Chapter Eight

The shaggy ends of his hair lightly brushed his shoulders as he shook his head at her. Maybe she was right, but she wasn’t done answering questions. “We’ll finish this discussion upstairs,” he told her as he reached for the door handle.

She stretched across his body to lay one hand on his. “Sir, please don’t just throw open that door. I should get out before you and look around.”

“I may not be a saint, but I am still a gentleman. There’s no way I’m not getting out of this car first and holding the door for a lady. It would look odd if I didn’t.” He didn’t wait on her to answer him; he pulled the handle and flung open the door.

“Dammit, Sir,” she swore violently, pulling hard on his arm. “At least, please get out of the car slowly and look around.”

Casually, he climbed out of the car, trying hard not to look like his mind was completely blown by the shit she’d just told him. He frowned at her, as she began to climb from the car without waiting on him to give her a hand. Immediately, he reached to grasp her elbow and steady her on those impossibly high heels as her eyes scanned the area.

“Thanks, Mike,” he told the driver.

“We need to get indoors. Now,” she ordered softly.

The trip into the building and upstairs in the elevator was tense and silent as she glared at him. It wasn’t until they reached the closed door of his apartment that she finally spoke to him.

“Do exactly as I say,” she said very softly. She motioned for him to unlock the door.

Jon watched in awe as she slid the short skirt of her dress up and pulled a pistol from a holster on the inside of her right thigh with her left hand. He noticed that she pointed the pistol at the floor with her left hand, while she laid the first finger of her right hand across her lips in a signal for him to be quiet.

Carefully, she pushed the door open and motioned for him to follow her through the door. As soon as Jon cleared the doorway, she pushed him into a corner with a hand on his right shoulder, and closed the door with nothing more than a slight click. She kept her back to him as she thoroughly scanned the entry way.

Casually, she kicked off her heels, and began to move on silent feet down the entry hall, peering carefully around the corner of the doorway that led into the large family room. If she weren’t acting so damn serious, he’d laugh out loud at her. His eyes went immediately to the control panel for his alarm system. He grinned as he stepped over and entered the four digit entry code that would keep it from going off.

He wasn’t sure where she’d disappeared to, but he could tell from the solid green light on the alarm control panel that no one had entered the apartment while he was gone. Jon shook his head and shrugged his shoulders; if she wanted to play secret agent, he’d let her.

Mere seconds had gone by, before he heard her call out, “Clear,” from somewhere around the master bedroom.

“I could’ve told you that,” he called out as he walked into the family room. “The alarm told me no one had entered since I left.”

He heard her voice before she stepped through the large doorway that led to the bedrooms. “Sir, I could’ve snuck in here and with a few alterations to your alarm control panel been waiting to blow your brains out when you stepped into this room. All without your alarm telling you shit. Any assassin worth his salt could do the same.” The tone of her voice told him just how stupid she thought he was.

Even as she spoke to him as if he were a child, he was turned on by the picture she made. She stood in the middle of his living room, with her long, chocolate brown tresses falling around her shoulders, her bare stocking feet braced slightly apart, as she quickly and effortlessly slipped the safety on her gun before sliding it carefully back into that holster on her thigh.

Damn, she was hot.

Hoarsely, he asked her, "Aren't you gonna take the bullets out of your gun?"

Her head jerked up and a smile teased at the corners of her full lips. "No, sir. An empty gun ain't nothin' but a paper weight."

He started towards the bar in the corner. He needed a drink. “Where'd you get the name Kryptonite?”

Her next words stopped him in his tracks.

“You gave it to me,” she answered him distractedly as she took in her surroundings.

“I gave...” he choked on his words, then began to laugh. His laughter filled the room as he got the joke his older self had made giving her that name. It was good to know that at least some things would stay the same.

He would still have the same taste in women.

At his laughter, her head jerked around to give him a quizzical look. “Would you mind sharing the joke with the whole class, Mr. Bongiovi?”

“You mean you don’t know?” he asked, his laughter continuing.

“No, you never would tell me, but your friend David found my codename just as amusing as you just did. So share.”

She raised one eyebrow at him, as if daring him to answer. He was never one to walk away from a dare, but showing would be better than telling, and right now just wasn’t the time. “Some other time,” he told her. “Right now, I’d like some more answers.”

“Sir, I’m not going to tell you anything more about the future. It just wouldn’t be a good idea,” she cautioned.

“I don’t want to know more about the future,” he told her softly as he crossed the room. He stopped when he was almost close enough for their breaths to mingle. With his right hand, he reached out to brush her long hair back over her shoulder. “I want to know more about you.”

Chapter Seven

Gabriella sighed softly. Finally, he was taking this seriously. “It’s kinda complicated,” her soft Texas drawl tickled his ears. “How much do you know about political science?”

