Deadly Designs Read online

  “I don’t know. A couple of hours, maybe.”

  A dull daylight shone through the window. She stared out the window. The sky had turned black and clouds had gathered. “I think time travel must be harder on us than normal portal travel. I still feel like I have lead inside my bones.” She yawned. “I just hope we’re in the right time frame.”

  “Yes.” His voice was grim. “But we have a bigger problem.”

  “What’s the matter?” She studied his face.

  “Tammy’s missing.”

  She blinked. Once. Twice. Then panic hit. “Oh my God. Are you serious? I locked the door. I know I did.”

  “And she unlocked it.”

  Storey made it to her feet, swaying only slightly. She looked around and pointed out signs of Tammy’s activities. A block of cheese sat on the desk, a large chunk ripped off, and an open package of pepperoni was almost gone. “She’s found food at least.”

  Eric stared hungrily at the items. Storey rolled her eyes. “Grab it then. I’m going to go outside and see if she’s there.”

  She stood up, searching for Tammy. “How long has she been gone?”

  “I only woke up a few minutes ago. So I can’t say.”

  “We have to find her,” she said urgently. She stumbled to the door.

  “I know.” He said, explaining patiently. “That’s why I came and woke you.”

  She checked her mother’s bedroom. Empty. Downstairs, she checked out the various rooms and couldn’t see any sign of Tammy. Out on the front deck, she searched the front of the house. Thankfully it appeared her parents hadn’t returned. At least there were no vehicles at home.

  At the outside chairs she found a stub of pepperoni. “At least we know she came this way.”

  Eric walked up behind her. “Great. So where’d she go from here?”

  “I wish I knew how long she’d been gone. That would give me an idea of how far she could have traveled.” Storey glanced out into the dark cloudy skies and ran her fingers through her hair. “I feel like I haven’t slept in days.”

  “We haven’t really. Portal travel, stress and even panic as we run for our lives, none of that is exactly easy on us, you know.”

  “I hear you.” And she really didn’t want to hear the details right now. Hadn’t he mentioned brain damage in an earlier conversation? Nasty. She so didn’t want to go there right now. She turned back to the real issue. “I really wish Tammy hadn’t gone missing. I so don’t need this.”

  “Actually…I’m not sure she has.” He placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her gently. “Is that her? It looks almost like she’s swinging on something like a suspended tire?”

  Sure enough Tammy sat facing the other way on an old tire swing at the back of the neighbor’s property. “Well thank heavens for that. One thing solved. Let’s bring her back.”

  She started walking forward, Eric at her side, a chunk of cheese in one of his hands and a stick of pepperoni in the other. “You really love protein, don’t you?”

  “Protein?” He looked at the food in his hands.

  “Meat. You could have grabbed an apple you know. Round out your food choices a little.”

  He grinned taking a big bite of cheese. “I’m good.”

  Males. She called out, “Tammy?”

  Tammy spun around, saw them and a big grin lit her face. She opened her mouth and for the first time, a normal, or almost normal sounding voice came out. “Toey.”

  Storey grinned. “Almost. It’s Storey with an Ssss sound.”

  Tammy tried again, her round face wrinkling with concentration. “Storrey.”

  “Close enough.” Storey held out her hand. “Come on kiddo, back to the house.”

  Tammy hopped off, whistled sharply – at least her lips pursed the right motion, but it sounded more like air rushed out instead. But didn’t the dratted rodent come running. He looked livelier too. He was dragging his leash behind. Tammy bent and grabbed the leash in one hand and her pet in the other.

  The rest had done them all good. Storey had to admit she’d prefer to rest here for a day or two. Just sleep, shower, eat and repeat.

  “I’m going to turn on the computer and check the dates.”

  “Will that tell you for sure?”

  She frowned. “I can check the news and see what’s happening. Computers are very exact nowadays.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “What are you thinking?” she asked curiously.

  He glanced her and then away quickly. “I’m wondering about going back into time before the Louers crossed to their new dimension and make sure she’s there for that crossing.”

  Storey’s steps slowed as she considered the idea. “What would happen if we did something like that? Would we be messing with their future?”

  “With Tammy’s future maybe, in that she wouldn’t remember any of this as it wouldn’t have happened yet – in theory at least. If we returned in time to a point before Skorky ran away…and somehow stopped her from leaving the group…then she wouldn’t have been there for you to find when you did.”

  “And I would have woken up still with my stylus and backpack and made a quick exit home. None of these last days would have happened.” Her voice rose in excitement.

  “In theory.”

  “And…would we remember it all? Or would we just not have those memories because we wouldn’t have had these days?”

  Eric shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  “It’s a scary thought. It might be the best way to deal with Tammy’s situation but is that the way to deal with anything else?”

  “I don’t think we can use it for much else though, at least not without messing with a lot of stuff.”

  It was her turn to say “Hmmm, I suppose.” But her mind wouldn’t let go of the concept. If it would return her world to normal that would be huge. But how could she do that without messing up the Louers’ dimension?

