He shook his head. “We don’t want money.”
“What we want,” Harris, the blond one, said, “is to get this finished so I can get home. I have vacation time coming to me.”
The dark-haired man scowled at him. “Have a little respect, would you?”
Harris held up his hands. “What is with you tonight, Adam? You’re acting bizarre. This is just another job.”
That’swho he reminded me of. The little boy from last week. Adam was his name too. Same black hair, same blue eyes. However, this guy was a whole lot more than seven years old – by at least twenty years.
“What happened with the bus?” Harris asked. “How’d you miss getting creamed?”
“Somebody grabbed me. Pushed me out of the way.”
“Really?” His eyebrows went up. “Well, that’s unlikely.”
I scowled at him. “Unlikely or not, that’s what happened. Butwhat difference does it make? And these Books of Fate . . . I don’t understand why it makes any damn difference. I almost got hit but I didn’t. So what?”
“Because you being alive right now when your name is on the list to die today is wrong. It has the potential to screw up the future.”
“Says who?”
“Says us,” Harris said, then he grinned. “Because that’s where we’re from.”
I gaped at him. “Sure you are.”
“I know it’s hard for you to believe, Sophie, but it’s true,” Adam said. “We are from the future. We’re part of a government organization that regulates fate, according to the Books, and controls any potential fluctuations that affect the future. It’s an important job and one we must take very seriously.”
Something slid behind his gaze as he said it despite his confident words. Regret? Why would he feel regret about this?
Then it dawned on me what these two crazy men were getting at.
“So because the bus didn’t kill me,” I began, my voice barely audible, “because I didn’t die on the day your so-called Books of Fate said I would, you’ve been sent here to finish the job?”
“Holy shit,” Harris said, amused. “And they say blondes are dumb. This one’s a regular brainiac. Impressive.”
I was shaking now, harder than before. “You’re going to kill me?”
“That’s the general idea,” Harris confirmed. “I’ll make it quick, though. I promise.”
“But . . .” I swallowed hard. “But why would you even bother to explain this to me? Why wouldn’t you just kill me outside the gallery?”
“Because it’s policy to explain what’s going on first,” Adam said. “It’s an important part of the process – for you to understand why we have to do this.”
“Istilldon’t understand. This is wrong and you have to know that.” I shook my head and felt hot tears slide down my cheeks. I felt utterly helpless tied to the chair. These men planned to kill me and I couldn’t even fight for my life.
“What I want to know is who yanked you out of that bus’s path this morning.” Harris pulled a gun out of a shoulder holster under his black coat. “It’s a fucking mystery to me. It’s as though they knew what was going to happen.”
Adam looked at him. “You think it was one of us? Somebody with access to the Books of Fate? And they might have travelled back in time to save her?”
I couldn’t keep my eyes off that shiny silver gun Harris now held with ease – the one he was going to end my life with. Fix the mistake. Erase the budding artist before she’d even had a chance to live just because her name was listed in a book somewhere in the future.
It didn’t matter if I believed them or not. My belief in time travel or fate didn’t change what was going to happen here one little bit.
“Yeah,” Harris said, grinning. “But that would be a really stupid move, wouldn’t it? And what would the motivation be?”
“Don’t know.” Adam shook his head. He’d barely taken his eyes off me since the lights came on. “Maybe somebody who’s started to doubt our missions. Somebody wondering if we’re sent out as an easy answer to a difficult problem. Somebody who has begun to question exactly what fate is and why we need to kill innocent people just because we’re told to. Somebody who never questioned these things until he saw the name Sophie Shaw in the Books and it jarred him out of his obedient daze enough that he travelled back twenty years through time to pull her out of the way of that bus.”
My eyes widened a little during his insightful speech.
