KingTony

"When your past catches up to you."

William had often had a revolutionary war era long gun pointed at him. He'd participated in more than a hundred Revolutionary War reenactments, after all. But those muskets had been reproductions, and while they could be loaded with powder and fired, sending forth a cloud of thick smoke to create a realistic battle, they couldn't actually send forth a lead ball that could, potentially, take a man's head right off. William's rifle had been an genuine 18th century weapon, cared for over the years and maintained such that it was safe to use in its original manner. Of course, until he'd put a ball through that terrorist, he'd never actually shot anyone with it. And now, seeing the weapons pointed at him, William certainly didn't want any of them shot at him!

Samuel's sudden appearance and story telling -- about how William was a friend from up north -- seemed to be holding the men, but the dangerous weapons were still very much pointed at William's head and torso. At least, until Keziah showed.

"There you are!" she called out as she headed toward the scene taking place in the packed dirt street outside her home. She continued chastising William with, "Speak of the devil ... I told you to stay put!"

William wasn't sure how to react. He was standing in the streets of 18th century Boston in a Hessian uniform covered in blood with guns pointed at his head while a fiery little woman a full head shorter than him ripped him a new ass hole for being a bad boy. Not confusing at all. William only heard some of what Keziah said to him and, next, to the soldiers who so badly wanted to either shoot him or arrest him, but whatever it was, it worked: the men slowly lowered their rifles, and after a bit more conversation with his host and hostess, they began to disperse and aid their comrades with Samuel's medical help.

For his part, William simply followed the fire ball back to the cabin. Before he closed the door behind him, he took one last look about the neighborhood. It was what William might have called the suburbs of 18th century Boston. The homes lined a wide, packed dirt road flanked by wandering ditches trenched by the runoff of the Northeast's sometimes harsh rains. The size of the individual properties seemed to vary a bit, from a part of an acre to a couple of them. Fences and corrals could be seen separating properties. William knew that at any other time the fields beyond those barriers would be filled with cattle, sheep, goats, and more. Yet now, the fields were mostly empty, likely a result of the British troops -- or maybe even the Patriot rebels -- stealing anything and everything that could be used to feed the war effort. William had heard that in times like these, the populace often brought their stock animals inside to live with them, to protect them. He closed the door and looked about himself for piles of pig dung or breeze blown collections of chicken feather but saw none, then laughed. He'd spent years -- decades, actually, having begun his quest for history at age 11 -- learning about this time, and now he was here living in it. What would he learn in the days to...

Days...? he wondered.

Just how long was he going to be here? Just how long was he going to be stuck here? In 1775? William still didn't know why he was here or how he'd gotten here. As he thought once again about his last moments in the 21st century, it was obvious that the firing of his ancestor's musket had caused this somehow. But, William had fired it often, at Revolutionary War and German Culture-related exhibitions. Why was this time different? It didn't take a genius to figure that one out: William had killed a man with the weapon. He'd put a ball in the weapon and sent it forth as he had so often, but this time he'd shot that shot at another man. Killed that other man. Then ... he was here. What the fuck?

"Where's my weapon?" he asked Keziah softly. She was involved in her duties once again and either didn't hear him or simply didn't respond. William stood again and began a casual search for the weapon, not realizing that neither his host or hostess had seen the weapon. It wasn't here William would soon enough learn, but he was becoming panicked as he asked, "Where's my rifle? I had it when I was shot. Did you see it when you found me? Samuel ... could he have put it away. I need that rifle."

"Not Part of the Plan"

"You looked like you could use a rescue."

"A rescue...?" Paul responded softly but with a feigned tone of disappointment. "Are you kidding me...? He was about to tell me the secret of his success ... about how I, too, could be a millionaire by years end." He rolled his eyes, made a short pfft sound, then finished, "Now, I'll be a reporter for the rest of my life ... eating top ramen, watching basic cable, and investing for my old age by buying a weekly lottery ticket. Thanks."

