Chapter 25

Sarah didn't show any eagerness to get down out of my arms, so I just carried her into the house, with her arms and legs wrapped around me. She hid her face in my neck as she turned bright red and shrieked and laughed all the way. Her Mom and Dad met us at the door, looking to see what all the noise was about. That made me turn red and stutter. Her Mom laughed.

"Sarah! Are you molesting this poor man? How many times have I told you not to try to have sex with a guy until you've at least seen him once or twice?" She shook her head sorrowfully, smiling slightly. "Teenagers! What can you do with them?"

"MOM!" Sarah shouted. "That's not true! You make me sound like a slut! You know I've never gone..." Sarah turned even redder as she realized what she had almost said. Then she got mad and started to struggle.

"Let me down! You adults are all alike! Damn it, put me down!" She hissed.

Oops. I guess she didn't think her Mom was funny. I hugged her close, trying to make it up to her.

"Sarah, I don't think anything of the kind. You saved my life, and besides, all the girls tell me you are a wonderful, sweet girl. Your Mom was just kidding, weren't you?" I looked at her Mom, hoping she would get it.

"I'm sorry, Sarah, I didn't think you would take offense; I tease you about that all the time," her Mom apologized. "We both know it's not true." Sarah had forgotten I was still holding her.

"But not in public and not in front of HIM!" Sarah protested, looking like she was ready to cry. "HE doesn't know it's not true and in front of all his daughters and wife and sister..." She wiggled down and ran to her room.

"I'm sorry," Sarah's Mom apologized to us. "I'm Laura and this is Paul. We're Sarah's parents. I'm afraid I'm just not very good at this parenting stuff. I've always been more like a friend or big sister to her. I didn't think about her being embarrassed. I forgot she has had such a big crush on you for years," she said, turning to me.

I was stunned! How could she have a crush on me? I just met her. I only talked to her over the radio for the first time an hour or so ago.

"How could she have a crush on me? I didn't even know she existed until a few hours ago! I've never met her before!" I looked at Megan as she gave me her 'Poor Patrick, so clueless' look. Why was I always the only one that was confused?

"I better let her tell you about that, if she wants to. I think I'm probably in enough trouble right now anyway," Laura said, laughing nervously. "I guess I better go talk to her. I'm really not looking forward to this. She's a sweet girl, but when she gets mad... if you hear any loud crashes, come save me."

"Let me talk to her," Megan suggested quietly. "I have a lot of experience talking to crazy, obnoxious, irritated young girls." She cringed as she saw Sammi's lower lip starting to tremble. Everyone was getting in real trouble today.

"Maybe we should just go out and start all over," Julie suggested, smiling softly. As soon as she stopped speaking, there was a bright flash of light.

Sarah didn't show any eagerness to get down out of my arms, so I just carried her into the house, with her arms and legs wrapped around me. She hid her face in my neck as she turned bright red and shrieked and laughed all the way. Her Mom and Dad met us at the door, looking to see what all the noise was about. That made me turn red and stutter. Her Mom laughed.

"Hi! Come on in! I see Sarah has found a new friend," she laughed. "I'm Laura, and this is Paul; we're Sarah's parents. You must be Patrick. I feel I already know you, I've heard so much about you from Sarah."

"MOM! Must you always tell everything about me as soon as you meet someone," Sarah protested, still laughing. Although I briefly wondered how Sarah could tell them all about someone she had never met before, I wasn't really listening to them, as I was trying to figure out what had just happened.

"Megan?" I asked, nervously. She shrugged her shoulders, looking uneasy. Victoria looked alarmed, the girls nervous.

"Did you feel it too?" I asked Megan. She nodded, saying nothing. All the other girls nodded too.

"Feel what?" Sarah asked, as she dropped down out of my arms.

"Everything just... repeated. We just did the same thing twice, like time repeated itself, except it was different the second time at the end." I was worried. Were we not permanent this time either?

"Oh, that. She did it. It has something to do with her," Sarah said casually, blowing it off as she pointed at Julie. We all looked at Julie as she had a shocked, confused look about her.

"I... I didn't do anything!" Julie protested. She was feeling self-conscious with everyone looking at her, not to mention worried about what she might have done. She didn't like being the center of attention and was usually very good at avoiding it.

"Oh, not consciously, you didn't, probably. But it came from you. You're not supposed to be here. It's causing some minor time distortions. It's no big deal; it will sort itself out in a few days or so." Sarah seemed ready to dismiss it again, but I wasn't satisfied.

