Title: In Name Only
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I don't own anything herein and no one's paying me to do it.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Children change almost everything.
AN: Item the first. What I know about parenting and childcare can be written on a 3x5 index card. Any real parents reading this may well want me dead by the end of this for sheer optimism. Item the second. I haven't spent any time around under ten children since I was one. See the second sentence of item the first. Third, I am no psychological expert, so you may just have to go with it.
Well, said she, grimly, we shall see.
Jake grimaced as he stood outside the school. There it was, home of bullies, ignorant teachers and misery. That was what school was, be it nursery school, primary school, high school, it was just effing miserable. And here he was, about to walk in under his own power.
This was all Kieran's fault. If he'd stood sentry like he was supposed to while Jake made the last connections into the system so that he could get every undergraduate transcript to be printed on a Star Wars themed background for a 24 hour period, Jake wouldn't be here, he'd be back in his residence, cackling with glee. Instead Kieran had wandered off to try to ask Danielle out again, and Jake had been caught.
The dean had chosen a deliberately creative punishment, rather than some sort of normal university censure, not wanting to do anything that would reflect poorly on Jake's transcripts. That, of course, had more to do with some sort of private funding and donation initiative on the dean's part than anything else, but Jake had been grateful. At least, until he'd heard the actual punishment. Then he pleaded to have his grades docked, to get thrown out of the residence, anything but this.
His punishment was to spend the next several weeks being the guest lecturer, classroom by classroom, in a set of three schools out in the hinterlands, which serviced several hamlets (they were too small to rate the title of 'village'). One nursery school, one primary and one high school. He had to teach uninterested children and teenagers about paleontology until he'd done so in every bloody class.
It was enough to make a geek cry.
Taking a deep breath, he walked in and headed for the office that was the central authority for all three. Standing in front of the secretary's desk, he tried not to wince. She was a bored middle-aged woman, trying too hard to cling to her youth with heavy eyeshadow that went out with the 80s, a powder-green power suit with huge shoulder pads, and with an expression on her face that screamed of an older woman hoping to land herself a young stud. The way her eyes lit up made Jake very uncomfortable, and for the first time in his life, he was delighted to be called into a headmaster's office.
"Mr. Cosgrove?" asked the man behind the desk. He was a paunchy man in a buttoned shirt and deliberately silly tie that went completely at odds with his demeanour, which was sort of completely humourless. The tie choice looked a little like it might be an attempt to make himself more likeable.
"Yes, sir," Jake said, feeling rather like he ought to play extra contrite. Who knew what word might get back to the dean, and he really had no desire to get stuck with some worse punishment. Like teaching maths or computers. At least he liked dinosaurs.
"I am the headmaster of the primary section of our school, Dudley Bottomley," Jake barely kept a poker face at that, "And I believe you are being sent to the nursery school to begin with, and will work your way up through the years."
"I see," Jake said, noncommittally. He listened to some standard-sounding blather about the school's interest in excellence, and was led to the building set a bit further back from the road of the three and entered the halls lined with bright paint and paper decorations made by the children.
"I believe the first class here is Miss Landy's," Headmaster Bottomley told him, then knocked and walked in. "Hello, children," he said in a patently false genial tone. Most of the children watched with a sort of fascination at this invasion of their daily routine, but one little girl looked rather sceptical of the whole thing. "I have here a special visitor from the University of Sheffield, and he's here to talk to you all about dinosaurs. Isn't that exciting?" he asked, now quite fatuous, really.
Jake smiled weakly at the children. They stared back, rather reminding him of the so-called "compies" in Jurassic Park. Harmless until they spat poison in your eyes and ate you alive. While he was woolgathering on the prospect of this collection of small people suddenly leaping on him and tearing him to shreds (why were creepy children so much more creepy than anything else on television?), the headmaster finished his introduction and left.
He was left facing the class, and wondered how Star Wars on a transcript could really warrant this sort of torture. "Erm . . . hi, nice to meet you all," he said.
"Hello Mr. Cosgrove," they sing-songed back.
Jake tried, really he did. He talked about t-rexes and triceratops, brachiosaurs and deinonychuses, hadrosaurs and pterosaurs and didn't go into lots of depth, talking about how big things were and how scary the teeth and claws were and was as dramatic as he could be. It was sort of sickening. Oh, he'd been just as fascinated at that age with something that big and that old and that scary, but the little buggers were absolutely jaded and eventually they just erupted into screaming fits and yelling "Raarrrr!" at each other as they all pretended they were t-rexes.
