Page 47 of The Book of Lost Hours

NO ONE WAS COMING.

Amelia had been wandering the time space for hours.

She was exhausted by the time she found herself sitting in front of the chasm, dusty shelves arching high up overhead.

Head cradled in her hands, knees pulled up to her chest. She was in the middle of her third round of hyperventilating when she heard footsteps approaching.

Anton stood in front of her with his arms crossed. A scowl fixed to his face.

“Back already?” he asked. “Where is your watch?”

Amelia lifted her head from her hands to look at him. “They took it.”

Anton knelt down in front of her. He reached out and touched her cheek where it was bruised, having no regard for personal space.

“I see you started asking questions,” he said softly.

“You were wrong. She didn’t kill him,” Amelia said faintly. Still trying to wrap her head around it.

Anton sighed. “Are you all right?”

“I’m exhausted. I need to sleep.”

“People don’t need to sleep in the time space.”

“Apparently some people do,” Amelia said, shutting her eyes in annoyance.

He looked at her for a moment longer and then held out his hand. “Come with me, koshka . We will find you someplace better to sleep.”

J AMES G RAVEL was slow to regain consciousness. Moira sat at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee while she waited. She kept one nervous eye on the window. More than once she imagined she heard sirens outside but brushed it off. No one was coming. Why would they? Nobody knew.

James stirred. His eyes opened, glassy and distant as he looked down at the bandages Moira had used to dress his wound. He tried to sit up, gasping in pain.

“Don’t do that,” Moira said. “I only just managed to stop the bleeding.”

“You,” James said in a deep, raspy voice. He began struggling to right himself. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Saving your life, apparently. Now hold still. You’ll ruin the stitches.”

“Stitches…” James stopped moving and assessed his bandages again. “You did this?”

Moira took her empty coffee cup to the sink. On the counter there was a bottle of pain medication she had bribed one of the porch dwellers into picking up from the pharmacy. She took two from the bottle and filled a glass with water before bringing them both over to James.

“What’s this?”

“Something for the pain.”

He eventually took the medicine from her hand. She watched as he swallowed them down. He glanced at the spattered blood on her white blouse. Some of it was his. Some of it wasn’t.

“I need to know where you’re hiding the watches,” she announced abruptly.

James took another gulp of water to avoid answering. “What watches?”

“The ones Ernest stole from the department.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Don’t know what you mean.”

“I know he brought them to you. He told me. Where are they?”

James scoffed at her in disbelief.

Moira let out a huff. “There are two dead bodies in your shop right now. One of them is the head of the CIA. Now you can tell me where the watches are, and I’ll make sure those bodies get taken care of.

Otherwise, I’ll be very annoyed that I wasted all that time and effort saving your life only to have you sentenced on two counts of second-degree murder. ”

James glared at her. “ Two bodies?”

Moira rolled her eyes impatiently. “The girl is fine.”

“Where is she?”

“Safe.”

“Safe?”

“Yes. But she won’t be for long if you don’t tell me where those watches are.”

James didn’t reply.

“Well?”

“You didn’t kill Ernest.”

“No.”

“Damn. I thought I had you pegged.”

“Mr. Gravel. Don’t make me shoot you again.”

James’s lips curled in a combination of hatred and amusement. “The wardrobe in the back of the shop upstairs has a false wooden bottom. There’s a box inside. The keys were in my pocket but I’m going to assume you already have those.”

“Thank you,” Moira said. “In a few days you should go see a doctor to get the wound checked. There’s more pain medication on the counter. I’ll clean things up upstairs, but you might want to join your family out of town for a while.” She turned to go.

“I don’t get it,” James called after her. “You’ve been on my case for over a year now. Harassing me. Terrorizing my family. And you expect me to believe that all that time you’ve been some kind of double agent? That you were on our side?”

“I wasn’t on your side,” Moira said tensely. “And I’m not a double agent.”

