A Time of Shadows (Out of Time #8) (20 page)

After they’d gotten around the obstacles, they bumped off the curb. He thought they might be able to lose them in the twisted warren of old streets and started to turn toward Sultanahmet. That was when he saw the two motorcycle cops at the far end of the intersection. They were a problem. His advantage was gone. Wherever he could go, they could go.
 

Running wasn’t going to work anymore.

“What do we do?” Tess whispered in his ear.

Jack paused for a moment, rifling through his memory for an idea. There was one place that was even more crowded than this, a place they might be able to lose the police.

“Well?” Tess said anxiously.

“Go shopping,” he said and turned the bike around.

They passed by the first police car that had been after them. It was stuck in traffic and Jack weaved right past them. The officers yelled as they got out of their car, but they could do nothing.

The two motorcycle officers were another story. They were right behind and gaining.

Thankfully, their destination was close, and after running a red light and a little more creative driving, they arrived at the Grand Bazaar. Jack pulled the bike up near the enormous building that covered a city block and then some.
 

Tess jumped off and he let the bike fall to the ground. Grabbing her hand, he pulled her toward the Carsikapi Gate. It was one of four entrances to the huge bazaar. He glanced back just as they reached the arched doorway. The two motorcycle officers had just rounded the corner and saw them.

They ran inside the enormous covered bazaar. Jack had only been there a few times before, and his memory was sketchy at best. There were over sixty streets and hundreds of vendors lining the long vaulted halls. It was a city within a city, all indoors. Restaurants, tea houses, leather goods, furniture, stores of every variety sat in bays along the numerous roads.

Even though it had just opened, the bazaar was already crowded with tourists and locals alike. Early morning bargain hunters made great cover, Jack thought as he hurried Tess down one of the lanes, then up another and down yet another.
 

They passed stores with hundreds of brightly colored hanging lanterns, like miniature old-fashioned air balloons lit from within. There were textiles and plates and food and jewelry. Every store was packed from floor to ceiling with goods. After a few more meandering turns, he finally reached the area he’d been looking for.
 

The first clothing store sold belly dancing outfits, but since they were looking for less attention and not more, they moved on. Luckily, two doors down he found what he was looking for. Modern, normal clothes. He grabbed a few dresses and shoved them at Tess.
 

“Changing room in the back,” he said as he spun her around, hoping he was right.
 

The proprietor watched Tess walk past him and smiled and gestured to the back. The man grinned broadly and came to Jack’s side.
 

He lifted up a jacket. “Finest leather? No better deal in all of Turkey.”

Jack nodded and slipped on the jacket. He made a show of admiring himself in the mirror, but what he was really doing was using it to keep an eye behind him.
 

He was about to say no, when he saw the two officers’ reflection in the mirror. He stepped behind a display and pulled a hat off a rack.

In the mirror, he saw the officers checking each store on the row. They stepped into the clothing store. One of them came deeper into the store while the other kept an eye on the road outside. Jack turned away and pretended to be going through a rack of jackets as the officer approached.

The officer passed him and went to the back of the store. Jack’s heart beat a little faster. If Tess came out of the dressing room, they were sunk.
 

The store owner came over to him.

“They are quite intent on finding someone,” he said in a quiet, conversational tone.

Jack nodded. He’d read about some police violence during recent protests, perhaps the animosity still ran deep. The owner hadn’t given them up yet, but it probably didn’t hurt to offer a little incentive.
 

Slowly, Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out his money clip. He quickly slipped two large bills between the folds of two shirts.

The officer called out to the owner, who turned and approached him. The two spoke briefly. The store owner was shaking his head. Finally, the officer frowned and started toward the front of the store.
 

Jack felt him slow as he reached the small section he was in. He paused and Jack felt him staring.

“
Siz
,” the officer said as he took a step closer.

Jack’s heart beat faster and he frantically tried to think of a way out.

He was about to turn around when a cry came from outside of the store.

