The Time-Traveling Outlaw by Macy Babineaux Page B

but over the man who had kidnapped his daughter. 
    Sam glanced back one last time, then stepped away from the chair. Next to the tables with all the computer equipment was a smaller table, with a simple black box on it, wires trailing from one side. Sam pushed his fingers down on the top of it and the box hissed open, a heavy mist escaping from the cleft as it split in two. 
    There, between the two halves of the box, sat an old pocket watch on a tiny black plastic pedestal.  
    “Can I take it back with me?” Logan said. He raised his head and saw Sturgess and Kazu both looking at them. This was bad. He had to hurry. “Would that work?”
    “Theoretically, yes,” Sam said. “The temporal field extends throughout your living tissue, so the watch would need to be surrounded by—”
    “I get it,” Logan said. “Give it to me and send me back. Now!” He no longer needed to lower his voice. The cat was out of the bag. The two men were moving toward them. 
    Sam saw them, too. He snatched the watch from the pedestal, put it on Logan’s chest, and plopped down in a chair in front of a computer. He began typing furiously. 
    Everything happened very fast.
    The restraints slid away from Logan’s arms. He reached up to grab the watch when the jolt hit him. The damned implants. Kazu was running, holding the remote in one hand.
    Logan screamed, and Sam turned his head to look at him. 
    “Don’t look at me!” Logan yelled at him. “Send me ba—”
    Another jolt, even more painful, hit him. Thankfully the scientist turned back around and kept working. 
    Logan felt like his whole body was on fire. His vision was blurred with tears as the electricity crackled through him, but he could see Sturgess reaching into his jacket. Kazu was standing over him, drawing a knife. 
    Logan struggled through the pain and clasped both hands around the pocket watch. He saw two things happen almost at the same time.
    Sam, hunched over, reached out with his index finger to press the Enter key. Sturgess withdrew a nickel-plated .45 from his jacket and pushed the muzzle against Sam’s forehead.
    The finger pushed the key down just as the gun fired. At the same time, Kazu’s knife, looking like a twelve-inch version of a samurai sword, was plunging down toward his belly.
    The world exploded into brightness. As it did, he saw a plume of blood burst out of the side of Sam’s head, his entire body jolting to the left. He saw the last faded image of the knife driving downward, the tip just above his belly button.
    Then the present was gone again.

9: Sally

    He’d been gone five days. 
    That first day, the Sheriff and his men had searched her property, finding nothing. They had left, and the Sheriff had apologized one last time. 
    The next day, chores still needed to be done. Instead, Sally had sat on the porch, looking up toward the road and waiting. He would come. She knew it. Something inside her said that he was coming back. 
    But the sun had inched its way across the sky, and no sign of Logan Carver had appeared. Eventually, the animals protested. They were hungry. They were thirsty. They needed fed and watered. So she picked herself up off the porch steps and went to the barn, looking over her shoulder. 
    That night she had worn a gauzy pink outfit to bed, just for him. He would come in the night. He would walk through her front door without knocking and he would come to the bedroom looking for her. She would be ready for him. He would scoop her up into his arms and kiss her roughly. They would make love for the first time, perhaps on the bed, perhaps on the floor. 
    But the longer she lay there, the more she began to feel stupid. He was gone. He had escaped. And there was so much that was strange about that escape. But the one thing she had been sure of was that he would come back for her. She had felt it in her bones. 
    But that first night, after enough hours passed, she cried herself to sleep.
    The next day, she did a little