And strangely, it had worked out.
“Are you going to go to Australia?” Josie asked.
“No.”
“Then why should I?”
“Because I can be of some use here. Whereas you’re just dead weight.”
“Hey, tell it like it is,” Josie muttered.
Kaitlin smirked. “When do I ever do anything else? But it makes sense. And Sadie is there. You’ll be okay.”
She yawned. It was past one in the morning, but she knew from experience that she wouldn’t sleep. She got up, wandered into the kitchen, and found a bottle of white wine in the fridge. She grabbed it, pulled the cork, and picked up two glasses, took them through and poured them both a glass of wine before settling herself down and taking a gulp.
“Two guys jumped me on the way home,” she said.
Josie blinked a couple of times, then sipped her wine. She was altogether just too...unmoved by everything. “Random?”
“No.”
“So why did they jump you and what did you do with them?”
“They were supposed to take me and hand me over to someone, but I couldn’t get any details. So, I knocked them out and left them for the police.”
Josie raised her glass in a toast. “All in a day’s work.”
“I’ll go to the station tomorrow and have a little visit with my new friends, see if I can’t get some more information. Then I’ll call Jake and give him a heads-up.”
“You could always tell him in person at the meeting.”
There was a meeting arranged in Scotland, at the Rayleigh estates, in two days’ time. It had been planned over a year ago.
If they’d failed to find any conclusive evidence of the cataclysm by this point, then they would have to decide how to move forward.
“I could if I was going. I’m not. But don’t let that stop you heading up there.”
“Not without you. But I think you should go.”
Kaitlin had considered it. She missed them so much—well, some of them—it was a constant ache in her chest. But she couldn’t face seeing the colonel, who was now helping them. The colonel had been their chief controller when they’d believed they worked for the government. And Kaitlin would never, ever forgive him for his part in Sam’s death.
Or Kane. While he hadn’t been directly responsible for Sam’s death, he could have helped him—perhaps the only person who could have, at that point. Instead, he’d decided that Sam and the rest of them were a danger to his precious time machine and set out to systematically destroy them all. And he’d nearly succeeded. Yet now they were all working together like one big, happy family.
The world was a crazy place.
Kane had been suspiciously silent over the last months; she’d heard nothing from him since she’d made it very clear shewas not running off to Australia. But she suspected his silence wouldn’t last. For some reason, Kane had a thing for her. Hopefully, he was beginning to accept that it would never be reciprocated.
“You have to go back sometime,” Josie said, breaking into her less than happy thoughts. “They’re your family.”
She was right. Jake, their leader, Sadie, Rose, all the others. They were the only family she had. And she loved them. But even after nearly three years away, she just wasn’t ready to face them. She had such a deep pool of bitterness inside her. “I will. Just not yet.”
“You know,” Josie said, “you have to forgive yourself sometime.”
“What?” she snapped.
“You feel guilty about Sam’s death,” Josie said.
How did she even know about Sam’s death? Kaitlin certainly hadn’t told her. She had never spoken of that day with anyone, although Jake had tried to get her to open up once or twice. She’d shut him down, and he’d backed off, given her space.
