Page 13 of The Book of Lost Hours

A MELIA ’ S SCREAM lasted only a millisecond before it was swallowed up by the endlessness of the time space.

Moira stayed in her spot by the window, feeling satisfied even though she knew she shouldn’t.

The girl was just scared. Understandably so.

She would be lying if she said she didn’t have compassion for her.

But compassion didn’t yield results and with the rest of the department’s watches beyond her reach, they needed the book now more than ever.

Without it, the entire department was rendered useless, and the Russians could rewrite history uncontested.

“A bit harsh, don’t you think?” A deep male voice came from behind her.

Moira didn’t turn around. “Hello, Jack,” she said, eyes on the place where Amelia had just vanished.

“Hello, Moira. I see things are going well.”

Without looking at him, she clocked his location ten feet behind her, standing at the table where Amelia had piled her books. She heard him turn one of them over to look at the cover.

“She reads poetry,” he said, sounding intrigued. “Just like you used to.”

Moira turned to face him, arms folded. “What are you doing here?”

He let the cover of the book fall shut. Jack always wore the same gray suits cut in the modern style.

His dark hair was slicked back to one side, using just enough gel to keep it in place, but not so much that it appeared greasy.

A navy blue necktie was secured in place.

Face neatly shaven. He was so consistent in his appearance that he was almost a caricature of himself. Like she was.

“Fred called. Told me he saw the girl leave the house alone while you were gone. So I came to make sure everything was going okay.”

Moira didn’t buy it. “I thought you were going to keep your distance.”

Jack raised his hands in denial. “I am, I am. Hands off, just like I promised. But that doesn’t mean I won’t get involved if the need arises.”

“The need hasn’t arisen. She went to the library, not the train station.”

“So you knew she was coming here?”

“Yes.”

Jack cocked an eyebrow. He came to stand beside her at the window.

Her spine stiffened instinctively as he got closer.

She noticed he was carrying a file folder in one hand but didn’t ask about it.

Jack liked to make people wonder about things.

It made him feel powerful to withhold information from people.

To force them to ask. Moira had learned to stop playing into it years ago.

“You look tired, Jack,” she said instead. “No rest for the wicked, I suppose.”

“You’re one to talk,” he bit back.

His reply was lacking some of its usual venom, so Moira knew he must really be exhausted.

Not that she could blame him. Between this investigation and his other responsibilities as head of the CIA, he was stretched thin.

All the more reason to back off and let her handle things alone. Of course, he didn’t see it that way.

Jack turned toward her and held up the file. “Here. Photos of all the known Russian timekeepers. Just like you asked for. The one on the top is our most likely suspect.”

Moira reached for the file. He pulled it back, tauntingly out of reach.

“You know, Donnelly, it used to be that you were the one fetching files for me . Not sure I like it the other way around.”

“You wanted the bigger office,” Moira pointed out.

“Sure, sure,” Jack said, lowering the file within her reach once more. “Still wish I could have kept the watch though.”

Moira didn’t respond. Given the scarcity of watches that could access the time space, Jack had been forced to give his up when he left the TRP.

The day he’d handed it over to her was still one of Moira’s most satisfying memories.

She took the file from his hand now and flipped it open.

Inside were a series of freshly printed profiles of Russian timekeepers.

Names, addresses, birth dates. Last known locations.

Photos were paper clipped to the top of each one.

Moira looked at the face of the first one, the most likely culprit.

He had a youthful face, but his eyes were hollow and haunted.

The eyes of someone who had seen far too much far too soon.

“What makes you think he’s the one who killed him?” she asked.

“The others said it was a boy they saw tailing Ernest. A boy, not a man. He’s the only one who fits that description. Besides… look at the name.”

Moira flipped the photograph up so she could read the document beneath. “Anton Stepanov. So this is…”

“Uh-huh. Anton Vasilyevich Stepanov. Vasily Stepanov’s son. You know how the Russians like to keep it in the family.”

Moira felt a cold foreboding in her chest. She had crossed paths with Vasily Stepanov once, years ago, and it had ended badly.

For him at least. And now here was his son, working for the KGB and possibly out for a little revenge.

She glanced at the birth date written in text beneath the boy’s name.

September 1948. Seventeen. He was only seventeen.

