The Time Collector Read online

  When he picked up the menu, both sides of it opened like a window.

  * * *

  Stuart was sitting in the back corner of the dimly lit Italian restaurant at a table for two, watching the rain. Rivulets ran along the glass pane and obstructed his view. Even though hard sheets were coming down outside he’d kept their plans for the evening.

  A bottle of champagne sat on ice. The ring was in his pocket, and the words were memorized.

  After he proposed to Nema he planned to serenade her in front of all these fine restaurant-goers. He was going to sing “Purple Rain” by Prince and had already tipped the waitstaff. The humiliation was worth it to watch Nema laugh and flash him that I can’t believe you did that look.

  He’d already asked Miguel to be his best man. Miguel was the one who’d introduced them two years ago, somehow knowing Stuart would find the archaeologist from Wales irresistible. They began dating shortly after.

  Stuart had been boasting to everyone, including Nema, that she was going to be his wife one day. Now he was ready to make good on that promise.

  He sat at the table for hours.

  He tried calling her, convinced she’d gotten caught up at work. He ordered dinner to go and brought the menu with him so they could play restaurant at home. He promised the manager he’d bring it back. They were regulars.

  The manager said of course and sent him on his way. But when Stuart got home to a cold, empty house without any lights on he began to grow afraid.

  The call from the hospital came minutes later as he stood in the kitchen. Stuart couldn’t grasp what he was being told.

  A fatal car accident in the rain. Blocks from the restaurant.

  The voice on the other end of the line destroyed him. Stuart laid his head on the counter and the menu became his pillow as he wept.

  She’d been on her way. To him.

  * * *

  Roan held on to the imprint … Nema. With blinding clarity, he understood Stuart’s quest to unravel the ooparts’ mystery. Stuart was trying to make his way back to Nema—to stop that day from happening. Stuart didn’t want to see the imprints of the past, he wanted to go back to the past, for her. Somewhere along the way he’d gotten tangled up with the wrong people, who were now trying to stop him instead.

  Roan took out his cell phone, pacing the room as he made a call to Sun. He needed to warn her about the men coming to New York and tell her what had happened to Stuart.

  Melicent’s safety in London was in question too. The men who’d taken Stuart had to be connected to the person who’d set fire to her house. He should never have brought her here and exposed her like this in the open. It had been a stupid and irresponsible thing for him to do. Stuart’s abductors could even be watching the house right now. Melicent should have stayed in New Orleans with her brother. He needed to extricate her from this nightmare.

  The call to Sun went straight to voicemail.

  He expelled a frustrated breath. “Sun. You need to get out of New York.” He hesitated, not willing to say anything more in case someone else listened to the message. He added, “I’m keeping the fan safe until I can return it.”

  He hung up and looked around the bedroom, a helpless feeling overtaking him. His friend was out there somewhere in desperate need. Roan couldn’t go to the police—no one would believe him. His best course was to dig into Stuart’s research and leverage what he found. He also had one of the ooparts as collateral. The men had been looking for Hanus’s key and Descartes’s ring.

  Roan had the key and Gyan had the ring.

  Gyan could well be the person behind all of this. The men who’d taken Stuart had been speaking Hindi.

  Roan turned to find Melicent in the doorway. She was surveying the room, taking in the disarray.

  “Let’s go.” He took her hand in his without thinking. The touch of her palm hit him like a jolt and his fingers wrapped around hers. Adrenaline coursed through him as he led her to the living room. “When we go outside, stay hidden behind me. If I tell you to run, run. Don’t wait. Get in the first cab that you can and we’ll meet at Paddington station.”

  Melicent nodded, trying to stay calm.

  He dropped her hand and put his gloves back on, then he grabbed the laptop and map and led her out the door and locked it, all the while scanning the street.

  Right now he needed to get her somewhere safe—somewhere out of London where he could study the laptop and the map while he figured out his next step in finding Stuart.

