“Can’t be here next week,” Maybrick added, pulling on clean clothes Lachley had laid out for him. “But we will kill the other dirty whores, won’t we? You’ll let me rip them?”
“Yes, yes!” Lachley snapped. “When can you be back, dammit? I’m tired of waiting for you! This business is urgent, Maybrick, dammed urgent! You’d bloody well better be here the first day you can get away!”
Maybrick drew on his overcoat, left behind earlier. “Saturday the 29th,” Maybrick replied easily. “You have my medicine ready?”
Lachley thrust the stoppered bottle into Maybrick’s hand and watched narrowly as he drank it down. The potent mixture which allowed Lachley to place his patients into such a deep trance was even more critical with this patient, giving Lachley the means by which to accomplish his murderous ends without being mentioned in Maybrick’s written record of his deeds. “Lie down on that bench,” Lachley said impatiently when Maybrick had finished it all.
The cotton merchant slid up onto Lachley’s long work bench and lay back with a smile, clearly pleased with the night’s work and equally clearly looking forward to another two repeat performances of the evening’s fun. Lachley stared down at the insane insect and loathed him so intensely, he had to clench his fists to keep from closing his hands around the man’s throat and crushing the life from him, as he’d crushed it from Annie Chapman. Maybrick’s eyelids gradually grew heavy and sank closed.
Lachley took Maybrick through the standard routine to bring about trance, went through the litany designed to abate his physical complaints, then repeated his injunction against ever mentioning or even hinting that Lachley existed when he wrote out his diary entries. “You will wake naturally in several hours, feeling refreshed and strong,” Lachley told the drugged murderer. “You will leave this place and go to Liverpool Street Station and take the train for home. You will remember nothing of your visits to Dr. John Lachley, nothing except that he is helping you with your illness. You will not mention Dr. Lachley to anyone you know, not even members of your family. You will remember nothing about this room until the twenty-ninth of September, when you will receive a telegram from your physician informing you of an appointment. You will then come here and meet me in this room and we will kill more whores and you will enjoy it immensely. You will write of your enjoyment in your diary, but you will mention nothing about your London physician or the help I give you. In your diary, you will write of how pleasurable it was to rip your whores, how much you look forward to ripping more of them . . .”
Maybrick, lying there in a drugged stupor, smiled.
Maniacal bastard.
Lachley flexed his hands, clenching them into fists and glared down at the pathetic creature on his work table. I’ll personally certify your death after they’ve hung you on the gallows. It can’t be too soon, either, damn your eyes.
Two bloody weeks . . . and two more dirty whores to be killed. Preferably, in one night. If he didn’t destroy them both on the same night, God alone knew how long it would be before Maybrick could tear himself away from business and family in Liverpool and return to finish this up. Yes, they would have to die on the same night, next time. Bloody hell . . . and they would have constables crawling like roaches through these streets, by then.
But it had got to be done, regardless, too much depended on it. All told, it was enough to drive a sane man into an asylum.
* * *
The message arrived on Gideon Guthrie’s computer via e-mail.
Trouble brewing, TT-86. Targets have escaped via two separate gates, Denver and London. Senator Caddrick has departed for terminal with entourage, vowing to close station. Please advise your intentions.
It had been relayed through so many servers, rerouted across so many continents, tracing it back to the original sender would have stymied the efforts even of the CIA and Interpol. When Gideon read Cyril Barris’ message, he swore explosively. That goddamned, grandstanding idiot! He’d told Caddrick, dammit, to stay out of this! Did the jackass really want to end up in prison?
He sent a reply: Will handle personally. Do nothing. Timetable still on schedule.
Then he deleted the original message from his hard drive and blistered the air with another savage curse. Goddammit! With Caddrick on the warpath, Gideon would have to go there, himself, clean up this whole God-cursed mess the hard way. Time Terminal Eighty-Six . . .
Gideon Guthrie swore viciously and tapped keys on his computer, opening the program which allowed him to make airline reservations. Just as with the e-mail message and its multitude of rerouting server connections, his request for airline tickets hopped the globe before reaching the airlines reservations computer. He typed in the requisite identification information, then calmly assumed the identity of Mr. Sid Kaederman, the name he’d given Caddrick to use as the “detective” hired to trace his missing kid.