He had to stay there for the whole bloody afternoon.
Miss Landy shot him a sympathetic shrug, patting him on the shoulder as she corralled a three-foot-high diplodocus, trying to use a rucksack as a makeshift tail to bludgeon a fellow three foot tall dinosaur. Jake suspected the latter was a triceratops from the use of paintbrushes held to his forehead to viciously poke the attacking sauropod.
He was distracted from the fascinating floor show by a tugging on his t-shirt. He looked down to see the highly sceptical little girl he'd noted before. "Hello," he said, crouching to put himself a little closer to eye-to-eye. "Did you need something?"
"Why are the dinosaurs' names so funny?" she asked.
He frowned. "What do you mean, funny?"
"Well," she said, plopping down beside him with a plastic brachiosaur held close. "We've got foxes and rabbits and lions and tigers and elephants and cows and things. Why aren't dinosaurs' names like that? They're all really long and funny-sounding."
"Well," Jake echoed her, "Foxes and rabbits and such got names like that because people know them and sort of just called them things 'cause they had to call them something. But since dinosaurs got discovered separately, scientists got to name them. So, a lot of the time, they name them things that sort of describe them."
"How does tyrannosaurus rex describe a really big, scary, lizard with scary teeth and tiny arms?" she asked all scepticism again.
"There's this language, Latin," Jake explained. "You may have heard of it. Lots of scientists use Latin words and call dinosaurs things that way. So, tyrannosaurus rex, actually means tyrant lizard king."
"Oh," she said. "Do scientists have special names for normal animals?"
He nodded. "Yep," he popped the 'p', making her giggle. "So, the red foxes you might see around sometimes are known as vulpes vulpes, which is sort of silly, 'cause it just means fox fox, but there's others, like vulpes cana, which means silvery fox, but people call them Blanford's foxes."
"Why would they have two names like that?" she asked.
"Because there's lots of different kinds of foxes, but they're all still foxes," Jake explained. "So they're saying this is a fox, but it's a whatever sort of fox."
"So, they name the dinosaurs things that describe them?" she asked.
"Yeah," Jake said. "But sometimes," he admitted, "They'll make it all scientific, but they're just naming them after someone's kid or pet dog." He grinned. "What's your name?"
"Imogen," she said, making a face. "I don't like it much."
"I can imagine," Jake said. "Still, if you have a middle name, maybe you can ask your mum and dad to call you by that instead."
"I couldn't," she snapped back, hastily and with an odd look on her face. Like the idea frightened her somehow. "Anyhow, my mum died when I was born and my dad doesn't . . . I don't want to . . . he likes it," she finished.
She didn't seem to want to talk about it, so Jake let it go. "So, if someone were naming a dinosaur after you, let's say . . . hmm . . ."
"A hadrosaur?" she asked.
"Why a hadrosaur?" Jake wanted to know.
She smiled, looking a little sad. "They take care of their babies, right? That's what Jack Horner proved with the Maiasaur."
"You're a smart one," Jake told her. "When did you hear about that?"
Imogen seemed to glow at his praise. "There was a bit on the telly last week," she said. "There were reporters talking to him, and he was talking about it."
"So," Jake went on then, "Maybe a dinosaur would be named something like, bucina imogensis. Which would be sort of, Imogen's trumpet."
She giggled again. As she moved, he spotted a bruise on her arm. It went all the way around. Not wanting to scare her, but suddenly unsettled, Jake deliberately grinned and kept talking. She was a bright little thing, actually interested in dinosaurs, not just in big stompy things, and Jake enjoyed his morning after all, because she was clever and fun and asked all sorts of interesting questions for a four-year old.
Imogen was picked up by a stern man, who half dragged her down the hall. As he watched her go, Miss Landy came up to him. "Don't think about it," she told him. "Geoffrey Clarke's not one to be crossed."
But Jake couldn't stop thinking about it. He thought about it that afternoon at the next class of four-year-olds, none of whom had her spark. He couldn't stop that night, or the next day or the next. He had to tramp back to the school day after day, since his term at uni was over and he was stuck in that godforsaken hamlet until he was done. Every day he'd stop off to see Imogen Clarke, who'd smile and ask him more questions about dinosaurs.
