A Rip in Time (Out of Time #7) (30 page)

They waited until he’d gone from sight before hurrying back into the tenement. The door was locked, but Elizabeth made short work of it. Her breaking and entering skills were disturbingly quick.

They stepped inside and Simon closed the door behind them. It was a small, thoroughly nondescript room. A small bed, a chair and rough-hewn table, and a very old, decrepit armoire.

Simon and Elizabeth shared a confused glance. What was so important here?

Simon stepped over to the window and eased back the ragged curtain. He could barely see through the filthy glass, but it did afford him a decent view of the street below. He kept watch as Elizabeth started to search the room.

She opened the armoire and he heard her gasp.

Letting the curtain fall back, he hurried over to her. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure I want to know,” she said, her voice quavering.
 

“Dear God.”

Inside the armoire were rows of jars and each held something more grotesque than the last. Intestines, parts of organs, pieces of flesh. The wave of revulsion was so overpowering, it took Simon a few moments to recover himself.
 

“It’s his trophy case.”

“I feel sick,” Elizabeth said.
 

Simon nodded. He’d known that the Ripper had taken things from his victims, but to see them, to know that Graham was the murderer…it made his head spin.

He turned away and started back toward the window. “We should go,” he said, and then as he turned back he saw a pair of black gloves on the table. Dread made his nerves spark. “Now.”

Elizabeth looked at him in confusion, but there wasn’t time to explain. He reached for her and they turned to the door just as it opened.
 

“Well,” Graham said. “Aren’t you clever?”

E
LIZABETH
STARED
AT
G
RAHAM
, at Jack the Ripper. He was surprised to find them there, to say the least, but as he’d done before, his mood changed on a dime. He smiled at them, genuinely impressed.

He closed the door behind him, took a step into the room, and reflexively Simon stepped between her and Graham.
 

Graham chuckled softly to himself. “Forgot my gloves.”

He picked them up off the table and ran them through the circle of his fingers. “Careless.”

He turned back to them and as he did his eyes landed on the door to the armoire that stood slightly ajar.

“I see we’ve no secrets anymore.” He raised an eyebrow. “It’s not what I thought it would feel like, you know, being caught out. A bit anticlimactic really.”

“Katherine knows what you are,” Elizabeth said.

“She suspects,” he admitted, and then spread his arms, “but you…you
know
.”

The way he said the last word sent a shiver up Elizabeth’s spine. He shrugged and sat down in the small wooden chair. “So, now what?”

For a serial killer who’d just been caught, he seemed terribly calm.

“I’d very much like to kill you,” Simon said, meaning every word.

Graham crossed his legs. “I’m sure. But you won’t, will you?”

Simon didn’t answer and Graham smiled.

“You can’t. You can’t risk changing time can you? I’ve work yet to do, and you know it.”

It was horrifying. He was right. They might know who he was, but they couldn’t stop him. Worse still, they
needed
him to do what he did.

“So, why are you here?” Graham puzzled aloud. “The Council wouldn’t send someone else to discover who the Ripper was, that’s why I’m here,” he added with a grin.

“Something else. Something important,” he mused and then sighed. “If you want my help you’re going have to give me something more.”

“Your help?” Simon bit out.

Graham nodded. “You know who I am, and yet you can’t do anything with that information or risk the timeline. I know I escape. Handy bit of information to have. So what are you doing here?”

Elizabeth and Simon looked at each other. There was no use in keeping it a secret any longer. His knowing might just make the difference.

“We’re here to save your life,” Simon said, choking on every word.

Graham laughed. “Save me? Oh, that’s unexpected. But a pleasant surprise. From dear Katherine, I’d imagine. I wouldn’t worry about that. If she tries, she fails. It’s her lot.”

“Maybe not,” Elizabeth said. “Those memory lapses you’ve been experiencing—those are time shifts. She’s already killed you.”

Graham’s face hardened. “What do you mean?”

“Time is in flux between our reality and the one she’s altered,” Simon explained.

Graham leaned back in his chair. “I underestimated her.” He narrowed his eyes at them. “Why not kill her before she kills me? Simple enough.”

