Chapter 28

 

 

Vic jumped up out of a sound sleep and spun one way and then the other, taking in the bedroom she knew so well. The city streets of Stromness teemed with humanity outside her window. Lace curtains framed the window, and heavy drapes surrounded the bed, creating a cozy atmosphere.

She studied every detail of the room. It really was the same room. Had she really gone back to San Francisco and told her friends about the June bug? Had she spent the night with Malcolm in his apartment, or was that all a dream?

Either way, she had a job to do. She had to find out who Boyd sent forward in time to intercept Ned and Ree—and Malcolm. Boyd knew Malcolm’s secret. If Vic didn’t catch those teams, they would kill Malcolm. She couldn’t allow that.

She dove off the bed, snatching up her handbag from next to her where she’d dropped it. She dumped it out and fossicked through the contents until she found her paperclip, but when she tried the door, she found it already unlocked.

Had Malcolm left it unlocked after he enchanted her back home the first time? Maybe he never sent her back at all. Maybe he was still planning to and hadn’t yet. All these journeys back and forth in time confused her. She couldn’t distinguish reality from fantasy anymore, but that didn’t matter.

Find Boyd. Find out who was on those teams. Everything else was icing on the cake. She hid her handbag under the bed just like before and glided out of the room. She sailed down the grand staircase, the Guild House fresh in her memory. She knew where to find everything, and she knew where Boyd would be hanging out.

She came to the sliding door leading to his apartment. Should she knock? She gathered all her resolve and pushed back the door, let herself in, and shut the door behind her. Her heart pounded harder than ever, and she couldn’t breathe. Her hands shook from the tension as she rushed across Boyd’s office and scooted behind his desk.

She’d never seen a more pristine desk in her life. Sheaves of paper tied in bundles piled the shelves on the big chair’s right hand, but not one stray scrap of paper lay visible on the desktop. An inkstand rested on the far edge. Other than that, he kept his desk perfectly clear. She shuddered. People as organized and clean as this gave Vic the creeps. She preferred a cluttered desk any day of the week.

She pulled open the first drawer and found two new goose feathers and a penknife, a stack of blank paper, and a seal in the Gunn family crest of a hand holding a sword. A lump of melted wax completed the picture. She closed that drawer and started on the second one. This could take all day, and she didn’t have time to go through everything in search of some covert assassination team Boyd might have cooked up on the side.

She turned right and left, despairing at the memory of Malcolm telling her how the Falisa operated. They left messages for each other, handed down through the generations, to communicate crucial information to future operatives when it might come in handy. If Boyd sent those teams forward in time, he must have recorded it somewhere. He must have written down the members’ names and maybe some other crucial details. She just had to find it. Then again, Malcolm used his position as acting Guild Master to search for it, and he’d never found it. What hope did she have?

Panic set in as she raced around the office. She tore into the dining room where she’d taken lunch with Boyd a few days before. What a gullible sap she’d been. She should have realized he was a slippery snake intent on manipulating her.

She bolted into the next room and found herself in a charming parlor like the one in which he’d first introduced himself. This one exuded a distinctly masculine air with two deep armchairs sitting before the fire and smelling of tobacco and whiskey.

Beyond that, she came to another window and cast a brief glance through it before she turned away. The sight caused her to whip around again to stare. Out in the garden, a band of six Highlanders stood in a circle near the lavender beds, all wearing Gunn tartans and weapons. She recognized them as the men who’d taken custody of her and Malcolm in the warehouse. They were all there—all except the man she’d killed on the wharf.

While she watched, Boyd emerged from the kitchen door and strode up to them. They opened the circle to let him in. He talked to them for a few minutes. He held what looked like a clipboard in one hand, and he kept consulting it while he conversed with them.

Those must be the teams. Boyd trusted these men with sensitive information and a dangerous mission. He must have sent them forward in time under orders to hunt Vic down and kill her and her friends. Boyd would also have confided in them about Malcolm. Once they found Malcolm in the future, they would confirm Boyd’s suspicions and include Malcolm in their extermination plan.

She scanned the group one more time, fixing their faces in her memory, but she didn’t really need to. She would have recognized them anywhere. They would have short hair in the future, and they would shave their beards and change their clothes. Other than that, they would be the same men.

Boyd spun around on his heel and set off for the house again, signaling one of them to follow. They headed for the kitchen.

Vic whirled away to flee, but her hopes had already flown out the window. She couldn’t get out of this apartment without him seeing her. He would catch her in the corridor if not in the act of closing the door to cover her tracks. What could she do? Every second she hesitated brought him closer to discovering her. Once he realized she could identify the teams, he would kill her too, if he didn’t already plan to do so.

She dashed for the door when she heard footsteps coming down the hall.

Male voices boomed through the house. “Come in here, Stewart.”

In her last desperate act, Vic dove into Boyd’s bedroom adjoining the parlor and scurried under the bed, hiding herself among the dust.

The door slid back, and Boyd’s voice echoed through the apartment. “That’s all yer orders. Ye’ll need to find a safe place to shelter while ye make the transformation. I regret I cannae give ye any better preparation, but we cannae trust the lassie to give us any accurate information about the times.”

A rumbly bass answered him. “I’m sure the Guild will still be operating in those times. We’ll find them.”

“It may take some searching,” Boyd replied. “They’ll no’ be hanging out their shingle to advertise who and what they are. Make sure ye’re safe before ye make a move on yer targets. Make sure ye conceal yerselves so no one kens where ye come from or yer true objective.”

“Ye’ll leave word for the Chapter Head, no doubt,” the other remarked.

