The Cutting Room: A Time Travel Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page B

Are you there?"
    The line blanked again. I put the walkie to my mouth. "I'm right behind you, Stephen. Are you in the trunk? Can you tell me anything about the car?"
    I surged through a yellow light. Someone honked. I stuck up my thumb, then remembered that meant something completely different in this age.
    "Yeah, he put me in the trunk," Stephen said. "The car's all white."
    "What else?"
    "Um. There is a picture of a little wheel on the trunk."
    "A little wheel?"
    "Yeah and part of it's white and part of it's blue."
    I still hadn't caught sight of Prince's car. I made a hard left, leaving the quaint downtown and entering the quiet neighborhood of old homes. I knew what Stephen was describing. Logo of some kind. Not familiar enough with the world or the time to know the brand, but I'd recognize it on sight.
    I pulled up across the street from Prince's ivy-trimmed house. "Stephen? Is the car still moving?"
    "Yeah," he said, the mutter of the engine undercutting his words. A bit of static. "...see me?"
    "Sure. But I need you to keep talking to me. Just keep talking. It doesn't matter what you say. Do you understand?"
    "Keep talk..?" More static ate up the last of his words.
    "Yes. Talk. Keep talking. I'll be right there."
    I pulled away. David Prince wasn't here and he was getting further away by the moment. I was losing the signal. I gassed it down the road. Stephen babbled away about his toy pirate ship, voice interrupted by static. At the end of the street, the receiver gave me nothing but unbroken white noise. I flipped the car around and drove back the way I'd come, racing past the elegant little homes.
    "...a dinosaur," Stephen said. "...teeth..."
    I continued east. Stephen's voice gained volume, clarity. He was telling a story he meant to write for his next classroom assignment. Something about a T. rex.
    "Have you ever seen one?" he said. The line blanked. He wanted me to answer.
    "Nope," I said. "The further back you go, the more energy it takes. I've never been much further back than this. Now keep talking, Stephen. Don't stop unless the car does. Then tell me everything you see."
    "Okay." He resumed his story.
    His voice stayed clear. I guessed that meant I was within a quarter, maybe half a mile of Prince. But that left an awful lot of town to cover. I'd have to spot him visually, and he wasn't exactly the only white sedan in town. I honed in on each one, scanning trunks and hoods for the logo of the little wheel.
    I hit an intersection and lost the signal. Frantically, I turned east, knowing town thinned out in that direction—better place to get away with a screaming child—and picked up Stephen's voice as I climbed a hill and rolled down into a lightly housed stretch of open yellowed fields scattered with stray trees and pockets of low-rent houses. The yards were fenced with barbed wire, cows gazing dully from behind the spikes. At another, horses raised their long heads to watch my car flash by.
    "The car just went off," Stephen said. "He's coming around to get me!"
    "Tell me everything you see," I said. "I'm right behind you."
    I pulled off the side of the road to give it all my focus and make sure I stayed within range. A metallic clunk came through the line.
    "There's trees!" Stephen shrieked. "And a big green cage and lots of water!"
    "What've you got?" Prince said, sounding far away. A scuffle. His voice neared. "Who are you—?"
    I snapped off my handset before Stephen lost his hold on the talk button. The silence of my car was deafening.
    Water and trees. Almost certainly the river. I didn't know what the green cage was, but I didn't have time to sit around and parse it out. If Prince was spooked, he might put an end to the game any second. I continued along the lonely road and took the first left north toward the river, swooping up and down a series of short swells, passing a few houses on both sides, farms and trailers and cozy-looking ramblers.
    The houses went away. Soon, the road did, too,