by C. B. Lewis
Kit shrugged with a small smile. “Looks like he could use it.”
Dieter nodded, leaning closer to nuzzle Janos’s cheek. He murmured something in Hungarian, then kissed Janos’s cheekbone. Janos only blinked, sending fresh tears rolling down his cheeks.
“Is he going to be okay?” Kit asked.
Dieter nodded, picking up one of the cups and pressing it into Janos’s trembling hand. “We are.”
“Why did he do that?” Janos said suddenly. His voice sounded different, thickened with emotion. “He had no reason.”
Dieter shook his head. “I don’t know.” He looked to Kit. “Why?”
Kit wrapped his arms around his middle. He wanted to believe it was simple compassion from a good man, but it was so much more than that, and he didn’t—couldn’t—understand why Jacob would make such a sacrifice for people he barely knew.
His cheeks felt wet again, and he could only shake his head.
Janos, who had been staring blindly at the spot where Jacob sat, turned his head and looked up at Kit. “He is a good man. Don’t let him go.”
Kit’s lips trembled.
If Jacob were found out, he wouldn’t get a choice about that, even if….
No. There was no if.
He wanted Jacob. He liked him. He liked him a lot, too much, and Christ, if Jacob were taken away now, when they were just making a start of it, what the hell was he meant to do?
Janos murmured to Dieter, who looked over at Kit, then rose and pulled him into a hug. Kit almost recoiled in shock. Dieter wasn’t the kind of person to just hug anyone, but here he was, and Kit’s arms moved of their own volition. He clung to Dieter.
“He’s a cunning fucker, that policeman,” Dieter murmured, rubbing between his shoulders. “Don’t you worry. He’ll be fine.”
Kit pulled back, scrubbing at his cheeks with a fist. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m pooping on your party.”
Janos rose from his seat and reached out, pulling Kit toward him. He hugged him warmly. “You have reasons,” he murmured against Kit’s hair. He stepped back, clapping his hand to Kit’s shoulder. “We should go downstairs. Dieter has not eaten all day.”
“You either,” Dieter snorted. He studied Kit. “You’re coming with us.”
“Jacob….”
“Will be arguing semantics with Mariam for hours,” Dieter said.
“People’ll ask us what happened,” Kit protested weakly.
Janos shook his head. “Not if you are with us. They know better. Come. You should not be alone just now. Trust me with this.”
He couldn’t really protest, and to his surprise, they were right. People who saw them in the corridors glanced at them curiously, but no one said a word. Even when they got to the canteen, he could tell people wanted to ask them questions, but no one did.
“You are hungry?” Janos asked. He had his hand back on Kit’s shoulder, a solid support.
Kit shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“We will get food. If you are hungry, you can eat it.”
Kit glanced at Dieter, who was smiling his perfect white smile. “Is he like this a lot?”
“You have no idea,” Dieter admitted. “I swear to God if I ate everything he put in front of me when he thought I was upset or worried, I’d be the size of a fucking house.”
“He exaggerates,” Janos said, propping a tray against one hip and arranging three plates on it, which he started filling from the buffet selection. “Anyway, you like food. We have seen you eat your own weight in bacon.”
That made Kit smile briefly. “I do like bacon.”
Janos nodded at once, searching the counters. “Do you want bacon? They must have some for the breakfasts. I will go….” He set down the tray on the counter and looked around for one of the kitchen staff, a determined look in his eye.
Kit yelped, reaching out and grabbing his arm. “You don’t have to! This stuff is all fine!”
“If you are sure?”
Kit nodded emphatically. “Really. I’m sure.”
In the end, he managed to persuade Janos that one plate of food was more than enough for him, while Dieter stood by, looking on with indulgent amusement. It must be rare, Kit supposed, that Janos’s attentions were on someone else.
He ate in silence, while Janos and Dieter spoke to each other, switching between English and Hungarian. Kit wasn’t really listening, but what he heard was rapid, excitable, and from the tone of their voices, happy, and that was good.
He wished he could be as happy and relieved as they were.
“You are done?”
Kit looked up from the plate. He’d eaten half of it and was pushing the rest of it around with his fork. No appetite, which wasn’t normal. But then, his almost-boyfriend committing a crime to save two of his not-quite-friends wasn’t exactly a part of his everyday routine.
“I s’pose,” he said, pushing the plate away. He glanced toward the door, frowning.
“You can go up if you want,” Dieter said, “but you know how much they’re going to need to let out to the world. It’s better not to get in the way.”
Kit nodded. “What are we meant to do now?”
Janos shrugged helplessly. “I did not think I would be free from today. I had no plans.”
“Fucking.” Dieter took a spoon out of his mouth to speak. “Fucking everywhere.”
Janos’s face lit up in a grin. “Yes. That is a plan.”
Dieter’s eyebrows lifted a little. “Fucking here?” he inquired optimistically.
A thoughtful look crossed Janos’s face. “Like old times….”
Kit held up his hands. “Too much information, guys.” He shoved his chair back. “I’m going to go and wait upstairs. You go and do… whatever you want to go and do.”
