Castaways in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (27 page)

“To whom did she deliver David? Can you tell
me who’s behind all this?”

“They’re called the Dunland Group: defense
contractors with their own private security force,” Lady Jane
said.

Callum sucked on his teeth. “They made a
fortune in Iraq, working for us as well as the Americans.”

“If I didn’t already know they were behind
these events, I know it now,” Lady Jane said. “The facial
recognition just came back on the two men you subdued. They are
known employees of the Dunland Group
.
”

“That’s why you’re telling me this now.”
Callum nodded. “Those faces are all but public now, and with that
fact, the Dunland Group will know that you know of their
involvement—and that others do too, people who can do something
about them.”

“The Dunland Group will swing into full
damage control. I imagine that the men you encountered will be
disavowed as a rogue operation,” Lady Jane said. “All the
politicians they’ve bought will pray nobody noticed them pocketing
their pound notes and clamor for an investigation.”

“Everyone implicated will be wondering what
else you know and whom you’ve told,” Callum said.

Lady Jane bit her lip. It was the first time
Callum had ever seen her uncertain. “It’s not just you I’ve put in
danger. It’s Cassie too.”

Callum licked his lips. He’d needed to know
what Lady Jane knew and was glad of the information, but the
repercussions of the Dunland Group’s actions—and this
conversation—stretched out in all directions. “We need to move
David.”

Lady Jane shook her head. “He cannot be
moved, not yet, not until he wakes.”

“If he wakes,” Callum said.

“As long as he remains unconscious, he buys
us time,” Lady Jane said. “After that, I will be forced to bring
him to London, at which point he will be out of my hands.”

“That cannot happen,” Callum said. “You need
to release what information you have
now
.”

“No,” Lady Jane said. “I don’t have solid
evidence yet. It’s enough to cause a scandal, yes, but not enough
to bring the culprits down. I need a few more days, that’s all, to
bring my plans to fruition.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed, and us
too,” Callum said. “I don’t know that I cared as much before about
that as I do now.”

“I’m working on alternatives,” Lady Jane
said. “You need to stay by David’s side until then.”

“What alternatives?”

“That’s my headache,” Lady Jane said. “I
will do my job.”

“And damn the consequence?” Callum barked a
laugh. “David and Cassie are my first priority, not the Security
Service, but I swear to you that I will do
my
job as long as
it is possible to do it.”

“I would expect no less.”

September, 2017

David

D
avid woke to quiet
darkness. He was in a hospital, but whether on the same day he’d
been rescued or a different day, he couldn’t have begun to guess.
He didn’t see a clock anywhere in the room to tell him the time.
For all he knew, he could have slept for a week. Living in the
Middle Ages had given him a better natural time-sense than he’d had
as a kid, but the transition to the twenty-first century—and
probably his illness and the drugs—had thrown it out of whack ever
since he got here. If he had to guess, he would have said that the
time was early evening. It was dark outside, but not past
midnight.

The curtains in his room had been left open,
and for a while David studied the spray of rain on the window and
the little rivers the water made down the glass. The drops sparkled
in the light coming from outside: streetlights, or maybe spotlights
shining from outside the hospital. For the first time since before
he left medieval Cardiff, David felt like his mind was clear. He
could breathe easily too, and his throat hurt no worse than if he
had a mild cold. The shot the medic had given him had hurt like
hell, but it seemed to have done the trick.

Cassie reclined in a chair beside the bed,
between him and the outside window. Near the end of his bed, the
door to the corridor was open. He had a private room, or at least
one that could be made private. A full bank of windows starting at
waist height and going all the way to the ceiling lined the
interior wall of the room, separating him from the corridor. Blinds
covered the top half of the windows, but he could see through the
gap between the bottom of the blind and the window frame to a
cluster of people standing in the hallway.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t hear what they
were saying, though from the apparent twitchiness of those
involved, the conversation was heated. Callum was tall enough that
the blind cut off his head from David’s sight, but David would have
known him anywhere by the sword in his hand. He must have retrieved
it from wherever he’d stashed it. He certainly hadn’t been wearing
it earlier when he’d come through the apartment door. Some of
David’s tension eased. By holding the sword, Callum was declaring
his loyalty and what he stood for.

