I shake my head. Leaving aside the fact that I really don’t want to know history that won’t happen until I’m old and gray, I’ve seen enough gory details for one day.
“Most of the people I saw died slow, nasty deaths. Saul and Prudence said it just went downhill after 2070. Said they were working for a future that’d change all that, which sounded like a pretty good idea to me at the time. They didn’t give me specifics, not then. Not a word about a Culling to wipe out half of mankind. So, yes, I was still a Cyrist when we met at Estero. It took you—she—damn it, I mean her.” He pounds his fists on his thighs. “It took Kate dragging me back to look directly at that fiasco to make me accept that I’d been part of something evil. Small in scale, maybe, compared to what was coming down the pike, but still capital-E Evil.”
“What about your mom? Is she still . . . with them?”
“My mom died about eighteen months ago. A little after I left Estero.”
I put my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well—she’d been sick for a while,” he says, not looking at me. “So it wasn’t really a surprise.” He claps his hands once and turns to me with a crisp, businesslike smile, clearly intent on changing the subject. “You said you needed to ask me about two jumps. Earlier, when you arrived?”
“Um . . . yeah. 1938?”
“Thought so.”
“It’s just . . .” I pause, then start over. “I think I have a handle on the other two, pretty much. I mean, we haven’t found the guy in Russia yet, and I’m not saying that either of them is straightforward, but I don’t get the sense that those jumps are—I don’t know, destined to go wrong?”
“We never got the Russian key.”
“Okay, but still, knowing what I know about the other timeline, it’s pretty hard not to see the 1938 jump to Georgia as a sort of Waterloo, since it’s right after that when . . . your Kate disappears.”
He nods, but doesn’t respond.
“Anyway, I think the Cyrists must currently hold at least one of those keys. Probably all three. She barely enters anything in the diary by that point, and when she does, it’s all cryptic. Something about London, and then she’s talking about Georgia again, something about the Federal Writers’ Project. And then she goes off on a rant about racial injustice, and I’m not clear how all that connects.”
“Kate was driving herself pretty hard by the end,” Kiernan says. “I mean—don’t take this the wrong way, okay? I loved her more than you can ever know, but there were moments she reminded me a bit of Pru that last night we were together. There was a death in 1938. One of the historians was murdered. And she felt responsible. Not like she caused it, but more like she could have stopped it. Should have stopped it. And I’m pretty sure she would have gone back and stopped it if she’d gotten the chance.”
“Did she get their keys?”
“Yeah, she did.” Kiernan leans forward, staring down at the floor with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped behind his head. “I was there for that part. They didn’t give them over voluntarily. I was along as muscle, in case she needed it, but the knockout drug Katherine gave her worked just fine on the three of them. Then Kate found out later that Katherine . . . she knew all along one of them was gonna die a few days later. And she didn’t tell Kate.”
“Ouch. Not that I’m exactly surprised, but . . .”
“Kate was so . . . I’ve never seen her that angry. I convinced her to wait here until I got back from the audition for this job so I could go with her. She needed to calm down before confronting Katherine.” He tilts his head to the side and looks at me. “That’s the one thing, maybe the only thing, that seems a bit different to me. Between the two of you. She had a harder time reining in her temper.”
“Hmph. Well, she’d been with Katherine, what—a little over two years? My own temper is probably on a shorter fuse now than it was a few months ago. I mean, it’s partly dealing with Katherine, but I’m guessing the other Kate probably had trouble sleeping, too—”
“Dreams,” he says, nodding. “It was rare she slept the full night through. Are they bothering you, too?”
“Yes,” I say, and he looks guilty. That look always tugs at my heart, but I have to admit it doesn’t tug quite as hard this time, given that what he’s just shown me will almost certainly make the nightmares worse. Maybe a little bit of guilt will discourage him from dragging me off on another grisly field trip.
But, deep down, I know he was right to take me. As much as I would like to unsee what happened in Estero, it’s one thing to know that there are people out there who believe so strongly in something that they are willing to die for it. It’s another thing entirely to know you’re up against people who will slit their own throats from ear to ear and continue to smile as their lives drain away, confident that the sacrifice was worth it.
∞7∞
I’ve just printed out five copies of a tentative schedule when the doorbell rings, triggering not only the chimes but also a round of Daphne barks from the backyard. I head down the hallway to grab the copies from the printer in the library, assuming someone is downstairs to open the door, until the bell rings again.
I peek out over the railing and through the living room window, where I see two cars parked at the curb. One is the blue van, again, and I get the creepy feeling, again, even though I can see there’s no one inside—well, at least not in the front.
The other car is a red sedan with a Valenzia’s Pizza sign on top. I make it downstairs to open the door just as the deliveryman is reaching out to ring for a third time.
“Someone here definitely ordered that,” I say with an apologetic smile, “but he didn’t tell me. Hold on, and I’ll find some cash.”
“No, no, no,” the guy says in an accent that is Indian or maybe Pakistani. “He already pay it. Just sign slip.” He taps the square of paper and shoves a pen in my direction.
I glance at the receipt and see it’s in Connor’s name, so I scrawl something that might pass for his signature, add a four-dollar tip, and take the boxes and the bag, which I’m really hoping contains their Greek salad.
Connor comes down the stairs and takes the boxes from me. It’s possible that he’s just being a gentleman, but I suspect it’s more an issue of staking his claim on the pizzas.
“Sorry. Had the headphones on, so I didn’t hear the doorbell. I thought we’d order out and give Harry the night off, since he’s back at work now.” He holds out a small stack of papers. “I’m guessing these are yours?”
I take the papers and put them on the kitchen island. “Not a bad idea. Meetings always go better with pizza.”
I let Daphne in from the backyard, and I’m sitting down at the kitchen island, glancing back through the papers for that one typo or omitted word you never find until you’re reading a print copy, when it occurs to me that Connor is acting a bit odd. For one thing, he’s in the same room as pizza, but the box is still closed. He’s usually on his second slice by now. Instead, he’s putting away a few pots and pans that were drying on the rack, something I’ve never seen Connor do. In fact, it might be more accurate to say he’s trying to put them away, because he’s on his third cabinet door before he finally finds the right place for the large pasta bowl.
“You feeling all right, Connor?”
“Yeah, sure. Why?”
“No particular reason. You’re just acting a little strange . . .”
He tosses the dish towel down and leans back against the counter before pacing back over to the cabinet to pull out some plates. “Well, this whole situation is strange. I didn’t really think about it until a few hours ago, but I’m about to meet my great-grandfather. I’ve spent the past several years blaming him for the role he played in screwing up my life, cursing him on a daily basis I might add, and then it turns out he might not be quite the bastard I thought. And then to add to the weirdness, the two of you were—” He shudders.