Time Read online

  TIME: OUT OF THE BOX 19

  The Girl in the Box, Book 29

  ROBERT J. CRANE

  Ostiagard Press

  TIME

  The Girl in the Box, Book 29

  (Out of the Box #19)

  Robert J. Crane

  Copyright © 2017-9 Ostiagard Press

  All Rights Reserved.

  2nd Edition

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, please email [email protected].

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Teaser

  Author's Note

  Other Works by Robert J. Crane

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER ONE

  Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan

  Now

  The sun sank low in the sky, falling gracefully into the Sumo-nada Sea, heralding the passing of another day. The man sat in lotus position, watching the orange hue light the clouds as the disc of fiery red glowed at the close of eve. Japan was behind him, the sea and sky ahead. He was an island—and on an island, miles from the Japanese mainland island of Kyushu. Sitting on the fourth floor of a decaying building, he saw only the endless horizon stretched out before him.

  All of that blended into the background, though, for the man. His focus was solely on the sunset, heralding the end of the day. He had long ago lost count of how many sunsets he had watched. An endless succession of them. He watched the sun set from here; he could watch the sunrise less than a hundred feet away, as he stared out over the sea back toward Kyushu, and some of the outlying suburban shore of Nagasaki.

  This was how he bookended his days, these endless days. Sunrise, sunset. He marked the passage of time with both, sitting on the hard, cracking concrete in the decaying building. Summer rains had washed away the roof long ago, and now the walls too were beginning to collapse under the cruel weight of time, its mission to reduce this building back to its component parts and wash it into the sea.

  It was working. Nature was winning, now that man had given up the fight. For he took no part in that struggle, performed no maintenance, tended nothing. He was a stone in the river. Water flowed around him, and he took no notice of the small eddy his presence made.

  Unnoticed by men.

  Unseen by time.

  Unstopped by all.

  And so the man sat, watching the sinking sun fading into the west as the sky turned purple above him. He let out a little sigh, the cool prickles of night settling upon his skin beneath his suit. This was what he did every evening, marking each day as it passed, though he had long since lost count of how many he’d witnessed.

  The sigh marked the end of his silent meditation, and he stood, brushing the hint of dust accumulated during his vigil from his black jacket sleeves and the back of his pants. A flick of his hand, and the dust was gone from him, had never been there, as though time itself had turned back to the moments before he sat. It was a simple trick, one he could initiate as easily as controlling his breath. He had come to mastery of both through long practice.

  The sun was gone, the day was done. Night loomed, darkness clouding the skies over him as the last light faded away.

  It was time. Again.

  With another small sigh, the man turned from the sky, and the sea, and all the signs of the passage of time. Here in the wreck of this building, where nature’s slow, inevitable war against the progress of man was being waged, he began his day anew.

  As he had every day for … so many, now.

  And yet, it was not new. It was the same. For he himself was in a war against nature, wasn’t he? The thought troubled him, when he dared to consider it. He might not be fighting against the decay brought by rain and earth and greenery, but he fought his own unending battle against the laws of nature nonetheless.

  His brow puckered, and he dismissed the thought once more. This litany of days, this endless string of them … they could not stop now.

  Not now. Not ever.

  He stared into the darkness of the rotting building, inhaling the smell of decay and mouldering walls. He scarcely remembered the scent of dew in the morning, but this smell—this mix of mildew, crumbling concrete, and damp stone—this was ever-present for him.

  It was time to begin again, and he steeled himself for it as he made his way through the ruin of this building—of this island … and of so many other things …

  For today was simply another day for the man on the island. Dread attended him as he descended the stairs into the interior. It was shrouded in darkness, and yet every step was familiar from the long practice of walking it daily.

  Another day.

  Just the same.

  Forever.

  He would see to that, he resolved, though somewhere deep within, he could feel the slipping … nature reasserting itself somewhere beyond him … and the dimmest trickle of fear made its way down his spine as he wondered, if maybe—just maybe …

  Something was soon to change.

  And that thought terrified him as little else did.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sienna

  Whoever said time heals all wounds probably hadn’t ever had souls ripped directly out of their body. Because it had been months—months and months, really, almost seven by now, since Rose Steward, Redhead McHellface, had held me down and ripped mine out, and time—

  Time hadn’t healed shit.

  I was staring out the window of a diner on the coast of Oregon, an expansive glass screen between me and the ocean beyond, a troubled grey sky hanging overhead. For the last two months since I’d come to this town, it had been pleasant sunshine and the occasional rain, a little chill in the air as winter gave way to spring. The kind you could feel dance across your skin, sneak into your underclothes in the morning, give you a little tickle that made the bumps rise on your skin.

