Double-Back (Jake Waters Book 3) by Bob Blink

her.  Before the woman could react, Natalie knocked her unconscious with a vase.  Then she went through the woman's belongings, noting her residence, place of employment, and the document she had been preparing to support her suspicions.  There was only one thing to do.  Natalie left the unconscious woman on the floor, drove home, memorized the key information, and performed a Backslide to Friday night, a few days earlier.  Then she made flight reservations to Boston.  She had noted the woman hadn't flown into Washington until Monday morning.  Finally, she called her brother Jeff in New York, explained she needed his help and that she would meet him in Boston at her hotel Saturday morning.
    Jeff had been shocked at what she proposed.  He'd always been the renegade, and she'd been the scholar.  He knew nothing of what Natalie had done to the Professor, and the fact she wanted someone eliminated wasn't something he'd been expecting to hear.  Even so, they managed to abduct the woman, dispose of her body, and make a careful check of the house for any materials that might point toward her suspicions of Natalie.  Then Jeff arranged for an electrical fire to break out late on Sunday night.  When Natalie had flown back to Washington, the disruptive arrival of Miss Kellmore had been prevented, and everything was normal as before.
    All had continued on a steady and predictable course until the testing two months ago showed the product was a likely success and Karl had boosted Natalie's ownership in the company to her full third.  Natalie was certain that was what had triggered Anne's ire and caused her to contact the FBI agent named Carlson and which was causing such a problem.  Unless they could do something, all her efforts were going to come crashing down around her, and she could conceivably end up in prison for a pair of murders.

Chapter 9
     
    "How do we even approach this?" Jim asked.  "We have no specific place to start.  Now that you have looped back, none of it ever happened."
    "Remember the sequence here," Jake warned Jim.  "All of this happened after I alerted you that you had called and warned me that Susan had been taken.  Their initial efforts were successful, and they got away with Susan to some place we never discovered.  Now I wish we had taken the time to figure out what exactly had happened.  I'd have those memories now.  It would tell us who these people are and give us a far better chance of dealing with them."
    "They might have already killed me," Susan pointed out.  "They've shown by the sniper attempt that my survival isn't in their planning.   I assume they tried the kidnapping because they had questions they wanted answered.  Questions they ultimately decided were of secondary importance."
    "Okay," Jim agreed.  "So after you alerted us, that's when we thwarted them, and took their pictures, which I forwarded to you in California?"
    Nodding, Jake agreed.
    "That's where we got unpredictably lucky.  If I hadn't been planning on the multi-jump Back-Track matter for Karin, whoever it is in their group that has my ability would have looped back when he became conscious and aware of their failure, just as I believe he did, but I would have been caught in the loop just as you and Susan have been, and none of us would have been aware that we caught them.  In fact, if he did it right, I would not have known of either of the attempts against Susan, just as they are unaware that at one point they succeeded in grabbing her."
    "This kind of thing was hard enough to keep track of when it was just you making the jumps backward," Jim noted.
    Susan had been thinking.
    "A similar chain of events must follow the sniper attempt," she said.  "These people must be aware that somehow we thwarted their attempt at kidnapping me, but not know exactly how we became aware of their attempt.  That means they know they were caught, and at least one person with an ability like yours will have memories of Jim