Time Lost

by C. B. Lewis

  Jacob nodded. “When she does, have her taken straight to the interview room. We don’t let her in here. We don’t let her see anything.”

  If they were curious about his newfound wariness, they didn’t ask. He knew he being was curt and sharper than he had been only the day before. He didn’t know if they had noticed, and frankly, he didn’t care. He was tired, and the one bright spot he’d had in months had been lying to him.

  While he had suspected it, it had still hurt when Kit didn’t deny it.

  As soon as he’d left Kit’s place the night before, he’d sent a message to Singh, who was on the night shift, to get someone in to take a fresh look at the memory chip. After that, he’d gone home and drunk himself into a stupor. The headache pressing behind his eyes reminded him what a bad idea that had been.

  He returned to his office and sat back in his seat, looking at Nagy’s file.

  It was something to do to keep himself from being angry with Kit, frustrated, even disappointed. Maybe the man had reasons for deceiving him. Maybe they were good reasons, but it still hurt like hell. The intensity of it had surprised him.

  He sighed, picking up the file and opening it out.

  It came as no surprise that Nagy had included everything. While Kit was hiding something, Nagy was being as transparent as possible. He had even included a thorough medical report from a Dr. Bellevue, which detailed his injuries when he arrived in the country.

  Jacob was still reading when Temple tapped on his door.

  “Sir, Mrs. Ashraf arrived. We put her in interview room two.”

  Jacob set down the papers. “How did she seem?”

  “Calm,” Temple replied. “She thinks she’s just here for some follow-up questions.”

  “Well, she’s not wrong.” Jacob got up, picking up his slate. “You good to sit in?”

  Temple nodded. “I’m up-to-date on everything. Anton can cover the desks.”

  Jacob motioned for her to lead the way.

  They had called Mrs. Ashraf shortly after the discovery of the room, to arrange for her to come down to the station in the morning. She didn’t know they had found it, and until they had more details, they weren’t willing to divulge any additional information.

  She looked up when Jacob and Temple entered the room. “DI Ofori.”

  “Mrs. Ashraf.” He sat down on the opposite side of the table. “Good morning. We have a few questions we need to clear up. I hope you don’t mind if we record this interview? Standard protocol and all that.”

  “Of course not. Any assistance I can offer.”

  Jacob smiled, but it felt like more of a grimace. He tapped the code into the side of the table and set the system to record, stating time and date and those present. He laid his slate against the sensor.

  “You are aware we have had footage from Sanders’s attacker come into our hands.”

  She barely even blinked. “Kit did mention that something had been found.”

  Of course he did.

  Jacob’s fingers darted across the screen of his slate. Captures from the video illuminated on the table in front of her. The first image was of the man. “Do you know this man?”

  Ashraf leaned forward, studying him, then shook her head. “I’ve never seen him before.”

  That was honest at least.

  Jacob nodded and shifted on to the next image. The shot of the gate was crystal clear. “I was wondering if you could tell me what this is.”

  Ashraf stared at the image. He saw the way she wet her lips, the way the tips of her fingers whitened on the edge of the table. “It looks like some kind of gate.”

  “We found pieces of a device that looked like this at the crime scene.” Jacob opened up the images of the mechanisms Kit had identified. “Mr. Rafferty confirmed that Sanders had worked with these machines.”

  She nodded. “They look like his attempts to build a teleportation device.”

  “Do you know if he was successful?”

  Ashraf shook her head. “It never got beyond the initial development stages.”

  Jacob flicked through some more images on the slate. “Have you ever worked with Mr. Sanders on these projects? Or is it just something he told you about?”

  “I’m not really a technician.” She shrugged. “I wouldn’t be any use to him.”

  There, Jacob thought grimly.

  “Perhaps, then,” he said, “you’d be able to explain why only your fingerprints and his were found on this machine?”

  He brought up the image of the gate from Sanders’s basement. It looked almost identical to the gate from the video.