  Back at the house, Storey took everyone back to her room and turned on her laptop. It sat under a pile of clothes. She’d forgotten about it in their last few crazy trips. Once up, with Eric and Tammy crowding around, both of them eating apples this time, Storey checked the date. May 17th. Close enough. Checking out the news, as far as she could see, they were back where they belonged.

  “Thank heavens for that,” she murmured, relief slipping off her shoulders.

  He wrapped one arm around her shoulder and squeezed. She smiled. Behind her, a telephone rang. She turned, a frown forming. Should she answer it or not?

  “Aren’t you going to answer it?” He dropped his arm and took a step back.

  “It won’t be for me. I have a cell phone.”

  But her feet walked in that direction. Slowly, she picked it up. “Hello.”

  “Storey? Where the hell have you been?”

  Storey didn’t recognize the irate voice. “Who is this?”

  “Your father, of course. Who do you think?” Sarcasm dripped through the phone line. “Where have you been?”

  “Um, doing homework?” she wrinkled her face at Eric, whispering the identity of the caller. He frowned at her.

  She shrugged and spoke into the phone. “When are you coming home?”

  “I’ll be there in three hours, maybe four. I want you there when I get back, do you hear me? You mother and I have been worried sick. There’s been a mess of weird storms going on, communications have been down all over the place. I know our phone hasn’t been working but that’s no reason for making us worry.”

  Storey didn’t know what to say. Thankfully she didn’t appear to need to say anything as his irate voice rolled right over her. “Stay home. We’ll get there as soon as we’re done working. I’m going to phone your mother right now and let her know you’re okay.”

  Storey made what she thought might have been the appropriate response as he hung up a few seconds later. She shook her head. “What the heck. He said they’ve been having weird storms, communications down? That’s not because of us, is it
?”

  Eric waved as if to brush off the idea, then paused, his hand in the air. His face twisted with concentration. “I’d have said no, until I remembered the time travel.” He stood with his hands on his hips contemplating the flooring. “With that, it is very possible. Think about it. We can’t just move through time-space without a reaction of some kind. Energy has to shift and change, atmospheres have to adapt, the time–space continuum has an order and we’ve disturbed it.” He shrugged as if expecting her to understand all that he’d spouted off. “Weather anomalies could easily be experienced with those changes.”

  She winced. “Great. So we’re screwing with the weather patterns, too. Is nothing going our way?” she muttered the last bit under her breath, but Eric still heard her.

  “We’re doing fine. We’re back to the time period we belong in, now the stylus can help us to get Tammy home.”

  She brightened. “Let’s ask. My parents are going to be home in three hours, four maximum. Possibly earlier. We need to be gone, and hopefully back again before they get home.”

  Eric motioned toward the bedroom where Tammy stood in the doorway a worried look on her face. Storey rushed forward, a reassuring smile on her face. “It’s okay honey. Everything is fine.” At least her tone of voice had to help even if Tammy didn’t understand the words.

  Coming up behind both of them, Eric ushered them into the bedroom, closing and locking the door behind them. “Let’s get this done.”

  Storey pulled out her largest sketchbook from the closet. Seeing an older backpack stuffed in the back, she grabbed it too. Then she sat cross-legged with her stylus. “Stylus, we need to get Tammy back to her family. Not just any Louers but to her mother and father. How do we do that?”

  The stylus jerked in her hand, Storey slapped the tip on the paper. She read the answer out to Eric. “Going back in time is dangerous. Going to her family in their new dimension right now is also dangerous.”

  Eric shook his head. “Staying here isn’t an option. Tammy needs her family and because of you, she trusts us to take her home.”

  “Which option do you want to choose?” She studied Eric’s face looking for an answer.

  “Which is the least dangerous?” Eric countered.

  Going to her family now. You won’t have to factor in all the dimension shifts from a time change.

  “Fine. Let’s do that then. Give us the coordinates for her people, preferably her parents, so that we can land, give her to them, and get out again. This time in and out. No landing us in weird spots or other time frames. Clean and simple.”

  Storey took note of the determination in his jaw as he spoke. She wished it could be so easy.

  The humming filled the air, this time louder, more intense as if the stylus was trying to actually transport them there himself. Storey looked over at Eric, one eyebrow raised. He shrugged. They both waited.

  Tammy sidled closer, slipping her hand into Storey’s hand. The two girls leaned against each other as they waited. She figured the stylus had to be communicating with the other styluses. Or it was recharging. Shrugging it off, she concentrated on the problems at hand. Time was running out.

  “We’ll need to change clothes,” she said abruptly.

  “Why? I haven’t.”

  “You can’t,” she said wryly. “There aren’t any other clothes here that will fit you.”

  An odd light flashed in his eyes and it matched the grin flashing across his face. Standing, he pulled a flat object out of a weird side pocket just below his knee of his ranger pants. “I forgot. They missed this when they emptied my pockets. Not that they’d have known its value anyway.” At her frown, he laughed. “Exactly. You have no idea what this is, do you?”

  She studied it for a moment. As it was too small to be anything but a plastic business card or credit card, she couldn’t see any other purpose to it. Especially being as thin as it was. “Nope.”

