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How could I tell? Nothing in life could have prepared me for this, and doubts and questions assailed me with every step. He must know. He must have somehow realized what I was looking for and where I went, and how can he be the same man?
He couldn’t be, of course.
But what if he was.
So manyifsswirled about. I was drowning in my own wretched memories and thoughts, and breathless from the scariness of the consequences of everything I had done.
But was it real?
Yes, I insisted to myself, it was.
Yet, the quality of the old black-and-white photo had been abysmal, and so I could never be sure, even if I had it before me to compare every crease on his face.
“I was just out there to check the drone,” I said, stopping in front of the doctor, perhaps too cheerfully. He towered over me. Having to angle my neck to meet his eyes was not easing my guilty conscience.
The doctor raised the drone controls. “No, you weren’t. I may have only seen the end of your dive, but I saw enough.”
He’d driven the drone underwater to check on me?
Now that I thought on it, the drone’s position had changed. I had been preoccupied when I surfaced.
Cassius shrugged, a half-smile on his face.
“I’m fine. I went a little deeper than you might’ve expected, but I’m fine.”
The hard stare I received from the doctor was the worst I’d suffered for days. I stopped talking. Something was coming, a punishment. Had the events under the water changed me that much? I wasn’t as concerned as should be. I wasn’t as scared.
I straightened my stance, remembering…
…a faded photo with a tiny scruffy image of a four-letter tattoo.
“We’re leaving now. The chopper landed early. There’s a helicopter flight then a long plane flight to get to where we have to be by evening. By the time I reach the site of the party, I’ll have decided on what to do with you, Miss Charity.”
Mouth open, I watched him turn from me and head toward the beach hut—no doubt to pack. I looked to Cassius, and he waved me onward. My attack puppy was of no use.
“Bugger.” I followed after the doctor. Things to do, places to go…possibly with a butt plug stuck up my ass, or worse, a dragon dick. I just knew this was going to be a noteworthy night.
* * *
While everyone was packing, arranging things, and shouting for staff, I dug my phone from where I’d hidden it in the closet, and I holed up in the bathroom, leaning against the wall. My memory jarred. The gun. When I could, I should move the gun somewhere else.
I turned on the phone and swiped to the photos app.
I needed to visit the sanctum, but I had no time for that today. Deprived of actually prowling the place and staring at the doctor’s collection of swords and so on, I could examine my photos from there. My curiosity antennae were still twitching.
I scanned quickly, looking for items like a purse, that might be personal. The emerald pendant showed me nothing until I wentduhand focused in on the label below. “A match. Shit. I am so stupid.”
The name attributed to the pendant was on the list of women. Had this been staring at me all this time? The date on the label was eighteen forty-five. Death? Birth? Something else?
I checked four other items that seemed likely to be hits, and the labels on all of them matched to the women. I had links to that list that went back to the fifteenth century. I settled against the bathroom wall, to think.
Maybe he was an immortal serial killer, and fricking dedicated with his souvenirs?
Maybe he was a Time Lord with amnesia. I snorted at that.
I rubbed my forehead, whispering, “I’m getting way too carried away here.”
Out of a need for some sort of thoroughness, I scrolled through the other objects. The labels seemed to mean nothing, until I reached the photo of the gallic helmet, an antique that went all the way back to the army of the Roman Republic. The helmet had been displayed beneath a glass box on a pedestal and could be viewed from all angles. It wasn’t the paper label that caught my eye, it was the small words punched into the back of the helmet, just above where it would meet the neck.
