Double-Back (Jake Waters Book 3) (14 page)

"You were right!" Jeff said gleefully.  "No one bothered us at all.  Your ability is being wasted.  I can see all kinds of ways it would be useful."

"Did you hear that?" Susan asked Jake.  "He all but confirmed what you have suspected."

"It's nice of them to do so, but I'd really like to have some names," Jake said.  "So far we've gotten nothing that will help us identify who they are and we don't even know who exactly he was talking to.  "

"And they are soon going to be out of range," Susan said.  "I wonder where they are going?"

"How long to the cabin?" Natalie asked suddenly, almost as if she was aware of Susan's question.

"Just under an hour," Jeff replied.  He named the small town it was close to.

"Shit!" Susan cursed.  "That's too far.  They are going to be well out of range, and with only one car following them, odds are we will lose them."

"We had hoped to have what we needed by now," Jake said unhappily.  "What do you want to do?  We can hang on until we lose them, or they reveal something useful."

"Can we redo this?" Susan asked.  "I'd feel more confident if we placed Lester and Solly near that town, and you and I waited and trailed the van.  That way if we get separated in traffic, we have a backup."

"You don't want to hang on and see what develops?"

"They aren't going to give anything away until they get to the cabin.  They are being too careful.  If we wait, it'll just mean that much more you have to live through again."

"Okay," Jake nodded reluctantly.  "Since we haven't learned anything, I'm just going to do a tactical loop, just enough to get back to our planning session when we sent Lester and Solly off.  We'll change where they are going, and move into their former position ourselves."

"That should work," Susan agreed.

Jim was about to leave for home.

"So it'll be you and Susan waiting around the block instead of Lester and Solly?" Jim asked.

Jake had told them what had happened and prompted his short Back-Track.

Susan nodded.  "Give us about ten minutes head start.  That way we'll be in place by the time you get home.  We know what will happen.  They'll put you and Clarissa in the white Ford van and head off toward this cabin of theirs.  Lester and Solly are already well on their way down the highway, and will be waiting for them to arrive.  We'll follow behind, and monitor the conversations, but if what we've seen so far holds, we aren't going to learn much."

"Save yourself some grief, and don't give the guy a chance to hit you with his gun," Jake advised.  "You'll be of more use later if you don't have that throbbing headache."

"I'm still not happy with this," Jim admitted.  "There should have been a way to keep Clarissa clear of these events."

He mumbled to himself as Susan and Jake left, hurrying toward the parking lot where Jake kept his rental car.

"Here's how this is going to work," the well dressed one with the revolver said.  Jim had returned home to find the foursome waiting for him just as Jake had described.  He'd been stripped of his weapon, and now they were about to leave.

"We are going to walk outside, and get into the vehicle, and drive away quietly.  Any trouble, anything at all, and Marty here will shoot Mrs. Laney.  We really only need to talk with Mr. Laney, so the loss of the lady won't restrict our efforts overly much.  Is that understood?" the man asked.

"Go outside, get into the white van, and stay quiet," Laney said.  "I understand.  Where are we going?"

The one in charge merely smiled and pointed toward the woman who had sat silently in the background.

"Is he ready for us?" he asked her.

She nodded.  In a cultured voice that supported Jim's assessment, she said, "He's in place.  No one is outside where they will present a problem.  We should go now while the opportunity presents itself."

"Let's go," the man said, indicating that Jim should stand.  Clarissa was pulled to her feet by the thug who had been keeping an eye on her.

"Quiet, and no trouble," the man reminded them.  "That way no one gets hurt."

They were led to the side door of the house, and after another check via the cell phones, led outside.

Jim said nothing as they emerged from the house and headed toward the vehicle.  He knew what to expect from what Jake had told him about how this was to proceed.  He hoped that Jake and Susan were listening in from around the corner, but there was no need to tell them what the van looked like.  Jake knew that from the last time he'd looped through these events.

The woman was watching him oddly as they drove out of the driveway and headed away from the house.  She looked around as if expecting trouble, then spoke suddenly, but she was addressing her friend, not Jim.

"Something's wrong," she said.  "Things aren't the same as before."

"What do you mean?" the cultured one asked.  "You said you went through this and everything went smoothly.  I thought you looped back after we were miles away."

"I did, but things have changed.  I've never seen a change before when I relived after a Backslide.  I think they know about us."

"Different?  What's different?" Jeff asked.  "We got away clean."

Natalie shook her head.

