by Rysa Walker
ALSO BY RYSA WALKER
Novels
Timebound
Time’s Edge
Novellas
Time’s Echo
Time’s Mirror
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 Rysa Walker
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Skyscape, New York
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Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Skyscape are trademarks of Amazon.com Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503946583
ISBN-10: 1503946584
Cover design by Cyanotype Book Architects
This book is dedicated to Pete—my Constant in any timeline.
∞Contents∞
1
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3
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5
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7
8
9
10
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12
13
14
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17
18
19
20
21
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23
24
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26
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
∞1∞
BETHESDA, MARYLAND
September 8, 9:37 p.m.
Julia Morrell Waters is not a patient woman. Less than five minutes after I open her note welcoming me to the Fifth Column, some guy holding a pizza box starts banging on Katherine’s door. A message on the same stationery as her welcome note is taped to the top of the box: Max will bring you to me. Go out the back. Climb the fence and he will pick you up one street over. Come alone. JMW.
The pizza box is empty—yes, Connor checked before he handed it to me—but the car out front has a Valenzia’s sign slapped on the top, so the Fifth Column has done their homework. It’s certainly not the first time Valenzia’s Pizza has pulled up to the house at this hour. But the guy they sent—Max, I guess—seems closer to a linebacker or a bouncer than a pizza guy.
“She’s not going alone,” Connor tells him.
Max’s eyes look like they’re going to pop out of his head. He jerks the box from Connor, pulls a pen out of his pocket, and scrawls the word bugged!!! on the back of the note. He shoves it toward me, then points to the kitchen and the patio door beyond, as though the matter is settled.
It’s not. I snatch his pen and write: Still not coming alone.
Trey looks at Katherine, who is still on the sofa, and then at Connor. They both nod. Then he taps his chest and points to me.
Max takes two menacing steps toward me, and judging from his expression, I’m pretty sure he’d have tried to sling me over his shoulder if not for the fact that Connor and Trey both move toward him at the same time. I kind of wish they hadn’t. This guy needs an attitude adjustment, and being flipped onto his back by a girl half his size would be a step in the right direction.
And he’s obviously not thinking things through. Julia’s instructions say for me to go out the back. If anyone is watching the house, they’d find it very suspicious if the pizza guy returned to his car with a passenger, especially one fighting him every step of the way.
Daphne has clearly picked up on the vibe in the room. She barks again, and as soon as Katherine lets go of her collar, she takes up position next to me, growling softly.
Max shakes his head like we’re being totally unreasonable, then reaches for something in his pocket. Daphne growls again. “Hold back your dog, okay? I need to call the office and see what happened with your order.”
I kneel down and put one arm around Daphne. She relaxes slightly but keeps her eyes on him.
We wait. Finally he says into the phone, “They say they ordered two. Not just the one.”
Max listens for a moment, then looks at the four of us—five, counting Daphne—and says, “No, I don’t think that’s gonna work . . . Okay . . . yeah.”
He stashes the phone back in his pocket. “Two it is. I’ll be back with the other pizza shortly.”
Connor says, “Sure. No problem. But we get a freebie, right? Since you messed up the order?”
Max rolls his eyes. “I’ll ask my boss.” He gives me a long stare, looks toward the kitchen door again, and then he’s gone.
Trey and I follow the directions on the note and sneak out the back. We hop the fence and squeeze through the neighbor’s cypress hedge, and we see the Valenzia’s car waiting at the curb. Max is on the phone again, keeping an eye out for us through the open driver’s side window.
The car is an old red junker. I think it used to be a cab because it’s got one of those partitions between the front and rear seats. After we get in, Max turns around and looks through the opening. “Okay, here’s how it’s gonna go. You can ride with her, but you’re gonna have to wait in the car when she goes in. Security reasons.”
“Nope.” Trey opens the car door, and we start to get out.
“Wait, wait,” Max says, raising his hand. “Hold on a minute.”
Eventually we reach a compromise. Max confiscates our phones and my backpack. Trey can come in the building, but not inside the office when I meet with Ms. Waters. I don’t especially like either of those provisions, but as long as I have my CHRONOS key, I can go for help if we run into trouble.
The car’s windows are tinted so dark that we can barely see outside. When Trey says he doesn’t think that much tint is legal, Max just grunts. I’m pretty sure we crossed the Beltway a few minutes back, but that doesn’t really help to pin down our location. A twenty-minute drive means we could be in DC, Northern Virginia, or still somewhere in Maryland.
We pull up in front of a row of ordinary-looking townhouses and walk up an ordinary-looking sidewalk toward an ordinary-looking door. The numbers by the door are missing.
The living room is clearly lived in. The coffee table is heaped with papers, envelopes, a computer manual, and several detective novels. Trey parks on the couch with something by Janet Evanovich. And then Max ushers me into a tiny office to meet the head of the Fifth Column, a resistance group within the Cyrist ranks that might, just might, give us a fighting chance at stopping the global disaster my grandfather is planning.
