Time Enough for Love (21 page)

He nodded a polite greeting, as if he were paying a social call. “Ms. Winthrop. And the Doctors Della Croce. You didn’t honestly think I wouldn’t be able to find you?” He smiled. “That bullet the elder Dr. Della Croce has in his leg is part of a little pet project I’ve been working on over at the Wizard-9 labs. It’s specifically designed to lose velocity upon impact and remain embedded in the recipient’s body, where it acts as a homing device. Clever, don’t you think, Ms. Winthrop?”

Charles moved so he was directly in front of Maggie. His face was bleeding. He’d been cut by the flying glass just below his left eye. He wiped the blood away as if it were merely an inconvenience. “You keep that gun aimed away from her.”

“Take care of those weapons,” Goodwin said to his hired gun, motioning with his head toward Chuck’s assault weapon hanging on the bedpost and the handgun on the bedside table.

Charles pulled himself to his feet, carefully keeping Maggie behind him as the gunman followed orders. Chuck still lay on the floor, caught in a feverish nightmare. Charles’s own nightmare was far too real.

He could feel Maggie’s fingers wrapped tightly around his arm.

“Step away from her, Doctor,” Goodwin said almost gently.

“I don’t think so.” Charles inched his hand down toward the pocket of his jacket. Chuck had been right. If he had to, he would use whatever means possible to protect Maggie.

Maggie’s voice was low and urgent. “Charlie, whatever happens, whatever he does, don’t continue with the Wells Project. It’s not worth it—
I’m
not worth it. I know you don’t love me, you couldn’t possibly—you don’t even really know me and—”

“Move away from her, Della Croce,” Goodwin said again as Charles slipped his fingers beneath the edge of his pocket. “You’re an extremely intelligent man. No doubt you’ve figured out what I have to do to guarantee your continued participation in this project.”

“Just keep thinking about New York,” Maggie told him fiercely. “If you give in and do what he says, he’ll use you for as long as he needs you and then he’ll kill you anyway. If I’m going to die, at least let my death
mean
something.” Her voice shook. “Promise me, Charlie. Let me at least hold on to those pictures of you in New York. I have to believe you’ll get there—that you’ll be all right.”

How could she think that? How could she imagine he’d be all right anywhere without her? But then
Charles knew. He’d never told her he loved her. And he did. He loved her.

“Put this one up on the bed.” Goodwin nudged Chuck with his foot as he spoke to his gunman. “And rouse him. I want him to be awake.”

This was it. Charles knew this was his chance. As the gunman slipped his own weapon over his shoulder and bent down to lift Chuck onto the bed, Charles dropped his hand into his jacket pocket, praying the handgun Chuck had given him hours before was pointing in the right direction.

It was.

He aimed it at Goodwin and fired, right through his pocket, like some kind of dime-novel gangster.

It all happened so fast. The look of shock on Goodwin’s face. The bloom of bright red on the white of his shirt. Maggie’s hands pushing him away, pushing him down. The sound of Goodwin’s gun as he squeezed off one final shot before his knees crumpled and he sank lifelessly to the ground.

And just like that, Goodwin vanished.

The gunman staggered back with a cry of alarm as Charles scrambled to his knees, pulling his gun free from his pocket. As he aimed the handgun at the man he saw from the corner of his eye that Chuck, too, had disappeared.

“I have no desire to kill you too,” he told the gunman. “Just slowly put down your weapons.”

The man’s hands were shaking as he obeyed.

“The girl’s been hit,” he said.

The words didn’t make any sense to Charles. At least not at first. The girl’s been …?

But then he turned and saw the blood.

Maggie.

Charles dropped his gun, fear and anguish hitting him like a battering ram to the chest. Goodwin’s final bullet had hit Maggie.

“Call 9-1-1,” he shouted as he reached for her, searching for her pulse, praying she was still alive. But the gunman was already gone, out of the room, the front door slamming behind him.

The bullet had gone in her lower back, just below the ribs, as she’d pushed him down and thrown herself across him. Once again, she’d taken the shot that was meant to kill him.

He reached for the phone himself, dialing the emergency number as he worked desperately to stop her bleeding.