  With a huge grin, he said, “Watch, you’re gonna love this.” He pulled a clip off the outside of his pants pocket. It was the size of a small cell phone. She’d thought it had been a decoration. Typical. He connected the clip to his small envelope looking thing, then tapped the small flat surface several times. Musical notes sounded, almost in a melody she recognized. Even Tammy came rushing over at the tune.

  Then Eric held the small package slightly away from his body. The package, apparently unlocked by the music, swelled and reshaped into a large rectangle as if folded under pressure. By the time it stopped moving, the package was now several feet long and a good foot wide.

  The process had taken less than a minute.

  Her astonishment made him laugh. “If you tell me that there is a full change of clothes in there, I’m so going to get me one of those.”

  Eric laughed as he opened the package to pull out pants, a shirt and what looked like socks. “I’ve got several spares on me all the time.”

  She gasped. “And you didn’t offer me the same thing?”

  He said apologetically, “I never considered it. I wondered why you were putting all that stuff into your bag. But it’s your dimension, your house, your system. I’ve been trying to learn how you do things here.”

  “I did that because I didn’t have another choice,” she snapped, exasperated. She stopped, a cool idea coming into her mind. “Does that only work with material?”

  He frowned, not understanding.

  “Could you do that to my sketchbooks, papers, food, anything?

  “Everyone in my dimension carries things this way. And yes, we could carry blankets, clothing, sketchbooks. I don’t know about food as I’ve never tried.”

  Storey bent and upended her bag of collected goodies. The mess rolled everywhere. “Go for it.”

  Eric gave her a shuttered look but bent obediently and separated the items into perishable and nonperishable. The nonperishable items he converted to a small bagful almost immediately. Once he had things sorted, he took the same cell phone thingy, clipped it to a corner of the bag, tapped several different spots, producing a different musical tune and the magic happened in reverse. While Storey watched in amazement, a long brown film stretched over the end of the stack and within seconds it had compressed and shrunken to a small envelope size.

  Eric stood and held it out to her.

  She studied it, turning it over and over, all the while shaking her head. “Wow. I don’t know how much you can put into a package like this but my world needs this technology.”

  “It’s tied to our codex technology. This way people can carry what they need to travel.”

  “Right.” Her frown deepened. “So we can’t have it. How can I open it without that little musical thingy? What’s it called anyway?” She couldn’t believe how fascinating and practical this system was. She so wanted one of those tools.

  “It’s a codin.” He laughed lightly. “We all have them. Several in some cases.”

  “Is there a way to open it if we get separated?”

  His grin flashed again. “I suspect the stylus would be able to open it for you if I’m not around.”

  “Except I need the sketchbook in here to communicate,” she said in exasperation.

  “Not quite. You seem to do fine even without paper. I wonder if there’s a way for you to become telepathic with it?”

  “Yes. I just don’t know how yet.” Unfortunately. “Can you do another of those little packages up? To hold spares of everything and another for food?”

  Eric pulled another clip from his knee pocket and attached it to his codin.

  Boy did she want to have that technology for herself. “Do you know how much easier it would be to travel if I could do that with all my stuff?”

  “It has limits, but for the most part, it’s a wonderful convenience.”

  She snorted. “Ya think? What’s the limit for this type of thing?”

  Eric assessed the food stacked in front of him. “I’ve only used it for packing clothing and personal items.” He grinned sheepishly. �
�That spare has been in these pants for awhile now. We could have done this so much earlier, but honestly, your system worked so well, I never considered looking for an alternative.”

  What could she say to that? Nothing. With time marching against them, she quickly drew a portal to Paxton’s lab while Eric packed clothing and food in separate parcels in case they were separated or captured again. In the packets Storey included two portals that they could use. The one they’d use to bring them home and the one to Paxton’s lab.

  Now, prepared with these, Storey had to admit the concept of going back with Tammy wasn’t so daunting.

  The deck was stacked in her favor for once.

  Chapter 14

  “Are you sure you want to leave before your parents get home?” Eric waited for her answer patiently.

  She’d been warring with herself for the last ten minutes over that same issue. “Yeah. I can’t even begin to explain you three being here.” As much as she’d like to smooth things over and leave on a good note, how could she without bringing up more problems? She didn’t even know this man who called himself her father. He might use the same name…but that didn’t make him the same man. Which he obviously wasn’t as he’d stuck around in this reality.

  Making a sudden decision, she walked over to her desk and wrote a note on the pad of paper sitting there, reading it out as she wrote. “Sorry. I have to leave. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  Staring at the message for a long moment, she decided it would have to do. Hopefully she’d be back in time to ditch the note before they ever saw it.

  She marched back over to where Tammy, holding Skorky tucked firmly under her arm with her hand in Eric’s, waited for her. At Eric’s questioning look, she shrugged. “I don’t know what else to do.”

  His lopsided grin flashed. “It’s pretty messed up, isn’t it?”

  “Ya think,” she sniffed. “Do we know what we’re doing this time? Do we need to meet with Paxton? Get another codex?” Eric frowned, considering. “It would be a good idea. If nothing else we should report in.”

  Storey glanced at Tammy. Paxton wouldn’t be happy if she returned with them. “Before or after?”