Refuge in Time

by Sarah Woodbury

  “As much as they knew.” Sophie let out a breath. “Michael thinks we were followed from Llanberis.”

  “He told me.” Chad grimaced. “I should have had Livia ditch her phone and given her one of ours.”

  “She might not have agreed. She kept calling her boss’s line, and nobody answered.”

  “Of all the things I’ve heard tonight, that could be the most disturbing, and that’s saying something, considering what’s happened.” He glanced at her. “And considering what you fear of me.”

  “We did conclude our tail wasn’t one of yours,” Sophie admitted. “It could have just been the press.”

  “How would a reporter know anything at all about the flash?”

  “She wouldn’t have to. She could have followed Michael and Livia from the warehouse in the first place. If I were an investigative reporter, that’s what I would have done.”

  “None of us thought of that.” Chad relaxed more into his seat. “I missed you.”

  He was ridiculously sincere, and as she studied his face, trying to decide if she could trust him, it occurred to her that she didn’t have to decide anything of the sort. She could keep Cade safe and distract whoever had followed them, but use Chad’s resources to do so. She pressed the button to start the vehicle.

  “Are we going somewhere?”

  “The longer Cade and I stay at the warehouse, the more likely we are to be discovered. They’ve questioned you already, right?”

  “Yes.” He snorted his disgust.

  “So you can leave?”

  “I suppose I can.” His voice strengthened. “I suppose I want to. You can bet if people I consider allies are questioning my motives, then my enemies are too. I want to have a fleet of lawyers between me and MI-5 or WECTU or whoever the hell is in charge here if that starts happening again.”

  She told him her plan and reached for Livia’s pink raincoat, which she’d left on the back seat. “Give your female decoy this.”

  He took the coat and got out of the car. They were both paranoid enough by now not to willingly discuss any plan over comms. Once outside, Chad gathered the members of his team to him, with the exception of Michael, who was still in the warehouse.

  Then he returned to the SUV. “Joe and Mali will stay behind for Michael and Livia. I’ve left a van for them.”

  Sophie was backed out of her parking space before he finished speaking. She pulled the SUV into formation behind Chad’s limousine and another SUV, identical to the one Sophie was driving. It was driven by two of Chad’s people who were closest in appearance to Michael and Livia, with the female agent wearing Livia’s pink raincoat. The lane between them and the exit to the car park was still clogged with emergency vehicles and press vans, however, so they were at a crawl.

  Sophie glanced at Chad. “Maybe you should sit in the back with Cade.”

  Chad laughed. “Reporters think I haven’t driven my own vehicle in ten years. It’s all about the back seat of that limo. As soon as it heads east, nobody is going to look twice at us.”

  “Do we have enough support at the compound? This only works if we can keep Cade safe there.”

  “I pulled security teams from my other properties two days ago. And while it doesn’t yet have the sophisticated security system I built into my castle at Chalfont St. Giles, it is my personal property now, since I bought it outright this morning. I can keep everyone I don’t want near me out of it.”

  The three vehicles were waved through the exit and picked up speed as they left the warehouse behind, though Sophie kept checking behind them to see if they were being followed. They didn’t appear to be. Chad was tapping his fingers on the arm rest. She glanced at him and returned to her conversation from earlier. “What were you going to do about my parents if I was gone for months or—or years? Andre and George are still gone.”

  “I figured we’d cross that bridge when we came to it. I told the world about David and his family to protect them. I didn’t tell anyone about what happened to you, George, and Andre for the same reason.”

  Sophie loosened her tight hold on the steering wheel. “Thank you. Really. What worried me most the whole time I was gone was how my parents would be freaking out. I’m glad now I worried for no reason.”

  “The fact that you and Cade arrived here in the same split-second David and William departed is a miraculous piece of luck of which I am going to willfully take advantage.”

