A Murder in Time

by Julie McElwain

  A

  MURDER

  in TIME

  A Novel

  JULIE MCELWAIN

  For my mom, the best woman I know

  And in memory of my dad, who is still the wind beneath my wings

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  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

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  August 1815

  He was in hell.

  The fire from the torches lent a satanic flicker to the cavern’s rough-hewn walls, molten gold and orange playing over the profane carvings and frescoes. The oily smoke from the sconces undulated, curled, and climbed like thick black serpents toward the ceiling.

  The effect pleased him.

  The environment was similar to the West Wycombe Caves favored by Sir Francis Dashwood and his notorious Hell Fire Club. Like those caverns, these chambers, thirty-five feet in the bowels of the earth, had been carved out by earlier man, desperate for the flint within the chalky walls, needing the rock to fashion their archaic weapons and tools. Later, someone had transformed the rocky environment into two rooms. He suspected it had been the Papists during Good Queen Bess’s rule. After she’d made Catholicism an act of treason, families who wanted to practice their faith had been driven underground—sometimes, like this chamber, literally—fearing the priest-hunters and scandal, which could cost both their fortune and their lives.

  Of course, he could not prove that these caves had been used for such a purpose—no stray religious relic had been left behind—but it amused him to imagine that the pious had once prayed here.

  It amused him to take the holy and make it unholy.

  He smiled, just a small movement of his mouth, as he thought of the stonemasons and carpenters that he’d hired five years ago from London for this venture. They’d thought him mad. He’d seen how their eyes were drawn to some of his more inspired details in the specially commissioned friezes. He’d seen the shock. And something else . . .

  Excitement.

  They could not deceive him, even if they deceived themselves. Fools. He refused to lie to himself. He knew who he was. He knew what he was.

  Still, he had something in common with the Papists. He couldn’t risk exposure any more than they could. He knew that if he revealed his dark appetites, which twisted his guts to dagger points of both pleasure and pain, society would call him a monster.

  Hypocrites.

  It enraged him. He could feel the anger heating his blood, but he hid that, too.

  Abruptly, he rose to his feet, the swift motion causing the dark velvet cape he wore to swirl around his calves like black mist. He would have enjoyed that effect, too, had he been aware of it. Yet he’d chosen the silk-lined cape not for its appearance, but for its warmth. No matter how many fire pits and torches were lit, it was impossible to dispel the chilly dampness in the underground catacombs.

  The wine, of course, helped.

  The men before him had been drinking steadily since the evening began, their faces flushed with claret as much as cold, and the anticipation of what he’d promised them. As he stood, they turned their gazes in his direction. In their dilated pupils, he saw the tiny flames from the candles and torches around them.

  Almost carelessly, he lifted the jeweled chalice, surveying the twelve apostles he had selected for his secret club.

  So young. So eager. So deliciously depraved.

  “Patience, my brothers,” he ordered, and fleetingly wondered if he were addressing them, or himself.

  The men laughed as though in agreement, and mimicked his gesture by lifting their own chalices, gold and silver, the metal a dull glint in the room’s mottled light, and then drinking greedily. The wine had already robbed two of the young pups of their usual elegance. With a thin, cold smile, he watched them guzzle red wine, heedless when it ran in thin rivulets down their chins, staining their cravats like blood.

  Even as he wondered how long they’d last, a sound, the scrape and soft slap of soles against hard stone, alerted him. The apostles heard the noise, too, and, one by one, the men fell silent. For a second, the dank air, heavy with the smell of wax and smoke, earth and brine, seemed to thrum with their expectations and peculiar excitement.

  The shadows came first, bouncing off the walls in macabre distortions. Then the women rounded the corner, following the loyal servant who led them into the abyss, their dark hooded capes matching the style, if not the more expensive velvet fabric, of his apostles.

  Initially, he’d considered ordering the women to dress as nuns, just as Dashwood had insisted for his Hell Fire Club more than sixty years before. As with the caves, he’d been inspired by Sir Francis’s secret society, which had rocked England to its faithless core. But whereas the Hell Fire Club had been the ruination of many, he desired a more cautious path.

  The men here thought it was a game, a bit of harmless debauchery against the rigid rules imposed upon them, against a lineage that was both a blessing and a curse. They were oblivious to the wild hunger inside him, the desperate need to satisfy his craving.

  The women’s awe at the cavernous hall was fast dissolving into nervous, ingratiating giggles. Several of them were trying to strike poses in the firelight to best show off their attributes despite the concealing cloaks they’d been asked to wear.

  His mouth tightened with annoyance. That’s what came from hiring whores. He’d instructed them to act innocent, but he supposed the concept was foreign to them.

  Except for the little one.

  Satisfaction eased aside some of his irritation as he observed her. He’d spent weeks hunting London’s brothels for this particular venture. Through his emissary, he had picked thirteen of the soiled doves. Lydia was the only one he’d selected for himself.