Everyone, including Callum, wore business
suits, trench coats, and ties, even the one woman. If her stabbing
finger was any indication, it was she who was in charge. David
guessed that she was Director Cooke. Her build was all wrong for
Natasha, who was the only other woman David knew of who was
involved in his case, not that MI-5 might not have dozens of female
agents. He just hadn’t seen any others.

David turned his head to look over at
Cassie, who opened her eyes. He wouldn’t have put it past her to
have a sixth sense about people watching her.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey yourself.” Cassie shifted in her seat.
“God, this chair is uncomfortable.”

“How can you say that after living in the
Middle Ages for five years?”

“Nobody pretends that you can sleep in a
medieval chair,” Cassie said, “though that rocker you had made for
Lili is pretty nice.”

“How long have I been asleep?” David
said.

“A long time,” Cassie said. “We brought you
in around nine in the evening yesterday, and it’s almost that time
again, though a day later.”

David pressed the ‘up’ button on the bed to
raise himself to a sitting position and pulled up his knees
too.

“Can you feel your feet?” Cassie said.

David wiggled his toes. “Yes.” He looked at
her warily. “Is there some reason I shouldn’t be able to?”

“They were numb,” Cassie said. “How much do
you remember?”

“Apparently, not a lot.” David thought back.
“I do remember the interrogation room and seeing you two come
through the apartment door. But nothing after that.”

“I guess that’s not surprising, given the
drugs they gave you,” Cassie said. “Fortunately, the man who
abducted you had just gotten started when we rescued you or you
would be in a lot worse shape than you are.”

David swallowed hard, unnerved to hear how
close it had been. “Thank you, if I neglected to say it
before.”

“You are most welcome,” Cassie said.
“Clearly, you’re feeling better.”

“The medic wasn’t kidding when he said the
antibiotic shot would work. My throat is only a tiny bit sore and
my head is clear.” David flexed his shoulders and arms, pleased to
discover that at the moment
nothing hurt
. Triumph shot
through him at the knowledge that this wasn’t over yet. Not by a
long shot. “And I’m hungry.”

“I’m sure that can be remedied soon enough,”
Cassie said, “though hospital food is nothing to write home
about.”

“Tell me what I missed,” David said.

Cassie grumbled. “I did this already,” but
then she obliged with a long soliloquy on everything that had
happened while they’d been apart.

David felt like he’d slept through
three-quarters of a movie and missed all the best parts. He
gestured towards the door. “What’s the argument about in the
hallway?”

“They don’t know you’re awake yet, of
course, but they’ve been talking nonstop since we brought you here
about what to do with you. Callum is being treated like the hero he
is, so we’re good there, but skeptics in the Home Office are having
a field day with how screwed up today—” She glanced at a small
digital clock on a side table which David hadn’t noticed until now.
It said 8:30, “—or rather, yesterday, got.”

“Is one of them Smythe?” David said.

“No,” Cassie said. “While you were asleep,
Smythe left for London on Lady Jane’s orders. He was to brief
representatives from the Home Office on the situation in
person.”

“Lady Jane?” David said.

“Callum’s name for Director Cooke,” Cassie
said.

“Why
in person
?” David said.

“Probably for his own self-aggrandizement,
but Lady Jane isn’t trusting any open form of communication, even a
secure cell phone, with your whereabouts,” Cassie said. “That woman
has ice water for blood.”

David peered up under the blinds. “They
really ought to include me in this conversation.”

“You’re not very good at letting other
people take charge of things, are you?” Cassie said with a
laugh.

“It hasn’t been my experience that doing so
generally turns out well,” David said. “I am the King of England,
after all.”

