Time travel tour guide Reegan McNamara’s job—taking eager tourists whenever they want to go—is usually a breeze. A trip back to 2020 to watch a world-changing speech seems no different, until a woman runs away from his tour group before the jump home. Now her tycoon husband is demanding her safe return—or Reegan will lose more than just his job.

PI Saul Kildare’s business is running on borrowed time. Due to a messy break with the police, he can’t get a referral to save his life. When an enigmatic stranger bangs on his door one night and promises a windfall for a missing-person case, it seems too good to be true. But the two men have an immediate connection, and Saul can’t pass up the chance to spend more time with Reegan, even if he is clearly hiding something.

Saul knows he shouldn’t trust Reegan, and Reegan knows he can’t get involved with Saul. But as their attraction evolves into feelings neither can deny, will they have the strength to take a leap of faith – together?

Available from Carina Press in January 2014!

Teaser excerpt! In which Reegan tries to explain to Silvia's husband how he lost her 125 years in the past... and how he plans to find her. Just click Read More...
D’arco rose, smacking his gloves against his palm as he circled behind Reegan. “She wasn’t with you when you returned. Please tell me you have a satisfactory explanation for that.”

Oh yeah. They were screwed. Reegan prepared to confess and take his medicine, but D’arco was one step ahead of him. “Did you help her run away?”

Breath whooshed out of Reegan’s lungs. Deflated, he turned. “I’m sorry?”

D’arco made some sort of signal. Either that or he used telepathy, because Reegan was suddenly on his ass in a chair with one of D’arco’s apes holding his arms behind his back.

Cyberschooling wasn’t looking so bad anymore. “What the hell?” Reegan wheezed.

“Where is my wife?” D’arco repeated. “The truth. If you’ve hurt her, you’ll regret it.”

“I…”

D’arco loomed. “Yes?”

The hell with it. “I lost her. Actually, she ditched me, the bi—” Reegan clamped his mouth shut when Maxie went gray and shook his head so fast his jowls did the hula. “She slipped away when my back was turned.”

D’arco’s lips peeled away from his teeth, and he growled. Reegan recoiled.

“Why didn’t you stay and look for her?” D’arco’s hands, fisted at his sides, began to shake. His eye twitched rhythmically.

“I couldn’t. I had fourteen other people whose safety I needed to ensure. And I sure as shit wasn’t going to be able to go looking for her with them in tow.”

Hissing his annoyance, D’arco spun away to stand in front of the two-way mirror. “She’s alone. Scared and helpless.”

Did this guy know anything about his wife? “I’m pretty sure she’s okay,” Reegan felt compelled to say. “She seems like an intelligent, capable lady.”

His words made the situation worse. D’arco glanced over his shoulder at Reegan, his expression morphing to pure hatred. The silent standoff lasted several seconds, then D’arco clasped his hands behind his back and brooded. His apes brooded in sympathy. Reegan took the opportunity to raise his eyebrows at Maxie. The look he got in return wasn’t encouraging. This was it. His career was going to end over a lover’s quarrel.

“How will she survive?” D’arco asked. “She has no money. None that would be recognized a hundred years ago. How long until she’s back at the destination point, praying you come to rescue her?”

“Hopefully she’s there now,” Reegan said, though he thought the odds slim. Silvia had ditched her bio bracelet without activating an alarm. He doubted she came by the knowledge accidentally. That was a tidbit he wouldn’t he sharing with her husband. “However, I think we should assume we’re going to have to look if we want to find her.”

“I can’t believe this is happening,” D’arco whispered. “She’s going to get hurt.”

“Yeah. I’d say she’s going to start running into trouble pretty soon.”

The temperature in the room dropped. Goose bumps rose on Reegan’s arms as D’arco pivoted and speared him with dark eyes. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

“Well.” Reegan looked to his boss for help, but all he got in return was Maxie’s impersonation of his goldfish, eyes wide and mouth formed in an O. “I’m talking about the Novikov Principle.” D’arco’s expression didn’t change. Reegan appealed to his goons. “Paradox-free time travel?”

D’arco stalked across the floor toward him. “Explain.”

Reegan licked his lips and gave an experimental pull of his arms. D’arco clocked the move, gave a slight nod to his man. “Let him go, Emilio.”

The pressure on Reegan’s shoulders eased. He shook free. “The Novikov Principle is what makes all this possible.” He spread his hands to encompass the crowded office. “Time as we know it is a series of closed curves. Loops,” he specified when D’arco’s brows drew together. “The portal folds the loops so that we can travel back in time.” They couldn’t go forward yet. Not reliably. Although Reegan was hoping for that breakthrough in his lifetime. “People used to think time travel was dangerous, or even impossible, because interfering in the past would cause a paradox. Do you know what a paradox is?”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“Just checking. These days we know paradoxes don’t happen. Novikov’s research proves that if an event occurs that might give rise to a paradox, the probability of that event is zero.” He’d quoted that gem directly from his eighth grade science lesson, and it had been twenty years since he’d laid eyes on it. What kid graduated cyberschool without knowing this stuff backward and forward?

