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  “TOTAL garbage,” Pike said. “What’s the other one?”

  “Gosh. I have to say you’re entertaining me. It’s as though someone threw a switch.”

  “And I came to life,” he said. “ . . . this is just my opinion of course.”

  “Yes. I don’t mean that negatively, far from it . . . The second was, the more difficult the task, the more obstacles were thrown in the protagonist’s path.”

  “Okay,” Pike said, “that one I’ll give you.” There was similar language in the 10 Rules, he couldn’t recall the specifics, but at least Stephen King got was in the ballpark there . . . and Pike was thinking of his own complicated experience with the obstacles in the Milburns’ deal.

  His phone rang and he asked Heidi to check it and it was Mitch. It was coming up on 1 am, and when Mitch called late at night it was generally important, unfortunately.

  Pike pulled off at the next rest area and called him back. Mitch said, “Sorry to bother you there sport.”

  “You’re not bothering me, don’t worry about it,” Pike lied.

  “Uh. Well that job you gave me, I did make contact with your friend.”

  Pike assumed this would be Erline and reminded Mitch that she’s not my friend, I’ve never talked to the person, but to spit it out, what do you have.

  “Well,” Mitch said. “One of the the transplant patients--another one--has been difficult to handle. This one, in Missoula, Montana. 36 year old male.”

  “Difficult to handle, how.” Pike knew whatever answer came back wouldn’t be good.

  “He shot a man in a bar scrap.”

  “Killed him?”

  “No, wounded him. Erline said it was touch and go for while--in the abdomen--but the person pulled through.”

  “Okay this is a dumb question,” Pike said, “but don’t they . . . shoot people sometimes anyway . . . in Montana? In bars. Saloons . . . I mean it still is kind of the Old West there, right?”

  “Son I know where you’re going and that occurred to me too--but that’s a reach. This gentleman--before the procedure--never drank alcohol, never displayed any violent tendencies.”

  “Oh,” Pike said. “What was the body part, do we know?”

  “Trachea.”

  “Holy Smokes, pretty major then.”

  “Yeah . . . Listen, I’ll let you go. I hate to say this . . . and I’ll keep an eye on it, and I’ll stay in close touch with Erline . . .”

  “But?”

  “But . . . we may have to have a meeting of the minds, before too long.”

  Pike said, “Let’s not think ahead,” and they hung up.

  Heidi waited until they’d been back on the highway for a few minutes. “At the risk of prying,” she said, “may I ask what was that all about? If I didn’t know better, you sounded like a secret agent or something.”

  Pike took a deep breath. As comfortable as he was with Heidi right now you couldn’t let her in on any of this. Even a little tiny morsel of it. It wouldn’t be fair. He said, “Okay, you know this Mitch, right? I mean, I guess you never met him but you probably heard of him, since he was putting us up, me and Jack.”

  “Yes. He sounds colorful.”

  “One way to look at it. The thing about Mitch . . . the poor guy’s in fantasy land. He has this website, people contact him with their stories of seeing UFO’s . . . He buys into it. Are you starting to get the idea?”

  “I believe in UFO’s,” Heidi set. “Not that we’re witnessing them on earth--necessarily--but scientifically, when you factor in the the magnitude of the universe, how could one not at least entertain the probability?”

  Pike said, “Okay not the greatest example, on Mitch. Bottom line, the guy can’t sleep great, and he calls me at weird hours sometimes, and I listen to his nonsense and it helps him . . . Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough,” she said. “What was the question you posed about the body part though?”

  Pike took a moment. “You know something,” he said, “you’re pretty cute, you don’t mind my saying.” Sticking his finger against her cheek.

  He left it at that, hoping that would work, and pretty soon Heidi fell asleep, and Pike had to admit she did look pretty dang cute curled up over there against the night.

  Chapter 16

  Before he departed Anthem Pike had told Mitch about Dani’s new information, and he gave Mitch the job of making contact with Erline.

