"Now you're just fucking with me."

He hadn't been, but now wasn't the time to admit that. Not in the present company. "I didn't have a choice. D'arco had a bomb. His plan-as far as I could tell, 'cause I didn't stop to have him explain-was to grab Silvia and bring her back, but leave Reegan stuck behind."

Reegan hummed agreement. "Changing the landscape of the physical location wouldn't have necessarily accomplished that, but it would have made it much harder to travel back unobserved. If I'd even survived the blast. I don't think I would have."

"And just how did that leave you with no choice?" Maxie waved his cigar. "I'm lost."

Reegan's fingers tightened into a painful grip, drawing Saul's gaze. "It didn't. You shouldn't have taken the risk."

The memory of it made Saul shiver. "You were unconscious. I tried to wake you up, but you were out cold. Someone had to hit the button to activate the portal. Before the bomb went off."

Reegan tilted his head backward. "Silvia."

He hadn't been addressing her, but she spoke up. "I was unconscious too. I don't remember anything after Emilio grabbed me at Cammie's." She probed the back of her head with a grimace.

Already, Saul found the topic tiresome. What was done was done. "I made it back with you. I didn't disappear or whatever it is that happens. It's fine."

"You shouldn't have made it. It was a death sentence. I told you that. You had a choice."

Saul shook his head. "A choice to what? Save myself and leave the two of you behind to die?"

"Yes!"

Saul traced the deep lines of agitation on Reegan's face. "You're right. I did have a choice," he said, tone quiet and final. "And I made it. End of story."

"Not exactly the end." With a resigned sigh, Maxie set his empty glass on the bar. Then he fished a transparent palm-sized device from his pocket and pressed a button, glaring at Reegan. "What does it say about you that I have the National Time Travel Agency on speed dial?"

"That your life would be extremely boring without me around." Despite Saul's protests, Reegan struggled to a sitting position. "You love the attention. Don't deny it."

Maxie gave him the finger. "You're fired." A tinny voice reached Saul's ears, and Maxie squeezed from between the bar and the wall as he answered. "This is Max Humes. Blast in the Past. Washington D.C. Comm-district seven. I need to report an incident."

Saul held his breath as Maxie paused to light the tip of his cigar. "Casualties? I'm afraid so."

Chapter Twenty-Two.

"How're you holding up?"

Reegan perched on the edge of the sofa and examined Saul critically. He was pale beneath his bruises. Dirt-smudged. His ripped hospital scrub shirt had slipped off one shoulder. War-torn was the word that came to Reegan's mind. Definitely in shock. Now that the immediate danger had passed, they'd all fallen into a shallow stupor.

Except for Maxie. He made call after call, barking words into the fiberoptic microphone connected to his earpiece. Brewed tea for Silvia. Fetched a clean rag for Reegan to hold to the seeping wound on the side on his head. He avoided Saul altogether, as though acknowledging his very presence might birth a spontaneous wormhole and suck the three of them back in time.

Silvia clutched the Blast in the Past mug Maxie had handed her and stared into the distance. Her eyes held a touch of the dazed shock Saul's did, but they also swirled with purpose. More than once Reegan had seen her lips move as she regrouped. Planned. Twice, she'd borrowed Maxie's comm to make calls of her own. To whom Reegan had no idea, but if she had any allies at all, any people loyal to her, they'd be needed.

As soon as the truth about D'arco hit the streets, her life would change. Whether for the worse or better would be determined by how she handled the next several hours.

Oddly, the prospect didn't worry him. You could kick that kid, but she didn't stay down. The main threat to her well-being was dead. Maybe that was the fact that had eased the bulk of Reegan's anxiety.

Or maybe he was too twisted up by Saul's presence, his brush with death, his sacrifice, to effectively process any higher thoughts at the moment.

He waited until Saul shifted his bleary gaze. "Hang in there."

Saul snorted, then jerked his chin at the three people who'd just come through the door into the jaunt room. "Who're they?" Dressed head to toe in deep sapphire jumpsuits, the two men and one woman ignored Maxie's offer of a handshake. The woman got right down to business.

"Mr. Humes? I'm Ann Silas, from NTTA." She retrieved her comm tablet from her bag, swept a finger across the screen and started firing off questions.

Maxie dropped his hand, answering each in turn, tone skirting the edge of belligerent. The abrupt shift in the power dynamic left Reegan edgy. The NTTA managed their investigations with a heavy hand. Their agents had a nose for code violations and a vicious desire to weasel them out. Reegan and Maxie ran a squeaky clean operation, but two incidents in a year would raise an eyebrow or two. It would pay to be cooperative, but that wasn't one of Maxie's strengths.