Paul laughed, then smiled wide as he lifted his flute to his lips. As he sipped the bubbly, he stare into Kat's eyes with an interest that wasn't feigned in the least, then lowered his glass again and looked her up and down with a conspicuously hungry look. Looking back to Kat's sparkling orbs -- the ones in her head, not her tight fitting gown -- he said in a quiet but suggestive tone, "I could tell this afternoon that you took my invitation for dinner as a way to work toward an inside scoop on your family and their empire." He stepped just a bit closer, adding a touch of intimacy to their proximity without looking creepy, and told her in an even softer tone, "I assure you, Miss Malloy ... my invitation had nothing to do with getting to know your grandfather ... and every thing to do with getting to know you."

A waiter happened by, and Paul snatched two full fluted of champagne before offering one out toward Kat and finishing, "And to prove it, I am going to forego the interview with your grandfather and ask again..." He lofted the flute, indicating he hoped she would acknowledge her acceptance of a date with a clinking of glass. "Please ... do me the great honor of letting me take you to dinner."

"When your past catches up to you."

"Keziah Wilkinson ... That was my brother Samuel. Samuel Black."

William's first thought -- a very man thought -- was Brother...? Great, that means you're available, yeehaw for me. Then he caught the fact of the different surnames, and William was disappointed to know -- incorrectly, of course -- that Keziah's husband would likely be returning soon enough.

Keziah finished with her cooking preps and clean up, then headed out of the room to check on the sister of whom William was only now becoming aware. Despite his hostess's order to stay put, though, William was up on his feet and heading for the door even as she was still heading down the short hallway. No sooner had she ducked inside the other bedroom then he was heading for the door through which he'd earlier seen evidence of the Revolutionary War.

William hadn't been sure of what to expect from the aftermath of the fight outside the cabin. On Normandy Beach in 1944, the Allied Forces had suffered almost 75,000 dead with twice that number injured. Eighty years before that, the Army of the Potomac had suffered more than 23,000 dead at the Battle of Gettysburg, with the Army of Northern Virginia incurring similar losses. But the population of the British Colonies in America had been small in 1775 relative to the US in 1863 or 1944: there had been only 2.5 million people in the 13 colonies at the beginning of the American Revolution, and today the Greater Boston Area alone had twice that many people inside its borders.

When he got outside, William was grateful not to find a sea of dead or writhing bodies. From the door step, he could see only three soldiers at all: one standing nearby, another seated on a stump being tended to by Samuel, and a third laying toes up near a burning wagon, another man's coat laid over his stilled upper torso and face. One dead, William thought with a sigh. Then, walking toward Samuel to lend a hand if needed, he began to see the others. In every direction, soldiers -- some in British Red, others in Patriot blue, and still more in just ordinary farmer wear -- were either dead, dying, or hoping to avoid either. It wasn't like any of William's reenactments, of course. They had used real gun powder -- without shot, of course -- to fill the air realistically with smoke. And sometimes they had used powerful, buried high pressure air devices to blow loosened dirt high into the air, simulating cannon balls exploding on the earth. But because children were often at these events and -- with the recent 21st century wars -- people could see enough blood and guts on the nightly news, no fake blood or lost limbs or other graphic injuries or deaths were exhibited as part of the reenactments.

But now, William found himself looking at bloodied bodies, some with limbs blown off, one even with its head missing. He got dizzy with his spinning about looking at the mayhem, and he leaned over to puke out the break and water his hostess had just recently given him. He recovered, but when he did and rose tall once again, William found himself staring down the barrel of a long rifle as the man eying him through the simple sights was saying to others nearby, "Come take a look at this bloody Englishman, boys! What the hell is this? This ain't no redcoat uni'. Whatcha wearing, boy? It sure ain't our uniform."

Another male nearby called out, "Kill'em, Phillip!"

