Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (18 page)

Meg pulled out her mobile. “If Cassie wants
to talk to her grandfather, she could do it through the back door.
I could call Jim, and he could call Art.”

Callum picked up the pace, heading for the
last shop in the row, wanting to put as much distance as possible
between them and the police vehicles as quickly as he could. “You
can’t ring Jim.”

“
Why not? You know him,
right, Cassie?” Meg said. “He gave me his phone number as we pulled
into the parking lot, and I memorized it. We could have him check
on your grandfather.”

Callum turned to look at Meg. “You memorized
his number?”

“
I’ve always been good with
numbers, and it was the first phone number I’d seen in seven years.
I thought it might come in handy if Anna and I got stuck
somewhere.”

They ducked around the last building and
turned into the rear car park. Many of the cars had been parked
here since before the rain began, which meant they belonged to
employees or very serious shoppers. If Callum chose correctly, it
might be a while before one was missed.

“
You can’t ring Jim,” he
repeated.

Meg hesitated, the mobile in her hand, and
Callum reached out and took it from her. Despite their earlier
discussion, she was hesitating. He hoped it wasn’t because she
didn’t trust him, but because she wasn’t thinking like an
agent.

“
What I’m about to do is
bad enough,” he said.

“
What are you about to do?”
Anna said.

Callum pulled out his mobile and redialed
Jones. “I need the entry code for a Toyota Highlander.” He walked
around the vehicle he’d chosen to commandeer. “Last year’s
model.”

“
You are not going to steal
a vehicle,” said Jones.

Callum was glad he had the mobile pressed to
his ear so neither Meg nor Anna could hear what Jones had said.
Callum was fairly certain Cassie already knew what he was going to
do. She was standing by the corner of the building, keeping an eye
out for any pursuit.

“
We have no choice. The
police are circling Art’s truck. We have no other avenue out of
here.” He glanced at Cassie. “And while you’re at it, see if you
can find out if Art McKay has been arrested.”

“
I’m not giving you that
code, Callum. So far, you’ve done nothing wrong,” said Jones.
“Stealing a vehicle is a felony.”

“
If we get arrested, the
charge may well be terrorism. That’ll be it for us until they
decide to let us out,” Callum said. “You know that.”

Then Anna tugged his sleeve. “Wait. Maybe
there’s another way.”

Callum turned to look where she was
pointing. A bus depot lay fifty yards from the rear car park with
four buses waiting at it. As Callum watched, another bus pulled up
and people surged off it, all heading to the shopping center.

“
Eugene sure is a happening
place the day after Thanksgiving,” Meg said. “Who knew?”

Without waiting for Callum to agree to the
revised plan, Meg and Anna legged it across the car park toward the
depot. Cassie and Callum followed, not even very reluctantly.
Callum liked the freedom of having his own vehicle, but he could
see Jones’s point too. As they approached the buses, Callum said to
Jones, who’d remained patiently on the line, “Okay, we have a new
plan. We’re getting on a bus, hopefully one that will take us
south.”

Jones grunted, which Callum took to be
assent but that he was too busy to actually speak. As always,
Callum could hear keys clicking furiously in the background. “A bus
traveling south from Eugene is leaving in five minutes, with stops
in Roseburg, Grants Pass, and Medford. I’ve purchased four tickets.
They should be coming through on your mobile right now.”

“
I owe you.”

“
You surely do.”

Callum looked at the screen and, five
seconds later, an email popped up. “Got it.”

They reached the depot, and after a minute
of loping from bus to bus, they found the one they wanted. Callum
herded the women on board and held out his mobile to the scanner.
It beeped four times as it accepted the evidence that he’d paid for
four tickets to Medford. He didn’t know that they were going that
far, but that’s what Jones had bought. Callum would have kissed him
if he were here.

He settled next to Cassie in a row near the
rear exit. The seat was surprisingly comfortable.

“
How bad is it?” Jones was
still on the line.

