Not that Reegan could ever forget. Every word of every warning he'd ever read had been circling through his brain since he stepped out of the portal the second time. He'd half expected to keel over from a heart attack the second he opened his mouth to confess the truth to Saul, but the office was still and silent. Safe, for now, despite how exposed he felt, sitting naked on Saul's pullout bed. He eyed his crumpled pants, lying a few feet away on the floor.

Saul's voice broke through his thoughts. "Is that it?"

The words had been little more than a growl, loosely enunciated. A warning that Reegan obeyed. He swung his gaze around. "Yes. Do you believe me?"

Slowly, like a pendulum gaining momentum, Saul shook his head. "But I think you do. If I hadn't actually seen your girl on the Mall that night? The one in your photograph?"

Reegan gulped. "Yes?"

"I'd toss you out right now. As it stands, I think she really exists. And I think she's really in trouble."

He turned to a filing cabinet behind him and yanked a clean T-shirt free from the middle drawer. "Get some sleep. I'll wake you when it's time to go."

Clutching the sheet, Reegan rose to his feet. "You're not staying?"

Saul gave him a wide berth as he circled around the bed to the door. He paused with his hand on the knob, then jerked it open. "Get some sleep."

The quiet click of the latch hurt Reegan's ears more than a slamming door.

Neither of them slept. Reegan spent an hour listening to Saul move around the outer office, then remade the bed and got dressed. He eased the door open to find Saul at Cammie's desk, bent over a stack of paper. Saul jerked his head up when Reegan appeared at his side. "You're up."

"Never really slept." He craned his neck as Saul gathered the papers into a messy pile. "Something related to a case?" Saul's sad laugh made him wish he hadn't asked.

"No. Just bills."

The universal headache, in any time. Reegan hadn't missed the way Saul's gaze had fixed on the stack of cash the night before. "How's business?"

"Slow."

It went a long way toward explaining why Saul took his case, despite his misgivings. "You were a detective before this. And a soldier before that."

Bent over Cammie's desk, hands fisted in his hair, Saul shook his head. "I suppose you're going to tell me you know those things because you're from the future."

Reegan bit his tongue on those exact words. "Why'd you leave the force?"

The pile of bills found their way back into Cammie's drawer. Saul closed it slowly, lips pursed.

"You don't have to tell me." Reegan already regretted asking, but the question had been nagging him. Along with the mystery of what happened to Saul's business after this year. "It's none of my business."

"No, it's not. I'll tell you, though. It's not exactly a secret."

Something public, maybe. Allegations of misconduct? Reegan couldn't picture it. Then it clicked. "The drinking?"

"Not in any way, shape or form. I always had a handle on the booze at work."

Reegan found his boots by the coat rack, stomped his feet into them, then brushed off his hat and put it on. "You didn't drink on duty."

"I drank on duty all the time." Saul sat to put on his sneakers. "I deserved to lose my job for that alone. But the vodka had nothing to do with it in the end. I had a falling out with my partner."

"You guys didn't get along?"

"We got along fine. Until he thought it would be cool to trade blowjobs."

Strangely, for the subject matter, Reegan detected little bitterness. He matched Saul's nonchalant tone. "Was he any good?"

"I'll never know." Methodically, Saul stood and loaded his pockets. Wallet. Cell phone. Keys. "He liked being on the receiving end well enough. But the rest was a bit too gay for him."

Tamping down his anger, keeping the conversation light when it was anything but, became a struggle. Reegan had studied the progression of societal acceptance of homosexual and polyamorous relationships, the subject being of personal interest to him. In Saul's time, the old prejudices still had a foothold. "He outed you?"

"Spectacularly and with much embellishment."

"The bastard." A twitch in Saul's shoulders stoked the fire. Reegan fumed. "What, you're not angry?"

Saul's response held more uncertainty than Reegan had yet to hear from the other man. "He's a good guy. He just didn't know how to handle it. It was the end of our friendship. It was the end of lots of things."

The truth came into focus. A little too sharply for Reegan's liking. "He's not a good guy if he sacrificed a friend because he was afraid."

"What, being afraid is a crime?"

"No, being afraid is human." Reegan stalked to the door and threw it open. "But being a cowardly prick is a choice."

He breezed through the outer office, into the vestibule and out of the building. The city had come to life over the course of their sleepy afternoon. People rushed by on the sidewalk. The street teemed with cars, most moving slower than the pedestrians. Life went on, despite everyone's personal crises. It would go on after Reegan and Silvia escaped or died. And it would go on for Saul despite the mistakes and betrayals in his past. But none of those facts tempered Reegan's need to find Saul's partner and punch him squarely in the face. More than once and with-what phrase had Saul used? Much embellishment.

