Text copyright © 2019 by Carolyn O’Doherty
All rights reserved.
Copying or digitizing this book for storage, display, or distribution in any other medium is strictly prohibited.
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact [email protected].
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Boyds Mills Press
An Imprint of Boyds Mills & Kane
boydsmillspress.com
Hardcover ISBN 9781629798158
Ebook ISBN 9781684378975
LCCN: 2019950721
First edition
a_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter: 01
Chapter: 02
Chapter: 03
Chapter: 04
Chapter: 05
Chapter: 06
Chapter: 07
Chapter: 08
Chapter: 09
Chapter: 10
Chapter: 11
Chapter: 12
Chapter: 13
Chapter: 14
Chapter: 15
Chapter: 16
Chapter: 17
Chapter: 18
Chapter: 19
Chapter: 20
Chapter: 21
Chapter: 22
Chapter: 23
Chapter: 24
Chapter: 25
Chapter: 26
Acknowledgments
About the Author
To my mother, who always believed I would write a book one day
01 CARSON ROSS
CARSON ROSS STUDIES THE BODY CRUMPLED IN THE corner of the basement: white female, mid-twenties, brown-haired, wearing jeans and a grimy T-shirt with Just Do It…Later printed on the front. Blood pools on the floor around her head in a sticky lake. She has contusions on her cheek, a sizable gash on her right temple, and lacerations on her face and arms, the latter presumably from the broken window through which she’s most likely been shoved. The woman’s head is twisted back at a sharp angle, as if she’s looking over her shoulder to see who caused her fall. Despite the gruesomeness of her condition, she’s noticeably pretty.
She’s also noticeably dead.
“The office manager found her an hour ago,” says the deputy hovering at Ross’s elbow. His eyes are bright, and his acne-flecked cheeks are flushed with eagerness. Ross’s jaw twitches. It should be the coroner giving him this background, or at least a senior officer. Saddling him with a kid barely out of the academy is typical of the department’s lack of respect for time agents.
“The printer ran out of toner,” the deputy continues, “and he came down to the basement to get a fresh cartridge.” The deputy shuffles a little closer. “Do you think it could be a Sikes killing? Chief said he always places his victims in a spot where they can’t be found until it’s too late to rewind the crime.”
There is no way this is a Sikes killing. After chasing the elusive thief/murderer for six years, Ross knows his MO better than anyone, and this death does not fit the pattern. Sikes uses more failsafe methods to kill his victims than a bash on the head: a slashed throat, a well-placed bullet. He’s also too smart to rely on chance, and the basement of an active business is hardly the kind of place one can count on to be empty of people for the seventy-two-hour time frame beyond which most rewinds can’t be sustained. Not that Ross is going to tell the deputy that, or anyone else for that matter. The clues that led him to uncover Sikes’s real identity are Ross’s secrets, ones that, for now, he intends to keep locked up tight. Sikes’s arrest will be a bombshell, and Ross has every intention of saving that revelation for the perfect moment—the one that is most likely to advance his career.
Ross pats the eager deputy on the shoulder, using the movement to put some space between them.
“It could be Sikes.” He flashes the kid his trademark smile, the charming one that shows all his teeth. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
The deputy stares at Ross with the kind of openmouthed wonder usually reserved for movie stars. Ross’s smile widens to dazzling. This deputy isn’t a bad kid, really. Even though this isn’t a Sikes crime, it will be satisfying to show a new recruit the ease with which a seasoned time agent can solve a murder.
Ross turns and beckons to the spinner who’s waiting by the concrete stairs on the other side of the room, her face carefully averted from the twisted corpse. She’s a delicate-looking teenager, with long dark hair falling over the shoulders of her regulation maroon Crime Investigation Center shirt. Ross struggles for a second to remember her name—Cookie? Yummy? Oh, right.
“Yuki,” he calls. “Will you come join us?”
“Yes, sir.” The girl sidles over, managing to approach without actually looking at the crime scene.