  And now … there was this grey crap. Blegh.

  I didn’t need sunshine
and daisies every day of my life, but neither did I like the feel of storms on the horizon. Storms meant I’d feel compelled to spend the day indoors.

  But at least … not alone. Probably.

  I glanced down at my coffee, black, then let my eyes flick back up to the picture window. It spanned the length of the place, which was … pretty lengthy. A couple hundred feet of length, actually, and I was one of a very few people here. It wasn’t tourist season in Cannon Beach, which was why I was here. I go where the people aren’t, because I was still a wanted fugitive.

  “Sorry for the delay,” my companion said, sliding into the booth across from me. He favored me with a quicksilver smile as he did so, perhaps sensing that my mood was as dark as the gathering clouds outside.

  “When you gotta go, you gotta go,” I shrugged and looked back at the thunderheads looming over the Pacific Ocean. The beach was empty, not a soul brave enough to go out in this impending mess. Far to the north, probably half a mile, there was a mighty rock that jutted hundreds of feet out of the ocean like some immense, foreboding evil tower. It was a perfect location for a supervillain to build a lair, and I’d kinda been waiting for one to do just that so I’d have someone’s ass to kick. I’d been here for two months and I still hadn’t learned its name. “Future Supervillain Hide-out Rock” sounded better than anything someone else could have come up with, anyway.

  “Still daydreaming about some great evil rearing its head here in peaceful, small town Oregon?” Harry Graves asked, taking a sip of his coffee and leaning back with a knowing look. Always the knowing look from Harry, because he could read the future. Or at least read the odds of events happening in the future. It was creepy on occasion, but also … “Here,” he said, and held out a piece of candy, a little toffee that looked yum, “I saw this by the cash register and thought you might need it.”

  I eyed the brightly colored candy, extended like a peace offering. I reached out and took it, unwrapped it, and popped it in my mouth. “Mm,” I said, unable to control myself. It was really good. And it hit the spot. Not enough to totally disperse my bad mood, but …

  I eyed Harry a little suspiciously. He was really good at defusing me, like I was an ever-pending bomb, ready to blow up. Sometimes it was doing something as simple as bringing me a piece of candy. Sometimes it was more complicated.

  And sometimes … there wasn’t a damned thing on earth he could do to make me feel better when I was down. He was usually smart enough to volunteer to “Go to the store” during those times. Seeing the future had its advantages, I suppose, and knowing your girlfriend was about to have emotional blowout and do some weeping? Well, what guy wouldn’t want a heads up before that happened so he could leave town for a spell, come back when the pieces were all put together again?

  “You might need to go to the store later,” I said, picking up my coffee and taking a sip.

  “If you want me to,” he said, seeming to hesitate just a second.

  I could feel a storm building in me too, not just out on the horizon. It had nothing to do with Harry. You couldn’t ask for a kinder, more conscientious … guy companion person. He could anticipate all my needs before I had them, and was ready in advance with—well, whatever was appropriate for the situation. He’d brought me roses, gift baskets, presents—you name it, he’d brought it to me these last couple of months. He’d stayed with me ever since we got here, and …

  He was great.

  In every way, he’d given me all I could have asked for and more. He even gave me space on the days when I needed to just lose it without anyone watching. Because nothing would have pissed me off more than if he’d stuck around to watch me at my lowest. That was the stuff of real intimacy, I supposed—and we weren’t there yet. I’d confided in him more than anyone else of late, but this last thing … it was like a wall between us, one I couldn’t just let him hurdle over. He’d seen me at my almost worst, let me cry on his shoulder before, but lately …

  I just couldn’t let him in that last door. Which … was par for the Sienna course. The only thing he couldn’t give me was the damned thing I needed most. The thing I didn’t let him give me.

  Well … maybe there were two things.

  “You don’t want to talk about it?” he asked. I could tell by the stiff manner with which he asked the question that he didn’t love the options he was being presented with in terms of my replies.

  I took a little pity on him. “No,” I said. He didn’t need me dumping my sadz all over him. Besides …

  “You sure?” His eyes were filled with concern. So sweet.

  Too bad he couldn’t give me a heinous supervillain to build a lair out on the rock. I don’t think it would have made me happy exactly, but that grinding emptiness that always seemed to reveal itself whenever I had too much empty time? It would have been nice to submerge that under some straightforward action. Damned fugitivity. Messing with my ability to solve crimes and save the world. Didn’t these people know that if I didn’t stop this stuff, the wheels would fall off the damned car that was everyday life?

  Also … I’d probably lose my effing mind.