Saul eyed the group with open distrust and let loose a grunt of pain as he pressed further into the arm of the sofa. "Love the outfits."

Those uniforms were legend. Reegan had taken more than one bet at time travel-conferences that the NTTA must have held a contest among their employees for most unflattering dress code ever. "NTTA agents. National Time Travel Agency. We're required to report all irregular jaunts to our local office immediately."

Saul started to nod, then winced, leaning his cheek carefully against the sofa cushion. "I take it this trip was irregular."

"This jaunt pretty much covered every clause in the definition of irregular, yeah." He frowned at the way Saul folded in on himself as the room began to fill with more people. "Medical just got here too. They'll have something more effective than an X-ray."

Saul's eyes drifted closed. "Okay."

Reegan buried the pressing need to offer comfort, settling for a tentative touch to his arm. "That's not all."

"I didn't figure it was," Saul mumbled.

"Because Maxie reported the incident as a level five-that means a death occurred on the jaunt-the authorities will be here soon too."

He'd tried to keep the uneasiness from his voice, but Saul heard it. A frown touched his lips. He cracked one eye to check the whereabouts of the NTTA agents before speaking in a hushed tone. "We didn't have time to corroborate our stories."

"Corroborate-don't worry about that." He'd have to keep in mind that Saul's basic knowledge was more than a century out of date. "Listen." He leaned close, daring to set a hand on Saul's knee. His body blocked the gesture from the people behind him. The last thing he wanted to do was raise questions about their relationship before they'd had time to give their statements. There'd be no hiding it then.

"There's only one story to tell, okay? The truth." A sharp squeeze to Saul's leg ensured his attention. "Lots of things have changed since you were a cop. Especially detective work. I'm sure you'll be asked to give a statement tonight. But that's where the familiar part's going to end. They'll use a soothsayer."

"Is that a person?"

Saul swallowed a smile. "No. It's a fancy biofeedback monitor. Hey," he soothed when Saul's eyes widened. "It's standard. Perfectly safe. And also foolproof. Don't lie. They'll know right away."

"So it's like a lie detector."

"In theory. That's like comparing a horse-drawn cart to a jet, though."

"You can't beat it?"

Reegan shook his head. "Don't even try."

"That's...amazing. And actually quite terrifying."

"It did make a huge impact on premeditated crime rates."

As well as birth a new generation of lawyers who learned how to manipulate the system. Truth was subjective. Reegan was sure every law student had that phrase tattooed on their ass before graduation. He, Saul and Silvia could still be held accountable for the deaths of D'arco and his men. All it would take was some creative spin.

He glanced over his shoulder as more people arrived. One uniformed officer and two plain-clothed cops. Detectives, was Reegan's guess. They'd mastered that timeless aura of bored intimidation all servants of the law possessed and were casing the crowd with hawklike interest.

The NTTA contingent met them halfway across the room, and the respective groups flashed their badges at each other, the holographic images fluttering in the stirred-up air.

Reegan turned back to Saul. "Some quick advice. Keep it as simple as possible. No unnecessary details. Just the straight-up story, beginning to end. You should be good at that. Answer their questions directly. Don't embellish."

"But-" Saul licked his lips.

"We didn't do anything wrong. It's going to be fine."

Thank God he wasn't hooked up to those machines at the moment. For once, his half-truth slipped under Saul's radar. Whether it was his injuries, the jaunt, or plain old-fashioned shock, Saul did little more than nod and wrap his arms around his torso. It took all of Reegan's will not to reach out to him when he looked so lost.

The truth about what happened would come out. The variable that worried Reegan was how it might be twisted to suit the desires of all parties involved. Losing his job was turning out to be the least of his problems. He drew a cleansing breath and exhaled slowly.

"Dr. McNamara?"

Showtime. Reegan turned to greet the two most recent guests to the party. Both held out their standard-issue comm tablets and presented their credentials-holographs of their badges. Police detectives with the fourth district. His guess had been spot-on. A trickle of sweat ran down between his shoulder blades.

The first spoke. "I'm Detective Perry. I understand there was an accident on your jaunt this evening."

Reegan couldn't help it. He laughed despite his nervousness. "Something like that."

"Councilman Victor D'arco was involved?"

"He was."

"You believe he was killed?"

"I can hope." He pressed his mouth shut before he could incriminate himself further.