"I don't understand, Sarah. What's causing it? How is it going to sort out?"

"I'm not completely sure. There is some really important event, in a previous... time or... cycle... whatever... that you guys were in that happened with her. Since she isn't supposed to be here, it still happened... or is going to happen, or has to happen... I don't really understand all this stuff. It will happen in the next few days or weeks and then everything will be ok, as the time differences will have resolved themselves. Apparently this is an important enough event that it has to happen, regardless of what else has changed. Until then, you might have some weird things happen like this. It'll be ok," Sarah assured us, dismissing it again as unimportant.

It wasn't unimportant to me! What if it was Julie's death? What if my bringing her with us didn't stop that? Megan looked at me, fire in her eyes, giving me a 'this is all your fault!' look. I knew she had thought of the 'Julie's death' scenario also. I also knew she was aware, as I was, that this was probably due to Protocol 29. She would probably hate me forever if anything happened to her baby. Hell, I would hate me forever if anything happened to Julie. Julie looked scared.

"How do you know all this, Sarah?" I asked. She frowned.

"I don't know. I just do. I can see it in her. I saw it before, also. You know I see things, right, just like Sammi?" She blushed prettily for some reason. "Well, maybe not just like Sammi..." Hmmm. I was going to have to ask more about that later; it sounded interesting.

We all went into the living room and sat down, chatting about inconsequential things while we all tried to recover from our fright of what had just happened. We invited Sarah's parents to join us, and they did for a little while, then they stood up to leave the room.

"I'm sure all of you have things to talk about. We usually try to stay out of anything Rhonda is involved in. It probably is better if we don't know any more about this than we already do. Please, everyone stay the night. We have room, and if we run short of rooms, Sarah just loves to bunk in with her friends. We'll see you all in the morning." Sarah's Mom showed us where everything was that we would need, and then they retired.

We all just sat there for awhile, looking at each other. Then Sammi got up, took Sarah by the hand, and walked her over to me, pushing her down onto my lap. Sarah giggled, turning red, and hid her face in my shirt. I guess I turned red also. I lifted her head, turning her face gently towards me, and kissed her thoroughly. She wrapped her arms around me and kissed me very nicely too. It didn't seem like this was her first kiss. Of course, smart ass Amy had to make the most of the situation.

"If there aren't enough rooms or beds, Sarah, I'm sure you could share a bed with Patrick. It looks like he wouldn't mind!" She giggled as she watched us blush even more. One thing about all my girls; jealousy seemed to be a word they didn't even know existed.

"Amy!" Megan admonished her. "That wasn't nice. Stop teasing the poor girl. Behave." Amy smiled sweetly at us, then jumped and screamed as a large orange cat with black spots, at least 15 pounds, suddenly appeared from nowhere in her lap. He hissed and growled as if he was really unhappy and sinking his claws into her for leverage, jumped down, and ran out of the room. Poor Amy! Her hand flew to her chest as if she was having a heart attack and she collapsed back into the chair, hyperventilating. Sarah looked at her with a not very guilty guilty look and a not very sorry 'sorry about that' look, and then looked really innocent. There was not a word said or a sound in the room as Sarah kissed me again. Then, everyone laughed. Amy's laugh seemed a little forced. Count on Cindi to not leave a situation alone when it came to her twin.

"What a pretty cat! And so big! Is that a Bengal?" She asked Sarah, grinning at Amy.

"Yes! Do you know about Bengals? He's actually kind of small; his Daddy was 20 pounds. I'm glad he's back; I sometimes forget where I've sent him. If I forget, he always seems to return eventually. What did you think of him?" Sarah asked. Cindi grinned at Sarah; she wasn't buying at all the story that he just seemed to return by himself into Amy's lap after Amy made her smart remark about Sarah!

"I think he's really pretty!" Cindi gushed, continuing the game. "What did you think, Amy?"

"Yeah. Pretty." Amy responded, looking around the room again. "Too fucking big and sneaky!" She muttered under her breath. All the other girls tried to smother their giggles behind their hands as they all had to 'cough' at once. Amy just glared, and then looked around the room again nervously.

Finally, Rhonda called our little meeting to order.