"He mentioned the white van while we were in the house.  I didn't think about it at the time because I recalled taking him to it the last loop.  But how could he have known?  You didn't mention what kind of vehicle.  You were deliberately obtuse about it, just as we have been careful about names.  Yet he knew exactly what kind of vehicle.  When we approached the van, last time he made some kind of remark, and Paul smacked him with his gun.  He was bleeding when he climbed into the vehicle and his wife was screaming.  Do you see any blood?  It didn't happen this time.  It took me a minute to reason that things were slightly altered."

"Maybe the details shift a little?" Paul suggested. 

Natalie shook her head. 

"The details are very important, and they always track.  You know, don't you?" she asked looking at Jim.

Jim shook his head as if confused, but his eyes were unable to hide the truth.

Natalie didn't hesitate, but immediately triggered a Backslide, going back three days to the time when Jeff had left her apartment and she and Paul had adjourned to the bedroom to make love.  That wasn't going to happen now, another casualty of the twisted sequence of events.

Natalie turned toward Paul as he entered the room and closed the door.  The full implications of what she had just learned blossomed in her brain, and she screamed.  Her scream startled Paul, who had just started to unbutton his shirt.

"They know about us?" she screamed, her hands clenched tightly to her head, which was throbbing as a result of the Backslide.

"What are you yelling about?" Paul asked, now disturbed as well.

"I've got two sets of memories of what will happen when we go after this Laney guy," she said.  "I made a loop while we were escaping with him and his wife captive.  The two sets of memories are different.  The only way I know of for the events to be different is if someone were to Blackslide and change them.  I was being very careful not to disturb the flow as a result of my own loopback.  Damn it!  They have someone who can do what I can.  They know what we are doing.  For some reason they did a Backslide to change something, but Laney made a couple of slips as we worked through events again.  If he hadn't mentioned the van and had taken the hit on the head, I wouldn't have realized what was happening."

"Natalie, this is ridiculous. You're just worried.  No one else has your ability."

She shook off his soothing explanation.

"No.  It makes sense now.  How do you think they were able to be on hand for each of the attempts we made against Carlson?  They didn't know in advance as we have been assuming.  After the fact, they knew exactly what was going to happen, and whoever their Backslider is, looped back, and used the knowledge to set traps for us.  They changed what originally happened.  I'll bet we got Carlson, just as planned.  But they didn't count on someone like me being able to unravel their correction.  When things went bad, I did my own loopback, and prevented us from taking the action.  As a result, they somehow knew something was going to happen, but had to be surprised when it didn't."

Paul shook his head.  "I don't know or recall any of this."

"You wouldn't.  Only the Backslider retains the memories from the previous loops."

"They know who we are?" Paul asked nervously as he considered what Natalie was telling him.

"I don't think so," she said.  "Otherwise they would have acted more directly and arrested us.  I think they were trying to find out who we are on this last event.  They were using Laney as a trap for us to reveal ourselves.  I don't know how much they have figured out.  Clearly they know more than we thought.  A lot depends on who their Backslider is, and what he saw or was told."

"What are we going to do?" Paul asked.

"I don't know," Natalie admitted.  "But we have to proceed very carefully.  They aren't going to stop looking for us."

Monday Morning, May 9th

"I guess I still don't understand how this all works," Paul admitted.

He, Natalie, and Jeff were in his apartment in New York City.  After Natalie had warned them of what she believed to be happening they had driven directly to the north.  They had arrived very late, and once there, Jeff had gone to his own home, while Natalie and Paul had settled in for the night.  Now it was morning, and Jeff had arrived a short time ago with fresh croissants he'd picked up from a local bakery, and they were sitting at the large table in the nook while discussing their situation.

"What don't you understand?" Natalie asked once she had finished chewing the overly large piece of croissant she'd taken a moment earlier.

"I don't understand why you have memories of all these things you say happened, while Jeff and I, who were with you all the time, don't have any of them.  My memory says none of these things happened."

" I've explained this before, but with all the looping, maybe that time got erased.  Only the person who Backslides retains the memories of how it was before the loopback," Natalie said.  "For you and Jeff, that other reality never happened, which is why your memory says it never occurred."

She could see he didn't follow.  She took the napkin and asked Jeff to get a pen or pencil.  Then she spent a while carefully drawing lines to indicate timelines, with stars to indicate points where events took place, marking what various people knew at different times along the timeline.  She used arcs to indicate where she had looped back, and what new knowledge she would have that the others didn't as time moved forward from where she intersected the main time flow.  She also showed where the suspected FBI BackSlider might have taken action, and what it meant as he made small or large loops backward.

"It appears you and this other person made a number of loops backward," Paul noted.

"I don't think we can be certain how many," Natalie admitted.  "I can think of how it might have worked, but perhaps a larger number of loops were exercised before we settled on the current reality."

