Tru stood leaning on the railing as the liner started to pull away. Unlike many of the other passengers she didn't wave to the crowd below, she still couldn't shake the feeling that something was not quite right.
She rubbed at the back of her neck as she sensed eyes watching her. It was something she had felt a lot over the last months, the sense of someone spying on her was strong and she felt her stomach knot.
She wouldn't turn around.
She was just imagining things.
She had been sensing Jack's presence dogging her steps for months now. She knew realistically that he could not have been following behind her every time she thought that she could sense him but still she knew that sometimes she was right. She had lost count of the number of times she had spun around whilst walking down a street only to see no sign of him behind her.
But once or twice she had been quick enough to catch him ducking into an alley or a doorway, a fleeting glimpse of her own personal nemesis.
"Something wrong?" Harrison asked from beside her as he waved enthusiastically to the crowd on the dock.
"No," Tru replied cautiously. "Just a bad feeling I've got."
"Well no one's died yet," Harrison whispered into her ear. "So why don't you relax a little and try to enjoy yourself. You deserve it more than any of us."
"Thanks Harry," Tru smiled at him and gave him a quick hug before forcing a grin on her face and turning to wave to the crowd too.
"We've got to share a room?" Meredith asked in shock as their father showed her and Tru into their room.
"I didn't think you'd mind," Richard said with a slight frown. "You used to share a room when you were kids."
"I didn't like it then either," Meredith pointed out with a huff and moving across the room to grab the best bed and to open her suitcase.
"It's only for a week," Tru pointed out. "I'm sure we can get along for that long."
"They're not fighting already are they?" Harrison asked with a grin as he poked his head around the door.
"We're fine," Tru said in a firm voice as she too turned towards her luggage.
"We're just across the hall," Richard said, pointing as he spoke to the open door directly opposite.
"Okay dad," Tru nodded.
Richard turned away and headed into his own room. Harrison lingered a moment but at Tru's forbidding frown, whatever smart comment he had been intending to make died on his tongue and he too turned towards the room he was sharing with their father.
Tru turned her attention to emptying her suitcase into the chest of drawers on her side of the room. The feeling of being observed was still with her even though Harrison had closed the door behind him and she was alone in the room with Meredith. Realising that it was only paranoia making her uneasy was a hollow relief. She decided she really would have to make an effort to put her unusual abilities out of her mind for the week. A break from everything including reliving days was just what she needed. A whole week with nothing to worry about except how to fill her hours on the luxury liner.
"There's a lot to do," Meredith commented from where she now lay reclining on the bed, leafing through the brochure and itinerary that had been left in their room. For a moment Tru wondered if she had spoken her thoughts aloud before realising her sister would surely have said something sooner if she had inadvertently spoken about reliving days.
"What do you want to do first then?" Tru asked picking up some of the information leaflets and flicking through them.
"Something to eat?" Meredith suggested. "I skipped breakfast this morning and the menu looks good."
"Okay," Tru agreed. She hadn't eaten much herself that morning through lingering worries about what was the matter with their father.
They finished unpacking and Tru grabbed her purse and followed Meredith out of the door. Locking the door to their cabin she checked it was secure twice while Meredith knocked impatiently on the door opposite until Harrison stepped out, closing the door behind him.
"We're going to get something to eat," Meredith told him. "You two going to join us?"
"Would I turn down food?" Harrison grinned. "I'm right there with you. But dad disappeared a minute ago. Something about checking something or other."
"Checking what?" Tru asked. "We've only just got on board. What could he have to check?"
"I don't know," Harrison replied. "I didn't ask."
"Didn't he say anything else?" Tru questioned.
"No," Harrison replied with a shrug. "I'm sure he'll be back soon. I'll leave him a note to let him know where we are."
"Okay," Tru nodded as her brother slipped back into his room and returned a minute later to join them.
"So does anyone else think this is odd?" Tru asked. "A sudden vacation for just us."