Another screamed, "Kill him dead, Elijah! He's an enemy soldier"

"Not Part of the Plan"

Paul was disappointed that Kat had turned down his invitation, but he wasn't surprised, for a lot of reasons. He stood with her, thanked her for the interview offer, shook her hand, and traded farewells with her before she left. He watched her head down the block and disappear around the corner. She was a joy to watch from the backside, and Paul couldn't help but smile as he wondered if she was thinking Is he staring at my ass?

The coffee shop was strike one. But Paul was still at bat. He hadn't told Kat that he'd already been slated to go to the fundraiser, so her first indication that she'd be seeing him so soon was when she looked away from a conversation in which she was engaged to see him standing near a far wall. He was holding a flute half filled with champagne in one hand and a small digital audio recorder in the other as he feigned interviewing one of the event's more prominent honorees. As the man ranted on and on about the acts of charity in which his corporation was involved, Paul's only thought was of how this corrupt blow hard was one of the Syndicate members worth a million dollars to him. Keep patting yourself on the back, bud ... right where I'm gonna stick a knife in it soon'nuff.

"Not Part of the Plan"

"I was just headed out for a quick cup of coffee actually..."

They chatted as they headed a couple of blocks to the coffee shop. Paul reassured Kat that she could certainly help him, then continued the casual chatting. He inquired about her current charity event, and before he knew it they were at a table in a corner booth with their drinks on the way. She was a remarkable woman, and Paul was intrigued by her. She was also a stunning young thing that Paul wouldn't mind seeing laying her back below him.

All of this was delightful to Paul, professionally so. From the moment he'd accepted this job, he'd known that he would need to get very close to the Syndicate to get to the most protected of its members, and the easiest way to get that close had always been to find a woman associated to the target: a daughter, a granddaughter ... even a wife of a member. There had been many a woman Paul had connected with -- sexually, evenly more intimately -- who hadn't been the type he'd bring home to mother. But he'd gotten the job done with such women so that he could later get the other job down with the target.

Kat, though? No, Paul could easily see himself getting close to her in an effort to finish this job. No trouble at all. During the creation of his new ID and background, Paul had searched for such women -- single and otherwise -- amongst his Syndicate targets' families. He'd found a dozen or so who might get him closer to one or more hard to reach targets, but when he'd come across Kat, Paul stopped looking elsewhere: she was single, attractive, socially active, and -- most importantly -- the granddaughter of a key member of the Syndicate.

"I know we've just met, Kat," Paul began after they'd spent almost half an hour, "but would you be interested in dinner one night soon?"

"When your past catches up to you."

"May 20th ... It's 1775...you don't have any history of hitting your head, repeatedly, do you?"

The woman's gentle questioning of his sanity barely registered as William thought only about her confirmation of where he was ... or, more specifically, when he was. May 20th ... 1775. How could this be?

William nibbled at the offered bread and contemplated his situation while his hostess and host talked quietly about a man named Peter. He didn't hear all the words, but it was obvious that this man had met with tragedy, likely in the very fighting in which William himself had incurred his injuries. William snapped out of his deep thought in time to hear his host say, "Please keep an eye on my wife..."

William had misunderstood, not realizing there was yet another woman in the house and thinking his host was referring to the woman standing here in the room. He was about to make a comical quip in return when the man said to his wife, "and you know what to do if he behaves inappropriately."

The man left, and his hostess returned to preparing their dinner, asking him "What is your name?"

"Bill," he said out of habit. He chuckled quietly, then corrected, "William. William Kutcher. And your name?"

After she'd answered, he asked his misguided question, "And your husband. His name?"

"Not Part of the Plan"

(OOC: The web page below obviously doesn't exist. Don't bother trying to go to it.)

"Electronic leashes."

When the young beauty passing by slowed and looked his way, Paul smiled wide and clarified, "Cell phones. My wife, God rest her soul, used to call them electronic leashes." He waggled a finger toward the pocket into which Kat had deposited her cell phone, then continued, "She used to turn her cell off as soon as she left work, then didn't turn it back on until just an hour before she had to leave for work the next day."