“He stole my wallet!” a man with an American accent bellowed. “Hey, you, police!”

The officer’s partner called to him, and with one last look, the officer turned and left the store.

Jack counted a few beats and kept looking at the rack of jackets. That was too close.

“They are gone,” the store owner said.

Jack exhaled and turned around and the owner picked up the shirts with the money tucked between them. Very deftly, he palmed the bills and put the shirts back, making a show of rearranging them.

“Thank you,” Jack said.

The owner smiled. “I love a good customer.”

He looked down at Jack’s pant legs. They were covered with dirt.
 

Then he added, “And I have the perfect pants that go with that jacket.”

Jack laughed. “Sold.”
 

E
LIZABETH
WATCHED
S
IMON
AS
he sat at the small table in yet another hotel room, this one in Dallas near the airport as they waited for their flight in the morning.

The burrito from room service sat like a lead ball in her stomach. Guacamole didn’t mix well with worry.
 

Simon mumbled something to himself and Elizabeth turned her attention back to the article in
Texas Monthly
she’d been reading for the last half hour. She still hadn’t gotten past the first paragraph. How could she when Charlotte was out there, somewhere, and not here with them?

It had been the right choice. She’d told herself that. Simon had told her that. But it didn’t change the way she felt. It was like part of her was just gone. In a way, part of her was, but she knew if she didn’t force herself to look ahead, she’d get run over by something while she stood looking back. And besides, she was pretty sure she’d run out of tears somewhere around Mesquite.

From where she was, she couldn’t help Charlotte. She’d done all she could for the time being. But, she decided fiercely as she set her magazine aside, she could help Simon. He’d taken this harder than even she had. He hid it as best he could and tried to lose himself in solving what the clues were leading to, but he was suffering.

He said something under his breath again and frowned even more deeply.

The clue they’d found at River Run hadn’t taken them much effort to decipher.

W76

A snake with no fangs can still strike at a man’s heart.

They’d come across thankfully few snakes in their travels, if she didn’t count people. In this case, she was fairly certain the snake wasn’t metaphorical. She’d had an unpleasant and memorable encounter with a cobra in Egypt. Its mouth had been sewn shut, but its bite certainly struck at her man’s heart. The memory of Simon’s expression when he’d thought she’d been bitten, and the anger he’d felt toward Henri when he’d thought he was to blame, were something she’d never forget.

And now Simon was steeped in that same fear and anger, but there was no handy Frenchman to hit. No one to blame, no release. Since they’d left Shreveport, he’d slowly and quietly stewed.
 

He’d taken her suggestion to look at the clues again, with hopes of finally recognizing a pattern. Even if he didn’t, it would do him good to occupy his mind. He’d always found refuge in research and analysis. Maybe spending some time doing that now would help ease his heart.

“Idiot,” Simon muttered.

Or not.
 

He glared down at the pad of paper in front of him, shaking his head.
 

“I’m a complete fool.”

“Not complete,” Elizabeth said, hoping to lighten the mood, but Simon ignored the remark and waved her over.

“Come take a look.”

Elizabeth moved the magazine from her lap and got off the bed. She stood behind him and looked over his shoulder. A pile of crumpled discards littered the table. Simon pointed to the mostly clean sheet in front of him.
 

On it were two rows of letters and numbers, the same ones from the clues, but they still didn’t mean anything to her.
 

“What am I looking at?”

“I should have seen it earlier. The pattern, it’s obvious.”

“To you.”

Simon turned around in his chair, and Elizabeth nearly cheered at the spark in his eyes. He just wasn’t Simon without it.

“I’ve been working the numbers over in my head, but nothing came.”
 

They’d burned the little slips that held the clues shortly after finding them. No reason to make it easier for the bad guys and committing the short clues and numbers to memory was easy enough.

“Then I wrote them down and tried different arrangements. I thought they might be another layer of clues,” Simon continued, “but it’s much simpler than that.”