"Well it is unusual," Meredith agreed. "But why look a gift horse in the mouth?"
"The Trojans probably said the same thing," Tru muttered. Meredith rolled her eyes in response.
"Just try and relax," Harrison advised her again. "It's an all expenses paid cruise with no dead bodies."
Meredith frowned at her brother. "Can you not mention dead bodies when we're going to eat?"
"Sorry," Harrison apologised though Tru suspected it was more an automatic response than that he was actually sorry.
They both knew that Meredith was not as relaxed as Harrison was about Tru working in a morgue. Unlike her brother, Meredith rarely stopped by to see Tru when she was at work. Not that Tru was particularly bothered about her lack of interest in her work, but she didn't want her coming round upsetting Davis who after one disastrous date with her sister was now far from relaxed in her company.
Leaving their father to catch up with them the siblings headed towards the restaurant ready to sample the liner's food.
"You were too close," Richard criticised the young man who sat across from him in one of the ship's bars. "She could sense you there. It made her uncomfortable."
"She didn't see me," Jack Harper replied taking a drink of the whiskey Richard had bought him.
"You were careless," Richard continued. "It can't happen again. She can't know you're here."
"So what if she does?" Jack argued. "She's no reason to connect the two of us."
"There's too much at stake," Richard answered, taking a drink of his own. It was a dangerous game they were playing and the stakes were higher than even Jack knew. His financial position had been on a downward spiral since the day his wife had died. The day he had stopped reliving days himself.
Now his funds were almost depleted. Between the cost of locating Jack, making sure that he had the means of spying on Tru, and the cost of the cruise he was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Unfortunately Jack was too new at reliving days to get him out of the trench he was in just yet.
The problem was Tru was succeeding in saving lives far more frequently than Jack was in redressing the balance. He knew, although Jack didn't as yet, that if Tru continued to save the lives of the victims Jack's own rewinds would eventually stop as his own nearly had and the calling would pass to another, more worthy, adversary.
He had made a mistake in having his wife killed. He hadn't known at the time that his own rewinds would stop with her death and he would lose the foreknowledge that had made him a successful player of the stock market.
The tips that Jack gave him on the rewind days were some help but it would take much longer to claw his way back to the position he once held. What they needed was the tactical advantage of not having to waste so much of Jack's rewind days with stopping Tru's efforts to save the victim.
He hadn't known at the time he had turned his back on his children that his wife's calling would pass on to Tru. Though he ruefully told himself he should have suspected that it would because Tru was a good deal like her mother and with her parents being who they were it was only natural that the gift would pass to her.
If he had known he would have kept her close to him and maybe things would have been different.
But it was too late for that now; she had accepted her calling like her mother before her and nothing Jack had said had convinced her to alter her actions.
But that didn't mean they had lost.
Richard smiled slightly as he recalled the fluke incident not too long ago where Harrison's day had rewound instead of Tru's. Jack had lost his battle that day but what they had gained had been far greater than any one single life.
Tru might be set in her ways but Harrison was not. He might have turned to Tru without hesitation when his day had rewound but the next time he wouldn't. Richard would make sure of that and this cruise was the first step in guiding his layabout son towards a different way of thinking.
Richard finished his drink while Jack waited for him to elaborate and tell him just exactly what was at stake.
"Just make sure you aren't seen," Richard advised as he put his glass back down on the bar.
"You can't leave me out of the loop here," Jack insisted. "I need to know what's going on here."
"You know everything you need to know," Richard told him before turning and leaving the bar.
Jack finished his own drink and ordered another. He was here at Richard's request but somehow he felt more like a puppet than a guest. There was so much that he didn't know about the calling, so much that Richard was keeping from him.
He didn't like being played and there was only so much he was prepared to do without knowing the rest of the story.
Still, he thought with a sly smile, just because Tru was off limits it didn't mean that her sister was.
