A Time of Shadows (Out of Time #8) (25 page)

“I was just going to wait for Skavo,” he said in a deep baritone. “But then why not kill two birds with one stone?” He lifted the push dagger, basically a fist with a short blade sticking out between the knuckles, and smiled. “Emphasis on kill.”
 

Jack raised his hands and kept slowly circling to his right toward the only thing nearby that might be a weapon. “I’m a bird lover myself. Lifetime Audubon member.”

Quint smirked and kept moving forward. “You can make this easy or hard.”

“I didn’t know I had options.” Jack edged a little further toward the bench.

“Doesn’t matter to me,” Quint said. “You’re just as dead either way.”

Suddenly, Quint swiped at Jack, who barely dodged it. Quint swung back again. And smiled. He was just toying with him, like a cat with a mouse.

Just as Jack thought that might be to his advantage, Quint tired of the game and lunged forward. His fist, wrapped tightly around the handle of the dagger, came screaming forward with a quick jab. Jack barely had time to react. But he had just enough; he grabbed the copper bowl from the marble bench and raised it like a shield. The knife blade scraped against the bowl as metal met metal. Jack forced the momentum to the side, deflecting the blow.

The force of his own punch threw Quint off balance. Jack re-gripped the copper bowl and swung for the fences. He’d had decent power when he played semi-professional baseball and he put every ounce of it into that swing.
 

The bowl collided heavily with the side of Quint’s head and sent him stumbling forward. Jack’s hands ached from the reverberation of the impact.
 

Quint’s hand spasmed, but he didn’t let go of the knife. Jack got a better grip, stepped forward and swung again, hitting the other side of Quint’s head. He’d always known being a switch hitter would come in handy one day.

Quint’s head snapped back and he stumbled again, backward now, finally falling onto the circular platform. His arms flopped back over his head. The knife skittered across the marble.

Jack looked down at the copper bowl, bent and misshapen now. He was about to kiss it when Quint groaned and rolled his head to the side.

“Oh, come on,” Jack said, then with a sigh hoisted himself up onto the platform. It was hot beneath his hands and feet. He walked toward Quint’s head, ready to deliver the final blow when Quint’s hand snaked out and grabbed Jack by the ankle.
 

Jack had just enough time to curse himself before he landed hard on the marble, the back of his head hitting it with a sharp crack. His vision blurred for a moment and he shook his head to clear it. And then wished he hadn’t.

He looked up to see Quint’s fist just before it hit his jaw. Thick hands wrapped around his throat. Jack tried to latch onto something, anything to keep conscious, but he could feel the darkness pulling at him.
 

Desperate, he reached up and found Quint’s face. His flushed cheeks were pulled back in a grimace of effort and Jack groped for something to grab onto. Quint was strong, but Jack was taller, longer. His reach was his only advantage now. His arms were longer and he gripped Quint’s head. Jack tried to push him back, but he was too strong. So Jack did the only thing he could and slid his thumb into Quint’s eye and pushed.
 

Quint cried out and reared back, letting go of Jack’s throat.
 

Jack gasped for breath and delivered a jab of his own—a quick sharp blow to the neck. Quint fell to the side, and Jack could hear his wheezing breath. Jack dove toward the edge of the platform, his hand reaching out for the knife that still sat there. He was just inches away when Quint grabbed him by the foot and pulled him back.

He slid along the hot marble and rolled over just in time to block another iron fist from Quint. The two men grappled with each other. Quint’s sweat made it hard to get a grip, but Jack finally succeeded, and with a little leverage managed to push Quint back off the edge of the platform and onto the floor.

Jack scrambled back across the marble and grabbed the knife. He jumped down onto the floor and raised it, ready.

Quint, lumbering and dazed, pushed himself up and stared at Jack, his eyes wild and unfocused.

What was it going to take to stop this guy?
 

Quint blinked and took a step forward. Just as he did, his foot slipped in a puddle of water and he tumbled forward. His head hit the edge of the platform with an audible and unceremonious crack.