Damn that girl! She was a twenty-year-old, wet-behind-the-ears rich man’s brat, with her head stuck in a bunch of history books. Even her boyfriend had played dress-up cowboy, for God’s sake, when he hadn’t been cozying up to Jenna’s film-making friends. But the little bitch had slipped right through their fingers, thanks to Noah Armstrong, and now Caddrick had gone ballistic. The suicidal idiot! Trying to play to the press and gain voter sympathy, when the very last thing they needed was Caddrick on any warpath.
Once again, Caddrick had failed to use the few brains God had given him, leaving Gideon no choice but to wade in and try to salvage the mess. Therefore, Mr. Sid Kaederman, detective with the world-famous, globe-spanning Wardmann Wolfe agency, would be taking an unplanned time tour. Gideon’s lips twisted in a sardonic smile at the notion of posing as a detective from Noah Armstrong’s own agency. But he did not find the idea of taking a time tour amusing. He was a fastidious man by nature, fond of his creature comforts, of up-time luxuries. He hadn’t done real fieldwork in fifteen years and had vowed never to set foot down a time touring gate, where filth and disease and accident could rob him of everything he’d built over his career.
God, time touring!
The only question was, which of Shangri-La Station’s gates would Mr. Sid Kaederman be touring? Which one, exactly, had Jenna Caddrick disappeared down, and which had Ianira Cassondra and her family gone through? Denver? Or London?
He intended to find out.
With that promise to himself foremost in his mind, Gideon Guthrie started reviewing methods by which he would slowly dismember Ms. Jenna Nicole Caddrick, and began packing his luggage. He was still reviewing delightfully bloodthirsty methods, up to the ninety-ninth and counting, when he snatched up a pre-prepared portfolio with Sid Kaederman’s identification, medical records, and credit cards, and headed grimly out the door.
Chapter Fifteen
Skeeter knew they didn’t have much time. The men who’d kidnapped Bergitta would kill her if they weren’t stopped, and stopped fast. Making use of what he had ready at hand, Skeeter deployed part of his forces—the closest thing he possessed to shock troops—in an ambush where the corridor turned, forming a blind corner with a partially constructed apartment along one approach and a storage room along the other, providing two doorways strategically positioned for attack.
Skeeter then led his light, mobile infantry—such as it was—back toward the preoccupied construction crew, in what he hoped would be a maneuver worthy of Yesukai the Valiant himself, or maybe Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox. Having selected the least threatening of his troops to accompany him, Skeeter jogged straight into the big open bay warehouse, with Molly and the two kids from the Lost and Found gang hard on his heels.
“There they are!” Skeeter yelled. “Molly, quick! Go call Security!”
Eight-year-old Tevel, playing his role with enthusiasm, taunted, “Boy, are you gonna get yours! They’ll throw away the key! Drop you down an unstable gate! Nyah-nyah, you’re all going to jail! Come on, Molly, let’s tell on ‘em!”
Hashim, not to be outdone, was shouting something that sounded scurrilo
us. Whether it was the teenager’s Arabic taunts or Tevel’s threats or Skeeter’s shout for Molly to call Security, six of the burliest, nastiest, angriest members of the construction crew charged right at them. Screwdrivers and wicked knives glinted in the work lights dangling from the unfinished ceiling. The man in the lead was shouting, “Don’t let them get away! Kill them all!”
Skeeter whipped around, bolting back the way they’d come. “Run!”
Hashim was still yelling taunts in Arabic as they pounded through a series of twists and turns in the corridor. Molly passed Skeeter, as planned, while eight-year-old Tevel shot into the lead, on a mission of his own. When they plunged through the blind corner, Skeeter turned on his heel and waited, claw hammer clutched in one hand. He could hear the pounding of their feet, could smell the stench of their sweat—
All six of them piled into the blind corner, running full tilt.
“NOW!”