Ross quashes a sigh. Alex, his former spinner, was never squeamish. Plus, he’s told Yuki three times she should call him Mr. Ross. She’s not going to be of any use to him if the two of them don’t bond, and no one bonds with people they call sir.
Yuki stops in front of him and holds out her left arm. The metal band clasping her wrist gleams dully under the single overhead bulb.
“What’s that?” the deputy asks.
“It’s called a leash.” Ross pulls a key from his pocket and unlocks the three-inch-wide bracelet. “Spinners wear them whenever they leave the Center. It emits electromagnetic waves that prevent them from accessing time.”
The leash falls away and the deputy backs up a few steps—a ridiculous precaution. What threat does this kid think a little girl like Yuki could possibly pose? The propaganda built up over the centuries to make people fear spinners was as illogical as it was effective.
Ross leans toward Yuki, speaking to her with both gentleness and respect.
“Are you ready to freeze time?”
Instead of answering, the girl places two fingers on the back of Ross’s hand with a touch as light as a butterfly’s. She takes a deep breath, gathering herself for what appears to be a great effort, and closes her eyes. The hush of the basement solidifies into absolute silence. The doe-eyed wonder on the deputy’s face transforms into an unmoving mask. The faint breeze from the building’s upper floor vanishes. Light dims as the bulb’s rays are stopped dead in their tracks. Every thing and everyone freezes as this single moment of time locks into place.
Almost everyone.
“Nicely done,” Ross says.
“Thanks.” Yuki removes her fingers from his skin and starts fiddling with a stack of red plastic bracelets that circle her right arm. The clacking they make in the frozen silence is harsh.
“Can you start the rewind?” If this were Alex, Ross wouldn’t have to ask.
Yuki closes her eyes again. Ross waits. And waits. The only reason he doesn’t tap his foot is fear of breaking her concentration, which, judging from the deep line in her forehead, is taking all her energy to maintain.
After months of working with Alex, Ross has forgotten how rocky other spinners’ rewinds are. When Alex rewound time, the images were pale but crystal clear. Yuki’s efforts, once they finally begin, are smudged and hazy. Ross watches as what looks like a film starring blurry ghosts spools out everything they’ve just done in reverse—his shadowy replica bending to speak to Yuki, his hand reclaspin
g the leash on her arm. A faint rendition of the deputy moves forward. The Yuki of one minute ago detaches herself from the real girl and drifts backward toward the steps. Sound follows the ghostly images: words, all played in reverse, create incoherent gibberish, mingling with the ambient noises also being replayed backward—traffic passing outside the building, the faint hum of electricity. Ross massages his temple. He always forgets to bring earplugs to block out the irritating jumble.
The rewind lurches, the speed of the passing minutes rising and slowing in random bursts. A handful of shadowy officers back down the stairs, their wavering outlines passing right through Ross as they move toward the body. Radios squawk meaningless noise. Cameras flash and then click. Notes disappear from pads.
Ross prods the body with one toe. Alex once told him that rewinding time felt like reeling in strands of invisible silk. Yuki seems to be hauling in a massive fishing net, one that’s slippery and heavy with knots.
“How are things at the Center?” Ross asks, when the pace of the rewind finally settles into something resembling a rhythm.
“What?” Yuki’s eyes fly open. The rewind stutters, and she just manages to catch hold of it before it stops altogether.
“The Crime Investigation Center,” Ross says. “It must be a bit tense there these days.”
The look she gives him is as blank as the corpse’s.
“I just meant it must be hard to have four spinners disappear overnight like that,” Ross amends.
“They didn’t disappear,” Yuki says. “Dr. Barnard told us they got sick.”
Ross studies the girl’s expressionless face. The Center’s director has a reputation for scientific brilliance, but his interpersonal skills are hardly warm and fuzzy. Does Yuki really believe the story Dr. Barnard told them? Spinners are raised with the lie that time sickness can strike its lethal blow at any moment, but losing four on the same day is extreme. Wouldn’t Yuki have heard rumors? From what Ross has been able to discover, Alex and her friends escaped in the middle of the afternoon. Surely someone saw something odd.
