A Rip in Time (Out of Time #7) (2 page)

“Mr. Travers,” Elizabeth said. “Come in.”

Travers looked up nervously at Simon for permission. Simon lingered in place for a moment, blocking his path. Unfortunately, as loath as he was to let this weaselly little man into their home, they would need his help if they were to find Katherine Vale.

Travers cleared his throat and kept his gaze down as he turned his body sideways and inched past Simon and into the foyer.

Simon heard Jack’s low, amused chuckle in the background.

“Thank you,” Travers said. “I—I was hoping I’d catch you.”

Simon closed the door and turned to face him. “Were you?”

“Y-yes,” Travers stammered anxiously as he pushed his glasses back up onto his nose. “I know what happened in Egypt, with, uhm—”

Simon strode forward, quickly closing the small distance between them. He’d never trusted the Council, and with damn good reason. He’d suspected someone in the so-called Shadow Council, a mysterious and corrupt group inside the Council proper, was responsible for Katherine Vale’s untimely appearance in Cairo. And Travers, well, his truth was never the whole truth and the parts that were missing seemed inclined to get them killed.

“And just how do you know that? Did you send her?”

“Vale?” Travers squeaked. “Oh my goodness, no. I—I don’t know who was responsible for that, but we have bigger problems, I’m afraid.”

“That’s a habit with you guys, isn’t it?” Jack said.

Travers turned, startled, and then smiled broadly in recognition. “Oh! Mr. Wells. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

Although Jack’s body language was casual as he leaned against the wall, Simon was pleased to note that he still had his gun in hand. Jack pushed himself off the wall and shifted his eyes anxiously from Travers to Elizabeth and back again. “Yeah?”

“I’m a bit of a World War II nut,” Travers said with a blush crawling up his neck. “Models and things mostly. They’re not very good, but a chance to speak to a real live OSS man…”

Jack stared back at him blankly.
 

Before Travers could begin to gush, Simon forced him back on topic. “Mr. Travers.”

“Oh, sorry. Right—”

“Do you know where Katherine Vale is?” Elizabeth asked abruptly.
 

Simon had planned on being a bit more circumspect in his questions, but leave it to Elizabeth to cut to the very heart of the matter.

Travers blinked at her directness, but the forthright question seemed to pull him back to himself and the seriousness of the situation. He straightened his back and stood as tall as his little frame would allow.
 

“I do.”

Simon waited a moment. “And are you going to tell us?”

“I’d rather show you.”

Simon’s eyes narrowed. “And why on earth should we trust you?”

Travers’ small round face wrinkled in thought as he took off his glasses. “No reason at all, I suppose,” he said softly before sliding his spectacles back onto his face. “But I sincerely hope you do. Without your help, I shudder to think of the consequences.”

Simon glanced over at Elizabeth and recognized her expression. She was already standing on the lip of the frying pan, planning her swan dive down into the fire.
 

She, Jack and Simon exchanged glances, but in the end, Simon knew they had little choice. If they were ever to rest again, they had to find Katherine Vale. If that meant going along with Travers for now, they simply could not say no.

“And just where will you be taking us?” Simon asked.