Kynan Rhys Gower lunged through an open doorway, war hammer gripped over his head for a striking blow. The heavy wooden mallet whistled in a short arc. The lead man ran full tilt into it. His skull caved in with a sickening crunch. The man behind him screamed and tripped over the body, trying to dig a heavy Egyptian hunting dart out of his left kidney. A rock whizzed from the doorway nearest Skeeter. It stuck the throat of the man next to the pincushion. The man gave out a gurgling scream and went down, clutching his crushed trachea. Eigil Bjarneson’s screaming war cry sent one man racing in retreat—straight onto Alfonzo’s pike. Another man screamed and fell to his knees when Eigil severed his hand with a single blow of his sword. A sharpened screwdriver clattered to the floor from the twitching, disconnected fingers. The final man was hit with double blows in the chest, once from a spinning rock, once when a heavy hunting dart embedded itself between ribs.
When Eigil would have finished off the man whose hand lay beside him on the concrete, Skeeter rushed in. “Wait! I want one of ‘em alive!”
The man on the floor was pleading for mercy, promising anything, if only they would let him live, if only they’d bring medical help to reattach his hand . . . Rushing footfalls from behind brought Skeeter around in a crouch. But it wasn’t an enemy, it was more down-timers, six of them, and the enraged construction foreman, whose face was bruised and scabbed with dried blood.
“How can I help?” Riyad snarled.
“Find out what that bastard knows about the Ansar Majlis. Their leaders arrived through Primary today. I want to know everything he knows about the Ansar Majlis and their plans to invade the station!”
“With pleasure! Get a tourniquet on that arm!” Then he switched to Arabic and Skeeter switched his attention to the rest of his war party.
“Kynan, Eigil, Alfonzo, get moving! Frontal assault. Corydon, Molly, Chenzira, back them up! And somebody get Security down here! Hashim, you’re with me!” He scooped up a heavy concrete trowel from one of the dead men. With a blade like a hoe, one which stuck straight out from the handle, rather than bending down at an angle, its edge had been sharpened wickedly. It made a conveniently lethal weapon to back up his claw hammer.
Skeeter sent his troops into the open bay warehouse. He put Molly in the lead, since she had the only pistol, with Corydon and Chenzira Umi backing her up with the other two projectile weapons. Skeeter charged past the open bay’s door and raced down the corridor toward the unfinished section of wall where Bergitta lay bound to the uprights. Hashim, too, had confiscated an abandoned weapon: a sharpened screwdriver. They crept past the last of the drywall, then crouched low to peer into the warehouse beyond.
About half of the fourteen remaining men had run toward the doorway, shouting obscenities at Skeeter’s attacking troops and charging to the attack. Several others had taken refuge behind stacked supplies, wailing—or so Hashim whispered—that they should never have attacked the crew foreman and brought the woman down here, that they hadn’t counted on killing so many people, couldn’t they just abandon the whore and run? Only two men had been left behind to guard Bergitta. She was barely conscious, face swollen and bruised, mouth and nose bleeding where they’d hit her repeatedly. Neither guard was paying any attention to her, which meant they weren’t looking at the open “wall” behind her, either.
Hashim slipped through first, easing past the two-by-fours on Bergitta’s left, while Skeeter edged past on her right. When Molly started shooting, the guards left with Bergitta moved even further away. That gave Skeeter and Hashim the chance they needed. The down-time boy struck first. He drove the sharpened screwdriver into the nearest guard’s back with a snarl of hatred. The man screamed. The other guard whirled, bringing up a knife—
Skeeter slashed with the sharpened trowel. The blow severed fingers. The man screamed and fell to his knees beside the clattering knife. A kick to the man’s head sent him sprawling. “Wire his hands!” he yelled to Hashim, who was already crouching low over Bergitta. A twist of Skeeter’s claw hammer served to break the wires around her wrists and throat. Skeeter picked her up, then shouted at the embattled construction workers, “I’ve got your hostage! You might as well give it up and surrender! Security’s on the way and there’s no way off this station! Surrender now and maybe these down-timers won’t kill you like they did your pals just now!”
Hashim translated into Arabic for good measure.