“It just seems strange so many kids got sick all at once,” Ross suggests.
Yuki looks confused. Stupid child. Ross turns back to the body. A man who must be the office manager lets out an eerie scream before leaning over the victim to check her condition. Ross tips his head to better see the man’s face. It’s startlingly unclear. He sighs. It’s going to be a real pain when the killer shows up and has to be identified from these bits of mist.
“Can you speed up the rewind?” he asks Yuki.
It’s hard to tell if she succeeds. The basement’s few windows are blocked by a line of ornamental shrubs, so clues to measure the passage of time are sparse—no duplicated sun spinning through the frozen sky, no rush of cars or passing pedestrians. Ross jingles the change in his pocket. The instant in time that he and Yuki occupy expands by some immeasurable amount. The past spools out around them, tedious and unchangeable. Ross yawns. He picks out a quarter from the rattling coins and traces the shape of the face detailed on its surface.
“What do you think happened to the victim?” he asks Yuki.
She shrugs. Her gaze is unfocused and sweat beads along her upper lip.
Ross turns the quarter in his hand. “Any thoughts about who might have done this?”
Yuki’s eyes flick over the body, and then away again, as fast as if they had been stung.
“Isn’t that why we’re doing the rewind?” she asks.
“Right.”
Ross takes his hands from his pockets and walks over to sit on the stairs. He misses Alex. She was a perfect spinner, especially once her true skills had emerged. Alex cared about solving crime, and she listened to all his theories with such seriousness. She was particularly devoted to the Sikes case—even more so once she learned that Ross’s former police partner, Sal, had been one of Sikes’s victims. Ross sighs. Life is so unfair. He’d been smart enough to find a great police partner and then a great spinner and both of them had been snatched away from him.
Ross studies the step beneath his feet and sees a crack running through the gray concrete. It’s narrow, but deep—the kind of flaw that over time can lead the entire staircase to fail. He puts his foot over the miniature chasm. He made a mistake with Alex; he can see that now. He should have kept her from seeing him kill Austin Shea. He thought she would understand that since Shea worked with Sal’s killer, his punishment was deserved, but the girl’s idealism, so helpful in some ways, turned out to be an unexpected weakness.
Ross rubs his foot over the crack, feeling the slight bump it makes beneath his shoe. The whole situation is horrendously unfair. One tiny mistake and the plan he’d spent years painstakingly stitching together unraveled in an instant. What really stings is Alex’s lack of gratitude. Before he became her agent, she was just a dying child forced to perform time tricks for a police force that barely tolerated her. It was he who gave her purpose; he who took her off the drug, Aclisote, so her real powers would emerge; and he who presented her with the truth. It was outright selfish of her to take all those gifts and use them for herself.
Something flashes in the corner of his eye. Ross looks up and sees the misty shape of a tumbling body rising up to the gaping window. It’s moving so fast he misses the moment it passes through the glass.
“Stop the rewind!” he shouts.
Yuki, who has been staring off in the opposite direction, jumps.
“Hold time right there,” he tells her.
Ross races up the stairs and out the building’s main door. The air outside feels heavy, the dark of a rewound night layered like fog over the morning’s natural light. Ross ducks under a band of yellow crime-scene tape blocking the entrance and makes his way to the side of the building. Plants mask the broken window, though right now, shadowy images of them are yanked to one side. The victim’s body rests on the ground in the gap between them. Her face is still battered, but the slashes to her flesh have not yet occurred. Beside her kneels a man, his hands gripping her shoulders as he prepares to ram her body through the window’s shattered glass.
The guy definitely isn’t Sikes. Sikes—real name Matt Thompson—is an average-height, middle-aged white male. This killer, while also male and white, looks nothing like him. Ross steps closer, scrutinizing the blurred face. Young, he thinks, though he’s basing this more on the man’s outfit than any identifiable features: baggy jeans, dark hoodie, shaved head, and a pair of those rings in his earlobes that open a hole wide enough that Ross is pretty sure he could fit his quarter through it. The guy’s clothes—like his victim’s—are cheap and worn. Ross’s nose wrinkles in disgust. These two are not going to turn out to be some of Portland’s finer citizens.
