Time Theif by M.J. JOHANSEN

When Nathan Cole ducks into a pawn shop to escape the rain, he walks out with a
scratched brass pocket watch for forty dollars — and, without knowing it, the ability to
rewind and skip forward through small windows of time. What starts as an idle curiosity
soon becomes a system: a modest sports bet here, a lottery ticket there, each outcome
confirmed before it is ever risked. Within months, a broke print-shop clerk has quietly
turned fifty dollars into eight figures.
But impossible luck doesn't go unnoticed. Vincent Delrose, a bookmaker who has built his
career reading odds and patterns, starts pulling threads on Nathan's uncanny winning
streak, and what he uncovers convinces him he isn't looking at skill or chance at all, but
something else entirely — something worth taking by force. As Vincent closes in, Nathan is
forced to decide how far he will go to protect a secret that has already reshaped his life,
and how much of it he is willing to gamble to keep it.
Time Thief is a tightly plotted thriller about greed, control, and the cost of getting exactly
what you want. Told across brisk, propulsive chapters, it follows Nathan from a rain-soaked
pawn shop counter to a downtown high-rise to a warehouse showdown where the watch's
true price finally comes due — and asks what's left of a person once every consequence
can be quietly undone.