He didn't fight the instinct, though the reason at its root was useless and unhealthy. He had to put the stops to whatever was building inside him, these feelings he was developing for Saul. Before he lost sight of the main goal-getting home alive.

He made a surreptitious scan of the street, looking for any familiar faces. None that he could see. Maybe he'd been wrong about Pigtail, though that was an indulgent thought, most likely untrue. He could try to fool himself all day long, but it wouldn't change the facts.

Saul joined him on the sidewalk, hands slung into his pockets. They stood shoulder to shoulder watching the passersby until Saul spoke. "He is a cowardly prick. But what's done is done. And if what you told me inside is true, about the timelines and stuff, then it wasn't a test, or bad judgment, or even the moon in fucking Aquarius. It just happened, and now I've got to deal with it."

Sadly true. Yet Reegan got the impression that Saul hadn't been dealing with it at all. "Does that make you feel better or worse?"

Saul pried the keys from his pocket, jingling them absently. "Jury's out on that. I'll let you know."

Chapter Eleven.

"Never seen her before."

Saul liked to believe he was the sort to disregard stereotypes. Still, when the bartender had given him Marty's name that morning, Saul's mind had formed a picture of a man who might have been a cross between Billy Joel and Fats Domino. The sort who'd strut the street, whistling, guitar swinging from one hand.

Marty might've been thirty, as he claimed, but Saul pegged him closer to just-barely-legal. Big as a house, solid muscle with not an ounce of fat, and covered in tattoos that were visible through his white T-shirt, he waved off Silvia's picture and sank onto the piano bench.

It gave an ominous groan, sagged a couple of inches in the middle, but held.

"Are you sure?" Saul kept the picture pointed at him. "The bartender said she might have been in here last night."

Marty shot a wicked glance toward the bar. "Maybe. I get lots of pretty ladies in here, though. Hard to keep track of them all."

Saul let his gaze drop to Marty's left hand and the wedding ring gleaming there. Marty grinned.

"Didn't say I partook. No harm in looking, though."

Perhaps not, but the words sounded forced and he wouldn't meet Saul's eyes for more than a second. When he grabbed a towel off the top of the piano and swiped it over the crown of his shiny bald head, Saul knew he'd struck gold. Despite the slight chill in the air, Marty was sweating heavily.

"Okay, Marty." Saul put the picture away. It'd done its job. "Relax. I'm not a cop or anything."

"I couldn't care less if you were," Marty snapped. He turned to his piano and set his huge paws on the keys. "Now fuck off, or I'll call the bouncer."

Reegan vibrated at his elbow, expression livid. He'd come to the same conclusion Saul had, and neither of them appreciated the misdirection. Quelling him with a sharp look, Saul moved around the piano, back into Marty's line of sight, and leaned on the instrument. "We're trying to help her."

"I just bet." Marty swept his fingers across the keys, and despite himself Saul stopped to listen, preconceptions shot to hell once more. Marty played beautifully, large fingers finding purchase on the narrow keys without any apparent effort, and he seemed content to play forever, ignoring the two angry men who hovered at his front and back.

Saul tried a different tactic. "We know her husband's after her. We'd like to get to her before he does. We want to protect the lady. You hearing me?"

Marty offered Saul another snarl as he took a break to slurp the rest of his drink, bourbon judging by the smell, jiggling the ice cubes to get the few final drops. A sharp cramp stuck Saul's left side, but he rode out the pain without giving himself away. He'd never cared for bourbon, but that sound-the tinkle of ice in crystal-unearthed a longing. A desire as sharp as any he'd felt since his last tumble off the wagon. A clammy sweat broke out between his shoulder blades.

"Marty, come on. Talk to us."

"I did." The dark eyes turned dangerous. Tattoos rippled over bulky biceps. "Don't know what you expect from me."

"Some help?" Saul ducked to catch his eye. "Can you tell me where she is?"

"Nope." Marty's fingers tripped off the end of the keyboard. He shifted on the bench and began the number again, faster this time. Saul wrestled with a wave of frustration. Marty wasn't bribe material. If they wanted the information, they'd need to do some quick convincing.

"We want to take her someplace safe. She's in danger."

"She's already someplace safe." A flutter of high notes punctuated Marty's statement, then the song began once more from the beginning, flawless and haunting.

Saul continued to dig. "Safe? Your place?"

"Safer. Invisible."

