CHAPTER THIRTEEN #2
Deciding not to wait for Jan, he speed-dialed Sam’s loft. There was no answer, and his sense of doom intensified. It was Rose, he thought. She was in trouble.
Maclean strode into his office without knocking, his eyes ablaze.
“Where is Sam?” Nick shot.
“Hemmer took her back in time, probably to the monk.”
Nick was furious and incredulous at once. He cursed. She could not be lost in time. “And you just stood there and let him grab her?”
“I was occupied with the monk,” Maclean spat. “Will ye do something to find her? Or will ye sit there on yer ass and let her die?”
“I don’t sit on my ass, Maclean. And before you start pointing that finger at me, why didn’t you follow them? Oh, I forgot. You’re afraid of the leap.”
Maclean shook with fury. “They left so swiftly, I couldn’t tell where they went!”
Nick knew he’d been too hard on him. Maclean was unused to the power and he’d only met a handful of men, all Highlanders, who could actually follow a demon through time.
He reminded himself to keep his cool. It had been eight years since he’d lost an agent in time.
He buzzed Kit Mars. “Get up here, please.”
Maclean paced right up to him. His nose almost touched Nick’s. “The monk and Hemmer paid us a visit after ye left. They’re working together. How will ye find her? She’s in the past. She could be anywhere!”
Nick stared, leaping into his mind, and he was shocked.
Maclean was terrified that Sam was going to be tortured.
So many horrific graphic images were roiling through his mind, so rapidly that they blurred.
But it didn’t matter. Nick saw it all, and what he didn’t see, he could assume, suspect and guess.
He saw the instruments of torture. He saw chains and bars, cages, racks.
He saw demon audiences. He saw beasts and monsters.
He saw a maze. He saw blood, he saw rape.
“Tell me what ye plan to do!” Maclean shouted at him.
Nick recoiled. For one unbelievable moment, he felt sorry for Ian Maclean.
Then he came to his senses. “Sam is as tough as they come.” But as he spoke, he was calculating the odds. He had faith in her, but he’d never count solely on faith. She wasn’t immortal. She could die.
He’d rather die himself than lose another agent in the damned and shifting sands of time. Rose was his agent, his responsibility. He had to go back and help her elude the demons and return to the present.
She was not going to become one of the Twelve, or rather, the Thirteen.
He’d never forgiven himself for his agents who were MIT.
He knew he was going to flash back. This time, it was like a knife going through his temples. He fought it, breathing hard.
When Maclean remained standing before him, when the room did not shift into that horrific stormy night on the highway with evil inhabiting every shadow, when the fiery explosions did not begin—when he didn’t hear the children’s screaming—he knew he’d won.
For the moment.
Maclean didn’t know about the agents who’d died in some god-forsaken time on his watch.
Maclean didn’t know about those agents who’d gone back and who were never heard from again, no matter the years of searching.
Maclean didn’t know he held himself responsible for the lost, the missing, the injured and the dead.
He didn’t know he had nightmares about every single one of them.
He didn’t know about the flashbacks.
And he especially didn’t know that his guilt was well deserved. It was his punishment for failing Katie and the kids, and later, for failing Jan.
Maclean didn’t know any of this. Nick smiled at him. “I’ll cut you a deal, Maclean. I might be able to help you find her, but you’ll have to cooperate.”
Maclean was shocked. “Ye want to bargain when her life is at stake?”
“I work for Uncle Sam. Sort of like a mindless robot. I receive orders. I fulfill them. Now, my orders are to acquire the page. Hand over the page and we’ll give you what we have on Hemmer and Carlisle.”
Maclean’s power exploded.
Nick hadn’t expected such an immediate or violent reaction. He was hurled backward into the wall behind his desk. He hit the credenza there so hard he heard the teakwood crack.
“Fuck you,” Maclean snarled. “I’ll find her myself.” He whirled, but Kit Mars stood in the doorway, her eyes wide, blocking his way out.
“Hold on, Maclean,” Nick said, rubbing his back. He hadn’t expected Maclean to cave. “What do you have, Kit?”
Kit looked back and forth between them. “Not much. The monk seemed to rule Carlisle with an iron fist from 1502 to 1527. He was feared wherever he went—even the king of Scotland opened his best state rooms to him. The bishop of Carlisle was under his thumb. People died whenever he was crossed—as in entire villages, Nick. The last date I have on him is August 27, 1527. He was at the Carlisle Cathedral that day and was never seen again.”