Apparently that, Jack thought as Quint’s body slid to the floor. After all that, a little puddle of water did him in. Jack wasn’t sure if the marble or Quint’s head cracked when they met, but one of them did. And it seemed to have done the job.

Jack panted for breath and stood over him for a moment, waiting for him to rise again. But he didn’t. Thank God, Jack thought, as his arms fell to his sides in exhaustion.

He heard a noise to his left and looked over to see Luka standing in the doorway to their small room.

“It’s all right now,” Jack said, breathless, and waved them over. “I hope.”

Luka turned back and he and Skavo tentatively came over. Jack looked at the boy and then at Skavo, and then at Skavo again.
 

“Aw, crap,” he said. “You’re not even him, are you?”

Luka looked nervously at the older man and then back to Jack. “My father was too ill to come. This is Bekir. He’s from the village my father is staying in.”

After nearly getting his head bashed in, all he had to show for it was a skinny old man in a towel.
 

Jack nodded, defeated, and lifted a weak hand to say hello, too tired to do anything else. “Nice to meet you.”

Luka handed Jack a towel, and it took him a moment to realize that he was naked. He must have lost his towel earlier, but had been too concerned about not dying to care.
 

“That was for your head,” Luka said. “You’re bleeding.”

Jack finished wrapping the towel around his waist and reached up to his forehead. He felt the wet stickiness and saw the blood on his fingertips. He wiped them on the white towel and looked down at Quint. A small pool of blood seeped out from beneath his head. The Council’s best agent was dirty and who knew who else was.
 

“I’ve got bigger problems than that, kid.”

T
HE
SMALL
VILLAGE
B
EKIR
led them to was buried deep in the forests outside of Istanbul. They finally turned off the long, winding highway onto a narrow dirt road that led deeper into the countryside. A canopy of bright leaves from the dense woods around them bathed the path in a soft green glow. They passed a small collection of wooden farmhouses, not much more than shacks. An old man with a round belly and pants up to his armpits tossed feed to chickens and geese. He stopped what he was doing to stare at them as they passed slowly by. The next house down, an elderly woman in a headscarf sat in a rocking chair on her porch as she crocheted brightly colored lace.

It was quiet and picturesque. It seemed like an unlikely sort of place a scientist would use to create a weapon that could change the world. But wasn’t that always the way?

They had driven a mile or so farther down the road when Luka reached forward from the backseat and patted Tess on the shoulder.

“There,” he said, nodding toward an old house with a rusted, corrugated steel roof.

Tess pulled the car over.
 

From what Jack had learned from Luka, his father had been ill for several years, but his health was declining quickly now. That’s why Luka, instead of Skavo, had gone to see the Wizard, and why Bekir had taken his place at the exchange.

Skavo was dying, but that didn’t make him any less dangerous. Maybe even more so, Jack thought as they got out of the car and made their way up the creaking front steps.

“Father?” Luka called out.

The door to a bedroom opened a moment later and a thin man, more beard than man, stepped forward. A smile lit his haggard face.

“My boy,” he said, holding out his arms.

Father and son embraced and Jack and Tess exchanged surprised glances. Skavo was in much worse shape than they’d expected. He started to teeter to the side and Luka held him up. His father patted his arm.

“I am all right,” he said and turned to Bekir. “
Teşekkürler.”

“N’aber?” Bekir asked as he took Skavo’s outstretched hand and gripped his arm by the elbow.

“
İyiyim, teşekkürler,” Skavo said. But both Jack and Bekir knew he was far from fine.

Bekir nodded and patted Skavo’s face before he turned and left.

“You should be in bed, Father,” Luka said.

Skavo gave Jack and Tess an anxious look, but it faded quickly. He didn’t have the energy to waste on them.

Luka led his father back into the bedroom and Jack and Tess followed.

So this was Skavo—the man who held the fate of the world in his hands.
 

“I got the Orichalcum.”
 

Skavo smiled faintly and nodded as he sat down.

Luka covered him with a blanket.

“You should not have done that, Luka,” Skavo said.

“It’s the last piece though, isn’t it? It’s what you need.”

