A Rip Through Time(89)

I return to the library, and I’m pulling open a desk drawer when I am certain I hear a clack from somewhere in the house. I freeze. Then I rise with my book in hand. Halfway to the door, I realize I left the drawer open.

I hesitate but force myself into the hall, where I listen. Listen and hear nothing.

Okay, now I’m being paranoid. The doors are locked. There’s no one here. With these high ceilings, I probably heard the echo of the damn drawer opening.

One last peer down the dark hallway, and I retreat to the desk. I reach into the drawer, where I know Isla keeps paper. Next comes the pen, plucked from a holder on the desktop. It’s a gorgeous engraved-silver combination dip pen and mechanical pencil that I can imagine my father salivating over. That’s the second time I’ve thought of him in the last hour, and each nudge brings an affectionate smile followed by a surge of panic.

My dad would love this pen.

When I get home, I should find one in an antiques shop for him.

What if I don’t get home?

What if Catriona is in my body?

What if I never see my parents again?

Deep breaths to calm my racing heart. What’s the saying about long, dark nights of the soul? The witching hour for all my worst fears to toil and boil forth, from a killer in the house to never seeing my parents again.

I cannot control the last part, except in the sense that solving Catriona’s murder might be the key to unlocking the gate. Maybe I was brought through time to stop her killer before he struck again. Except it’s no longer the same guy, and I’m doing a really shitty job of stopping him.

I press my fingers to my temples, return to the desk, and sit again.

I lift my pen over the blank page to be frozen exactly as I was upstairs. Where to begin? What’s the starting thread? The current murders? Catriona’s initial attack? Or her second attack—the one I’d faced, which requires the killer knowing she’s helping Gray and McCreadie?

Stop. It doesn’t matter where I start. Just write it all down.

Current murders. First victim, Archie Evans, chosen because the killer wanted information from him. He knew something—

Wait.

Wait right there.

We’d been checking out Evans’s housemates trying to determine what the killer wanted from him. What he’d been tortured for. It had seemed connected to his housemates’ anti-immigrant efforts. Except that wouldn’t interest a modern-day killer. Whatever his own beliefs, he’s not going after Evans to extract information on a nineteenth-century anti-immigration movement.

What did he want?

He killed Evans within two days of arriving in this world. He’d barely arrived. What would he want? What could he want?

I let my mind drift back to my first day here. Waking in the bed upstairs. Waking in a world and a body I didn’t recognize. What did I want?

Answers.

Who am I? Where am I?

I’d gotten them by asking Gray, under the guise of mental confusion.

The killer isn’t going to grab a random guy on the street and torture him for information that he could get by feigning a blow to the head until someone took pity and answered.

Where am I? What year is it? What day is it?

Hell, he could get those answers by finding a newspaper stand.

What couldn’t he find as easily?

Who am I?

The man whose body the killer inhabits knew Evans. He was connected to him in a way that meant he had the information the killer needed.

Who am I? Where do I live? What do I do for a living?

He wouldn’t need to torture Evans for that. Fake a blow to the head and ask, and if Evans got suspicious, then he could kill him. Torture meant he needed more.

What more did I need when I arrived?

Everything. It was like being dropped into a foreign country where you barely speak the same language.

How do I wake up in the morning? What are my duties? How do I perform those duties—where is the mop, the water, the soap?

I’d had my safe cocoon, a houseful of decent people who made allowances for me. Yet I’d needed more, so much more, all the things I’m still figuring out, including information on this body I’m inhabiting. Luckily, I have Isla now, but those early days had been a constant cloud of fear that I’d be found out because I didn’t know the first damn thing about Catriona and “memory problems” only got me so far.

The killer had two choices. Live as the person whose body he inhabited or start over. Living as that person meant having a home and belongings and a job, but it also meant understanding that person’s life in a way I’d skipped with Catriona.

This is what he wanted from Evans. Not just “who am I?” but the crux of that question—tell me everything about myself so I can fully inhabit this life.

Where am I from? What do I like? How do I act? Who do I know?

That’s why he needed torture. He’d captured Evans with the intention of getting as much as possible from him and then killing him, both to cover his tracks and to renew his pursuit of serial-killer fame.

This means that Catriona’s would-be killer knew Evans. Knew him well enough that the killer recognized him as a source of invaluable information.

I need to learn more about Evans. He lived with students. Was he also a student? Part-time, maybe? Wait, McCreadie said he was English. Maybe he came for school in Edinburgh?

He wrote for a newspaper. The Evening Courant. Was that something done in an office—with colleagues—or freelance? I’ll need to ask Isla.