Time's Divide (The Chronos Files Book 3) (10 page)

I nod, and he goes on. “But from what I can tell, the Cyrists are stronger than ever. I’d say maybe ten percent larger, in terms of membership, and maybe twenty percent richer. Their revenues exceed the GDP of some countries—decent-sized countries at that. Unlike a lot of other religions, that wealth is fairly concentrated at the central level.”

“And you’re wondering why that’s still the case, even after the Fifth Column?”

“No,” he says. “I’m wondering why it’s
even more the case
than before. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.” He shrugs. “Anyway, I take it you found your mom? And Trey found you?”

“Yes to both. But the situation with Mom is complicated. Where’s Katherine?”

“She went to bed a little early, but I doubt she’s asleep yet. I’ll go get her.” He pushes himself up off the swing. “There’s coffee, if you’d like. The weak froofy stuff you and Harry seem to enjoy.”

I snort, following him. “It’s not weak. We just prefer something that won’t eat a hole in the mug.”

Ten minutes later, I’m back on the swing with my coffee and a banana muffin that’s too stale to be very good, but I’m hungry and didn’t want to rummage around for anything else. Daphne comes bounding across the lawn, followed by Katherine, and Connor, who’s carrying a couple of chairs from the patio.

Daphne puts her head in my lap, along with one damp, grass-covered paw, so I use petting her as momentary excuse to avoid looking at Katherine. This is the second time in the past few days that I’ve come back from a mission with a sense of failure—first, failing to get the keys from Abel and Delia and now not convincing Mom to come back to DC. I can only hope that there will be a silver lining to this cloud as well, although Connor’s comment about the current strength levels of Cyrist International has me wondering whether that first silver lining is real.

This entire Fifth Column thing could be a trap. Maybe it’s Julia who can’t be trusted instead of Kiernan? Or maybe I can’t trust either of them.

I push all of that aside for now. Katherine is sitting across from me, holding the tablet and diary from my meeting with Julia in her lap, along with some papers and a green file folder with
KATE’S HOMEWORK
scrawled across the front in Connor’s handwriting. That brings a little smile to my lips, but it quickly disappears when I look back up at Katherine’s face.

“So,” she says, “when is Deborah coming home?”

“I told her everything. She’s not coming back.”

Katherine’s expression barely changes, but I can see the little light of hope in her eyes flicker out.

“She isn’t siding against us. It’s just . . . Mom thinks she can be of more use there, with Prudence, than she’ll be here. And she may be right.”

I spend the next few minutes recounting the events in Julia’s office, in London, my brief jump to 1905, and Kiernan’s odd behavior.

Katherine, who has been silent the entire time, finally speaks up when I get to the part about Kiernan. “Do you still trust him?”

“I . . .
want
to trust him. And I think I do, deep down. Were you able to pull up the video of Delia from the diary?”

Katherine shakes her head, looking a little embarrassed, and hands me the tablet and the diary. “I tried, but . . . I think the medicines interfere. Or maybe Fred himself.”

“Fred?”

“The tumor. I named it after the rabbiroo I had as a kid. Just like this tumor, he was a wicked little devil with a tendency to bite.”

Okay.
I don’t really have a response to that, other than to ask what in hell a
rabbiroo
is. As that question seems likely to lead us away from the topic at hand, I just nod.

“No problem. I just thought you might be able to pick up something I didn’t, but the message was pretty straightforward. Delia said to trust my heart where Kiernan is concerned. Julia blames him for the death of her son—Max’s dad—so she’s not really seeing things in an unbiased fashion. And Trey thinks . . .”

I pause and glance at Katherine, unsure how she’ll react to me pulling in his assessment of the situation. But she just looks at me, eyebrows slightly raised, waiting for me to go on.

“Trey thinks we can trust him. He says he watched Kiernan the entire time we were at tea with Prudence, and he doesn’t believe Kiernan would do anything to hurt me. And yes, he’s basing that on just one meeting, but . . .”

