21
I really think we would have made it out of the hotel unnoticed if Kiernan had just stayed put on the sidewalk like Katherine had told him. Or if we hadn’t taken a wrong turn at the second corridor, which turned out to be one of the blind hallways Holmes had thrown into the floor plan just for grins and giggles. If either of those things hadn’t happened, Holmes would still have been in the office on the other side of the exit.
But both of those things did happen. The creditor Katherine had lured in to distract Holmes was downstairs, arguing loudly with Minnie, who was demanding that he wait for Holmes in the parlor. Holmes was on the landing between the first and second floors, holding a gun in one hand and the back of Kiernan’s shirt in the other.
“Good evening, ladies.” Judging from the pleasant smile on Holmes’s face and the humorous twinkle in his blue eyes, he might have been planning to engage us in a casual chat about the weather. “Does this young fellow belong to either of you?” he asked.
Katherine answered “No” at the exact moment that I answered “Yes.”
“He’s my assistant,” I said, giving Katherine an angry glance. “I’m a reporter covering the fair for the Rochester Worker’s Gazette. Your wife told me that you were kind enough to bring me back here when I fainted on the Midway. Thank you.”
“Good,” Holmes said. “That’s exactly what he told me.”
Even though I’m not a big fan of droopy mustaches, I could see why Holmes had found it easy to charm women. His eyes were almost hypnotic, and there were friendly crinkles—smile lines, my dad called them—around the edges.
I pulled my gaze away from Holmes to glance down at Kiernan. His face was pale and his dark eyes were wide and anxious. He mouthed the words “I’m sorry” silently, and I shook my head and gave him a look of sympathy. This wasn’t his fault.
Holmes was still smiling when I looked up. He nodded toward Katherine. “And who might this good lady be?”
“My mother,” I said. “She’s traveling with me.”
Katherine took her cue and stepped forward slightly, apparently deciding, as I had, that our best chance was to act as though the otherwise pleasant man on the landing wasn’t holding a pistol. “Yes, sir,” she said. “You have our deepest gratitude. I don’t know what might have happened to my daughter if you hadn’t…”
“No trouble at all, madam. In fact, it was my very real pleasure. Now if you and your ‘daughter’ wouldn’t mind taking a few steps back?” He gestured with the gun and we backed up silently. He then reached down and hefted Kiernan under his arm, carrying him up the stairs to the second floor where we stood.
“I’d be delighted to stand here and chat with you lovely ladies,” Holmes said as he reached the top step, “but I’ve had to leave my… wife to handle a rather distraught business associate and she’s really not very good at these types of situations. So I’m going to ask you to return to your room, and we’ll continue this discussion at our leisure later this evening.”
He motioned again with the gun, and Katherine and I began to back toward the corridor.
“I think we’ll move much more quickly if you turn around,” he said.
We hesitated briefly, then reversed course, retracing our steps down the hallway. A few turns later, we were again in front of the door with the bolt on the outside.
Holmes tossed Kiernan at my feet as if he were a sack of potatoes and then held the door open as we filed inside.
“Please make yourselves comfortable. I promise I’ll return just as quickly as I can.”
Still smiling, he closed the door and slammed the bolt.
The tiny bit of daylight that had shown through the small window earlier was now gone. I could feel Kiernan’s small body shaking next to me, but I couldn’t tell in the dark whether he was crying. I knelt down on the floor and pulled him toward me, as much for my own comfort as his.
“I’m sorry, Miss Kate,” he said. “I shoulda stayed in the alley.”
Katherine gave a little huff as she sat on the bed, making it clear that he’d get no argument from her on that point.
“No, Kiernan,” I said firmly, giving Katherine a dirty look, even though I knew she couldn’t see it. “You were amazing—I can’t believe you managed to grab my things right under Holmes’s nose and bring help. But how did you find Katherine? I don’t even think I’d have recognized her.”
He shrugged. “It’s just disguises. You get used to ’em on the Midway. She walks the same an’ sounds the same. I seen her aroun’ lotsa times this year. An’ she always had on a bracelet like the one you’re wearin’. The one you said was your special sign.”
“You’re incredibly observant for an eight-year-old,” I said. “Are sure you aren’t a grown-up in disguise?”
It was a lame attempt at humor, but he obliged me with a little laugh. I gave him a big hug and kiss on the forehead. “You saved my life, you know.”
“I wouldn’t be so quick to jump to that conclusion,” Katherine said, “given our current predicament.”
She then removed something from the pocket of her skirt. The glowing interface of a CHRONOS diary popped up a few seconds after she opened it.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m calling HQ for an emergency extraction. They can come in through the third-floor stable point and—”
“No,” I said, snatching the diary.