“Someone must have done the world a favor,” Nick remarked. “Maybe it was our Sammie.”
“Nick?” Kit whispered, ashen. “Is Sam back there?”
Maclean whirled to face her. “The monk took her.” He confronted Nick, seething.
“That’s no help. For all ye know, he went to another time an’ took an alias.
Demons from the past leap to the future all the time!
Ye know it—half the demons in this city are from the past!
What do ye know about Hemmer?” he demanded. “Why does Hemmer work with the monk?”
He was right. The monk might have simply fled Carlisle in 1527 to live elsewhere for a long, long time.
“We know that he was buddies with Robert Moran. They had quite a few business dealings in the seventies, eighties and nineties.” In case he didn’t get it, Nick said softly, “You know Moran, right? Aka your granddaddy?”
Maclean gave him a furious look.
“Hemmer was just your average entrepreneur before he met Moran,” Kit said grimly.
“He had a few investors, but he was a kid from the Bronx from a blue-collar family, who just barely graduated high school. He could talk the talk, though, which was how he managed to make those first few deals. It was tough going, and most of his deals went south. But after he started with Moran, he had investors galore. He went high, high risk and his income exploded. Almost overnight, he became the name on everyone’s lips.
It was as if he had the Midas touch, could do no wrong.
Every deal he made added millions to his coffers. And you know the rest.”
Maclean stared at her. “He’s not a demon. He’s human and very, very evil.”
“So what did he do to get the power to leap?” Kit asked.
“He sold his soul for the millions,” Nick remarked. “And he probably met Carlisle through Moran. Carlisle was one of your guards.”
Maclean flinched. “Is that in my file?”
“I’ll never tell,” Nick said softly. For one instant, he wanted Maclean to pay for not handing the page over but then he thought about Sam. “Any chance you remember him from the time of your captivity?”
“Hemmer? No. If I had, I’d never have stolen the van Gogh for him.” Maclean started.
“What is it?” Nick demanded.
Maclean said slowly, “He approached me, not the other way around.”
Nick stared. “This has just gotten interesting,” he finally said. “I mean, you’re not the only art thief in the world. Of course, you might be the only art thief with certain extra powers.”
Maclean didn’t speak. He seemed stricken by the concept that he’d been a target from the start.
“Nick?” Kit swallowed. “Do you remember that witch, Kristin LaFarge, that you were hunting? She met a demon we never made last October at the Carlisle Hotel here in the city. I know it’s probably a coincidence, but I just thought I’d raise it.”
“What is she talking about?” Maclean demanded.
“Tabitha Rose was being hunted by a witch, LaFarge, who chased her back in time. She was reporting to some higher up in the present and they used the Carlisle Hotel as a meeting place.” He wondered if it was a coincidence or not.
LaFarge had died before they could get any info from her, but he knew she’d been given permission and the power to go back to hunt Tabby Rose by the honcho demon she’d dallied with.
He’d still love to get a make on that demon.
“The monk speaks English as well as I do,” Maclean said suddenly. “He’s comfortable in this time, but he’s French.”
Maclean was telling him that the monk could have easily posed as a modern man.
Maclean faced Nick. “We’re wasting time. Hemmer’s evil. I knew it when I stole the van Gogh for him. And Hemmer’s working with the monk, who has great black power. Now they have Sam. Hemmer took her back to medieval times—wherever the monk is. I am certain.”
Briefly, Nick slipped into his thoughts again. They were more controlled, but his concern for Sam was huge. It was the kind of concern one felt for a lover, a best friend, a family member.
Maybe he had underestimated Maclean. He wasn’t the indifferent asshole he’d assumed him to be. On the other hand, Nick would categorize him as a selfish asshole until he handed over the page.
“Listen, Maclean. You don’t know that Hemmer took her back to the monk. He could have taken Sam to his island off Monaco, for all we know.”
“I do know. I’ve seen her. She’s being held in a dungeon, in chains.”
“What do you mean, you’ve seen her?”
“I have visual telepathy,” he snapped. “But I can’t see the date or the place name. You have agents everywhere—even in the past.”
“Yeah, we do,” Nick said, wondering how much he knew about HCU.
“I have agents all over the map, in many different times. And then there’s Big Mama.
We can feed her the case details while I put the word out.
Sometimes, when an agent is missing in time like Sam, we can find a clue in actual historical records.
Or one of our agents might hear something—a passing reference that means nothing to the average historian or civvy, but everything to us. ”