THE DRIVE TO SYDNEY’S apartment seemed overly long and Alex knew that the effects of the serum were still with him, screwing with his perception of time, which was normally unchanging.
He had no idea what he was going to say to her. He dreaded this meeting with every fiber of his soul, and it occurred to him that this was exactly what Veris meant. Letting either Sydney or Rafe change the way he lived his life would be declaring he was spineless. Weak. Because he so badly wanted to turn the car around was exactly the reason he should do this, or forever be ruled by fear.
For him, forever was a very long time. Better to make a life he did want out of what he could have. That was what Veris had been saying. Pining after a life that would never be his and not doing anything about it was the weak way.
But when Sydney answered the door, with Bruce snuffling at the edge of it, happy to see him again, Alex felt the impact of her slam into his chest.
He loved her.
His heart shifted, hurting. She stood in front of him in the most casual of clothing; an oversized tee shirt, yoga pants and socks, none of them the least bit sexy. Her hair was pinned up on the top of her head, but locks had worked loose and were hanging around her face. Her sharp green eyes were narrowed in guarded caution…and he loved her anyway.
He made himself take the breath he needed to speak. “I’m not here about Rafe.” He kept his voice low and reasonable.
Sydney drew in a shaky breath. “You’re okay,” she breathed.
She had been worrying about him. Of course, she had phoned Veris and sent the three of them to his place to check on him.
“I’m okay,” Alex said, and tried to smile…and did smile. It was small, but it was there and it was genuine. Suddenly, he was glad he was here to reassure her and to mend things between them. “There’s something I have to ask you. It’s related to your work and it will only take a minute.”
Sydney stepped back and Bruce took the opportunity to jump up and greet him nose-to-nose. Alex scratched his ears and told him to go and sit down, and Bruce trotted over to the sofa and climbed onto his end of it. That left the doorway clear.
The compact apartment, the books, the low light over her reading chair…it was all familiar. Alex turned his back on them and faced Sydney. “Rafe isn’t here? I ask,” he added hurriedly, “only because I don’t want to intrude.”
The light went out of her eyes. “Rafe hasn’t been back since…the park.”
Alex shook his head. “That’s no good. Would you like me to talk to him?”
Sydney’s eyes filled with tears and Alex cupped her chin. “What is it?” he asked, alarmed.
“I love him,” she whispered. “Or I thought I did. I’ve been sick all week because I thought I had fallen in love with him, but now you’re here in front of me and I…oh, I don’t know!” Her tears fell and she dashed them away with the back of her hand.
Alex pulled her into his arms. “Shh…” He tried not to notice the softness of her hair and her body against him, or her scent. She was upset and that was making his chest ache. Whatever it was, he had to fix this for her. “It’s all right, Sydney. Whatever it is, it will be all right.”
“No.” She shook her head, her chin rubbing against his chest. “It can’t be all right.”
“Time fixes everything. That is something I know from long experience. You just have to give things time.”
She put her arms around him and Alex steeled himself against the need to kiss her, or do anything that would make her hate him. Instead, he offered what comfort he could. “I’ll go and see Rafe,” he told her. “Perhaps I might even sock him in the jaw for upsetting you. If he knows I’m okay, then he’ll come back to you. He’s just feeling guilty.”
“We are guilty!” she cried. “Alex, we didn’t intend…it wasn’t…oh, this is such a mess!” Her arms tightened around him.
“It is what it is,” Alex told her. “You want him back, don’t you?”
After a moment, she nodded.
“Then hold on to that thought. Come and sit down. Come on.”
He led her over to the sofa and Sydney sat in the corner and wiped her face with the hem of her tee shirt. “God, I’m so sorry,” she said, looking up at him with still sparkling eyes.
“Would you like something? Water?” Alex asked. Anything but stand there looking down at her when she was so vulnerable and open.
“I would like…would you mind making me tea, like you did that first night? I haven’t been able to make it the same way at all.”
He smiled. “Tea. That, I can do.” Gratefully, he went into the kitchenette and set about making the tea.
Sydney gave another big sniff and sighed. “You said you had something to ask me,” she said. “About work?”