Paul stood and walked closer to Kat, not so near or so quickly as to alarm her with a stranger danger. He smiled politely, hoping that she would pay more attention to his relatively nice looks than to the fact that she didn't know him. Paul had often been attractive. One lover had often referred to him as tasty. He had the dark, dramatic facial features of Keanu Reeves in his 40s and the deliciously sculpted body of Mark Wahlberg in his 20s. His near perfect smile was the result of a lifelong obsession with brushing and flossing, not tens of thousands of dollars in caps and polishings; and his hazel-green eyes sparkled when he was happy, or when he was on the make, as he was with Kat now.

He only had two conspicuously noticeable physical flaws: the first was a slight limp in his right leg when he walked slowly -- as he was now -- which was the result of a bullet fragment still lodged in his hip bone; and the second was a three inch long scar on the left side of his neck -- which he concealed by approaching Kat on her right -- that was the result of a knife fight in Munich six years earlier.

"I'm Paul," he said offering out his hand, still at enough of a distance that if Kat wanted to take it she would have to take a step forward. "And you're Kat Malloy."

He smiled wider, then laughed attempting to alleviate any tension that might be brewing from a stalker vibe. "I meant to find you at the benefit tonight, but I noticed you coming outside. I'm covering it, the benefit. I'm a contributor, for Good People ... Good People Doing Good Things dot com."

He laughed, feigning embarrassment. "I know, I know. Silly name for an online magazine."

GoodPeopleDoingGoodThings.com had been one of the easiest elements of setting up Paul's new identity. Paul's go-to hackers-slash-web designers -- he called them Tweedle Do and Tweedle Did -- had created Good People to automatically sift through and pirate from thousands of already existing charity and social services websites, reposting articles from those sites. The Tweedles had faked a following of millions, which had led to Good People making hundreds of Top Ten Online Site lists, which had led to millions of actual followers, which then had led to advertisers paying for a presence on the page. And now -- despite Paul never having meant for the site to do so -- Good People was pulling down more than $10,000 a month in revenue, which he let the Tweedles keep as payment for services rendered.

"I was hoping maybe to pick your brain," he continued, "maybe over a cup of coffee...?"

"When your past catches up to you."

"I will not leave you with that man!"

The voice of a man inside the cabin startled William. It shouldn't have, of course: after all, someone had carried him inside and taken care of his wounds. But at this moment, likely anything would have startled William: the situation was just all to confusing and incredible. Movement caught his eye, and the man who'd apparently spoken moved to and closed the door looking out upon what had to be an actual battle. He moved off out of William's view again, and staring at the closed door was suddenly disappointing to William. It separated him from what appeared to be a real war, which should have been comforting. But this was the Revolutionary War -- or, at least, it had to be, didn't it? -- and William wanted to see it with his own eyes.

Ever since he'd written a report in 5th grade on America's fight for independence, William had been obsessed with anything Revolutionary-related. Things had gotten even more involved when he'd learned that he had ancestors who'd originated in Hesse-Kassel -- the source of the term Hessians -- who'd fought as mercenaries for the British. William's twelve-times-great-grandfather had been an infantry man fighting in New York in 1776. Of course, that hadn't occurred until a few months after the end of the siege of British-held Boston by the rebels who would come to be the first real Americans. (Well, ignoring, of course, that the American continent had had native inhabitants already for thousands of years, something the part-Indian William had not!)

William's ancestor, Danilo -- who later changed his name to Daniel -- had surrendered with dozens of other reluctantly-fighting Hessians to none other than George Washington. George Washington! General George Frickin' Washington! General George was -- apparently! -- alive and well and fighting for the future of what was going to become the United States of America someday. [i]Two hundred and forty years from now! Two hundred and forty years from now, William would be reenacting the very battle that was taking place outside this very cabin! It was just mind boggling!

"Oh. You're awake."