  “Luck?” Sophie found herself actually able to laugh. “Coincidence? We surely can’t believe in those anymore.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  3 April 2022

  Michael

  The rain had abated somewhat, so the fact that Michael had forgotten the umbrella in the car was less important. Livia didn’t seem to mind the wet either as she strode beside him, still in her black raincoat, which she’d worn underneath the larger pink one. When Michael had driven into the car park, the WECTU agent had directed him to park in a spot closer to the car park’s entrance than the one his vehicle had occupied earlier, so they hadn’t been able to see the north-facing door until they rounded the corner of the warehouse.

  “There’s Bard.” Livia pointed ahead. The lead agent stood just under the shelter of the warehouse’s overhanging roof, gesticulating broadly but not speaking loud enough for Michael to hear from this distance.

  Earlier, everyone had been going in and out of a regular door beside a much larger one designed to be rolled up and down when necessary to admit vehicles into the warehouse. The larger door was now fully rolled up, and a black WECTU personnel vehicle was backed in with its nose jutting into the car park. Even so, it didn’t take up all the available space, and there was enough room beside the vehicle for a steady stream of people to be moving in and out of the warehouse.

  Livia and Michael approached together, and once Bard spotted them, he waved them closer. “Good. I need to talk to you.”

  But he meant he needed to talk to Livia, which became clear immediately as Bard edged between her and Michael in a blatant attempt to shut him out of their conversation. Michael chose not to be offended. He would have wanted to talk only to Livia too. Thus, he nodded at Bard, who nodded gravely back (in a manly way, Michael could hear David saying), and then he walked with purpose towards the security office.

  He did glance back once, catching Livia’s eye for a heartbeat. She herself nodded almost imperceptibly, and then refocused on Bard. She had a way of holding her expression nearly still to hide whatever she was feeling or thinking. Michael was starting to read her a little bit, though, and the pinching at the corners of her eyes and the occasional sniffs told him she was annoyed—though not with him.

  In the nearly two hours Michael and Livia had been gone, the personnel in the warehouse had sorted themselves out a bit more. The ambulances for the two lighting technicians were long gone, but the forensics specialists remained hard at work. Michael had seen enough police procedurals on the telly to realize that picking up every fiber in the warehouse to identify the evidence left by the shooters was an impossible task, but it looked as if WECTU was going to attempt it anyway.

  In truth, their efficient single-mindedness gave him some confidence that he could trust the agency with the security of his country. Of all the organizations that could be involved, he didn’t see that WECTU, a consortium of four Welsh police forces and security agencies, were behind the shooters. And if they were, they had been doing a fantastic job of keeping a low profile up until now.

  He reached the security office just as a harried-looking woman of Asian descent, who was a good fifteen years older than he, exited it. She didn’t give him a real look, her eyes sliding past him to where Livia stood with Bard. Then her steps quickened. He felt a moment’s pang of guilt for abandoning Livia, but suppressed it. She was MI-5, and he truly did trust that she knew what she was doing. Actually, he would have trusted her with a lot more than that.

  Michael caught the door before it closed and entered the office to find thi
ngs had changed here too since he’d last been inside. Two hours after the shooting, three techs he didn’t know sat before the monitors, though they appeared to be looking at the same feeds Candy had shown him and Livia earlier.

  “Where’s Candy?” he said in his best commanding voice.

  The techs didn’t appear impressed, but the one who sat farthest to the left waved a hand in the direction of an adjacent office, to which it appeared Candy had been relegated. Michael poked his nose inside to find her hunched over a laptop instead of a keyboard, with no monitors in front of her.

  “Hi.” He entered the room fully.

  She looked up. “Close the door!” Her voice came in a harsh whisper, and she accompanied her command with a flap of her hand.

  He obeyed, somewhat amused by her urgency. If anything, the wad of gum in her mouth was larger than before. But amusement turned to concern when she flipped her laptop around to show him her screen. “What do you make of that? Our boss isn’t being entirely truthful.”

