BACKTRACKER by Milo Fowler (e book reader txt) 📕

have. But if you do not remain here, in this time... Ifyou return to the future, you may—"

"I might forget Harry forever," she finished his thoughtas if it were her own.

"It is possible. But if you remain here with thisdevice—" He held up Muldoon's. "Then you can go back, further intothe past, and keep this moment from ever happening."

"Keep you from killing him."

"Yes." He reached out to her with the black wristwatchin his white hand. "By any means necessary."

"Kill you instead, you mean."

He nodded without reservation. "Yes."

She paused. "What makes you think that I can?"

"You see the alternative," he said. "You must notlet this happen. I tried to stop myself, but I could not. Even if I were to goback further into the past, I am afraid I would be unable to do anythingdifferently."

"You're Cyrus Horton's little puppet," she said, but herexpression twisted with regret as soon as the words passed her lips.

"So it would appear." Cade nodded. "It will be asimple matter of extermination. I am not human. I am...a thing."

"Then why are you crying?"

He frowned. "I am not."

"There are tears on your face."

The device on his wrist chimed loudly, this time a long,high-pitched tone as the screen flashed with a blinking ten-second countdown.

"Take it, Irena." He stood. "Remove your own. I will return toour time and inform your father that Harold Muldoon is dead. He will have noreason to doubt me."

Five seconds.

She hesitated, glancing from his face to the watch he extendedtoward her. Then she reached for it, closing her gloved fingertips over thetimepiece. As she did so, her own wristwatch chimed three times—a last warningprior to the countdown.

"Go back, Irena."

Two seconds.

"You must undo what I have done."

She watched him vanish into the air with a flash of blue light.

Horror clawed at her insides and threatened to erupt in a wildscream. She bit her lip, clenched her fists, willed the storm within her toremain in check. It took all that she had. For there lay her husband, the manshe'd spoken to less than an hour ago.Only then he had been whole.

"How'd you get in here, by theway?" he asked her. "You make a habit of hacking people's cars?"

"Oscar and I go way back."

He glanced at her, frowned."Oscar?"

"Your car. Didn't you know it has aname?"

Otiose prattle. When there had been so much more she wanted tosay. Wanted to, but couldn't.

"He-uh...never told me." His eyeswandered down the dashboard console.

"You're changing the subject. We werediscussing your new watch."

"Old, by the looks of it. Can't believeit still works."

"If you keep deflecting me, we'll behere all morning."

She wished they had spent the entire day together. So long withouthim, it had stirred her heart just to be in his presence again. Yet he hadn'tbeen the same man she knew as her husband. His younger self was a stranger toher. But he'd been there, right beside her, alive and well. As headstrong andimpudent as ever. In his prime, so full of life.

Now cut down, in pieces.

Bile rose in her throat and she turned her gaze away. She couldn'tstay here. What can I do?

If she did nothing, she would vanish as Cade had, returning to herown time. According to her father, the world would be different because HaroldMuldoon would be dead, and his trips through time, altering its flow inunpredictable ways, would never have occurred. She wouldn't remember him,because his imprint would never have been made upon her life.

How could I ever forget him? It's notpossible.

Yet she feared it was, like so many other impossible thingslately.

If instead she went back,if she were able to program this device herself andtravel into the recent past, she could keepCade from killing Harry. But could she kill Cade instead?

Her eyes drifted to the short sword he'd left behind, its bladedark with her husband's blood. Do I have it in me? Cade was herprotector, her friend. Or had been, before she'd known the truth. Before he'dknown it himself.

There had to be another way.

The device on her wrist chimed a shrill warning and startedcounting down. Ten seconds, flashedthe display.

The goal was to keep this moment from ever happening—Harry'sdeath, and more to the point, his interference with the timeline. To keep CyrusHorton from wanting him dead in the first place.

Eight seconds.

She remembered the last time she'd seen her Harry alive. He camehome very late one night from the office. She was asleep on the couch in theirliving room; she'd waited up for him as long as she could. When she awoke, shefound him already in bed, as if he'd walked in and collapsed face-first underan avalanche of exhaustion. She removed his shoes, crawled into bed beside him.And when he awoke early in the morning, he'd left without saying a word.

She'd never seen him again.

Five seconds.

She looked down at the watch. In less than five seconds, she wouldbe pulled back to her own time. To face her father and his creatures: Peter,Paul, Mary. Cade—a man she'd trusted with her life. Would she ever be able totrust him again?

She looked at the device in her gloved hand, the one her husbandhad, for some unknown reason, brought back through time and left for hisyounger self.

I don't know how to program this thing. If she screwed it up,she'd be stuck in the past forever.

Two seconds.

She had to make a choice. Stay here, or return to her own time. Afuture where she might not remember her own husband.

She snapped the device off her wrist and dropped it onto thefloor. A second later, it vanished with a burst of electric-blue light. Wherewould it be twenty years from now? In this office, in this very building? Cadewould be there as well, and he would make certain no one else laid a hand onit. No one else would disrupt time's flowing current.

Enough harm had already been done.

Cade stood shivering where he had only moments ago. But thingswere different now. The office was as dark as before, but the door to thewell-lit hallway outside was closed and locked. Irena was nowhere in sight. Neither were the remains of HaroldMuldoon.

Was this Muldoon's office?