He turned the lock behind her and headed for his cold, dark office. Streetlamps threw mustard-colored light into the cramped space, accentuating the thick layers of dust on his desk. The stacks of books, papers and cameras gave the office an air of authenticity, as though real detective work happened here. And more than once a month. The dust told the real story.

Saul didn't bother with the lights, taking the four familiar steps to his desk and sliding between it and the pressed-wood bookcase. His neighbors must still be downtown celebrating. For once, the building was quiet. No sound filtered through the walls or ceiling. The tick of the radiator and the whir of his laptop's cooling fan were all that broke the silence.

Bending slowly, Saul found the pull for the lower right-hand drawer and slid it open. He'd had the vodka out just a few days ago. It hadn't been a moment of weakness then. More an affirmation. That he could survive this, maybe even beat it.

No sugarcoating his motives tonight. He wanted to get drunk. And tomorrow, when the regret was heavy, he'd decide whether or not to buy another bottle. And whether or not to open it immediately.

The frosted glass felt ice cold in his palm, but it wasn't until he lifted it to his forehead that he noticed the sweat dripping from his face. His hands shook as he rolled the bottle across his cheek. It would be so easy to crack the seal, unscrew the cap and take a taste. Saliva flooded his mouth.

His fists tightened around the bottle's neck until he was afraid it would shatter in his grasp. Forcing the fingers of one hand to relax, he reached in his pocket for his cell phone, pressing Send twice to call the last number dialed. Cammie's.

It went straight to voice mail, and Saul laughed under his breath. He'd tried. The phone clattered onto the desk as he tipped the bottle upright and curled his fingers over the cap. "Sorry, Cammie," he whispered.

In the other room, someone began to pound on the door.

Chapter Three.

Reegan soothed the group's irritated grumblings, using the tools he had at his disposal. By the time he'd escorted his remaining fourteen charges from Blast in the Past, no one was threatening to sue. One of the ladies had even slipped him her phone number.

He'd barely closed the door behind the last one when Maxie's voice sounded over the intercom. "Reegan, in my office. Now."

"Be right there." Typical summons after a jaunt. Maxie had his thumb in everything that happened at Blast in the Past, which was what had caused trouble between him and Reegan in the first place. Time to face the music. He knocked on Maxie's door, swallowing a wave of nausea. "We've got a problem," he said, stepping inside, eyes lowered.

"You ain't whistling Dixie," Maxie shot back, voice hoarse. "Victor D'arco, this is Reegan McNamara. He was the guide for tonight's jaunt."

Reegan's head snapped up. Four other people stood spread around the room. D'arco was easy to pick out, with his hand-tailored suit and black wool trench coat draped across his shoulders. Its brass buttons glinted.

"Mr. D'arco." Reegan inclined his head. D'arco returned the greeting with a nod. The other three men avoided his gaze, expressions twisted into grimaces, as though somebody had their balls in a vise. Unnerved, Reegan focused on Maxie.

Maxie didn't keep him waiting. "Mr. D'arco is here to fetch his wife. Apparently she didn't tell him she was going on the jaunt."

Reegan muzzled the "So fucking what?" that tried to escape. "I didn't realize Mr. D'arco's wife needed permission to take an evening for herself."

Maxie bit right through his cigar, sputtering, but D'arco waved off his stumbling apology. "I don't want you to get the impression my wife is a prisoner. She's free to do whatever she wants. All I insist is that she keep these three men with her at all times."

They weren't with her now. Could be why they looked constipated. "I bet that gets old."

"Of course it does." D'arco folded gracefully into one of Maxie's chairs. He offered Reegan a wan smile. "I know she hates it. Resents it. But she's never disregarded it. Until tonight." His left eye twitched, and he rubbed at it absently before gesturing at the other three men. "She doesn't understand the need."

"Maybe because there is no need."

"She's very nave," D'arco retorted.

Reegan brushed off the implied insult. The Silvia Reegan he knew-had known-would eat these clowns for breakfast. "Nave or not, she managed to give your security the slip tonight."

D'arco closed his eyes, as though the words hurt him. "Which I'll need to deal with as well. But later. After she's home safe."

"You said she's in danger." Reegan pretended to ponder this. "Does she have that many enemies?"

"No. She's an angel. Everyone loves her."

That was how Reegan remembered her as well.

"But I have enemies, I'm afraid. People who don't like my platforms and programs."

Reegan had heard the stories. Nothing so public as what you'd find on the news. D'arco had amassed an unparalleled record of achievement since his first election as city councilman. The majority of his work benefited the people in Reegan and Silvia's childhood res district, an obvious nod to her sympathies. He advocated for the less privileged and won, which made him popular in some parts of the city. And universally hated in others.

Other rumors had circulated. Unsavory stories of strong-arm tactics and not-quite-legal methods of doing business. Reegan mostly ignored gossip, but once a seed was planted, it grew. Now that he'd met D'arco, that seed was growing like Jack's beanstalk. The man talked all pretty, but his eyes swirled with just enough darkness to give Reegan a real scare.