  He was surprised both by her candidness and by what he saw. She’d frozen two moments of video and placed them side by side as single images. One showed Chad speaking to a man wearing a dark suit and sunglasses and carrying a large black case. The poor quality of the light in the image indicated it had been taken outside in the car park not long before the interview had started. The second image showed Chad standing on the stage looking up with evident interest towards the light array. A corner of the picture was taken up by Michael’s shoulder and arm, indicating it was moments before the bullets had started flying.

  “Who’s the man Chad’s speaking to?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t found him in any image after this one.”

  “Can you send the images to my phone?”

  Candy set to work on her computer.

  “Have you shown these to anyone else?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Not Dennis?”

  “He left once those WECTU dudes elbowed him out, but not before I got myself a backdoor into the system. I don’t think Dennis likes me, but he likes how I work.”

  “You mean you still have access to the feeds?”

  She gave him a pleased smile and waggled her head. “I downloaded these particular videos before those bozos showed up. They were a little slow on the uptake. Plus—” she tossed her head, “—they took one look at my hair and my gender and dismissed me.”

  “Sometimes it isn’t a bad thing to be underestimated,” Michael said.

  She eyed him for a second before returning her attention to her screen. “Chad didn’t. He trusted me, and I trusted him.” Hurt crept into her voice. “Find out what’s going on.”

  “I’m interested you trust me with this.”

  This time, the look she shot him was more piercing. “You must be something special to show up out of the blue and get hired on the spot. David trusted you with his life. But you’ve worked for Chad for only three days. I’d say your loyalty is to David, not Chad, which means you are the best one here to get to the bottom of this.”

  Michael was touched. “I will do my best.”

  “If Chad did this, I’m going to nail him to the wall.” She looked up, her attention fully on Michael again. “But if he didn’t, if there’s a reasonable explanation for those pictures, I want to know it before I expose him.”

  Michael’s eyes turned thoughtful. “Do you need to sit here to work?”

  “No. I have my hotspot with me.”

  “Then let’s get you out of here before someone starts asking questions we don’t want to answer."

  Candy immediately saw the sense in that, saved what she was doing, and closed her laptop, tucking it, along with the rest of her gear, into a soft dark purple briefcase. Then she headed for the door. As they passed the techs who’d taken her place in front of the monitors, Michael sensed that, had he not been with her, she might have said something obnoxious and/or obscene on her way by. She rolled her eyes at Michael instead, and they exited the office without incident.

  For her part, Livia was still talking to Bard, whose body posture indicated he was anxious about something. As Michael approached, Bard twitched away from Livia to speak to one of the technicians coming from the stage. As his back turned, Livia widened her eyes in an exaggerated fashion and then walked towards Michael, meeting him halfway across the floor. “I’m glad you’re back. I was trying to keep Bard occupied until you came out again.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  She made a noncommittal motion with her head and shoulders that wasn’t quite a shrug. “You work for Chad Treadman. You may not have noticed, but you and Candy are the only people left inside the warehouse who do. I thought I’d try to delay the moment anyone questioned your presence.”

  “Well ... thanks,” he said, finding himself speechless for the second time in as many minutes. “Candy has something to show us—”

  But he didn’t finish his sentence because his attention was drawn by a WECTU agent dashing into the warehouse at a flat run. Once inside, she pulled up and walked with sedate haste towards Bard.

  “Sir.” Her eyes skated to Livia and Michael and then back to Bard. “We ... we have something.” Again her eyes went to Livia and Michael, and she was clearly nervous about telling Bard anything in front of either of them.

  Bard was missing the cues, however—either that, or he didn’t care. “Just tell me.”

  “We found the missing Security Service agents.”

  “Where?” Livia took three steps forward, and Michael followed.

  The agent looked questioningly at Bard, who motioned she should continue. “They were tied up in a van parked in a layby three-quarters of a mile from here.”