The bruises were hidden, but not well, and they always peeked out from just under hems and sleeves and shirt necks. A week and he couldn't stand it, couldn't stand the small hints that were dropped and the way none of the teachers seemed to care to notice. So, he reported it to the police.
Two nights later, he was accosted on his way back to the room he was staying in at the dean's cousin's house. "You'll stay out of Clarke's way if you know what's good for you," he was told.
Miss Landy shook her head when he stopped by, "I told you," she said.
Imogen wasn't there that day.
She wasn't there for three days, and when she was back, she was pale and sad, and very angry when she saw him. "He said you told. You can't tell," she said. "He gets angry with me when people tell."
It seemed Clarke had the whole area in his pocket. Or scared. Or both. On a hunch, Jake hacked into the police files and found that his report had been shelved by an investigation he knew couldn't have happened, because nothing worked that fast. A little more hacking and Clarke's name began to show up as a man who made a lot of charitable donations and a man with connections to a raft of people with less-than-stellar reputations. And the idea that came to him was so mad, he dismissed it at once.
But as his bruises faded, he couldn't help but think of it again. There was no going to the authorities, what would he do? Tell them that the whole of the town and its police force were corrupt? That everyone was scared of this man, whatever his influence was? And if he took his temper at Jake out on Imogen, what would he do if Jake got an investigation happening? It was like some sort of third rate television melodrama.
He'd given his last horrible speech to dully uninterested teenagers, wondering if a bare five years before he'd been that horrible to his teachers and the like, when he passed Clarke, not quite dragging Imogen down the street. She was crying, but silent, and he couldn't stand it. It was completely mad what he was thinking, but somehow, he did it anyhow.
Gloves and the skills from three years doing a combined degree in electrical engineering and animal biology (more the engineering than the anatomy and behavioural study), got him into the Clarke home, more mansion than house, the alarm on the door disabled. It wasn't hard to find Imogen's room, or to break in past the locks on the bloody outside of her door, since he'd been breaking into places to set pranks for years.
"Imogen?" he whispered, hearing a muffled whimper and horrified to find that she'd not only been locked into the room, she'd been locked into her own wardrobe.
She stared, silent and shocked as he knelt and hastily collected a change of clothes for her, stuffing it into a rucksack. Finally she asked, "J - Jake?"
"Yeah," he whispered. "It's me. I'm taking you away, so you've got to be really quiet, okay?"
She nodded, and when he picked her up, she clung to him like a limpet. Jake hurried away, getting to the edge of town where he'd left the car he was 'borrowing' from the headmaster. Once they were on the road, he reviewed his plan. He knew how to do it all in theory, the only question was, would Imogen and Lettie and the universe cooperate? They drove until dawn, at which point he left the car in a small copse of trees out of sight of the road, then hastily put on a hat and purchased train tickets for them both, heading out to Lettie's home.
He knocked on the door when they got there, and she answered, took one look at him and Imogen and said, "So, you're clearly in more trouble than usual."
Imogen had fallen asleep, and Jake ignored Lettie for the moment, taking her up to the familiar room at the top of the stairs. Then he came downstairs and dropped into a chair at the kitchen table. "Yeah, I'm in trouble." He sighed, ran a hand through his hair and said, "I kidnapped her."
Lettie was walking to the table with the tea and detoured to slap him on the back of the head. "Why did you do it and what help do you need from me?" she asked calmly.
"That's why I love you, Lettie," Jake said, rubbing the area he could have half sworn was coming out in a lump. "I can rely on you to help, and to beat me half to death."
"What do you expect?" she asked. "Jake, I love you as if you were my own son, but even Connor, God rest his soul, wouldn't have got away with starting out like that with me."
So he explained, and when he was done, Lettie looked at him thoughtfully. "It's just as well, I suppose, that I'd moved away before he died and so few people here are even aware of him." A moment more, and she said, "So, I assume you'll be saying that Margaret's her mum?"
"Margaret was Conn's girlfriend," Jake admitted. "It would make sense, and you know he would've taken in their daughter in a heartbeat."
"She would," Lettie said, nodding. "Alright, Jake. I'll do it. You just take the next couple days to do what you need to, and then . . . we'll go from there."
"Jake?" came a soft voice from the stairs. They both looked up. Imogen was standing there, looking lost and confused.