“Not a lot,” he admitted with a self-deprecating grin. “I know who I like in the race and back them. That’s about it.”

She had no trouble reading the look on his face. She’d seen it many times in the five years she’d worked for him. It was what he referred to as his ‘On’ facade. The ‘I-may-just-be-a-dumb-rock-star-but’ look. She had seen him use that look to get people to tell him just how much they knew on any given subject, whether it was all stuff he knew already or not. He’d told her once that one of his favorite sayings was ‘It’s better to let people think you’re a stupid ass, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt’. It had always been a useful tactic of pumping people for information for him. It seemed strange to see this younger version using the same tactic. And on her, no less.

“Somehow, I doubt that,” she told him bluntly. “Sir, you’re not fooling me. I’ve seen you use that tactic on too many people before.”

“What tactic?” he asked, innocently.

“Sir,” she paused while she debated with herself over how familiar to get with this younger version of a man she greatly admired. They had a very friendly relationship in her time. They often joked and teased each other; she’d even relaxed enough not to watch every word she said around him. Several times, she’d used a few choice curse words. She even knew what his favorite curse word was. “With all due respect...Fuck off.”

Jon laughed softly. “Is that any way to talk to your President?”

“You’re not my President.” She paused meaningfully. “Yet.”

He shrugged in casual indifference. “You haven’t answered my question,” he pointed out.

“We weren’t entirely sure as to the why, but we could make an educated guess based on what was going on at the time,” she told him. “Sir, you have the unique opportunity to ‘stack the court’.”

A puzzled frown briefly wrinkled his forehead. “Huh? Oh, you mean the Supreme Court,” he was having a hard time thinking in terms of him making those kind of decisions for this country.

She nodded at him. “With the retirement of two justices and then the death of a third. You were in the process of putting a liberal majority on the court.”

Again, he laughed softly. “So, who did they object to? Southside or Bruce?”

She frowned at him. “Sir, I thought you were finally taking this seriously?”

“Who said I wasn’t serious?”

“Your last nominee was Barack Obama,” she told him solemnly. “We are fairly certain that was the nominee that set their plan in motion.”

“Who the hell is Barack Obama?” Jon asked her.

“Sir, it’s best that I not explain all of that to you. You shouldn’t know too much about your own future.”

“Why? Will the world as we know it come to an end because of some ripple in the ‘time flux continuum’?” He sounded way too sarcastic as he tried to quote Doc Brown from Back to the Future. The thought crossed his mind that she probably had no clue what he was talking about. Then another thought struck him. “Hey! How old are you?”

“Didn’t your mom teach you better manners than to ask a lady that question?” she demanded with a sly little grin.

“Normally, yeah. But, this situation is way the fuck beyond ‘normal’,” he answered, adding a snort for good measure. “So, how old are ya?”

“Then or now?” she asked with a smile.

“Both.”

“Thirty-eight and twelve.”

“So there’s another you somewhere in this time?”

“Yes. She’s in a foster home in Corpus Christie, Texas,” she answered him. “But, you’re straying from the topic.” She really didn’t want to answer personal questions. When he nodded in agreement, she went on, “You had only just made the announcement that Obama was your nominee, when we heard whispers about an assassination plot and began to investigate.”

Jon shook his head in wonder. “I still can’t believe that in just twenty-six years we can travel through time. Have they invented that ‘beam me up’ transporter thing from Star Trek yet?” He was genuinely curious; he’d always wanted to buy one of those.

“Sir, the assassins had only recently developed the technology.”

“Ah, and used the trip to get me as a trial run, huh?” He suddenly had a flash of just how ridiculous this whole conversation was. Was he really buying into this whole travel through time to come back and save him thing? “Wait. I’ve seen this movie!” he growled at her. “Arnold was great in it, too.”

Her next words told him that she was indeed getting all of the smart ass movie references he was making. “Dammit Sir! This is not Back to the Future or Terminator. This is the real deal, and you are severely trying my patience.”

“So you have seen those movies?” he grinned unrepentantly at her.

“Only two of the Back to the Future movies, but all eight Terminators, even the ones after Arnold died and they CG’d him in.” she popped off without thinking.

“Arnold’s dead in the future too?” Jon asked, then realized that considering Arnold’s age now, it made perfect sense that twenty-six years from now he’d be gone.

“Sir,” she said in a one word warning.

“Right. Sorry. Who is trying to kill me?”

“We weren’t sure who the assassin that came back for you is, but we were able to make a few arrests. I can’t and won’t go into those details, Sir. You shouldn’t know too much about your own future.”

“Okay, then let’s back up a little and discuss the two you’s that are now in this time, and the fact that one of them can’t leave.”

She frowned at him, her light green eyes flashing with an inner fire as she lost all patience. “What about it?”

