Matter of Time

I.P.D. Watts

Description

Peter Collins, disappeared without trace a week before 9/11. On September 5, 2016, fifteen years later, an unknown person stumbles through an NSA time vortex by mistake; Peter Collins had resurfaced.He finds that his wife, Marie, has remarried. Ashley, his daughter, is now twenty-seven, but worst of all, his two twin boys, Tom and Jake, only ten years of age, perished at the World Trade Center.He meets a woman called Heather Lombard who helps him get back on his feet. But he discovers the CIA has a contract out on him, and everyone he has come in contact with since arriving in 2016. The body count starts to rise as good friends die around him.NSA special agent, Doug McClean, wants to send him back to 2001, so he can regain his life as it was, but he has to find him first, and a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues with the CIA.Will Peter get the chance to go back and regain the fifteen years he has lost and save Tom and Jake from 9/11? Or will he be stuck in 2016. Can the future be changed? Or are all our futures set? It's all A Matter of Time.

Sujets

• Science fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528994668
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

A Matter of Time
The Future Is Not Set
I.P.D. Watts
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-11-30
A Matter of Time About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Foreword Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49
About the Author
Ian Watts lives in Leicestershire with his life partner, Kim. Between them, they have five lovely children and two beautiful small ones. He loves all forms of music and has played guitar in many rock bands. Also a big rugby fan and of most sports, and enjoys a regular round of golf.
He has always had a love for writing, and over the past ten years has honed his craft with novels and screenplays. He loves writing very early in the morning when it’s quiet and everyone is asleep for the most inspiration. More stories from I.P.D. Watts are in progress.
Dedication
This is for my late father, Ian Watts, who always instilled in me and my brothers from a very early age, “You can do what you want to do and be what you want to be in life, and everyone has at least one book in them.”
This is for you, Dad.
For my grandchildren; Jude, Saffron, James and Willow.
“A child who reads will become an adult who thinks.”
(Gail Hennessey)
Copyright Information ©
I.P.D. Watts (2020)
The right of I.P.D. Watts to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528994651 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528915304 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781528994668 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Foreword
“What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting.”
– George Eliot.
Prologue
Peter Collins disappeared on Wednesday, September 5, 2001, six days before Nine-Eleven. When he left the office, he was on his way to meet his ex-Marine buddies he had served with, in the Gulf War. His new Mercedes was still parked in the underground garage beneath his offices. The CCTV footage from the garage clearly showed that Peter never actually made it to his car, and in the blink of an eye, he was gone, disappearing into thin air. The CCTV tape was kept under wraps by the FBI, and the tape used in the report instead was deemed inconclusive as it was riddled with interference. Sheila Greenway, his PA had seen the original footage and was forced never to reveal what was in the original. His company was called Edwards and Collins Worldwide Security. The business at that time was a major player in the security sector, and he had recently secured major contracts at the Whitehouse. There was a suspicion that his disappearance was somehow linked to it.
Peter Collins was forty-two years old, at the top of his game, and left behind a thriving business and a family who loved him. The World Trade Center disaster that happened a week later took precedent, but still, the NYPD and FBI put in over a thousand hours, investigating his disappearance, and followed many lines of inquiry with no conclusions or theories as to what had happened to him, it was a complete mystery.
After years of hoping and praying he was still alive and would return one day. Peter Collins was finally declared legally dead in 2011 by his wife, Marie, and with the absence of a body, a plaque of remembrance for him was placed at Young’s Cemetery in his picturesque hometown of Oyster Bay, where Theodore Roosevelt was also buried.
But no one actually disappears into thin air with no explanation and no evidence, do they? The FBI likened it to a Bermuda Triangle scenario, only to put a tag on it so that they could file it away under unexplained phenomena.