  He didn’t mean to be bossing the old guy around, but the fact was Mitch had as much of a vested interest as anyone, and he enjoyed this stuff, whether he always admitted it or not.

  So Mitch had done his due diligence and reached Erline and gotten the latest, and he could have waited until the morning to call Pike, nothing anyone could do about it right now--or likely soon for that matter--and hopefully never.

  Pike still treated these random bits of slightly alarming news, allegedly all stemming from Don’s situation, as anomalies. That there’s no set pattern, no root cause, that, as he was telling Mitch, you could take an ordinary guy--a non-Don transplant one--and things could unfortunately go wrong there too.

  It wasn’t great to hear about another one, obviously. Pike thought of something, and when they stopped for gas an hour later, Heidi still fast asleep, Pike called Mitch, didn’t bother asking if he woke him up, but told him to please come up with a breakdown of every recipient of Don’s--and spread-sheet it out, and you hated to be blunt, but, organized by:

  body part received

  male/female

  age

  occupation

  location

  any unusual behavior reported

  Mitch said good idea, that made sense, and he’d start that process next time he contacted Erline.

  Pike didn’t want to sound like the one who was a little nervous here, so he said fine, and to put it together at your convenience--though the truth was he hoped Mitch wouldn’t wait too long.

  Heidi slept what seemed like forever and Pike was thinking Gee, that activity yesterday at the zoo and go-kart place must have taken it out of her . . . but obviously it was the middle of the night and that’s what people did unless they were caffeined up the wazoo like him.

  She woke up when they were in the home stretch, about 50 miles to go, and as though there had been no interruption, she picked up the ‘11/22/63’ thing where she left off.

  She said, “As far as what happened at the end--if you really don’t mind a spoiler?”

  Pike said he didn’t at all, and she said, “Well. I may not be entirely accurate, but the point the reader retains is that a monumental change to the historical record--such as preventing a presidential assasination--does not come without consequences.”

  “Wait,” Pike said, “so he does stop it?”

  “Yes he does.”

  “How did he pull it off? I have to hear this one.”

  Heidi said, “It’s interesting. At times you seem wholly engaged and on board, and at others you seem quite cynical.”

  “Sorry about that,” Pike said. “Don’t take me too seriously here.”

  “Anyhow, Jake in his surveillance of Lee Harvey Oswald learns that Oswald may have a friend in Dallas, an accomplice.”

  “A Mafia dude, he’s saying?”

  “No. Someone in the CIA. Jake gets thrown off by that prospect, gives too much weight to it, and nearly loses track of Lee Oswald on the critical day.”

  “But?”

  “Oswald has made it to the window of the depository, but Jake arrives at the last minute and charges him and disrupts the gun shot.”

  Pike said, “Oh boy. Okay, now we’re in movie territory. What are the odds something like that would actually happen?”

  “You’re probably correct, yes.”

  “In real life--I mean, fake real life, but you know what I’m saying--without the bells of whistles where you have to entertain an audience with cheap stunts--he stops the guy short of the building, like I say . . . No glamour to doing it that way though.”

/>   Heidi said, “Maybe you should provide that feedback to Stephen King. Many writers and celebrities are on Twitter now, they are accessible.”

  “So what’s the final final you’re hinting at?” he said.

  “Jake is applauded for his work, recognized, and is given an award by the FBI. But then a few days later there is a large catastrophic earthquake in Los Angeles, the symmetry of which he doesn’t connect to his actions--but when he returns to the present, the world is quite different.”

  “More movies and TV . . . but how so?”

  “Well, it began with a radical candidate winning the next presidential election--I believe it was George Wallace--which led to a subsequent nuclear exchange, and . . . okay granted, perhaps it was farfetched from there.”

  Pike was thinking sure, when you changed something--in this case prevented something fairly drastic--there would be the ripple effect. But extending all the way to the nuclear option? No way.

