Flirting With Forever by Gwyn Cready (books for 20 year olds TXT) 📗

“No,” he said with exquisite politeness, “thank you.” He stretched his long legs. Now was the time. “How is my patronage looking, Mertons?”

Peter hadn’t been exactly eager to deal with his customers since returning, and the surprise showed on Mertons’s face. With a tilt of his head, the thin man peered into the long hal way.

“You have a considerable line out there.”

“Excel ent,” said Peter, who, in fact, couldn’t have cared less. “But …”

“But what?”

“I admit I am concerned, most concerned, about the appropriateness of each patron as far as our limits are concerned. Might you be wil ing to size them up, so to speak, from a jump risk point of view?”

Mertons’s forehead creased, and he shuffled through the papers before finding one in particular. “I assume they’re the same people you saw when you lived this day in your life before.”

“Quite likely, aye.” Peter carried the prints to the storage room. “But the point is one can’t be sure. We assume the writer wil be disguised, but what if there is more than a single man with access to the unsecured time tube? What if there is a conspiracy to unravel the time fabric?”

Mertons paled. “You’re right. There’s a Robert de Manvil e on this list here whose name is giving me pause.”

“Robert de Manvil e.” Peter frowned. “I don’t remember him. Seems a very likely candidate, Mertons.”

Mertons sighed. “I explained you wouldn’t remember everyone. It is just as if you were seventy, and returned to the neighborhood in which you lived until you were breeked.

Some faces you wil remember. Some you wil not. It is not a reliable means by which to judge. You must exercise caution and foresight at al times— all times, Peter. Give me a moment. I shal examine the group versus the appointments you had for the day from our records and offer you my thinking.”

“Take al the time you need.”

And Mertons, feeling more than his usual sense of trepidation, did. Though Robert de Manvil e, upon rigorous cross-examination, proved unremarkable and the woman with the crimson frock and pockmarks gave him no pause, the man with the hooded eyes beside her—her husband, or at least the man who purported to be—alarmed Mertons almost enough to announce Mr. Lely was accepting no more clients for the day. But he took down a thorough description of the man, so thorough, in fact, the elaborate chime of Peter’s Ottoman clock entered his consciousness as only a distant, barely noticed melody.

When he felt he’d observed enough to make a judgment on the security of the mission, he stepped back into the office and said, “I would like to offer a caution on—Peter?”

The desk was empty, and the door to the storage room was ajar.

“Er, I say, Peter,” he cal ed, raising his voice a degree, “I would like to offer a stiff note of caution on a man named John Howel and his wife. I’m not certain, of course, but you must not take risks.”

Peter did not reply. Mertons frowned and started to-ward the room. “Remember, this writer has enough heartless calculation to fool his readers, destroy the reputation of a gifted man and thus far elude the Guild. I would cal that more than a temporary irritant, Peter. I would cal that”—

Mertons entered to find nothing but curtains fluttering at an open window, and his warning sputtered to a close—“a cold-blooded machine.”

2

ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICES OF THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM

OF ART, PITTSBURGH, PRESENT DAY

There are certain things that drive a woman to immediate action, Campbel Stratford thought as she heard the pop. A flesh-cutting panty hose run is one of them.

“Oh. My. God! ” She shoved the manuscript pages aside, knocking over an orange Crush with one hand and a three-inch stack of security audit reports with the other. “How did I ever get a grown-up job?”

“Since when is curating a grown-up job?” Jeanne, her assistant and longtime friend, grabbed a nearby napkin.

Campbel found the scissors and flung her leg on the desk. A run the size of the Grand Canyon with the approximate pain-delivery power of an electrified garrote had laddered between her legs