Jeff shook his head.  He hadn't really followed what his sister was trying to explain.

"I wish you could make a really large loop and go back before all of this started, and before this other person knew you existed?  Then we could solve this before it became so complicated.  Then you could go back and kill this woman in your company before she can make her phone call."

"That's what I should have done in the beginning," Natalie admitted.  "I was concerned what a mysterious death of someone in the company might result in, and I had no way of knowing that there would be someone else with my ability.  That is the big surprise, and the reason this hasn't worked out simply for us."

"And now that option is out of reach?" Paul said sadly. 

Natalie nodded.  "That time is out of reach," she agreed.  "I just looped back nearly as far as I can reach, and that was after at least one other loop I know of.  There might have been more.  The effect is somewhat cumulative.  I've tried to sense myself in the past, and I can't do so.  That's often the case after a large loop, and tells me I couldn't make another loop just now no matter how hard I tried.  In a day or so, I'll sense myself, and would be able to Backslide again, but it will only be back to about this time."

"What about this other Backslider?" Paul asked.  "Is he restricted the same as you?"

"I wish I knew," Natalie admitted.  "I assume the same sort of restrictions apply to whoever it is, but I've never known another person with the ability so can only assume what restrictions they must face.  I do believe whoever it is has more experience with this than I do."

"Why do you say that?" her brother asked.

"It's too much of a reach to believe the FBI came up with someone with this ability at the same time I presented them with a case where it is needed.  This person must be someone the FBI has known about, and has worked with before."

Paul was shaking his head.

"We have a few resources inside the Bureau, and I think we would have learned about such a person.  It would be a difficult thing to keep secret."

"Perhaps it is not widely known, and only a few within the Bureau know about it," Natalie mused.  "Maybe this Carlson has the ability, or knows someone with it, and uses it secretly.  You said she has a reputation at solving some of the more difficult cases the FBI has had."

"The latter is more likely," but she must be very good at keeping secrets.  It's got to be someone around her."

"But not necessarily someone within the Bureau," Natalie warned.  "It could be a friend, or a relative, of almost anyone that she could contact for help if she needed it.  We need to figure out who it is, because any action we take with this person out there, will only be undone, and each time we act we risk revealing who we are.  Once they figure that out, then they will be on us immediately."

"Just what is our situation?" Paul asked.

"I don't know," Natalie admitted.  "That's why we fled Washington.  They certainly know we exist, but what details have survived their Backsliding is difficult to say.  They know one of us has the ability to Backslide, of that I'm certain, so they will plan accordingly.  If no one has raided my apartment, then I think it's safe to assume they don't know our identities just yet."

"You said they had Paul and me in custody for some time after the kidnapping before you made one of these loops," Jeff pointed out.  "Could they have taken pictures of us?  If so, they could be searching through their databases even now."

"Their Backslider couldn't have brought any photographs back with him," Natalie pointed out.  "Only memories, but if he was one of those who saw you while you were in custody, then he might recall what you look like.  That wouldn't be good."

"And if this Backslider is someone outside of the group of agents involved?" Paul asked.

"Then at most he might have been given a verbal description to carry back.  That would be far less useful."

"Look, I hate to say this, but maybe we should just walk away from this," Paul suggested.  "If they haven't figured out who we are, then it's unlikely they will if we just disappear and drop the whole thing.  Soon enough we'll reach a time where their Backslider can't loop back, and we will fade into the background."

"I wish it were that easy," Natalie said. 

"Why won't Paul's idea work?" Jeff asked.

"Because of Anne," Natalie reminded them.  "Carlson apparently hasn't followed up with her as yet, probably because of our actions keeping her distracted, but sooner or later she will remember and call Anne, or Anne will call her once again.  While there is no solid link to suggest that is the source of her problems, it will certainly mean I am likely to come under investigation which I was trying to avoid from the start.  There is also the chance they have learned enough that a link can be made to you two."

"You may have to just give up your job there and go into hiding," Jeff said. 

"I've worked too hard to simply throw it all away," Natalie objected.  "We are close, and the serum we are working on will make me rich, and highly respected in my field.  You want me to walk away from that and live the rest of my days as a fugitive?"

"Maybe they won't be able to make a case," Paul suggested.  "With your Backsliding, you can wait them out, and if turns bad, loop back a few days and disappear before they act."

"Nope," Natalie replied, shaking her head.  "Not with this other Backslider still out there.  They would have him simply loop back and nail me at the earlier time."

"This whole thing is nuts," Jeff objected.  "What else can we do then?"

"What if we make this simple as it should have been in the beginning?" Paul asked.  "What if we simply eliminate this woman who can bring the FBI down on you?"

