Time Thief: A Time Thief Novel (30 page)

No one was present outside, and we made it back to the tent without anyone knowing what we’d been up to.

“OK, that was fun,” I said as I tucked the vial into my purse. “I’ve never done anything like that before. I can see why you like being a police detective. Do you have to go through special paranormal police school to be part of the Watch?”

“Yes.” Peter stood outside the tent for a moment before he reached in and, taking my hand, pulled me out.

“Where are we going? My purse is inside—”

“We’re going somewhere we can talk privately. One that doesn’t smell of skunk.”

“Are you sure you’re not taking me off to seduce me under the midsummer moon?” My fingers tightened around his, and I gave myself up to thoughts of just what I’d like to do to him under the moonlight.

“I hadn’t intended on doing that, but I am nothing if
not a considerate man, and I will naturally oblige your lustful desires.” Once we were beyond view of the camp, he adjusted the penlight so that its beam broadened, making it possible to see obstacles before us.

“Maybe later,” I laughed, warmth filling me as he squeezed my hand. “After you tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Right now I’m thinking about your breasts, and belly, and how much I like it when you tighten your muscles around me.”

“That is the result of years of Kegels. My foster mother always said I’d bless the day I started doing them, but I always thought she meant I’d have awesome bladder muscles when I am an old lady. I guess this is just as good. Our incredible sex life aside, now that you’re resolved to the idea of sharing your thoughts with me—”

“That, my fair little squab, is going to take more than a few minutes,” he interrupted, stopping before a small clearing that consisted of an official forest notice posted to a tree. The light of the flashlight made it possible to see that next to the sign were a couple of low, smooth rocks that were just the right height for sitting. He led me over to one, taking a seat opposite me.

I giggled at the squab reference, and continued. “Now that you’re OK with the idea of telling me what’s going on, why doesn’t the vial matter to you any longer? What did you mean by saying that finding the evidence and finding the vial weren’t the same thing? And why do you think Andrew of all people was involved with whatever is going on with your boss?”

“Do you always ask this many questions?” Peter asked. “If so, I may have to reconsider the proposal I made earlier.”

“Smart aleck.” I nudged him with the toe of my sandal. He took my foot and began to absently rub the top of it.

“To answer your first question, the whole thing was too easy. Or too convenient, if you will.”

I thought about that for a moment or two. “You mean that it was convenient that Andrew drove off in a huff?”

“Partially that, yes. Particularly so when he did it after I announced I was spending the evening with you.”

“You think he meant for us to search his RV? He locked it up, though.”

“Anyone with rudimentary lock-picking skills could have opened his door. Yes, I think exactly that—I think he put the vial where it would be easily found, and then made himself scarce while I was in the area. He must have known I’d take advantage of his absence to search his caravan.”

Something puzzled me. “Why would he want you to have the vial? That doesn’t make any—oh!” Enlightenment struck me. “It isn’t the same vial!”

“No, it’s my vial.”

“He took the evidence?”

Peter nodded. “I’m fairly certain that examination of the DNA in this vial will result in a different profile than what would have been gained from my evidence.”

“That sneaky bastard.” I stood up, flexing my fingers. “Well, there’s just one thing to do! We have to steal enough time to set the clock back to before Andrew took your vial, and—”

“No.”

“—then we can prove…why not? You’re not still going on about how wrong it is to steal time, are you? Because I agree that doing it when it’s for your own gain,
like me taking that motel hussy’s time, is very bad juju, but doing it for a righteous cause isn’t the same. I mean, I haven’t been zapped at all for taking Andrew’s time this evening.”

“That’s because you limited yourself to taking just a few seconds. Had you tried for anything longer, even so relatively short a time as five minutes, you would be in a very different situation. Not that I think you have the ability to take that much time from a Traveller, but you have to stop thinking of reasons to justify stealing time, Kiya. There is no justification for it. It is simply wrong, and if you continue, you will find yourself in a dire situation sooner rather than later.”

