Losing Time (Lost Time, Book 1): A Time Travel Romantic Suspense Series

by Nicola Claire

  I hadn't realised I was shaking her, practically shouting in her face, spraying her, no doubt, with spittle.

  "Easy," Jack said off to the side, reaching for me. I scrambled back, away from them both, and held up my arms to protect me.

  But nothing could protect me from this. From the empty hollowness inside. From the ache of truth registering. From the shock and loss all over again.

  "No," I said, my head shaking. "I want her back."

  Sally flicked her gaze from me to Jack, and back again. I watched her take everything in.

  "Why did he return her and not Carrie?" I shouted, pointing an accusing finger at Groves.

  "I don't know," Jack said carefully.

  "Yes, you do!" I shouted. "You just won't tell me. You want me to go home too. But I won't. Not without Carrie. You can't make me!" God, I sounded like a child.

  "Mouse," he said as if that would reach me.

  It only made me turn into Hyde.

  "No!" I growled and turned away, realising I was at the edge of the pier and had nowhere to hide.

  I started to panic.

  "Call the ship, Miss Groves," I heard Jack say. Then, "Mimi, don't run."

  I couldn't run. I had nowhere to go.

  "Jack," I said, gripping the pier railing and sobbing.

  "I know," he whispered in my ear. "Sweetheart, I know."

  I collapsed against him, my fists raining down on his chest, my tears wetting his shirt collar, my voice rasping into his neck. He let me. He didn't fight back or try to contain me. He let my temper reign, and he took it all.

  Each weakening pummel of my fist. Every single drop of tears. And when I was done, he picked me up and carried me into the module, sitting down in my seat with me curled up on his lap.

  "Home, Dr Hoffman," I heard him instruct.

  "Yes, sir," Rafe replied quietly.

  But I'd only registered the one word.

  "Not home," I pleaded, fighting exhaustion.

  "No," Jack murmured, his hot breath in my hair. “Not your home. Trust me," he added, but all I could hear were my sister's words.

  You can't trust him, Mouse. You can't believe a word that he says.

  It wasn’t surprising that my dreams were fragmented. That they messed with my mind. Jack. Carrie. Carrie. Jack. I felt lost in the ones with my sister. I hated how safe I felt in Jack's bed. I fought them. I screamed inside my head. I railed against my mind.

  Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe I was catatonic, having suffered a breakdown at the knowledge of my parents' deaths. Maybe Carrie was at my bedside, crying. Willing me to come back.

  Go home, Mouse. For fuck's sake, just go home.

  Don't go!

  Please!

  I woke up in a bed. No dimpled metal floor. No exposed wires or plumbing. No dashboard. No moulded seats with full body harnesses. No smell of electrical wiring burning.

  No Orion.

  I knew before I fully woke, that this was not a good thing.

  The embroidered coat of arms on the pillow slip amplified that feeling. The words carefully stitched beneath added weight.

  Royal Academy of Time Surgeons.

  He'd brought me home.

  To his time, not mine.

  Oh, eff me. If I was out of time before, what was I now?

  And where was Carrie? Parallel to me? Or was that all a lie, a wild suggestion, to keep me in the dark about more nefarious things? Like why Carrie thought she was saving me.

  Go home, Mouse.

  I'm not sure I knew where that was.

  Neither did Carrie.

  I frowned, threw back the covers, and climbed down from the bed. I glanced around the room, but nothing suggested it belonged to Jack Evans. The bed, though, was familiar. Big, wide, and luxurious. If this was a guest-room, then why had it featured in my dreams already?

  I was still dressed in a 1969 era mini skirt and bold print blouse, so I splashed some water on my face at the basin in the corner, brushed fingers through my tangled hair, and reached for the door. I half expected it to be locked, but it wasn't. I peered around the door jam into a gloomy hall. Nothing jumped out at me.

  Brushing myself down I started to walk. I guess I was following my stomach; the smell of something delicious meeting my nose. I sniffed the air before me, noting the number of closed doors along the way but not a single soul, and finally came out in what had to be a cafeteria.

