There were always minor variations in who was here and who wasn’t.Human choice added its own variable to time’s flow.But they were also oddly consistent, as in the same faces rotated in and out.
Because of the time instability, Rita began to look for who was new, rather than anyone who’d been here before.
Besides her, of course.This was her first time.Could she be the reason for the rising instability?
Why had she been sent here?Her presence was more likely to hide the problem, rather than find it.They should have sent someone who’d been here before, at least that was the current recommendation.
Like time itself, those recommendations must be a moving target.
So why was she here, she asked herself again?She didn’t frown.Girls in swingy dresses didn’t frown.
The instability flickered harder, before settling back into an annoyed pulsing.
Was this a test of some kind?She was due for a promotion—which were based on the number of missions—not time with the agency.Was that why she’d been sent on so many trips?And if this was a test…why did she feel uneasy?
She hadn’t done anything she shouldn’t—other than enjoy herself.Did it violate some unspoken rule?She’d been with the agency long enough to know there were rumbling and hidden depths that stayed mostly out of sight of most agents.
Okay, she felt it, she didn’t know it.This feeling came from her gut—which she trusted even more than her time sense.
Her gut told her that John—none of them used surnames for safety reasons—wasn’t an ordinary instructor.She’d read the subtle surprise when he’d supervised her first few jumps.
It had been a relief when he’d vanished as abruptly as he’d appeared.Even if she hadn’t known he was higher up the chain, her gut hadn’t liked him at all.
John hid himself very deeply, but that alone was a warning sign he was a dangerous man.She supposed the agency needed dangerous people.Time travel was a risky business.But he still made her uneasy.
And his attention had changed something with the support staff.They’d treated her differently after that.They weren’t rude, but she’d sensed a distance between them and her, a wariness that hadn’t been there before.
It was too bad because she could have learned the off-book stuff from them, instead of having to figure it out on her own.
Things like how far you could push the monitoring from the recall device embedded in her back.It was part-data collector and part dead man’s switch.They couldn’t risk leaving an out-of-time corpse lying around.
She heard the rising murmur of voices, just around the next corner and picked up the pace just a bit.That was a mistake.It sent the inner flames rising higher.
She glanced at her wrist watch again.She wasn’t late.And then she almost grinned.Was it possible to be late when traveling through time?
Roswell, New Mexico, 1947
Con stood in the shadows, watching the cluster of press and locals waiting for the Air Force’s press conference.
He had two reasons for hanging back.The first, he needed to recover from his landing—his first time not using theRay.It had been too risky to send an alien looking craft into the heart of an alien conspiracy situation.Even he knew that.
He hadn’t liked it, liked it even less now that he’d jumped out of a plane at high altitude without a parachute.
He might have balked, but he couldn’t let a girl show him up.And Ty, the liar, had told him it was as easy as stepping off the curb.
Right, if the curb was thirty thousand feet high.
It was a crazy ride.One minute he was tumbling through the air, the next standing on the street without even a wobble in his knees and wondering where the heck he was.
He felt like he deserved a medal for managing to orient himself, find out where and when he was without sounding like a loon, and making it to the press conference—the whole reason he was here.
With the photograph of the girl firmly fixed in his mind, all he had to do was observe her and then return and report.
Other than the high altitude drop, it was a butt easy mission.
The trouble with time travel, according to Jack Hamilton, was that it could change.Just because they had a photograph of the girl here in Roswell around this time, that didn’t mean she’d be here this time.
But…and here was the kicker.If she wasn’t here, it might indicate that she was indeed a time traveler.But her being there might indicate the same thing.It depended on where he found her.