Skavo shook his head. “It was folly.” He looked at his son with haunted eyes. “It has all been a folly.”

“No, Father. You’re so close.”

Skavo sighed and held on tightly to the edges of his blanket. “Some things are not meant to be.”

“So you don’t know how to create the watch?” Tess asked, breaking the spell between father and son.

Skavo looked at her as though he’d just noticed she was there. He stared at her and then shifted his eyes to Jack. With sad resignation in his eyes, he turned to Luka. “Go and make sure Bekir is all right,” he said. “I’m sure this was trying for him.”

“He’s fine, Father,” Luka protested, but Skavo held up his hand.
 

“All right,” Luka said.

“And we need milk, go to Osman to get it. Yusuf’s cow is not well.”

“But—”

A single stern look from Skavo quieted the boy, and with a last nervous look to Jack and Tess, he left.

Skavo’s eyes moved between Jack and Tess and then he nodded. “I knew you would find me eventually. But I’m afraid you are going to be disappointed.”

“Is there anyone else here?” Tess asked.

Skavo shifted uncomfortably in his chair and his blanket fell to the ground.

“No,” he said. “Just my son and the other villagers, but they are unaware.”

Jack picked up the blanket and handed it back to Skavo as Tess walked over to a long table that sat on the far side of the room. Watch pieces, papers, microscopes and other scientific equipment littered the top of it.
 

She flipped through a few of the papers and picked up a pocket watch in mid-repair. “Is this it?”

Skavo shook his head. “Another failure. My room is filled with them,” he added waving his arm around the small area. “My life is filled with them.”

“So you aren’t close to cracking it?” Jack asked.

Skavo smiled sadly. “I thought I was. Many times. It was an obsession. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t stop myself from trying.”

He looked at Jack, the pain of lost years in his eyes. “Once I realized who I was working for, I ran. I should have left it all behind. But I
had
to know.”

His expression was a mixture of a plea for understanding and begging for forgiveness.
 

“I lost everything, my wife, my life, looking for something that does not even exist.”

Tess looked down at the watch in her hand and put it back on the table. “And why should we believe you?”

The coldness in her voice surprised Jack, but she had a point.
 

“A dying man has little reason to lie.”

Tess took a step toward the door and then turned back. She narrowed her eyes. “And yet you are.”

“No,” Skavo said. “I am—”

“Lying,” Tess finished for him.

Jack turned to her, ready to defend Skavo. He was an old, dying man consumed with regret, but Jack pulled up short when he saw that she’d pulled out a gun.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Jack said, recovering himself and taking a step toward her.

When she turned the gun on him, he stopped dead in his tracks.
 

“Oh, I think it is,” Tess said, ice cold now. And the realization of what was happening, what had been happening, sank into Jack’s stomach like a lead fist.
 

She waved the gun, urging Jack to move back. He held up his hands and edged backward to stand next to Skavo. She’d been one of them the whole time.

“Your gun,” she said. “Slowly.”

Jack briefly considered trying to reason with her, but from the look in her eyes she was well beyond reason. Slowly and carefully, he reached into his jacket and un-holstered his gun. For a split second, he thought about making his move right here and now, but she was too close. He wouldn’t get a shot off before she killed him. He needed to buy some time.

Keeping his movements slow and deliberate, he squatted down and placed his gun on the floor and then kicked it over to her.

She bent to pick it up. “Very good.”

She put it into the waistband of her pants and re-trained her gun on Jack. She watched him as he put two and two together.

He’d wondered how Quint had known about the meeting with Skavo at the bathhouse, but had thought he’d just been following them unseen. But that wasn’t it at all, he realized. It was Tess. It had been Tess all along.

She smiled. “It dawns.”

An angry and embarrassed flush crawled up his neck and cheeks. He was an idiot. He put the pieces together and it all made sense, horrible sense. How had the thugs from the Shadow Council known exactly where the Crosses were going to be?

“My cell phone,” he said. “It was bugged.”

She inclined her head.
 

How had the Shadow Council found out? He’d told them. He felt sick.

“Dammit.”