  “Dead?” They were all tired, but Livia’s face was suddenly ashen.

  “Alive but unconscious, just like the light technicians. We haven’t been able to wake them. Our medic is on his way.”

  Livia pulled out her phone. “I need to call this in.”

  But Bard put out a hand. “I have spoken with my director, and he has asked that any communication with MI-5 comes through him directly.”

  “Does he know I’m on scene?”

  “He does. Grant Dempsey is on his way here from London, as is my director.”

  Livia visibly ground her teeth, but she subsided. She was used to the chain of command as, Michael supposed, they all were, barring, perhaps, Candy.

  “How are the light technicians?” Michael asked, partly as a distraction and partly out of professional curiosity.

  “They’ve woken up, but they remember nothing,” Bard said.

  “Nothing at all?”

  “They noted movement behind them before they were subdued. One thought he saw a man wearing a balaclava, but neither can tell us more than that.”

  “Our batmen were quick and efficient,” Candy muttered from behind Michael.

  Bard’s jaw was tight as he turned back to his underling. “How did you find the two agents?”

  “We were doing a sweep of the surrounding neighborhoods, just like you ordered.”

  “I should be there.” Bard headed for a WECTU vehicle, parked just outside the warehouse.

  “What did you and Bard talk about?” Michael said in an undertone to Livia as they returned to the car park too. The rain had completely stopped, and there seemed to be fewer vehicles present. Security remained extensive, of course, and the forensic specialists would be here all night, but because nobody had died, the level of intensity was less than if it had been a scene of carnage.

  “I didn’t tell him about Cade, if that’s what you’re asking. As he said, he’s reporting his findings to his head, who’s on his way from Cardiff. As far as Bard is concerned, everything is completely copacetic, barring David’s disappearance, of course.”

  Copacetic wasn’t a word Michael had ever heard in regular conversation, but he knew what it meant.

  “What about you?” Livia continued. “Why is Candy with us? You said she found
something?”

  “We have some hard questions for Chad.” And Michael showed her the images Candy had sent to his phone.

  Livia gave them a long look and then shook her head. “I’m usually better with people than this.”

  “We aren’t hanging him yet,” Candy said.

  They picked up the pace, heading back to their vehicle, but as they rounded the corner of the warehouse, Livia pulled up short. “Where’s our car?”

  “Cade was still in it.” Michael took a few steps forward, panic rising in his chest, but then Mali stepped out from behind a black van that also belonged to Treadman Global, and waved a hand. They hurried to her.

  “What happened?” Michael asked as they stopped in front of her.

  “Chad and Sophie went back to the house to put Cade to bed. The car park felt too exposed anyway.” And as Mali gestured them into the back of the van, holding the handle of the sliding door, she explained about the decoy cars.

  Livia balked. “I need to get my car.”

  They all looked to where it was parked. Unfortunately, it was boxed in by a fire engine and a panda car.

  “We’ll send someone back for it in the morning,” Mali said. “Better to leave now as a team.”

  Livia pressed her lips together, but she did as Mali asked. Joe was already in the driver’s seat with the engine running, waiting for them to get settled and belted.

  “Did they make it to the house?” Livia leaned forward. “Did anybody see them?”

  Mali herself sat in the front passenger seat and twisted to look at the three of them, lined up as they were on the second row bench seat. “They made it, and they weren’t followed.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  3 April 2022

  Livia

  Returning to the compound felt surprisingly like coming home. And, as with the vehicle carrying Cade, if anyone had followed them, they kept their distance enough not to be noticeable. Once at the front gate, Joe held his ID before the camera, at which point one of Reg’s people walked down the driveway. As the gate opened, he waved the vehicle through and then moved to the rear to act as a guard until the car was safely up the drive. Then he slipped back inside the compound as the gate closed. Two more armed guards were stationed on a platform at the top of the wall, in a manner not unlike patrolling the wall-walk of a castle. Chad was taking security very seriously.