Callum put the mobile back up to his ear.
“The bus is fine.” He peered out the window towards the Wal-Mart.
“We’ve seen only local police. Can you tell us what they’ve been
told? We need to know if this is lucky accident, or if it’s the
spearhead of a wide-scale search.”

“
Give me a second to get
into the system.” Jones might be a valued member of Callum’s team
and an employee of the British government, but he remained a hacker
and a rebel at heart.

“
It would be nice to know
who’s looking for us.” Cassie had put her head next to Callum’s so
she could hear what Jones was saying.

“
Lucky for you, Wal-Mart is
one of the least hackable corporations in the world. They don’t
play well with others,” said Jones. “Their surveillance system is
on a closed circuit. Whoever is hunting you will need a court order
to gain access.”

That was the first good news Callum had
heard in a while.

“
It’s Thanksgiving here.”
Cassie’s head now rested on Callum’s shoulder. “No judge is going
to appreciate being woken at two in the morning on the second day
of his four-day weekend to authorize a hunt for time
travelers.”

“
I doubt that’s what he
would be told.” Callum automatically checked around the bus to see
if anyone else was listening in and lowered his voice. “It’s always
a matter of national security, you know that.”

The bus had started moving now. The bus
depot was a stone’s throw from the motorway, and Callum let out a
sigh of relief as the bus turned onto the entrance ramp that would
take them south.

“
I didn’t use my own credit
card for any of our purchases,” Callum said.

“
If you had done that, it
would be time to hang up your hat,” Jones said.

“
What’s happening where you
are?” Callum said.

Meg shot Callum an irritated look from
across the aisle, undoubtedly wanting to hear the conversation too.
But this was a public bus. Six other passengers had joined it
before the driver closed the doors and eased away from the curb.
Callum couldn’t put Jones on speakerphone.

“
I am being recalled to the
office,” Jones said with a touch of humor in his voice.

“
They shouldn’t have kept
you on the sidelines in the first place,” Callum said.

“
Nobody likes
hearing,
I told you so
.”

“
I’m not following you,”
Callum said.

Jones was like this sometimes. It took
effort to get him to articulate complete thoughts.

“
A month ago, we
red-flagged the group that has since taken responsibility for the
bombing at GCHQ. We even gave the anti-terrorism division of MI-5
the name of their possible leader and his address.”

Callum frowned, remembering
the meeting. The Project
had access to a
special police unit—like the American S.W.A.T. team—but didn’t
sustain one in-house, so Callum had passed on the information to
MI-5. “Didn’t the organization have an oddly inappropriate
name?”

“
E.L.F.,” said Jones.
“Economic Liberation Front.”

“
I remember them too,”
Cassie said. “Someone’s been reading too much Harry
Potter.”

“
Are you going to the
Office or our office?” Callum said.

“
Our office. And I’m taking
my own sweet time,” said Jones. “They won’t notice anyway. It’s
bedlam there.”

Meg waved a hand to get Callum’s attention.
“I have an idea.”

Callum moved the mobile phone a few inches
from his ear. “I’m open to ideas.”

“
Could Mark reserve a
rental car for us? Untraceably?” she said.

“
It’s two in the morning,”
Cassie said. “We can’t get a rental car at this hour.”

“
Airports tend to be open
twenty-four hours,” Meg said. “Try Medford. It’s a bigger and
busier airport than you might think.”

Callum returned his attention to his mobile
phone and relayed Meg’s question to Jones.

“
What else do you have with
you for ID, Callum?” said Jones. “Any United States document would
be easiest, but not the same card you used at the shop.”

“
John MacDonald.” Callum
reached into his backpack and pulled out a blue
passport.

Cassie glanced at it, her mouth twisting
into a sardonic smile. “Who needs citizenship when you have
MI-5?”

“
How far to Medford?” Anna
said.

Cassie and Meg exchanged a look. “Three
hours?” Meg said.

“
We’re in a bus,” Cassie
said. “It might take longer.”

