Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (8 page)

“
Up Meacham Creek.” Jim
tipped his head to indicate back the way he’d come.
“Why?”

“
Actually … um … I was
wondering if you knew Cassie McKay?” Anna said.

Jim jerked the wheel—just a quick back and
forth—but it showed his surprise. Then he steadied the truck. “Are
you friends of hers?”

“
Yes,” Meg said. “Have you
seen her recently?”

“
Not since last
Thanksgiving,” Jim said. “Do you know her grandfather,
Art?”

“
We’ve never met, but he
should have heard of us,” Anna said. “You wouldn’t happen to have
his phone number, would you?”

“
Not on me or in my phone.
I could take you to his house, but I don’t think he’s there.” Jim
checked his watch. “Another twenty minutes to Mission. Then I’ll
see what I can do.”

Meg settled back in her seat, her head
against the headrest, and closed her eyes. She could feel Jim’s
glances, and she knew that he wanted to ask more questions, but he
didn’t, for which she was grateful. She had declared to Anna what
she believed to be a truth about the time traveling: that they
ended up where they needed to be, even if it didn’t seem like it at
first. Last time Meg had come to the modern world, she’d landed in
an indoor pool in Aberystwyth in a world-class health clinic whose
doctors saved Llywelyn’s life.

This time they’d found a friendly face
already, and she was hoping that today wouldn’t be the exception
that proved the rule.

As Meg had said to Llywelyn
only a few hours ago but in another world, and with humor then
instead of trepidation,
Dear God, what have
we done?

Chapter Five

November 2019

Callum

C
allum’s mobile buzzed, but since he was relaxing with his wife
on a very squashy couch that would require considerable effort to
rise from, or even to shift to reach his pocket, he ignored
it.

In fact, he’d been ignoring unpleasant news
from home all afternoon. Earlier, one of Cassie’s relatives had
turned on the television to the news—always a mistake—and it had
been full of the riots in London, Manchester, and Liverpool,
protesting the new austerity program the British government had
instituted. The London office of MI-5 had averted a suspected
terrorist attack at the Tower of London that morning. Callum’s
country was coming apart at the seams.

Then his mobile buzzed again.

“
You’d better get that,”
Cassie said, pushing her black hair off her shoulder. “It isn’t
Thanksgiving in Cardiff. It’s just a Thursday.”

“
It’s half midnight on
Friday now.” But even so, Callum allowed two inches to come between
Cassie and himself and felt for his mobile phone. A quick glance at
the caller ID told him it was Agent Mark Jones, calling from
Cardiff, as Cassie had guessed. Callum put the mobile to his ear.
“What’s up?”

There was a pause. “You’ve been spending far
too much time with your American relatives,” Jones said.

“
Jones—”

“
Someone’s
here.”

Squashy couch or no squashy couch, Callum
was on his feet in an instant. He and Cassie had been stranded in
the modern world for two years. Having David or another family
member arrive wasn’t the same thing as going back, but it was a
start. The rest of Cassie’s family had been gathering over the last
hour for a meal that would begin at six in the evening. Cassie and
Callum had retreated to the living room with two aged aunts who
couldn’t hear a word Callum said—or possibly understand it if they
did hear it—and about twenty kids.

Raucous or not, everyone looked at Callum as
he stood up, the mobile fixed to his ear. He was taller than anyone
in the room, with close-cropped dark hair and hazel eyes that
snapped with concern.

That same concern was reflected in Cassie’s
nearly black eyes. “What is it, Callum?”

His adrenaline had already started pumping.
“Where?” Callum moved towards the door, estimating how quickly he
and Cassie could drive to the closest airport, which out here
wasn’t exactly close, and flight times to the UK.

Cassie grabbed both their coats and followed
Callum onto the porch, allowing the screen door to close with a
bang. Callum took his coat but didn’t put it on. She shrugged into
hers and tied the scarf. Compared to November in Wales, where the
temperature hovered around seven degrees (Celsius, that is;
forty-five degrees Fahrenheit to Cassie), eastern Oregon was
experiencing lows below freezing. Callum’s breath fogged as soon as
it left his mouth.