Alex looked at her through the serving hatch. “I do. It’s going to sound very odd, though.”
“I hear odd and unusual every day. Usually it’s suspects spinning stories about their whereabouts. The stuff of fantasy, sometimes, but they tell it with a straight face as if that will convince us it’s the truth.” He heard her soft laugh.
“This is another sort of weird,” Alex assured her.
“Try me.”
He poured the boiling water into the tea leaves in the saucepan, then set it on the stove to come to the boil again. “Sometime since the trial ended, did you have a conversation with your captain about Brixton?”
There was a small silence. “Lucky guess, Alex?” she asked.
His chest tightened. He looked though the hatch at her again. “You did?”
Sydney frowned, as if she were weighing up her answer. “I don’t suppose it’s such a secret that I wasn’t thrilled about the way the trial went. Not that I wanted Brody charged, of course. But I stormed out of there with my mad on and Brixton was the sole reason I was mad. Yeah, I confronted Baker about it. Brixton embarrassed the department. I wanted Baker to do something about it.”
“Wait while I finish this,” Alex called, then carefully poured the boiling tea through the strainer. A touch of cream and sugar and he carried the cup out to the living room and put it on the table next to Sydney’s elbow.
She was hugging her arms against herself, as if she was cold. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m looking forward to drinking it. I enjoyed the first one so much.”
“Perhaps I’ll teach you how to make it for yourself.” He pointed to the footstool. “May I?”
She nodded and picked up the cup.
He pulled it over in front of her and sat on it. “In your conversation with Captain Baker, did you threaten to take the matter up with Internal Affairs?”
Sydney’s eyes grew very big over the top of the cup. She put it down slowly. “How did you know that?”
“I can’t say right now,” Alex told her. Damn, he should have figured out the answer to that question ahead of time. She was already on high alert. He pushed on anyway. “There were two other lieutenants in the room with you. A black man, and a man with a pug nose, that looks like it’s been at the end of too many fists.”
Sydney hugged herself again. “Jimmy Yonkers and McLeary,” she said, and her voice was hoarse. “Was there a bug in that room? Hidden surveillance? How do you know about it?”
Alex shook his head. “That’s not the important part,” he told her. He had to get her to focus on the conversation itself and not how he knew about it. “After you left the room, Sydney, the three of them discussed you.”
She gave a wry smile. “I’m the only female lieutenant in the precinct. I get talked about a lot.”
“Not this way. They conspired. Against you.”
Sydney stared at him, and now he knew she was focused properly. “To what end?” she asked, her voice even.
“I don’t know,” Alex said. “Baker told the two of them to get you out of his station. Yonkers…that’s the black man?”
She nodded.
“Yonkers said he knew of a way to deal with you that was guaranteed not to come back on any of them. The captain told him to do it.”
Sydney swallowed. “But he didn’t say what?”
“The captain didn’t want him to.”
“Plausible deniability,” Sydney said bitterly, her voice low. She picked up the cup and sipped again. Then her gaze focused on Alex. “You’re not going to tell me how you know about this, are you?”
Alex shook his head. “I just wanted to warn you.”
Sydney put the cup down and hugged herself and this time she shivered. “I knew I was unpopular at the station. I had no idea how deeply it ran.”
“What will you do?” Alex asked.
“There is nothing I can do, if you won’t tell me your source. I can’t point a finger if I can’t back it up. Internal Affairs will get pissed that I’m wasting their time. The only thing I can do is work with my guard up. If they really do make some sort of move against me, I’ll at least be ready for it.”
“I really can’t tell you,” Alex assured her. “I would, in a heartbeat, if it gave you a way to neutralize them. But I just can’t.”
Sydney nodded. “I understand.”
“You do?”
“Sure. Confidential informants, privileged information, even Homeland Security…there are so many reasons sources are hidden. I’ve learned to shrug and work around it.” She gave him a weak smile.
Her easy acceptance let Alex relax. “Good,” he said. “I’ll be happier knowing you’re watching your rear.”
Sydney sipped her tea. “This really is so good. You didn’t make yourself one.”
