Ripping Time

"But—" Je

A dark glance from steel-cold grey eyes shut her up. "There are two of us. And two groups of them." The detective nodded at Marcus and Ianira, who still lay unmoving except to breathe. Fright tightened down another notch, leaving Je

The teenager interrupted. "You don't look like her. Not anything like her. Nobody would believe you were her. You are too tall."

For the first time, Je

The very fact that he'd come up with the idea in the first place told Je

The teenager stared her down. "Yes. They have tried to murder Ianira."

It was all that needed to be said.

"Julius—" Marcus started to protest.

"No," Julius swung that determined gaze toward his older friend. "If I die, then I will die with honor, protecting people I love. What more can any man ask?"

How did a kid that young end up that wise? Je

"That's settled, then," Noah said briskly. "Julius, I don't have words to thank you. Right now, I'd better go up to Commons, check into the hotel under the name on my station pass, find an outfitter. You, too, Je

The purloined letter... Je

Then she headed up to Commons on Noah Armstrong's heels to fetch a steamer trunk.

Chapter Four

Shangri-La Station was an Escheresque blend of major airport terminal, world-class shopping mall, and miniature city, all tucked away safely inside a massive cavern in the heart of the uplifted limestone massifs of the Himalayan mountains, a cavern which had been gradually enlarged and remolded into one of the busiest terminals in the entire time-touring industry. Portions of the station emerged into the open sunshine on the mountain's flank, or would have, if Shangri-La's engineers hadn't artificially extended that rocky flank to cover the station's outer walls in natural-looking concrete "rock" faces. Because the terminal's main structure followed the maze of the cave system's i

The major time-touring gates all lay in the Commons, of course, a vast area of twisting balconies, insane staircases and ramps, and all the glitter of high-class shops and restaurants that even the most discriminating of billionaires could wish to find themselves surrounded with. But because Commons followed the twists and turns of the immense cavern, there was no straight shot or even line-of-sight view from one end to the other. And station Residential snaked back into even more remote corners and cra

The underpi

Margo had realized long ago that Shangri-La Station was immense. She just hadn't realized how big it really was. Not until Skeeter Jackson led them down circuitous, narrow tu

Probably what saved his life when that enraged gladiator was trying to skewer him with a sword, she thought silently. Under Skeeter's direction, their search party broke apart at intervals, combing the corridors and tu

The size of a small aircraft, the enormous flying reptile lived in an immense hydraulic cage that could be hoisted up from the sub-basements right through the floor to the Commons level for "feeding demonstrations." The pterodactyl ate several mountains of fish a day, far more than they could keep stocked through the gates. So the head of pest control, Sue Fritchey, had hatched an ambitious project to keep the big sternbergi fed: breeding her own subterranean food supply from an up-time hatchery and any down-time fingerlings they could bring in. The sub-basement corridors were lined with rows and high-stacked tiers of empty aquariums, waiting to be filled with the next batch of live fingerlings. Piles and dusty stacks of the empty glass boxes left the tu