Threading the Timelines

Prologue

Prologue
August 23, 2014

"Hello? Flynn?" A sharp staccato of car horns greeted her as she answered the phone.

"Pack what you can in the next five minutes and be ready to run." His voice came over the speaker, frantic, his accent thickened from his evident fear.

A muttered curse followed squealing tires and Lucy felt her heart hitch in her chest. "Slow down before you get yourself killed."

"There's no time! Luc, please, I beg you." A shiver trailed down her neck as his voice dropped, barely audible above the traffic. "It's Rittenhouse. They're coming for us."

Lucy's eyes darted to the windows. "What? How?"

"I'll explain later, but right now we need to move."

She sprinted into motion heading towards their bedroom. "How far away are you?"

"I'm at the grocery on 3rd...maybe three, four minutes tops. Do you remember the combo?"

She jumped on the bed, pulled the Monet from the wall, and spun the dial on the hidden safe.

"Yes."

The passports and cash went in the bag by the bed, kept there for just such an occasion. She strapped on one gun, grabbed the other for Flynn, and shoved the keys to the getaway vehicle parked and waiting in a nearby abandoned building in her pocket..

"I'll keep you safe, I promise," his words seemed to plead with the universe.

She stifled a hiccuped cry. "I know, Cia."

Crouching down, she pulled the backpack filled with necessities from the back corner of the closet, then stood and scanned the room. Their wedding photo from the little Croatian chapel and the necklace he'd given her on their first Christmas together went gently into the bag. He'd want the picture of them in the redwoods and his grandfather's watch, and those items joined the rest of what she could save from their lives, packed into two nondescript backpacks.

He took in a deep relieved breath. "I'm pulling in now, I'll be right in." The car screeched into the driveway.

She took one last look around the bedroom they'd shared for years and jogged to meet him at the door. She'd never look back as long as she had him. "I love you, Garcia. Forever."

"And always, my Lucia. Always." She heard his key turning in the lock and slid to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, ready to run, with this man, to the ends of the earth if necessary.

Flynn opened the door and stepped into the house, cell phone pressed desperately to his ear for some unknown reason. A recorded message informed him that the number he had dialed was not in service. He stopped and looked around, discombobulated, his heart searching for something he could not name.

Shaking his head, he tossed his keys into the waiting dish by the door and called out, "Lorena? Iris? Where are my girls?"

~*~*~*~
October 3, 1976

Emma sat rigid in the office of a young, and handsome she happened to notice, Benjamin Cahill.

"You'll ensure she'll never take that job at Oberlin? That she'll follow in her mother's footsteps and teach at Stanford?"

He crossed one leg over the other and stared her down. "It's for Rittenhouse?" She nodded, never glancing away. "But you won't tell me why this is all so important? That I keep my as yet unborn and thus unknown daughter from taking a job at some obscure university."

"No, I can't, unfortunately. Just know that it's necessary to our survival." Well, it wasn't exactly a lie. They couldn't risk those two fighting together, they'd make a formidable team. But her animus featured a bit of a personal nature, she could admit to herself.

"Consider it done." A cold smile crept across his features. "For Rittenhouse."

Emma wondered briefly if she'd made a deal with the devil. Probably, but that was tomorrow's problem. Who knew what loose ends she'd have to tie up in 2014. No matter, as long as Lucy's father held up his end of the bargain, she'd deal with whatever came at her.

~*~*~*~
August 23, 2014

Lucy stood on stage, momentarily confused, lost, and terrified. A sea of faces stared back as she searched her thoughts.

"What would happen if, say, the Hindenburg never caught fire?" The feeling of wrongness eased away and she continued, " How would the world change if those thirty-seven people never died? How would the present find itself irrevocably altered? That is the importance of history."