"Hey sweetheart," Jake said. She reached for him, and it was instinct to pick her up and feel her clinging on. "We were talking about a few things to do with you." He went back to his chair and turned Imogen to look at Lettie. "Imogen, I want you to meet Laetitia Temple, who's doing me a really big favour. Lettie, this is Imogen Clarke."
"Delighted to meet you," Lettie told her. "Call me Lettie, everyone does that I like."
Imogen giggled. "Delighted to meet you too," she said.
"Are you hungry?" Lettie asked, "It's a little late in the day, but since you've been sleeping, you'll probably want breakfast."
"Yes, please," said Imogen softly.
Jake sighed. "Sweetheart, we have to talk about some really important things," he said. "Like what we're going to do now that I've got you away from your dad."
"What are we going to do?" she asked, looking frightened. "My dad always finds out about everything. I shouldn't have gone with you, but you're nice and I just wanted to pretend that I had a real dad who wants me and-"
"Shh," Jake soothed. "He doesn't have to find out where you are, if you help me."
She sniffled, but perked up slowly. "How can I help?"
"Well, you see, we're going to hide, not by running away and staying in a cave somewhere where there's bats and rats and snakes and things," Jake explained, "We're going to pretend we're other people. So when someone goes looking to find Jake Cosgrove and Imogen Clarke, they won't find them." Lettie put the eggs, bacon and toast down and a glass of chocolate milk for Jake and Imogen each. While Imogen slowly ate her eggs, sopping up yolk with her toast, Jake went on. "Lettie's my best mate's mum. Only, see, my best mate died a while ago."
Imogen gasped. "That's sad," she said. "Do you miss him?"
"Very much," Lettie said, her dark eyes wet. "But Jake's been wonderful, always coming by to make sure I'm not by myself."
Jake smiled at her. "It's not like it's horrible to come here. You're practically as much my mum as my real mum is." He turned to Imogen. "You see, Conn and I, we looked a lot alike. If we dressed the same and did up our hair the same and made sure to wear a hat, people would sometimes mistake us for each other."
"You're going to pretend that you're your friend?" she asked.
He nodded. "And Lettie's going to help by letting people think she's my mum for real." He took a deep breath. "And we'll tell everyone that I'm your dad-"
He was cut off by the small form hurtling into his lap. "You mean it?" she asked.
"I mean it," he told her. "And so we'll pick out a new name for you. Like Gertrude," he teased, laughing as she made an 'ick' face.
"Don't be horrible," Lettie told him. She turned to Imogen. "I've got a baby names book, we can look through that and you can pick something. Keep in mind, it has to go with Temple for your last name."
"I can stop being Imogen for real?' she asked, happily. "Brilliant!"
"You're a bad influence," Lettie told Jake mildly. "You need to get started on that computer stuff of yours?"
Jake nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Can I leave you with Lettie a bit?" he asked Imogen. "Only, I've got some things to do, and she'll probably be better help picking out a good name for a girl than me."
She looked a little apprehensive, but agreed, and Jake headed upstairs to start covering up his tracks. In short order, he'd begun deleting himself from existence along with Imogen. Starting with hospital files and working gradually up to his university one. Once they didn't exist anymore on any computer he could access, then he'd have to start creating things from scratch, and that would require finding as many people as possible who had died to make up the paper trail.
When he finally took a break, he came downstairs to be greeted by a smiling Lettie in the living room. She pointed towards the little girl Jake suddenly realised he'd taken full responsibility for, and said, "It's a girl," she told him brightly. "Let me introduce Caitlyn Rose Temple."
Her previously waist-length brown hair had been trimmed much shorter and was in adorable pigtails, the prissy dress she'd been wearing had been replaced somehow with a pair of jeans and a t-shirt with a jumble of dinosaurs on it and her normally glum little face sparkled with excitement. She looked like a completely different person, and for the first time, Jake felt really sure they'd pull it all off.
Once Jake, (Connor, he had to keep reminding himself), had finished erasing himself from the files of the world, he had to effectively build up and merge his life with Connor's. It involved a few things, not least of which was finding dead doctors to do checkups and dead schoolteachers to give him better grades and reports, dead testing authorities to give him graded GCSEs and just generally making sure that there was almost no one on the paper trail who was accessible to question about the validity of the various statements, including the death certificate he had to get revoked.