  She managed to hide her shock well, but her lips trembled. She stared at the picture for a moment longer than was necessary. When she spoke, it was slowly. “He thought I could help with some kind of coding for it. He thought it could make a difference.”

  Jacob set his slate in his lap and folded his hands on the table. “Here’s where I’m confused, Mrs. Ashraf.” He kept his tone pleasant. “You said you didn’t know Sanders until after he lost his wife, but all the information we have on him shows that he stopped working on teleportation over ten years ago. Before his wife vanished.”

  The hesitation was just long enough, and he could practically see her mind whirling. “He stopped working on it publicly, because of all the attention it drew. He didn’t want to get people’s hopes up, only for it to fail again.”

  “I see.” Jacob inclined his head. “Remind me again how he lost his wife.”

  Ashraf blanched. “You’re not suggesting he used his wife as a subject in his experiment?”

  “You tell me. She went traveling, isn’t that what you said? And vanished, with no trace?”

  “If you’re implying what I think you are, you better stop now.” She rose sharply, pushing the chair back. “I didn’t come down here to listen to you slandering one of my dearest friends.”

  Jacob met her eyes. “Sit down, Mrs. Ashraf. You are here to answer questions, and believe me when I say I have a lot of them. Most specifically I want you to tell me about this gate, and this time, please try not to lie to me.”

  She remained standing. “Am I being charged with anything?”

  “Not yet.” He gestured to the chair. “Please sit down.”

  She complied, tucking her hands in her lap. “Very well.”

  He brought up all available images of the doorways on the tabletop. “Tell me everything you know about these, and why Rafferty is still familiar with them if Sanders stopped working in teleportation.” Ashraf was silent for so long that he prompted, “Mrs. Ashraf? Now, if you don’t mind.”

  She raised her eyes from the pictures to look across the table at him. “Sanders never stopped working on his teleportation technology,” she said, her voice flat. “He had ambitions that one day it would work, but up until now, he’s hit all the same problems as previous tests.”

  “Up until now?”

  She lifted her shoulders in a tight shrug. “He was still tinkering with it. Maybe he finally got it right, and that’s why you can’t find him.” She pursed her lips. “Or maybe it still went wrong, and you should be looking for pieces.”

  Jacob leaned back in his seat, watching her. It was like Kit all over again. She was telling him a lot of useful information, but he couldn’t help feeling that he was missing something, and that was the thing to make the whole case make sense.

  He set his slate back against the sensor and flicked up the image of the destroyed machines at Sanders’s house.

  This time, she didn’t even bother trying to hide her dismay. “What happened to them?”

  “Best guess, someone took a wrench to the casing and tore out whatever was inside them.” Jacob scaled up the image. “You’ve seen the machines before. Do you know what was inside those units?”

  She looked back up at him. “Oh, yes,” she said quietly. “Those machines contained the details and schematics of his original designs.” She touched the edge of one of the images. “If they couldn
’t get Sanders and his brain, they got the next best thing.”

  “How much information would he have stored there?” Jacob asked.

  Mrs. Ashraf smiled, brief and tight and painful. “All of it.”

  Chapter 22

  MARIAM WASN’T at the office when Kit got in.

  He wasn’t in any state to focus on work, his mind all over the place. He’d tried to find a way to tell her what had happened on the quill, and it hadn’t worked. He’d even got to the point of writing down what he had to say on paper, but in the end he’d binned it.

  Face-to-face and honesty was the best option.

  He asked to be contacted when she came into the office, but when an hour passed and then another, he knew someone had to be told, and if anyone was going to know about how badly he’d screwed up, it had to be the man who it would affect the most.

  Janos was still on compassionate leave with Dieter, but Kit sweet-talked their address out of Paul in HR. The man had looked at him doubtfully when he’d asked, but relented when Kit insisted it was important, and that it related to three years ago.

  He made his excuses to Hamid, then headed out of the office and held out his quill to catch a taxi-pod. Janos and Dieter lived on the outskirts of the city, and given the choice of changing from tram to train and the potential for delays, a pod was easier and quicker.