Saul eased off to reassess. The terminology brought back memories, few of them pleasant. There was a chance, though the odds were slim, that he and Marty shared some of the same secrets. And if they did, Saul's search just got a hell of a lot easier. He reached into his back pocket and retrieved his wallet.

Fingers flying over the keyboard, Marty sneered. "Don't bother, man. I ain't for sale."

A fact Saul had already decided. Inside his bifold were several of Reegan's crisp hundred dollar bills. He ignored them for the thick stack of business cards he kept jammed into the pocket next to the cash. He plucked the one he was looking for from the bottom of the pile and held it out to Marty.

Speechless, Marty stared at it.

The card, given to Saul over a year ago, had frayed around the edges, and a dark brown stain eclipsed one corner. But the single name and phone number stood out in stark black ink, unmarred. "Ever seen one of these?"

Marty's hand jerked, and a discordant note slipped into the previously flawless piece. His gaze bore into Saul's, intense. "Maybe. Once or twice."

Bingo. "Did you give one to Silvia?" He waited through a long silence. "Come on, Marty. You know if I've got this card, I'm one of the good guys, right?"

Reegan pushed against him from behind, craning his neck to stare at the card. "What is that?"

Saul shushed him. "Marty?"

"Yeah. Okay." Shifting around on the stool, Marty darted a look around the room. The small tables in front of the stage had filled. So had the stools ringing the bar. The noise level rose with the incoming tide of people, but Marty still leaned close, speaking in low tones. "I gave her one, but that's all I'm telling you."

"That's all I need." Saul replaced the card in his wallet and stuck out his hand.

Gaze measured, Marty took it. "Take care of her. She's a sweet girl. Got a voice like a fallen angel."

A passing waitress plucked up Marty's empty glass and replaced it with a full one, reaching under Saul's nose to set it on the coaster. More bourbon over rocks. He licked his lips and tried to back away, but Reegan blocked him from behind.

"She does, doesn't she?" Reegan grinned and leaned closer, pinning Saul against the piano, inches from the glass of alcohol. "Did she sing for you?"

Marty bobbed his head. "Ain't never going to forget it, either." They shared a crooked smile.

"No, you won't." Reegan tipped his hat. "Thanks again."

The warm weight against Saul's back disappeared, but the room had closed in around him, and his lungs wouldn't fill. Breathing fast, he turned toward the door, weaving through a dense crowd that hadn't been there twenty minutes before, but every route he tried was jammed with bodies. Throat swollen, he wheezed for air, shoving the next person who tried to cut off his escape. He heard an affronted "Hey!" Something wet splashed across his sleeve, and the smell of beer engulfed him.

"Watch where the hell you're going?" a woman yelled in his ear.

"Sorry," he choked, plowing toward freedom. He had a rule about being in a bar this time of night. A rule he'd set for a reason. Glass glinted at him from every direction as people carried their drinks from the bar to the tables. A fountain of beer poured from the tap as the bartenders filled pitcher after pitcher. A petite waitress, tray loaded with vodka shots, bobbed by, then stopped a few feet away to wait out a passing group of revelers. The tray hovered in front of his nose.

He could take one and she would never know. No one would.

His hand twitched.

An image came to mind. Reegan, sweeping up shards of glass from a shattered bottle of vodka. And another, flashing on the heels of the first. Reegan standing shirtless in his office, looking lost and alone. Are you thinking about a drink?

No. This was temptation he didn't need and couldn't afford. He shoved his hands in his pockets and barreled through the bodies until he reached the door, then jogged up the stairs to the street. It wasn't until he was standing on the sidewalk gulping air that he realized he'd left Reegan behind.

He glanced back. Bodies streamed into the bar, not out, while two burly bouncers struggled to keep the line organized. Saul craned his neck for a glimpse of Reegan's hat.

Please don't let me have to go back in.

Like an angel escaping purgatory, Reegan appeared, elbowing against the mass of bodies to join Saul on the street.

Saul pasted on a weak smile. "Sorry. I thought you were-" His voice failed, body still too oxygen starved to manage more. The street took on a slight tilt, then listed even further. Christ, he was going to pass out.

Blindly, he reached out, and a strong hand took his. A steadying arm snuck around his waist. The world right itself, and the sickening sideways pull of gravity stopped. Saul blinked through the sweat dripping into his eyes, feeling calmer in a matter of heartbeats. It was okay. Reegan had him.

Face grim, Reegan steered him down the street to the small park they'd visited earlier in the day.

Wrong way, Saul tried to say. They needed to get back to the car. He knew where Silvia was hiding. But the words wouldn't come, his mouth too arid for speech, and Reegan's firm grip didn't loosen when Saul tried to alter their course.