Downtime

by Tamara Allen

  Leonard seemed pleased to have finally impressed me. “Explorers over the centuries have collected artifacts from every corner of the world. So much that we will never be able to display all of it. Did you know….”

  This is what happened to a guy who worked every day at the same desk under the same clock with the same view. No wonder he’d been so excited about getting out and having a face-to-face with old Nosik. Getting a taste of adventure—if you could call camping out in a cold, deserted warehouse for days on end any kind of adventure….

  I didn’t ask. Nosik requested it.

  “Goddamn it to hell.” Was the bastard defecting—or watching us, to find the right moment to put a bullet into the brain of the man who’d bested him too many times to count? Even as I spun on a heel to grab Gladstell and get him the hell out, I could hear Creighton’s dour admonition that my tendency to trust my gut feelings—act on impulse, was how he’d worded it—would not be acceptable while working with his agents. I knew my own higher-ups in Washington had warned him about me, but I didn’t give a shit. An agent who didn’t trust his instincts was a dead man. And right now, I was sure Leonard was one if I didn’t haul his butt out of the museum in record time.

  As I grabbed him, he looked at me in alarm. I didn’t get a chance to explain. At the other end of the exhibit, I saw a stout man in blue plaid slacks and a cheap windbreaker. Gray hair a wind-blown fringe around his head, cheeks and nose red in a sallow, sagging face, he’d come in from the cold in one sense, anyway; just not the one we’d had in mind.

  Nosik’s attention settled on me and his jowls lifted with a smile of polite interest. Not the sort of look you normally see from a guy in the process of hitching up his windbreaker to extract a bulky, ancient Stechkin. The gun might be forty years old, but Nosik clearly had every confidence it would do the trick as he centered on Leonard.

  I dove behind the exhibit, dragging Leonard with me. When I looked up, Nosik was gone. “Son of a bitch.”

  “Nash?”

  “He’s after you. Stay down.” Ignoring my own advice, I took off in the direction Nosik had gone. I spotted his bald head in the crowd and was pushing my way through when the cell chimed again. For God’s sake. “Yeah?”

  “How do you feel about me?”

  “Reese? What the hell—” Nosik vanished behind a door just at the bend of the corridor and I put on a burst of speed, determined not to lose him.

  “You said, ‘you know how I feel about you’,” came the reminder patiently from faraway New York. “And the fact is, I really don’t. But after I hung up, morbid curiosity got the better of me—”

  “Reese, this is really not a good time. Can I call you back?” Reaching the door, I leaned lightly against it to listen for any sound inside.

  Reese’s voice came from the phone I’d lowered to my knee. “Are you serious? Jesus, Morgan, you are a piece of work. You try your best to get to me and when you finally do, you pull this disinterested shit every damn time. Do you have the vaguest idea how hard it is to love a guy like that?”

  I kept my voice low as I ducked into a dim storage area stuffed with more treasures, but harboring no sign of life. “Hard. Yeah.” I crouched down behind a stack of crates. “Twenty minutes. I’ll call you back. Swear to God.”

  “Yeah, you go ahead and call back. Leave a voice message. See what it gets you.”

  Under the brittle anger, his voice had roughened with emotion that took the edge off my concentration. “Reese, I’m not doing this to hurt you, for God’s sake. I swear I’m not. Just let me call you back.”

  Reese was quiet too long. I was going to have to hang up on him, as much as I hated to do it. But then he spoke just as I was lowering the phone. “You know something, even if you live to be ninety, you still won’t get it. You won’t know why you’re all alone and lonely. Maybe you had a tough break when you were a kid and maybe now you think you’ve got to save the world to make up for not being able to save him. But your whole life is just about chasing the bad guys. There’s got to be more than that.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.”

  “I’m right?”