“No offense,” I begin, instantly wishing I hadn’t. In my experience, that phrase almost always sets someone up to take offense. “But I don’t know you. This could be a trap Saul has set up. There’s no way I’m handing over the keys or anything else until I’m convinced it isn’t.”
Julia Morrell Waters tilts her head back slightly and levels me with a stare. Physically, she reminds me of her mother. Her skin is a few shades darker, and she’s a little plumper, but she has the same deep blue eyes. The smile seems the same, too, although I only got a brief glimpse of it, at the beginning, when she thanked me for helping to get her parents out of Georgia alive. And while she’s a good forty years older than Delia was when I last saw her in Georgia, it’s obvious that Julia was just as stunning as her mother back in the day.
Her tone of voice and her attitude, however, are 100 percent Abel Waters, at least right at this moment. Because I’ve just questioned her orders. Again. Directly, explicitly, and this time, to her face.
I’m not trying to be combative. I�
�m just exhausted and not at all clear why this meeting couldn’t have waited until morning. It’s been less than three hours since I watched Abel, Delia, and Kiernan climb out of Martha’s root cellar and into the back of Simon’s car in 1938 Georgia, each still in possession of the CHRONOS keys I was there to collect.
A few hours of sleep doesn’t seem like too much to request before being forced into a shouting match with their daughter. And while I feel bad about yelling at an old lady, she’s not being reasonable.
“You do realize we could simply take what we want, right?” Julia says. “That would be even more true if I was working with Brother Cyr—”
“Saul,” I say through clenched teeth. She’s said Brother Cyrus half a dozen times in the past fifteen minutes, and it’s beginning to grate. “The man’s name is Saul Rand. There’s no Brother Cyrus.”
Julia closes her eyes and sighs. “Yes. But when you work on the inside trying to overturn an organization as massive and paranoid as Cyrist International, you learn to play things carefully. It’s a good idea to cultivate the habit of calling the maniac at the top by the name that won’t get you killed. They do that, you know. They kill people, especially people who have things they want and refuse to hand them over. They don’t ask nicely.”
I wouldn’t say Julia asked nicely either. It was more of a directive to turn everything over to the Fifth Column. The keys that we’ve collected, all of the information we have, the sample from Six Bridges. Everything.
“Fine,” I say. “Call him by whatever name makes you happy. And yes, just like Saul’s people, I’m sure you could storm in and take anything you wanted. But keep in mind that we’d fight you, and if you harmed any of us, that would end the possibility of me working with you.”
I watch Julia carefully as I speak, because all of this is a bit of a bluff. This Fifth Column could have its own little army of time travelers, just like Saul. Maybe the only things they need from me to stop the Culling are the keys and the information we’ve collected thus far.
But something in Julia’s eyes tells me that’s not true. And given their general attitude so far, I think they’d have done exactly what she said before. They’d have stormed in to take what they wanted, if they didn’t need my help. And the only thing I can think of that I have to offer is my ability with the key.
Julia’s first two fingers have been tapping out a quiet but steady rhythm almost every time I speak. She seems to be waiting for me to go on, so I add, “Unless you have everything under control already? Kiernan—”
She makes an odd face when I say his name, but she doesn’t interrupt me.
“Kiernan,” I say, “was pretty certain that the keys the Cyrists carry are the ones from your parents’ time, from the future. The ones that belonged to the historians who weren’t in the field that day. Is that still our working assumption?”
She nods, her fingers still tapping. There’s a roll of tape on the desk, and I fight the urge to get up and tape them to the arm of the chair.
I settle for staring pointedly at her fingers until she stops. Then I ask, “And you need my help in retrieving those keys?”
“It would make things . . . easier,” she admits.
“Okay, then. If you want my cooperation, it’ll be on my terms.”
“And what exactly are those terms?”
I haven’t really had time to think this far ahead, so I decide to keep things vague. “First, I decide who’s on my team. I need to pull in people I know, people I trust.”
“We’ve already done that. Your file mentioned Harvey Tilson and the Singleton girl.”
“What file? Who gave you that information?”
“My parents. Mostly my mother, once I realized we’d need your help to end this.”
I think back to the night at Martha’s, when Abel first said that we’d need allies. I don’t remember mentioning Tilson, although I guess it’s possible. But Charlayne? Why would I have said anything about her?
“I’m still not clear what value the Singleton girl brings to the team,” Julia says, almost as though she’s reading my mind, “but Tilson and the young man have been definite assets.”
Okay . . . now it makes sense. By young man, she must mean Kiernan, and he knew about both Tilson and Charlayne.
“So who else?” Julia asks. “Who else do we need to pull in to make you feel all safe and cozy?”
Her tone pisses me off, but I let it slide. “Katherine, Connor, and Trey. My parents . . .”
“Why? Your mother doesn’t even know about all of this.”
