“Now, that I can handle. I’ll call an emergency meeting of the armchair detectives. They may already have the information you require.” He reached for the phone, relayed the message to Mabel, then replaced the receiver. “I assume that my job will be to keep Mabel and Sam in their respective corners?”
She nodded. “Timing is everything. If we can get there right before the murder takes place, I can pinpoint the Ripper’s location and Max can stun him with his weapon and take him back to 2128.”
Linc studied her as he dialed the number. “And then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“What about the two of you?”
Her heart squeezed. She hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I suppose that will be it. The catch with psychic time travel is that you can’t go to a place that you can’t imagine in your mind. I can’t go to 2128. He can’t stay here. And there are rules—a lot of them. He can’t bring me back with him.”
Linc regarded her intently. “And you can settle for that?”
“I have to.” Neely cleared her throat. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”
“Oh, shit, sweetie.” Linc put his arm around her shoulder.
“That always ends so badly.”
MAX STUDIED Deirdre as she paced on the sidewalk. It was costing him to remain still and let her sort through everything. And the last thing he wanted was for her to notice his impatience. It had been simmering and steadily building inside of him ever since he’d awakened. Time was a wasting. It was May 16. The Ripper was going to make his move on Neely in less than twenty hours.
To keep his mind off of that, he focused on his surroundings. Spring had arrived. The air carried the scent of blossoms. The morning rush-hour traffic had diminished and he saw only the occasional car or pedestrian. Across the street, a young woman sent them a curious glance as she pushed a baby carriage toward the small park.
Deirdre continued to pace. He’d told her everything that had happened since he’d arrived, with the exception of the sex. So far, she hadn’t said a thing—hadn’t even questioned his assessment of Neely’s powers. Nor had she commented on discovering him half-naked and barefoot in Neely’s store. He figured she’d filed that in a “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” folder.
He felt Neely’s gaze on him before he glanced over and met her eyes. In spite of the night they’d spent together, the simple act of looking at her was enough to have lust knotting in his belly. Impatience bubbled up again. He wanted to be with her. He wanted her. If he linked his mind with hers now…
Deirdre appeared in his peripheral vision, and Max dragged his thoughts back to his current problem. He wasn’t going to get fired because he’d made love to Neely, but it might get him pulled from this job, and he didn’t need any psychic powers to know what his superior was thinking on that issue. What she wanted to do, and what he would have done in her place, was to immediately send him back to 2128. She was probably regretting ever having agreed to his proposal and wondering how she was going to explain her lack of judgment to Lance Shaw. Max figured he only had one argument in his favor. The question was when to present it.
She came to a stop a few feet away, met his eyes and fisted her hands on her hips. “You’re walking a very high tightrope.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’ve managed to take me right up there with you.”
“That, too.”
She spared a glance for Bookends. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Linc was at the window watching them.
“How much is she telling her partner?”
“Probably everything. They seem very close.”
“Will he believe her?”
“It’s only a guess, but I think the trust goes both ways. She’s probably already confided in him that she’s been visiting the Ripper’s crime scenes in London.”
Deirdre nodded once. “You have any idea where she came by her power?”
“I was going to request that you run a genealogical scan on her.”
Deirdre’s eyes narrowed. “If and when you ever reported in.”
“I was going to do that this morning.”
“Hmm.”
The sound was a snort, and it definitely wasn’t trust he saw in her eyes. But for just a second, he thought he noticed a flash of guilt. Why? Before he could ask, another young woman approached, this time on their side of the street, and the stroller she pushed was a two-seater. He took Deirdre’s arm and drew her onto the first step of the stoop. Then he sat down and pulled her down beside him.
Angling her head to study him, she said, “If you want to stay on the job, this would be a good time to make your case.”
Now or never, he thought. “She’s our best chance of catching him, Dee. She can sense him. I’m not sure how, but she knows his position when he’s invisible. That gives me a better chance of stunning him so that I can see his face.”
“What happened to your plan of learning his identity in 2008 so that we could catch him in 2128?”
It was just like Deirdre to cut to the bottom line, but Max kept his eyes steady on hers. “That gives me only one shot. If Neely and I go back to London together, it strengthens the odds that I can catch him.”
“Very smooth answer, Max, but I know you. You’re not going to let the Rafferty woman die if you can help it. Just what are you really planning?”
Max said nothing. No way was he going to confirm her suspicion.
Finally, she turned to him. “I should send you back right now and take over the job myself.”
He had to clamp down hard on both impatience and panic. “There’s another thing, Dee. She’s a loose cannon. She wants to save all those London women.”
Her eyes widened.
“I’ve explained the rules. But she doesn’t see any point to them. She calls them Orwellian. And she may not feel they apply to her. She’s impulsive, and it’s a crap shoot trying to predict where the impulse will lead. Right now, she trusts me, and I have some influence over her. Besides, I have a feeling—nothing concrete—but I think I know when the Ripper will make contact with her.” He told her about the Rhoades book and their plan to attend the lecture at the Brooklyn Psychic Institute early that afternoon.
“You think this Rhoades might be the Ripper?”
“I don’t know. I just have a feeling it’s through Rhoades that the Ripper will make contact with Neely. What I know is that she’ll sense the Ripper if he’s there. I might be able to ID him by this afternoon. The trip to London may not even be necessary.”
“I could go with her to the lecture.”
Max met her gaze steadily. “I promise you you’ll have your hands full if you take her on.”
Deirdre raised a brow. “Like I don’t have my hands full right now? Lance Shaw is afraid he’s going to lose both of us over this. He thinks you’ll break the Prime Directive and I’ll lose my job over it.”
“You told him that you approved my proposal?”
“No. Someone else—we think the Ripper—left a communications chip on his assistant Adam’s desk, telling him that you were investigating earlier Ripper murders. I told no one about your proposal. I assured Shaw that you didn’t tell anyone, either.”
Max rose and began to pace as he absorbed the implications. “So the Ripper must have spotted me. I’m betting it was when I was on Buck’s Row with Neely. That means he’s from our time and he’s high up enough in TGS to know me and what I do.”
“And to be able to drop an anonymous communications chip on a desk only a matter of feet from Shaw’s office. The bastard is arrogant as hell.”
“What did you get from the security cameras in Shaw’s office? How many suspects are we looking at?”
Deirdre smiled at him for the first time. “Five. Four members of the board of directors—Henry Whitehall, Mitchell Lambert, Jose Rivera, Lawrence Chu—and Dr. Thomas Renquist, who was delivering a report on clairvoyance genes. Lambert, Rivera and Chu can time travel. Whitehall and Renquist only carry a dormant gene.”
“Five narrows it down considerably. And the killer has finally made a mistake. I bet he wasn’t expecting to see me on Buck’s Row and he panicked. Considering my close connection to the case, he probably thought I was operating on my own, and he planted the chip in the hopes that Shaw would kick me off the case. Is that what Shaw has sent you to do?”
“No. He reads it just the way you do. He sent me to warn you. On two counts. First, be careful. Second, he’s worried you’re going to break the rules because of Suzanna.” She threw up her hands. “If he knew you were involved with Neely Rafferty, I think he’d order you back.”
Max studied her face. “But you’re not going to.”
“No. If her powers are as advanced as you suspect, she could help you. But I’m worried. When Shaw doesn’t take you off the case, the Ripper may decide to eliminate you himself. Watch your back, Max.”
“Not to worry. Show me the faces of your five suspects. If one of them resembles Dr. Rhoades, this could be over.”
Deirdre took out her palm unit, cued it up and handed it to him.