Ripping Time

"Come on, kid! Go into shock later!"

Armstrong jerked her into motion once more. She literally fell off her high-heeled shoes, managed to kick them off as she stumbled after Armstrong. They pelted down the alleyway and emerged into heavy traffic. Armstrong ran right in front of a yellow taxicab. The car screeched to a halt, driver cursing in a blistering tongue that was not English. Armstrong yanked open the driver's door and bodily tossed the cabby onto the street.

"Get in!"

Je

"Sorry, kid."

She squeezed shut her eyes. Oh, God... Cassie... Carl... . Je

"It's my fault," Armstrong said savagely. "I should never have let her meet you. I told her not to wait at Luigi's for you, told her they'd trace her through that goddamned call to your apartment! I knew they'd try something, dammit! But Christ, an all-out war in the middle of Luigi's... with his own daughter and sister-in-law!"

Wetness stung Je

"Forget Europe, kid," the detective muttered. "They're not go

She nodded, unable to force any sound past the constriction in her throat.

Whoever Armstrong was, he or she could out-curse a rodeo rider. "Which means," the detective ended harshly, "they were going to hit you anyway, even if Cassie hadn't met you. Just on the chance she might have mailed it to you. And they had to kill Carl, in case you'd said something to him. God damn them!"

"Who's ‘them'?" she managed to choke out, not quite daring to ask what Cassie might have mailed, but hadn't.

Armstrong glanced sidelong at her for just an instant, long enough for Je

Je

"Ever been time-touring, kid?" Armstrong asked abruptly.

"Wh-what?"

"Time-touring? Have you ever been?"

She blinked, tried to force her brain to function again. "No. But..." she had to swallow hard, "Carl and I, we were going to go... through TT-86, to London. Got the tickets and everything, used false ID to buy them, to keep it a secret..."

The taxi slewed around another corner, merged with traffic on Broadway, slowed to a decorous pace. "Kid," Armstrong said softly, "those tickets might just save your life. Because the only by-God way out of this city now is through TT-86. Where did you hide them? Do you still have the fake ID's you bought?"

She'd begun to shake against the cracked plastic of the taxi's front seat, was ashamed of the reaction, couldn't hide it. "Yeah, we've still—I've still—" she was trembling violently now, unable to block the memory of Carl's agonized screams. "Locked them up in... in my lock box..." The other secret hidden in that lock box brought the tears flooding despite her best efforts not to cry. Carl's ring, the one she couldn't wear openly, yet, not until she'd turned twenty-one, making her legally and financially independent of her hated father, lay nestled in the lock box beside the tickets.

Noah glanced sharply into her eyes. "Lock box? A bank box? Which bank?"

Je

Twenty minutes later, after a brief stop at a back-alley stolen-clothes huckster for new clothes—something without blood on it—Je

She also carried a thick case which held Carl's two black-powder 1858 Remington Beale's pistols she'd kept in the vault, the heavy .44 caliber pistols Carl had carried during re-enactments of Gettysburg and First Manassas and the Wilderness campaigns, the ones he'd taught her to use, after he'd won that action-shooting match in up-state New York last month. The ones her father would've exploded over, had he known Je

Je

"Good. We'll have to ditch this modern stuff before we enter TT-86. I'd just as soon be armed with something. How do you load them?"

Wordlessly, Je

"Why not?" Je

Noah Armstrong's voice went incredibly gentle. "No, that isn't it. We just won't be able to take loaded guns through TT-86's security scans. We can take them through as costume accessories, but not loaded and ready to fire. Tell me how to load them, and we'll do that the second we're on station."

Je

"They're probably going to figure out where we went," Armstrong said quietly when she'd finished. "In fact, they'll be hitting TT-86, too, as soon as possible." The detective swore softly. "Ansar Majlis... That's the key, after all, isn't it? After today, it's even money they'll hit her the next time Primary cycles. Part of their goddamned terrorist plan."

Je

"Those bastards at Luigi's were Ansar Majlis. Never heard of ‘em? I wish to Christ I hadn't. Your aunt is—was—a prominent public supporter of the Lady of Heaven Temples. So are the owners of Luigi's. And half the patrons. The bastard behind that attack back there sent a death-squad of Ansar Majlis to do his dirty work for him. You've heard of Cyril Barris? The multi-billionaire? Believe me, kid, you don't want to know how he made all that money. And he can't afford to have your aunt's murder tied to him. Or to your father. Getting the Ansar Majlis involved makes goddamned sure of that. And those bastards have lined up another ‘terrorist' hit, aimed right at the very soul of the Lady of Heaven Temples..."