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October 7th, 1991 The Bronx
SAM lay across the thin, hard single mattress in the cheap motel room they’d rented, and listened—to someone picking the lock on the door. They hadn’t wanted to make things too easy for Kirin and whoever she’d brought with her.
Neither had they wanted to make it impossible, which was why they’d stayed in this time instead of Traveling. They didn’t want to make it difficult at all, so they’d chosen to stay here. Where Sam might make a tempting target. Though they now had the resources to stay somewhere nicer.
Kirin wouldn’t know that, though. It had taken the woman three months to have her work done and convalesce and finish laying whatever plans she had for getting rid of the thorn in her side.
Which was Sam. She felt sure Kirin would want to be on hand to see the deed done, if not to commit the crime with her own hand. And according to the locator app, the woman had come.
Sam’s leader device was the one that could expose Kirin’s approach, and it showed she’d come in the wee hours. Probably since the woman thought Sam was alone and couldn’t keep vigil while she was sleeping. She couldn’t, but Bailey had.
While she had slept, he’d had the leader device and kept an eye on the locator screen to have some kind of warning when Kirin came approached. When the woman had come, he’d woken Sam to let her know. Now they waited.
A faint click. Sam opened her eyes and couldn’t see a thing in the dark room, but she could hear the doorknob turn and the slight swish as the opening door brushed against the rough carpet.
The night outside was dark, too. And with the drapes pulled to block out the few lights there were at this place, she could only make out the vaguest of shapes as a couple of people moved into the room. She wondered if the whites of her eyes were shining in the darkness to betray that she was awake.
The lights came on suddenly and forced her to blink and refocus. She sat up on the bed, taking in the scene before her—a grizzled man with a hairy arm filling the entrance and his arm still stretched out toward the light switch on the wall. And Kirin halfway between the door and the bed with a knife in her hand.
The woman jerked her head at the thug behind her. “Close the door and make sure we’re not disturbed.”
Seemingly trapping the two women in the room together, Kirin’s muscle retreated outside, shutting the door as he went without a word. Maybe she cut out his tongue.
Sam stared for a long, drawn-out moment. The plastic surgery must’ve been expert indeed—even the harsh light of the motel room couldn’t detract from Kirin’s beauty. The woman had been restored to her old self. Unfortunately.
She only held Sam’s gaze for a brief moment before flicking it around the dingy room. “Have you not accessed the trust funds yet? Or did one of the others get to this year’s stipend first?”
“I told you I wasn’t interested in the money. I only withdrew enough from the stipend to meet my needs. As long as you can’t get your hands on the rest, I’m satisfied.”
“Well, I’ll have to thank you for leaving the bulk of the funds for me. Which I’ll have access to once I have the leader device back.”
Sam squinted at the woman. “You think I’ll just give it back to you?”
Kirin sighed. “If you’re smart. You offered me a deal—now I’m offering you one. Give me back the leader device. I’ll keep your helper device as well so you can’t track me anymore. Then I’ll tell Marco to leave you alive, after he pays you back for my accident. Or I can just take what I want off your dead body. How’s that for a deal?”
“You’re so confident of handling me all by yourself that you left your goon outside?”
The woman bared her gleaming white teeth. “I know you don’t have the killer instinct. You proved that yourself.”
“And you’ve shown you are a killer. Did you really have to murder poor Harold?”
“It was more convenient that way. And if it had not been for you...”
“The only witness.” Sam smiled. “I’m rather surprised you’re willing to let me live. I could find a way to get a message to the others, tell them what you did. Maybe I already have.”
Kirin narrowed her eyes. “I don’t believe it.”
“I believe your so-called deal is a fake. You just want to avoid a confrontation because you’re afraid of me.”
“Of you?” The woman gestured with the stiletto in her hand. “A gunshot might attract attention. In this kind of place, though, no one will listen to your screaming. And I want to see you bleed.”
Sam’s smile turned grim. “Then you should’ve kept Marco with you.”
Kirin snorted. “I told you I’m not afraid of you.”
“You should at least be afraid of the authorities. You left your fingerprints all over the knife you used to kill Harold, and the police will have them on file. Someday that will catch up to you.”
“Silly Sam. I’ll just make sure I have an unimpeachable alibi when the time comes. Between that and my wealth, I’ll be untouchable. And you won’t be around to be a witness.”
“That’s what I thought. That’s why you’ve left me with no choice but to see justice done myself.”
Kirin laughed. “And how do you think you can do that?”
“Well, if you must know...”
The woman’s attention had been so fixed upon their conversation, she hadn’t noticed Bailey slipping out of the closet. Not until he had knocked the knife out of her hand and sent it sailing across the room. Then she yelped.
The door began opening from the outside, and Bailey threw all his weight against it. Crushing the man who had started to enter into the door jamb. The thug Marco moaned. Bailey opened the door again and drove his fist into the man’s stomach.
Sam started off the bed toward Kirin, then away again as the woman slashed her long, sharp fingernails at Sam’s face. Bailey was busy shoving Marco into a heap in the hallway outside.
Kirin lunged at Sam again. But as Sam jerked back from the attack, the woman turned and ran for the door. She rammed into Bailey’s back, pushing him through the open door and sending him stumbling over her own goon.
Kirin was a fool if she thought she could outrun Sam. The woman might’ve brought more help than the one thug though, so Sam didn’t rush headlong after her. It might be a trap.
She ran after the woman with careful attention to her surroundings.
