Sean pulled down his shirt and showed Luther the angry red dent in his chest.
Luther winced. “Ouch.”
“Yeah, ouch. I woke up here, pulled the bullet out of my lung and...” Sean felt the pain of losing Isobel a second time intensifying and looked away to give himself a chance to check his emotions. “I thought I’d been given a second chance.”
Luther shook his head. “Don’t give that another thought. This was no second chance. You didn’t screw up.”
“It feels like it. And how the hell do you know? Why are you here?”
“I’m here for you.”
Sean rolled his eyes. “I should have said how are you here. The Luther I know couldn’t jump through time. Are you God? Was the Morgan Freeman portrayal closer to the truth than anyone knew?”
Luther laughed his deep baritone. “Naw, I ain’t God.”
“No. God probably wouldn’t say ain’t.”
“He might.”
“Fair enough. Who can say right?” Sean flicked at the bottom of his mug with his nail.
“Anyway, it took me months to train myself to say ain’t. To blend in and be who I said I was. If I remember right, you didn’t lose your accent overnight.”
“Uh huh. Help me out here. I’m trying really hard not to freak out, as Catriona would say.”
“No reason to freak out.”
“Tell me why.”
Luther tilted his head to the side, squinting one eye at his friend. “A lot of what’s going on is on a need to know basis.”
Sean felt a flash of anger. “Don’t you dare tell me I don’t need to know. I think I deserve some answers at this point.”
“You do. You deserve a lot of ‘em. And you’re ready.”
“Gosh thanks.”
Luther stared at the table and nodded his head slowly, as if gathering his thoughts. “I got the call your car had been in an accident. But you weren’t there and the tall skinny man the truck driver said he hit wasn’t there either, so I had some idea one or both of you might have...”
Luther wiggled his fingers in the air as he raised his hand to imply flight.
“Flown away through time,” said Sean, filling in the blank.
“Yup.”
“Okay, I told you about my past, so I can see how you might come to that conclusion. But that doesn’t explain how you’re sitting here.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Luther threw back the last of his ale and motioned to the man behind the bar for another. “There is somethin’ I’ve been meanin’ to tell you—”
Sean laughed and looked away, the insanity of the moment making it hard for him to concentrate. Or maybe it was the ale. He didn’t know the alcohol content of ancient brews. It wasn’t like there were labels. He only knew he felt strange.
He finished his pint and pushed it towards the end of the table.
Luke brought them two more tankards and took theirs away, blessing them with another distrustful glare. Sean’s strange clothing and the ebony shade of Luther’s skin would make it impossible for them to go anywhere without suspicious looks. Sean silently groaned at the idea of having to find scratchy wool replacements for his comfortable, one-hundred-percent-cotton polo shirts. Modern day had its perks and he’d come to expect them all.
Another random thought bounced through his head.
“Catriona! did you—?”
Luther shook his head. “She doesn’t know. She and Broch are still in Las Vegas on the Tyler thing.”
He nodded. “Good. I don’t want her worried.” Sean leaned back in the booth and took as deep a breath as he could, exhaling slowly.
Luther tapped the table with his finger. “That’s what we need to talk about. You were never supposed to be here.”
“No? Then why am I here?”
“Honestly? I think you wanted it so bad you made it happen.”
“That’s possible?”
“I’m here, ain’t I?” Luther leaned back in his booth. “Remember Fiona told Catriona the two of them being together would help their father find them?”
Sean recalled the conversation. Luther had been eating a tuna fish sandwich when he relayed the information to him, and Sean could smell the fishiness of it now as he remembered.
“Yes...”
“She was right. She’s young to know stuff like that, which worries me, because if you haven’t figured it out, she’s not on our side.”
“Our side. Who are we?”
“The good guys.”
“The ones who help people.”
Luther smiled. “You figured that out on your own.”
“Sometimes I have half a brain,” Sean muttered into his ale. He put down the tankard and looked up at Luther. “So that’s how Rune jumped in front of my car? He just wanted to?”
“Yep. The truck put him on an unstoppable path towards death. So he left that time and started again, a few minutes later.”
“In front of my car.”
“Right where he wanted to be.”
Sean straightened. “And I wanted to be here? To save Isobel?”
Luther nodded. “I suspect that’s a big part of it. You didn’t have any plan in mind so you followed your heart, literally.”
“Is that wrong?”
“It’s wrong to come back here. Anything you change could change everything in the future.”
“So if I’d been able to save Isobel—”
“She might have had more children. Her children might have married people that other people married in the world we know now. The disruptions are endless.”
“So why was it so easy for me to pop back here?”
“Rune was near you. He tempted you to do something you shouldn’t do. To follow your own selfish path.”
“Because he’s a bad guy. He and Fiona make people make the wrong choices.”
“Exactly.” Luther put his big paw on Sean’s.
Sean thought about the things he’d done since arriving. The peasants he’d talked to, had he changed their lives by stopping them to chat? Then he’d stolen a horse