  I put the phone to my ear. “You’re right. My life is about chasing the bad guys. And right now you’ve got to let me do it.” I jabbed the button with my thumb, disconnecting, and hit the power to make sure nothing else would break my concentration. I heard soft cursing in Russian, then the scuffle of a shoe on the straw-littered floor. I rose with my gun, ready for him. The door opened behind me and Nosik’s eyes widened in alarm. He babbled something that I translated as a warning to his confederate behind me and I knew I was shit-deep in trouble. I started to turn, hoping to bring the confederate down before Nosik shot me. Even as I did, I heard Nosik cock the ancient piece and fire.

  So much for ending the day on a high note.

  Chapter 2

  After hours on the floor with nausea churning in my gut and something that felt a lot colder than blood running too fast through my veins, I dragged open bleary eyes and blinked at the dim hands on my watch. Okay, it hadn’t been hours—more like five minutes, but that was plenty of time to bleed to death. I jabbed the number for Leonard’s cell and got exactly nothing for my effort. “Goddamn it.” Looking for service. Fucking fantastic. If you wanted to get anything done, you had to do it yourself.

  I fumbled a hand over my stomach, grimly determined to stop the bleeding however I had to—and found none. I checked again, teeth clenched against very real nausea, but there was nothing to feel except smooth, if clammy skin.

  What the hell? I would have sworn Nosik had blasted a hole through me….

  But apparently he had missed, from just ten feet away. Maybe he needed glasses. Whatever the case, I wouldn’t get answers lying on the floor all day. As I pushed myself onto hands and knees, I felt a distinct difference in the room. I hadn’t passed out. I was fairly sure I hadn’t. But tilting my head to peer to one side only confirmed the feeling. The light was different. Not brighter but—warmer, like candlelight. Things were moved. Rearranged. And Nosik was nowhere in sight.

  Uneasiness prickled the length of my spine as my focus sharpened. Maybe I was too sick to stand up, but I wasn’t too sick to blow a few holes through Nosik’s little helpers, if they were the ones waiting around to bag me. I gritted my teeth and forced myself back on my haunches—and there they were, three of them. My uneasiness expanded to new dimensions. If these were Nosik’s buddies, they’d fallen into an even deeper time warp than Nosik with his plaid trousers. They stood gathered in a tight group, looking less like foreign agents than museum employees, of the type who were stuck in storage rooms to catalogue junk as dusty as they were.

  Then I realized none of them had tried for my gun, which lay on the floor just within reach. I grabbed it and lurched to my feet, telling myself on the way up that it wouldn’t look professional to vomit in front of the enemy. As I hefted the Glock in a firmer grip, two of the three men fell back a step. The third, a leather-bound book open in his hands, stared at me with wide blue eyes. Instinct told me he was the leader of this little gang of—art thieves? Art theft was more popular than ever. Even drug cartels and arms dealers were getting into the act. But these guys didn’t look like arms dealers any more than they looked like agents. They didn’t even appear to be armed. Maybe they were just museum employees, but something out of the ordinary was going on. I took a shot at prompting a confession.

  “Guess I interrupted something. You gentlemen are aware of the minimum stretch for art theft these days?”

  His face alight with interest, the blue-eyed one made a move in my direction. His cohorts grabbed him, sending the book thudding to the floor, and he resisted with an impatient shake of his head. “Look at him, Derry.” He nudged the well-padded ribs of the black-haired guy doing most of the pulling. “An ordinary man, nothing more. No need to worry.”

  His confidence did not persuade Derry, who said something I had trouble comprehending because of a brogue thick enough to cu
t with one very big knife. But I did catch a name. Ezra. The one who wasn’t afraid of me—although judging by his comment, he was aware of my reputation.

  Keeping my firearm trained on him, I fished out my identification. “Special Agent Nash, gentlemen.”

  “He’s American,” the thin blond fellow noted.

  “Very much so,” Ezra said and leaned in for a closer look at the Glock. “A sort of pistol, is it?” He tapped the muzzle, apparently not in the least perturbed by the possibility of taking a bullet in the head. Jesus, these guys weren’t smart enough to be art thieves or museum employees. They needed to be locked up for their own safety, as well as mine.

  “Okay, maybe I didn’t make myself clear. Morgan Nash, FBI. Now listen up—”

  “Agent, you said?” Ezra looked dubious. “As in house?”

