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"Yes."
Quinn squeezed her hand. "So you did help."
Gabriel, who had been unusually quiet, stood abruptly and started from the room.
"Gabriel?" Quinn's voice stopped him but he didn't turn to face her.
"I'll be back in a few days. Please stay here."
"Gabriel?"
He turned then and the look on his face was one Quinn had never seen before. He was beyond rage, he looked positively lethal, and when he spoke his voice was devoid of all emotion.
"Quinn," he demanded, "stay here with Nick and Cole."
She was too stunned to speak and when she heard the front door close, she knew it was too late to call him back. She turned to the others in the room.
"What did I miss?"
Nick's look of bewilderment matched her own. "I haven't a clue."
"I've known him a really long time and I have never seen him look like that," Cole told them. "Clearly something in Morgan's journal made him remember and whatever it is that he's remembered, he isn't happy about." Cole turned to Quinn before he added, "There's only one thing that can make him that angry."
"What?" Quinn asked.
"Someone threatening what he loves most in this world. In other words, Quinn, someone coming after you. I think Gabriel may just have realized who killed you."
"Oh shit." Quinn and Nick whispered in unison.
Quinn sat in the window seat in the great hall and looked out the window as the wind and rain pelted against the glass. She was worried about Gabriel but the few times she tried to call him he didn't answer. Where did he go? She was startled when Nick came up to her and placed his hand on her shoulder.
"Quinn, who do you think sent him back and sent you back to Archer's time?"
"Maude, but I don't know who Maude is. I knew after I chatted with her that there was magic in her but then I convinced myself that I was just being fanciful because there was a castle right down the road and an old, strange woman living in a cottage in the woods. I wish I had found out more about her, pressed for more information, but I couldn't possibly have known what adventure was awaiting me." Quinn smiled at the memory.
"And that's what she told me: that there was magic here and an adventure awaited the person who knew where to look." She turned her attention to Cole before she asked, "Before my accident was Gabriel our boss?"
Cole looked at her oddly, as if she had suddenly lost her mind, but when he really thought about her question he came up blank. "I don't remember."
Nick looked at Cole before settling his hazel eyes on her. "What are you thinking?"
"Every time someone goes back in time they change the future. Before I went back to Archer's time I never knew my boss, not his name, what he looked like, I couldn't even really say if it was a man or a woman. After my accident, after I went back in time, Gabriel was our boss presumably sent back from the future to save me. But why this time, specifically if we didn't marry until 2019? What is so significant about now? And was Gabriel our boss before or was it someone else?"
"That's important, why?" Nick asked.
"What if who ever is pulling the strings led Derek to that Mayan temple to set this entire ball rolling. I mean how many people have been through those temples? The number of archaeological digs and studies are countless and yet Derek, who is a very poor archaeologist, finds a necklace that blueprints time travel?"
"What are you saying, Quinn?"
She turned to Cole. "What if Gabriel was right and that person is from the future? What if our old boss was from the future setting the stage exactly how they wanted it?"
"Gabriel's future," Nick whispered.
"Yes. It would explain why he left so abruptly. He figured it out, knows who's behind it. But why are they doing this, going to such lengths, for what purpose?" Quinn asked.
"There has to be a common denominator. The end result seems to be the same, splitting you and Gabriel up. In the past, Morgan was killed freeing Archer, in the future you are killed freeing Gabriel. We know it was Katherine in the past."
Quinn looked downright ill in response to Cole's free association.