  She was young, probably not much older than fifteen.
And, unlike the others, she was fresh. With her dark curls and apple-cheeked complexion, she exuded youth and innocence.

  It was a sham, of course. But her eyes weren’t quite as jaded as the other whores, and that appealed to him.

  He set the chalice down on the long, pine serving table in the center of the room, and walked toward her, her smaller stature making her easy to identify among the relative anonymity of the cloaked figures. Her face was nearly hidden in the shadows of her hood, but he caught the nervous darting of her eyes as she glanced around. When she saw him, recognition flashed across her face and a smile trembled on her Cupid’s bow mouth. Her cheeks flushed with pleasure as he reached out to grasp her slender wrist.

  Her welcoming smile transformed into a surprised O when he yanked her across the cavern, to the jagged opening that formed a narrow passageway. Stopping abruptly, so abruptly that the girl stumbled into him, he turned back to the room and raised an arm.

  “‘Do As Thou Wilt,’” he quoted, borrowing once again from Sir Francis. His mouth curved with cold satisfaction as his apostles swooped on the harlots, and the chamber echoed with delighted laughter and thrilled screams. Distorted shadows danced against the cavern’s walls. The game had begun.

  Turning back into the passageway, his fingers tightening around the doxy’s thin wrist, he yanked her behind him with little regard as he hurried down the tunnel. She had to run or be dragged.

  “M-me Lord . . .” she gasped breathlessly. He didn’t seem to hear her, as she was forced to race to keep up with his longer strides, the hood of her cloak falling to her shoulders, the dark curls tumbling around her pretty face.

  A rustic oak door was at the end of the corridor. He stopped, releasing her to withdraw a key from his pocket. He tugged open the door, stepping aside in a courtly gesture that was sure to have her heart fluttering. With a flirtatious smile and a toss of her head, Lydia crossed the threshold, but he watched her coy sophistication crumble as her eyes drifted over the elaborate four-poster bed with its gleaming red satin sheets. Across the room was an enormous table and cupboard, the table scattered with at least twenty beeswax candles. Beneath that scent, one could detect other smells . . . sex, and something else . . . something not quite identifiable.

  “Oh, la. ’Tis amazing, this,” she whispered, as her fingers worked on the knot at her throat, and the wool cape she’d been given for the night’s pleasure slid off her thin shoulders to pool on the hard stone floor. He locked the door and began methodically stripping off his own cape and clothes, leaving them in a crumpled pile behind him as he walked, naked, toward her. He was already aroused.

  Lydia smiled in a way that never failed to attract the rogues who visited Madame’s establishment. Her smile slipped, though, when he reached her and, taking the muslin gown in his hands, shredded it in two in a swift, violent motion. Before she could cry out over its destruction, he was tearing her cotton chemise and short stays from her body, lifting her toward the bed.

  “Lovely . . . so lovely.” His breath was hot against her flesh as he bore her down on the feather mattress. Shackling her delicate wrists above her head with one hand, he kissed his way down the slim white column of her throat to one small breast. Dress forgotten, she relaxed under the sensual onslaught, delighted to feel his mouth and tongue laving her. A soft sigh escaped her lips as she began to dream about a future that had nothing to do with Madame Duprey. A future far away from the fat, sweaty old men who came to see her at the academy.

  To leave the house on Bacon Street, to have a place all her own . . .

  ‘Twould be heaven . . .

  The searing pain was so unexpected, she couldn’t quite comprehend it even as her body jerked in reaction. Crying out, her eyes flew open in shock and met the man’s as he lifted his head. Dread rippled through her as she saw the bright flecks of blood on his lips.

  Even then it took her a moment to connect that to the hot, painful throbbing on her left breast.

  Her eyes slewed downward. She felt a jolt of fear and horror as she caught sight of the wound.

  She screamed.

  His eyes glinted, his face suddenly a demonic shadow as he hovered above her. His free hand flashed toward her throat, wrapping around the slim column, choking off the shrill sound. The pressure increased. The sharp pain in her breast faded abruptly, swamped by the more pressing need to breathe. Frantically, she struggled to free herself from the punishing grip. As she bucked and writhed, her lungs began to burn, her vision dimmed. Her tongue seemed to swell in her mouth, further choking her.

  Just when she thought her throat would be crushed, the pressure eased. Coughing and gasping, she sucked in great gulps of the scented air. And now she recognized that other smell in the room. It came to her in one horrifying flash.

  Blood.

  The devil’s lips brushed her ear.

  “It’s not going to be that easy, my sweet,” he murmured silkily, sliding over her. Skin against skin. His sweat mingling with her blood. “I am not through with you yet.”