"I already explained that," Natalie said impatiently.  "That will get their interest, especially now with all of this mystery for them.  Anything like a surprise death they will look at for possible connection."

"They haven't been paying your CFO much attention of late," Paul countered.  "What if she had an accident, something that didn't look like a murder."

"They would still investigate, and depending on what she told Carlson, it could still come back on me.  Besides, they could Backslide and prevent her death.  We would have done nothing beyond focusing their attention on her."

"Could, but might not," Paul pointed out.  "Now suppose that her death isn't all that happened.  What if, about the same time, a series of attacks were unleashed against Carlson, this Laney fellow, and anyone else we can learn is associated with their investigation.  They will be so involved in trying to sort that out, they might miss the fact your CFO died at all.  You said they were old friends, but not current friends in constant contact.  If we can get past a few days, maybe a week, they won't be able to go back and save her.  Their ability to question her will be gone.  It's the best chance we have."

"If we run more attacks against them, we risk revealing ourselves," Natalie warned.

"It wouldn't be us," Paul explained.  "There are ways to hire hits that can't be traced back to the source.  They might know someone is targeting them, but we'd do it in such a way they can't link it to us, even with their Backsliding ability.  Maybe we can find some background on Carlson that can be leaked to suggest a reason for the attempts on her.  Maybe someone recently died in prison, and a family member is seeking revenge.  I don't know.  I haven't thought out the details.  At the very least, it should be set up with what look to be viable leads, that ultimately take them nowhere, but use up time."

"Even if Anne's death could be made to look like a legitimate accident, Carlson might still attempt to investigate the company," Natalie worried out loud.

"Why?" Paul asked.  "Unless Anne has already told her of her suspicions, she wouldn't know what she was trying to look for.  Meanwhile, she would have a major threat to her and her associates to try to resolve.  We could make sure the pressure stayed in place for some time, with additional attacks later.  In time, we pull back, and it all fades away.  By then, your CFO will be old news, and Carlson will have other matters to worry about.  People like her are always overworked.  I think it's our best chance of walking away from this thing.  Carlson lives, but you don't really have an issue with her anyway."

"How would you make Anne's death look like an accident?" Natalie asked.

"I don't know yet.  You need to tell me everything you know about her, and I'd need to get someone I know of to have a close look at her house while she's at work.  Most people have habits that are potentially risky.  We just need to find hers."

"Maybe over time we could figure out who their Backslider is and deal with him also," Jeff suggested.

Paul shook his head.

"If we know, we file it away for an emergency, but once clear I wouldn't risk mixing it up with him anymore.  We could end up with him on our trail again, and we might not have an out like this time."

"I think it's that Laney guy," Jeff said.  "He was right there and able to decide when he should make one of these loops."

"It's not Laney," Paul said.  "He would have initiated one of these Backslides as soon as he saw his wife was in danger.  I know his type.  He's brave enough when it's just himself at risk, but wouldn't want her involved."

"Are you positive?" Natalie said.  "They were trying to catch us, and he would have known he could make it all go away later.  I agree if things were normal, but if he had the ability, he might have held on."

"Can you do all of this?" Natalie asked.

"I might need my uncle's help," Paul admitted.  "This involves too many people and he's going to hear that something is up anyway."

"Would you have to tell him about me?" Natalie asked.

"Not your ability. That would make him wonder about me, but I'd have to explain that my girlfriend is in danger.  I might also have to reveal your medical discovery might be at risk.  Money talks.  He might want a cut of the action from the profits you stand to make.  It's a lot of money, and he's ultimately a businessman."

Natalie made a face, but said after a moment's pause.  "I stand to lose it all if we don't solve this.  Splitting it is better than nothing.  Let's see what you can set up, and we'll decide if we want to go forward."

In the back of her mind, Natalie reserved the thought that if the resulting plan didn't look promising or if the uncle became a problem, she could always Backslide to this moment and squash the plan to involve Paul's family.  She looked at her watch to fix the time and date, and noted that she still had a week of the vacation she'd taken from her job.  With all the Backsliding, she had sort of lost track.  She hoped a week would be enough to finish this off.

"What do you think they are doing now?" Jeff asked. 

"Probably preparing for the move against Laney," Natalie said.  "They won't know yet that we won't show up again, which gives Paul a couple of days to prepare  our alternative while their mind is focused on something that won't turn out to matter."

"It would be good to move quickly against your CFO," Paul noted.  "This is the kind of distraction I was talking about.  If we hit her now, they are unlikely to be aware, and once the move against Laney doesn't happen, we should hit them with the alternate attacks to keep them worried about that."