Through the Storm

Chapter Eleven

Monday, January 13, 2003, 7:35 a.m.

The sun blazed in my eyes again, but this time an icy breeze swept over me, stinging the ends of my ears. I stood outside a coffee shop a few blocks from my building. The door opened and an inviting gust of warm air rushed out. I ducked inside and grabbed the morning paper off an empty table.

I confirmed the date and felt a small amount of satisfaction. It was nice to know 'when' I was for a change.

My legs felt so light, like rubber. I sank into a chair and rested my head on the table. A few deep breaths later, I lifted my eyes and looked around.

The only problem was...I didn't know what I was looking for.
Why would it matter if my father worked for the CIA? Although...come to think of it...it might explain the angry dudes with guns storming into Mitch's dorm room. The idea that my dad had a hand in what happened to Mitch made me sick to my stomach. As much as I wish the blame didn't rest on me, I hated the idea of it being my dad's fault. Still, If I put on my logical (sane) hat for a moment, there were only a few scenarios that could explain everything. I forced myself to sit down and go through these in my head before I made any crazy, impulsive moves...although it didn't really matter, since I wasn't in home base. I shook the thought from my head and set it aside...for now.
I grabbed a piece of of scrap paper and a pen to jot some theories down, even though I couldn't take something back with me. Not in this kind of jump. But seeing the words on paper might help.

1. My dad, the CEO, is secretly well trained in the art of killer self-defense and paranoid about the safety of his children to the point where he hires, I don't know, maybe an injured ex-CIA agent to follow his kids everywhere. But that doesn't explain dad's ability to follow is without me or Courtney noticing!

2. My dad DOES work for the CIA and his day job is a cover, but he's totally the good guy and it's not his fault a couple of dudes with guns decided to threaten his one living family member because he refused to hand over a secret government password that, if it fell into the wrong hands, would potentially set off nuclear weapons across the world. He just forgot to tell me to watch out for these guys. Or maybe they got to him first...in 2009...I mean, how would I know without going back?

3. My dad does work for the CIA as a spy and found out about me being a time traveler in 2009 and decided that me and anyone I'm associated with are a threat to national (or world) security and must be locked up (or killed) to keep the world from being destroyed.

4. Again, he's an agent for real, and knew that his own son was a freak and had to be studied with brain scans a few times a year and eventually used by the government as a lab rat. Or sold to Russian spies.

Okay, so maybe these theories sounded a little to much like summer box office movie hits, but seriously...some CIA agent (or maybe he's an injured, one legged ex-CIA agent) was following my twelve-year-old self and the twelve-year-old version of my sister. So, yeah, my theories have a lot to live up to. And even if options two through four had less than a one percent chance of being possible, it ruled out the solution of just asking my dad, in 2007, what he really did for a living. Although I kind of ruled out confronting him before this list, right after the strangling incident.

I walked up to the counter to buy some coffee and come up with a plan to spy on the guy dad had spying on the younger me and Courtney. "Large white chocolate mocha."

The man nodded and took my money, then I slid over to wait.
"Small hot chocolate with skim milk and extra whip cream."

My head shot up when I heard that voice. The man handed me my coffee and I took it and turned quickly. I knew as soon as I heard her speak, my plans to follow the seemingly invisible Agent Freeman wouldn't happen. Not when I so desperately wanted to talk to my sister again.