D’arco stepped close to Reegan and loomed. “That’s it?”

Pretty much. That was as simple an explanation as he could manage. And no way was Reegan going to extrapolate what that meant for Silvia unless he had a gun to his head. “That’s it. That’s how we’re able to travel into the past without causing a paradox. It’s scientifically impossible.”

D’arco pulled back, nostrils flaring. “But you couldn’t stay in the past forever and not change something.”

Finally he was catching on. “No, you can’t. We do change things. We make small changes all the time just by being there. But small changes iron themselves out. They smooth over. Like ripples on a pond.”

“Forever?”

Maxie spoke up. “That’s what Dr. McNamara has been working around to. It doesn’t work forever. Eventually, the probabilities shift. The longer we’re there, the greater the potential for our presence to create permanent changes to the timeline.”

Reegan winced. D’arco wasn’t going to like what came next.

“When that happens,” Maxie continued, “the jaunter is eliminated.”

“Eliminated?”

“That’s right.”

“How?” D’arco directed the question at Regan.

Reegan shrugged. A million different ways. Car accident. Lightning strike. Heart attack. It was the ultimate catch-22. A person could go anywhere. See anything. As long as they returned within a certain period of time. “I couldn’t say exactly how it might happen.” He laid it all out. “But you can’t make a long and happy life in the past. The clock starts ticking the moment you step into the portal. Statistically, the more aggressive your interference, the quicker you’ll expire.” Lots of people had died before the science of jaunting had been perfected. A strict code regulated the tech’s use because of that.

A sound escaped D’arco’s throat. “So what you’re telling me is that if you don’t find her, she’ll die.”

Reegan swished that watered-down version around his mouth before answering. “Right. She’ll die.”

“But you’re not going to let that happen.”

Reegan bit back hysterical laughter.

“Find her, Dr. McNamara. Before any harm comes to her. If you don’t, I’ll shut this whole operation down and throw so many code violations at this company, you’ll both rot in jail for the rest of your lives.”

Reegan’s instinctive loyalty to Silvia, a woman who didn’t even know his name and whom he hadn’t laid eyes on in ten years, was causing him more trouble by the second. She was nothing like the young woman who haunted his dreams. That girl had been helpless, relying on him to keep her safe. His mistake had been an unforgivable breach of trust. Silvia, on the other hand, had brought this mess down on herself. He’d have to remember that, if he could. He rose from his chair, gritting his teeth at how shaky his knees felt.

Maxie stood as well, crushing his broken cigar in a white-knuckled grip. “We’ll get her back.”

D’arco gathered his men close. “We’ll wait in there.” He pointed at the jaunt room, where earlier Reegan had watched Silvia through the mirror. “I’m sure you and Mr. McNamara have preparations to make.”

“It’s Dr. McNamara,” Reegan muttered. He acknowledged the bodyguards as they filed out, then closed the door and turned to Maxie.

“Well, isn’t this a fucking ugly pickle?” Maxie asked. He’d lumbered over to the mirror. In the room beyond, D’arco accepted a glass of brandy from Emilio and made himself comfortable on one of the plush sofas. He twirled the snifter, watching the amber liquid ride the inside of the glass. With one leg crossed over the other and head tipped to the ceiling, the only sign of his agitation was the ever-present tic in the corner of his eye.

His two other goons hovered close by. The biceps on the biggest bulged through his suit coat, and with the patchy beard and growled, unintelligible responses, could have passed for Bluto. The other, tall and thin, had decided to compensate for his receding hair by growing it long. Braided in a scrubby brown pigtail, it protruded from the back of his neck like a boot spur.

Reegan joined Maxie in front of the mirror. “Something’s not adding up. She planned this. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing like he’s suggesting.”

“If that’s true, her planning skills suck. She’s going to get herself killed. And all because her husband probably wanted her to serve chardonnay instead of Chablis with dinner. Rich people are twisted, and not in a good way.”

“No. She’s running from him. I’d bet on it.”

Maxie harrumphed.

“Is that all you have to say?”

“You want to know what I think?” Maxie cut his eyes to the side. “That’s her fucking problem. We need to be worried about ourselves.”

“I’m sorry,” Reegan ground out. “I didn’t mean to bring this down on you.”

“Yeah, you sound real sorry.” Maxie waved off his retort. “Drop it. I’m an asshole, not an idiot. If this bitch wanted to disappear, you didn’t have a prayer of stopping it. This is on her.” He stabbed a finger onto the desk in front of him. “The best we can hope for is to come out of this breathing, with our balls and our business intact.”