“Aye,” Boyd replied. “Ye can be sure on that, and I’ll tell him yer names and a description of each of ye. Ye’ll be the wizard on the team, Stewart. I’m trusting ye to cast the spell. Send yerselves at least a year before the target so ye have plenty of time to infiltrate.”

“Aye,” Stewart answered. “I’ll manage it. Ye can rely on us.”

“Dinnae come back until ye eliminate them all,” Boyd snarled. “Nothing else takes higher priority.”

Stewart snorted. “I dinnae mind living in the future, so long as the Guild still exists. Anything that serves the Guild is good enough for me.”

“Good.” A slapping sound followed. “Get along with ye, then, and Godspeed. I’m going upstairs to interrogate the lassie now. It could get messy, just the way I like it.”

Stewart chortled.

The door hissed open and closed again.

Vic choked for breath under the bed, but Boyd hadn’t left. How long would she have to hide here? The instant Boyd left this room, he would discover her gone and search the house until he found her.

Boyd bustled about the apartment. He sat down at his desk, and she heard a pen scratching across paper. Then he stood up and crossed the floor. Some liquid poured into a glass. He sighed.

Her blood screamed in her veins. She had to get out of here. She had to get off this island before he found her gone. How could she do that?

She had to find Malcolm. He could cast the spell to vaporize her off the face of the Earth. She couldn’t escape any other way. Boyd hadn’t come to find her yet. That must mean Malcolm hadn’t sent her home yet. He must have sent her to the moment before Boyd came to find her. She still had a few more minutes before the roof caved in.

At last, he strode away from her, and the door whished open one more time. She followed every thump of his heels leaving the room. As soon as she heard him walk away toward the stairs, she slithered out from under the bed. She didn’t bother to brush the dust off her dress.

Get out of here. Get out of here now.

She raced across the apartment and through his office on the way to the exit when, out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of what she at first took for the clipboard he was holding in the garden. It sat alone on his desk. Insatiable curiosity took hold of her. She had to see if it held the names of the other operatives. She swiveled around to take a look at it. Her eye skipped down a list of names.

Marcus McLeod

Muir Wiley

Reid Gunn

Roy Fraser

Seumas Baird

Shaw Munro

Stewart Gunn

At that moment, to her horror, the door opened right in front of her. Boyd strode through it, turned around, and closed it before he faced into the room. There she stood. She didn’t have time to hide. She didn’t even try. He caught her in the act of reading the very list of names she came here to find.

He sucked in a quick intake of breath. “Vic!”

She opened her mouth and closed it again. What could she do? He blocked her from the doorway. He had her at his mercy.

Sure enough, the surprise melted off his face. His features softened into a chilling smile. He strolled sideways along the bookcases lining the wall. “So, here ye are. I only came back for me keys, ye see? I got to the stairs when I realized I’d forgotten them. I was just on me way up to yer room to have a wee chat with ye, but since ye’re here, we can do it in here. One place is as good as another, do ye no’ think so?”

Vic remained frozen, her eyes refusing to shift away from his face even as she beheld her own destruction stalking closer all the time.

He sidled up to the desk and picked up the board, scanned the sheet, and set it down again. “Well, that’s that, then, is it no’? Ye ken who’s gone forward to intercept yer friends, but ye’ll never tell anybody. Ye’ll never leave this room.”

She swallowed hard, trying to think of something to say to deflect his wrath. “You can’t stop them, Boyd. They’re all ready to produce the elixir. I gave them the last piece of the puzzle. Even if you kill me, you can’t stop them from making the Cipher’s Kiss.”

“I dinnae have to stop them making it,” he replied. “They can make it all they like. While ye and I stand here discussing the matter, me men are on their way to San Francisco.” He waved toward the window. “Take a look. They’re no’ out there anymore.”

Against her will, she glanced out the window. The garden stood empty outside, but that meant nothing. Boyd could be trying to trick her into panicking.

He didn’t have to trick her. She’d already panicked. She was staring into the oncoming headlights of her own death. She should have listened to Malcolm and stayed with him. They could have found out who these men were some other way. She’d been too quick to jump and too slow to reason. Now she was dead. She would never see Malcolm again.

Poor Malcolm! Her heart ached thinking about the time she’d spent in bed with him. She loved him more than she could stand, and now she would never see him again. Would he ever love another woman, or would he live the rest of his miserable life undercover at Allied Chemical?

Boyd came to a stop in front of her. For the first time since she’d first met him, he looked down on her with sympathetic kindness. He took her hand and raised it to her lips. “Let’s have no more unpleasantness between us, lass. Sit ye down here, and let’s talk about this as civilized people. We neednae fight and damage each other like wild animals.”

She craved the soothing temptation he offered, would give anything to wipe all this hostility out of existence. She wanted more than anything to be friends with Boyd, to believe against all evidence to the contrary that he would shelter her and protect her. She started to give in, letting her hand relax into his touch.

Malcolm. She’d touched him. She’d kissed him and lay next to him. She’d given him her body, not just once, but over and over, and would do it again if she could.

Her gut revolted against Boyd’s touch. Her love for Malcolm repelled Boyd.

He sensed the change almost before she registered it herself, and the slightest hint of cruelty tinged his expression.

Lightning quick, she jerked back from Boyd and grabbed for the first thing available. She scooped the ink pot off the desk and flung it at him with all her strength. The ink splattered over him on impact, staining his light hair. He cringed for a fraction of a second before he recovered and lunged at her, roaring in fury.

Vic dove for cover, but with lightning precision, he hooked his arm around her waist and yanked her back. In a heartbeat, he’d hurled her down on the floor. She smashed onto the carpet with a shriek but didn’t have a chance to experience any pain before he was on her.