The Guardian by Diana Knightley

Seventy-one - Hayley

The men were dressed in kilts, boots, coats, with swords. We wore holsters with guns strapped on us, and more guns in leather satchels. We had horses and enough supplies for a few days. I was wearing the closest thing we had to the time period, a bodice and skirt with a wool wrap, a cloth pinned to my hair.

I checked my gun was loaded for like the third time. “We doing this?” I rolled my head around, stretching my neck. “Yeah, we doing this.”

We had a case with a drone inside, a big one with two side drones that all worked in unison, a spying kind of drone with not only a camera but with a weapon or two. Quentin was in charge of that, it was his specialty, or as he said, “It ain’t easy to fly this thing without satellites, but I’ll try.”

James’s specialty was exuberance and refusal to ‘let this asshole take his wife.’ I was there to round out the team, every good plan needed a round team. Fraoch was our Gaelic dude, our sword fighter, our guy that probably knew a lot about castles. He was probably the most important of us all.

We thought so, but then again, this was 140 years before his time too.

I mean, things moved pretty slow back then, but 140 years was a long time.

In my time 140 years would be 1883, the world had changed a lot between 1883 to 2023. “We got it all?” I glanced at Fraoch’s face. “You sure you’re healthy enough to do this?”

“How long was I in the hospital, Hayley?”

“Couple of weeks, but that’s not really an answer.”

“Twas enough. Let’s go get Sophie.”

James had been very quiet.

I said, “You ready?”

“Yep those assholes are going to regret this.”

Quentin said, “I appreciate the sentiment, but we are not doing anything drastic, we’re just looking for Madame Sophie, right? Like the helicopter thing, blowing up the side of the castle, jumping into the castle while in flight? That’s not what we’re doing this time. Promise me.”

I said, “We don’t even have a helicopter — maybe we need a helicopter.”

Quentin groaned. “I’m going to need everyone to verbally promise me.” We all said we promised. “Good, now everyone grab hold of the vessel.”

He twisted it and sent us way way way back in time.