“I understand what you’re saying, and I agree that stealing is totally wrong, but there has to be situations—”

“No.” He released my foot, leaving it (and me) feeling sad and lonely. “What you are experiencing is normal, sweetheart. You just found out you have a tremendous ability, one that can do seemingly miraculous things, and you want to use that skill. But every time you do so, you risk more than you can possibly know.”

“If it’s that horrible an ability, then how do other Travellers do it and not suffer?” I asked, trying not to make my scoffing obvious. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but I had an idea that because he didn’t believe there were any circumstances where stealing time might be justified, he was painting all Travellers who used their talents in a darker light than was necessary. “Your family looks pretty hale and hearty. They all have expensive RVs, and none of them have a job, so clearly they are prosperous and healthy and happy. Where’s all the downside that you’re talking about?”

“You don’t know what truly goes on in someone’s life
until you have walked in their shoes,” Peter said all righteously and quasi-pious.

“True, but I can also see that none of them are being punished with the equivalent of Sunil, or suffering karmic whiplash, or however you want to describe it. They must be doing something right if the stealing spirit you have to appease isn’t smiting them with boils or a plague of locusts or diarrhea.”

“Now you’re being flip,” he said, his brows pulling together.

“And you’re being a stick-in-the-mud,” I answered, and immediately regretted it. I held up my hand to stop his objection. “No, that was uncalled-for. I apologize, Peter. You have a very good reason to warn me about the consequences of our actions, and I assure you that I don’t want anything horrible happening again like the Gigantic Lip Episode. I just think that maybe you are erring just a smidgen too much on the side of caution here.”

“Until that moment when you stare down into the lifeless face of the mortal who your actions killed—and I fervently hope that situation is one you never endure—you cannot know just how high a price you risk paying. I don’t know why we have seen no signs of the terrible sins that have been committed by someone in this family, but I will find out who it is, and how they’ve avoided the judgment of the shuvani.”

I nodded as graciously as I could, keeping my opinion behind my teeth. There was no sense in arguing the point with him—he’d made up his mind on the matter, and nothing I had to say would alter that. A change of subject was obviously in order. “Now maybe you can tell me what’s up with Andrew and your boss. What does one have to do with the other?”

“I don’t know for certain,” Peter said, rubbing his thumb on his chin. I had to give my id a moment to swoon over Peter’s chin and jaw and neck and other nibble-worthy parts of his head before she let me focus again. “But something struck me as slightly off when I met Dalton earlier this evening.”

“The easy way to find out is to, you know—” I wiggled my fingers in the air. “Do the time reset thing.”

He gave me a weary look.

“Sorry. Won’t mention it again.” I thought for a minute about what he’d said, allowing the night sounds of the forest—slight breeze rustling through the trees, owls talking to one another, the faint squeak of some rodent or night bird—to calm my mind so I could focus on the tangle of speculation that seemed to surround us. “Why did Dalton seem off to you tonight? Not what was wrong, because if you knew that, then you wouldn’t be sitting here trying to puzzle it out. But something must have started you thinking that way. Was it anything in particular?”

“Not really, no. It was just a sense that…I was seeing only part of the picture, and was missing something important. But I’ll be damned if I know what.”

“Carla—my foster mom—used to help me whenever I’d lose my house keys by walking me through what I’d been doing before. Let’s do that. Describe exactly what happened when you met with him. And you can stop with the skeptical expression, because Carla is really smart, and she never, ever failed to get me to remember where my keys were.”

One side of Peter’s mouth curled up into a rueful half smile. It was almost more than I could bear, but I knew full well that if I gave in to the temptation and sat on his
lap to kiss the smile, we wouldn’t end up talking over the situation with Andrew and Dalton.

“I met with him just off the highway, where the drive to the lumber mill starts. He was already there, pulled off the road and standing next to his car, when I arrived.”

I closed my eyes so I could better visualize the scene. Eloise had died at that turn off the road enough that I was very familiar with the location. It was unremarkable in every sense, consisting of a pothole-marked dirt road, lined on either side with a dense thicket of fir trees and shrubs. Cars and logging trucks whizzed by on the main road with a speed that usually caused a mini vortex of wind at the entrance, kicking up the dust, and causing the fronds of the sagebrush to whip around. There was no wildlife there, though, since the highway was just a few feet away, and nothing other than the chain and sign I’d seen when I first arrived to mark that the lumber camp was there.