  “So that was it?” he said. “Or, the guy goes back and undoes the whole thing?”

  “How did you guess,” she said.

  “Only because you told me he could re-set stuff. Every new time he went back . . . Honestly? It shouldn’t be that easy. That would make a better story.”

  You could tell Heidi was getting a kick out of this. “How should it work then?” she said.

  “If he screwed up? But doing what he thought was the right thing and stopping the shooter?”

  “Unh-huh.”

  “He’d have to go back again, get there sooner. Then let events proceed as normal, not get in Oswald’s way.”

  Pike was a little confused himself, thinking for a moment, would it work like that?

  “But he can’t get there sooner,” she said, “he’s limited to the particular date in 1958.”

  “You keep saying that,” Pike said, “but that’s a joke. He can, he just doesn’t know it . . . I mean, that would have been a lot more logical, have it structured that way, the book. Don’t you think?”

  Heidi said, “Again, your enthusiasm is quite potent . . . I’m not sure where it’s all coming from at 5 in the morning.”

  “Me neither,” Pike said, and they both laughed, and Pike’s focus shifted to what really seemed important now-- should they stop short of Beacon and have breakfast, or get there first and figure it out.

  Heidi said, “One other interesting component of the story, there is a gentleman who Jake tries to help in the beginning. In fact that was the genesis of the larger effort, with JFK . . . When Jake learns that he can truly travel back in time--from the basement of his local diner . . . ”

  “Meaning the diner was older than 1958, was that the set-up?” Pike said.

  “That I’m not sure of. The gentleman he’s helping is a janitor. When the janitor was young he absorbed a terrible beating from his abusive father, which left him mentally impaired.”

  “Okay I get the picture. What happens?”

  “I don’t recall specifically now, except that he intercedes and the man doesn’t suffer the beating. However, at the end of the book, as an addendum to the nuclear drama, Stephen King throws in that by surviving the beating and thereby being fit, the man is drafted into the Viet Nam war, and that doesn’t end well.”

  “Ooh boy,” was what Pike couldn’t help saying. He was processing it. He had to concede that King may be onto something--certain parts at least, to a degree--though you’d still chalk up a lot of it to fantasy.

  He couldn’t help wondering though, as he flicked on the right blinker for the Beacon turn-off, finally: Could you really do something like that--stop the murder of John F. Kennedy?

  It wasn’t like he was going to try it right now for Gosh sakes, nothing at all like that . . . but who knows, it might be something to run by Mitch.

  Chapter 17

  “This is certainly a nice friendly town you have here,” Heidi was saying. They were in B’s Cafe downtown, Heidi was the one enjoying the big breakfast, Pike having hit the wall all of a sudden, with the effect of the monster drive he just handled kicking in.

  Part of Pike’s concern at this point was not running directly into high school classmates who might easily expose him as the fraud he was, and not the college student he’d been lying to Heidi about.

  That said, he was tired enough right now that it might not matter, you’d try and roll with it, whatever came down.

  It didn’t take long before Jack Hannamaker got in the picture. He texted Pike a couple times yesterday and Pike ignored them, but now with Heidi putting down her fork for a moment and doing something on her own phone Pike figured it wouldn’t be rude to get back to the guy, and Jack returned his text pretty quick and asked if he’d made it, and Pike said yep he was eating breakfast, sort of.

  B’s was their basic no-frills restaurant of choice, he and Jack, unless they got adventurous and headed the 11 miles out to Art’s Span by the mall, which had an all-you-can-eat deal that took care of you for the day. Pike figured if Jack was available at present he’d know where Pike was and maybe show up. Which wouldn’t be the worst thing. He wasn’t exactly tired of Heidi, but you could use a little diversity, and no doubt she could too.

  Sure enough the guy comes strutting through the door about 10 minutes later like he owns the joint, and squeezes in next to Pike and reaches over without asking and grabs a piece of Pike’s bacon.

  “Hi again,” Jack said to Heidi.

