“Seriously?” My deadpan response must be hysterical because Nico belly laughs himself into tears.
Even Fagin cracks a smile. “It is entertaining to watch. You’re quite graceful flying through the air.” She tilts her head to one side and peers at the holographic version of me lying face-down in the mud. “Do you know how many credits a good mud bath costs back home? You’re getting one for free.”
Nico wipes tears from his cheeks. “Would you rather be known for always getting trapped in the toilet on missions or this heroic action shot of diving into the mud?”
“Can we stop relieving my blooper reel and get to the point? We know the assailant transported out of there, but where did he go?”
“Computer, trace the transporter signal embedded in hologram file 1532.SOL142,” Nico says. “Display geographic visual in tabletop configuration.” He glances up at me and taps out a few more commands on the display screen. “This camera is several miles from the location where the transporter signature ends. It’s gonna be a little grainy and unfocused, but I’ll dial the resolution in the best I can.”
The hologram shifts scene to the middle of a barren field. Nico and Fagin exchange glances and give me expectant looks, like I’m supposed to know what I’m looking at.
“He transported to an empty cow pasture?” I ask, confused.
“Wait for it,” Nico says.
A few seconds later, light flashes in the emptiness as vegetation the width of a narrow door slides open to the right. The image is more pixelated than the assassin’s figure in the previous file, but visible inside what looks like a gaping wound in the countryside is the vestibule of a time pod.
Shadows move just inside the entryway of the other ship. A few seconds later, one shadow moves through the door and emerges into the sunlight. It’s a male figure—light-haired, broad shouldered, walks with a bit of a swagger. He moves around the perimeter of the ship—one of many physical camouflage-checks a time flight crew performs during the day—and Nico zooms in for a better look.
The backside of his head— a mop of curly blond hair—comes into sharp focus and I know exactly who it is before his gaze moves up toward the sky and back down again. The last time I saw this asshole was on the De Medici job when he ragged on me for screwing with his retirement with one breath and offered to be my father figure with the next.
Merde. Jackson Carter—the rat-bastard ex-commander who put me in this shitty situation in the first place—is on the scene and working with that psycho, Becca Trevor.
This is bad. Really fucking bad.
Chapter 22
“Fagin. Dodger. Get up here now. We’ve got a big problem,” Nico’s voice booms over the CommLink speakers in my quarters, waking me from a dead sleep.
It takes a few minutes before I’m lucid enough to do anything more than groan at the intrusion. “Computer, time check,” I say, croaking the words out. My throat feels like I’ve been walking in a desert all night. “And what the hell is wrong with Nico?”
“The time is Zero-Five-Thirty.” The computer’s soothing feminine tone is more sedative than energetic motivation to climb out from under my pillow. “Commander Garcia’s heart rate and respiration are elevated, indicating he is—”
“Computer, shut up.” I’m not looking for a laundry list of Nico’s vital signs.
“Dodger!” Nico says again, his voice more urgent.
I groan. “On my way.”
Last night, we spent several hours combing through the footage Nico had pieced together from several long-range cameras, to figure out how many backups Trevor has on the scene.
I couldn’t concentrate. The emotional and physical exhaustion only intensified as the night wore on. Somewhere south of two o’clock, Fagin ordered me to bed—dozing at the conference table and drooling on the tabletop is a breach of etiquette she can’t stomach—even though we still hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Trevor in the surveillance footage.
If I dreamt at all, I don’t remember, but it must’ve been a restless night. The sheets are twisted around me, and I feel as though the scant three hours of sleep have drained my energy more than not sleeping at all would have done.
There’s a sharp rap on my door. “Dodger, let’s go,” Fagin says.
Five minutes later, both Fagin and I slouch in chairs in the Ready Room peering at a tabletop hologram image paused in mid-action: Lady Anne exiting the palace, flanked by two of King Henry’s guards. “This better be good,” I say. “I haven’t even had coffee yet.”
Nico paces the room. He chews the skin on the side of his thumb and his eyes never leave the hologram.
Fagin stares at the image. “What are we looking at?”
“Lady Anne on her way to the tower,” he says in a dry, matter-of-fact tone.
“She’s not supposed to move to the queen’s apartments in the tower until her coronation,” Fagin replies. She shoots Nico an annoyed look that asks: You woke us up for this?
“She’s been checking the place out for the last few days. Henry’s been refurbishing the rooms, and she wanted to get a good look at the progress,” I reply.
“This footage is hot off the presses.” Nico checks the time. “Like, fifteen-minutes-ago hot.” He works the hologram control panel and the image springs to life again, this time in reverse; he rewinds back to the moment they roused Anne from her sleep.
Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk and Anne’s uncle, stands in her privy chamber waiting for the ladies-in-waiting to finish dressing her before she can receive him. When she emerges, still half-asleep and dazed, he wastes no time getting to the point. “My Lady Marquess, I am sent by the king to arrest you on the charge of seducing his royal majesty away from his lawful wife by means of witchcraft.”
Fagin and I exchange wide-eyed
