“I don’t see how they could have. They were in here only seconds before you blew in the door.” She thought about it—no way could they have gone out that way. They would have crashed straight into Kane and his crew. And the window was still closed. Besides, they were ten floors up. She remembered Rose telling her that Melody had escaped from a locked basement while handcuffed, with no sign of how she could have gotten out. They’d presumed, with hindsight—once they’d learnedMelody was from the future—that she’d time-traveled out. Just magically disappeared without even a puff of smoke. “I think they must have time traveled back to wherever they came from.”
“You really think so?” Rose’s brows drew together. “Without a time machine?”
She nodded. “Like Melody from the locked basement.”
“You’re right. That is wicked cool.” Rose came up to her and opened her arms and Kaitlin stepped inside and was enveloped in a hug. “Don’t do that again,” Rose said. “My nerves can’t take it. And you nearly gave Kane a heart attack. I thought he was going to spontaneously combust when we came through the door, and you weren’t here.”
Kaitlin looked back at him. He was wearing a reflector device, and she couldn’t read his thoughts. But she could see the signs of strain on his face. And the expression in his eyes. She’d always known he cared. Even when he was trying to kill them all off, he’d still cared.
She remembered the vow she had made that if she got out of here, she was going to make love with Kane.
Now she was out.
The question was, would she hold herself to that vow?
First, they needed to get away from here.
“Who are the other men?” she asked.
“Ethan organized a SWAT team,” Rose said. “We thought it might be better if we looked official. These two guys”—she waved a hand to encompass the two strangers—“are Conclave.”
“Ethan sure is a useful guy to have around.” She turned to the men. “Thanks for the help.”
“He’s also organized a plane,” Rose continued. “It’s at Heathrow airport and ready to fly us wherever we want. And Dave is downstairs waiting to take us there, so I suggest we get the hell out of here.”
Kane had been strangely silent through the whole proceedings. He still looked like he was in shock. Kaitlin snapped her fingers under his nose. “Are you still with us?”
He shook his head. “I never want to live through that again.”
“Well, I can’t promise anything, because I’ve got to warn you, trouble seems to follow me around. Which means, if you have got a thing for me, you’re going to have to get used to trouble.”
“Jesus.” Maybe Kane was going to get over his infatuation. And quickly. But she didn’t think so. He reached out and took her hand, pulled her toward the door. “Let’s go home.”
For a moment, she dug in her heels. She had a feeling he was referring to Uganda. Was she ready to go there? But she had an idea that if Stella and her cronies returned from wherever they had vanished, they would be heading to Uganda as well.
Looked like Uganda was where the action was going to be. She allowed him to pull her along. “Okay.”
He seemed vaguely taken aback that she had given in so easily. She supposed it was quite a novel reaction from her. Then again, she liked to keep him on his toes.
They took the elevator to the ground floor—just the four of them. The two Conclave operatives stayed behind, presumably to clean up. Likely, they were real SWAT officers. That was the way the Conclave worked. They recruited from within organizations that could be useful. Ethan had explained it to her once. They kept people on retainer, almost like sleepers. Many of them were never woken up.
Outside the building, another black SUV was parked. It looked exactly like the last one, except this one showed no obvious damage, so she assumed it was new. The windows were tinted but the driver’s window rolled down, and she caught sight of Dave at the wheel.
Kane still had hold of her hand, as if afraid she might bolt if he let her go. She considered telling him that she wasn’t goinganywhere—except to the airport and then to Uganda. But she quite liked him keeping hold of her. It made her feel grounded.
He opened the back and tugged her inside. Taking a seat, he pulled her down beside him. Rose got in the front beside Dave, and Janelle and Josie took the seats behind them, then the vehicle pulled out into the traffic.
She was pondering the time travel thing. “If the bad guys did return to the future, how did they do it?” she asked. “They obviously didn’t have a time machine. So why do you think you have a big silver time machine, but they didn’t need one?”
“I’m guessing they come from farther in the future. Maybe they did away with the need for an actual machine.”
“Melody certainly didn’t have a time machine,” Rose said from behind her. “I would have noticed.”
“That would make sense. The machine that brought our ancestors back in time came from an earlier future than the two agents we just met. And they probably came from around the same time as Melody.”
She cast Kane a sideways glance. He was staring out of the window. She couldn’t read his thoughts and could get no sense of what he was thinking.
Suddenly, he turned and looked at her. “Here, put this on.” He handed her a reflector device. “Just in case they come back.” He frowned. “I suppose if they’ve gone back to their time, then they could actually return here at any point. Hell, they could already be here. Or they could go back to just before the attack and—Jesus, it does your head in.”
