A Rip Through Time (A Rip Through Time #1)

by Kelley Armstrong

They will change their tune. I want to tell him that. I want to tell him that thousands of future detectives will appreciate the work done by him and others. Thousands of innocent people will walk free because of it. Hundreds of thousands of victims will find justice because of it.

She turns to me. “I have taken the liberty of retrieving your possessions, Catriona. We are free to leave.” I nod, and she takes my arm and leads me outside, Gray following. The moment the door shuts behind her, she turns to her brother. “I am going to take Catriona out for a breakfast tea,” she says. “I know you have errands to run. We shall meet you at home.”

It’s the layers of distrust woven under those words. He’s not sure I was actually attacked. If I was, he’s not sure I didn’t deserve it—at least in the sense that I’ve been attacked twice, and that can’t be simple bad luck. Either way, he’s not sure I should continue to be treated like a valued servant, and he’s quite sure I shouldn’t be left alone with his sister.

“You found your locket,” he says, and I look over sharply, to see it around her neck. She nods. “I did.”

She hands back Catriona’s switchblade, along with the few coins that’d been in my pockets. Then she lifts the sovereign she took from Gray. “A month’s wages. I will double it if you do not attempt to argue your case now. I am finished with you, Catriona. I cannot trust you, and I cannot have you in our house.”

I was attacked in Catriona’s old haunt, with Isla’s necklace on me, as if I’d sat in that library yesterday, listened to her pleas for its return, and heard only that I should sell it before she searched my room.

There are moments when you know you are about to do something incredibly reckless and breathtakingly dangerous. And you don’t care. It’s not leaping before you look. It’s looking, seeing the pit of boiling lava, and jumping anyway, because an enraged elephant is charging straight at you, and there’s a very slight chance you might land on that tiny island amid the lava. “What about the truth? No story. The truth.”

“Okay,” I say, and even that unfamiliar word is enough to have her brows knitting. I resist the urge to replace it. Time to be me. Be Mallory.

“Roll back the clock to exactly one week ago today,” I say. “I’ve flown to Edinburgh to be with my nan. She’s in hospice care. Cancer. Two weeks to live, tops, which means she’s probably already…” I inhale. “Yep, I’m trying not to think about that.” Isla’s mild brow knit tightens into a full-blown knot. I continue, “I’m about to say a whole lotta words that will make zero sense to you. Just roll with it. So, a week ago. Long day at Nan’s bedside, and I need a break.

but hey, I’m a cop, I can handle it.” “Cop?” “Police officer. Detective, actually. Anyway, I got cocky. I’ve patrolled worse neighborhoods in Vancouver.” “Van…?” “Canadian port city. West coast. In 1869, it’d be a trading post. Maybe a fort?

She’s staring. I expect that. I could shorten my story, cut out any side rambles or confusing terminology, but if I have any chance of convincing her, this is how I’ll do it. Talk like someone from the twenty-first century. Pepper my story with terms and asides too elaborate for me to concoct on the spur of the moment.

Fought like hell, but the guy got a rope around my neck. Eventually I passed out. I woke in a strange house, hoping to God it wasn’t the killer’s lair. I looked in the mirror, and holy shit, it’s the blond girl from the alley. I’m the blond girl from the alley. In her body. In her house. In her time.”

“What you’re saying is that you’re from the future.” I make a face. “I was trying not to use those exact words. Seriously clichéd B-movie dialogue.”

“Look,” I say. “I don’t expect you to believe me. Obviously. That was just my last-ditch effort. Nothing to lose, right?” “You’re a police detective. From Canada. In the year…” “Two thousand and nineteen. One hundred and fifty years from now, which I figure must have some significance.

“Your mother studied law,” she says, as if that’s where her mind stopped. “She’s a defense attorney. Partner in a law firm. Dad’s an English prof at UBC, teaching English classic literature. Dickens, Brontë, Hardy…” “Charles Dickens is literature?” “Hey, he’s one of my favorites.”

Just do me a favor. When I do find a way home and Catriona comes back, kick her ass to the curb.” “Kick her…?” “Sorry. Let me try that again. Please, ma’am, heed my words well and dinnae allow the wee lassie to tarry in your abode.” Her lips twitch. “We don’t actually speak like that.” “Would you prefer ‘kick her ass to the curb’?” “It is much more picturesque.”