Ross walks a quick but thorough circuit of the surrounding area, searching for any other potential suspects. The building is on a corner lot, and the street in both directions is clear of any remembered visitors, as is the parking lot at the back of the building. The only possibly suspicious item is a rusty metal pipe behind the dumpster, which Ross carries back in case it proves important.
“Keep rewinding,” he calls down to Yuki when he returns to the broken window, “but do it slowly.”
Time shifts backward again, setting the scene in motion. Even accounting for the awkwardness of watching someone in reverse, the killer’s movements are clumsy. Perhaps he’s distraught. The man pulls the body away from the window. When it’s clear of the surrounding greenery, the woman’s head and shoulders abruptly leap into his arms—a drop in reverse. The killer drags her across the lawn, an action that looks particularly strange since he’s leaning away from the body in counterbalance as he appears to move forward. When he’s ten feet from the building, he turns and lowers her to the ground. He remains on his knees beside her, hands wrapped over his bald pate as he rocks back and forth, emitting a strange, high-pitched wail.
Ross lowers himsel
f so he’s next to the pair and studies the ground around her head. Just beside the gash on her temple is an area of tamped-down grass and dirt. Superimposed over this is the ghostly image of a sharp rock, the top corner of which is partially embedded in the woman’s head. So much for his pipe theory. Ross runs his fingers through the disturbed earth. It’s wet from last night’s rain, but there’s no rock. Distraught as the killer seems now, he must have had the wherewithal to get rid of the cause of death, plus some luck, since the rain has erased his bloody trail.
The rewind flickers, and the movements grind to a halt. Ross drops the meaningless pipe and gets to his feet.
“You doing OK, Yuki?” he calls.
“Yes, sir,” she answers, though her voice is faint, and Ross would bet money it’s more from strain than distance. He suppresses a sigh.
“Just a couple more minutes. Keep rewinding.”
There’s a pause before the scene grinds back into motion. It’s moving faster now, with Yuki presumably rushing to cover some ground before she loses her hold. Ross feels another pang of loss. This whole business was much more pleasant with Alex.
The killer lurches to his feet. The woman on the ground twitches, then follows the same trajectory, rising in a quick surge to collide with the solid mass of the man’s fist. Ross dusts his palms against the front of his pants. Involuntary manslaughter, ten to sixteen months in prison. It’s hardly even worth convicting.
The ghostly couple engages in an exchange of violence. His fist bursts away from her face; her nails remove gouges in his cheek. The air is rent with angry squeals that even in their muted form are clearly shouts. Ross can’t make any sense of the words, but given that no object of value ever emerges, the disagreement is almost assuredly interpersonal. Jealousy. A loan gone bad. Broken promises.
Ross snatches the pipe off the ground and hurls it at one of the building’s upper windows. There’s a deafening crash and glass rains down in a glittering shower. The rewind abruptly halts, but Ross doesn’t care. He’s seen enough. What a waste of his talents. He is worth so much more than rewinding grubby murders of irrelevant people. Ross glares at the glass’s cruel edges. When he was a kid, his favorite movies were the ones about men who took justice into their own hands and never worried about collateral damage. These were his heroes, and it was how he envisioned police work. The real job proved disappointing, a tedious mess of rules and paperwork that turned justice into a mismanaged bureaucracy that set criminals free and gave victims no resolution. A lesser man might have become disillusioned, but not Ross. He paired up with the brilliant Salvador Rodriguez, and together the two of them fought through the bureaucratic haze to achieve an impressive arrest record. After Sal’s murder, when the police chief pulled him off the Sikes case and reassigned him to the unpopular time squad so he could “recover,” Ross used his own intelligence to unearth the true potential of the spinners. With their skills under his control, he would be able to finally fulfill his childhood dream: Carson Ross, defender of right, by any means necessary.
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