His timing had been perfected over the last year.
Long gone were the times when he regularly started his rewind day after he had originally risen.
It had taken a while but now he prided himself on knowing Tru's schedule as well as he knew his own. He had finally pinned down the exact time she would wake each morning and made sure that he was still in bed at that time. He knew her shift pattern at work, he knew the days she would sleep in and the days she would rise early, and he carefully engineered his own to match.
But even after all his careful scheming the plan wasn't entirely without faults. Looking ruefully at the healing burn on his hand from the previous rewind, he shook his head and swore. Tru had changed her shift on the day of the last rewind and had gone into work unexpectedly. The day had restarted without him being aware there was even a possibility and he had found himself back in his kitchen cooking breakfast. The shock of the rewind had taken him by surprise and he had stumbled forward and grabbed at the hot grill before realising what had happened.
Again he cursed the fact that he rewound to the same time his counterpart awoke and not the time that he did.
He hadn't stood a chance of stopping Tru on the last rewind. Caught off guard and without a clue who the victim was he had decided to let that one go. Richard hadn't been pleased to find that his daughter was on a rewind day and he'd not done anything to try to stop her saving the victim. He'd urged him to step up his game or lose his place on the team; not that Richard had any more control over that than he did. But still, Richard was the one person he knew who had first hand experience of being Death and Jack knew that his advice had been invaluable.
Furthermore, Jack was one of the few people alive who knew just how dangerous Richard was; the last thing he wanted was to get on his wrong side.
Jack walked across his apartment to the array of electronic equipment that took up a large portion of the room.
He flicked a few switches and was pleased to see that Richard's new gift was working.
"So we need to find out why the car crashed unexpectedly?" Davis's voice came through loud and clear, the tap on the line to Tru's apartment was working just as it should. Jack smiled slightly at the ease of getting his information these days; it beat the hell out of trying to eavesdrop at the morgue itself, especially when he went there only to find that Davis wasn't working, a rare occurrence but it had been known to happen.
"The eye witnesses said the driver swerved to avoid nothing," Tru replied.
"What did the driver say?" Davis queried.
"Nothing, he was unconscious at the scene. An older brother."
"Could the car have been tampered with?"
"Possibly, I'll be checking that out."
"Good," Davis replied as Jack pictured him frantically scribbling down notes. Tru was lucky she had help from her co-worker, though looking at the amount of tech in his apartment now he shouldn't complain about lack of help from Richard. Though it would have been good to have a bit more moral support from him.
"I'm going to head over to the high school they came from and see if anyone was hanging round the vehicle while they were in class."
"Okay. Call me if you need anything."
"Will do," Tru assured him before ending the call.
With another flick of the switch Jack turned the machine off. He didn't know the name of the school but it wasn't a problem.
He knew that Tru had seen him move into the apartment across from her; he also knew she had seen him move out. With the benefit of hindsight he had realised that he shouldn't have been so obvious about his surveillance of her, but it was too late to do anything about that now.
What Tru didn't know was that he had not moved that far away and although the view was not nearly as good as before he could still see when she left her building.
He looked at the clock realising immediately that it was too early for Tru to be leaving to go to a school. There wouldn't be any point going there yet, as it would be deserted. His instincts told him it would be a local school because there was no reason why the teenagers would be so far away from their territory?
Deciding to take advantage of the extra time he had Jack went through to the kitchen to fix himself some breakfast before sitting at his window ready to watch for her leaving.
Sure enough forty-five minutes later Jack watched Tru emerge from her apartment; he set down his half-empty mug of coffee before following after her.
A/N I hope you are enjoying this story. If you have time feel free to leave a review. I do accept anonymous ones.