  In the back of the cab, Kit stared blankly out at the city as it flashed by. He’d bitten his nails down to the quick but couldn’t help chewing on them again until they stung and bled.

  If Jacob was as smart as Kit knew he was, he was about to turn Janos’s life upside down.

  Kit shivered. How the hell was he meant to tell a man that oh, sorry, thinking with my dick just ruined your life?

  He had almost an hour to find a solution, but even as the pod drew up outside the small house, he was drawing a blank. He stood at the front gate as the pod sped off, and tried to find the balls to go in.

  It wasn’t anything like he’d expected: a cottage that looked like it came from the early 1900s, tucked just off the main road, and with enough land attached that the housing estates on either side were kept at a distance. It was probably what Janos had grown up with. It even had a garden and a hedge.

  Kit opened the gate and walked into the garden. It was simple, with a small stream running through it and a quirky little bridge that led up to the house. There was even a ceramic gnome, which would have seemed out of place if he hadn’t been holding something that definitely wasn’t a fishing rod.

  Ahead of him, the door of the house opened.

  Kit forced himself to keep walking.

  Janos was drying his hands on a dishcloth, and he looked puzzled. “Kit?”

  “Hey. Um. You got a minute?”

  Janos’s frown deepened. “Something is wrong?”

  Kit’s shoulders sagged and he didn’t know what to say. The air left him all in a rush and he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out, his voice shaking. “I fucked up so badly, and it’s going to ruin everything.”

  He didn’t hear Janos come closer and jumped when Janos’s broad arm wrapped around his shoulders.

  “Come inside,” the man said. “This is not a conversation to have in garden.”

  Kit let Janos guide him into the house and obediently complied when he was told to remove his shoes. The inside of the house was as different from the outside as possible, a beautiful, modern, sprawling living room with thick dark beams serving as a staircase up to the next level.

  Dieter was reclined on one of the sofas, reading something on a slate, his glasses perched on the end of his nose. He pushed himself upright, frowning, when he saw Kit, and looked askance at Janos.

  “Kit is upset,” Janos murmured, guiding Kit around the end of the couch.

  “Yeah, I see that,” Dieter said. He swung his legs down and sat up properly, setting his slate on the heavy wooden coffee table that nestled between the oversized couch and the fireplace. “I also can’t help noticing he’s… here?”

  Kit sat down. His legs wouldn’t hold him any longer. “The police are going to find out the truth about the TRI.” He swallowed hard. His words were tripping over one another in their haste to be out. “I cocked up and I accidentally helped them find the footage, and now, the detective knows I tried to hide something, he’s going to go back and look, and if he does, if they’re speaking on the video, he’s going to find out and when he does and when he comes back to the TRI and he knows about the time travel….” He took a shaking breath. “I had to tell you first. It’s your life.”

  Janos and Dieter were both silent.

  Kit looked down at his hand. His thumbnail was bleeding.

  “You gave him the footage?” Dieter’s voice was flat.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Kit said in a whisper. “I tried to scramble it, but he figured me out, guessed I was trying to hide something.”

  “Fuck.” Dieter pulled off his glasses and covered his eyes with one hand. “Jesus fucking Christ on a cake.”

  “It’s okay.”

  Kit looked at Janos in astonishment, but Dieter was the one to speak first.

  “What do you mean it’s okay? Didn’t you hear him?” He stood up suddenly, throwing his glasses down on the table. “This stupid fucking arsehole has practically handed your identity to a fucking copper on a silver platter!” He swung around and stormed over to the window, slamming both hands down on the sill. “Christ! Why do we work with fucking morons who can’t leave things well enough alone?”

  Kit started to rise, but Janos pressed his shoulder in silent command. He subsided and watched as Janos walked across the room and stopped behind Dieter.

  He laid his hands on Dieter’s shoulders and murmured something in Hungarian. His voice was calm and placating, but it wasn’t enough to stop Dieter from whirling around, his eyes blazing.

