Rita saw the men in black before they saw her.She didn’t recognize them.That was odd.Agents like her were always briefed on who they were and where they were deployed before a jump.
Were theytheirmen in black?How they stood, the way they were dressed, the careful way they appeared to not be looking around, screamed men in black.
All of them and what they wore and did was pretty consistent across time—with minor clothing adjustments to where they were in time, of course—which was kind of funny.
So why wasn’t she laughing?
Because they weren’t supposed to be here, for one.This event had spawned them, but for now, in this place, the main actors were military.She wasn’t sure when they’d appeared in history.It hadn’t mattered because this was her first close encounter with them.
She took a careful second look.Nope, she didn’t recognize them.Did they have height and build requirements?The pair were remarkably similar.Weirdly similar.Weren’t they supposed to be off-grid?Instead of low key, they looked sinister and a bit creepy.
Was this an anomaly she was supposed to recognize?Or part of the test?She had another thought, but dismissed it.
If there were others traveling through time—a non-agency group—they’d have told them.It was too dangerous not to know they weren’t alone out here.
Her lips twitched as this circled her thoughts back to aliens.Well, in way they were aliens.They sure as heck weren’t supposed to be here.
She found a bit of shade and stepped into it, glad for even the smidgeon of cooling it provided, and studied them, looking for that giveaway waver—yes, there is was.It was somewhat like the heat haze on a horizon, but there wasn’t a horizon here where there were buildings on every side.
They’d positioned themselves so they could see almost everyone and their sunglasses hid their eyes, so she couldn’t see if they were looking at her or someone else.
She didn’t want them to see her watching them for too long, so she made sure to direct her gaze to the other people waiting for the press conference to begin.
There were enough of the usual suspects in the crowd—and no time ripples around them.Nothing new to see here but the men in black—wait.There was someone she hadn’t seen before.
He stood in the scant shade of a building overhang, his shoulders propped against said building.She might be jealous.His patch of shade was bigger than hers.
The face wasn’t familiar but his stance was.
Confident, a hint of cocky.Military?Not that unusual in this post-war time.Almost all the guys had done some kind of war service.
Something about the way he leaned against the building made her think he was a pilot.Well, if he was a pilot and had survived the war, he’d earned the right to be as cocky as he liked.It took nerve and resolve to climb into the cockpit of something that could fall out of the sky—or explode in a ball of fire.
It had been pilots who tested those early time travel devices—some of them dying more than once when it had become possible to clean up past mistakes.
That would have been a trip, she thought, digging into a vintage colloquialism for the term.Dying in the 1800s and coming back to life a few centuries later.And doing it more than once.
The agency claimed they didn’t remember dying.Something in their eyes made her wonder about that.
Since she wasn’t supposed to have thoughts like that, she studied the possible pilot some more.He was nice to look at.
Tall and lanky, he had a face her eyes didn’t mind lingering on at length.Brown hair a little long, but if he’d been mustered out of the military after the war, he could have let it grow.She’d noticed that some guys kept their military cut and others didn’t.
She couldn’t see his eyes—she was too far from him for that—and wondered if she’d ever know their color.If she could step close and look up at him, what would she see in his eyes?
His pose was a bit on the bored side.Would that be echoed in his eyes?
She learned a lot from looking into people’s eyes—unless they were like her trainer, John, and had a permanent closed sign in place.The trouble with John, she didn’t need to see into eyes and truth be told, she didn’t want to.
Maybe that was why all the men in black hid behind sunglasses.Like that helped them look less sinister.
The cute pilot looked in their direction.Well, the two men did stand out wearing black suits, shirts buttoned up and ties, in this heat.For a supposedly super-secret organization, their clothes and aspects screamed super-secret, but not good at the super-secret part.
What did he think of them, she wondered?Could he sense the aura of menace that they projected?They might look a bit comical, but everyone she knew advised stepping warily around them.
The guy’s shoulders gave a twitch and he looked away from the two men, his gaze suddenly meeting hers across the dry, hot stretch of ground.
Brown, she realized.Brown and intelligent, aware in a way that wasn’t creepy.And no sign of boredom.She wanted to keep looking, which was weird and interesting.