“You’re right. She doesn’t. But I’ll be changing that shortly.”
“No, Kate,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “I understand and appreciate that you’re concerned for your mother’s safety. But we have a full security detail attached to Prudence and Deborah. Your mother is safe, and the plan that we’ve developed is contingent upon secrecy. It’s far too risky for us to allow you to deviate from the timetable for this kind of personal matter.”
I shake my head firmly. “No. Mom needs to know what’s going on, and I need to be the one to tell her. It’s not that I don’t trust your security personnel.” That part isn’t entirely truthful because I’m not sure that I do trust her security personnel. “It’s just that I won’t be able to focus on anything else until she’s home. I’m leaving in the morning. Katherine agrees—”
“Katherine’s opinion doesn’t factor into this!” Julia stops and takes a deep breath. Her voice is still firm, but a little less unkind when she continues. “From what I’ve been told, she’s much too ill to make logical decisions. To be honest, given her relationship with Brother Cyrus in the past, I’m not sure good decisions were ever her forte. But leaving that aside, it’s hardly surprising that she’d put her daughter’s welfare ahead of the cause.”
Julia may not be surprised, but I was. As soon as Connor told me they had a tentative location where Mom and Prudence would be on Thursday, I began pulling up stable points in London, ready to go in immediately. Katherine talked me down, reminding me that I needed to get some rest first to be sure I arrived with a clear head. But she also helped me find the closest stable point to the hotel where Mom will be staying and the best time to jump in. We’d just begun discussing specifics for the jump when Max came pounding on the door.
I know Katherine is sick, and yes, her decisions are a little suspect right now. I’ll even admit that I’ve had some of the very same reservations Julia voiced in regard to Katherine’s relationship with Saul. But it bugs the hell out of me to hear this woman—this stranger—dismiss Katherine so casually.
“That brings me to condition number two,” I say. “You don’t get to decide whose opinions matter. Katherine sacrificed most of her life trying to fix the disaster that Saul created.”
“As have I.”
“That may be the case,” I acknowledge. “But Katherine has an advantage here that you don’t when it comes to any decisions that concern me. Katherine knows me. She knows that I won’t be able to focus on what you need me to do if I’m worrying about Mom. So when we’re done here, I’m going home to sleep. I’ve only had a few hours in the past several days. Then I’m going to London. Prudence and Mom—”
“Yes, yes,” Julia says, waving a hand. “I know. They’ll check into the County Hall Marriott day after tomorrow. Adjoining rooms, fourth floor. As I told you, we’re monitoring their every step, even their private communication. In fact, I can already tell you they stay three days and then—”
“Why are we arguing about this?” I say, my voice rising. “Why is it an issue? I can just use the key. If time is short, once I’ve seen that my mother is safe, I’ll jump back to this precise hour, this precise minute, if you insist.”
“That’s not the problem, Kate. We’re concerned that something you do or say in London will tip off Cyrus’s people. They’re watching Prudence, too. In fact, one of their men often travels with Prudence to keep an eye on her and report back to Simon and C
yrus on her activities. She’s . . .” Julia looks down and shuffles the papers in front of her. “Let’s just say that Prudence is too far gone to realize she’s being played.”
I’m about to ask who the man is, but then it hits me. “Kiernan? No. He isn’t on Saul’s side. Or Prudence’s. You’re right on that part, at least. Kiernan is on our side. He’s just getting information from her. From Saul as well.”
Julia gives me a condescending smile. “My father told me you might think that. But you’re wrong. There was some question for a while as to which faction he was with, but we’ve known for some time now that he’s with Cyrus. He’s been in on this from the beginning, Kate.”
My mouth is suddenly very dry, and it’s hard to pull in a breath. It’s as though a giant fist is squeezing my lungs. For several seconds I can’t even respond. Eventually I croak out, “I don’t believe you.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s true. Prudence’s faction is pretty much finished. Almost everyone who was allied with her is now either part of the Fifth Column or they’ve shifted back to the main branch of Cyrist International. Some of them never left the fold to begin with. They remained loyal to Br—” She huffs. “To Saul—all along. And I’m quite certain Kiernan Dunne is in the latter group.”
“You’re wrong. I know Kiernan. I know where his loyalties lie.”
Julia Morrell Waters gives me a tight little smile. “Things change, Kate. That may well be the only unchanging fact in the universe—everything changes.”
Twenty minutes later, I’m once again in Max’s car with Trey, headed back to Katherine’s house. I’m holding a password-secured and encrypted tablet that I was cautioned to operate only when I’m under a CHRONOS field. Which is totally not a problem, since I’m never outside of a CHRONOS field.
I’m supposed to meet Julia again on Friday morning at a location Max entered into my key. Julia assured me there’s more than enough content on this tablet to keep me busy until then.
She also assured me—several times, in fact—that Mom will be fine and that it would be a very, very bad idea for me to go to London. And before I left the office, I promised her that I would wait to contact Mom.
