DESTINY'S EMBRACE: A Western Time Travel Romance (The Destiny Series Book 4) by Suzanne Elizabeth (23)

San Francisco, 2017

Two weeks of personal leave was more free time than Officer Kristen Ford could handle. A person could stroll down Pier 39 only so many times before feeling driven to leap off the nearest piling. Internal Affairs was concerned that her father’s recent death in the line of duty might affect Kristen’s job performance, but the boredom alone was going to send her over the deep end.

She should be on duty, barreling down Divisadero in a squad car, chasing bad guys, settling domestic disturbances. She needed to work. It was all she had left now that the last remaining member of her family was gone.

But, yielding to the powers that be, Kristen had agreed to two weeks of personal leave. So far, she’d spent the majority of it on her sofa, binge-watching Netflix. Usually somebody from the station would stop by in the late afternoons to fill her in on gossip and sneak her files from ongoing cases. At first her coworker’s visits had lifted her spirits, but lately they’d left her feeling more empty and useless. The nights were the worst; old movies and microwave popcorn, coupled with a bitterness she couldn’t seem to shake.

And then, late one night, a loud knock at the door woke Kristen from a deep sleep. She opened her eyes to find herself staring up at the ceiling, her head thrown back over the arm of the sofa. She rubbed her eyes and yawned. The theme from ‘Seinfeld’ popped and clicked its way into her slowly reviving consciousness and she glanced at the clock. It was two in the morning.

Her visitor leaned on the doorbell. The intrusive sound shot through the still darkness and jarred Kristen’s nerves. She scowled at the door. “This better be good.”

Dragging herself up from the sofa, she staggered to the entryway, turned the dead bolt and yanked open the door.

A cold wind brushed her face. Her first thought was that the stoop was empty, but then she frowned down at a tiny, unfamiliar woman standing beneath the glare of the porch light.

Her gaze drifted over the woman’s stylish charcoal-gray suit, her brightly colored silk scarf, and the strand of pearls around her short neck. “Whatever you’re selling,” Kristen grumbled, “I’m not interested.”

The woman’s expression was pinched, as if Kristen was the one intruding and not the other way around. “I’ve been sent to speak to you, Miss Ford.”

Kristen paused in shutting the door. “How do you know my name?”

“I know a lot more than just your name.”

Kristen scowled, and then she understood; the suit, the impromptu visit, the serious expression. “Riecher sent you, didn’t he?”

“Not exa—”

“Look, I told him I don’t need therapy. I went through all of this when my mother died. I can handle it.”

“Of course you can,” the woman responded seriously. “We’re never given more than we can handle, and you are stronger than most.”

Kristen leaned against the doorframe and folded her arms. “Don’t try to psychoanalyze me in my doorway, lady. I get that you’re just trying to do your job, but, seriously, it’s two o’clock in the morning.”

The woman’s small eyes widened. “Two o’clock?” She waved a small dismissive hand. “Regardless of the hour, Miss Ford, I am under explicit instructions to discuss this matter with you.”

Kristen smiled at that. She knew how Sergeant Riecher could be about following orders. The poor woman was probably in fear for her job. Kristen had crossed the Sergeant several times herself during her five years on the force. If Riecher ever found out she was keeping tabs on her work while she was suppose to be on leave, she’d be canned faster than Grandma’s peaches.

Suddenly feeling sorry for the woman, and tired of standing in the doorway, Kristen decided it wouldn’t hurt to let her come in and ask a few questions. She was wide-awake now anyway. “You’ve got ten minutes.”

The woman slipped past her, like a stray cat being let in from the rain. “I’ll have some tea and milk.”

Kristen threw her an irritated look and shut the door. “I don’t have any tea, milk, or coffee for that matter. I’d offer you some cream-filled croissants, but the cook hasn’t made them yet this morning.”

The woman brushed off a cushion on Kristen’s threadbare sofa, and then eased herself down into a tight perch on the edge. “I didn’t know you had a— Oh. You’re making a joke.” She arched one perfect eyebrow. “I don’t particularly like jokes.”

