Lou shook her head slowly. “I’ve never been lucky enough to be loved the way you are. I’m envious, frankly. You should see how he looks at you. It’s disgusting.” They both giggled a bit, a hint of tears in their voices. “In times past, when you’d talk about him and lust after him. I thought you were nuts.” More laughter. “But you two were connected, somehow. Like there was a lifeline flowing through time for you both to hold onto.”
“Would you be willing to give that up, even at risk of your own life?”
Lou stood up to gaze out the window. “Just look at those flowers. Golden lantanas, purple sage, flame vines. Your aunt has one green thumb.”
“Lou.”
At Journey’s imploring tone, Lou whirled around. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. I haven’t felt what you’ve felt. My work is my lover. You dreamed about Reno and I dreamed of string theory.” She reached up to pull her own hair. “Look, Journey, you’re my friend. I can’t give my blessing for you to go back in time. Hell, I couldn’t live with your death on my conscience. I also can’t imagine you waiting the rest of your life for him to come back to you. Because that’s what you’d do. As crazy as it seems now, you waited for him for years.”
“And he came to me, Lou. He came once and he’ll do it again.”
“Maybe. You can’t be sure.” She took Journey’s hands in her own. “I can’t tell you what to do, but I can advise you.”
“I want your advice, of course.”
“All right. Let me tell you a little more about the people who vanished. The ones I’m thinking about today disappeared into thin air like the others. Their stories were very similar. Mysterious. Most were last seen in a boulder field or a mountainous area. The dogs wouldn’t track their scent and hundreds of first responders and volunteers would search the area meticulously and find nothing. Sometimes there was a shoe, for God knows what reason. But there was never any blood, no scent, no tracks, and no remains. Searchers would give up after a few weeks, they couldn’t continue searching forever. The cost is prohibitive. In these particular cases, however, their bodies were eventually found weeks or months later in a way that the authorities could not explain.”
Journey felt a chill run down her spine. “Why not?”
“Because someone would come across the body in a spot that had been searched time and time again. As far as anyone could tell, the body was found in the exact location where it had gone missing in the first place.”
“Someone put it back?”
“Possibly.”
“Or they didn’t make it through the portal.”
Lou knelt in front of her. “No one can say for sure.”
“How did they die?” Her question was asked in a soft, small voice.
“Sometimes the coroner will say hypothermia, many times they’ll say that the cause can’t be determined.”
Journey didn’t respond, but Lou had one more thing to say. “I just don’t want this to be you.”
Suddenly, they heard the sound of the kitchen door opening and closing.
“Journey?”
Reno.
She grabbed Lou’s hand. “Don’t say anything. I don’t want him to know what we talked about. I don’t want him to know I told you. Not yet.”
Lou nodded.
“Journey?”
“We’re in here!” she called out, maintaining eye contact with her friend.
“Oh, there you are.” He came into the room to take her in his arms, looking between them. “What’s going on?”
“Not a thing.” Lou clapped her hands together. “I’m about to head back to Austin to buy those stones for Kota. There’s also some work I need to take care of there.”
“But you are coming back. Right?” Reno turned a chair around and straddled it.
“I will. Yes. I’ll be back a few days before the…deadline. Or sooner if you need me.”
Reno glanced at Journey. “Okay…I guess there’s nothing you can do here.”
“I’ll keep researching and I’ll talk to Dr. Sculler again. I’ll give everything we talked about a lot of thought.”
Journey rose to walk with her friend. “I know you’ll do what you can. Please call if you think of anything or find out something you think we should know. We may take a little trip. I’m not sure.”
This was news to Reno, but he didn’t question or contradict Journey in front of Lou. He got the strange sense she was glad to see her friend go. While the women prepared for Lou’s departure, Reno sat down at the laptop. “Females, I’ll never understand them, no matter which century I’m in.”
While he’d been out on Traveler, a thought had occurred to him. When he returned to the past, he intended to expose Kinsella and his gang. He figured it would help if he knew as much about them as possible. Having seen how accessible information could be, Reno decided to see if he could find any reference to the man in history.
After logging into the browser, he followed Journey’s example and just started typing in words he thought might apply. One-fingered, of course. He wondered why in the world whoever invented these machines hadn’t put the keys in alphabetical order.
Texas. History. Raiders disguised as Indians.
He hit enter and his eyes widened. “What in the heck does New Delhi have to do with anything?”
And then he remembered and tried again.
Raiders disguised as Native Americans. Central Texas. History.
“And voila!”
Reno found a review
