But Nick had tuned them out, he tuned them all out. His mind was closed off, focused on the watch in his pocket as he counted down the seconds until 9:00 in his head.

And as the mayhem continued around him, as Marcus screamed and pile-drived Shannon, Nick continued counting.

Three…

Two…

One…

7:02 P.M.

NICK FOUND HIS BEARINGS much more quickly this time. He knew it was because he was accepting the impossibility of the phenomenon. The metallic taste was there but less pronounced; the bitter cold was still rising off his skin but all in all, he was in pretty good shape.

He sat on the front steps of Marcus’s house. The front door was in one piece and hung wide open on the warm summer evening. Marcus stepped through it, walked across the slate front terrace, and sat down beside him. The color was drained from his face; his hands trembled in shock.

“The cops are coming, but with the plane wreck and all…” Marcus could hardly get the words out. “They can only spare two guys with everyone so involved with the crash site. They said to not touch anything and thought it best you stay with me.”

Nick nodded. His eyes were fixed on his house, where Julia’s body lay.

Nick reached into his pocket and withdrew the gold watch. He flipped it open, and while he expected what he saw, he was still shocked to see the time was 7:02, two hours earlier than the moments when he had counted down the seconds until 9:00. The cops were not at the house; they had not even arrived at the scene yet. Marcus had just seen Julia’s body, his emotional core rocked with the sight of her gruesome death.

And Nick realized that while he remembered what just happened, that was all in the future. Marcus didn’t know of Nick’s eventual arrest, the names of the cops, or the damage that would be wrought upon his doors. All of which crystallized the rules of the game for Nick.

He was the only one with continuity throughout this ordeal. He was on his own and would have to achieve his goal every hour before being whisked back to where he had been two hours before, while losing the assistance of whoever was helping him in the present hour.

He was thankful it was a Friday, he always worked from home on Fridays and had remained at the house all day, working to complete an analysis related to his week’s travels before the weekend arrived. He hadn’t even ventured out for lunch, which was lucky as each time jump would bring him back home, allowing him the opportunity to stay focused during his investigation and the rescuing of his wife.

Nick closed the watch, shook himself out of his thoughts, and stood up.

“Where are you going?” Marcus asked.

Nick stared at his house. “I need to go in there.”

“Back in there?” Marcus said in shock. “No, I think that is a bad idea.”

“I agree,” Nick said. “But I need to figure out what the hell is going on and I need to do it before the cops start poking around.”

“They said not to touch anything-”

“My wife is dead, Marcus,” Nick said, more to the situation than to Marcus. “I need answers, I need to know who did this. It’s my house, I’m going back in.”

“All right.” Marcus reluctantly nodded. “But I’m coming with you.”

Nick began walking, shaking his head. “I need to do this alone.”

It had taken Nick the better part of the prior hour-future hour now that he thought of it-to convince Marcus of his situation, sending him to see Dance for proof of his clairvoyance. If Nick was going to get the help of Marcus, or of anyone, for that matter, he was going to have to find a way to convince him of the time slip in five minutes or less, otherwise too much time would be wasted, stolen from the limited twelve hours he had to save Julia.

Marcus remained seated on the his front porch. “Please, whatever you do, don’t look at her. It’s not her anymore.”

Marcus’s voice faded as Nick walked across the wide expanse of lawn, battling his mixed emotions. He had been given a gift, a gift he didn’t understand and was not going to waste time pondering. The internal debate on how it was happening, why it was happening, could last a lifetime, and he had less than twelve hours.

But despite the elation that he was being given a second chance, that Julia was being given a second chance, he still feared what he was about to walk into.

Now, despite what he knew he would see, as devastating to his mind as her image would be, he would have to willingly look upon her, if he was to have any hope of saving her, of figuring out who killed her. In order to stop that person, he would have to gather every bit of information, every clue, including exactly how she died.

Nick forced himself to push Julia’s death from his mind; his anxiety, his pain and grieving were selfish acts that would only impede him from getting to the truth. As difficult as the task ahead would be, he clung to the fact that it was all in an effort to save her from fate, to twist the past in order to save her future.

Nick walked across the driveway to the front of his white farmhouse and entered through the 110-year-old front door.

The foyer was dark. All the lights were out from the power failure caused by the plane crash. He opened the front hall closet and pulled out the oversized Maglite, switching on its blinding beam. Though the sun was still above the horizon, the light of late day was fading fast and would not provide the illumination he would need.

Nick had debated getting a generator like Marcus’s but thought it to be a waste of twenty thousand dollars for that one annual moment when the lights didn’t work for an hour. Now, as he walked around his house in search of a clue to why Julia had been murdered, he would gladly have paid double to make the light switches respond.

MARRIED EIGHT YEARS this coming September, Nick and Julia had spent their time focused on only two things: their careers and each other. They had resolved to put away a healthy nest egg and own their house free and clear, unencumbered by a mortgage, by the time they elected to have children. Plans were made, schedules outlined, budgets created and adhered to, their life set on paper like a playbook for the Super Bowl. Their vacation expenses were kept to a minimum, forgoing Europe, Asia, and world travel until their later years. Wherever possible, trips were taken via car; camping, museum visits, and overnights at the shore were not only the simplest and cheapest getaways but the most fun. They both knew that a true vacation was not a destination of location, but rather a destination of the mind. So as long as they were together, their vacations were better than anything that could be provided by Paris, Monaco, or any exotic locale.

So their shelves and tables were littered with pictures of them fishing the lakes of Maine, surfing the shores of Huntington Beach, hiking down into the Grand Canyon, scaling the rocky peaks of Wyoming. They cherished the outdoors, the simple amenities that nature had to offer, and always returned home with refreshed, focused minds to tackle their flourishing careers.

While they had only been married eight years, they had been together for sixteen, having dated through high school and college. They had fallen in love at the age of fifteen, while their friends and parents laughed at the fact that they were so sure of their future together. But the laughter fell away when they said “I do” in St. Patrick’s Church on that late May day. Neither ever said I told you so to the naysayers; they never needed affirmation or votes of confidence from their family and peers in something their hearts told them was right.

They had met at a swim meet. He was the star of the team, with a handful of school and county records by tenth grade in both long distance and sprint races. Julia had been a last-minute substitution for the 4 X 200 meter relay. As she had spent her brief swim career in the shorter sprint races, the two-hundred-meter leg she would be responsible to anchor was something she had never prepared for. To say she was nervous would have been an understatement. So the coach sent her to talk to Nick, who, as the school’s youngest captain, possessed a quiet air of confidence that managed to infect all around him.