"We need to figure out a solution to a little problem you might run into. Ok, a big problem. Sometime over the next few hours, it's going to occur to some brilliant career ladder climbing officer, if it hasn't already, that you guys would be very valuable to have around, or at least to have some control over. I know you have been pretty careful about using your powers, but they've seen some things. They know Sammi can see things from afar. Once they review satellite tapes of the area, they are going to see some very interesting footage in various shades of green. I don't know what else you guys might have done that I didn't see, but it will be pretty obvious you aren't your typical high school cheerleaders. Not to mention you survived and successfully completed a mission that twelve of their highly trained men died trying to accomplish." She looked at us expectantly.

"Good point, Rhonda," Victoria replied. We had decided to let her speak for us at this meeting; as a former Marine wife, she was probably more familiar with these types of meetings. "What do you suggest?"

"I'm glad you asked that, Victoria," Rhonda replied. What was this, a straight man act? "I do have a suggestion, if you are comfortable with it. You probably can't just say no and refuse any 'help' they offer to 'keep you safe'." I heard several snorts of derisive laughter in the room. "I know; you could keep them safe easier than they could help you. But that's their excuse for watching you. Then that leads to controlling you. I know you could stop it any time you wanted, but that would just attract more attention. So, here's my plan.

"I will suggest to my superiors that you need a liaison officer from the Marines to coordinate any 'needs you might have'. Since I have gone on this little mission with you, I will imply that I have a rapport with you that they can use to their advantage. You trust me, I can be around you frequently, I can pass information on to them, blah, blah, blah; you get the idea. In other words, use me exactly as they wanted to in the first place. Except, since I'm helping you, we only pass on stuff that you want them to know. I could get an apartment somewhere near you." Rhonda looked at all of us, nervousness plain in her eyes.

"Do you all trust me enough to have me do that? Do you trust that I would only pass on what you want? I would like to help and I just don't think they are going to let you walk away from this unattached." She waited nervously.

"Interesting idea," Victoria replied. "At the risk of sounding cynical, what do you get out of this?" Victoria raised her eye brows in inquiry. Rhonda sighed heavily.

"I figured someone would ask that. I do have a partially selfish motive, besides just wanting to maintain contact with some really interesting people I've grown attached to." She unaccountably blushed when she said that. "I would really like to get Sarah out of here. She's not safe here in Iraq. Mom and Dad have to stay here for a few more years and I just don't want her around that long. It's not safe. This way, I could take her back with me. My bosses would like that, too, as they would feel it would give us an 'in' with the girls; a more unofficial source of information, if you will. I can't imagine where she could be safer than with you guys. I think Mom and Dad would be all for it too. They worry about me and Sarah all the time." She stopped talking again. She was a master at not over-stressing a point. There was a brief silence; then Cindi just couldn't keep quiet anymore.

"They could live with us! We have lots of room. It would be way cool to have Sarah around all the time! Oh, and you too Rhonda. Oh, say yes Daddy! It would really be neat! You could hug and kiss Sarah anytime you wanted and we could even tape Amy's mouth shut if she teased you too much!" Everyone laughed at that, with several of the girls raising their hands to volunteer for that duty. Poor Amy. She just sat quietly in her chair, her eyes darting around the room periodically, watching for the cat I guess.

"Calm down, Cindi. We have a lot to discuss before we get there, although I admit I like the idea," I responded. Then to Rhonda, "Do you think they would let you do that? Alone, I mean?"

"Well, that's the other fly in the ointment. They would probably want someone else to help, to spell me and maybe act as a handler. Are there any others you trust? I would trust John Hargrove. I know him very well. He's a good man."

I immediately liked that idea. He was the Marine Officer I had talked to at Elizabeth's funeral, the one that Dad had said was the best available, the Marine Officer at the planning session. I explained who he was to the others. They whole-heartedly agreed.

"Do you think he would do it?" I asked Rhonda. She grinned.

"Oh, in a heartbeat. He was good friends with Robert Costello and had great respect for him. Besides, he was always a little smitten with Robert's wife. I understand she is connected with you guys in some way. I'm sure he would jump at the chance to meet her again. I've never met her, but I understand from him that she is a wonderful person. He has great respect for her abilities, not to mention she is supposed to be really good looking. John always thought so, anyway. He was devastated at Robert's death, and was greatly disturbed about how hard his wife must have taken it. Apparently, they were the darlings of the Marines as far as husband and wife teams were concerned. I'm sure he would love to have a hand in protecting her."