  “Federal.” I flashed the badge again. “As in government.”

  His eyebrows rose. “You work for the government? By faith, we have conjured a demon.”

  Derry’s broad face contorted and the thin blond fellow broke into a twitchy smirk. It was a weird reaction for three guys who knew they were about to be arrested, and it was an annoying reaction. I appreciated the fact that some situations resisted evaluation, but I was about to do a little placement of suspects into the good old search position.

  “I hate to ruin your fun, gentlemen, but I’m going to have to take you in for questioning. I want you to line up, hands clasped behind your head. If you’re planning to reach for ID, let me know so I don’t have to break anyone’s fingers.”

  The threat normally inspired grumbling and the occasional sullen scowl. These guys resisted the norm right down the line. Three wide-eyed faces looked at me in bemusement and I did the scowling. “Like this.” I seized a handful of Ezra’s coat and swung him to face the wall. No sooner did I have his hands resting on his curly brown head than he started to lower them and turn to me. I jabbed the muzzle in his back. “Yes, it is a pistol and yes, I will use it if you force me to. I suggest you don’t.”

  “You’re arresting us?”

  The guy was not taking his predicament seriously in the least. Wondering if I still had my cuffs with me, I kept the gun at his back. “I knew you’d catch on, Ez, old chap. Keep your hands up, please.”

  “Can he arrest us?” Derry whispered to Ezra.

  “How can he?” the thin blond asked with contempt. “He doesn’t even belong here.”

  “He doesn’t know that.” Ezra snuck a look at me and I caught the sympathy in his eyes.

  I didn’t know what his game was, but I wasn’t playing. “If you want a British agent to haul you in, I can arrange it.” I snagged my phone and tried Leonard’s number again, but the connection had gone dead. I couldn’t get even a whisper of static.

  Fed up, I pushed Ezra toward the door and persuaded the other two with a wave of my gun to line up behind him. I patted them down one by one. Not a gun on any of them, nor, unfortunately, a cell phone. “I would advise you gentlemen to stick together and keep quiet. If you want to know just how good a shot I am, making a run for it is one way to find out.”

  There was no sign of Leonard or Nosik, but I noted the museum was still open—and apparently Nosik’s discharging his weapon hadn’t perturbed anyone in particular. Then it hit me that the people roaming the exhibits looked as though they ought to be a part of one. The earlier crowd in their jeans, sneakers, and jackets had gone and a suit-and-tie crowd had taken their place. But these suits must have been pulled from an old trunk in museum storage. The coats were too long, the collars just one step away from neck brace. More striking were the women. Skirts brushed the floor, hats piled with feathers reaching in the opposite direction. The men wore hats too, and I wasn’t talking baseball cap. I didn’t see an untucked shirt or pierced nose in sight.

  If someone was filming a movie, I saw no camera or director. I hooked a hand around Ezra’s arm and pulled him to face me. “What the hell’s going on?”

  He looked me over with what I might have taken for concern if he’d known me from Adam. “You’re a little shaken, I can imagine, sir.”

  I jabbed the firearm in his ribs. “You’re the one who provided the manpower and the means. Who are you working for?”

  “Not manpower, precisely,” he said, looking uncomfortable for the first time. “We—rather, Henry—”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” the blond said, hot with indignation. “I wasn’t reading it properly, if you will recall. Leave it to the Latin expert—”

  “He never said he was expert,” Derry cut in. “You were making such a mess of it. I could tell, clear as day, and you know what my Latin’s like.”

  “Well, if you’d hie yourself to Mass, you heathen,” Ezra said in what was obviously a private joke, judging by the smile he exchanged with Derry. Then he noticed I wasn’t laughing and his smile faded. “You’ll have to forgive us. We weren’t expecting anything to come of it, really.”

  “Come of what?”

  Silence descended as they shared a worried look. I kept quiet. Sometimes it was better to let suspects run off at the mouth, and I felt confident this group could produce enough rope to hang themselves.

  “Oh saints,” Derry groaned. “Kathleen!”