“If anyone had an incentive to want you
not
to trust Kiernan, it would be Trey,” Connor says. “And he might be a better judge in this than you are, Kate. Trey isn’t comparing Kiernan to before. He’s looking at what’s there, what meets the eye now.” He wads up his empty chip bag and shoves it into his pocket. “I’m probably not the best judge either because I really don’t want to go back to thinking that my great-grandfather was . . . or is . . . an ass. So I hope Trey’s right.”

“Well, then,” Katherine says, “what’s next? Are you going back to Eastbourne to get the key from Houdini?”

I haven’t actually decided that yet, so I look up at the moths that are circling around the light by the garage door and take a moment to think it through. Maybe Trey is right and I should trust the inner voice that tells me Kiernan is still on our side. But I want more information about what’s been going on with the Fifth Column before I face him again. And I think I need a little more time to process the idea that, whether friend or foe, he’s no longer the person I knew. And the delay won’t make any difference to Kiernan, since when I do go back, it will be to the same moment that I left. He’s not standing around on the sidewalk waiting for me to arrive, although there’s a part of me that would be perfectly okay with that. Let Kiernan see how
he
likes being left hanging for a change.

“Not yet,” I say. “I’ll wait until after this meeting with Julia. Before I go, I want to dig into some of the files in the library—previous timeline stuff about Houdini.”

Katherine presses her lips into a tight line. “Do you think Julia will know you didn’t keep the promise about London?”

“I don’t know. She’s already annoyed at me anyway. I think she believed we’d just hand over the keys we’ve collected. On the video, Delia said they only have the one, so I guess that’s the one Max had last night. Let’s just say Julia wasn’t too happy when I told her we’d destroyed most of them.”

Connor is about to say something when a noise comes from his shirt pocket. It takes a moment, but I recognize it as the theme from
Jaws
. He pulls out his phone and glances at the screen, frowns, then puts it back.

“What was that?” I ask.

“The news alert I set up for when there’s a Cyrist-related event in the press. Nothing major—just one of Patterson’s judicial appointments confirmed by the Senate. What was I about to say?”

Katherine and I shake our heads, and then Connor remembers. “Oh. The medallions. I kept back two spares, like I said I would, if you think we’re better off with Julia under a key. If nothing else, it would be a peace offering in case she’s pissed.”

“Not a bad idea. But hey, if she knows about London and she’s angry, then she’s angry. Lying to her might not be the best foot to start out on, but she practically kidnapped me the other night, so she hasn’t been on her best behavior, either. Or maybe that
is
her best behavior. It’s kind of hard to say, when I know almost nothing about her.”

“I think I can help you there,” Connor says, taking the file folder and other items Katherine’s holding. “You can read the full file, but to sum up, Julia Morrell Waters is a big deal. Cyrist government liaison for two administrations prior to President Patterson—who’s now on her second term, by the way. Defeated the incumbent the first time she ran, instead of getting trounced. Waters is on the board of half a dozen foundations and frequent speaker at congressional hearings. She was also an ambassador during Patterson’s first term, but she’s retired now.”

I flip open the folder and pull out a picture of Julia, seated in front of an American flag. A tight semi-smile is the only break in her otherwise stern face.

I stare at the photograph, and again I feel a twinge of anxiety. I decide to give it voice and see what Katherine and Connor think.

“Here’s the thing that bothers me. Julia . . . she doesn’t seem like a nice person. Even her own mom kind of admitted that. Did you read the liability waiver she wants me to sign? Why would she include something to protect Cyrist International?”

“Maybe it was just a standard form?” Connor suggests. “One that she’s used for years, and she forgot to zap the Cyrist portion? You didn’t sign it, did you?”

“No! And I’m not going to. I’m not enlisting in her private army, and this isn’t a job. I just can’t help but wonder whether it goes deeper. Maybe she sold out? Maybe this Fifth Column thing is a trap?”