Janos rose so quickly his chair fell over, and Dieter was right behind him.
“If anyone asks,” Dieter called back over his shoulder, “we’re working. Hard.”
Janos’s laughter rang back.
Kit watched them go, then plodded out to the corridor.
He couldn’t make any sense of Jacob’s actions.
No one was that good or generous without a reason.
He headed up the stairs, back toward the conference room. His stomach was churning, and he was bloody tired. It had been a long day of trying to get things organized, watching Janos getting increasingly pale and drawn, and wondering if he was going to end up hating Jacob for doing what he had to do.
How wrong he had been.
The room felt much bigger now that it was empty and silent.
Kit sat down, folding his arms on the table and propping his chin on them. He wanted to do something, but his mind felt so scattered he just knew that anything he tried to do would end up wrong.
Soon, the TRI would be unveiled to the world, and people would be asking questions and poking at the agency, and if Mariam couldn’t find some way to keep it controlled, it might even get shut down. It was unlikely, but he knew it could be possible.
Hell, even if it didn’t get shut down, everyone in the TRI would know he was one of the people who gave it away, and that would go down like a lead balloon. He might get driven out by the people he had considered colleagues.
He buried his face in his arms.
It would be a bloody great joke if he ended up losing a lover and a job all over the fact he was too bloody honest.
Chapter 37
JACOB WAS exhausted.
For three hours, he and Ashraf went over the options. They had to go public and show the links to the case, but without confirming they suspected a time traveler was involved.
She was unsurprisingly concerned about how the TRI operatives would be perceived when the news broke. People would be furious that such an advance in technology had been horded by such a small group.
The easiest solution was laying accountability at Sanders’s door. He was responsible for the technology and restricting its use, but Ashraf was unhappy to blame the man when he wasn’t
there to defend himself.
“If you make it clear it was for his wife,” Jacob suggested.
She shook her head. “They’ll think he was using her as his guinea pig.”
Privately, Jacob wondered if that wasn’t exactly what Sanders had done. Just because the woman had agreed to try out his technology didn’t mean he wasn’t using her.
They turned over options, trying to find a way that wouldn’t bring the whole world crashing down on them. Ashraf even suggested shutting down the system, destroying all the parts.
“It’s too late for that,” Jacob said. “You’ve been using this stuff. If you think they’ll be angry about you not letting them know about it, imagine how much worse they’ll be if they find out you’ve destroyed it.”
Ashraf nodded unhappily. “It needs to be controlled.”
“Then make sure it’s put into the right hands?”
She gave him a blank look. “Who could we possibly trust with this? The government? The United Nations? There was a reason he limited the access: there was less chance of someone betraying us.” She sighed. “Even then, it wasn’t enough.”
Jacob frowned. “What?”
“One of our agents went rogue,” she replied, passing her hand over her eyes. “He tried to change something significant. It went wrong. He’s being cared for in our medical facilities.”
Jacob sat back in his seat. “Significant how?”
“Stopping a world war.”
The Killing Hitler theory. Change a historical event to stop wars and disasters.
Jacob shivered. “What happened to him?”
Ashraf met his eyes. “Because he intervened and it went wrong, history remembers him—his false identity in that period—as being complicit. He was one of the people blamed for it all in the history books, and he couldn’t cope with it. He’s the living example we have of why you can’t change things.”
“Jesus,” Jacob breathed. He shook his head. “Christ, you people….”
Ashraf’s cheek twitched as she clenched her teeth. “It may seem ruthless, but it made our point clear to our agents. It made a point of why we have to be neutral.”
“So you keep him closed up here? A specimen to remind people what not to do?”
Ashraf took a deep breath, clearly trying to keep her temper. “He was one of our agents, DI Ofori,” she said, her voice sharp as a blade. “He had no family. If we gave him over to the local authorities, he would just be another patient on a ventilator, checked by nurses and left to fade away to nothing. Here, he is cared for by people who knew him, and know what he did and why. Here, he is looked after for as long as he will live.” Her eyes were bright and her voice turned brittle. “We protect our own, DI Ofori. We always will.”
He had the good grace to look away. “He’s still your cautionary tale.”
“He is,” she agreed quietly. “We might not like it, but he made himself the perfect example of why the rules exist.” She returned to her desk and sat back down. “They’ll ask, when we go public. They’ll ask why we don’t interfere. Why we don’t stop conflicts before they start.”
Jacob understood. He didn’t like it, but he understood. “And you’ll tell his tale.”
She set down her glass. “The world already knows about the Potiorek conspiracy. This will just be the full stop at the end of that story.”
By the time he left, they had come to an agreement.
A press conference would be arranged for the next morning. That would give them twelve hours to gather and purge all the data relating to Janos Nagy, and him time to put together a report on his theory of what had happened.
If all went well, he could time his meeting for just before the press conference, and ensure that his team learned about the whole thing before it was officially announced. That way, they wouldn’t have time to think he’d cracked, and none of them would be able to let it slip by mistake. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them, but all it took was one person saying the wrong thing to the wrong people, and everyone would know.