  There was only one place he could think to go. He just hadn’t intended for Melicent to have to meet his mother on this trip. Jocelyn Matthis wasn’t the easiest person to handle and she would have a million questions for them both—questions he wasn’t willing to answer.

  23. THE PICTURE FRAME

  THEY TOOK A TAXI FROM NOTTING HILL. Melicent knew Roan had seen something distressing while touching the flowers at Stuart’s, that much was obvious. Now she was kicking herself for not touching the flowers too. She’d come to London for answers, but she’d frozen when she stepped inside the house. When she tried to ask Roan what he’d seen, he became evasive. He was brooding and staring out the cab window.

  “Where are we going?” She finally broke the silence.

  “Oxford.”

  “Oxford University, Oxford?”

  He looked over to her. “My mother’s a professor there. We’ll stay the night with her.”

  “Oh.” Melicent silently gulped. They were on their way to meet Roan’s mother?

  She remembered coming across the name of an Oxford professor in her initial online snooping—Dr. Jocelyn Matthis—who was on the Heirloom Foundation’s board of directors. She was also a distinguished historian. Melicent never imagined the woman might be his mother. Dr. Matthis either must have kept her maiden name or changed it after the divorce.

  The idea of meeting her made Melicent’s stomach flutter with nerves. The scene at Stuart’s had been unsettling enough, now she was about to meet the mother of her potential boyfriend—if they survived this.

  Melicent wanted to ask who the men were that wanted Stuart’s laptop, but she didn’t want to get into it in front of the cabdriver. Plus, she was pretty sure Roan would sidestep the question. The man was forming the habit of trying to protect her.

  She sighed and looked out the cab window, unable to marvel at the fact that she was in a taxi in London, a city she’d always wanted to visit, with a man she’d love to get to know under normal circumstances. But nothing was normal anymore. Her previous life was gone, and she still wasn’t ready to revisit that pain or accept the loss.

  Right now, there was nothing more she’d rather do than reach over and hold Roan’s hand again and enjoy a simple cab ride. But Roan didn’t hold hands, and his were once again encased in thick leather. She’d seen the surprise on his face back at Stuart’s when he’d taken her hand without putting his glove back on first. And it’d occurred to her that he was afraid to hold her hand—or anyone’s hand for that matter. Someone had hurt him in the past, broken his trust, and he was afraid to let anyone do it again.

  She didn’t know how she knew that truth. Either it was her ability assisting her, or woman’s intuition, or both. Whatever the reason, Roan’s gloves were back on, and she wasn’t sure when they were coming off again.

  She tried to distract herself by looking out the window at the city as they headed to the station. When she thought of London, she hadn’t expected to see all the canals or boats in the water. The atmospheric waterways looked like havens tucked within the city, surrounded by Victorian warehouses and charming waterside restaurants.

  When they reached Paddington station they had some time before their train, so Melicent asked to go to platform one to see the Paddington Bear statue. She couldn’t pass through Paddington station without seeing it. As a child she’d sat on her mother’s lap reading about the little bear from Darkest Peru.

  Seeing the life-size statue of Paddington sitting on his suitcase gave he
r the impulse to touch the sculpture. Perhaps she could sense an imprint from the artist who had made it—or even the author, Michael Bond. The writer must have come to see this work of art inspired by his stories. The bronze statue would be the first object she’d intentionally tried to read since the toy horse and the peace pipe. Paddington Bear seemed like a good place to start.

  “You don’t want to touch that,” Roan warned her, breaking her concentration.

  Melicent turned to him, her hand in midair. “Why, is there a negative imprint in it?”

  “No, there’s a piece of gum stuck to the side of the hat.” He nodded.

  Melicent leaned down to look, and sure enough there was a sticky wad of goo right where her hand had been about to go. “Thank you,” she said wryly. Perhaps the universe was trying to tell her something.