  Locating exactly where all the people had been.

  Thirty odd pairs of eyes all turned toward me. The sound of cutlery clanking and glasses clinking ceased. Along with all conversation. If I hadn't already heard the vacuum of space, I would have likened it to here.

  No one said anything. Then an older man, perhaps late sixties, walked out from the centre of the room, leaning heavily on a walking stick. Everyone watched his progress towards me. The utter absence of sound, not even whispers, made the entire episode surreal.

  The man stopped before me and inclined his head, his bushy old-man eyebrows arching.

  "You would be Miss Wylde."

  I nodded. It didn't seem wise to talk.

  No one else was. And where was Jack? Or Sally and Rafe? Had they just left me here and gone back to look for Fawkes' team? Hell, I might have even welcomed a sneer from Harding.

  I suddenly felt very alone.

  "Well," the man said, "this is a first."

  I nodded again. I don't know why. And then the silence stretched between us.

  My eyes reluctantly returned from their desperate darting around the room, from trying to ascertain threats and potential exits. To land on the man before me. Who seemed to be waiting for something. Waiting and watching, eyes searching my features, expecting to see something. But what, I did not know.

  The longer he stood there and waited, the more uneasy I got.

  I shook my head slowly. This place freaked me out. This man…

  He just smiled.

  "Never mind me, Miss Wylde. Forgive an old man his quirks?” he asked, genially.

  I went to nod my head when Jack’s voice suddenly sounded out from across the room.

  “Clive!”

  And then he was striding towards us, Rafe and Sally hanging back at the door, as I took one step, and then another, unable to stop my feet from taking me to safety.

  When Jack's hand slipped into mine, I finally felt at peace.

  And then the room erupted.

  Bloody Fucking Bollocks!

  Jack

  I dropped her hand before it could brand me. Too late. I’d been branded in other ways by Mimi Wylde. There seemed to be a part of me that was inextricably drawn to her. Unable to stop myself from reaching for her. Touching her. Even if that touch was merely through holding hands.

  I cursed the dream’s existence mentally and assessed the level of disquiet in the room.

  “What the bloody hell is a contemporary doing in our time?” someone shouted.

  “This is it, isn’t it?” someone else asked, voice elevated to an unnaturally sounding high. “This is how it happens.”

  “She has to go back!”

  “What are you going to do, Dr Crawford?”

  “Dr Evans, what were you thinking?”

  “SILENCE!” Crawford yelled at the top of his very capable voice. “Remember you are Surgeons! Trained at the most prestigious Academy in the world. Remember yourselves, Doctors! RATS is better than this.”

  He turned to look at me, that affable façade he’d been wearing long evaporated. Now stood the Chief Surgeon of the Academy. Clive had poured his heart and soul into this venture. Into a controversial undertaking that had threatened his good name. He’d risked everything for RATS. He’d laid himself bare before the King.

  Thankfully, the King had understood science and backed him. But that did not mean Parliament did. Nor the general public. Crawford walked a fine line between success and failure. And now I’d done this.

  “We need to talk, Clive,” I said.

  “Damn right we do
, son.” He spun on his heel, surprisingly agile and ambulatory, proving yet again how he used his injury as a weapon, and marched from the room. Daring anyone to halt his progress with a fierce glare.

  Bryan had warned me. Bringing Mimi here had been an awful risk. To the Academy. To Clive. To me. But most of all to her. I looked down at her, standing so silently beside me. Here stood the mouse.

  Bloody fucking bollocks!

  “Come on,” I said softly. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  God alone knew what the Surgeons would do to her if I left her to fend for herself in the cafeteria. This needed to be sorted, and until Clive was onboard, Mimi would be glued to my side.

  My eyes met Rafe’s as we walked from the room. His look said it all. He thought I was headed to the executioner. He thought I’d well and truly done myself in.

  Silence descended as we traversed the gloomy hallways. The building living up to its nickname: Shadowship. For a relatively modern structure, it was definitely on the dark side. Shaped like a battleship rising out of deep waters, the Royal Academy of Time Surgeons was a proud establishment set on twenty acres of lush real estate in Greenwich. If our funding ever got cut, we could make money selling off acreage. That’s if anyone was game enough to build so close to us.