  It could have been an argument for all Kit could understand: Dieter was shouting, his voice high and breaking, and Janos was catching his hands, taking his arms, speaking more calmly, quietly. Finally, Janos drew Dieter into an embrace. Dieter struggled and punched weakly at his chest, but Janos curled his hands in Dieter’s hair and against his back, and all the anger seemed to sap out of Dieter’s body.

  Janos continued to murmur, rubbing his right hand slowly up and down the back of Dieter’s neck, and Kit had to look away when he realized Dieter’s shoulders were shaking and he was sobbing.

  He was still self-consciously staring down at his hands when Janos returned to the couch with Dieter, sitting down beside him. Dieter leaned mutely into him, and Kit could see how tightly he was holding on to Janos’s hand.

  “I’m sorry,” Kit said again, quietly. “I really am.”

  “We know.” Janos sighed. “We have been waiting for this day. Every day I live in this time, I wait for someone to notice, someone to see.” He looked at Dieter, then back at Kit. “The TRI is hiding a big secret. Big secrets cannot hide forever.”

  “And the day that secret comes out,” Dieter said unsteadily, “is the day they lock Janos up in a fucking freak show.”

  “We do not know that,” Janos murmured.

  Dieter’s hand tightened on Janos’s, and he wrapped his other hand around their linked ones. “I know what this world is like. If those fuckers try and take you then they’re taking me too.”

  Janos leaned closer and pressed a kiss to Dieter’s brow. “So sentimental.”

  “Fucking right I am.” Dieter took an unsteady breath and blew it out. He looked at Kit, and his eyes were bloodshot. “You said this detective’s going through the footage again? Mariam said you thought he trusted you.”

  “Turns out not so much.” Kit shifted on the edge of the couch. “Last night, he pretty much said he knew I’d played with the footage.”

  “Last night?” Janos was frowning. “He only comes to the office during the day.”

  Kit groped in his pocket for a tissue. The best he had was a crumpl
ed knot of one, but at least it wasn’t snotty. He pressed it against the side of his bleeding thumbnail. “I….” He frowned at his hand. “Um. I might have shagged the policeman.”

  Dieter burst out in explosive, sharp laughter. “Well bugger me backwards and call me Sebastian,” he said. “Isn’t that useful?”

  Janos looked at Kit. “More than good-looking?”

  Kit’s face was burning. “I wasn’t meant to get involved in any of this, and the bastard dragged me in.”

  Dieter’s eyes were on Janos. He said something in Hungarian that made Janos’s expression tense.

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Dieter said. “He’s screwing someone in the TRI. It could get him off the case.”

  “And make him pissed so he will tell his other policemen what to look for, and make it easy for them.” Janos shook his head. “We do not say anything to him about this. If he asks, I will talk to him, but this….” He sounded adamant. “We do not stoop low.”

  “Jan,” Dieter began.

  “No.” Janos looked at Kit. “He does not trust you now? Tell us what happened.”

  It was like the floodgates opened: he told them everything right up to the point where Jacob showed all his cards and left Kit sitting in a heap on the floor.

  “What a bastard,” Dieter murmured.

  Kit looked down at his hands. “No. We both buggered up. I knew I shouldn’t go near him, he knew he shouldn’t go near me, and we still both did it, because we were stupid and horny.”

  “You like him?” Janos asked.

  Kit glanced up at the other man. “Course. He’s good-looking and—”

  “No,” Janos interrupted. “I did not ask if you want him. I ask if you like him.”

  Kit’s stomach flipped. “Like him?”

  “You said that he says if things were not as they are now, if there was no case, he would be with you.” Janos lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “If things were different and there was no case, would you like him enough to be with him?”

  Kit gaped at him.

  He hadn’t thought about it.

  It was meant to be one night, and then it became a night and a day. All at once, there were emotions there that shouldn’t have been, and the anger and the frustration was too intense for something that was just meant to be a one-night stand.