“
Well … there, actually,”
said Jones. “I have your mobile location on GPS and the flash
occurred twenty miles to the east from where you are
standing.”

Now Callum’s heart really sped up. He
wondered who had come and hoped also that what had brought him,
her, or them wasn’t the need for immediate medical attention.
Twenty miles to the east of here was closer to the middle of
nowhere than where he was currently standing, which was close
enough for a man who’d spend most of his life in cities.

“
Who else knows about
this?” Callum held up one finger to Cassie, who’d moved right next
to him, her hand clutching the back of his shirt. She stood on
tiptoe, straining to hear what Jones was saying.

“
Nobody,” said Jones.
“We’re all but shut down, you know that.”

Callum did know that. More than two years
without a time travel incident coupled with a worldwide financial
crisis had resulted in draconian budget cuts within an already
discredited MI-5. Callum’s new department, termed the Project,
which he’d taken on with such guarded optimism two years ago, once
had three divisions, each dedicated to one aspect of the time
travel issue. The first section, in charge of identifying possible
time travelers, had instead turned up and been responsible for the
arrest of no fewer than eight terrorist cells in the last two
years. That was a better record than the entirety of MI-5, and
consequently it was the only section the government was continuing
to fund. And the only reason Callum still had a job, at least until
the year was out.

After that, Jones was to be shuttled from
the Project back to MI-5 proper, Callum might find himself sent to
Iceland, and the fact that the British government had ever funded a
time travel initiative would be instantly—and
conveniently—forgotten. Callum was contemplating asking for a pay
rise so they could simply sack him for impertinence and be done
with it.

“
Send the coordinates to my
mobile,” Callum said, “and then monitor the traffic. Let me know if
anyone—and I mean anyone—gets wind of this.”

“
Right,” said Jones, not
needing Callum to explain that just because the British government
had been shortsighted enough to end the Project didn’t mean that
everyone else had given up on it.
Penny-wise and pound foolish,
Lady
Jane might have said, had she still been alive. “And by the
way—”

Callum could hear clicking in the background
as Jones pounded away on his keyboard.

“—
there’s been another
bombing. A bad one.”

“
What? Where?” Callum took
the mobile away from his ear to check for other messages, but there
were none. Two months ago, three bombs had gone off simultaneously
in what otherwise had been nondescript government office buildings
in London, York, and Bristol. Dozens of people had died and many
more had been injured.

“
The GCHQ in Cheltenham,”
said Jones, referring to the Government Communications
Headquarters, known casually as ‘Signals’, an intelligence
organization dedicated to providing communications intelligence and
information to the British government. Since heading up the
Project, Callum had worked closely with the director of Signals.
The two agencies were dependent upon the same sources of
information—satellites, mobile networks, internet communications—to
do their work.

“
Christ,” Callum said.
“When was this?”

“
About twenty minutes ago,”
said Jones.

“
Casualties?” Callum held
his breath.

“
It’s too soon to know
much. It’ll be many, including, we think, the director.”

Callum bent his head and put his mobile to
his forehead for a moment, eyes closed, gathering his thoughts.
He’d liked the director of Signals, as much as it was possible to
like anyone who’d sacrificed as much as he had to reach the peak of
his profession. “What was he doing at work at that hour?”

“
How often have you worked
that late talking to counterparts in Australia?” said Jones. “The
only good news is that the flash may go unremarked, and nobody else
will know about your friend’s arrival.”

“
No one in our government,
you mean,” Callum said. “The Americans may have caught
it.”

Jones grunted his acknowledgment of that
unpleasant fact.

“
The Prime Minister might
be regretting shutting us down about now,” Callum said. “Without
information from GCHQ’s data streams, even MI-5 and 6 are
blind.”