“So you decided to shoot your boss for what? The thrill of it?”

Moira shot him a wry smile and opened the door. “Goodbye, Mr. Gravel. If all goes well, you won’t be seeing me again.”

“Thank god for that,” he said as she shut the door behind her.

The bodies upstairs were already locked in the trunk of her car.

It had been the first thing she’d done while waiting for James to wake up.

She returned to the shop to get the watches and locked the door behind her before dropping the keys in the mailbox.

Neither of the two men on the porch said a word as she got in her car and drove away.

They’d seen her with the bodies, but she wasn’t worried about them.

They weren’t about to willingly call more law enforcement into their neighborhood.

Between the shop and her first destination, she smoked three cigarettes, hoping they would help clear her head.

When they didn’t, she threw the third out the window, only half spent.

She reached the bridge where Amelia had discarded the tape as the sun was going down.

The wind had picked up. It was going to rain.

There was no one around to see her as she dragged the heavy bodies from the trunk and laid them side by side on the riverbank beneath the bridge.

“Sorry, Fred,” she muttered as she laid his pistol in his open palm to make it look like he was the one who’d done this.

By the time she finished, she was sweating and dirty and still covered in blood.

She returned to her car just as the sky opened up.

Good. Rain meant fewer people on the road.

It took Moira seven hours to reach DC from Boston.

She pulled the car up to the gates of Jack’s office at half past one in the morning.

All the lights were off. As the security guard approached, she quickly slid into her coat to hide the bloodstains on her blouse and rolled down the window.

“Name?” he asked, looking down at a clipboard as rain pelted his umbrella.

Moira cocked an eyebrow and waited. He looked up and immediately began apologizing.

“Oh, Director Donnelly. So sorry, I didn’t realize it was you.”

“I need to get into Jack’s office,” Moira said curtly. “He’s currently detained in Boston but he needed something.”

He didn’t question her story, immediately opening the gates for her. “If you give me a moment, I can come and escort you in.”

“No need,” Moira said. “I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

There were two other cars in the parking lot when she parked.

One belonged to the security guard, but the other…

She studied the plates, tapping one finger on the steering wheel.

Who was still here this late? Cleaning staff perhaps?

Just in case, she reloaded her revolver and tucked it into her coat.

Rain pelted her as she got out of the car and climbed the staircase, heels clicking against the concrete.

It had been five years since Moira had relocated the TRP to the New York offices.

It had been framed to the others as a strategic choice, allowing for their work to stay as protected as possible as CIA operations in the capital expanded.

But really, it was a way for Moira to get away from Jack.

He still worked in DC, and so she knew exactly where he kept things.

Most importantly, she knew exactly where he kept the things he didn’t want her to know he still had.

Inside, the building was warm and quiet.

The hum of the radiator was the only sound.

Maybe no one else was here. She didn’t turn on any lights as she made her way down the hall and up the elevator.

On the third floor, she stopped to listen, hearing nothing, and then stepped out of the elevator.

She stood by the desk of Jack’s new secretary, staring down at the seat that used to be hers.

The name on the desk was different than the last time she’d been here.

Poor thing didn’t know yet that she was out of a job.

Moira took out her wallet and laid two fifty-dollar bills on the desk, knowing that, in the chaos that was about to ensue, it might be a while before Jack’s new secretary received her last paycheck.

Moira hoped, though she doubted it, that this one would at least be getting out before he manipulated her into sleeping with him.

As he had done with every single one of his secretaries.

As an afterthought, Moira laid down another twenty.

She let herself into Jack’s office using the keys she had taken from his coat.

The air smelled like copy paper and cologne.

His desk was as neat as his appearance, not a stray pen or paper clip out of place.

The safe she was looking for was underneath the desk.

Heavy and metal and tucked inside a cabinet.

She knelt in front of it and began fiddling with the combination lock, hoping to God he hadn’t gotten wise and changed the code. It opened with a satisfying click.