  “Hey, Paris,” a guy said at the table across the way. I turned my head to look. It was an old guy, probably a regular, talking to the waitress who was coming over to him.

  “Hey, Jimmy,” Paris said to the old guy, a kind twinkle in her eyes. “How’s the world treating you this morning?”

  “Like a dog treats his own junk,” Jimmy said, causing Paris to chuckle. She had a carafe in hand, and started to move it toward his coffee cup.

  “I’m sure,” I said, turning back to Harry and forcing a tight smile of my own. He had that look again. The one that suggested a mixture of regret that he couldn’t fix me, worry that I was losing my mind or at least unspooling under the weight of all this unresolved trauma (I wasn’t. Probably.), and that strangest of all emotions, the one I wasn’t quite used to yet …

  Desire.

  Harry Graves wanted to be with me, I was pretty sure.

  Weird.

  “Okay,” he said and stirred. “I paid the tab, so we can—” He started to get out of the booth—

  Then he just stopped. He was partway between standing and sitting, one hand braced on the table, the other on the back of the booth, plainly poised to get up, but—

  He was just hanging there, unmoving, mouth partially open in mild exertion.

  I stared at Harry, who stared at the ground. It was one of the strangest things I’d ever seen, as though he’d just … frozen. But without the benefit of any ice holding him in place.

  “What the hell—?” I started to ask, turning back to Jimmy and Paris and their ongoing repartee, but when I turned my head, I found them both …

  Frozen. She was pouring coffee, filling his cup as he watched, steam in a small cloud rising out of the cup but—

  It wasn’t moving at all. Neither were they.

  It was as though every particle in the diner had stopped all motion.

  Except mine.

  I moved my hand, just to be sure I could. I got to my feet tentatively, half-expecting that long-awaited supervillain to come flying in from the rock. I checked, just to be sure—nope, no massive hideout had appeared up there in the last few seconds—or second, singular, given that no one else was moving. I walked hesitantly over to the restaurant’s passage to the kitchen …

  The cooks inside weren’t moving, either. They were standing there at their job stations, one of them looking like he’d just told a great joke that had another guy roaring with laughter over a skillet that was filled with scrambled eggs.

  I looked back to Harry, still stuck in place in the booth, somewhere between standing and sitting. I made my way back over to him, glancing out at the dark clouds on the horizon.

  A single spot of water marked the place on the flawless picture window where the first drop had hit.

  With a rush of motion and sound, everything snapped back into movement. Paris the waitress pulled up the carafe,
the coffee stopped pouring, the last of the steam cloud dispersed, leaving just a hint wafting off the coffee cup that Jimmy took in hand, letting out a satisfied sound as he brought it up to his nose and gave it a sniff. “The world’s heading toward its proper shape now,” he said to Paris, responding to some question I’d missed, maybe, or just generally proclaiming something that was …

  Not right …

  At all.

  “What the …?” Harry asked. I was standing in the middle of the room, some twenty feet or more away from where I’d been a moment earlier. His brows were knitted close together, and he stared at me, slightly openmouthed, cringing in …

  Pain?

  Whatever had just happened, it had startled the man who could see the future.

  “Oh, shit,” I said, a little tingle running over me. And I tried to contain the feeling that welled up within me, along with the totally normal fear and worry that I should have felt when the entire world stopped around me. Because those were definitely there, if only in trace amounts.

  But I kept that other feeling to myself, that … more unseemly one, the one that was way, way out of place when the world was in crisis. “Come on,” I said, hurrying over to Harry and brushing past him. “We’ve got to go.”

  “What the f—?” Harry was looking around, bewildered. “I didn’t see—any of that—what—what is going on here, Sienna?” he asked, hurrying to keep up with me as I shot through the makeshift gift shop that covered every surface of the entry to the diner.

  I darted out into the spring air, got hit by my first droplet, then another, then another as the sky opened up in a total downpour. My hair was soaked in seconds, and still I just stood there, taking it all in.

  No rain was going to kill my mood right now.

  Because now—after months of just sitting here, wallowing and being liked by Harry and accepted and doing frisky stuff and killing time—

  Now, NOW, FINALLY!

  I had a case.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Jamal

  “Ialways thought being a PI would be cool,” Augustus groused, his head against the driver’s side car window of our rental. He sounded like a child who’d opened up his Christmas presents to find rat crap or something instead of … I dunno, whatever kids are into nowadays. Hatchimals, maybe? “But if I’d known it was like ninety-nine percent boredom and one percent excitement … dude, I’d have thought about going into something that has a little higher action to boredom ratio. Like being a greeter at Wal-Mart.”