  Roan gave her a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes; his attention was now fixed on something else.

  Melicent turned to see what he was looking at and caught sight of the little girl, no more than five years old. She was standing alone like a scared animal afraid to cross the road as tears streamed down her face.

  The little girl was lost.

  Roan was already walking toward her with purposeful strides, taking off his right glove as he approached. Melicent hurried to follow.

  Roan bent down on one knee to match the little girl’s height. “Hello, have you been looking at Paddington? I was just showing him to my friend here.” He motioned to Melicent behind him, who found herself nodding and smiling to alleviate the girl’s fear.

  The little girl looked at them both through her tears.

  “My name’s Roan and this is Melicent.” Roan held out his bare hand for a proper handshake, and the little girl shook it. “We’re visiting from out of town. Do you know the story of Paddington?”

  Melicent stared at their joined hands in fascination. Roan had his other hand by his side tucked in some kind of mudra.

  The little girl nodded. “He’s a very brave bear from Peru who loves honey.”

  Roan continued to hold her hand. “I bet you’re as brave. Do you know where your mother is?”

  “No, and I’ve gone all over looking. We’re visiting my auntie who just had a baby.”

  “Would you like me to try a magic spell to find her?” he asked her. The little girl nodded vigorously. He said, “All you have to do is count to ten and picture your mother in your mind. Can you do that?” Roan continued to hold her hand while the girl counted. Melicent had no idea what he was doing.

  “Did it work?” the little girl asked when she was finished.

  “Absolutely.” He took out a pen and notepad from his bag and began to write. He tore off the piece of paper and handed it to her. “Take this paper over to the policeman at the end of the platform. See him over there?” Roan pointed out the man in uniform. “Show him the paper and he’ll call your mommy for you.”

  “Is this really mummy’s telephone number?” The girl looked at Roan in wonder. “Are you from Hogwarts?”

  “Something like that.” He winked at her. “Now hurry on. I’m sure your mother’s worried.”

  Without saying goodbye, the little girl took off running through the throng of people to the policeman at the end of the platform. Roan stood up and put his glove back on and waited until she handed the note to the officer. When the officer took the paper and began to call the number, Roan turned away.

  “Let’s go.” He walked in the opposite direction and disappeared into the crowd.

  Melicent hesitated, riveted by the sight of the little girl taking the officer’s phone. The expression on the girl’s face transformed from one of fear into a portrait of light when she heard her mother’s voice.

  Melicent felt a pang in her heart as if it had been broken and then repaired at the same time. Roan had helped the little girl find her way home.

  * * *

  Melicent didn’t say a word for most of the hour-long train ride to Oxford. She stared out the window as the train sped through suburban London and left the industrial sprawl for a picturesque English countryside.

  The depth of Roan’s ability was beginning to boggle her mind. He had scanned that little girl like a hard drive, expertly extracting the precise information he’d needed.

  How had he retrieved the mother’s phone number? Had he replayed a memory of the girl hearing or seeing it? And what was the mudra that he had made with his left hand?

  She noticed Roan read imprints with his right hand too, which meant he was left-handed. Maybe her ability would have been more developed by now if she had not suffered a lifetime of second-guessing which hand to use. Would she ever be able to perform such a feat?

  If Roan thought her silence unusual he gave no indication. Or perhaps he understood. He had his eyes closed; his arms were folded with one hand on his face and two fingers against his forehead, casting shadows on the frown on his face. His gloves were back on.

  Melicent used the time to study him while he napped. His large frame barely fit in the space. This was a man who’d been reading imprints since he was a small child, peering into the nooks and crannies of the past. If he held her hand, could he go back and see her life? Press rewind and return to any time? Was her biological body just a sum of information, a walking accumulation of every moment she’d ever experienced, collected and encoded? Is that all DNA was?

  Roan opened his eyes and caught her gaze. They looked at each other for a suspended moment. “What are you thinking about?” he asked.