Kirin kept glancing behind her, and the fear on her face looked real enough, but it could have been meant to lure Sam onward. Sam chased the woman down the corridor, gaining on her all the same and following around a corner—toward the landing and the stairs down to the second floor. Kirin turned to glare as she started down the steps.
She caught her heel in the rusty metal grating and launched into the air, tumbling down one flight and bouncing over the railing.
Hurrying down the stairs, Sam leaned over the same railing and saw Kirin lying on the asphalt in the middle of an empty parking space below.
Descending the rest of the steps with less haste, Sam heard a soft moan. But when she walked over to where the woman lay and saw how half of Kirin’s head was dented in, there seemed little doubt. Sam listened for last words that didn’t come.
She did hear Bailey’s heavy feet pounding down the stairs behind her. He stepped ahead of her and knelt down to press his fingers to Kirin’s throat and shook his head.
“She’s fading fast.” Then he looked up at Sam, which felt strange to her. “Now she’s gone.”
Sam nodded and said a silent and possibly useless prayer for Kirin’s soul. Who knows what might have been in her heart at the end? Whatever Kirin’s ultimate destination, it wasn’t up to Sam.
“Bailey, take the device off her wrist. Search for the other one, too. We don’t want the natives discovering it.” Kirin should have both her own watch and Sam’s.
“We don’t want them discovering us either. We should leave now.” Still he took the time to remove the watch from the dead woman’s wrist and hand it to Sam, then do a quick search of the body. But he didn’t find the other device.
Sam glanced around at the night, but there was no one. “What if she had other hired goons? Will they come after us?” And where in the world is that other device?
Bailey rose to his feet and began herding Sam out of the parking lot. “Paid thugs wouldn’t still be hanging around after this. After all, if they’ve been paid they can take their money and run—now that she’s dead. Though that Marco may not be in any shape to run. Speaking of which...”
Sam nodded. They had left nothing behind in their hotel room, so she started walking fast toward the street. Bailey matched her pace, out to the sidewalk and headed for the subway. Only a few blocks away, thankfully.
It wasn’t until they’d reached the steps down to the station that either of them said a word. Bailey looked to make sure no one was listening before he spoke his mind. “Now that that business is finished and we have the leader device, we can begin Traveling back to the summer of two thousand.”
Sam shook her head. “It’s not completely over and done with. Especially since we’re not going to go looking for the others.”
“What do you mean?”
She stayed quiet, listening to her heart. When they reached the platform, she led him to an empty patch of ground where they could talk undisturbed while they waited for the next train.
“We’re going back to Manhattan and staying in some place a bit nicer than that dump.”
“That’s not what I was talking about.”
“I know.” Sam was still thinking about how she needed to avoid the kind of luxury Kirin had sought.
Dismissing that from her mind, she tried to decide how to explain to Bailey what she was going to do. She looked up into his face and wondered how he would take it. Will he try to take the leader device back?
“Something’s wrong, Bailey.” She turned and stared out at the empty tracks and waited until the meaningless squawking over the loudspeakers had ceased. “The way we were all scattered. Maybe the professor or someone will come looking for us, but they haven’t yet. And until they do—”
More garbled metallic speech screeched from above, and Sam waited until the noise had abated. “With Harold and Kirin both dead, I’m the only one left of our research team. That makes me leader, so I’m going to make my own decisions about where to go and what to do.”
Bailey stayed silent for a long moment, looking at her. “How will we know what’s wrong if we don’t go back? And we need to tell the others about what happened, about Harold and Kirin and us.”
“That’s why I said it’s not over and done. Yet. If you want, I can drop you off in two thousand, and you can try to look for the others to let them know. Find Page—she’s your leader. But I have another idea how to leave a message.”
Bailey’s blank face turned away, in thought, she hoped. Sam realized she wasn’t anxious about what he’d decide to do, only curious. But as the minutes passed and the man remained quiet, she started to get annoyed.
She had other things she needed to talk about. So while he made up his mind, she talked. “I don’t like the idea of keeping this extra device.” Or that there’s another one on the loose. “Since it expands the range, it’d be too dangerous to carry around. At least when I’m Traveling. I might accidentally take someone with me. The way Kirin did.”
He continued to stare out into the dark.
“Bailey, I’m going to send this extra watch back to the others. If you’re going to stay with me, you’ll need to stick close.”
He turned and nodded at her. “You’re a leader now, and I’m a helper, and as you said, no one has come looking for us. So since Page isn’t here to lead me, I might as well follow you.”
Not as good as Sam had hoped for, but it was enough. She nodded her acceptance of his offer and turned to look down the tunnel herself as she heard a squeal and a dim rumble in the distance. Watching for the lights of the approaching train, she felt Bailey’s eyes on her.
As the noise around them increased, he asked a question. “Where am I following you to?”
Sam turned back to him and lifted onto her toes to get closer to his ear. “The bank. I’ll leave a message for Anya or Page, telling them our story. Along with the extra device.” She smiled to herself. “They won’t be able to eat without visiting the bank, and I can’t see either of them living very long the way we have. So it should reach them.”
Bailey smiled. “Certainly Page will hit the bank at her first opportunity.”
Sam took a deep breath and raised her voice as the train roared into the station and screeched to a halt in front of them. “And Anya eats like a horse.” She lowered her volume again. “So until someone finds us, we’ll be on our own. It’ll be an adventure.”
“What kind of adventure?”
“I don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out.”