“Excuse me?”
“Year.” He leaned back. “How many years past the birth of Christ has mankind survived on this fine morning?”
“Uh, it’s 2009.” Maybe she’d been too quick to rule out the psych hospital option?
He looked to the ceiling for a moment and then tapped her form. “Put down April 17, 1977.” He flashed a gleaming white smile that sparked in his eyes.
Her stomach tightened and she blinked, hoping to negate the familiarity she felt. Loneliness had driven her to conjure up a connection pulsing between them. A trick of the mind. Clearly it was time to start dating, again.
“Mr Reddick, there’s no point in lying.”
“Sweetheart—” he leaned forwards “—last time I checked, I was thirty-two years old. So if this is 2009, it follows I was born on April 17, 1977.” He was grinning again. Clearly amused.
But she wasn’t amused at the effect his sexy smile was having on her insides. Kara gathered up a healthy dose of irritation to drown it.
Nineteen-seventy-seven sounded right. She’d been born a couple of years later and he looked roughly her age — further proving he wasn’t who she’d thought. Where was the joke?
She realized. “Oh, happy birthday.”
He leaned back. “No need to throw me a party, honey. Every day’s my birthday.”
His mocking grin hit her right in the belly.
She pressed back and crossed her arms over her uniformed chest. “Officer.”
“What?”
“It’s officer, not honey.”
He rolled his eyes and then raised his palms towards her. “Look, officer, I’m no chauvinist pig. I think it’s cool they’re letting chicks carry guns these days. Just trying to be friendly.”
Friendly, my ass. “Look. You’re in some serious shit here. You assaulted my partner.”
“Your partner’s a pig.”
Hard to argue with that one. She chewed the inside of her lip to keep from smiling.
“Listen, Mr Reddick. I get the feeling you’re not really such a bad guy, and I’d love to help you get into a shelter, or send you home to grovel to your wife, or whoever tossed you out on your ass last night, but for some reason you seem hell-bent on making me regret helping you. Do you want to spend the next couple of months in lock-up?”
He shrugged.
She leaned on to the desk. “We’re real backed up right now. It’ll be ages before you see the inside of a courtroom.”
He cocked up one eyebrow. “Do what you want. I know exactly where I’ll be tomorrow at dawn and it won’t be in your jail cell. I guaran-damn-tee it.”
“Oh, really. You think I won’t do it, don’t you?” He’d read her like a book. She hated that.
Hand in his pocket, he pressed a sharp edge up and into the fabric of his slacks.
Heart racing, Kara stood, squared her stance and moved one hand to her weapon. “Empty your pockets. Now.” She was off her game not doing this sooner.
He shrugged and dug into his blazer to come up with a gold lighter and a pack of gum from one, a crumpled envelope and a small key from the other. The gum’s label said “Wrigley”, but must’ve been bought overseas, because it was unlike any pack she’d ever seen. She kept her hand over her gun as he dug into his pants pocket and then slapped a handful of bills and coins on to the desk. Three one-dollar bills, but something was off. Counterfeits? Maybe. Not recently issued bills, that’s for sure.
“The other pocket.”
He pulled out a necklace and let it dangle for a moment before dropping it to the metal desktop. The enamelled butterfly pendant hit with a clink, and then the chain snaked around it like sand falling in slow motion.
Goosebumps erupted on every inch of her body. “Where’d you get the necklace?”
“From a kid in the park — teenaged runaway.”
The air rushed from her lungs and she squeezed her muscles to hinder the earthquake emanating from deep in her bones. She shook her head to dislodge the impossible conclusions scrambling to take hold.
His eyes widened. That they quickly snapped back to indifference didn’t matter. The few seconds of intense recognition, of wonder in his eyes, had swept her from the squad room and back in time. Back to a day in 1994 she’d started to think she’d imagined.
She was imagining this.
“Get out of here.” It wasn’t him, and if it was, he was fucking with her.
“What? No jail?” His pissed-off tone fuelled her confusion-induced anger.
She pointed towards the entrance. “Out. Now.”
As she watched him stuff his possessions into his pockets and walk away, her mind, her whole body, felt as if she’d been set in a paint mixer.
This man, his smile, his eyes, his dated clothing and hairstyle, were so much like the man who’d saved her life. But he couldn’t be. Not unless fifteen years could pass without him aging a day.
Jake played with the pendant in his pocket. Hard to believe it was the same girl, but her reaction to the butterfly had been unmistakable.
From the second he’d heard her voice, something about her had been familiar, but it wasn’t until he’d brought out the pendant that he’d seen the oh-so-obvious truth. Even all grown up, in that cop uniform, and without the heavy black eyeliner he’d wiped from her cheeks with that same damn handkerchief, it had to be her.
Across from the police station, he leaned against the brick wall, unable to leave — obsessed — like some chick waiting for the Beatles to emerge from a hotel. Pathetic.
And useless.
Chances were there was some back entrance the cops used. And even if she did see him waiting, she clearly wouldn’t want to. She’d tossed him out.
The year they’d met in the park she’d been a teenager — lost, terrified, out of her depth — and he’d been the big brother figure who’d shared his story, hoping his life lessons might help her.
Her reaction to him that day had been textbook obvious, given her age and the circumstances, and didn’t mean she’d give a damn about, or even remember, him today. She was a fully formed person now, no longer broken. Probably had a husband or boyfriend, at least friends to support her.
More to the point, even if she were curious, wanted to find out if they shared the same memory, what would be the point?
In spite of today — even because of today — the odds were freakishly long that he’d ever see her again. If there was a next time, he’d be just as likely to find her playing on the swings as a toddler, or pushing a walker as a ninety-year-old woman. Both were thousands of times more likely than seeing her on anything resembling tomorrow.
For him, there were no tomorrows.
He pushed off the wall and started down the street. A small car pulled out from the kerb and a line of yellow cabs honked. His first visit to the twenty-first century. Didn’t look that different from the last.
“Mr Reddick. Jacob. Wait. Please. Jake.”
He stopped, but didn’t turn.
“Wait a minute,” her voice pleaded, coming closer.
Talking to her was a dumb idea, yet his feet remained clamped to the sidewalk. Time — however meaningless the term had become — had taught him that interacting with others, making any kind of connection, was pointless.
Human connections only made his existence harder to endure.
Kara slid her hand on to Jake’s shoulder and his head tipped back a fraction of an inch. His sandy curls hit the collar of his plaid jacket, bending like soft springs, and it was all she could do to keep her hand from traversing the few inches required to stroke those curls, confirm their softness, and run the back of her finger along the warm neck beneath.
Crazy. Insane.
She barely knew this guy. They’d spent one day talking when she’d been all of fourteen, yet he’d been the leading man in her dreams for years.