“We were a moving target for them or for time itself.,” Mel reminded him.This place hadn’t exactly moved, but time had shifted around them.Mel had seen it happening, and it gotten so bad, Jack had seen it, too.“And that seemed to be more about Alice.”
Alice definitely had some form of “time sight.”It sounded a bit woo-woo but Mel didn’t know what else to call it.
“Has she…” Jack stopped, as if unsure what to ask.
“She says nothing so far.That could change, of course.”Time changed and time didn’t change.That was one reason her brain went into merry-go-round mode.It was both a blessing and curse, having a photographic memory.
She remembered it all.If she wanted to stay with the merry-go-round metaphor, the memories appeared from different views, as if she were on a different horse at times.
“Even if she isn’t having difficulties,” Jack said, “any move they make could still be about her.”
“Yes.Alice would be valuable to them,” Mel agreed.Her mind and her oh so interesting power source?Both had sped up their efforts and efficiency.
“So, a trap.”
Jack had obviously circled back to their main concern.Had they sent Con into a trap?The fact that they couldn’t find him didn’t feel like a good omen.
“What would it look like?”Jack asked.
“Alice thinks it would have to be a consistent sighting of someone—like the girl she found.”This was where super-smarts could work against you.
“But Con is under orders not to approach her.”
“And we have a picture of them walking away from the press conference together.”
“He could have been following her.”Jack didn’t sound that hopeful when he offered this option.
“We can hope they weren’t side by side,” even though that is what it looked like, Mel added silently.It had looked to her as if the girl had her hand tucked in the crook of his elbow.
“And now these men in black,” Jack said, then sighed.
Men in black where they weren’t supposed to be either.
“Why are they sticking out like a sore thumb?”Mel rubbed her head.Her gaze lifted to meet Jack’s.
“Only reason I can think of, they wanted us to see them.”
“There’s another reason,” Mel said, her grasp on Jack’s hand tightening.“They wanted Con and the girl to see them, to provoke a reaction.”
“To provoke one or both of them into coming here.”His tone was flat with menace.
“We’ll need to plan for that,” Mel said.
Jack rubbed his face.“Yeah.”
Red bent over a map they’d bought from a gas station, tracing what she assumed were different routes out of town.
Rita had a local tourist guide and was flipping through its pages, not even sure what she hoped to find.It was a very short guide with newsprint that smudged easily.
Later, there would be a lot more pages, a lot more to see.It would have been fun to be here then, at the height of the alien anniversary celebrations.
Well, even if there weren’t aliens—and Rita still wasn’t sure—their people were alien to this time and place.So technically, the celebrations were legit.
Not for the first time, she wondered what had set it all off.Why this decision to travel into the past?Why the focus on better and more efficient time travel when the trips just messed things up and launched more alien sighting stories?
In the front facing part of the agency, where Rita operated, they were told that all they did was conduct research on what went wrong, so that they wouldn’t make the same mistakes in the future.
That had seemed like a worthy goal and she’d dived in headfirst—not just to help but because the excitement of traveling through time was a heady trip.