Caitlyn (nee Imogen) was another one who had to have a life carefully aligned. He had to create a false history of pregnancy for Connor's girlfriend who'd died in the same car accident as he did, find closed hospital wards and dead doctors to fill in all of Caitlyn's history. Luckily she was only four, so there was no need to fake much in the way of school records and the like.
Through all this, Jake - Connor, damnit, had a crash course in parenting.
At first it was easy. Caitlyn, still nervous about how she'd be punished if she misbehaved, happy to be safe and cared for properly, didn't act out at all. It was a relief, of course. Connor had seen those other children at the nursery school and primary, thought he knew just how bad it could get and figured he'd lucked out with the best behaved child in the history of the world.
When he said this, Lettie laughed, and said, "Just don't hesitate to call me. Unless it's after midnight." Then she walked away cackling, and a sense of foreboding fell over him.
It started slowly. Instead of one story at bedtime, she wanted two, and Connor was happy to oblige her that. When she asked for dessert after dinner one night, Connor was happy to produce some chocolate biscuits. When she had a bad dream, he let her climb into bed with him and curl up with her new dad so she'd feel safe.
That last one seemed to twig something for her, and Caitlyn started getting pushy. When she didn't get dessert every night, the complaints began, the whining.
"But Dad," she whinged, "I hate courgettes. I don't want them. I won't eat them."
"They're good for you," said Connor, who also hated courgettes, but ate them at Lettie's because she was like a second mother to him and she could ravage anyone verbally with the best of them.
"I don't care," she said obstinately.
Not wanting to argue, Connor leant over and whispered in her ear, "I hate them too, so we won't have them at home. But do what Lettie . . . your grandmum says, because she's a scary lady when she's upset. Ow." The sharp rap on the back of his head made him quiet and silenced Caitlyn as a consequence.
Then the tantrums started. Connor tried ignoring them, tried naughty step tactics, tried reasoning with her and pleading. Nothing worked, and Lettie, who'd been more one for a sharp rap to the head or a spanking, admitted she was worried about using that on a girl who'd already been abused, because it might just set everything back. They withheld desserts and suffered through more fits and demands until Connor snapped.
He was in the midst of setting up a very delicate piece of identity work, something that needed monitoring of the firewall, juggling bits and pieces of code and could get him in a lot of trouble, because these were census files and such, and with the need for confidentiality were far more secure than most things.
Caitlyn was at the office door, screaming the house down because he was ignoring her, and Lettie had gone out shopping, so there was no one to pull her away. He finished up to the sound of her furious shrieks, then whipped around, furious. "Stop that right now!" he snapped.
"You're not listening-"
"Do you want to go back to Clarke's?" he demanded. "Because if you do, keep it up."
The threat shocked her into silence. "You said you wouldn't take me back," she finally ventured.
"I won't have to, if you keep interrupting me when I'm working on this," Connor said grimly. "What I'm doing is hard, and complicated, and if I get caught at it, they'll take you away back to him, and I'll be sent to prison."
"But-"
"But nothing," Connor told her. "And just for the fact that I may not have got this right because you were screaming in my ear, you're not just getting no dessert tonight, you're getting no stories at all before bedtime, and since you're so determined to be in here with me, you get to sit, quietly, right here, watching me until I'm done. No books, no toys, no nothing."
She was very quiet that evening and even went to bed without a fuss. "What happened?" Lettie finally asked.
Connor rubbed his forehead. "I may have sort of threatened her with going back to her father's."
"Ja - Connor," Lettie may have been the one to suggest they all start using the false names all the time at once, but she had a lifetime of calling him Jake, and he wasn't Connor, never would be. "You said you weren't going to, and you were right not to."
"I know," he said, sighing. "But I was hacking the census figures, taking her out of them and shifting her over to Connor . . . my . . . household when she started pitching a fit. I'm not sure I didn't leave some big markers behind that I was in the system and I just blew up. Warned her that if could be her fault if we got caught by the police and all -"
"And that she'd be taken back if you were caught," Lettie caught on. "I think that may have been a good idea, actually."
He frowned at her, confused. "How come?"
