It’s the hint of vulnerability Eve so rarely shows. The hard-wrought intimacy we fought to find after our many dating starts-and-stops.
However, while my twenty-eight year old body stirs with the memories in my head, in that moment it’s the fifty-two year old, well-married man inside me that longs to wrap my fingers through her hair, pull her close, anchor myself to something familiar.
Something known. Something mine. No. Ours.
Except for Silas. His timely appearance brought me up short, reminded me that Eve is not mine. Yet.
She’s young and eager, still relatively innocent and I am, in experience, if not in body, a much older man.
Which makes my impulses suddenly awkward and not a little creepy, and I’m possessed with the strangest urge to protect her.
From myself.
This is really getting weird.
She searches for Good Earth coffee and finds a listing. Not a website, apparently the world isn’t quite that sophisticated yet, but a piece of data with relevant info.
“The company is located in Brazil, with distribution worldwide,” Eve says, reading from the site.
“There has to be a connection,” I say, not because it’s such a rare and unique deduction, but I’m reaching a point of desperation. “It’s our only known link between the two bombings.”
I don’t continue my thought that it’s also the only link to tomorrow’s horror. Unfortunately, yesterday’s search didn’t raise even a sliver of memory.
At this rate, I’ll need some kind of miracle to stop tomorrow’s bombing.
If I even can. Because suddenly every time paradox I’ve ever read whirls through my brain.
Is my failure already written into the timeline, no more than fated scenes about to play out and etched in stone? Or, can I stop it, and if so, does all of history change? Will I wake up to a new life tomorrow?
That brings me to the conundrum that I might actually be stuck here, right? How does one return to their time when they don’t know how they got here in the first place? Art said only, I think so, to my question. I don’t know about you, but in my book that isn’t the reassurance I was hoping for. My watch is still ticking, so, that has to mean something, but what if I’m stuck here forever?
I’ll be smarter. And richer. And maybe I’ll enjoy it better this time around, so I guess I’m not horrified by this idea.
Except … what happens to Eve, in the future? That future. The one I vanished from without a trace. If I never get back, she’ll never know what happened to me. Just like we never knew what happened to Mickey for so many years.
My hands grow clammy.
Then one more thought strikes me like a bolt of cold lightning.
Ashley.
I want them both back now, and that thought puts a fist right through my sternum so hard I nearly gasp.
I have to get back. I will get back.
But while I’m here, I’ll save a few lives. In fact, the first thing I’ll do after stopping this bombing is figure out how to get Danny Mulligan to stop hating me.
For no reason, I might add. His words to me, out of Eve’s earshot, have left a bruise. “I don’t trust you, Stone, and I’m warning you—stay away from my daughter, unless it’s work related. I don’t want you to get her into trouble.”
Everything for the rest of my life will be classified as work related, you can bet on it. But I would really prefer Mulligan to like me, especially since he’s going to be sticking around.
How? I’ll figure that part out later.
I reach over Eve’s shoulder and point to a listing down the page. “What is that article about a protest?”
It’s something from a Canadian news site about an organized protest. Eve reads it as fast as I do.
“It looks like Good Earth coffee was named by the protesters as one of the perpetrators of child labor,” she says, summing up what I’ve just read. “There’s a long list.”
“Who are the protesters?”
“A conglomerate group. The article mentions Free the Children, a couple church groups, and the International Child Labor Defense League.”
“Yahoo that.” That sounds weird. Apparently “Google it” doesn’t translate. “Search for the Child Labor Defense League,” I say, simplifying.
She’s already typing it in and a few hits come up. “It’s a group out of DC. They’ve been involved in a number of protests around the country. Here’s one in Oregon, and another in New York City.”
She pulls up the article. “Oh, wow, they’re not exactly peaceful. Seattle. The burning of…a coffee shop.”
“Was anyone arrested?” I’m reading it too, but Eve’s always been a faster reader than me.
“A couple people. Gus Silva and…Jo De Paulo.”
“Do a search—”
But she’s already typing, and there is a hit for a Gustavo Silva, Brazilian footballer.
Brazilian.
“He immigrated to the US a year ago with D.C. United,” Eve says. “And was arrested about three months later.”
I sit back and shake my head. “What is a Brazilian footballer doing hooked up with a child labor protest group in Seattle?”
“According to the Child Labor Defense League, Brazil is one of the leading countries that uses child slave labor to pick their beans.”
“Interesting. Where is Gustavo from in Brazil?”
“There’s a picture of his team.” She’s pulled up the team roster. “Wow, about half these guys are international.” She is scrolling down and right about the middle of the page, my gut clenches.
“Stop.” I point to the screen. “That’s Ramses.”
“The guy you chased today?”
I nod and it’s all I can do to sit here, every corpuscle in my body on fire. “I knew it.”
“You think he’s involved with the Child Labor Defense League?”
“He and Gustavo.”
She has clicked on Gustavo’s picture, and is reading his stats. “He’s from a village in the State of Espirito Santo…” She clicks on Ramses pictures.