“
Should I call in whoever
might be around?” said Jones. “Delany hasn’t started work in London
yet.”

“
Let me talk to Tate,”
Callum said, referring to the new director of MI-5. “We should be
able to get some of our people back temporarily.” The paperwork
would be a nightmare, but it would be worth it. “Keep me posted.
Given the bombing, I expect to be recalled at any
minute.”

“
What are you going to do
about whoever’s come through?” said Jones.

“
Go get them, of course.”
Callum pressed ‘end’ on Jones’s bark of laughter and looked down at
Cassie.

She was hopping up and down with curiosity,
or maybe that was an attempt to stay warm. “What is it? I can tell
it’s bad.”

“
Someone’s here, and
there’s been another bombing.”

“
What? Where?”

Her questions were the same as Callum’s had
been to Jones and were relevant to both halves of Callum’s
statement. Callum chose to answer the first. “Right here … well, to
the east of where we are now.” His mobile beeped, indicating that
the map Jones had promised to send had come through.

Cassie and Callum put their heads together
and studied the blinking dot. “That’s way the heck out there,” she
said. “I don’t think it’s close to any road, not even a dirt
one.”

As the crow flies, the blinking dot was
twenty miles from where they stood, but Callum knew from experience
that if a road went there directly, it wasn’t one he wanted to be
on. This was rough country: grassland and wheat fields and long
narrow draws turning to forested hills the farther into the
mountains one went. The entire county, an area slightly less than
half the size of Wales, had all of eighty thousand people in
it.

The screen door screeched open, and Cassie’s
grandfather came onto the porch. He peered into the darkness and
then flicked on the light. “Cassie?”

“
We’re here, Grandfather,”
she said.

“
What’s happened?” Art
McKay thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. He had
put on his Pendleton wool coat over a checked buttoned down shirt
and a cowboy string tie he wore underneath. Shorter than Cassie, he
nonetheless was a presence in any room he entered.

Callum had speculated more than once about
those long dead Scots who’d emigrated to Oregon, resulting in
Cassie’s very Scottish last name. Many of her relatives had
suggested that he return for the festival of Highland games that
took place up the road every July. That Scottish connection was an
odd coincidence among many odd coincidences in the series of events
that had led in the end to Cassie’s rescue of him after his company
was ambushed by a host of angry Highlanders in Scotland in the
Middle Ages.

“
Some of our friends have
arrived, Grandfather,” Cassie said.

“
You’ll be missing dinner
then,” he said.

“
I’m sorry.” Callum turned
the mobile so Art could see the map. “They’re out there all
alone.”

Art pointed towards his truck with his lips.
“Let me get my keys and tell the others. That’s a lot of square
miles to cover. You’ll be needing help.”

Gratefulness spread though Callum like a sip
of warm mead. Cassie’s family, led by her grandfather, had accepted
him into her life from the moment he’d shown up on this very porch
two years ago. And truthfully, while nobody else in the clan had
married an Englishman—or a Scotsman rather—they were no strangers
to welcoming newcomers into their midst. Callum hoped their
openness wouldn’t be tested too far when they found whoever had
come through.

During that first trip two years ago (after
Callum had recovered from the gunshot wound to his shoulder), he’d
discovered how tightly knit this community was. Not only did
everyone know his name and something of his history before he
arrived, but while he struggled to put names to faces, they all
referred to him as ‘that guy Cassie married.’ When he complained
about it, she laughed and said that at least they were including
him. If they didn’t like him, they would have looked past him as if
he didn’t exist.

While Callum left a message for Tate about
borrowing some of his former staff, Art organized four truckloads
of men, many with rifles in case they encountered wild animals.
Callum still hadn’t heard from his employer, which was somewhat
troubling. He’d known that he was being shunted to one side. He’d
watched it happen. He wasn’t sorry now, since it meant he could get
on with what he viewed as his primary job, but it didn’t bode well
for his future employment. Callum didn’t think he could go back to
being a regular agent.