"Because she's still a young child, and I don't know if she really understands how important it all is," Lettie explained. "Right now, I expect she's pushing partly to see whether we'll crack and act like her father did, but it's also because she doesn't know how to judge what's important and what isn't, what you interrupt an adult for or don't." She slumped down. "Still, I'm getting too old for this. I should be playing at spoiling my grandkids, not being her mum."
"I'm sorry," he told her, contrite. "I just threw this all in your lap, didn't I?" he asked.
"Jake," she said, "You're just as important to me as Conn was, and I'd help you with anything as important as this. And a lot that's less important."
"Still," he said with a sigh, "We'll be getting out of your hair soon enough. I've finished up everything, and all that's left is transferring 'Connor' from Sheffield out to Met Central University for the last year in undergraduate studies."
"London?" she said, surprised. "You're going that far? I thought maybe Leeds or . . . somewhere a bit closer."
He shook his head. "I've got to get far away, and I know that Connor would have gone for his PhD in something to do with paleontology in the end. He was always more gutsy than me, doing the engineering second honours focus just for the safe fallback."
"He was," she chuckled. "So, you'll be taking his risk for him?"
A sad smile crossed his face. "I should make sure our database is good for something, yeah?"
So, a few weeks later it was all done. The 'replacement' identifications, birth certificates, driver's license and what-all had arrived in the mail, Jake no longer sporting his clothing, but Connor's that Lettie hadn't the heart to be rid of, and Caitlyn, now sporting the nickname Lynn and dressed like Connor in miniature were on their way to a new life in London.
Connor had had to add a few extra layers of hiding after Clarke had showed up, accusing Jake of kidnapping Imogen. With all his concern, he decided to compartmentalise Lynn and his academic life as much as possible, since the academic community could be very small at times and he didn't want any rumours leaking back to his old stomping grounds. So, now he was stuck in the sort of council flat that gave government housing a bad name, on a student budget, and no way to claim assistance from much of anyone besides Lettie.
He struck gold in the nice lady down the hall, who was happy to babysit for him when Lynn wasn't in nursery school and Connor had to be in classes, exams or working part time to fill in the gaps.
They'd got settled in, with a few tantrums and tempers from Lynn, who wasn't at all used to such squalid surroundings, and was cynical enough at the age of five (her birthday had passed over the summer), to give him the evil eye when he suggested something as stupid as pretending it was an adventure.
Admitting shamefacedly to her teachers that he'd been a stupid teenager, who'd done a few stupid things, and that was why he had a five-year-old daughter while he was still twenty-three, Connor was meticulous about being an attentive parent and being seen to do all the right things. The last thing he wanted was to have anyone think to call child services down on him to investigate. Consequently, he had a nasty shock when a redheaded man in jeans plopped down next to him on a bench at the park while he was watching Lynn on the swings and doing his readings for his next class.
"Afternoon Mr. Cosgrove," he said.
Jake felt the blood drain out of his face. "You one of Geoffrey Clarke's people?" he asked. It didn't even occur to him to try bluffing until after it was too late.
The man shook his head. "DC Daniel Quinn," he said.
"That's almost worse," Jake said with a sigh. "You come to take me in, then?"
"Personally," Detective Quinn said, "I'm more interested right now in the real story."
"The . . . real story?" Jake asked, hesitantly. "Meaning?"
"Meaning," Detective Quinn told him, "That I found it interesting that the little girl's room back home hadn't been slept in or lived in at all, looked pretty much for show to me, but her wardrobe, that looked plenty lived in. More like something had been trying to get out of it. Then when I caught up to you," he turned and flashed Jake a companionable look, "Nice job on hiding by the way, I'm not sure any of our witness protection people could have done much better."
"Er . . . thanks?"
"Anyhow," the man continued, "I found her, and she seems pretty keen on you. Likes you a lot, never seems to act like she's afraid of you or anything. Calls you 'dad' without a single thought about it. So, why is that? If she's been taken from a loving home and all, why's she so happy here?"
"He was abusing her," Jake said, and the whole story spilled out. Between one moment and the next, everything, the police corruption, the way no one did anything, Clarke's apparent power in the area, Jake's fears that if he'd gone to the police it would get swept under the rug and both he and Imogen would suffer for it, it all came out. Detective Quinn listened, getting steadily more focussed and more angry.
"Right," he said. "I'm going to look into this, and you'll stay in London and keep on as you have. You run, I'll run you to ground. That clear?"