Only a year and eight months older than Amelia.

She looked back at the picture for a long moment before shutting the file.

“I’ll show these to her,” she said, wanting Jack to go away. “Let her know who to watch out for.”

He was chewing his lower lip, once again staring out the window contemplatively. “So she’s scared, is she?”

“We wouldn’t have this issue if you’d just let me go in to investigate myself.”

“Don’t start with me, Moira. You know I won’t allow that.”

She let out a frustrated sigh. “Then you’re going to have to be patient. She’ll come around, she just needs a little bit of a push.”

“I suppose,” Jack muttered. “Well, keep tossing her out of windows then, I guess. Whatever it takes. I want to know which Russian is responsible for this mess so we can blow his brains out.”

“We have to know which brains we’re looking for before you can do that,” Moira said.

Jack snorted. “Or we could just shoot the lot of them. All this diplomacy is very un-American if you ask me. Do you think anyone ever stopped to make sure they were shooting the right German?”

“We’re trying to avoid a war, Jack, not start one.”

“They drew first blood,” Jack said.

She shot him a look, knowing that it wasn’t grief or concern over Ernest in particular that was driving his desire to strike.

Jack had lost a great deal to war. His father in the first. Most of his friends in the second.

He had been an officer in the navy and had watched an entire ship full of his own men burn under enemy fire after he had given them an order to wait.

An experience that had left him with a “strike first, ask questions later” mentality that could be hard to rein in.

He viewed communism and the Russians who supported it as the next great enemy, and as such, he did whatever it took to stop them.

Moira moved over to the table and began stacking Amelia’s books into a neat pile. Rilke. Donne. Blake. All male poets, she noted. When she looked up, Jack was still standing there.

“Did you need something else?”

“James Gravel,” Jack said.

Moira stopped shuffling books and straightened. “What about him?”

“He’s still not talking.”

“So send Fred after him.”

“Tried that,” Jack said, shaking his head. “We’ve twisted his arms seven ways to Sunday. The man won’t budge.”

Moira was only a little surprised. She had been part of the twisting, for a time. Before Ernest had died and everything came to a screeching halt. James Gravel was stubborn. Immovably so.

“And what would you like me to do about that? If you haven’t noticed, I’m a little preoccupied babysitting your newest agent.”

Jack ignored the subtle accusation in her tone. “He and Ernest had a rapport, right? They talked?”

“Occasionally.”

Jack clicked his tongue against his teeth the way he did whenever he was scheming. “Think he’d talk to the girl? He might give something away if she’s the one asking the questions.”

“Finding the book is the objective,” Moira said flatly. “Anything else has to be secondary.”

“No. Finding the book is one objective,” Jack said. “The other is finding the watches the rebels stole from us in the first place, and to do that, we need to find the rebels. If we root them out, we dismantle their whole movement. And James Gravel is a part of that.”

Moira stiffened her jaw in resignation. She could see that Jack was set on this. “Fine. I’ll take her to see him later this week.”

Jack smiled. “Tomorrow. Take her tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow it is.”

Jack caught on to the tension in her tone and chuckled. “Attagirl.” He turned to go, pausing to pat her on the shoulder as he passed. “And try to keep a closer eye on her for me, won’t you? We don’t want her running off all alone.”

He left without another word and Moira let loose the shudder she had been suppressing ever since he appeared.

A MELIA WAS panicking. The darkness. The shadows.

There was so much of it, stretching up and out and all around her.

It made Amelia feel as though she was suffocating from the moment she entered the time space.

The silence was a wet blanket weighing her down and stifling the air from her lungs.

Her eyes scanned the row of shelves. Images of Uncle Ernest’s face, bloody and lifeless, flooded her mind.

The world spun around her, and she sank to the floor.

She thought she heard a voice speaking to her in another language. A man’s voice.

Something touched her shoulder. She let out a scream.

The person standing beside her reeled back in alarm, raising up his hands in surrender.

The boy was tall with a sharp jaw, hollow cheeks, and thick, regal eyebrows.

He was speaking to her in a language she didn’t understand, crouching low until they were at eye level.

“I… I’m sorry. I don’t…”

Recognition registered on his face. “Ahh. American,” he said in a thick accent. “Are you okay?”