“
Oh dear. Look at that,”
said Jones, deadpan. “The traffic cameras along Interstate 5 just
went out.” Now there was no mistaking the glee in his voice. “I am
good.”

“
Are you hacking into the
Oregon Department of Transportation?” Callum said.

“
Hacking has such
unfortunate connotations,” said Jones. “I prefer a more circumspect
vocabulary.”

Callum snorted laughter, but Cassie said,
“Any luck with identifying who’s chasing us?”

“
A nameless, faceless
bureaucracy,” said Jones, unironically. “It’s out of D.C., but I
don’t have more information than that and—” He cleared his throat;
Callum could hear him speaking to someone in the background before
he came back on the line. “I have to go. They sent a car for me.
I’ll keep on this, and you should have a vehicle waiting for you at
the Rogue Valley airport in Medford.”

“
What car hire company?”
Callum said.

“
Hertz. I told them you’d
pick it up sometime after 4 A.M.”

“
Thanks,” Callum said.
“We’d be lost without you.”

“
Yes, you would.” Jones
closed the connection.

Callum leaned back in the seat and shut his
eyes for a second.

Then he remembered how abrupt he’d been with
Meg back when she’d wanted to ring Jim and turned to her. “I’m
sorry about closing you down.” He took her mobile out of his jacket
pocket and handed it to her. He’d had bigger problems ten minutes
ago than he had now. “I know that Cassie is worried about her
family, but we can’t call Art.”

“
Why not?” Meg
said.

Callum grimaced. This kind of thinking had
become second nature for him again since his return to the modern
world, but even though the laws passed since 9/11 had received a
lot of publicity, civilians still underestimated the scope and
power of security agencies. “It’s two in the morning, and if
someone is sitting with Art, any call to him would immediately put
us on the radar.”

“
Especially at two in the
morning,” Cassie said.

“
Maybe it’s unlikely
they’ve connected Jim to Cassie, but it’s a risk,” Callum said. “If
the authorities are tapping Art’s phone, or Cassie’s aunt’s phone,
they would have Jim’s number, and that could lead them to
yours.”

Cassie sighed and took out her mobile. “To
all of our phones.” She removed the battery.

“
I didn’t call him, Cassie.
We’re okay,” Meg said.

Cassie shook her head. “How may calls to the
UK went through the closest cell tower to Art’s truck in the last
hour?”

Callum groaned. “One.” Perhaps he wasn’t as
used to this as he’d supposed.

Cassie motioned that Meg and Anna should
take apart their mobiles. “If we get separated, you can put them
back together, but until then, we should keep them all off.”

Meg’s face held a wary look. “How exposed do
you think we are now?”

“
It depends on how quickly
whoever is hunting us can move,” Callum said. “They have Art’s
truck. The next thing would be to look for us individually. Phone
traffic in and out of the United States is monitored. I just spoke
with Jones, and my mobile number is now on the grid. If they get a
warrant, they’ll learn that a mobile with that number was bought
with three other mobiles an hour ago in the Wal-Mart in Eugene
where they found Art’s truck. Whether or not they discover we’re on
this bus, they’ll put a trace on the mobiles and find
us.”

“
You make them sound like
they’re omnipotent,” Anna said.

“
Nobody is off the grid
anymore,” Callum said. “Given how quickly they found Art’s truck, I
am inclined to believe that with enough manpower and computers,
they can find anything. The question is just how much time it’s
going to take them.”

“
Text Mark quickly one more
time and tell him what we’re thinking,” Cassie said. “We can catch
up with him after we leave the bus for the rental and get new
phones again with a different ID.”

Callum wished they were in Medford right now
and cursed the long distances between cities in Oregon. “When we
get there, I’ll drop you off at a hotel and then take an airport
shuttle to the car hire agency. There’s probably nothing we can do
about the authorities guessing we’re headed to Medford, since we’ve
clearly bypassed Portland and driven south, but they won’t know
more than that.” He gazed around at the three women. “We should
sleep if we can.”