“Don’t die,” he told her. “Goddammit, I’m not going to let you die!”

·    ·    ·

“Dr. Della Croce?”

Charles looked up warily as the police detective came into the small cinder-block room.

He’d been questioned for hours, first at the hospital, and then here, in this interrogation room at the police station. He’d told his story over and over again to all shapes and sizes of detectives. To the precinct captain. To a psychiatrist who was clearly trying to evaluate his sanity.

He knew it sounded crazy. Time travel. Who would possibly believe it?

The worst of it was, they seemed to think he was the one who had shot Maggie.

Maggie’s surgery had taken an interminable amount of time. She’d come through it alive, but when he’d been taken from the hospital she still wasn’t out of danger. She was placed under guard in the intensive-care unit.

Charles wanted to be there, sitting next to her, holding her hand, telling her to hang on, to fight to stay alive.

Telling her that he loved her.

Instead, he’d been taken here. And while he hadn’t quite been put in a jail cell, the door to this little room had been securely locked each time he’d been left alone.

He’d tried to focus his thoughts on Maggie, tried
to reach out to her across all the city blocks that separated them.

Her love for him had defied the boundaries of time. Surely his could touch her across such a short physical distance.…

“How is she?” he asked the detective, praying that the news was good.

“She’s corroborated your story,” the man told him.

Charles’s heart leaped and he stood up. “She’s conscious?”

“Yeah. Not that we believe her any more than we believe you, but at least we seem to have removed you from our list of suspects. Ms. Winthrop insists you didn’t shoot her. Although I think it’s the fact that the ballistics lab verified that the bullet the doctors took out of her didn’t come from your gun that’s working the most in your favor.”

“I want to see her.”

“Well, she’s asking for you, too,” the detective told him. “So let’s go.”

The drive to the hospital took forever, as did the elevator up to the intensive-care unit, but finally Charles was there.

Maggie was asleep. She looked so tiny in that bed, hooked up to every monitor imaginable. An IV tube was attached to a bag that sent a slow but
steady drip of a powerful painkiller into her arm. Charles took her chart from the foot of her bed.

“You can’t read that,” the nurse admonished him.

He gave her a long, level look. “Yes,” he said. “I can.”

She was silent as he opened Maggie’s chart and quickly read the doctor’s notes, saw from where the bullet had been removed, saw that it hadn’t come near her spine, saw that none of the damage it had done would be permanent.

Her injuries were serious, but she would live.

If she wanted to.

The nurse watched him warily as he replaced the chart.

“I’m going to sit with her,” he told the woman.

“Visitors aren’t supposed to stay long,” she told him. “There’s no chair.”

“Then I’ll stand.” Charles reached out gently and touched Maggie’s hair, touched her hand. “Hey, Maggie,” he said quietly, unable to keep his eyes from filling with tears. “I’m here.” His voice broke and he couldn’t go on. All he could do was hold her hand, hope that she felt the pressure of his fingers against hers. He didn’t care what anyone said, he wasn’t leaving her side again. He needed her to hang on. He needed her to come back to him. He wanted
her to open her eyes and look at him while he told her that he loved her.

The nurse stood and watched him for several long minutes before she silently left the room.

She came back with a chair.

Charles couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. But every time he felt himself start to drift off, he forced himself to sit up straighter and have another cup of coffee.

He was determined to keep talking to Maggie. He was sure that somewhere, even if only in the back of her subconscious mind, she could hear him.

And he wanted to make sure he was there and awake when she opened her eyes again.

At first the nurses tried to talk him into taking a nap. But after a while they gave up and brought him a fresh cup of coffee every time they came in to check on Maggie.

The only problem with coffee was that after drinking about three cups, he was forced to leave Maggie’s side for a minute or two.

And naturally, he was in the bathroom when she woke up.

“She’s asking for you,” one of the nurses told him as he walked out of the men’s room.

Charles ran down the hall, praying that he’d get to her before she slipped back into a painkiller-induced sleep.

He burst through the door. “Maggie!”

Her eyes were closed, but she spoke. “Chuck.”

Chuck. She wanted Chuck.

Charles felt sick. He felt his heart drop down into his stomach. She wanted Chuck, but Chuck was gone. Forever.