This is the story of Peter Collins.
Chapter 1
Wednesday, September 5, 2001
Peter was sitting in his colonial-style kitchen, at number 1 Steamboat Landing Road, Oyster Bay. He was balancing precariously on the back legs of his chair, pushing himself back and forth, while studying the New York Times crossword on his lap. Eleven down, first letter, ‘A.’ Nine letters. The clue: ‘ Reparation. ’ He stared out of the large bay window over at Oyster Bay in the distance. The answer was on the tip of his tongue, lurking deep within his subconscious begging to come out, but he couldn’t quite connect the neurons. He clenched his pen tightly between his teeth, flipping it up and down in his mouth like an over-active, ’ Groucho Marx’ cigar. It wasn’t coming at all.
He had already been up for two hours, had run his usual ten-mile route around the beautiful Oyster Bay, then a thirty-minute high-intensity workout in his gym, all to keep his physique toned to perfection. He had washed, changed, and was ready for the day ahead. Routine meant everything to him, it was a hangover from his days in Iraq as a marine. Awake at first light and be on your guard, ready for action, it was one of the many rules by which he lived his life.
Today though, he had dressed neatly in his new golfing gear, his ‘Bayside Park Golf Club’ polo shirt and trousers that Marie had bought him for Christmas 2000, and it was the first time he was wearing them. So, the day would consist of a quick meeting at the office, get the important stuff out of the way, and then he would be off for an enjoyable afternoon’s golf with his mates from the squad, and a few beers at the nineteenth hole regaling stories about their time together as marines. After the Gulf War, they had all kept in touch and saw each other often. Theirs was a bond they could never break, a closed shop, born from putting their lives in each other’s hands and coming through. After they all came home, some started small businesses, some stayed in the military. Peter, on the other hand, went into business in a big way.
He founded Edwards and Collins Worldwide Security with a good friend of his, Lawrence Edwards, in 1995. Now at forty-two, Peter was a successful businessman with offices in Manhattan, employing over a thousand people worldwide. Lawrence was the brains and the seed money behind the venture, and Peter brought his enthusiasm and expertise, which was all that was needed, and he had heaps of it. Peter turned out to be an expert in covert security, and everyone wanted his services, including the government.
His business grew over those five years into a hundred-million-dollar-turnover Company, and that meant he could afford all the trappings of wealth. Peter didn’t get injured in Iraq, he was one of the lucky ones, but so many of his comrades did. Some were wounded and survived, but others never made it back home at all. He felt blessed he’d made it back in one piece, and as soon as his plane landed at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland. He kissed the ground of the United States of America and asked Marie to marry him, and much to his pleasure, she said yes.
“Have you done that yet?” Marie said, smiling, looking over his shoulder.
“Not yet, darling, a bit stuck.”
“No surprise there then,” she laughed.
“Hey, Cheeky,” he laughed as well.
The Times crossword was a mental challenge he undertook most days of the week to keep his mind sharp and alert, but he only ever completed it once a week if he was lucky, and it was always on a Wednesday. ‘Something to do with the person who sets it,’ Marie had once said jokingly.
Marie was funny, sarcastically funny, intelligently funny and would have everyone in stitches at dinner parties with her quick wit and stories about her work in the field. She worked part-time as a health visitor around the New York Huntington area, looking after very sick and vulnerable children with a limited life expectancy, giving the family respite care for a few hours at a time. It gave her time for the family and an excellent work-life balance. Her forty-one years belied a much younger woman, with vitality, beauty, and a strong will.
As it was a Wednesday, she was busy making eggs for everyone’s breakfast while hum-singing ‘Run to you’ by Whitney, and destroying it by singing off pitch. It probably sounded great to her, but to Peter, who had to listen to it, every other note was either flat or sharp. He tried his hardest to concentrate with his fingers in his ears. She then quite characteristically walked briskly across the kitchen and yelled upstairs.
“Come on you kids! You’ll be late if you don’t hurry up, it’s eight o’clock!”
All hell was about to break loose as the peacefulness and tranquillity came to an abrupt end. Peter looked up tutting to Marie, who was smiling to herself having broken his