“My point is not to let the real Catriona come back. If I show up on your doorstep acting like her, presume it is her and send her packing. She was stealing from you. I found her stash of money. Also found a box of candies some guy sent you and a letter Lady Something-or-other sent your brother, which by the way, you do not want to read.”

“I heard a child crying. Obviously, that made me think of how I was attacked in my time, but I still went to investigate, in case it was another rip through time, one that might send me home. It was a trap. A guy tried to strangle me, just like before. I fought, and this time I was better prepared. Catriona had a switchblade, and I’d brought it along. I stabbed my attacker, and I fought, and eventually, two guys showed up and rescued him.” “Rescued him?” “Yeah, they rescued the guy attacking me. He fled as fast as he could.”

She hails a coach. A “hansom” as Gray called it, and as I recall from my Sherlock Holmes reading, though admittedly, teenage Mallory thought it was a British spelling of handsome and meant they were very fine cabs indeed.

what’s the alternative? Walk into a police station and offer my professional services?

“Duncan,” she murmurs. She turns to me. “Whatever you do, do not breathe a word of this to him. I don’t know if your tale is delusion or scheme or the impossible truth, but I will not be able to save your position if you try to convince him of it. He is a man of science.” “And science can’t explain body-swapping time travel. Not even in my world.”

“What do you see?” she asks, waving at the apparatus. “You’re cooking up moonshine. Cool.” I catch her eye. “Joking. That’s what it looks like to me. A moonshine still from a hillbilly-feud movie set amidst the coal mines of Civil War–era Kentucky.” “You do realize none of that makes sense to me.” “Yep, that’s why it’s fun to say.”

“Criminology? Is that what my brother does? Or is it the study of police techniques?” “Neither really.” I pull out a stool and perch on it. “Criminology is the study of criminal behavior. Everything from identifying predictive patterns to understanding underlying causes.”

“Ah, a pop quiz. Testing the parameters of my delusion. All right.” I settle better on the stool, getting comfortable. “Apparently, Catriona came from a decent family, meaning she didn’t need to fall into a life of crime. I could speculate that she chose it, but that’d be presumptive without additional data. What was her home life like? Her early experiences? A middle-class family doesn’t mean a perfect life. If she was abused—physically or sexually—she may have fled and fallen into crime as a way to make a living. She didn’t give it up when she came to work for you. Is that because she enjoys it? She shows sociopathic tendencies, but you’d need a psychiatrist to diagnose that. She wasn’t spending her money. She was saving it. To escape life as a housemaid? Can’t say I blame her. Maybe it’s ambition combined with a lack of ability to empathize with others. She sees other people as only a means to an end.”

Right now, this position is a safety net. It’s sheer luck that I ended up in an eccentric household willing to overlook the idiosyncrasies of my speech and behavior. Do I go out into the world and attempt to get something like a shop-clerk position—only nominally better than being a maid—at the risk of being fired the first day because I don’t know my ha’pence from my thruppence?

You are, in your world, Hugh McCreadie’s equal, yes?” “In theory, yes. But I can’t tell Dr. Gray that.” “Yet you can help him in the guise of an apprentice.” I answer carefully. “If you mean with his studies, there’s the issue of how much I should tell him at the risk of disrupting history. If he’d even believe me, which he won’t while I’m Catriona.”

But if he is a modern killer, then there is no way in hell, as a law-enforcement officer, I can just continue to play at being a housemaid. He won’t screw up by leaving evidence behind.

You were attacked twice in a similar manner. The first could be misfortune. A second time, though?” “It seems like proof that I’m involved in criminal activities that could endanger his household, including you.”

As for the peacock feather, it fits. For Evans, it was a messenger pigeon or stool pigeon. For Catriona, the proud and vain peacock.”

The raven killer tried to strangle me. That note he left tells me he knows who I am, which means if he wants to finish the job, he’ll know exactly where to find me.

Yes, our father showed up one night with a child barely old enough to toddle. I was only three at the time, but it is my earliest memory, that little boy in my father’s arms, him telling my mother the child is his, and the mother is dead and so she must raise him now.”