“San Francisco.” Travers’ nervous smile returned. “HQ. The…the headquarters for the Council for Temporal Studies.”

~~~

Elizabeth knew she shouldn’t be excited by it all. They were traveling with a man they didn’t really trust to a city where they’d nearly been killed to see a woman who wanted them dead. It had “last trip you’ll ever take” written all over it. Despite that, Elizabeth was relieved to be going, relieved to be doing something, anything, other than running. Of course, Simon had pointed out that they were running, just into the jaws of death instead of away from them, but she knew deep down he felt the same way. A life on the run was no life at all.
 

The charter flight took less than two hours, and before they knew it she, Simon and Jack were riding in the back of a town car through the streets of San Francisco. It brought back an onslaught of memories.

She’d often wondered what happened to the Eldridges and Gerald, and Max and Teddy. They’d long since passed by now, but she liked to think of them out there alive and happy, somewhere, somewhen.

The last time they’d been in San Francisco, the city had been destroyed by the Great Earthquake and was in the process of being engulfed by dozens of enormous fires. The city that passed by her window showed no scars. It had risen, literally, from the ashes, and was born again.
 

As they turned down Market Street, Elizabeth took heart in the courage of the city. It, like them, had been knocked down, but it wasn’t out. And neither were they.
 

Elizabeth slipped her hand over Simon’s as it rested on his thigh. He turned to her, and she could see the ghosts of their past reflected in his eyes.
 

“I’m glad we’re going to San Francisco
together
this time,” she said with a wry smile.

Simon laughed, half humorous and half self-deprecating. “I won’t make that mistake again, I assure you.”

The old Elizabeth would have taken that to mean that he wouldn’t “let” her run off on her own again, and she would have bristled like a prized colt at the inference. But this Elizabeth knew better. She knew that wasn’t what he meant. It meant he trusted her. Completely.

Elizabeth leaned in to kiss him, but before she could, Travers’ little Piglet voice interrupted them.

“We’re here!”

Simon’s discontented sigh made her giggle. She pecked his cheek and then stepped out as the chauffeur opened the door.

They’d stopped in front of an imposing building with large Corinthian columns that looked like a bank or a museum. A detailed frieze with carvings representing the signs of the zodiac wrapped around the top of the building. She recognized all of them immediately except for the one in the center—a boy, robes around his waist, standing inside a circle—until she read the words carved beneath him.
 

“The Aion Society,” she read aloud.

“Clever,” Simon said modestly impressed, but trying not to be.

“What am I missing?” Jack said.

“Aion was a god of time during the Hellenic period,” Simon explained. “The more popularly known Chronos represented a more linear way of thinking—past, present and future—each discrete from the other. Aion, on the other hand, symbolizes eternity, a perception of time stretching out infinitely in all directions.”

Jack nodded. “Got it.
Dr. Who.
Timey-wimey stuff.”

Simon frowned and Elizabeth couldn’t stop her laugh. “Watch the show, get the joke,” she told her husband as he held the door open for her.

The inside of the building was as austere as the outside, and she’d been right about it resembling a museum. Inside were displays and glass cases and even a few tourists.

“The Aion Society’s mission,” Travers said in his best tour guide voice as he led them through the main lobby area, “is to preserve history for future generations. Our collection is quite eclectic.”

Elizabeth and the others peered into a few displays as they passed. Were all of these things from Council missions? Was something from one of their trips here somewhere? One of Sebastian’s?

“This way,” Travers said as he led them out of the main floor and back behind closed doors.

“The collection?” Elizabeth asked.

Travers pressed the button for the elevator. “A combination of artifacts obtained by the Council, and some through more traditional means. It serves as a good cover. We acquire large sums of period money, clothing and the like. That might appear somewhat suspicious without the society’s ‘collection’.”

“That’s all very interesting,” Simon said, “but that is not why we’ve come here.”

“No,” Travers agreed. “It’s not.”

The elevator dinged and the doors opened. A large man in a dark suit waited inside for them and held the door open.

“After you,” Travers said.

Elizabeth looked at Simon, but she knew they hadn’t come all this way to bug out now, and she walked ahead of him into the elevator. Travers and Jack followed.
 

“Sorry, sir,” the big man said as he held his hand out to stop Jack. “You’ll have to leave that here.” He indicated Jack’s holstered gun. How he’d even noticed it beneath Jack’s coat, she didn’t know.

Jack frowned and glanced at Simon who arched an eyebrow and nodded. Jack unholstered the gun, flipped it in his hand and held it out handle first.

The man waved to a pretty young woman at a nearby desk. She came over and smiled at Jack who smiled back broadly. Elizabeth could see him trying to come up with angle.

The woman laughed lightly, but was otherwise unfazed by Jack’s charm. “Your gun, Mr. Wells.”

“Oh,” Jack said. “Right.”

She smiled and took the gun, handing Jack a numbered ticket in return like a coat check girl.
 

She stepped back out of the way and Jack tilted his head to get one last admiring look before slipping the ticket into his pocket. “Maybe this’ll be more interesting than I thought.”

“Wells…” Simon said as the doors closed and they began their descent.

“Just makin’ lemonade, Cross. Makin’ lemonade.”