Kristen walked past the sofa and stood by the hearth. “Now you have nine minutes.” She wasn’t surprised that the woman didn’t like jokes. Her elfin face seemed to be frozen in a perpetual state of disappointment.

“Very well. I have a question to put to you, Miss Ford.”

“Oh, I’m sure you do.” Like any well-trained psychologist, the woman was there to pick Kristen’s brain until she’d found something she could report back to Riecher. Well, if little Miss Gray-Suit was hoping for some career damaging dirt, she’d rung the wrong doorbell.

“What would you say if I told you your entire life up to this point was incorrect?”

Kristen narrowed her eyes at the odd question. “Is this a test? Like one of those ink blot things?”

The woman stared back at her. “Not a test.”

“Okay. I’d ask you what was so wrong with my life.” She thought of her father and her heart squeezed. “Besides the obvious.”

“Everything,” the woman replied. “Your family. Your home. Your date of birth—”

“Date of birth?”

“Most assuredly your date of birth. Mistakes happen, my dear, and they must be rectified. For the sake of all parties involved.”

Speaking of mistakes, Kristen was starting to feel a nagging suspicion that she’d made a serious blunder in letting this odd woman through her door.

“You, Miss Ford, are a walking anachronism.”

“Anachra… What did you say your name was?”

“You are a misplacement in time, a—”

Kristen held up her hand. “How long have you been with the department?”

The woman sighed. “Miss Ford, yours is a rare and quite complicated case of a person being born in the wrong century. It’s going to take the cooperation of at least one of the parties involved to set things right. With your father’s death, you have no further ties to this time, so, naturally, I chose to approach you instead of—”

Kristen strode to the couch. “Time’s up.” She took the woman by the arm.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I gave you ten minutes, and your time is up.” She hauled the woman to the door. “You are obviously not who I thought you were.”

“But I—”

Kristen opened the door and deposited the woman back on the stoop where she’d found her. “Go dig yourself up another sucker, lady. Or better yet, get yourself a good therapist. You clearly need one more than I do.”

* * *

Stella stood on the stoop, glaring at the closed door, then she turned and looked up at the stars. “She’s a stubborn one,” she stated. “It’s going to take a bit more persuading than I’d hoped.”

She turned and began walking down the sidewalk. “Oh, don’t start spouting regulations at me,” she snapped. “She only offered me ten minutes. I had no alternative but to get straight to the point. This isn’t my mess, you know. I’m not the Guide who sent her to the wrong site in the first place. Oh, but I am always the one cleaning things up, aren’t I? Always the one rushing along behind the incompetents, picking up the bungled pieces. Well, I have news for Miss Kristen Ford; I haven’t failed a client yet, and I am not about to let her ruin a perfectly good record…”

Her voice faded, and she vanished with a wisp into the cold night air.

* * *

The sun glared brightly into Kristen’s bedroom window late the next morning—another warm spring day in the making. The moment she opened her eyes, however, she remembered the odd little woman in the gray suit and her mood took an instant turn for the worse. What kind of wacko went around ringing people’s doorbells at 2 a.m.?

She wandered into her bathroom and took a long shower, trying to wash away her gloom before it settled in for another day. Then she dressed in an old pair of jeans and a sweater, and headed for the kitchen and breakfast.

She hadn’t been to the store in weeks. Her refrigerated assets consisted of a bag of moldy cheddar cheese, a very old carton of strawberry yogurt, a half-eaten jar of Sweet Nubbins pickles, and two sixteen-ounce boxes of baking soda. And, as she’d told the woman the night before, she was even out of coffee.

A quick trip to Starbuck’s was tempting. But that meant leaving her apartment, and the very idea made her want to crawl back into bed and pull the covers up over her head.

The doorbell rang. She ran her fingers through her damp hair, and hoped it was somebody from the station with donuts and coffee.

She opened the door and glared down at the last person she’d expected to see again—and with her arms full of shopping bags. “I come bearing gifts,” the little woman said.

“I thought I’d made myself clear to you last night, lady. I’m not interested in what you’re peddling.”

Kristen moved to close the door, but the nervy little woman had the gall to block it with her foot.

