L'affaire Bob

36. How To Be a Gift From Heaven: A Guide

Paul's POV

-"So?" I hissed impatiently, looking at the screen Samantha and Nathan Guillot were showing me, after she had taken us to one of their offices to reveal their search results. 

Whereas just mere seconds ago, there was a date, place, and time written alongside a dot blipping on the screen, now, unfortunately, both the image and the text had been blurred. "I thought you found her. What's happening now?"

-"Calm down a minute now, will you?" Amanda demanded.

-"I'm calm, I truly am," I reassured her. "I'm... I was asking a few essential questions, if you get what I mean."

-"Paul, don't worry about Emma," Sam insisted. "We're going to find her, sooner or later."

At this moment, a dot started blipping again on the blurry screen in front of us-- a dot which, a split second later, turned into two.

-"That's Emma, right?" I stated, hesitantly.

-"It is Emma indeed," Nathan said, although doubt and confusion were written all over his face. "But-"

-"It looks like another traveler is with her," my guardian cut in.

-"The problem isn't if someone's with her or not, but rather, the absence of date or location on this goddamn screen," I muttered.

-"That's strange," Sam observed. "It's not normal for this information to disappear, just like that."

-"Is that so? Then what's this?" a masculine voice said from behind, making us all jump. Pointing his finger towards the screen, he showed us two lines next to the shiny dots.

-"Who are you?" I asked and raised a suspicious eyebrow. My hand instinctively inched towards my gun, or rather, the place where it would've been, had I been on a mission, working on the ground.

-"Someone you shouldn't worry about," spoke this time a familiar feminine voice. "Or at least, not yet."

-"Emma!" We all exclaimed while turning towards the newcomers.

-"Where were you?" I inquired.

-"Are you alright?" Amanda rushed to her.

-"Relax, darlings," the blond guy cut us in, a strange, malicious glint in his piercing blue eyes. "She chilled a few in London's jail."

-"She what?"

-"Chilled a few. To sit down or stay in a particular place for a specific period of time. Idiom used mostly in informal language. Evolved in the early 2100s."

My eyebrows shot up.

-"Where are you from, Mr...?" I started.

-"Davis. Mike Davis. I'm from the 2134's USA."

-"I see. Do you always act like a walking dictionary, Mike?"

-"No, no, of course not, sweetie."

-"Paul. Call me Paul."

-"Well, Paul, I don't do it much, ya know. It really depends on the occasion."

I tilted my head.

-"Okay, yes. Yes, I do it. Constantly," he sighed defeatedly.

-"That's my boy," I told him.

-"So, you're saying you were both in London's prison?"

-"Pretty much, yeah."

-"And what, pray, where you doing there?" I queried, turning this time to Emmanuelle Rousseau. I plastered a fake smile on my face to encourage her, but this only seemed to make things worse seeing the few steps she took backward and the weird look she gave me.