  “You.” She watched his eyes widen in surprise. They were sitting together like any other couple on a train, a hand’s touch away, an inch from a kiss. She wanted to know about his life. “When did you realize you had your ability?”

  “When I was five.”

  Her eyebrows rose. That was young. “How did it happen?”

  “My parents and I were on a family vacation to Disneyland and we stopped at an outdoor flea market. My mom was rummaging through boxes of books and my dad was browsing a stall of musical instruments.” He got a faraway smile on his face as he remembered. “I tugged on his pant leg and asked him who Roy Rogers was.”

  A surprised laugh escaped her.

  Roan caught her eyes. “My father laughed too. He said, ‘The King of the Cowboys a long time ago.’” Roan extended his hand, showing her. “I had my hand around the neck of a guitar that was propped up on a stand, and I told him, ‘Roy Rogers’s name was really Leonard Slye. This was his guitar before he was famous.’”

  Melicent was hanging on to every word. How she would have loved to see Roan at age five reading the imprint of Roy Rogers’s guitar.

  “My father knelt down and asked, how did I know? And I said because of the story in the guitar.” Roan met Melicent’s eyes. “My dad asked me to tell him the story. So I told him how Leonard had moved from Ohio to live with his sister, Mary. He was shy but he tried out for a radio show. I knew all these things up until the time he was playing for the Rocky Mountaineers, the years before he became famous and changed his name.”

  “What did your dad think?”

  “He was so flustered.” Roan chuckled. “He bought the guitar for forty dollars. Then we went and found my mom. I told her too in the car. They didn’t know what to think. My dad read a biography on Roy Rogers and confirmed all the things I knew about Leonard Slye in the 1920s and thirties. When we got back home to New Orleans, he found a guitar salesman who restored historic guitars. The restorer found ‘L. Slye’ had been written on the back of the neck and then polished off. A collector bought it from us for ten thousand dollars.”

  “Wow. So that was the beginning of West, Inc., Roy Rogers.”

  “Roy Rogers.” Roan nodded. “My dad had been a struggling accountant up till then. He began taking me to antique fairs to see if what had happened with the guitar was a fluke. It wasn’t. After that my parents rearranged their lives around my gift.”

  Now Melicent was about to meet one of those parents. Anticipation
trilled through her.

  * * *

  When they arrived at Oxford rail station, Melicent stepped onto the street and looked around in wonder, never once having imagined she would be in Oxford, England. The first thing she noticed was the sea of bicycles parked by the station.

  Roan guided her by the elbow past the taxis. “The house is close, just a half mile, near the university.”

  They walked toward the city center. With each step, the architecture began to transport her to centuries past, the curvature of the stones offering up a glimpse of their yesteryears. She found herself yearning to create a snow globe to capture the magic in the air.

  “They call it the City of Dreaming Spires,” Roan said. “The university was founded in the eleventh century. It’s the oldest English-speaking university in the world. Some of the greatest minds have come here to study … Stephen Hawking, Indira Gandhi, Tolkien, Margaret Thatcher, Aung San Suu Kyi … Edwin Hubble.” A little smile hovered on his lips with Hubble’s name. “These buildings witnessed it all.”

  Melicent followed one step behind Roan, watching him stride down the street. He seemed energized by being in Oxford and knew his way around. In fact, he looked at home. She asked him, “What does your mom teach?”

  “Cultural history.”

  She fell into step beside him. “The history of cultures?”

  “Not exactly. It’s more the study of beliefs and ideas across the world through time. Cultural history dissects how the past defines the present, everything from art, food, clothing, objects, customs, values, religion. It draws on anthropology and philosophy as well.”

  “Sounds serious.”

  “My mom’s a serious lady.” He gave her a rueful smile as he led her past an array of cafés and bars and a quaint-looking sign that said 17TH CENTURY HOTEL. They turned down a lane leading to a pocket of residential houses.