Free The Trouble With Time by Lexi Revellian Page B

that night. When dawn came and he finally got free, he’d realized he had another mountain to climb just to survive. It had taken him three days to trap his first rabbit, two weeks to make fire. Ravenous, disgusted, he’d had to eat the meat slimy and raw. The cold at night had made sleep impossible except in snatches interspersed with jumping about to warm up.
    “Why did he leave you to die?”
    “Because I found out he was a crook. He’d killed a man, too.”
    “Who is – was he?”
    “We worked together. He was my boss.”
    “When we arrived, you seemed to be waiting for him. You were right there, you jumped him straight away.”
    Jace almost smiled. “Ah well, he didn’t search me carefully enough. He missed a locator in my pocket. Careless, that. I’d borrowed it for the job I was working on.” From Kayla. His heart beat faster at the thought of seeing her again. “He didn’t know I’d got one. I’d forgotten myself.”
    “What’s a –”
    “They give an alert when someone is about to time in. I waited five years for that little beep to go off. Wore it round my neck.”
    Jace thought for a minute, listening to the crisp sound the scissors made. They’d been close as brothers; he knew how Quinn’s mind worked. He had stayed in Bunhill Fields in the belief Quinn would begin to wish he had killed him outright; would start to obsess that Jace was not dead, would, in the end, return to check and set his mind at rest. Gradually as the weeks and months passed, this conviction faded; Jace had expected to die alone in that future London. The adrenaline rush when the locator had finally sounded, the almost unbearable revival of hope, the fear he’d somehow cock up the chance to get away . . .
    “What if people come looking for him here? Perhaps we shouldn’t be hanging around.”
    “I won’t stay longer than I have to. I need to get this sorted out. I’m assuming there’s a warrant out for me. We should be okay for a day or two.”
    She didn’t say anything for a while, but concentrated on cutting his hair. She wasn’t doing a bad job. “You’re not a hairdresser, are you?”
    She laughed. “No. I used to cut my boyfriend’s hair at uni.”
    When she’d finished Jace sat down again at the computer screen. Floss wandered around until she found Quinn’s Kindle and scrolled through the contents. His selection of novels not being to her liking, with Jace’s help she downloaded one of her choice and immersed herself in it on the sofa.
    Jace ordered three different pairs of boots his size using Quinn’s Amazon account, figuring that one pair at least should fit him. As an afterthought, he added some motion sickness patches to his order. This done, he searched for Wanted Criminals UK , and on the Crimestoppers site selected London and Timecrime . The first image on the page was his, rotating slowly to show him from all angles. He’d expected this, but that didn’t make it any more welcome. He rated the full five stars, and maximum reward for information leading to a conviction. Beneath the photo it said:
    NAME: Jason CARNADY
    NICKNAME: Jace
    CRIME TYPE: Timecrime
    DATE: 2045
    CARNADY is wanted on suspicion of theft of a TiTrav and illegal time travel.
    SEX: Male
    AGE: 34
    HEIGHT:
    185 cm (approx 6' 1")
    BUILD: Muscular
    HAIR COLOUR: Dark
    This was what he’d expected – no point dwelling on it. He went to the kitchen and found a knife, sharpened it to a razor edge, washed it twice and poured brandy over it. He took off his shirt, wiped brandy over his upper arm, and sat in front of the mirror again. Microchips were not inserted far under the skin – you needed one all the time when paying for things and identifying yourself, so there were few reasons anyone would want to remove them. Pity it was his right arm, and he was right-handed. Fuck, that hurt . Blood ran down his arm. He gulped some brandy straight from the bottle, then slid the point of the knife into the cut he had made.
    “What