“Do you think Rita can really see time?”he asked suddenly.
Mel didn’t seem perturbed by his sudden topic shift.She was quiet for several seconds.“I think she believes it.”
“I guess only time will tell.”
Mel lifted her head and gave him a look.
Jack followed this platitude up with a grin.And he was bending his head to grab a kiss when the intercom buzzed.
He sighed and reach over to press the button without letting Mel go.
“Rita says there’s something really wrong,” Con said, his voice flattened by the old school tech.
Mel’s chin came up and she twisted to look at their bulletin board, slash, weird time sensor.
“Oh dear,” Mel said.
They’d stopped to eat in Cody and now Alice looked around her with interest she didn’t have to hide.Everyone that was clearly a tourist was also bemused by the interior of the Irma Hotel’s restaurant and bar.
She was so amazed, she had to clamp her mouth shut to keep it from falling open.
It gleamed with chrome, was well-lit, with reflective mirrors, while still managing to be dim and mysterious.Animal heads loomed out of the shadows.The old bar stretched down a decent length of the room.
“It’s haunted,” she heard someone at the next table say.
Alice could believe it.It felt eerily like stepping into the past—or at least a different time.She’d come from the past, after all.
While they waited for their food, Ty studied the little pile of paper with all the things to see and do in the area.They’d decided before they got here they couldn’t just drive straight through to the relocation center site.
In theory, no one was watching them.In reality, no one was probably watching them.It just felt like someone or something was watching them.
So the plan was to find their reserved slot at the RV park and check things out, do the tourist thing.
There was also a kind of trolley tour of some kind that might give them a better sense of the city.
They’d be tourists for at least one day, and depending on how they felt, maybe even two days.
It wasn’t that she didn’t feel urgency.Maybe it was because she did, that she felt they needed to take extra care.Or maybe it was just that she felt so exposed after her time at Muroc where she’d met Ty.Muroc.It was called Edwards Air Force Base now.
And that had been followed by a new life in the silo.Living underground.For the most part and she hadn’t minded that part because she’d finally been able to use all of her brain without hiding anything.
It was ironic that the most free she’d ever felt was while hiding under the ground.
And it made her smile to realize her last outing had been to Palm Springs the day she met Ty.If she didn’t count ending up in the desert and almost dying as an outing.
She considered and decided she couldn’t count that.An outing should at least be a little fun.
Their food came and they tucked in, grateful to have a real meal instead of fast food.Alice almost grinned at herself.Her first few days on the road, the fast food had fascinated her.Now she enjoyed the meatloaf and mashed potatoes.
At the end of the meal, they rose and paid with cash.No way they were leaving a credit card trail for someone to follow.
The sun had temporarily beat back the storm that had been threatening when they ducked inside the Irma.
Alice held up a hand to shade her eyes while she pulled out her sunglasses.
It took her a few seconds for her eyes to catch up with her sense that something was wrong.She carefully studied her surroundings.The street was the same—but not the same.
When they went into the Irma, the cars had been parked parallel.Now they were diagonal.And those vehicles were from another decade in time.The buildings had changed, too, not completely, but their facades.