"Just so's I'm clear," Jake replied, "You're not arresting me? You're not taking her back?"
"No." That much was definite. "I'm checking out your story, then I'll report them to internal investigations if I can, and then we'll see." He looked Jake in the eye. "What I do know, is that right now I do believe you were rescuing her and that you didn't see any other options." He stood, grinning in a friendly way again, and said cheerfully, "I'll see you around, Temple."
He sagged down on the bench in relief. This being in hiding was extremely stressful.
A week later, a knock at the door interrupted Lynn's declarations that, "I hate you! You don't let me do anything! I just want to go to Jackie's for a sleepover!" (on a school night no less, and neither girl had her parents' permission when they made their plans).
Lynn was throwing toys at the door to her bedroom when Connor let the detective into his flat. "Trouble in paradise?" Quinn asked with a tired-looking smirk.
"She thinks I ought to let her stay overnight at a friend's on a Wednesday evening when she's got school the next day," Connor said with a shrug. "Let - Mum thinks that, now that she's allowed friends and to visit them, she's testing her boundaries all over again, since Clarke never let her have any friends at all."
"You'll have to watch those slip-ups," Quinn said, suddenly dropping to Connor's couch. "I got nowhere. That man's got all the regional authorities in his pocket, not just the police. Worse," he said heavily, "I can't figure out what he's doing out there that needs it. But who has that kind of pull already set up if they don't need it?"
"No smoke without fire?" Connor asked.
Quinn nodded. "Seems like. I tried to report things, and it just got cancelled by a councillor on behalf of a few groups."
"Hell," Connor said, joining him on the couch. It was the only place to sit besides the chairs at the table he and Lynn ate at.
"So, I snarled up the paperwork and investigations looking for you instead," Quinn added.
His heart skipped a beat as he breathed, "Thank you."
Quinn looked around the cracked walls, stained ceiling, windows with gaffer tape to seal the cracks at the frames where the wind would come through and freeze them both come winter, and said, "As much as looking into that berk even more makes me sure she's better off here, I wish I could do more for you."
Connor smiled. "Knowing that no one's coming for us at the moment's good enough. But," he added, joking, "It'd be nice to have a back-up babysitter. I can't trust Miss Kirkpatrick down the hall to always be available when I need her, and since she's gone most of next week, I'm going to have to pay someone to pick Lynn up from school at three on Tuesday, and stay with her on Wednesday and Thursday evenings while I've got classes."
Friday morning of the week after, Lynn declared that Danny was the coolest babysitter ever, and could he keep looking after her instead of Miss Kirkpatrick?
In time everything settled. Lynn got used to having friends and a dad who cared and the squalid conditions. In consultation with Lettie and some of the more experienced parents at her school, he was reassured she'd hit a pretty normal balance for a child her age between acting out and being good. Actually, she was pretty brilliant, especially for her age, and over the summer when she turned seven, Connor was practically bullied by several teachers at her school into shifting her into a different school, further away, with a more competitive curriculum and catering to a supposedly better class of people. All Connor cared at that point, was that it was still free for him, because he simply wasn't making enough to pay any sort of tuition costs.
Meanwhile, his classes at uni were brilliant. He'd made new friends, and between Lynn's friends' parents, Danny and Miss Kirkpatrick, he managed to hang out and have a social life from time to time. It was actually due to a teacher education development day, whatever they were being called, that landed on a Friday, and Connor had been happy enough to let Lynn spend the day and sleep over at Jackie's, that allowed him to propose heading out to the Forest of Dean with professor Cutter and his assistant.
It wasn't until they were tracking the gorgonopsid that Connor had a flash of realisation. And when Stephen asked him if he was coming, he froze a moment, then lied. Because he didn't want to let Stephen go without someone to watch his back, but Connor was no action hero, and what would Lynn do if he got himself hurt? "You, mighty hunter. Me, I'm more logistics and, you know, backup," he said.
He felt terrible watching Stephen go, but he had to think of Lynn. When the bloody thing showed up at the anomaly site, scattering everyone in a desperate attempt to get away, he was sure he'd been right. It didn't stop him from wanting to be part of it all, though.
When Lynn came home, Connor wrapped his arms around her and hung on for dear life. "How was Jackie's?"
"Good. Are you going to let go?" she inquired.
"In a minute."
She was clever, his girl. "What happened?"
"What do you mean?"