  “Hi yourself,” she said, and for the first time--or maybe Pike missed the signal down in Phoenix--he noticed some chemistry between them.

  Pike cleared his throat. “How’s Andrea doing?” he said. “Everything hunky dory with the plane ride and all?”

  “That part was fine,” Jack said. “Two things--full disclosure. We broke up on the airport shuttle thingamajig.”

  “Hmm,” Pike said. “The one to the airport down there? Or from it up here?”

  “Idiot,” Jack said, “you drove us to the airport down there.”

  “Oh yeah,” Pike said.

  “That’s so sad,” Heidi said. “I feel for you.”

  “Fine that’s one,” Pike said, “what do we got for number two?” And he said to Heidi, “Always a lot of drama with this guy.” But Heidi didn’t much react to that, she was all-in at the moment, studying Jack.

  “Two is I lost my job,” Jack said. “So here we are.”

  Pike said, “The one you never had.”

  “You know something?” Jack said.

  “I was thinking, when he laid that on us,” Pike said to Heidi, “this guy barely worked a day in his life.”

  “That’s a cheap shot, man,” Jack said. And Pike knew he stepped over the line a bit, that Jack’s uncle had a moving company and Jack did help him out, and even Pike himself pitched in over there on a couple Sundays when they were short.

  Meanwhile though, now Pike was wondering, had Jack really changed when Pike came back from Idaho--playing up the new enterprising side and all--or . . . was the dude just using the fake job excuse to get back to Beacon early. In other words, the same old guy.

  And if that was the case, why would he want to get back to Beacon so soon--but Jack was complicated that way, and you probably weren’t going to find out, and what did it matter, he had his reasons.

  On the other hand . . . Jack did own the F-250 now, so that was definitely different, and he had to pay for the thing somehow.

  Pike said out loud what he was thinking. “I’m having more trouble putting 2 and 2 together these days . . . and yeah sorry, that was a cheap shot.”

  Heidi said to Jack, “So what precipitated you two breaking up? Was it the culmination of something you’d like to discuss?”

  Jack gave Pike a little look, and Pike knew where he was going, like is the girl for real, but not necessarily minding it either.

  Jack said, “Well these things happen. We decided we wanted our space.” And Pike couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic, but it seemed like an okay time to step outside and catch a l
ittle fresh air, and get back to one other person--Frankie--who had also texted him. Not yesterday, but a couple days ago, before he had to take off for Idaho.

  Frankie of course was the good-hearted librarian in town who helped Pike back in the beginning, climbing on a ladder in a special reference room and bringing down for Pike the old leather-bound volume, The 10 Rules of Time Travel.

  Pike had met with Frankie a few more times, at the ice cream place, and he didn’t exactly outline everything that was going on with him--it wasn’t quite on the level of his relationship with Mitch--but Frankie got the idea, and made some suggestions. Pike was never sure if the suggestions actually helped--when he had to go someplace--but he suspected they did, and how could they hurt.

  Right now Frankie’s phone went to voice mail and Pike went back into the cafe--and Jeez, Jack and Heidi weren’t quite side by side cuddling up, but they were both leaning forward and whatever they were talking about they were both highly into . . . and Pike announced that he really was shot, and was heading home for a while, and would Jack mind showing Heidi the sights--such as they were--of beautiful Beacon while he re-charged the batteries.

  And Jack nodded and absentmindedly opened his hand and Pike stuck the F-250 keys in there and went back outside and had to call an Uber of all things, to take him home after driving 500 miles to get here . . . and as per normal, there was no one around in the house, that Pike had to waste time saying hello to, and he went up to his room and when he saw the bed he barely made it there in time and was out like a light for 12 hours.

  Chapter 18

  Frankie said, “It’s good to see you, my friend.”

  It seemed like a lot of people lately were telling other people it was good to see them, but with Frankie it was genuine, and appreciated, and there was no ulterior motive behind it, that was for sure.