  RATS had a name for the unusual, and that was before you considered we travelled through Time.

  Clive slammed into his office, bypassing his secretary by using his private access. I held the door open for Mimi to precede me, and followed them both in.

  “Sit,” Clive ordered. Mimi sat as if pulled down by strings.

  I sighed.

  “You think this amusing, Jack?” Clive asked.

  “Not at all,” I replied, taking the seat beside Mimi, opposite Clive’s desk. “I think you’ll understand why I did this once I have a chance to explain.”

  “Allow me to vent before we get there,” Clive said acerbically. “What the bloody hell? Not only is she here, but you let her wander around a classified facility freely! You allow her to bear witness to the operations of an MPCV.” Rafe had been talking. “You take her to not just one time, but several. Bloody hell, Jack, you allowed her to come in contact with Lunik!”

  “All quite explanatory.”

  “Damn your explanations, Jack! How the bloody hell will I explain this to the King?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Must you?”

  Clive scoffed. “He’s the only thing between us and closure, as you well know. I keep him abreast of operations. A Monarch in the dark is a very dangerous thing.”

  “An uneducated person involved so intricately in our business is a very dangerous thing,” I countered.

  “You want to argue this now? With her sitting right here in my office!”

  “You always play the political card, Clive. When you know damn well without us, the entire world would be fucked.”

  “And you think holding it over a barrel will keep us open? Pay attention, son! We are borderline closed already.”

  I stilled.

  “Have I missed something?”

  “You’ve missed a whole bloody lot. Chasing after a bit of skirt, traipsing through the timeline tearing rips the size of Australia in it. While you’ve been satisfying an itch, Lunik has gained ground in our time.” Clive sighed and finally sat back in his seat. I realised he looked drawn, tired. Exhausted even. Beaten down and barely able to get back up. “He had an audience with the Prime Minister.”

  “He was in 1969,” I pointed out.

  “Did you see him?”

  I froze. Oh, fuck. My head turned slowly to look at Mimi. Who was curled in on herself in her oversized armchair. Her eyes widened slightly with both of our attention on her. I was sure she was hoping to blend into the chintz or something.

  “Yes?” she squeaked.

  “The man who threatened you. What did he look like exactly?”

  “He..he had short brown hair. A b..beard. It was pointed. Um…dark eyes and an angular looking face.”

  I hated this. I hated that she’d become her nickname. I hated that the fire I knew existed inside her had been snuffed out in the presence of Clive Crawford and RATS. Mimi Wylde was an inordinately intelligent and capable woman. She could hold her own with these people if she weren't so bloody fucking scared right now.

  I wanted to reassure her. I wanted desperately to reach out and comfort her through touch.

  My eyes caught Clive’s.

  I did nothing.

  “Certainly sounds like Sergei,” Clive muttered.

  “He could have returned,” I offered.

  “And then what? Bounced around Time dogging your footsteps? That is what happened, isn’t it, Jack? That’s what Hoffman and Groves supplied.”

  “So, you’ve debriefed them already?”

  “Of course I bloody well have! I’m not incompetent!”

  “I didn’t say you were, Clive.”

  “Then what are you saying exactly?”

  I held his fierce glare.

  “Riled,” I offered.

  “Damn straight I am.”

  “You bluster when you’re riled,” I pointed out.

  “What the bloody hell would you have me do right now?”

  “Think, Clive. For fuck’s sake, think! Would I have brought her back here, knowing the consequences, if I hadn’t deemed it absolutely necessary?” I didn’t wait for a reply. “Orion Two is missing. Sergei, or whoever was operating that Lunik, picked up Groves as if she was a piece of luggage, and then dropped her off again to prove a bloody point. He has capabilities we aren’t even aware of. I’d assumed picking up Miss Wylde ourselves had been an anomaly. But Sergei’s moves since have proved that perhaps it is not. Perhaps it is something that we’ve overlooked, and Sergei hasn’t.