Elizabeth looked at his scribbling again. Nothing. “Okay, now I just feel stupid.”

Simon chuckled, took her hand and led her beside him. She sat down and scooted her chair closer.

“You see, this was the first clue,” he said, pointing at a pair of numbers that were second in the row on the first line. “And this was the second.”

He pointed to another pair on the line.

“It was the moon that held the key,” he said. “No pun intended. He used eight phases of the moon.”

He indicated the eight sets of numbers, with three blank lines for the ones they didn’t have yet.
 

“While we got 13 first, the moon phase was the first quarter; that put it third in line. The clue from Hollywood had the old crescent—”

“And that put it there,” Elizabeth said, touching the third set of numbers in the second row. “But why the rows? Why isn’t it a string straight across?”

Simon held up a finger, a sure sign he was more himself. This was where he was most comfortable, solving problems and explaining them to the less logical.

“I had a feeling, but wasn’t sure until we got the clue from Natchez.” He put his finger below the W76 from the River Run clue. “This W sealed it.”

Elizabeth knew he enjoyed dangling the answer, making her work for it and so she obliged. “W is for…?”

“West,” he said.

She looked at the paper again and suddenly felt the rush of realization and the sting of knowing she should have seen it sooner. “They’re coordinates.”

“Exactly. Latitude and Longitude. Considering the moon phases he’s using, there should be eight clues. Eight sets of numbers. That threw me a little, until I realized that he was including hundredths of seconds. The 99 gave that away. Nothing if not precise, our Teddy.”

And then he frowned.
 
“At least, I hope that’s the case. But this just feels right.”

Elizabeth didn’t comment on the always rational Simon Cross listening to his gut, and she definitely didn’t comment to ask him what it would mean if he were wrong. She knew the answer and, besides, she had faith in Simon’s gut even if he didn’t always.

He ran his finger along the paper. “Degrees, minutes, seconds, hundredths of seconds.”

N40
 
__ 13
 
34

W76 __ __
 
99

“Okay, so where’s that?” Elizabeth asked. “Do we really need the minutes? Minutes don’t sound very important. And who needs seconds?”

Simon shook his head. “We do. Well, we might be able to do without knowing the precise seconds, but the minutes….A variation of just one minute could put us off by a mile, give or take.”

“We can totally cover a mile.”

“Yes,” Simon said patiently, finding comfort in his role as professor. “If only it were just one mile, we could. But there are sixty minutes in a degree. That means we’ve narrowed it down to an area of roughly 3,600 square miles.”

“Okay, that we cannot cover,” Elizabeth said.

“No,” Simon agreed. “Which means we will have to find the rest of the clues before we can pinpoint the exact location.”

Elizabeth looked down at the coordinates and marveled at Teddy’s ingenuity. “He’s a clever one.”

Simon nodded thoughtfully.

“And thank God for you,” she said. “I would have had us chasing our tails and swimming the English Channel or something.”

“I doubt that,” Simon said and took her hand. “And as much as I appreciate the thought and did enjoy, embarrassingly, being the one to find the answer, you don’t ever have to make yourself less to make me feel like more.”

Elizabeth squeezed his hand. She nodded and leaned in for a kiss. It was soft and wonderful and just what they both needed.

Elizabeth looked over at the bed. “Maybe we should try to get some sleep. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”

Simon nodded. “You go ahead. I’m going stay up a little longer.”

She knew what that meant. He was going to stay up all night. And worry.

Elizabeth waved her hand toward the bed. “Eh. Sleep’s overrated. I think I’ll just sit with you.”

Simon nodded and then turned to look out at the Dallas skyline. She could tell from the look in his eyes that he was grateful for the company. She leaned her head onto his shoulder as his arm went around her waist. They watched the Texas day turn into night, both of their thoughts with Charlotte, hoping she forgave them and praying she was all right. Wherever she was.