Such a thing is not unheard of, but it’s still a scandal and an unforgivable insult to my mother. However, it has nothing to do with Duncan, and so she raised him as her own, which was nearly as scandalous.” “Was she supposed to play the evil stepmother and make him sleep in the servants’ quarters?” “Apparently, that would have been more acceptable.

My products are primarily traded through third parties, like Mr. Bruce, who is a chemist in his own right, but not a very good one.” “So he buys your medicine and passes it off as his own. Hope you charge him extra for that.” She smiles. “I should. A surcharge for improving his professional reputation.”

I married young. I married foolishly. A handsome classmate of Duncan’s who swept me off my feet, mostly by insisting that my family scandal did not matter to him.” “Seems like a low bar.”

“It is not the fact of Duncan’s existence as much as the fact that we accepted him as an equal, given his…” Another throat clearing. “Unique heritage.” “Ah, because he’s a person of color.”

The sum of the matter is that when my father died and our older brother traipsed off to Europe, Duncan gave Lawrence the money he needed to travel to Africa, on the condition he would not expect me to accompany him, which suited us both. I moved back into the family home and began my chemist’s work, which made enough to allow Lawrence to remain in Africa.”

“You are saying that you will not tell me about advances lest I invent something fifty years before its time and become wealthy beyond measure?” “Or get burned for witchcraft.”

“What happens when the police need to see your ID?” “Why ever should they do that?” She folds the paper with a snap. “Are you telling me that in your world, police go about demanding people prove who they are? That sounds positively tyrannical.”

So if my attacker jumped into Catriona’s attacker’s body, how would he find out who that guy is in this world? Or would he just not bother—pick up and carry on, stealing what he needed?

I’m guessing sports aren’t part of a Victorian girl’s life.” “Heavens, no. How would one expect to bear children, jostling around the womb in such a fashion?” “The … womb?” “Of course. If one otherwise engages in sporting activities, it bounces around in the torso.” “And gets lost?”

My detective brain wants to get a good look at this odd assortment of items Gray keeps so carefully. And they are indeed odd. A big-cat claw fashioned into a brooch. A handful of ancient Roman coins. An ornate hair comb carved from ivory. An enamel scarab inlaid with gems. A few other items, too, that I can’t immediately identify.

Our mother gave Duncan that box, comprised of all the items she found amongst our father’s things when he passed. Items that could have a connection to his mother.” “His birth mother. Who died.”

He wouldn’t speak of the matter. Wouldn’t speak of Duncan’s mother either. Not a name. Not a single fact about her.

Time to get this out of the way. “I hit you, didn’t I, Alice? Before my accident.” She says nothing, just tightens her jaw. “I did,” I say. “I must have, though I don’t remember.” I back up and sit on the end of my bed. “I won’t do that ever again. If I do, then…” I sigh. “Well, if I do then I’m back to being the old Catriona, and if that happens, hopefully Mrs. Ballantyne will fire me.

“You seem altogether another person, and Mrs. Wallace doesn’t like it, so I don’t either. Either you are lying, or you are possessed.” “Possessed?” I stifle a laugh, half at the idea and half at how, in its way, this is far more accurate than Alice could imagine. “Have you ever heard of a possessed person being better than they were before?”

Is it possible that the raven killer is the serial killer who tried to strangle me in 2019 Edinburgh?

Then there’s the moment during our fight when he seemed to recognize me. Recognize the real me, as the victim who’d fought back in the modern world. I’d been fighting for my life and not caring whether I was talking or acting like a Victorian housemaid. That modern talk caught his ear, as the modern self-defense techniques caught his attention. A moment of déjà vu for both of us. Is that enough?

The water Gray found in Evans’s lungs combined with the lung damage and restraints suggests waterboarding. I’ve seen that, too, and cops I know say it mostly started after the news of waterboarding at Guantánamo Bay. It’s a bloodless and effective torture method. One McCreadie laughed at. Pouring water on someone’s face? How was that torture? Anyone who has ever been yanked underwater knows how horrible it is. Even if your brain realizes you aren’t going to drown, your body reacts with primal panic.

But if you’re a modern killer looking for bloodless torture? Waterboarding would rank at the top of your list.

“Describe the recent attacker.” “He was dressed entirely in black, including a mask of some sort.” “Like a theater mask?” I shake my head. “It was black fabric with holes for eyes and presumably for his mouth,