I heard tires screeching and looked up to see the black car turning onto the street. “Take a deep breath,” he warned, and there was the same sensation I felt in my apartment, the rush of air being vacuumed away, except this time I disappeared into the flash of light with Michael just as the car pulled up next to us.
***
When Michael pressed the buttons on the device, an explosion of light enveloped us completely, absorbing us into the vacuum along with the air around us. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced; I think we actually became the light for one fraction of a second. I was weightless and senseless with nothing but a blinding white brilliance all around me.
Then we were stumbling on the floor of my mother’s kitchen. The clock on the stove inexplicably read 9:43 a.m. - nearly an hour later than it should have been. Unable to speak, I looked at Michael, pleading with my eyes for an explanation.
“Yes, the clock is right. This,” he slid up his sleeve to reveal the first of his three watches again, “is what your father called a Hopper. Don’t ask me to explain how it works; I am a soldier and assassin, not a scientist.”
I shook my head in disbelief, “It’s a time machine?” This is insane.
The right corner of his mouth turned up in amusement. “I guess you would call it a compact version. From what I do understand, it opens a wormhole to a predetermined location a short time in the future. Your grandfather started work on the concept, but died before he built the prototype. Your father finished his work a couple of years later.
“In order for it to work, I have to place a device where I want to turn up in advance. I wear multiple Hoppers, and have multiple places to go.” He pulled the sleeve up on the other arm to reveal three more.
“Or escape to.” No further explanation was needed for me to understand how he was always in the right place at the right time.
“I’ll explain more later, I promise. First, I need to make sure you’re safe while I go get Jayden.” He took Mom’s keys from the hook by the garage door. “I’ll drive this time.”
CHAPTER 9
09/24/2006
Hideaway
I held Artemis on my lap in the passenger seat, and waited for Michael to speak. I felt like I was losing my mind. We were back on Route 39 before I remembered to call Bailey and cancel our date. His voicemail picked up, “Hey Bail, I’m sorry I have to cancel our plans. A client offered me an opportunity I couldn’t pass on, and I’m going up north to do some work on the project. I’m on the way to LAX, I’ll try again later.”
When I hung up, we were almost back to where we left my car. Michael finally spoke, only to say, “I’m
sorry, Sam. I know you want answers, I just don’t know where to begin right now.”
We began our winding ascent, and Artemis purred away in my lap. She’d never been particularly fond of car rides, and would normally be frantically peering out of the windows, moving from one to another. Strange as the behavior was, her calm display soothed me; my heartbeat slowed down for the first time since I met the stranger at my door.
Driving on, along the canyon and up the mountain, I watched as the chaparral thickened, and grew into a forest of pine, oak, and fir as our elevation climbed in the West Fork. We passed the sign marking two miles to the turn-off for Crystal Lake, and I was confused more by the minute; I knew the road came to an end about two miles beyond the lake. There was a landslide in nineteen seventy-eight which necessitated the closure of the last four miles of the highway that once connected it to State Route 2. California’s legislators always found some more worthy waste of tax payer dollars, so nearly three decades later, the scenic route to the North San Fernando Valley remained inaccessible.
We reached the gate blocking access to the last stretch of road, and Michael put the Land Rover in park, “Get in the driver’s seat, I’ll have you pull it through.”
Dumbfounded, I stared after him as he got out and walked to the lock on the gate, fumbling in his pocket. He produced a key, and looked over his shoulder at me as he bent to insert it, jerking his head toward the driver’s seat to indicate I should move. Shocked back into control of my limbs, I scrambled over the center console, noting the dashboard clock read 10:33 a.m.
He swung the bright yellow bars open wide enough for me to drive through, so I did. In the rearview mirror, I saw him draw them together again, and replace the chains and padlock. I started to climb over the center console again as he opened the passenger door. “You can stay there; I have to get out again.”
“Umm, I hope you know where we’re going, ‘cause last time I checked this road doesn’t go through.” I felt it was my duty to inform him as I had checked once, when I was nineteen.
He smiled, “I do. It’s not far, but we’ll have to do some walking.”
I drove slowly around the next curve. Once we were out of sight of the roadblock, he said, “Here, stop,” and got out.