“And another alteration to the timeline.”

Graham frowned in thought. “We don’t want that, do we? Too unpredictable. Well then,” he said as he stood, “we’ll all just have to hope you can do your job.”

He straightened his back. “I suppose I’ll have to find a new hotel. Any recommendations?”

Simon ground his teeth. Graham smiled and shrugged.

How could Graham be so casual about it all? She tried to make sense of it. How this man, this man she’d actually liked could be such a vicious killer.
 

He must have read her expression. “Why?” he said, echoing her unasked question.
 

His insight surprised her, but he shrugged. “It’s the one thing everyone wants to know, isn’t it? I’m not sure I can give you a satisfactory answer. It’s simply who I am.”

He walked over to the armoire, Simon and Elizabeth edging away as he did.
 

He closed the door and turned back to them. He fiddled with the loose gloves in his hands. “I found my mother murdered. I didn’t do it,” and then added, “but I wished I had.”

He shrugged, as if confessing such a thing were like ordering a soft drink. “I was fourteen when I first read about Jack the Ripper. Fascinating. So clever not to get caught. So, I studied him. Learned everything there was to know, but it was just words in a book. Ancient history or so I thought, until I joined the Council. It took years, but I finally convinced them to send me back to study him, and find out once and for all who he was. And to tell him how much I admired him.”

Elizabeth shuddered. Graham was terrifying.

If he noticed her reaction, he ignored it and continued. “Imagine my surprise when I showed up to the first crime scene and no one else came. Except for Mary Ann Nichols, of course. I looked at her and wanted her dead. Needed her dead. That’s when I knew. I felt it inside,” he said, tapping his chest. “
I
was Jack the Ripper.”

Elizabeth swallowed. “So you killed her.”

He nodded. “I’ve done everything exactly as it’s supposed to be. I know it all by heart. Where they’ll be, how I’ll cut them. I’m simply a tool of destiny.”

Holy crap, Elizabeth thought, what was with the crazies and their destinies?
 

“And as you know,” Graham said, “I’m not quite finished.”

“Not yet,” Simon said, emphasizing the last word.

Graham smiled at the implied threat and then shrugged. “Everyone dies. But I don’t die here and I don’t die now. And since I need your assistance…you don’t either.”

It was a horrific stalemate. They knew what he was, what he was going to do, and they couldn’t stop it. And Graham couldn’t kill them because he needed them to help keep him alive so he could kill. It was the worst kind of Gordian knot, and Alexander and his sword were nowhere to be found.

~~~

Simon looked around their new hotel room. It was significantly smaller than their previous suite, but it had one added benefit. Neither Graham nor Vale knew where it was.

The first thing they’d done when they’d left Graham’s hovel was return to their hotel and get the hell out of it. It was bad enough when one murdering psychopath knew where they lived, but two….The second thing they’d done was find Freddie and send a note off to Victor.
 

It had been several hours now and they’d had no reply. Simon knew Renaud could take care of himself, when he wasn’t pissed, but he felt a worry take root in his stomach and grow with each passing hour.

A knock on the door interrupted Simon’s gloomy train of thought.

“Who is it?” he asked before opening the door.

“Freddie.”

Simon opened the door and there stood young Freddie, looking tired and unwell.

“Are you all right?”

The boy nodded and swiped at his nose with his forearm. “Got a message.”

Simon held out his hand, but the boy shook his head.

“Ain’t writ down.”

“All right,” Simon said. “What is it?”

Freddie looked down and squinted as he tried to remember it. “Important news. Need to see you. London Bridge 4 a.m.”

“That’s all?” Simon asked.

The boy nodded but he seemed nervous.

“Is something wrong, Freddie?” Elizabeth asked as she joined Simon at the door.

“No, miss,” Freddie said quickly. “It’s just I needs to get back to me brother.”

“If there’s anything we can do….”

The boy nodded quickly and hurried down the hall.

Simon closed the door and turned to Elizabeth. “Why no note?”

Elizabeth shrugged, but said, “Maybe he didn’t have time to write it down?”

“Perhaps.” Changes to the usual methods and Freddie’s odd behavior had him worried. “I don’t like this.”

Elizabeth sighed. “It’s a little weird, but…”

“We go,” Simon agreed. “But we don’t go unprepared.”

