Dani didn’t even think, she just stood up and drilled the vase directly at Stoecker’s head. Like a perfect spiral pass, the heavy crystal caught him on the temple, just as he pushed the button, sending the violet stream to the left of Jack, where it vaporized half the wall between the front and back of her shop, and a good part of the ceiling.
Stoecker grunted and collapsed, as Jack – after a quick look of shock in her direction – kicked at the slave trader’s hand, sending the weapon out of his reach. Then Jack grabbed it and aimed it at Stoecker.
But the man hadn’t moved. In fact, he was out cold.
Jack looked at Dani. “I thought I told you to stay outside.”
“You were trashing my business. And my home. I live – lived – upstairs.” She glanced up, and felt her shoulders slump, even as the rest of her began to shake as the after-effects of the adrenaline rush kicked in.
“What was that?” Jack asked, as he pulled himself to his feet. He staggered to her work table, looking a bit more worse for wear after the fight.
“Fluted vase. Austrian crystal.” She sighed. “Imported.”
“Lucky throw.”
She looked at him. “Nothing lucky about it. Archery and darts champ, Lake Machapunga, three summers running.” She looked over at the prone form of Stoecker and smiled. “Bite me, Tommy Decker.”
“Who?”
She looked back at Jack. He was holding one arm around his ribcage, and there was blood trickling down the side of his temple. Even battered and banged-up, he was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen. “Are you going to be okay? You should let me look at that puncture wound—”
“I’ve had worse.” He shook his head when she started to come around the counter to check on him.
“Stay back. I need to get him secured.”
“I didn’t . . . kill him?”
“Doubtful, sweetheart.” But before Jack could secure him, the air around Stoecker began to shimmer. It only took a moment or two for Dani to realize it wasn’t the air around the prone giant, it was the giant himself who was shimmering. “He’s – Jack! Look!”
“I can see it.” Moving with surprising swiftness, Jack came around the table, blocking her behind him with one arm. He was sweaty, almost hot to the touch, and despite the blood and the obvious wounds, felt sturdy, stable, and strong. “It’s the fissure. It’s looped back already. Must be a tight bend this far back.”
“So, he’s what? Going back? I mean . . . forward?” She shook her head. “Back to your time, I mean?”
Jack nodded, then turned to face her, keeping her tight in the circle of his arm. “I have to go with him, Dani. It’s the best chance I’ve had, the closest I’ve gotten to stopping him for good.”
“Can’t you just, you know, catch the next – what did you call it? Fissure?”
He shook his head. “This is just the far end looping. No telling if it would ever come back this far again. I still don’t know how it was manipulated to do what it did. I may never know.” He looked at her, searched her eyes. “You should be safe now. At least from Stoecker. I’ll make sure of that.”
“So you’re going? For good?”
He nodded.
“But—”
He framed her face with his palms. “No time.”
She smiled faintly. “You said that once before.”
“Stop talking,” he said, only this time a smile hovered over his beautifully chiseled, if slightly battered, lips.
“That, too,” she said, trying to smile, but hearing the quaver in her voice.
“Come here.” He tilted her head and kissed her firmly, passionately, but there was something else there now. Not simply urgency due to the situation. It was far more elemental than that. When he lifted his mouth from hers, her eyes were glassy and unreadable. “I’ve never missed anyone before. But I’ll miss you, Dani.”
“Jack—”
But it was too late. He broke his hold, and stepped back, into the aura that surrounded an almost completely transparent Stoecker on her shop floor. Then Jack started to fragment, too.
Dani raised her fist to her mouth, determined not to say anything, not to beg him to stay. He had no choice but to do his job, to save those whose lives Stoecker would destroy. Besides, what the hell would a time-traveling bounty hunter from the future do in a tiny, South Carolina tourist town?
She couldn’t, however, stop the single tear that tracked down her cheek as he held her gaze, solidly, intently, until the very last particle of him was gone.
Dani slowly gave in to the trembling in her legs and sank to the floor of her battered and trashed shop.
Funny how the destruction didn’t even seem to matter to her. All it was to her now was proof that the entire night hadn’t, in fact, been a product of an overactive imagination.
It had really happened. Jack was real. His commanding presence and take-charge attitude. His instinctive need to protect and defend. His kisses, so dark and dangerous.
She lifted her fingers to her lips, and didn’t even try to stop the tears. “I’ll miss you, too.”
Four
Nine months (plus one week, three days, and two hours – but who was counting, really) later, Dani was working late, putting the finishing touches to a table centerpiece for the upcoming town-council banquet.
They didn’t go in for the exotic or whimsical, so her thoughts were wandering as she plugged in a spray of lily grass here and a random piece of fiddlehead fern there.
She was proud of herself. She’d gone a whole month now without making up reasons to stay late after the shop closed, till long after the sun had gone down, you know . . . just in case. This evening, she actually hadn’t had to make up an excuse. The council order had been last-minute, to be picked up the following morning, and she needed the business.
She’d had to stay late. Possibly, if she were being honest, not quite as late as she’d ended up staying, but she couldn’t seem to stay focused on the project at hand. It was a nagging problem. Ever since Jack.
She might have stopped waiting for him to materialize again, but there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to stop thinking about him. Even running into Adam and his very young bride as they pushed the stroller with their adorable baby past the floral shop hadn’t distracted her from her, well, moping, really.
There was no way to pretty that up. She missed Jack. Simple as that. And she couldn’t even talk about him to anyone.
The local cops had shown up moments after Jack had vanished. Apparently vaporizing the back door had set off her new silent security system, which automatically alerted the police and fire department, who had also shown up, sirens blaring. She had still been a wreck, which the responding police officers had assumed was a result of her finding her shop broken into and vandalized. That’s how the report had been written up, though no one could adequately explain how the wall and part of the ceiling had been destroyed.
Thankfully, she supposed, her insurance company had settled the claim on most of the repairs and replacements. And the accompanying excitement had driven business her way. For a time. But the cost of repairing what her insurance hadn’t covered, combined with a very slow winter season, had put her business on the brink of closing. If things didn’t pick up fast now that summer was here – well, she tried to keep positive.
She sighed, and plunged another sprig into the arrangement. She still enjoyed her work, it was the one true escape she had from her tormenting thoughts. What would have happened if she’d run to Jack in those last few seconds? Would she have gone with him? What did it feel like, being all particulated like that? Was it risky? Would she have done it anyway, if he’d asked her to go with him?