  “Can you conceive what he could do with such technology? What he’s already done with Lunik and his original Orion is bad enough. But with added abilities such as this? I fear he’s gone too far, Clive. This time, we will all pay for his actions. This time, there won’t be a rip to repair, Time will simply not be there.”

  Clive’s jaw flexed, but he said nothing.

  “Fawkes,” I said, running a hand through my hair and then scratching at my stubble. I worried at the scar, remembering. Grounding myself again. “He’s a damn fine Surgeon, Clive. If he can get back on his own, then he will. But if Sergei has him, the Russian would have crowed, and he didn’t. The message was quite clear. ‘The next one, we’ll keep.’ They don’t have Orion Two. Returning Miss Groves had been the message. Keeping Orion Two would have been a greater one, a threat held over our heads. Instead, Sergei has gone for a show. A performance. Look at what I can do. Not what I have done.”

  “Perhaps,” Clive conceded. I went in for the kill.

  “Something happened with that Origin Event tear. Something that involves the two Misses Wyldes. The loop wasn’t bisecting, Clive. It was parallel. Have you ever heard of that before?

  “No,” he murmured. “There’s a lot we still don’t know about time travel.”

  “And yet, here we have,” I waved a hand toward Miss Wylde, “a key to it all. Right in our hands. Ripe for the picking.”

  “Excuse me?” Mimi said, suddenly coming alive. I’d almost forgotten she was cognisant. Actually, I’d partially thought she wasn’t. My bad. “Ripe for the picking?”

  “We’ll get to you in a moment, Miss Wylde,” Clive said dismissively. “Jack, you…”

  Mimi stood up from her chair.

  “No,” she said, quite steadily. “You’ll address me as if I am in the room. You’ll include me in your conversation, gentlemen. And you’ll remember, Doctors, that I hold a Master of Science. That I am quite capable of understanding every word you say. That if I am the ‘key’ to your problems, you better ask nicely, because this mouse has teeth. On occasion,” she added and promptly sat down again.

  I tried hard, but for the life of me, I couldn’t contain the smile.

  Thatta girl.
I stilled. Her sister had said the same.

  “My apologies, Miss Wylde,” Clive immediately offered. Behind that gruff façade was a gentleman. “But you can’t possibly understand all that we say.”

  Mimi sat up straighter in her chair. “I know you’re the Chief Surgeon for the Royal Academy of Time Surgeons. I know Sergei Anton Ivanov stole the Orion technology back at the beginning of the century. My guess, that century was the twenty-second.” I closed my eyes as she continued. “I know you have a team missing. I know them, so don’t think I don’t feel your fears. I also know this lunatic, this ex-cosmonaut, has my sister. That somehow he has brainwashed her or coerced her into delivering his messages. I also know he wasn’t lying when he said he’d kill her if you didn’t destroy your Orions.

  “The way I see it, Doctor, I know about as much as you do. In fact, I might know a bit more. Because I know my sister. And you do not.”

  My eyes snapped open, and I looked at her. She was fierce Mimi again. Try as I might, I think I was falling for her. I struggled to disassociate my feelings from those of the dream.

  I no longer could.

  “You are not RATS approved,” Clive pointed out.

  “Then make me,” Mimi argued.

  “It’s not that easy, Miss Wylde.”

  “It’s extremely easy. You’re the Chief Surgeon, are you not?”

  “I must answer to certain committees.”

  “But they listen to your guidance?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Then guide them.”

  “I’m not sure I wish to in this,” Clive blustered.

  “Do you want to find them, Dr Crawford?”

  “Find who?” I almost laughed. She was talking him in circles; he could hardly keep up.

  “Orion Two.”

  “Oh, yes, of course!”

  “Then approve me.”

  “Why?” I sat forward in my seat. Where was she going with this?

  “Because, like I said, I know my sister.”

  “And?” both Clive and I said.

  Mimi’s eyes darted from one of us to the other and back again. Settling on Clive for some reason. She swallowed. Only slightly. Clive might have missed it. But I notice every single detail about Mimi Wylde.