~~~

Elizabeth wrapped her coat more snugly about her as they waited in the shadows on the shore at the far end of the bridge. They’d gone early and found a good vantage point to watch the diminishing traffic. But even from there, they couldn’t see more than halfway across. The darkness and distance were too great. The bridge spanned almost 100 yards across the Thames.

Simon took his hand from his pocket where Elizabeth knew it had been wrapped around a gun, and checked his watch. “Ten past.”

He frowned and put his watch back in his vest pocket.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“Wait.”

And so they did. Ten minutes turned into twenty and then thirty. Finally, she saw someone walking across the bridge, alone.
 

“There,” she said, pointing.

“I see him.”

Whoever it was, stopped in the middle and waited. From so far away it was impossible to see who it was, but he was far too short to be Victor. Whoever it was stood near the balustrade and waved his arms in the air.

“Hallo?”
 

The voice was small, but one they knew. Freddie.

Simon looked at Elizabeth warily.
 

“What’s he doing here?” she asked.

He frowned and slipped his hand back into his pocket with his gun. “Stay close.”

It took them a few minutes to get to the edge of the bridge and they started the long walk toward the center. It was an oddly vulnerable feeling. They were so exposed, but they had to find what was wrong.

A few lone carriages made their way across, the sound of the wheels and horse’s hooves loud in the quiet and stillness of the night.

When they got close enough, Simon called out in a hoarse whisper, “Freddie?”

The boy kept his eyes trained on the river beneath them.

“What’s wrong?” Simon asked. “Where’s Victor?”

Freddie sniffled and then finally turned to face them. “I’m sorry.”

“What’s…”

Elizabeth knew they’d been trapped. It wasn’t a sound, but the lack of one. A carriage that had been passing by stopped and they all turned toward it.

Simon had his gun out and pointed it at the driver.

Even in the darkness Elizabeth recognized him. Roderick, Dr. Blackwood’s valet.
 

“Now, now, don’t do something foolish,” a woman said from inside the carriage. Elizabeth knew that voice as well.

Simon didn’t move and kept his gun trained on Roderick.

The carriage door opened and a small boy, Alfie, stepped out. Behind him came Katherine Vale, a small pistol pressed against the boy’s temple.

Elizabeth instinctively took a half-step forward, but stopped herself. Next to her, Simon’s hand remained amazingly steady.

“Let the boy go,” he said.

“It’s all right, Alfie,” Freddie said.

The smaller boy shivered with fear.

Elizabeth edged in front of Freddie to shield him.

“Katherine,” she said, hoping she could still reach the young woman she’d gotten to know. “Please—”

“Put down your gun or I’ll blow this boy’s brains out,” she said calmly. “I think you know I will.”

Both the words and the cold way she said them sent a chill through Elizabeth. Simon glanced at her once, but they both knew he had no choice and lowered the gun.

“On the ground,” she instructed him.
 

He dropped it to the pavement.
 

“Step back,” she told them.

The three of them did as they were told and took a step back and then another, until they were standing up against the edge of the bridge and touching the balustrade.
 

“Get the gun,” Vale ordered and Roderick climbed down from his perch atop the carriage.

“And his watch,” she added after Roderick had picked up the gun. “I seem to have lost mine.”

The valet looked at her oddly, but she didn’t take her eyes from them.

“Just do it,” she said.

Roderick stepped forward in front of Simon. “Easy way or the hard way, makes no difference to me.”

Simon grunted in frustration and handed his watch to him.

Roderick slipped it into his pocket and then moved back next to the coach.

Vale smiled. “Don’t worry, you won’t be needing it.”

“Let the boy go,” Simon said again.

“I think I will,” she said. “But I need one more thing.”

Her eyes drifted over to Elizabeth and her smile grew.

“No,” Simon said.

Vale pulled Aflie closer and pushed the gun against his skull.

“It’s okay,” Elizabeth said, stepping forward.