“I understand your hesitation, Miss Ford.” Kristen could barely see the woman’s face. It was hidden behind an inviting box of donuts peeking out from the top of one of the grocery bags. “But I really must talk to you. Please let me in and we’ll have a nice chat over a hearty breakfast.” The woman gave her a forced smile, as if it were an afterthought.

Kristen pressed her hands against either side of the doorjamb and blocked the woman’s way. “Do I look stupid to you?”

“On the contrary,” the woman replied. “Even as a child you showed a remarkably sharp intellect and a keen eye for deception.”

Kristen smiled cynically. “That’s very good. I bet that little line’s earned you a buck or two. Tell me what else you’ve seen about me in your crystal ball.”

The woman frowned. “The first thing you need to know, if we’re going to get along, is that I do not appreciate flippancy. My vocation is not an easy one, my dear, and your making fun of it does not sit well with me.”

“Does this mean I don’t get a fortune cookie?”

The woman’s dark eyes rolled toward the sky. “She’s trying my patience.”

Kristen stepped back. “Then let me help you.” She took advantage of the woman’s lapse in attention and shut the door in her face. “Crazy people,” she mumbled. She threw the deadbolt into place, and then walked back to the kitchen, bent on scrounging up something for breakfast.

“I’ve gone about this the customary way, Miss Ford.”

Kristen cried out in surprise and turned to find the woman standing in her kitchen.

“Time is too precious to waste any more of it evading your lack of faith.”

“How the hell did you get in here?” As a police officer, she’d been trained to react calmly in tense situations, but her heart was pounding so fast she could barely think.

“As I told you earlier this morning, I have something very important to speak with you about.” The woman dropped her grocery bags onto the table and grabbed the box of donuts. “Here.” She tossed them to Kristen. “They’re your favorite.”

Kristen stared blankly at the box. They actually were her favorite donuts. Coming to her senses, she slammed the box down onto the counter. “I don’t know how you got in here, lady, but I want you out. Otherwise I’m going to have you carted off in a tight white jacket with sleeves that tie together in the back.”

The woman’s pinched expression suddenly changed to one of desperation. “He needs you.”

“Who?

“Your soulmate.”

Kristen shook her head. “That’s it.” She reached for her cellphone.

“You’re a disgraceful astonishment, Miss Ford,” the woman said in a tight voice. “I’ve been around for a long while, but no one has ever had me ejected from their home. And I haven’t done a blessed thing but attempt to help you.”

There was something about the woman’s reprimanding tone, something that reminded Kristen of her mother, that made her put her phone down. “Why me? Why did you choose me?”

“I didn’t choose you. You’re the product of an incompetent Guide. I am only here to rectify the matter. It’s my job.”

“You probably saw the obituary and figured I was an easy target, right? The grieving daughter with no living relatives?”

The woman’s expression softened. “I didn’t have to read an obituary to know your father had departed. Yes, I have waited until his passing before contacting you. You never would have agreed had you any ties to this time.”

Kristen narrowed her eyes. “Agreed to what?”

“A relocation.”

“You mean a change of job?” Was this part of some bizarre interview process?

“I mean a change of life.”

Kristen’s stomach growled noisily. She tore open the box of donuts on the table and shoved one in her mouth. “I suppose you have airline tickets and a passport for me in your purse?” she mumbled through a mouthful of food.

The woman looked hopeful. “Are you willing to hear me out, then?”

Kristen eyed the bags of food on the table and then assessed the little woman. The lady was only five feet tall if she was an inch, and didn’t look to have an ounce of fat or muscle on her tiny body. She guessed her age at around fifty, and felt confident that she could handle things if the woman turned violent. Considering all the food she’d brought with her, what harm could it do to listen?

“Tell you what,” Kristen said, “I’ll dig through these bags and make some breakfast, while you go ahead with your pressing explanations.”

“Deal.” The woman sat at the table. “First of all, you need to understand that every man and woman has an existence before achieving a temporal birth.”

Kristen lifted a carton of eggs from the bag, thrilled to find English muffins lying beneath. “Sounds good.”

“And they are guided by a power greater than their own.”

“Uh-huh.” Kristen dropped a muffin into her pastry toaster and reached into the lower cupboard for a griddle.