Still, for all his notoriety, he was only a city councilman, not the Godfather. Weren't they taking the cloak-and-dagger theatrics a bit far?

"There have been two threats against her in the last month alone," D'arco said.

Maybe not. A bead of sweat ran down between Reegan's shoulder blades. Losing his job could be the least of his worries. "She made no mention of that."

"No, she wouldn't have." D'arco wrung his hands and stared at his lap. "She chafes at the security. Finds it stifling. But I love her. The thought of any harm coming to her, of anyone touching her-" His nostrils flared. "It enrages me."

Reegan swallowed. "Of course." He risked a glance at Maxie. The air in the office had grown warm. A sheen of perspiration glowed on Maxie's bald head, and his hands clenched the edge of the desk, knuckles white.

D'arco rose, smacking his gloves against his palm as he circled behind Reegan. "She wasn't with you when you returned. Please tell me you have a satisfactory explanation for that."

Oh yeah. They were screwed. Reegan prepared to confess and take his medicine, but D'arco was one step ahead of him. "Did you help her run away?"

Breath whooshed out of Reegan's lungs. Deflated, he turned. "I'm sorry?"

D'arco made some sort of signal. Either that or he used telepathy, because Reegan was suddenly on his ass in a chair with one of D'arco's apes holding his arms behind his back.

Cyberschooling wasn't looking so bad anymore. "What the hell?" Reegan wheezed.

"Where is my wife?" D'arco repeated. "The truth. If you've hurt her, you'll regret it."

"I..."

D'arco loomed. "Yes?"

The hell with it. "I lost her. Actually, she ditched me, the bi-" Reegan clamped his mouth shut when Maxie went gray and shook his head so fast his jowls did the hula. "She slipped away when my back was turned."

D'arco's lips peeled away from his teeth, and he growled. Reegan recoiled.

"Why didn't you stay and look for her?" D'arco's hands, fisted at his sides, began to shake. His eye twitched rhythmically.

"I couldn't. I had fourteen other people whose safety I needed to ensure. And I sure as shit wasn't going to be able to go looking for her with them in tow."

Hissing his annoyance, D'arco spun away to stand in front of the two-way mirror. "She's alone. Scared and helpless."

Did this guy know anything about his wife? "I'm pretty sure she's okay," Reegan felt compelled to say. "She seems like an intelligent, capable lady."

His words made the situation worse. D'arco glanced over his shoulder at Reegan, his expression morphing to pure hatred. The silent standoff lasted several seconds, then D'arco clasped his hands behind his back and brooded. His apes brooded in sympathy. Reegan took the opportunity to raise his eyebrows at Maxie. The look he got in return wasn't encouraging. This was it. His career was going to end over a lover's quarrel.

"How will she survive?" D'arco asked. "She has no money. None that would be recognized a hundred years ago. How long until she's back at the destination point, praying you come to rescue her?"

"Hopefully she's there now," Reegan said, though he thought the odds slim. Silvia had ditched her bio bracelet without activating an alarm. He doubted she came by the knowledge accidentally. That was a tidbit he wouldn't be sharing with her husband. "However, I think we should assume we're going to have to look if we want to find her."

"I can't believe this is happening," D'arco whispered. "She's going to get hurt."

"Yeah. I'd say she's going to start running into trouble pretty soon."

The temperature in the room dropped. Goose bumps rose on Reegan's arms as D'arco pivoted and speared him with dark eyes. "What exactly do you mean by that?"

"Well." Reegan looked to his boss for help, but all he got in return was Maxie's impersonation of his goldfish, eyes wide and mouth formed in an O. "I'm talking about the Novikov Principle." D'arco's expression didn't change. Reegan appealed to his goons. "Paradox-free time travel?"

D'arco stalked across the floor toward him. "Explain."

Reegan licked his lips and gave an experimental pull of his arms. D'arco clocked the move, gave a slight nod to his man. "Let him go, Emilio."

The pressure on Reegan's shoulders eased. He shook free. "The Novikov Principle is what makes all this possible." He spread his hands to encompass the crowded office. "Time as we know it is a series of closed curves. Loops," he specified when D'arco's brows drew together. "The portal folds the loops so that we can travel back in time." They couldn't go forward yet. Not reliably. Although Reegan was hoping for that breakthrough in his lifetime. "People used to think time travel was dangerous, or even impossible, because interfering in the past would cause a paradox. Do you know what a paradox is?"

"I'm not an idiot."

"Just checking. These days we know paradoxes don't happen. Novikov's research proves that if an event occurs that might give rise to a paradox, the probability of that event is zero." He'd quoted that gem directly from his eighth grade science lesson, and it had been twenty years since he'd laid eyes on it. What kid graduated cyberschool without knowing this stuff backward and forward?

D'arco stepped close to Reegan and loomed. "That's it?"

Pretty much. That was as simple an explanation as he could manage. And no way was Reegan going to extrapolate what that meant for Silvia unless he had a gun to his head. "That's it. That's how we're able to travel into the past without causing a paradox. It's scientifically impossible."