Perry barely batted an eyelash. "We'd like to take your statement first, if you have no objections."

No objections. The sooner, the better. Recounting it while all the details were fresh might be their only hope of avoiding prison. People on D'arco's side of the equation were probably already searching for a convenient scapegoat. Or three.

"That's fine." Then he could come back and watch over Saul. He eyed the small briefcases they carried that housed the soothsayers. This would be his second statement of record in less than eighteen months. The interrogation process wasn't painful, but knowing his thoughts and memories would be an open book to complete strangers, at least for a short time, left his mouth dry.

"There's an empty jaunt room across the hall. We can use that." He caught Saul's gaze, pasting on an encouraging smile. "Be back soon."

Mistake. Detective Perry's piercing gaze swung toward Saul. "Good evening, sir."

"Hello," Saul answered, eyes swimming with uncertainty.

"May I see some identification, please?"

Reegan spoke up when Saul looked to him. "He doesn't have any. He just arrived."

"Arrived?" The detective keyed a short sequence into his comm tablet and the transparent surface turned opaque. He pointed it at Saul. "From where?"

Going into this now was a bad idea. Reegan had wanted the chance to explain Saul's presence before these guys got a hold of him. Teeth clenched, he watched Perry snap a picture, then send it through the facial recognition database. He studied the information scrolling across the screen, frown growing more pronounced.

Reegan suppressed a shiver. Maybe they needed their own lawyer. "He's from the past. Returned with us on the jaunt. He's not a criminal," he growled. "He's a cop. From the year 2020."

He hadn't meant the words to carry, but the several conversations happening around the room stopped and an expectant silence descended. It took several seconds for Perry to find his voice. "I didn't realize that was possible."

"It's rare, but possible."

NTTA Agent Silas had called someone in the wake of Reegan's announcement and was now whispering furiously into the thin filament connected to her earpiece, gaze fixed on Saul. Reegan's gut churned, and when she started across the room toward them, he sidled closer to the sofa, placing himself in her path.

She blew right up into his personal space, twitching with excitement. "Dr. McNamara, I'm Ann Silas with the NTTA. Don't worry. A team is on the way."

"A team of what?"

She floundered at his sharp reply. "Of medical professionals. If your traveler is actually from the past, he'll need to be quarantined immediately. Be seen by our doctors." She leaned close to whisper in his ear, as though Saul weren't sitting three feet away. "And receive psychological counseling, of course, before he's sent back."

"Sent back?" Shock and dismay laced Saul's voice. He looked between Silas and Reegan. "I can't stay?"

Yes, you can stay. The words lodged in Reegan's throat. He had no idea if they were true. "You can't send him back there. He-"

Silas tilted her head. Waited.

He belongs with me. Those four words held all the truth in the universe but wouldn't mean a thing to the NTTA.

"Dr. McNamara, surely you understand why he needs to return."

He didn't have a single weapon against her honest curiosity, not a reasonable one. None that penetrated the sizzling ball of emotion churning in his chest. He stifled the desire to stamp his foot, yell "mine" and wrap Saul protectively in his arms.

Struggling to keep his voice even, he answered. "Isn't that something that can be negotiated? Challenged?"

Her gaze flew between the two of them, lingering longer on Saul than Reegan liked. "He still needs quarantine. I'm afraid that's not up for debate."

Reegan hadn't considered quarantine, although it made sense. Saul lacked immunity to some of the mutated superviruses discovered in the past century. He had no identity. No money. And no matter how brave a front he put up, Reegan knew he was scared. So having this lady treat him like a bug in a jar, with no rights or feelings, grated.

But the root of his anger was that he had no control over the process. They'd take him, whether Reegan protested or not. The thought of Saul being separated from him-more, the idea of Saul having to deal with everything alone-set all his protective instincts on fire. "I understand, but I'd like to stay with him."

"I'm not sure that will be possible."

He'd make it possible. Reegan squared his shoulders, but Saul cut off his rant before it began.

"It's fine, Reegan." Voice thin, he tipped his chin at Agent Silas. "I'll go with them. It'll be okay."

The med team had flocked to Silvia's side at first. Now two of the four peeled off and approached Saul and Reegan. The first sank to his haunches by Saul's side and began scanning his injuries. Saul followed the movement of the compact handheld device as it passed over his body but said nothing. The second medic buzzed around Reegan with another scanner, huffing in frustration. "Please stay still, sir."

"I'm fine. I don't need medical attention right now."

"These readings say otherwise."