~~~

The elevator deposited them on a level with multiple doorways and corridors. Each doorway had a set of complex gears embedded in the middle. They followed Travers to the right where he entered a code on a keypad. A small panel opened and he stepped forward for a retinal scan.

Simon and Elizabeth exchanged impressed looks. The Council certainly took security seriously, which was a darn good thing when you were dealing with something as powerful and potentially dangerous as time travel.

Once the scan was over, Travers stood back and the complex series of gears in the middle of their door began to spin and grind against each other. Like layers of an onion, they peeled away, each disappearing inside the wall creating a hole about two feet in diameter. Finally, the gears stopped and the doors slid open. The only thing that was missing, Elizabeth thought, was the Star Trek whoosh.

“This is our highest security area,” Travers said as he stepped through the opening. “You’re the only civilians to set foot inside.”

“As impressive as all this is,” Simon said as they walked down a long corridor, “you said you’d take us to Katherine Vale.”

“And so I have.” Travers knocked on an unmarked door. “Travers.”

The door opened and another bulky man in a suit answered.
 

“You can wait outside,” Travers said to him.

The man nodded once and then stepped aside.

Travers held out his arm, gesturing for them to go in.
 

“After you,” Simon said pointedly. He was not about to go anywhere without Travers in grabbing distance. Travers went in and they followed.
 

The room was nondescript. It had a few chairs, a desk scattered with papers and filing cabinets covered most of the far wall except for another doorway. The other wall, Elizabeth realized once she was inside, was all glass, but it was dark and smoky, a deep midnight blue.
 

“Well?” Simon did little to hide his impatience.

Travers pressed a button and the smoky glass cleared, revealing an adjacent room with nothing but a table, a chair and Katherine Vale.

~~~

Simon took an involuntary step forward; his heart raced at the sight of her. He heard Elizabeth let out a breath next to him and he glanced over at her and they shared an uneasy smile.

This woman, this evil woman who’d haunted his nightmares for the last two weeks was here, and judging from the manacles around her wrists, their prisoner. She seemed wholly unaware of their presence on the other side of the glass. She hadn’t given any indication she’d seen them, confirming his suspicion that this was some sort of one-way mirror.

Simon stepped a bit closer to study her. She looked a far cry from the woman he’d last seen in the catacombs of Egypt. Her wild expression was neutral now, almost bored. The blood-red ceremonial robes she’d worn were replaced with sky blue surgical scrubs. The manic energy she’d exuded was completely gone.
 

To all the world, she looked well captured. They should be safe from her, but Simon didn’t feel the relief he’d expected. Seeing her again sent a chill through him he could not shake nor explain.
 

“How?” he asked, never taking his eyes off her.

“We traced her watch,” Travers said.

Simon turned to face him and took a threatening step forward. “You what? You turned on the tracking device again?”
 

Good God, Simon thought as he looked back at Vale, she could have found them so easily.

“Yes,” Travers said apologetically. “After we learned what happened in Egypt, and the incident here—”

“What
incident
?”

“She killed two men in the records office,” a voice behind him said in a mild French accent.
 

Simon spun around to see a tall man, at least his own height, with broad sloping shoulders, leaning against the wall near the door along the back of the room. When had he come in?

“Who the hell are you?” Simon demanded.

“This is Victor Renaud,” Travers said. “Victor, this is—”

The man waved his hand in dismissal. “I know who they are.”

And, judging from the sour look on his hawk-nosed face, he was unimpressed.

Travers ignored the slight. “He’s the one you can thank for capturing Katherine Vale.”

“Thank you for that,” Elizabeth said. “A lot.”

Simon nodded his agreement. “We’re in your debt.”

Renaud grunted in acknowledgment with patented French smugness, as he pushed himself off the wall and walked toward the glass. Simon waited for something more, but nothing came.