Moments later, it was over. Security did, in fact, arrive in force, led by Wally Klontz and the crew foreman, Riyad, along with several of his enraged crew who’d been jumped and knocked out. They started cleaning up the mess. Skeeter carried Bergitta up to the infirmary, himself, not trusting the job to anyone else. He ran the whole way, while Bergitta lapsed into unconsciousness. He skidded, out of breath, into the infirmary, where battered tourists and the irate Senator Caddrick were being treated for injuries from the riot at Primary.
Rachel Eisenstein, who was busy rinsing tear gas out of Caddrick’s reddened eyes, took one look at Bergitta, blanched, and abandoned Caddrick. “What’s happened?”
“Some of the Arabian Nights crew dragged her down to the basement, beat her nearly to death, gang-raped her . . .”
“I need a trauma team, stat!” Rachel shoved past the shocked and red-faced senator, who sputtered an outraged protest at being abandoned.
Skeeter carried Bergitta in Rachel’s wake, shoving his own way past the angry senator, and followed the station’s chief of medicine into a treatment room. Skeeter turned Bergitta over to Rachel’s care, gratified by the swiftness of the trauma team’s arrival, and found himself abruptly trembling from head to toes with the aftershock of battle. He dragged his hands across his face, decided he’d better find someplace to sit down, and stumbled back toward the front of the infirmary.
And ran slap into Mike Benson.
“Jackson!”
He glanced up just in time to see the handcuffs. He was so off-balance and exhausted from the fight, from the desperate rush to get Bergitta to a doctor, he didn’t even have the strength or presence of mind to slip out of the way. Benson slapped the cuffs around his wrists, cold and terrifying, and tightened them down with a savage twist. “We’ve got a basement full of bodies, Jackson! And for once, you’re not gonna wriggle out of it! Not with Caddrick on station, threatening to shut us down!”
Too badly shaken to do more than stumble, Skeeter followed numbly when Benson hauled him past gaping orderlies, nurses, newsies, and injured tourists. Ten minutes later, Skeeter was in the aerie high above Commons, facing down Ronisha Azzan, Shangri-La’s tall deputy station manager. She’d clearly taken over when the feds had dragged Bull Morgan away to jail. Like Time Tours CEO Granville Baxter, Ronisha Azzan claimed Masai heritage and wore richly patterned African textiles done up in expensive suits. At the moment, she towered over Skeeter, glowering down at him from the other side of Bull’s desk, while Benson blocked the exit, standing between Skeeter and the elevator doors. Skeeter stood swaying, wrists aching where the too-tight cuffs were cutting the skin, badly shaken and beginning to despair.
Ronisha Azzan said coldly, “We’ve taken into custody half-a-dozen down-timers on murder charges, Skeeter. What I want to know is—“
The elevator doors slid open with a soft ping! and Kit Carson crashed the party.
“Move it, Mike,” Kit growled, facing down Benson when the head of security thought twice about letting him into the aerie. Kit brought one arm up to keep the elevator doors from closing again. “I’m in no mood to play games with anybody.”
Benson locked eyes with the retired scout, then grunted once and wisely stepped aside. Skeeter sank, shaking, into the nearest chair, having been on the receiving end of Kit’s rage once before, but after a moment’s utter panic, he realized what Kit’s presence here meant.
Kynan Rhys Gower had sworn an oath of fealty to Kit, several months back. The retired time scout had rescued him from Portuguese traders intent on burning the Welshman and Margo as witches on a beach in sixteenth-century East Africa. Kit was therefore obligated to speak on his behalf as the Welshman’s liege lord. Kit Carson might, yet, take Skeeter apart for involving his vassal in something as serious as murder, but for the moment, his attention was rivetted on Ronisha Azzan.
Then he spoke, voice flat with anger, and darted a glance at Skeeter’s manacled wrists. “Was it really necessary to cuff him?”
Benson snapped, “I thought so! There’s half a dozen dead men down there—“
“And damned near a dead little girl!” Kit’s lean face ran white with barely controlled fury. “That poor kid’s been raped and beaten unconscious! Rachel’s staff said they’re not even sure she’ll come out of surgery alive!”
Skeeter blanched.
“Take the cuffs off, Mike! Skeeter’s not going to attack one of us. And even if he did, I could throw him through the nearest window without batting an eyelash, which he knows!”
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