The limo pulled to a stop, and they both felt the dip in the car as the driver climbed out of the vehicle, and heard the door slam. Jon knew the man would wait patiently for him to open the door and be ready to exit the car.

“How will this work exactly? The twelve year old you grows up to become a secret agent, and...”

She jumped in quickly to interrupt him. “Don’t think about it too much, Sir. It’ll only make your head hurt.”

Chapter Six

The two of them weren’t alone again until the limo ride back to his apartment. It hadn’t been much of a surprise to Gabby when Jon had practically ordered her to join him. Jon had spent the last hour of the dinner party in a daze. His body was there, but his mind was a million miles away. He kept hearing those words over and over, ‘Richie’s dead’. He thought about that flight that Richie should’ve been on today, and how his friend would’ve been on that plane if it hadn’t been for this woman’s email.

She’d saved Richie’s life.

That was the only thing keeping him from turning the full force of his temper on her. Instead, he’d just been giving her what the fans call his ‘stink eye’. He was fully aware of what he was doing; he just couldn’t stop it.

How had she known the information in that email?

He had held the door of the limo open for her, and watched as she carefully slid across the seat. Even as mad as he was, he’d enjoyed the glimpse of long, shapely leg. He hadn’t missed the band that indicated thigh high stockings under the short skirt of that dress, before she’d quickly tugged it back down.

The wheels of the car had barely started turning, when he pushed the button to raise the glass partition between the front and back of the car.

He turned in the seat so that he could look her in the eye. “Start talking,” he’d ordered.

The woman in Gabriella over-rode the agent for the briefest of seconds, drinking in the casual elegance of the man next to her. The pictures she’d seen in her research hadn’t done him justice. Her eyes traveled up the length of his bent right leg, then over the narrowness of his waist, up the expanse of chest, to the tense jaw that gave away his impatience. Well, that jaw combined with the flash of anger in his stormy blue eyes. Her fingers itched to curl into the disheveled mass of blond mane that just barely brushed those wide shoulders. He truly was beautiful.

She curled her itchy fingers into her palms and looked him in the eyes. “Sir, let me assure you that this is not a joke. I know that even now you’re thinking it’s something that Obie, Joker or ‘Sambo’ cooked up.” She used her fingers to make air quotes around the nickname given to his best friend.

His full lips tightened even more and a brief flash of surprise slid across those blue orbs before it was once again hidden in his ‘On’ facade. “And, I’m just supposed to take your word for that?” He shook his head, wondering why he was even listening to this obviously insane woman. He knew it wasn’t that she was beautiful. Because, really, she wasn’t. Not in that classically-beautiful-kick-you-in-the-teeth sort of way. No. She had that whole girl next door sexy thing going on. That Sandra Bullock type of sexy that although subtle still managed to announce itself with authority.

“No,” she answered softly. “Take YOUR word for it.”

“What?” he asked her, frowning in confusion.

“Before you sent me here, you told me a story about your favorite book as a kid. You told me that you always wished that you’d had a special code word for disaster with your brothers just like in that book. But, that you didn’t have that type of relationship with your younger brothers. You always tried to be a good brother, but the age difference and your music got in the way.”

He wasn’t happy with the direction this conversation had taken. His family was always off limits, especially to obviously insane lunatics. “Cut the psych 101.”

“Sir?” she asked in genuine puzzlement.

“Every fan knows about the age difference thing with my brothers. Every last one of them can do the math, lady, and I’m tired of playing this fucking game with you.”

“Will you at least let me finish?” she was also starting to lose the tenuous grip on her own anger. At his terse nod, she went on. “In that book, two brothers had a phrase that they used even in humor to indicate a disaster had happened or was about to happen. Sir,” she paused for just a heartbeat, “Alas Babylon.”

Jon sucked in a deep breath, as memories of a long forgotten summer flashed through his mind. A summer that had begun with a two week quarantine while he ached to scratch every damn itchy bump on his body. At 14, chicken pox had kept him locked in his room so that his toddler brother didn’t catch it. He’d been unable to ride his dirt bike to the clay pits with his friends or go swimming in the neighbor’s pool. He’d played his guitar until it was late enough at night that he worried about waking his parents. That’s when he’d read the book she was talking about. This wasn’t just pop psychology like he’d accused. As a teenager, he’d often wished he’d had that kind of relationship with his own brothers, where just a simple phrase would mean so much more than mere words, where a phone call in the dead of the night would merely have to be long enough for two words to let you know they needed you and no one else would do.

Gabriella watched as slowly he came to grips with what had suddenly become a harsh reality. Sympathy she hadn’t expected to feel for him washed over her. She hadn’t really considered his side of all of this. She had tried to focus on nothing more than the mission.

Cloudy blue eyes met hers. His voice was soft and full of wonder, as if he was only now grasping the full implications of why she was there. “Why does someone want to assassinate me?”