Page 11

"Okay, kid." I crouched down in front of her outside the door to her classroom. "Be the best first grader you can be, okay?"

"Okay." She giggled and tossed her arms around me. "Love you, Auntie Jags."

My face heated immediately, and I swallowed down the emotions that hearing her declaration sparked. Had she ever told me that before so openly?

"Love you, too," I croaked, fixing my face before I leaned back to look at her. "Go on." I patted her arm and nodded toward the door. "See you later."

"Bye!" she squeaked and bounced her way into the classroom.

I waved to her teacher when he initiated, then headed out once she was settled with her friends.

With little time to spare, I hauled ass out of the school to bolt downtown in the direction of the crime lab.

I managed to make it on time, but getting through the four-thousand layers of security without an escort proved a challenge. Security stopped me at the desk, and I waited there for a solid five minutes before he opened the door for me.

"Doctor Wright will see you now," he said, handing me a temporary identification badge.

"Doctor who?" I accepted it with a furrowed brow.

"Doctor Who. I'm the forty-seventh." Clementine appeared out of nowhere and I started.

"The forty-seventh what?" I pinned the badge to my shirt while turning to her.

"Doctor." Her expression, as blank as the walls around us, gave me no hints to better understand her statement. She turned on her heel and headed down the hall with her hands tucked into the pockets of her lab coat.

"The forty-seventh doctor of what?" I followed her quickly, her pace nearly twice the speed of mine and I felt the urge to skip beside her like Reagan trying to keep up with me.

She glanced at me when I stopped short beside her, her eyes narrowing with an accompanying brow crinkle.

"Of the Timelords."

"What—I—"

And there it was; the tiniest hint of a smile tugged the corner of her mouth as she held the door open for me. I headed in first, stifling the huff of annoyance.

She led me into her lab where, in addition to the working robotic equipment, a big screen illuminated some of the case numbers we spoke of the day before. Charts, graphs, and figures of some sort filled every inch of it. And I understood exactly none of it. She gestured toward one of the padded stools for me to sit, then joined me when I did. She slid onto the seat, her fingers gripping the edges of it as she crossed her legs. Only then did I notice that her hair wasn't pulled back in a ponytail today. Instead, the waist-length strands of amber-gold brushed her knees and tumbled around her hips. The front bore many layers that cradled her heart-shaped face and the twinkling eyes that accompanied it. Amusement danced in her gaze, but the rest of her was nearly impossible to read.

"What's a timelord?" I asked.

"You have no tears in your pants today," she said, completely ignoring my question.

"Not today." I smirked and glanced at the shadow of a worker passing in the next lab. "Is Ainsley joining us?"

"Perhaps." She clicked something in her palm then looked over at the screen. "There are six identified victims in this case, only two of which were processed through this lab."

"What—oh. Right. The other cases were older." I cleared my throat in an attempt to keep up with her.

"A ten-year gap between the cases." She clicked the button again and I noticed the screen changed, except I had no idea what I was looking at.

"Yes, but—"

"I've requisitioned everything to be reprocessed here. Since it's a cold case, all items are still on file. I've written a proposal to enact genealogical testing on all the victims. What are your thoughts on that?" She leaned back then, her eyes intently on me now.

"I—don't even know what that means." I stared at her and felt the overwhelmed expression that tried to take over my face. "Can we start over?"

Clementine paused and sat up straighter. She glanced toward the door then back to me. "From the beginning?"

"Yes, please."