“Do you have any better ideas?” she countered, attempting to grab the diary back from me. “Holmes will return eventually and I don’t think he’s planning an ice-cream social for the evening’s entertainment.”
“I told you no one at CHRONOS can know about this, Katherine. Have you thought about what happens to me if you pull in HQ? Or to Kiernan? Do you think CHRONOS will be willing to let him go, no questions asked, given what he’s seen and heard?”
“He’s only seen me open a diary, Kate, and heard a conversation that he doesn’t understand in the slightest. And if you’d shut up and hand the book back to me, we can end that conversation so that he—”
“It’s not the firs’ time I seen one of those things, Miss Kate,” Kiernan interrupted. “It’s like the one of me dad’s, the thing I used to send a message to—”
I yanked his arm a bit and he took the hint, but it was too late. Katherine reached into the handbag and pulled out the CHRONOS key I’d been wearing earlier. The glow from the key lit the room with pale blue and I mentally kicked myself for not thinking of using it as a flashlight earlier.
“What color is this?” Katherine asked, holding the medallion close to Kiernan’s face.
“I canna really see it in the dark, ma’am,” he answered, glancing up nervously at me.
Katherine’s eyebrow shot up. “You’re a smooth little liar, kid, but you’re not fooling me.” She grabbed his free hand and pressed it against the center of the medallion. The display wasn’t clear—it was really little more than static, with the occasional visible word or button, but it provided her with the answer she needed.
“How?” she asked me. “How is he able to do that? They don’t even start training kids this young.”
“I can’t really tell you that,” I said. “It’s part of what we’re trying to correct.”
That was a blatant lie and I hoped that my poker face was better than Kiernan’s, at least in the dim light. A truthful response would have been that I was asking her to go back and start the very chain of events that would lead to Kiernan, myself, and who knew how many others being able to activate that equipment. But that chain of events was the one that I knew and the only one that seemed to promise any hope, however small, of stopping the Cyrists.
“So what do you suggest, Kate?” she asked, tucking the medallion back inside her dress. “I don’t think there’s any way out of this room, and our only other option is to sit here and wait for Holmes to return. It would be three against one, but one of us is pretty small, and I think the gun puts the odds slightly in his favor.”
“There is a way for one of us to get out of here,” I said. “And it only takes one person to open that bolt and get us all out. Your return trip may be restricted to the stable point on the Wooded Island, but mine isn’t. I can jump to any stable point from here. Didn’t you say there’s one on the third floor?”
“Yes, but how can you—”
“I can’t explain any further, Katherine.” It was, admittedly, a bit of a kick to be the one restricting her knowledge on a need-to-know basis, but we really didn’t have the time for a detailed discussion on the matter. And each bit of information I gave her was another string that she’d be tempted to pull, potentially unraveling the events that needed to transpire over the next few months.
“I only familiarized myself with the stable points inside the fair and near the entrances,” I said, removing my CHRONOS key from the inner pocket and handing it to her. “I knew there were others, but—well, I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare. If you can pull the location up on the key so that I can see it and lock it in, I should be able to make the jump and get back here in a couple of minutes. I’m just not sure how we’re going to get out the front door with both Holmes and Minnie lurking at the bottom of the stairs.”
“Miss Kate?” Kiernan said, tugging my arm. “Maybe we don’ hafta take the stairs. Maybe we could take the ladder?”
“What ladder? There’s a fire escape?” I hadn’t even considered that possibility—I mean, really, what homicidal maniac would include fire escapes in the design plan for his torture castle?
“I don’ know if you’d call it a fire escape, but there’s a ladder from a window on the top floor, goin’ down to the roof of the buildin’ next door. I saw it when I was waitin’ all that time in the alley. Instead of goin’ home.”
I couldn’t help but grin at the note of sarcasm in his voice on the last sentence. If Katherine noticed, however, she didn’t let on. She just reached over and took my hand, placing the activated medallion in my palm.
“The kid and I will put our heads together while you’re gone,” she said, “and try to see if we can figure out which window is most likely to lead to the ladder.”
Positioning herself so that we could both see the interface clearly, she visually sorted through the various categories and then halted when a dark space came into view.
“Are you sure that’s it?” I asked. “It’s totally black.”
“Yes,” she answered a bit testily. “It’s a linen closet. And it is nighttime. What do you expect?”
“I’m just not sure how you can tell this closet from some of the other dark closets you zoomed past. I could end up in Des Moines.”
