Jude Hardin - The Reacher Code - Timestream 1

Nobody was home.

Stahler slid the pistol into the back of his waistband and walked into the kitchen. The sink was full of dirty dishes, and a carton of milk had been left out on the counter. Stahler touched the carton. It was still cold. Which meant that it hadn’t been out of the refrigerator for any length of time. Probably just a few minutes.

9:31…

9:30…

9:29…

Stahler had no idea where Wahlman and Diane might have gone, and he didn’t have time to try to track them down. He was already cutting it close. Too close. He’d meant to leave himself at least a ten minute window to make it back to the bike and get it up to speed before the countdown reached zero. Now he was going to have to rush. And he didn’t like to rush. Time travel was kind of like defusing a bomb. Not a lot of margin for error. One little mistake could very well be your last.

Stahler exited through the back door and started jogging toward the alley. He had no intention of stopping, for any reason, had no time for it, but then something caught his eye as he ran past the pile of junk in the courtyard.

Someone had written DG KITCHEN UTENSILS on the side of the cardboard box with a black magic marker.

DG.

Diane Givens.

Stahler walked over to the box. There was an old hubcap and a side view mirror on top of it. Stahler set those items aside and opened the box and saw that it was full of clothes. No kitchen utensils. The writing on the side must have been from when Diane moved into the apartment. She’d kept the box and was now repurposing it, probably taking some things that didn’t fit anymore or that she just didn’t want anymore to one of the charitable organizations in the area. The box and the tire and the hubcap and the mirror had probably been in the trunk of her car. Stahler wondered why she’d taken the items out and had left them in the courtyard. Probably to make room for something else. But what?

Stahler picked up the hubcap, examined the insignia on the plastic insert at the center. Some kind of crown against a red background. It meant nothing to him. But the hubcap was fairly large. And the tire was fairly large. Which meant that the car was fairly large. Which meant that the trunk was fairly large.

Which meant that a fairly large man might be able to fit into it.

Maybe even a very large man.

But why would Wahlman want to hide in the trunk of Diane’s car?

There was only one reason Stahler could think of.

To get back onto the base.

8:23…

8:22…

8:21…

Stahler decided to take the hubcap with him. When he got back to 2101, he could determine exactly what kind of car it came off of. Then he would know which car to look for when he returned to 1983.

And which trunk to shoot full of holes.

13

“Take a right at the next intersection,” Wahlman said.

Diane took a right. Wahlman looked for a good place to get out and climb into the trunk, saw some kind of school off to the right, instructed Diane to pull in there and then instructed her to follow a sign with a picture of a delivery truck on it.

“This secluded enough for you?” she asked, steering up to a loading dock at the back of the building.

Wahlman figured the bay doors behind the dock probably opened to a storage area for the cafeteria. Cases and cases of corn and green beans and macaroni and cheese. Institutional-size cans. And pudding. Chocolate. In little plastic cups. The same stuff they served at schools decades from now when he was a kid.

“This is fine,” he said. “Open the trunk.”

Diane switched off the ignition, climbed out and slid the key into the slot at the edge of the trunk. She had to jiggle it a few times before it finally popped open.

She stepped back and gestured toward the space with her hand.

“Waiting for an invitation?” she asked.

“What’s wrong with the lock?”

“It’s an old car. Sometimes it opens right away, sometimes it doesn’t.”

Wahlman had been having second thoughts about allowing Diane to close him up in the trunk, but he couldn’t think of any other way to get onto the base.

“What are you going to do once I climb in there?” he asked.

“Just what you told me to do,” Diane said. “Get through the front gate, drive to the hospital and let you out in the parking lot.”

“You’re not going to leave me here at the loading dock and run for help, right?”

Diane shrugged.

“I guess I could do that,” she said. “I guess you’re just going to have to trust me, aren’t you?”

Wahlman took his watch off.

“Hold out your arm,” he said.

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

Diane held out her left arm. Wahlman slid the watch onto her wrist. He punched in a special code that caused the band to tighten and lock into place, and then he adjusted the settings and set a countdown timer for one hour.

“Why am I wearing your watch?” Diane asked. “And what was that stuff you did with the buttons.”

“In exactly one hour, the watch will self-destruct,” Wahlman said. “It will destroy itself, along with anything that happens to be near it. Kind of like a hand grenade.”

Diane looked down at the watch.

“Right,” she said. “So we’re in a James Bond movie now? Give me a break.”

“Believe it or don’t believe it. The result will be the same. A while ago I told you that you could go home after dropping me off at the hospital. Now I’m telling you that you can’t. You’re going to have to wait for me there in the parking lot. When I’m finished doing what I need to do, I’ll come back out and disarm the watch and take it off your wrist. Then you can go home.”

“What’s stopping me from—”

“There’s no tool on the planet that’s capable of cutting through the band on that watch,” Wahlman said, anticipating her next question. “There will be, but there’s not right now. It’s made from an alloy that’s harder than diamonds. I guess you could try to get one of the doctors over there to amputate your arm for you, but I’m pretty sure a request like that would result in a referral to the psychiatric department.”

Diane swallowed hard.

“What if you don’t make it out to the parking lot in time?” she asked.

“I guess you’re just going to have to trust me, aren’t you?” Wahlman said.

He climbed into the trunk. Diane shut the lid. Thirty seconds later the engine sputtered on and the car started moving.

14

As he was running toward his motorcycle, Stahler reached into his pocket and pulled out the foil envelope marked RTL.

The letters stood for return to lab.

Inside the envelope there were two tablets and a capsule, the medication you needed to take before every spin. To keep yourself from going insane. That was the theory. Because of what had happened to a few of the palmetto bugs during the trials. Before the pharmaceuticals had become a regular part of the routine, some of the insects had become extremely aggressive after returning from a spin. Murderously and cannibalistically aggressive. That was why McDaniels had come up with a similar drug cocktail for humans. As a precaution. Which didn’t make a lot of sense to Stahler. People weren’t cockroaches. It was possible that the drugs weren’t even necessary. Stahler didn’t like taking them. They made him feel groggy. And depressed. He thought about tossing the packet aside and spinning on home with nothing in his bloodstream but blood, but he didn’t. He tore the packet open and swallowed the pills, because that was what he’d been ordered to do.

He looked at his watch.

All zeros.

Flashing and telling him he was out of time.