“Maybe,” Connor says. “Although it would be really, really dumb for her to leave the words ‘Cyrist International’ in the middle of that legal mumbo-jumbo if she’s working for them, wouldn’t it? She’d have to know that would put you on alert.”

“That’s true,” Katherine says. “Although, either way, it raises red flags for me, too.” She takes Julia’s picture from me and stares at it, like I did, as though a printout of an 8 by 10 photo could provide a glimpse into the woman’s soul.

After a moment, she shakes her head and hands it back to me. “Let’s look at this another way. If this Fifth Column is a trap, where does that leave us? From what Connor has told me, the Cyrists are stronger than ever, and we have no other allies. It won’t matter whether we walk into the trap or we wait until they bring the fight to us. Either way, the pooch is screwed.”

It’s such a totally un-Katherine-like thing to say that I choke on my coffee, trying to hold in a laugh. Connor doesn’t even bother to hold it in.

“What?” Katherine asks. “You disagree?”

“Nope,” Connor says, still smiling. “You’re right. If this is a trap, that pretty much sums it up.”

“Then why on earth would you find that amusing?” She shakes her head and looks at both of us before getting up to head back into the house. “You two have the strangest sense of humor sometimes.”

Connor doesn’t follow her. His smile fades very quickly, and I can tell that something is bothering him.

“What is it?”

He shakes his head, but turns on the tablet. “I’ve backed all of these up, so you can return their tablet. I couldn’t do anything with the diary, of course.”

Once the icons come up, he clicks to open the timeline. “It’s probably nothing. I was just thinking about these dates—the ones labeled
Deadline
? One’s 2024, then 2025, and 2034. I’m thinking those are probably—”

“Their best guesses on the date Saul set for the Culling.”

“Yeah.” Connor clicks to open the timeline chart. “So I was kind of curious about the strike-throughs here—when they crossed out those dates and why. And as much as I usually hate the whole track changes feature, it’s actually useful this time. The first two must have already been crossed out before they turned on track changes, but the last two edits are a lot more recent.”

He goes into the review panel and changes it from
Final
to
Final Showing Markup
,
and a number of little balloons pop up in the side margin.
Some of them are pink and labeled
JMW
. Others are green and labeled
KPK
.

“I used your initials,” Connor says. “So she won’t know you outsourced your homework.”

Two of the changes deal with the
Deadlines
box. One, made by JMW, is the strike-through for the 2034 date. Connor taps that balloon, and a date pops up showing when the edit was made—three days ago, just before my meeting with Julia.

It’s the second balloon that’s interesting, however. It was edited by JMW at the same time, but instead of the four question marks that are now showing, it once held a specific date:
12252015
.

I give Connor a nervous glance. “Saul can’t use the key. And from everything I’ve seen, I really do think he’d want to be there to survey his handiwork in person. Maybe Julia removed that date because she realized he couldn’t possibly be planning for the Culling to happen that quickly.”

Connor must hear the hopeful note in my voice, because his eyes soften. “Maybe. Or maybe she’s worried it’s going to happen sooner.”

Connor and Katherine go to bed around eleven, and I spend the next few hours in Katherine’s library combing through the books and files that have been protected by a CHRONOS field. There’s a good deal of information about Houdini’s life in the pre-Cyrist timeline, most of it identical to what Trey and I found last night on the web. The only thing that stands out as markedly different is a description of the book on the friendship between Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle. Katherine doesn’t have an actual copy, just a review published in a history journal, but it mentions a falling out between Houdini and Doyle that wrecked their friendship. It’s supposedly a key point of the book, and I’m certain the sections I skimmed last night said they remained very close.

I spend the rest of my time poring over files that Connor collected. He found nothing about a “Fifth Column” in conjunction with the Cyrists, only generic mentions of fifth columns in various wars and in some TV series about aliens. A few rumors exist about an anti-Cyrist alliance within the government, but mostly on conspiracy theory websites, next to stories claiming the moon landing was fake, UFOs control our minds through microwave signals, and the Illuminati control everything else.