“I’ve never been to Des Moines. I’ve been here, however. Your first left and then your second left should get you from the closet to the staircase. And from there, you just need to retrace our steps back to this room.”
I nodded and positioned my fingers over the controls, replacing hers. The display wavered for a moment and then sputtered out.
Katherine snorted in annoyance and pulled it up again. “Focus this time, okay?”
“Fine,” I said. “I like you better as an old lady. You need time to mellow.” It was true, but I reminded myself that it had been a pretty stressful day for her as well. She’d just learned she was pregnant and that the father probably wasn’t what he was pretending to be, and she was smart enough to realize that her world was about to change in major ways. That was a lot to digest, even without threats from a serial killer.
The display flickered again briefly when Katherine moved her fingers to make way for mine, but I was able to pull the image back.
“Okay. I’ve got it. Thanks, Katherine.
“Kiernan,” I said, keeping my eyes locked on the display, “I’ll be right back. Only a couple of minutes. Katherine’s really not as nasty as she seems.”
“I’ll be all right,” he said. “Be careful, Miss Kate.”
“And Katherine?” I added in a lower voice. “If something happens, I’m trusting that you’ll get him out of here. I know for a fact that he is not meant to meet his end in this hotel. You’ll tell CHRONOS he saw nothing and he knows nothing.”
“My God, Kate. What do you think I am?” she hissed. “The kid has been a major pain in my backside today, but I wouldn’t leave him with that monster.”
“So I have your word on that? You’ll do everything you can to get him to safety if I don’t make it back?”
“You’d better make it back, since you seem so convinced that the fate of the world depends on it. But yes—you have my word. Would you just go?”
I focused on the very middle of the black rectangle that Katherine claimed was the third-floor linen closet and blinked.
I’m not a fan of small, dark spaces, so I was relieved that the arc of blue light from the medallion illuminated most of the closet. Apparently CHRONOS hired only very thin historians, however, because the stable point was a tight fit even for my slight frame. My shoulder collided with a shelf as I turned, tumbling a large stack of linens to the floor. The stench of chemicals and something more earthy and pungent underneath assaulted my nose.
Out of habit, I bent down and started to pick up the sheets that I knocked over, but the smell was stronger near the floor. Fighting back a wave of nausea, I decided I really didn’t want to know what was under the stack of linens and pushed the door to my right. It wouldn’t budge and there was no handle on the inside.
I moved back two steps to see if I could get enough room to kick it in. That’s when I felt something round and hard poking my spine.
I bit back a scream. Then, after a few seconds of nothing happening, I glanced behind me and saw that my attacker was the doorknob to another, larger door. Relieved, I opened it and escaped into the hallway. I had no clue where the first door led, and given that the smell was stronger in that direction, I was very glad that I didn’t have to find out.
The light from the medallion was again very useful, since the gas lamps in the third-floor hallways weren’t lit. The corridors were confusing enough without having to feel my way along the walls in the dark. The entire floor seemed deserted, but I couldn’t shake the memory of the things that had happened behind some of these doors.
Of course, Katherine’s instructions were wrong. The first left did take me to a main hallway, but the second left along that corridor was one of Holmes’s amusing little dead ends.
Coming back toward the main hallway, I passed a door that, like the second-floor room where Katherine and Kiernan were waiting for me, had a bolt on the outside.
I knew Katherine would screech that I was violating the timeline—and she was undoubtedly correct that anyone in there probably wasn’t supposed to escape—but I really didn’t think much of the CHRONOS ethical guidelines on that front. I yanked the bolt back and opened the door.
I heard a scuffling sound from inside, but it could very easily have been a mouse and I didn’t have time to stop and investigate. “If there’s anyone in there, the door is open,” I whispered. “Holmes has a gun, though, so be careful.”
I didn’t wait for an answer, just turned right at the main corridor, and then tried the next left. Thankfully, that one did lead me to the stairs.
I paused at the top of the open stairwell to listen. The muted noise of an argument drifted upward, but it didn’t sound like the man from the bank.
“… not leaving you here with…” That voice was clearly Minnie. I couldn’t make out the entire response, but the other voice was low and calm, and I was pretty sure it was Holmes. I picked up the phrase “back at the flat,” and “business” as I moved slowly down the stairs, but that was all I heard.
When I hit the second floor, I took off quickly through the hallway. No wrong turns this time and the gas lamps were easier to travel by than the dim light of the CHRONOS key. It was still a confusing maze of twists and turns, but I reached the room a few minutes later. I unbolted the door, and a very relieved-looking Katherine and Kiernan rushed out.
