Page 43 of Preying Game

“Yes. Alice is here with me. She’s fine.”

“Where are you?”

“Back at the car,” he answered, assuming Grant would know he was back in the twenty-first century if he’d answered the phone.

“It’s her car. She bought it used in ‘61.”

“That explains it.”

“Yeah.” He added, “I can’t talk now. We’ll be there soon.”

“Understood.” When he clicked off, he saw Alice watching him.

“Is that some kind of walkie-talkie?” she asked.

“Something like that.”

“You said I bought the car in ‘61. That’s this year, right?”

He felt his heart turn over. This was it. “No.”

“Then what?”

He swallowed hard. “You know I’m telepathic. That’s how I found you.”

“Yes.”

“When your voice came over the car radio, you were reaching across a lot of miles to find me. But it wasn’t just miles. It was years, too.”

She kept her gaze on him. “What do you mean?”

“You were in 1961. I wasn’t.”

She shook her head, grappling with that. “What year is it, then?”

When he told her the date in the twenty-first century she gasped. “No.”

“I’m sorry.”

She looked shell-shocked. “How?”

“I don’t know. But it happened, and I was able to come back and find you. I didn’t know what was really going on until yesterday. When we lost contact, I was following Hayward upstairs and into the kitchen and library. I found a calendar on the wall. I couldn’t get close enough to read the date, but I saw it was from the Carvertown Business Association—so I knew what town you were in. And I saw a very distinctive rock in the river. My friend Grant Bradley and I rushed over here in a helicopter, and the house was burned up. I thought I was too late. Then Grant pointed out it was an old fire.”

“Oh my God. You mean from when I burned it?”

“Yeah.”

As she started to shake, he pulled her close. He knew it was a lot to take in. He’d been just as shocked that morning when he’d realized what had happened.

“It’s going to be okay.”

“How?”

“We’ll figure it out.”

He felt her struggling for calm.

Raising her head, she searched his face. “And we can stay together?” she asked in a shaky voice.

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