“Oh sure,” Cassie said, “but I bet you were
this way before. In fact, I’ve talked to Anna, so I know you
were.”

Even though David hadn’t seen his sister for
months—hadn’t even met her new baby—Cassie and Callum had traveled
to Shrewsbury and then into Wales to meet the rest of their new
family. That was after they got married and had returned from
Orkney, which hadn’t turned out to be much of a honeymoon. While
David and his companions had thwarted several of Valence’s schemes
over the last year, he didn’t know how many he’d failed to thwart.
The rogue baron couldn’t be allowed to roam free any longer.

What David wasn’t so sure about was what he
was going to do with Valence once he captured him. All of his
counselors insisted that the man had to die. They thought Valence’s
fellow conspirators, whom David still had locked up in the Tower of
London, should be executed too. David wasn’t yet medieval enough to
feel right about ordering the death of a man in cold blood. He was
probably king enough to do it if he had to, but he didn’t know what
it would take to live with himself afterwards.

All of this was presuming, in Valence’s
case, that they could take him alive. Or that they could take him
at all. If Valence knew what was good for him, he would have left
Ireland once he realized David was on his way and sailed for
America. Never mind that its existence was a discredited Welsh myth
or a Viking rumor. He should know that nothing was going to stop
David now. Not even being displaced in time.

That dilemma was for another day, however,
and another place. David had to get better, though he realized as
he swallowed again how much better he already was, and then get
himself back to the Middle Ages.
How
he was going to get
back was the only problem that interested him currently. He pursed
his lips as he observed the group in the corridor again. He had to
get past all of them to make it happen.

Fortunately, he had allies in Cassie and
Callum, and maybe he would garner a bit more sympathy now from Lady
Jane and the others than he’d been given before. He was a valuable
commodity. They didn’t want to let him go, but he’d been badly
mistreated on their watch. Maybe that fact was something David
could use to his advantage. It was a mercenary idea, and not
entirely like him, but he had a kingdom to run and a wife and child
he desperately needed to see again.

The cluster of people talking in the hallway
broke up, and Callum came through the door to the room, pushing it
wider with his shoulder. He saw David sitting up and smiled. Cassie
sat up straighter and said, “You are ridiculously handsome when you
smile.”

Ignoring his wife, except for the fact that
his smile broadened further, Callum put his heels together and
bowed. “Sire.”

David waved a hand. “Shut up and tell me
what’s happening.”

Callum took a deep breath. “A great deal,
none of it good. You’ve given some people a bad headache. The
threat is not just from outside the Security Service, but within it
too.”

“Which makes it even worse,” David said.
“Natasha wasn’t the only one?”

“No,” Callum said.

“And she hasn’t come in?” David said.

“Neither she nor the ambulance men nor the
police officer who drove her away. Who knows how many more
conspirators we have to contend with.” Callum straightened David’s
blanket until the edges were perfectly aligned. “We’ve spent the
last twenty-four hours looking for all of them.”

“I’m sorry about Natasha, Callum,” Cassie
said.

“Do we know yet who the men in the apartment
were?” David said.

“Both men are ex-military black-ops, working
now for the private security firm, the Dunland Group. It has ties
to defense contractors in the US, UK, and Europe.”

“So not CIA,” Cassie said.

“If they were secretly working for the CIA
or any other agency, the Americans aren’t claiming them,” Callum
said.

Cassie slouched further in the uncomfortable
chair so she could put her feet up on David’s bed and cross them at
the ankles. “Would the Americans claim them if they were
theirs?”

“It is customary to acknowledge your own
agent when talking to foreign agencies who are your allies.” Callum
leaned against the wall between the two windows, folding his arms
across his chest and crossing his ankles in a mimicry of Cassie.
“Admittedly, the Americans are at least as likely as the French to
lie to us.”

David fiddled with his remote control to
alter his position. He shifted so he could see his friends better
and contemplated getting out of bed. He wondered how badly that
would freak out his guardians. “What would a defense contractor
want with me?”