William flinched at the female voice, then grimaced at the pain in his side. He looked to his wound again -- or at least to the bandage hiding it -- and imagined it as a massive hole in his side with his guts threatening to spill out onto the cabin's dusty plank floor. Of course, it was no such wound: the bullet, despite being half again larger than most of the bullets fired in modern warfare, had only grazed across his belly, ripping the outer layers of flesh without ever penetrating his body. But it sure as fuck didn't feel that minor!

"Thank you," William told the woman as she held out a cup of water out to him. He lifted it to his mouth, then hesitated. The 18th century was known for a lot of things, and -- at least in some places -- germ-free, pure water hadn't been one of them. Nevertheless, William raised the glass and sucked down the room temperature liquid. He'd just have to hope it came from a well and not one of the streams that fed into the massive bug-infested Boston-area wetlands that one day would be filled in to create the greater Boston Area in which William had been raised. He handed over the empty cup to the woman...

...then took a moment to look her over. She was beautiful under all that concern and exhaustion. William suspected that she was younger -- maybe far younger -- than his own 26 years, but it was hard to tell. The stress of pre-industrial era living could be hard on people sometimes, so this woman could have been anywhere between 16 and 36 and William probably wouldn't have guessed within half a dozen years if he tried.

He sat up on the wood plank table, grimacing as he did. Remembering that he wasn't exactly dressed for company, William tried to pull his torn, bloodied shirt to cover his exposed torso. In addition to being a history freak, William had been a fitness enthusiastic, too. As his hostess may have noticed -- presuming she'd been part of his first aid -- his chest and belly were impressively rock solid. William was the kind of guy the girls at the beach would have gawked at with hungry smiles if he'd ever spent time at the more public beaches rather than the more private exercise room of his apartment.

William had had a girlfriend once who told he had facial likeness of Keanu Reeves and the body of the younger Mark Wahlberg. He likely would have been flattered by this description had he known either of those two actors as more than just names he often heard in the Entertainment News. (The drawback to being a library loving book worm and of not having had an interest in movies unless they were documentaries.) At 5'10", William was 180 pound of solidness. His hazel-green eyes sparkled, particularly when he was happy. Other than that and the comparisons to Keanu and Mark, there wasn't really much to say about his looks. And few people had ever said much about those looks because William had never been the dating-every-weekend type, so not many women had ever had the occasion to comment one way or the other on his appearance.

"Thank you," he told the woman standing before him, asking if he could have another glass. He was parched, making him wonder how long he'd been laying here unconscious. His empty stomach rolled, and after she'd brought him a second glass, William asked politely if there was anything to eat before he ventured with the question that had been screaming out for asking. He cleared his throat and asked tentatively, "Could you, um ... would you mind, ma'am ... telling me what day this is...?"

He waited for her to answer, then -- unsure of whether she would answer, laugh, or cringe, thinking him a nut -- William continued with his question, "And ... the year...?"

"Not Part of the Plan"

Paul Taylor: Assassin

Current Identity: Contributor to online magazine GoodPeopleDoingGoodThings.com.

Physical Description:

• I'm not using a picture.
• He has been described as "...attractive ... (having) the dark, dramatic facial features of Keanu Reeves in his 40s and the deliciously sculpted body of Mark Wahlberg in his 20s.
• 5'10, 185#; well sculpted body.
• Three inch scar on the left of his neck from a knife fight years earlier.
• Slight limp, particularly conspicuous when he walks slowly.
• Sparkling hazel-green eyes.
• A near perfect smile of brightly white teeth.
• Although not yet applicable, well endowed.

Personality:

• Confident.
• Highly intelligent; very informed.
• Soft spoken until he gets to know you. (This is more about protecting himself by not inadvertently saying something that might contradict his current false identity.)
• Charismatic. Women tend to like him quickly, sometimes too quickly.
• Conscientious lover, particularly with Marks or Assets.

Background: Not yet stated.

History: Unfolding now.

"Not Part of the Plan"

Saving this space for future use.