“You’re the patient,” Alex told her. “Or you were. You seem to have recovered nicely.”
“Is that what I’ve done? I just feel angry now. What is it about women in a man’s world that gets men so hysterical, Alex? I do my job well, I don’t pee in anyone else’s territory, and I keep my nose out of their business. So why do they act like I’m going to emasculate them if they don’t wear iron jock straps and come out with all guns blazing?”
Alex smiled at the mixed analogies. “It’s because you are good, and because you operate outside their buddy system and are still effective. You do threaten them, Sydney, but not because you’re a woman. You threaten them because you’re good. Being a woman just adds insult to the basic injury.”
She tilted her head. “You speak like you know that from past experience.”
Alex nodded, a flood of old memories prompted by her question. “I do,” he told her. He could smell the Jordanian desert in his nostrils. The hot, dry smell and feel the hot air drying his skin wherever it touched him. The merciless sun that beat down endlessly. “When I was still living in the Middle East, I knew a woman who was involved in a very long war, when—”
“The Arab Israeli war?” Sydney interrupted. Of course, the history lover would want clarity.
“Yes,” Alex lied. After all, the Crusades had also been religious wars. “Naila Fathiyya was instrumental in the saving of…an entire battalion—” He had been about to say the entire crusade, but remembered to change it at the last second. “But no one remembers her name because she was a woman and her name could not be spoken aloud.”
“Naila Fathiyya,” Sydney said slowly. “Didn’t you write a book about a woman with that name? But it was from the Crusades.”
“The one I knew was named for her,” Alex lied quickly. “It’s where I got my inspiration the write the book.” He leaned forward. “The point is, Sydney, strong women always have a hard time competing in a world that is dominated by men. It doesn’t mean the fight isn’t a worthy one, or that your contribution won’t be remembered and acknowledged, even if it feels like you’re invisible right now.”
“Acknowledgement in a thousand years’ time isn’t much of a consolation,” Sydney said. “And I’m hardly invisible. Someone has a target painted on me.” She put her cup down. “I sometimes think it would be easier to just quit. Escape somewhere, like…” And she stopped suddenly and looked at him as if she had said something indiscreet.
“Everyone wants to escape, sometimes,” Alex assured her. “Look at me. I’ve been trying to escape for over a year.”
She smiled weakly. “But you didn’t. You’re still here, sitting in front of me.”
Alex’s heart gave a little start. She was gazing at him with those beautiful green eyes, and it was more than he could take. He leaned forward and kissed her…
* * * * *
It was the sun beating down on his bare head that warned him, along with the smell of the desert, which was strong and dry.
Sydney shifted in his arms, looking up at him. “Alex?” she whispered. Fear was big in her eyes. She wore a veil over her hair, but it wasn’t hooked across her face. Her gown was brushing around his ankles. She looked down at herself and up at him, and her hand shifted restlessly against his chest, over the dishdash he wore.
Over her shoulder, Alex saw the broad, clear pool of water that they had travelled three days into the desert to find. He recognized it instantly, for the memory was seared onto his brain. It was early morning and the shadows cast by a few date palms were long. Hundreds of ibex, with long spiral horns and dainty noses, were pushing toward the water.
Close by the date palms, where the shade was thickest, Taylor was just getting to her feet, a bow and arrows in her hand. She wore the knee-length chain mail Brody had insist she wear while travelling in the desert among so many enemies. Her hair was braided and coiled and she was watching the ibex.
Naila Fathiyya, Alex thought, with a mental sigh.
“Alex,” Sydney whispered. “What’s happening?” Her fear was growing.
“I think,” Alexander said, and he realized that he had slipped into medieval French without effort, “that you are supposed to say now that you’re not wearing a red shirt.”
Taylor dropped her bow and staggered forward through the sand toward them. “Alexander?” she whispered. “Is this ‘live long and prosper’?”
He gripped her wrist, trying not to alarm her. For her, this was a first time, too. “Taylor!”
“What year?” she said. “Quickly, what year is it for you?”
He told her.
Taylor squeezed his wrist with her other hand, while Sydney stood back, watching them, taking everything.
“You’re from my future,” Taylor said.