He wasn’t surprised when the door of the conference room opened as he passed. It was Kit. Christ, he wanted to turn and to reassure him that it was going to be okay, but he couldn’t lie like that. For all he knew, anything could happen.
He paused, though, and he saw the aborted half-gesture Kit made.
“I need to get back to the station,” he said.
“Oh. Right.” Kit’s hand fell back by his side.
It felt shit, leaving it like that, but it was better for both of them, until they knew what was going to happen. It wasn’t fair to let Kit get attached to him. He wanted to sink his hand into Kit’s hair, ruffle it, tell him they would be fine, but he couldn’t, so he just walked away.
He stood by the elevator with Ashraf, and from the doorway, he heard Kit call, “By the way, Detective Inspector Ofori, Janos says thank you.”
Jacob pressed his lips together. He could remember the shock and relief on Nagy’s face, and the joy on his lover’s. It was only fair to give him that chance, in a place where prejudice wouldn’t hurt him. After what he’d been through, the poor bugger deserved it.
He nodded silently but couldn’t turn to look at Kit.
It was only when he was in a taxi-pod back to the station that he let himself sink down into the seat and bury his head in his hands. Christ, he was tired. It was all so bloody complicated.
Anton was still at his desk when Jacob got back to the station, and his smile vanished at the look on Jacob’s face. “You okay, boss?”
“The TRI gave me the information we need,” he said.
“Seriously? About bloody time!” Anton rose. “Do you have anything you need me to update on the incident board?”
“It’s nothing that’ll make a difference tonight,” Jacob demurred. “But I need all hands in for a meeting at nine forty-five tomorrow morning. Compulsory attendance. I need everyone there and I need them to be punctual.”
Anton frowned. “If it’s that important….”
Jacob lifted his hand to knead at the back of his neck. He felt twenty years older. “It’s sensitive information, so I’d rather give it to the whole team in one go, instead of people wandering in and seeing it on the board.”
“Fair enough. You okay, boss? You look… well… shit.”
Jacob laughed tiredly. “I was chewed out by the DCIs this morning, then had a useless meeting with Harper, then spent the rest of the day trying to get information out of the TRI.”
“Eugh.” Anton winced. “Yeah. If I’d had that day, I’d look pretty shit too.” He jerked his head toward the door. “You done for the night?”
“Just need to catch up on any developments.”
The other man snorted. “Yeah. So many.” Off Jacob’s look, he held up his hands. “One or two more sightings of our missing woman, but nothing conclusive about her current location. The DNA sample is being run again in two separate labs, in case of cross-contamination. Oh, and Temple says you’re a bastard for leaving her with those videos.”
“She get anything?”
Anton shook his head. “Nothing more than we already knew.” He nodded toward the incident board. “All video footage of her is up there.”
Jacob glanced at it. He was shattered, but if he went home, he would just sit and worry about what might come. “I’ll have a look over it and see if there’s anything she missed.”
“She’ll love that,” Anton said dryly.
“She can deal with it,” Jacob replied. He headed into his office and sat down. His slate lit up when he touched it, but he didn’t open the files at once.
Instead, he checked his quill. There were messages from Kit, received throughout the day. The most recent one must have been sent just after he left the TRI: Come by if you want. Or if you want company, let me know. K
He closed the message up and almost laughed at the irony that he had discovered restraint at the worst possible time. It was a crap time to be alone. Jacob was by nature a peop
le person, and all these nights with Kit had reminded him how much he liked having other people around. He didn’t want to be alone.
There was one person he knew he had to see, regardless of what was to come.
He opened up a new message.
I need to see you. Please can you come up as soon as possible.
He pressed Send, then set the quill aside to open the video files on his slate.
Jacob cupped his chin in his hand and watched them in order, one by one. There were four altogether: the external shot of her entering, waiting in reception, coming back through the reception on her way out, and an external shot of her leaving.
On first glance, he almost had to agree with Temple. The woman waited in the reception, spoke little, and when she did, her accent was clear. She said nothing about her purpose, only that she had a parcel to be personally delivered.
He played them through again, watching her carefully.
She was carrying a box, about the size of a shoebox. If it wasn’t the hard drives, he could only speculate that it was something to do with them. She was nervous too. While she waited, she avoided the camera, so subtly it almost seemed natural. That explained a lot about why they had little to no surveillance footage of her: someone who knew how to avoid cameras was always difficult to find. That didn’t bode well, if she was trained in the art of covert operations.
Could be military, could be private. Hell, if she was from a future where time travel was used, she could even be a government agent. He frowned. If she came from the future, then there was no reason for her to be looking up someone born years before she was. Unless she knew him somewhere in the future.
Jacob stared blankly into nothing.
Harper. He said he didn’t know the woman, and that the woman said she didn’t know him either. Maybe she just didn’t know him as he was in this day and age. Maybe she knew him when he was older. And if that was the case, and Harper was the one who had sent her….
No.
The present-day Harper couldn’t possibly know about time travel, and if he had, why had he sent the woman on her way, still carrying her box?