“Our business? You circling the wagons, boss?”

“Just putting things in perspective.” Maxie flipped a switch at the side of his desk, and a virtual screen appeared in the air between them. His fingers flew over the holographic keyboard. “There are no good solutions to this shitstorm. Our best hope is to find the woman and get her back here before the two of you are killed. After that, she’s on her own, and we can hope to hell D’arco feels like being kind to the rest of us.”

“And how are we going to do that? The city is huge and packed to the gills.”

“Yeah? I doubt she made reservations at the Marriott. So she’ll have problems finding a place to stay.” Maxie’s fingers flew over the keys. “How much planning do you think we’re talking about here?”

Reegan chewed his thumbnail, then dug in his pocket for Silvia’s bracelet. He jingled it in his hand. “She managed to get the bio bracelet off without alerting me.”

Maxie’s fingers froze. “No shit?” His brows crawled into his hairline. “I was going to ask you how you lost her. How’d she manage that?”

“With money and a bit of trolling online, probably.”

Maxie snapped his fingers. “So she’s smart.”

“Not really.” Reegan swept a hand across the desk, pushing the 3D screen aside. “She has no idea about closed timelines and traversable wormholes. What was she thinking?” He smacked the wood with his fist, rocking the fishbowl hard enough to splash water over the rim.

With a flick of his wrist, Maxie repositioned the screen in front of them. “She was thinking she wanted to go back in time.”

Reegan snorted. “Don’t we all?” He glanced into the jaunt room. Bluto and Pigtail had spread themselves along the perimeter. Emilio stood directly in front of the two-way mirror, staring inward. As intimidation tactics went, it worked a little too well for Reegan’s liking. He gave the guy the finger. “No. What she wanted to do was erase the past. That’s completely different.”

“Not when you’re desperate.”

That hit too close to home for Reegan’s liking. “You got a plan?”

Maxie spun his finger in the air, and the display rotated to face Reegan. He squinted at the information hovering on the screen. “A P.I.?”

“Yeah. Why not?” Maxie lit a fresh cigar. “It won’t be cheap, but a dollar stretched a bit further back then. I’ve got enough old currency in the vault to make it work.”

Bring a stranger into the mix? Wasn’t he tempting fate enough as it was? “I don’t know. Getting involved with a local could get me eliminated even more quickly. And it’s late at night there. Where the hell am I going to find a reputable private investigator at that hour?”

A slick smile spread over Maxie’s face. He winked. “Who says we need reputable?”

No one. But qualified would help. The two tended to go hand in hand.

“Fine. Let’s say I find some workaholic willing to take on a missing person’s case at nearly midnight. There’s going to be a fine line between giving them enough information to help and withholding enough to protect myself.” Minimizing timeline ripples would buy him time, but there were no guarantees.

“Thought you were a big-shot professor?”

Reegan dropped into a chair and massaged his pounding temples. “Of history.”

“You’re field trained.”

“Jesus!” Reegan exploded out of his seat, waving at the thick smoke hovering over Maxie’s desk. “Not for this. I don’t think my three-hundred-page dissertation on the internal politics of the Unionist Party is going to be a huge help here.”

Real fear crept in. D’arco hovered like an angry wasp, and now Reegan had to play a game of chicken with the cosmic forces of the universe. Maybe some help wouldn’t be amiss. “Okay. We’ll try the private eye.” He’d have to make up one hell of a cover story. “You have someone in mind?”

“Right here.” Maxie stabbed his cigar at the data scrolling on the screen. Smoke floated into the graphics, causing them to flicker. “Saul Kildare. Ex-marine. Ex-police detective. Hung out his shingle in 2019. Took it down about a year and a half later. Must have got a better offer somewhere. Small operation. Just him, it looks like.” Maxie expanded a picture of the guy, and Reegan had to bank his instinctive reaction. Black hair, longer than what Reegan had expected for ex-military, and deep-set blue eyes.

“Nice.”

“I thought you’d like that.” Maxie scowled at Saul’s handsome, chiseled face. “Ready to hear the best part?”

“He’s gay?”

Maxie wheezed a laugh. “Don’t die, McNamara. I’d miss your sick sense of humor.”

“I was kind of being honest.”

“That’s the sick part. No, the good news is that the address for his residence matches the address for the business.”

That was good news. Maxie’s database was state of the art, a supercomputer so full of information about the metro area’s history that it made Reegan dizzy. It was Maxie’s pride and joy. If he said the guy slept where he worked, then Reegan trusted him. “All right. It’s not going to get better than that. Guess I’ll pay Mr. Kildare a visit.”

“Say hi for me.”