Free Castaways in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) by Sarah Woodbury Page A

Service long enough to know how this works.”
    “I was,” Callum said. “That’s why I’m
asking.”
    “Some have wondered if you’re safe on your
own, or if you should be moved to a psychiatric facility.”
    “I can guess who might have asked that,”
Callum said.
    Driscoll tsked through his teeth. “He’s not
the only one.” He held up his tablet so both Cassie and Callum
could see it. It showed a message board with comment after comment
appearing and then being superseded by another.
    “MI-5’s very own Facebook,” Cassie said.
    “And just as useless,” Callum said.
    Cassie leaned forward to match Callum. “They
ask about Callum’s mental state, while dragging David off for
interrogation? How does that make sense? If they believe David came
from the Middle Ages, they have to believe it of Callum too.”
    “Humans are quite capable of holding two
contradictory viewpoints simultaneously and believing them both,”
Driscoll said.
    “What about me?” Cassie said.
    “I have no information on you, but judging
from your accent, you’re American, yes?”
    Cassie nodded.
    “Then I imagine you will be deported to the
United States in due course, unless something can be worked out
with your embassy,” Driscoll said.
    “Callum and I are married!” Cassie said.
    “Where is that recorded, again?” Driscoll
said.
    Cassie’s mouth dropped open, and she
stuttered, “But—”
    Callum pulled on the handle to the door
beside him; it didn’t open. “Driscoll—”
    “Right.” Driscoll opened his door and got
out and then opened Callum’s. “I’m not telling you what I think, but what others are saying, Callum. You need to be prepared
for questions.”
    “I can answer any question,” Callum said,
his voice a low growl.
    Leaving the driver to park the SUV in the
back of the garage, the three of them followed the path David and
his captors had taken. Driscoll provided their only escort since
all of the men in riot gear, plus Natasha, had gone with David.
    Cassie caught Callum’s hand. “They really don’t view us as a threat,” she said in Welsh.
    “It seems not,” Callum said.
    “What do they think David is, though?”
Cassie said. “A nuclear bomb?”
    Cassie had to say the last two words in
English, since they didn’t exist in medieval Welsh, and Driscoll
overheard. “You don’t want to say that out loud. You two need to
keep your heads down and your stories straight.”
    Callum tightened his grip on Cassie’s hand.
“If it’s all right with you, Cassie, I’ll do the talking.”
    Cassie nodded, thinking how odd it was that
in the Middle Ages she’d fought so hard for her right to be treated
like a human being. She’d seen the mistreatment of women—and the
assumption that they weren’t as intelligent or as competent as
men—as something to be fought against. And yet, her first hour in
the twenty-first century had already reduced her to the status of
non-person, to be seen and not heard. And this time, it wasn’t men
as a class doing the dehumanizing, but a faceless bureaucracy that
had decided David was a threat to the British state.
    She bit her lip, finding amusement in the
thought that MI-5 wasn’t far off in thinking that. David might be a
twenty-year-old kid, but he’d grown from a high school freshman in
a little town in Oregon to the King of England in less than seven
years. While she and Callum were smart and resourceful, and she had
faith that as long as they worked together, they could figure any
problem out, David was a different animal entirely. He was smarter
than anyone she’d ever met. He was analytical, a creative thinker,
and driven to a crazy degree. MI-5 really had no idea what
they were in for.

Chapter Seven
    September, 2017
     
    David
     
    D avid had seen the
way the wind was blowing as soon as that van of military police
showed up, so he wouldn’t have said that having the agents separate
him from Cassie and Callum was unexpected. It was unfortunate.