Brian’s eyes darted in the direction of his co-worker as he leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper. “If the boss finds out, I’m fired.”
“So just let me look at the recording. I’m not going to say anything.”
Brian sighed and caught Broch’s eye. “Is she always this tough?”
Broch smiled. “Ye hae nae idea.”
Brian motioned for them to come around the counter and led them through a curtain to a back office.
He pulled a VHS tape from a backpack, looking sheepish.
“You’re not going to take it, are you?”
Probably.
Catriona shook her head. “No. It’s an actual tape? It isn’t digital?”
Brian rolled his eyes. “Greg is cheap. This system’s like a thousand years old.”
“Greg’s the owner?”
“Uh huh.”
“And this is the only copy? You were taking it home?”
He nodded and grinned as if he couldn’t help himself. “It’s a good one.”
Brian slipped the tape into the machine and rewound it for a few seconds. Catriona stared at an empty street illuminated by street lamps until a man and a woman appeared at the entrance to the alley beside Jay’s. Between them, they carried the seemingly unconscious body of a young blond man.
“That’s Tyler,” said Broch, pointing.
“What’s wrong with him?” asked Catriona to no one in particular.
Brian shrugged. “I don’t know how he got like that, but here comes the interesting part.”
The woman and the man put Tyler in the trunk of a black Mercedes sedan. They spoke for a moment before the man lumbered back inside Jay’s and the woman drove the Mercedes out of view.
Brian reached to stop the tape just as another man and a woman walked out of the building.
Catriona touched his arm. “Wait.”
The couple stood outside Jay’s talking. The man was impossibly thin. The woman was all too familiar.
“Is that Fiona?” asked Broch, leaning in to get a better look. He glanced at Catriona. “And yer da?”
Catriona didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She felt as though someone had flash-frozen her insides. The nerves in her arms jangled with what could only be described as dread.
Since her father had arrived in town, she’d been trying to pretend he hadn’t. Seeing him moving and breathing made her plan more difficult.
She remained transfixed by the screen until the two figures walked out of frame, first her father, followed by her sister.
“What are they doing there?” she mumbled under her breath. Worry buzzed in the back of her brain like a fly trapped under glass.
No one had anything nice to say about her father, Rune.
Fiona had told her their father was a man to be feared…that he’d killed their mother and tried to kill her.
She didn’t remember that.
Broch knew Rune as the man who shot her dead in another life. At first, Catriona thought she’d met Broch for the first time when he appeared on the studio lot, but no. It turned out she’d once died in his arms, shot dead by her own father.
She didn’t remember that either.
Maybe that was a good thing.
After that, according to the story Sean and Broch pieced together slowly and over much whiskey, she apparently went spinning through time, appearing reborn in, well, now. Sean adopted her as a child, coming to know Rune as the man who’d killed her new, LA mother. And for some reason neither Sean nor Broch could explain, Rune had a habit of calling her by her sister’s name, Fiona. Which was odd...but possibly less disturbing than the realization that Rune had killed both the mothers she didn’t remember.
Catriona cocked her head.
It certainly doesn’t pay to be my mother.
It didn’t pay to be her father either. Sean had cleft Rune nearly in two while saving her from his clutches. This triggered the apparent reason for her family’s time-traveling abilities—some sort of preservation mechanism that swapped certain death for life in another century. Sean’s attack sent Rune off to god-knows-where.
Death, or near-death, had to be the cause for all the time-traveling. She’d been sent to the future after being shot, Sean had been run through by a sword, Broch had been stabbed...
Not only were her family and friends time travelers, they were apparently accident-prone death magnets.
Anyway, now Rune was back.
Yea.
He’d survived Sean’s attack—though when she saw him, his arm had looked suspicious, his hand gloved. She suspected his limb may not have survived. Broch still had a scar where Fiona had stabbed him, so remnants of the wounds that would have killed seemed to stay.
Maybe just wounds inflicted by other time travelers.
Hm.
“Do you need to see it again?” asked Brian.
Catriona snapped to the present.
“Huh?”
Wow. I am doing a great job not thinking about my psycho father.
“Do you need to see the tape again?”
“Oh. No.”
Catriona pushed the eject button and retrieved the tape before nudging Broch. “Let’s go.”
Brian’s eyes popped wide. “Hey, wait, you can’t take the tape.”
“Oh, but I’m going to.”
Brian gasped. “But you said you wouldn’t!”
“I lied.”
Brian lunged for the tape but Catriona easily jerked it from his reach. Broch stepped between them, staring down the barista.
“Na.”
Brian swallowed and crossed his arms over his chest. “Bitch.”
Broch’s neck cricked down to pull his face closer to Brian’s. “Ye ca’ her that again and ah’ll tie ye intae a breid knot yer partner can sell to the next man wha rings the bell.”
With a bravery Catriona hadn’t suspected in the boy, Brian lifted his chin to stare back into Broch’s eyes. “I wasn’t talking about her.”
Broch’s brow knit and Catriona tugged him through the curtain, through the shop and back onto the street. The girl never looked up from her phone as they left the store.
They