D'arco pulled back, nostrils flaring. "But you couldn't stay in the past forever and not change something."

Finally he was catching on. "No, you can't. We do change things. We make small changes all the time just by being there. But small changes iron themselves out. They smooth over. Like ripples on a pond."

"Forever?"

Maxie spoke up. "That's what Dr. McNamara has been working around to. It doesn't work forever. Eventually, the probabilities shift. The longer we're there, the greater the potential for our presence to create permanent changes to the timeline."

Reegan winced. D'arco wasn't going to like what came next.

"When that happens," Maxie continued, "the jaunter is eliminated."

"Eliminated?"

"That's right."

"How?" D'arco directed the question at Regan.

Reegan shrugged. A million different ways. Car accident. Lightning strike. Heart attack. It was the ultimate catch-22. A person could go anywhere. See anything. As long as they returned within a certain period of time. "I couldn't say exactly how it might happen." He laid it all out. "But you can't make a long and happy life in the past. The clock starts ticking the moment you step into the portal. Statistically, the more aggressive your interference, the quicker you'll expire." Lots of people had died before the science of jaunting had been perfected. A strict code regulated the tech's use because of that.

A sound escaped D'arco's throat. "So what you're telling me is that if you don't find her, she'll die."

Reegan swished that watered-down version around his mouth before answering. "Right. She'll die."

"But you're not going to let that happen."

Reegan bit back hysterical laughter.

"Find her, Dr. McNamara. Before any harm comes to her. If you don't, I'll shut this whole operation down and throw so many code violations at this company, you'll both rot in jail for the rest of your lives."

Reegan's instinctive loyalty to Silvia, a woman who didn't even know his name and whom he hadn't laid eyes on in ten years, was causing him more trouble by the second. She was nothing like the young woman who haunted his dreams. That girl had been helpless, relying on him to keep her safe. His mistake had been an unforgivable breach of trust. Silvia, on the other hand, had brought this mess down on herself. He'd have to remember that, if he could. He rose from his chair, gritting his teeth at how shaky his knees felt.

Maxie stood as well, crushing his broken cigar in a white-knuckled grip. "We'll get her back."

D'arco gathered his men close. "We'll wait in there." He pointed at the jaunt room, where earlier Reegan had watched Silvia through the mirror. "I'm sure you and Mr. McNamara have preparations to make."

"It's Dr. McNamara," Reegan muttered. He acknowledged the bodyguards as they filed out, then closed the door and turned to Maxie.

"Well, isn't this a fucking ugly pickle?" Maxie asked. He'd lumbered over to the mirror. In the room beyond, D'arco accepted a glass of brandy from Emilio and made himself comfortable on one of the plush sofas. He twirled the snifter, watching the amber liquid ride the inside of the glass. With one leg crossed over the other and head tipped to the ceiling, the only sign of his agitation was the ever-present tic in the corner of his eye.

His two other goons hovered close by. The biceps on the biggest bulged through his suit coat, and with the patchy beard and growled, unintelligible responses, could have passed for Bluto. The other, tall and thin, had decided to compensate for his receding hair by growing it long. Braided in a scrubby brown pigtail, it protruded from the back of his neck like a boot spur.

Reegan joined Maxie in front of the mirror. "Something's not adding up. She planned this. It wasn't a spur-of-the-moment thing like he's suggesting."

"If that's true, her planning skills suck. She's going to get herself killed. And all because her husband probably wanted her to serve chardonnay instead of Chablis with dinner. Rich people are twisted, and not in a good way."

"No. She's running from him. I'd bet on it."

Maxie harrumphed.

"Is that all you have to say?"

"You want to know what I think?" Maxie cut his eyes to the side. "That's her fucking problem. We need to be worried about ourselves."

"I'm sorry," Reegan ground out. "I didn't mean to bring this down on you."

"Yeah, you sound real sorry." Maxie waved off his retort. "Drop it. I'm an asshole, not an idiot. If this bitch wanted to disappear, you didn't have a prayer of stopping it. This is on her." He stabbed a finger onto the desk in front of him. "The best we can hope for is to come out of this breathing, with our balls and our business intact."

"Our business? You circling the wagons, boss?"

"Just putting things in perspective." Maxie flipped a switch at the side of his desk, and a virtual screen appeared in the air between them. His fingers flew over the holographic keyboard. "There are no good solutions to this shitstorm. Our best hope is to find the woman and get her back here before the two of you are killed. After that, she's on her own, and we can hope to hell D'arco feels like being kind to the rest of us."

"And how are we going to do that? The city is huge and packed to the gills."

"Yeah? I doubt she made reservations at the Marriott. So she'll have problems finding a place to stay." Maxie's fingers flew over the keys. "How much planning do you think we're talking about here?"

Reegan chewed his thumbnail, then dug in his pocket for Silvia's bracelet. He jingled it in his hand. "She managed to get the bio bracelet off without alerting me."