Stars Across Time Read Online Free

only group of thieves operating in the mountains, and as much as he would like to see them dead, that would not allow him to accomplish his mission.
    Realizing he was outpacing the men, Theron forced himself to slow down and wait. He wanted to make sure the women were doing well—as well as could be expected. This was rough terrain, and they were not following a trail or road. He couldn’t appear too solicitous, as he had reminded himself earlier, because he had been with the group for less than two weeks, and they would be suspicious of him if he seemed any different than they did. Still, if he found a chance to let the women escape without risking revealing his identity and dooming his mission, he would take it. The fewer people the thieves succeeded in kidnapping, the less risk there was of wreaking havoc with the timeline.
    Staying to the side of the crooked column, Theron checked on the fighter woman first. Andie, he reminded himself, having sneaked up on the camp early enough to hear her talking with her friend, Min-ji. He had seen them using the telescope, as well, speaking of a comet in the sky, and his gut had twisted at the idea of kidnapping them. He had a telescope back home, and he, too, enjoyed studying the stars. He had been considering a way to warn them, but the rest of his party had shown up too soon, clomping and snapping their way through the woods, making enough noise that even city dwellers, as these women appeared to be, had heard their approach.
    Theron had remained still for as long as he could, silently hoping they would make it to their vehicle and escape. For those who had been sleeping, their fates had been inevitable, but Min-ji and Andie had been so close to making it. It wasn’t as if the kidnappers had vehicles of their own that they could give chase in. Cars and trucks—and the gasoline to power them—were almost as rare as diamonds in his time.
    Andie trod along, there being little else she could do since she was hemmed in by men and her hands were bound behind her back. But she looked left and right as she walked, determination burning in her eyes. He thought she might have glimpsed him as he passed, even though he remained silent. It was possible—even though he’d had far more wilderness training than most of these men, he wasn’t trying to hide himself—but she did not let her gaze linger on him. Why would she? He was nothing more than one more thug to her.
    Trusting that she could survive the hike without trouble, Theron waited for the others, so he could check on them. Min-ji plodded along, her head down. Behind her, the teenage girl must have passed out or not been keeping up, because she had been slung over one of the men’s shoulders, like the blonde woman. Theron had not seen what had happened in those other camps, but he hoped the idiots had not killed anyone. He would have objected to the shooting of civilians under any circumstances, but in this case, he objected even more strenuously. Anybody the thieves killed or kidnapped could cause their own time to change. If they murdered some distant ancestor, they might cause some friend of theirs to completely disappear, to have never existed. Theron shuddered to think that such a thing might have already happened, that some military comrade he had once fought beside might have disappeared without Theron ever knowing the loss because all of history had changed. Or what if there might have been some version of time where he had been married and had a wife and children?
    He snorted to himself, admitting that was unlikely, given how rarely he was home where he might meet women. And children? There were so few couples that managed to have children. There was a reason these thieves were kidnapping females from this time period, no matter how misguided and greed-driven their motives were. Oddly, they never seemed to kidnap fertile men to sell, probably because so many men had trouble admitting that they might be the weak half of the