He looked around. “I came here to tell you how to shoot Ibex.” That was what he had done the first time. He had watched her line up on the ibex, then hesitate because she didn’t know where to shoot.
“I’m a jumper here myself,” Taylor said. “I don’t know how this messes with history. You need to go back.” Then she looked at Sydney, who was frowning heavily. “Alexander will explain everything,” Taylor told her. “He’ll bring you to me and I’ll explain more. You and I have a lot to talk about. You are the only other one like me I’ve ever met.”
Sydney’s eyes narrowed. “You’re speaking…English. Then what were you speaking before? Where are we?” Her eyes narrowed. “I know you. You’re the woman who lives with that rock singer.”
Alex’s heart jumped. This was dangerous. Very dangerous.
But Taylor was the first to respond. “Don’t say any more,” she told Sydney with an urgent tone. “Whatever you know about me, it’s from my future.”
Sydney’s lips parted in surprise. She turned to Alexander. “Alex?”
He tightened his arm around her. Oh…this was going to be a long conversation! But first they had to get home. “I’m going to kiss you again, Sydney, and you need to think of your apartment and tea and relaxing and going home. Then we’ll be back there again. You have to trust me for just a moment more.”
She glanced at Taylor. Taylor nodded. “He is telling you the truth. Do as he says and you’ll get home.”
Sydney nodded, looking around the oasis once more, sizing it up with a quick, sweeping glance. She pressed her full lips together. “Fine,” she said, although her voice shook.
Alexander slid his hand gently under her hair, to cup her face. He leaned in and pressed his lips against hers. It was ambrosial, to kiss her again. But he made himself think of Sydney’s apartment. The low light. Bruce’s snores.
Sydney moaned under his lips, then he felt them move. It was like a giant hand had swept sideways through the air and scooped them up.
He opened his eyes, although he wasn’t aware of having closed them.
Bruce, snoring. Sydney’s cup of tea still cooling on the side table. The small pool of warm yellow light cast by the table lamp next to it.
And Sydney.
She was leaning away from him, pushing back against the back of the sofa. “What the fuck, Alex? What just happened?” Her investigator’s mind was already reaching for answers.
He stood up and dug in his pants pocket for his phone. “Do you remember what Taylor said? That she would give you answers? I’m going to call her now.”
Sydney’s hand reached for her throat. “My God, you were there, too. You saw it too.”
He hit the speed dial number and listened. “Yes, I was there,” he told her quietly. “We both were there.”
“Where?” she demanded.
“I think you know the answer to that,” Alex said.
Sydney pressed her hand to her lips. “The past?” she whispered.
Taylor answered the phone softly.
“Taylor, I think you’ve been waiting for this call for a long time,” Alex said. “Sydney and I just got back from ten ninety-nine. The desert. Do you remember?”
He heard Taylor’s indrawn breath, quick and surprised. “Yes, I have been waiting,” she said. “Sydney will want answers. Where are you? I’ll come straight away.”
Alex gave her the address and disconnected.
Sydney had picked up a pillow and was hugging it to her. “Taylor…the woman from that place. Gallagher’s wife, I think. I’m not sure if she was married to Gallagher or to…Veris. The big one.”
Alex sat back on the footstool. “Actually, she’s married to both of them.”
Sydney’s eyes widened. “And she can do…what we just did?”
Alex threaded his hands together. “It’s time travel, Sydney,” he said flatly. “Jules Verne used a chair, but we—or rather, you--can do it with your mind.”
“Me?”
“I’m presuming it is you that powers the jump.” He held up his hand. “Let’s wait for Taylor. She will be able to give you her perspective on this.” He hesitated, then decided it would be the smart thing to do, and added, “You might want to call Rafe and ask him to sit in on this. He deserves to know.”
Sydney pressed her fingertips to her temples. “He’s going to think I’ve gone crazy.”
“Maybe not,” Alex prevaricated. “Call him. And let’s wait until everyone is here. Then you can ask all the questions you want.”
“I’m going to have hundreds,” Sydney warned him, her eyes narrowed.
“I have no doubt about that at all,” Alex said.