“I pulled up, and went to talk to him. He seemed perfectly normal. He looked like he normally does, and sounded fine, but there was something…off.”

“What did you talk about?” I asked, my eyes still closed.

Peter related a conversation that appeared to be innocuous enough. He hesitated for a few seconds, then hurried over a section that sounded familiar.

“So Dalton thinks you’re persecuting your family?” I asked, opening my eyes to watch him. His face was shuttered, absolutely devoid of expression.

“He’s wrong. I’m not.” The defiance was in his voice.

“I know he’s wrong,” I said simply, smiling at him. “You’re not a vindictive person. You’re going after your family because you think one of them is a murderer, not because they abandoned you.”

“I know one or more of them is a murderer, yes,” he said, his face relaxing as the tension left his shoulders. “And thank you for believing me.”

“And what else did Dalton have to say?”

“Nothing beyond that he’d await the results of my search.”

“That’s so odd,” I mused, running through the scene again in my head. “Do you think that maybe someone else has been talking to him? Or convinced him that you’re…I don’t know, incompetent to conduct the investigation? Maybe someone is bad-mouthing you to him?”

“I doubt it. He would come to me with any accusations that had been made against me.”

“Hmm.” I closed my eyes again. “Let’s go over it once more. You turned off the highway, and he was at the entrance of the camp rather than your normal meeting point.”

“He claimed it was faster to meet there, and it was.”

“Yes, but is that out of character?” Time seemed to come to a halt as I mentally set the scene. Peter arriving in his blue car. Dalton standing beside his car, waiting for Peter. Darkness around them, pierced occasionally by the lights of passing vehicles. “I’m afraid I’m no help at all. It sounds like everything was perfectly normal.”

“Obviously something isn’t normal if there are two Daltons, albeit one of which is apparently deceased.”

“Maybe we’re tackling this the wrong way. Maybe instead of wondering what’s wrong with Dalton, we should be asking ourselves what’s wrong with the body I saw. What happened to it, for one?” I looked up at him. “Do you think it’s back at the motel?”

“Hmm. You might have something there.” He clasped
my hand and started off at a lope, forcing me to run after him. “I don’t know what happened to the corpse, but we can find out quickly enough if it’s at the motel.”

“Hold up, I can’t run that fast!” He slowed down, allowing me to catch up, the light from his flashlight swinging in wide arcs before us. When we reached the rutted drive to the lumber camp, he turned left, and would have started toward the highway if I hadn’t stopped him. “Wait a sec, Peter.”

“We don’t have time to fuss with your car,” he called after me when I dashed past Eloise to the tent. “Mine is quicker, not to mention infinitely more reliable.”

“I just want to get my purse. The vial is in it, and I don’t want to leave it where anyone could…oh. Hello.”

A shape loomed up out of the darkness of my tent, and resolved itself into a man.

Andrew held my purse in one hand, and the vial in the other.

“Mother pus-bucket,” I swore, looking around wildly for Peter. I could tell by the expression on Andrew’s face that he was in a rage, and I had no doubt whatsoever who the focus of that rage would be. I took a deep breath to warn Peter, but before I could get any words out, a hand clamped down over my mouth, jerking me backward. As I flailed helplessly against the person restraining me, a second man emerged from the tent, joining the first. My eyes widened at the sight of him a second before blackness exploded painfully in my head, and once again I fell into nothing.

T
hey had her in Andrew’s caravan.

Peter watched from the blackness of the forest as Andrew and William emerged from the former’s caravan, carefully locking the door behind them. They proceeded to William’s motor home, and entered it without a word spoken between them.

He smiled to himself, a grim smile, the smile of a man whose woman had been abducted, if not before that very man’s eyes, then behind his back while he was waiting for said woman to grab her purse. It was a smile that boded ill for anyone who came between him and the woman who he now admitted consumed his every waking thought. And probably most of his sleeping ones, not that he knew what his mind did while he slept, since he didn’t hold conversations with it the way Kiya did with hers.