  He reached for something above her, and though her heart pounded in her ears, Lydia heard the unmistakable clink of metal. Then, the cold bite of steel against her flesh.

  Her eyes widened and the bone-shaking terror that flooded her made her yearn for the unconsciousness denied her a moment ago. Because now she knew that this was no sensual lair with the flickering candles and beautiful bed.

  A choked sob escaped her.

  This wasn’t heaven, after all.

  1

  Present Day

  “You’re sure about this? Absolutely sure? We finally got the son of a bitch?”

  Unease, as dark and slick as an oil spill, slid inside Kendra’s belly. She ignored the sensation, putting it down to the dozen pairs of eyes locked on her at the moment.

  And not just any eyes. Three sets of those eyes belonged to assistant directors or associate deputy directors from a veritable alphabet soup of agencies—the CIA, NSA, and her own FBI, including a senior official from the National Security Branch, which had been formed post-9/11 to coordinate counter­terrorism, counterintelligence, and intelligence resources. The other members of the special task force were agents like her, although she was the only woman in the room. Depending on one’s perspective, that made her either very special or a freak. She shied away from choosing a side on that one.

  “It’s Balakirev.” Kendra kept her voice cool and steady with an effort, though she felt those eyes pressing against her like a physical weight. “We managed to get a lock on his IP address after we covertly piggybacked onto one of his client’s wired accounts—”

  “It wasn’t easy,” Special Agent Daniel Sheppard jumped in, excitement animating his usually taciturn features. “The sneaky bastard bounced the signal around the globe.”

  Daniel was, at heart, a computer geek, and used his skills brilliantly within the FBI’s Cyber Action Teams. Normally, he was responsible for chasing malicious computer hackers throughout the world. This was the first time he’d been asked to track down a known terrorist.

  “But Kendra—Special Agent Donovan—created a program that was absolutely genius,” Daniel continued, shooting the woman beside him a look of admiration. “It tracked his previous patterns, allowing us to leap forward, rather than catching up with his signal—”

  “I understand.” Peter Carson, the FBI’s assistant director of the New York field office, raised his hand in an impatient, preemptive gesture to ward off what would undoubtedly be a long-winded session of techno-speak. Carson wasn’t a computer geek. He had no interest in the Internet, except to use it to nail the ass of one Vlad Balakirev, former KGB agent turned merchant of death.

  The Russian had been Carson’s mission for more than a year, ever since the NSA had picked up chatter linking him to an al-Qaeda terrorist group rumored to be on the verge of setting up a cell in New York City. They’d formed an elite, multi-agency task force to track Balakirev around the world. And they’d come damn close to capturing him
twice: once in Jordan and then, two months later, in Spain. But he’d eluded them. In the process, he’d taken out five of their Special Ops agents.

  That had been a bitter pill to swallow, but nothing compared to the gut-clenching fear that Carson felt after receiving intel a month ago that Balakirev had slipped into the United States with a cache of chemical weapons to sell. Specifically, ricin, the deadly compound favored by Balakirev’s former KGB. Carson had been chewing Tums like they were candy after that news.

  “I want to be sure—absolutely goddamn sure—that it’s Balakirev,” he said now, remembering the botched mission in Spain. How the hell had the Russian slipped through that net? He pushed that question aside to focus on Kendra Donovan.

  If he felt a little squeamish about dealing with her, he was careful to keep that hidden. It had been his decision eight months ago to pull her out of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, where she’d been using her profiling and computer skills to work on the country’s most vicious serial killer cases. It had given him a jolt to meet her in person, though. He put his reaction down to her age—only twenty-six, for Christ’s sake. But he’d read her file; he knew who she was. Hell, he knew what she was. The offspring of two scientists who advocated eugenics, she’d been a child prodigy, landing at Princeton when she was only fourteen. By the time she was eighteen, she’d gotten degrees in advanced computer science, psychology, and criminology. No wonder the Bureau had wanted her badly enough to circumvent their age requirement of twenty-three to get her in. Kendra Donovan was a capable agent, Carson knew.

  Even so, it was damn distracting, discussing tactical operations with someone who wore their hair in a jaunty ponytail. Feminists could kiss his ass, but Carson was old enough and, yes, old-fashioned enough to still believe that to bring a woman—especially a woman who looked like Kendra—into an all-male environment was to invite disaster. But if Kendra had found Balakirev, he’d kiss the foot of every feminist he met. Damned if he wouldn’t.

  “It’s Balakirev.” Kendra was pleased her voice was steady, revealing none of her inner tension. “We’ve tracked his signal to a warehouse in Brooklyn.” She hesitated briefly, her eyes, as dark as onyx, unreadable. She kept her gaze trained on Carson, even though she wanted to glance at the man on the other side of the room. “The warehouse is owned by Berkshire, Ltd. That’s a shell company for E.V. Inc., which is a subsidiary of Greenway International.”