He was gone.
In the agency records, he was listed as missing in time, presumed dead.
But he wasn’t dead.Whatever she’d felt for him, kept the connection alive.And she had a feeling she knew why he’d left but she wasn’t sure what he looked for.
Alice, her mind?He needed more knowledge that he couldn’t get on his own.She knew that much.
She’d helped him get part of the way to where he wanted to be.
And now she had to stop him before he got all the way to…where?What?
Somewhere in time.
Smoking helped him think, so Alastor often came to this time where it was still legal.It was a pattern of sorts and therefore dangerous, but he never picked the same terrace for his smoking and thinking.Or the same continent.
The world was still a big place—one made larger when one threw in the ability to move through time.Someday he should do the math on the odds of matching him to both a time and an inconsistent place.He could go somewhere that had the capability to do that math, but he liked going old school.
And Stella would be watching all the technologically superior places.She wouldn’t be able to imagine him going rustic.
She didn’t know him as well as she thought she did.
Poor Stella.Poor brilliant Stella.He’d thought she might be what he needed.It was ironic that she’d been smart enough to help him realize she wasn’t.
He’d almost told her.She’d have understood.She’d lost a child, too, though left was a better description for what she’d done.Abandoned an even better one.And that was why he hadn’t told her.
Her guilt was different from his.
He knew where else she’d be watching for him.He’d never said it, but he knew she suspected him.
She believed he wanted her daughter.
And he did.But not in the way she thought.
No, she’d never really known him.
He glanced at his watch.It looked authentic to the time if anyone were to look at it.Only he could see the butterfly fluttering behind the constantly moving numbers.
June, 1960
It was a perfect day for flying and for watching flying.The airshow was crowded with excited spectators and a good many pilots had turned up with their aircraft.
Jack Hamilton adjusted his cap so it cast more of a shadow on his face as he moved easily toward the line of parked planes.He looked resolutely away from the B-17.He wasn’t that pilot anymore.It was crazy to miss theTime Machine.It was long gone and he was happy no one was shooting at him.But she’d been there when they needed her.
He did miss the feeling of rising into the sky, the throb of engines beneath him, and the rush and push as the plane lifted off.
Yeah, he did miss that.
He didn’t miss it enough to risk being spotted by, say, some rogue time travelers.If he were looking for him, this is where he’d look; at airshows, but not on the ground.He’d look at the pilots.So Jack didn’t fly where he could be spotted and possibly photographed.
He didn’t think the opposition knew who he was, even though they’d gotten pretty close to wiping he and Mel out of time.But there were easier ways to get rid of someone.Just go further in the past when they were vulnerable to accidents and such.
But you had to know who they really were to do that.
Who they really were.
Sometimes, he didn’t know who he really was.The person he was, had jumped over his life, arriving in a future he was happy to live in with Mel.
But unlike her, because he didn’t have her photographic memory, he’d just get flashes from that other life.