He felt a surge of emotions. Grief for her loss. The pain and despair of his own dashed hopes and expectations. Fear that if she knew the truth, if she knew Chuck was gone, she’d give up her fight to stay alive.

Charles reached for her hand, uncertain how to tell her.

As his fingers touched hers her eyes opened.

He could see both her pain and the medication she was being given to numb it in her eyes. She was barely able to focus, and she blinked up at him, trying to clear her foggy vision.

“Chuck,” she said again.

The cut on his cheek. No doubt she saw it and in her grogginess she mistook him for his future self. He started to shake his head, to tell her no, but she reached for him, pulling him closer, clearly wanting to tell him something of great importance.

“Chuck, it’s … okay,” she breathed. “You can go now. I’m going to be all right.”

She tried to squeeze his hand, but her grip was impossibly weak. Charles couldn’t speak. He didn’t know what to say.

“I love you,” she whispered. “I’ll always love you, and remember you. But I have to … be honest.”

She fell into a silence that lasted so long, Charles pulled back slightly, thinking she was once again asleep. But her eyes were still open. They were filled with tears.

“I know why you wanted me and Charlie … to be together. You were right.…”

“I don’t understand.…”

“You knew if I could love you, if I could love the man you’ve become, despite all you’ve done and all you wouldn’t tell me … then I would love Charlie even more.” Her eyes closed and the last of her words were spoken on a sigh. “And I do.”

Charles sent a silent prayer of thanks to Chuck, wherever he was. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t going to take Chuck’s dark and dangerous path. It didn’t matter that he was never going to become Chuck.

He was already something better than Chuck.

He was Charlie.

And Maggie loved him, just the way he was.

·    ·    ·

Maggie’s throat was sore. Her mouth and tongue were dry and tasted like the floor of a barn.

Her eyelids were heavy and glued shut. It took close to forever to pry them open, but when she did, she was rewarded by the sight of Charles, fast asleep in a chair next to her bed.

From the looks of the hospital room, from the number of empty coffee cups scattered around the room, he appeared to have moved in.

How long had she been here?

Judging from the growth of stubble on Charles’s chin, it had been quite a few days.

She tried to moisten her lips to speak, but when she opened her mouth, she made barely more than a dry-sounding rattle.

Nevertheless, Charles sat up, instantly alert.

“Hey,” he said, his lips curving up into one of his truly fabulous smiles.

He poured some water from a pitcher into a waiting cup, and held it out for her, positioning the straw so that it reached her lips.

The water was almost as refreshing as his smile, and she sighed deeply with contentment—then realized that deep sighs, in fact, deep breaths of any kind, were no longer in her repertoire.

“Hurts, huh?” Charles’s eyes were dark with concern as she stifled a groan.

“Yeah,” she managed to rasp.

“You’re going to be okay.” He took her hand. “You woke up just in time to watch them move you out of the ICU.”

The cut on his cheek was starting to heal. “You’re going to have a scar,” Maggie whispered, “right where Chuck did.”

Charles nodded. “Probably.”

“Funny,” she said.

“He’s gone, you know.”

Maggie looked into Charles’s eyes. “Not all of him. Not the best part of him.”

He gave another of those slow, wonderful smiles. “We’ve been driving the police crazy, you and I.”

She laughed, and discovered that laughing was something else she shouldn’t do a great deal of for a while.

“I told them the truth,” he continued after she’d recovered slightly, “but they haven’t exactly taken the time-travel part of the story and embraced it. They remain stumped by the blood on the sheets. They’ve done DNA testing, and it’s obviously my blood, but they know that amount couldn’t possibly have come from the cut on my cheek.… I told them
about Chuck being shot, but every time I mention him, they send another shrink in to evaluate me.

“And the bullet they took out of you—it’s unlike anything they’ve ever seen before. But whenever I tell them it came from a gun that was made seven years in the future, they get really tense.”

Maggie bit her lip. “Don’t make me laugh!”

“Enough of the neighbors saw Goodwin’s hired gun running out of the house. I think the police suspect we were being held hostage by him, and that the trauma created this odd delusion we share about time travelers.”