  “We meant no harm,” Ezra said, but he didn’t look any too happy, himself.

  The pinched line of Henry’s mouth tightened further. “We aren’t taking him home with us, I hope? How can we be so sure he’s not a demon?”

  “The devil may assume a pleasing shape,” Ezra commented, stealing a glance at me that was appreciative and then some. I managed to return the glance with indifference, concealing my surprise. Though I could see he wasn’t easily fazed, it took balls to flirt with a guy holding a gun on you. I’d run into the occasional raven who would do his job whether the target was male or female, but I doubted Nosik had hired one for that purpose. My personal life wasn’t common knowledge. That would make a risky business even riskier. And maybe this guy wasn’t too bad on the eyes, but his chances of seducing me to get any kind of information out of me were nonexistent—assuming he was even working for Nosik or anyone else, something I was beginning to doubt.

  If Nosik had somehow slipped me something to make me hallucinate, this was one hell of a solid and consistent hallucination. I glanced at my watch, to find it showing the same time it had fifteen minutes ago. Damn, it had only been issued to me three weeks past. Probably the camera in it was broken too. First the cell, now my watch; not exactly something I could blame on Nosik, but a hell of a fluke, if he’d had nothing to do with it.

  But if he hadn’t, who had? And what the hell was the plan? Because if they wanted to take me permanently out of the game, I wouldn’t be standing with a loaded gun and more or less the upper hand. Maybe I was already dead and this was Hell, where so many had invited me to go over the years. Whatever it was, I was the one out of place. Or out of time. And my instincts were failing me fast.

  Ezra laid a hand on my arm. “Are you all right?”

  I shook him off. I wasn’t putting up with any of that winning-the-prisoner’s-trust bullshit. I was no one’s prisoner. “Let me see if I’ve got this. You want me to believe you were trying to cast some kind of magic spell to summon a demon and you ended up dragging me back through time?”

  Ezra cleared his throat. “I believe the Latin translates into something along the lines of ‘one who brings knowledge of the future’. Not a demon, necessarily. A man would certainly do. But why you in particular….” He shook his head, then changed the subject. “Must you do that?” He pushed gingerly at the gun in his ribs. “I’m not a danger to you.”

  I pushed back. “Let’s focus on the real world for a minute, all right? I want to know who you are, who you’re working for, and what they want from me, in that order. I also want the name of the drug you guys slipped me to send me into the Twilight Zone.” I tucked the gun muzzle under his chin. “By the way, what did you do with Leonard? And what the hell did you do to my
phone and my watch?”

  “Your phone? And your watch?” He peeled back a corner of my leather jacket. “You haven’t—”

  “My watch.” I twisted my wrist to show him the display. “Not working. And neither is my cell. I pass out in the twenty-first century and wake up in what looks like the nineteenth. Why? What do you want?”

  His eyes went wide. “It is the nineteenth. You said—twenty-first?”

  I didn’t have time to deal with lunatics. I had a spy to hunt down. I sheathed my gun and left Larry, Moe, and Curly to deal with their mental problems on their own. Heading for the entrance, I figured I could find a pay phone and contact Leonard from there. That was assuming Nosik hadn’t hauled him off for ransom, or worse.

  Well aware that the sorcerer and his pals were following, I stepped outside, braced for the ice-cold wind—to find the evening had turned comfortably cool and clear in the space of twenty minutes. At the top of the steps, I noted with a peculiarly detached feeling that what lay in front of my eyes was not at all what was supposed to be there. Stone and brick dominated, reminding me of the London I’d left behind, but the neon was gone, and shadows loomed larger in the yellow glow of old-fashioned street lamps. The absence of real traffic—rumbling engines and blaring horns—was damned unnatural. I hoped devoutly that we were downwind from a barn and that the smell assailing me would not be prevalent everywhere I went; judging by the number of horses at work in the road below, however, the smell would not be easily escaped. The tangle of carts and carriages and God knew what else were at a virtual standstill; rush hour in the nineteenth century, replete with the shouts of irritated drivers expressing themselves in familiar language.