“Each individual arrives here with an intent in mind, a preordained destiny, so to speak.”

“Ah, I’m not so sure about that.” Kristen peeled herself a banana. “Belief in free will has always had sort of a special place in my heart.”

“I am not speaking of free will, Miss Ford. I’m speaking of fate. It is fate that you meet the people you come into contact with every day. Each step in your life is meant to bring you closer to your ultimate purpose.”

Kristen finished her banana and began cracking eggs into a frying pan. “So we all make free choices in our lives, but those choices inevitably lead us in one planned direction?”

“Precisely.”

“I can handle that.”

“Can you handle the idea that you are living in the wrong century? And that if we don’t act quickly, your soulmate will be lost forever?”

“Soulmate. You mentioned that once before.” Kristen grabbed a spatula and tended to her eggs. “If you want me to follow this tale, you’re going to have to explain that one to me.”

The woman frowned. “Tale?”

Realizing she’d offended her, Kristen corrected herself for the sake of her breakfast. “Your explanation, I mean.”

“Yes. Well. He’s your soulmate, the other half of you, the complement to who and what you are. As a rule, soulmates are meant to encounter each other during their mutual time frames and share their lives together. Each has specific qualities that balance the other out, like sweet and sour, strong and weak, light and dark. Each set of soulmates has a Spiritual Guide such as myself. Naturally both members of the couple are required to live in the same time and place. But, in your sad case, as in a few others, your Guide erred.”

“Erred?” Kristen slipped her fried eggs onto a plate and topped them off with an English muffin.

“Inept is the only way to describe your previous Guide,” the woman muttered. “He sent you and your soulmate to different sites. You haven’t had the chance to balance each other out, my dear, and I’m afraid your soulmate has suffered the most from the separation.”

Plate in hand, Kristen sat at the table. “So what’s this soulmate’s problem?” She blew on her steaming breakfast and picked up a fork.

“Well, he’s a…um…”

Kristen glanced up. “He’s a what?”

The woman gave her a direct look. “He’s a criminal.”

Kristen choked on a mouthful of food. “A criminal?! You paired a cop with a criminal,” she said, laughing.

“You weren’t a cop and a criminal before this life. When you accepted him as your soulmate, you vowed to temper him with your goodness and guide him to a life of morality.”

Kristen jammed another bite of food into her mouth. “Well, it sounds like it’s too late for the guy now.”

“It’s not too late. That’s why I’m here. You have no further bonds to hold you to the twenty-first century. You need to take your proper place in time before it is too late for him.”

Kristen finished off the last of her food and smiled. “I suppose you have a large, metal contraption with lots of fancy propellers waiting around the corner to whisk me back in time to where I’m supposed to be?”

“It’s not that complicated,” the woman responded. “All I need is your compliance.”

Kristen stood from the table. “Great. I’ll get my purse.”

She stifled laughter all the way to her bedroom, where she found her black purse on the floor at the foot of her bed. Spiritual Guide? she thought. What an incredible imagination. She pulled on her long boots and zip them up over her jeans. This Guide of hers was certainly creative if not completely sane. She seemed harmless enough, though—Kristen almost hated to turn her in. But she wasn’t about to let the poor woman wander the streets, ringing people’s doorbells in the middle of the night. She’d coax her into the car and then drop her at the nearest hospital for a mental health eval.

She slung her purse over her shoulder and headed back to the kitchen. “I’m all set.” She grabbed her cellphone and slipped it into her purse. “What do you say we pass on the H. G. Wells model, though, and take my car?”

The woman stood, her dark eyes wide and assessing. “So you’re agreeing?”

“Sure. Why—”

Kristen didn’t feel a thing.

Nothing flashed or went black.

She didn’t pass out or even fall down—she doubted she’d blinked.

She was standing in the center of a railroad track, the stench of dirt mixed with manure filling her nose, and a hot wind whipping through her hair.

In front of her were three mounted men sitting atop large, snorting horses. The men’s faces were covered with faded red bandanas, and they were staring down at her with cold, menacing eyes.

Kristen gasped. “What the…”