Time Line Read online

  “Yeah well, what are you going to do,” Jack said.

  Pike said, “You remember an Audrey Milburn?”

  “Dude, you keep asking me that. What’s your problem?”

  Pike had heard somewhere that one of the tools therapists used on people--a sneaky tool--was to keep asking the same questions over and over. The concept being, you make the person search deeper down than maybe their conscious level is aware of, and who knows, they might spit something new out on the third or fourth try . . . Even the getting ticked off part, that might jar something . . . like Jack was at the moment.

  “If I told you,” Pike said, “you used to date her. And one time, in the middle of it, we had an altercation at the water fountain . . . That’d be you and me.”

  Jack said, “Really. What was it about?”

  “I can’t remember exactly,” Pike said, which at this point was true. “But then I stole her away from you . . . while you were in the hospital getting an injury repaired, and you didn’t know what was going on.”

  “Gillette?” Jack said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You should write comic books. You have a fertile imagination.”

  “And then she moved away,” Pike continued. “The whole family did . . . Nothing to do with us, exactly.”

  “So, la-di-da,” Jack said.

  “Anyways . . . I found her in Kansas. Or I should say, someone helped me.’

  “So call her up.”

  Pike took a moment. “I’ve thought about it. Been tossing it around . . . I’m more inclined to, like, maybe show up in person. Briefly. See what’s up.”

  Jack was staring into space now, and Pike wondered, was the guy actually pulling something up from deep down in the recesses?

  Jack said, “She change her name then? This person? When she moved away?”

  “Yes she did.”

  “Well what is it?”

  “I’m going to leave it at that,” Pike said, “for now.”

  “You’re an idiot,” Jack said. “But if you ever do head out that way--Kansas--I guess let me know. I might come along for the ride.”

  “Really,” Pike said. “Now why would that be?”

  Jack was back to normal. “You know something? Why not make yourself useful, and go upstairs and bring us something to eat.”

  Pike said, “You like to boss people around. That the trouble, eventually, with Heidi?”

  “Thank God I got out of that one.”

  “Kind of a, be careful what you wish for type deal then?” Pike said.

  “Ah, man,” Jack said.

  The End

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  The Pike Gillette Series:

  Time Control, Book 1

  Time Lapse, Book 2

  Time Games, Book 3

  Time Line, Book 4

  Contact: [email protected]

  Copyright © 2020 Rex Bolt

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, organizations, events or locales, or to any other works of fiction, is entirely coincidental.