“Vanessa!” Hannah exclaimed, turning and instinctivelyreaching for her bag.
“Don’t even think about it,” replied her enemy, covering herwith the same laser weapon she had previously threatened Alice with. “Drop thebag.”
“How did you know I’d be here?” asked Hannah as shecomplied.
“Oh really, did you think I’d be naïve enough not to knowyou and the others would try something like this? I’ve been one step ahead ofyou all the way. You know when you all had that cosy little get-together at theTurf? I was there, listening to every word.”
Hannah knew she was in the most dangerous situation she hadfaced in her whole life, and the only weapon she had left was words. Her onlyhope was that she could somehow appeal to the woman’s better nature.
“Look, Vanessa, is this really all worth it? We know whatyou’re trying to do, but you can’t make Josh love you.”
“Oh, I can,” she said. “I’ve got the resources of the mostadvanced scientific institute in the world behind me. Do you know we makemind-altering drugs for some of the biggest secret service organisations in theworld? We can make people do or think whatever we want them to.”
“And is that really what you want? Can’t you see that itwouldn’t be real? You may as well build one of your androids to look like Joshand programme that to adore you.”
“Oh, it’s all very well for you, with your lovey-doveyrelationship with Peter Perfect, isn’t it? Well, you can kiss that goodbyebecause you won’t be seeing him again.”
She raised the weapon threateningly. Hannah knew at thatpoint her number was almost certainly up so she decided she may as well go downin a blaze of glory.
“Said in the jealous tone of a pathetic, inadequate womanwho can’t find love herself so resorts to hating those who have,” said Hannah.“The truth of the matter is, no matter what you do to me or any of us, nothingcan take away the fact that Peter and I have had the most amazing, beautifullife together, something you’ll never have, with Josh or anyone else.”
She knew she had signed her own death warrant with thisrant, but what did it matter? Vanessa would have killed her anyway, and she wasdamned if she was going to lower herself to pleading for the mercy that herkiller clearly didn’t possess. At least she could be proud of her final words.
“Bitch!” hissed Vanessa as she squeezed the trigger on herweapon, letting out the distinctive, high-pitched whistling sound it madebefore it disintegrated Hannah into nothingness with its single blue bolt.
“That was fun,” remarked Vanessa to the empty space whereHannah had been standing. With every kill she enjoyed it more, and she wouldn’thave to wait long to claim her next victim.
Peter never stood a chance. Hannah had said she wouldreappear a few seconds after she had left. When it was Vanessa who appearedinstead, he knew things must have gone terribly wrong.
“What…” he began.
“Let me cut you short there,” she interrupted. “I can’t bebothered to go through a lot of chit-chat again: I’ve just had all that withyour dead wife. So, I think I’ll just do this.”
She raised the gun and blasted Peter into oblivion, amusedat the casual manner in which she’d despatched him. She lifted the gun to herlips and blew some imaginary smoke off the end like a cowboy in an old westernmovie, an evil smile spreading across her cruel, heartless face.
“And now for all the others,” she said.
Chapter Sixteen
May 2058
Josh was getting extremely worried. Peter had promised tocheck in with him as soon as Hannah had been scheduled to return, and he hadheard nothing for nearly twelve hours.
All attempts to contact both of them had failed.Consequently, Josh had called Charlie, Kaylee and Lauren together for whatamounted to a council of war.
Keen to stay out of public sight, the four of them weremeeting upstairs in The Red Lion. Lauren’s living room, where she liked to slobout and watch TV on the evenings when she wasn’t working, was a complete mess.
“For goodness’ sake, Lauren, you could have tidied thisplace up a bit before we got here,” complained Kaylee, moving various items ofdiscarded underwear off the sofa and looking disapprovingly at thepyramid-shaped collection of takeaway boxes on the coffee table.
She sat down and pulled a black bra out of the gap betweenthe seat cushions of the red fabric sofa.
“Whose is this?” she asked, looking at the flimsy garment.“That’s not your cup size.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” said Lauren. “I had a couple offriends up here last night for a bit of a party after the pub closed and thingsgot a little lively.”
“Don’t they always?” said Kaylee, who wasn’t in the leastbit surprised after so many years of hearing about Lauren’s antics.
“For goodness’ sake,” said an extremely worried-lookingJosh. “Can we skip the usual banter and get on to business. We’re all interrible danger, and Lauren, I don’t think you’ve any concept of theseriousness of the situation.”
“It’s kind of hard to get my head around it,” she said. “Youtell me someone I’ve no memory of ever meeting has disappeared and history’sbeen changed, but it all seems perfectly normal to me.”
“But you remember Peter and Hannah? Both of them have nowdisappeared.”
“Of course,” said Lauren.
“Why can she remember them, but she can’t remember Alice?”asked Kaylee.
“It might be because it is their current selves that Vanessa’sgot to. If she killed Hannah after she went back into the past, it would be ourHannah, not a past Hannah, so her timeline up to the present day would remainintact,” said Charlie.
“What about Peter? He didn’t go back in time with Hannah,”asked Kaylee.
“She must have got him, too, otherwise we would have heardfrom him,” said Josh. “Maybe she got them both before Hannah even went back intime. She must have got wind of what they were up to and stopped them.”
“By stopped, do you mean she killed them?” asked Kaylee.
“That’s what she did to the others,” replied Josh. “We haveto assume the worst.”
“What are we going to do?” asked Kaylee.
It was the last thing she said before everything