As we hurried back toward the stairway, I took all of the cash that I could find at the bottom of the handbag and crammed it down the front of Kiernan’s shirt. It was at least ten times the salary we’d agreed upon and he started to protest.
“You’ve earned it, kiddo. And,” I said softly, “if we get separated, you may still have a job to do. Get Katherine back to the Wooded Island—the spot near the cabin.”
“I know how to get back to the Expo, Kate,” Katherine said. “I’ve spent plenty of time here.”
“Yes, but I’ll wager you don’t know the back ways as well as he does. And based on what I’ve seen, he’s friends with half the people who work at the Expo. I’m willing to bet they’d help him—no questions asked.
“Kiernan,” I added, “take every back alley you know and keep an eye out for the guy you were following earlier. The pudgy one. He’s still looking for Katherine, probably on the Midway.”
“What about you?” he asked.
“I’ll be okay—I can jump straight home from here—but I won’t see either of you again for a long while.”
Katherine had just turned a corner. I held Kiernan’s arm to keep him back so that she couldn’t hear our next exchange.
“If you get out, you don’t come back, okay? I’ll be fine.” I tapped the medallion hanging from my neck and spoke quickly. “Is yours at the cabin?”
He nodded, and after a moment’s hesitation, I slipped the spare medallion around his neck and tucked it into his shirt. “Never take it off, okay? Never. Prudence is going to demand your dad’s key at some point, and I think there’s a good chance you won’t remember any of this if she does. You might not even remember why you don’t trust her, and I really don’t think that’s fair, do you?”
His eyes were solemn. “No, Miss Kate. I don’ think that’s a bit fair.” The chain was very long on him, well below his waist, and he rearranged it as we turned the corner, wedging it into the waistband of his trousers.
I again had the eerie feeling that I was being watched and spun around to look back down the hallway we’d just left. But there was no one in the corridor—just the flickering shadows from the gas lamps.
Katherine, who was now approaching the stairwell, looked back impatiently over her shoulder. I turned back to Kiernan, putting my finger to my lips and flashing my eyes toward Katherine, hoping he’d understand both that he needed to be quiet and that she didn’t need to know about our little exchange. He nodded and gave me a little smile.
There were no voices in the stairwell. A few lights were still burning in the pharmacy, but Holmes’s office was dark. I crossed my fingers that he had stepped out to help his wife find a cab to take her home, but I had a bad feeling.
I led Kiernan toward the inner edge of the stairs and we crept upward to the dark third floor of the hotel. When we reached the landing, I gave Kiernan’s shoulder a little squeeze and moved the two of us in front of Katherine.
“What are you doing?” she asked, in a barely perceptible whisper. “I’m the one who knows which way we’re going.”
“Do you have martial arts training?” I snapped. “If not, we stand a better chance if I go first. Just in case. You take the rear, Kiernan in the middle. If we all stay close, you can nudge me when we need to turn.”
She made a slight face, but nodded once and pulled back against the wall so that I could inch out in front of her. “It should be the second left.”
After my last experience with her thinking it was the second left, I was tempted to ask if she was sure it wasn’t the third, but I decided it was best to keep chatter to a minimum.
We crossed to the other side of the hallway and were just about to make the turn when two gunshots sounded from behind us. All three of us jumped and ducked as we ran around the corner, but the shots were clearly on a lower floor. The good news? Holmes was nowhere near our current location. The bad news? He was most definitely still in the building. And from the sound of things, that bad news had probably been much worse news for someone on the first or second floor.
“Come on,” I said. “At least now we know he’s in the building, but not close by. We just need to find that window.”
“But he doesn’t shoot anyone tonight,” Katherine said.
“You know that for a fact?” I asked, my voice tense. “He killed a lot of people here.”
“I just hope he hasn’t killed someone else because of us,” she said. “Someone who wasn’t supposed to die.”
“I do, too,” I said. “But there’s not much we can do about it now, is there? We need to keep moving.”
There was a rapping sound behind me and I whipped the CHRONOS key around to look down the corridor, bumping into Kiernan as I spun around. For a split second, I saw a tall shadow in the very middle of the hallway and then it was gone.
“Did you see that?” I asked Katherine.
“No,” she said. “What are you talking about?”
“I thought…” I shook my head. It clearly wasn’t Holmes, and I’d had very little sleep in the past forty-eight hours. “Nothing. Just jumpy, I guess.”
We ran down two more corridors, including the one where I’d paused earlier to unbolt the door. The door was open a good deal wider than it had been when I left, and I wondered whether the occupant had escaped the frying pan only to land directly in the fire.
And that’s when I smelled the smoke.