Lynn wriggled away. "You're acting weird, Dad."
He laughed a little. "I am. Sorry. It's just been a bit of a scary day or two. I'm just happy to see you."
"Scary!" she exclaimed, "Scary how? What happened?"
"Weird stuff," he told her. "And I signed this contract thing that says I can't tell anyone."
"Not even me?" she asked. "I wouldn't tell. You know I'm good at secrets."
"I know you are," he said regretfully. "But this is really big. Big like when we both started hiding from your dad, big."
"He's not my dad," she declared. "You are. I remember, when I first started at school, there was a whole day we spent talking about adopted kids. Your parents are the people who take care of you and stuff. You do that. He never did."
"And he wasn't cool enough to have Gertrude, over there," he said, jerking his head at the full-sized model of a Jurassic Park velociraptor that his old friend whose life he was living, had bid for and won online just days before he died. They'd set it up at the front door after much discussion, agreeing that anyone breaking in would get a scare in the dead of night, walking into the lifelike model. Intermittently she was used as a hat rack.
The topic of his frightening day was dropped, and they had dinner.
But Connor wanted to bring Tom and Duncan in on it, tried to convince his two friends, the only ones he'd wound up telling about Lynn (though not the real truth, just his story of teenaged indiscretion), but they didn't buy it. He was sitting with Abby, having phoned Stephen about the potential incursion, when his phone started ringing. He broke off what he was saying, which was actually probably a good thing, considering all the luck he'd had flirting with her, to answer. "Hey, what's up?"
"Dad, Tom and Duncan are trying to trick you!"
"What?" Connor frowned, turning away from Abby a smidge. "What do you mean?"
"When they were last staying over, you know, when you had that exam? They were talking about the weird animal sighting web site and a whole bunch of things. When I told Danny, he said it sounded like they're trying to prank you."
The growling noise made Abby startle and for a moment Connor froze. Then suddenly he realised what was going on. "Thanks Lynn." Glaring, he started storming to the bushes, just as Cutter and Stephen showed up. "Tom! Duncan! I can't believe you'd do this to me!"
There they were, crouched in the bushes, making an idiot of him. Abby was next to him a moment later. "You idiots!" she snapped. "This isn't some stupid joke!"
Not that either his or Abby's pleas did any good. Cutter still threw him off the team before things had barely begun. He stormed home in a bad mood, flopping onto the bed once he'd thanked Danny for once again being there to babysit. "Did you have a bad day?" Lynn asked. "'Cause mine was good. Danny took me out for ice cream and I got to have the swings all to myself the whole afternoon. I think I nearly made it over the top today."
"Did you?" Connor asked. "You get all your homework done too?"
"Everything but the maths," she said, making a face.
He sat up, pushing away his pique, because while dinosaurs were his and Conn's dream, this was all for Lynn. She deserved better than to listen to him moaning about Tom and Duncan being utter berks. "Then let's get the maths done, and we can watch a film and have pizza after." They argued about which film and she won, and that was how they wound up watching Barbie: Island Princess while Connor muttered about the flying peacock, the unnaturally speedy elephant, why, if all the other animals could talk the dolphins couldn't and agreeing with Lynn that if real rats were like the ones in the film, they'd want one for a pet.
The phone call from Claudia Brown came as a shock. "Hello?"
"Mr. Temple," she said crisply. "In spite of whatever may have happened, I've been told we need your database to figure out what's poisoned Stephen and find something to apply a proper antivenin. We need you down here, right now."
"Poisoned?" he gaped.
Lynn's head came up from where she'd been watching the mother and daughter reunite onscreen. "Poison?" she echoed.
Internally cursing, Connor said, "I'll be down as soon as I can." He hung up and hurried down the hall, knocking on the door. "Vivian?" he knocked on Miss Kirkpatrick's door.
The older woman opened a minute later. "Connor? Is something wrong?"
"One of my . . . friends is in a bit of trouble," he said hastily. "I really hope you're free to watch Lynn for a bit, because I've got to go."
"Oh, of course," she said. "That bad?"
"He's in hospital," Connor said, hoping he wouldn't have to go into more detail than that.
"Bring her right over, then," she told him. She'd long since declared that Gertrude the Raptor gave her the willies and she wasn't going to spend any evening sitting next to her.. "It's no trouble. We'll watch the telly and everything'll be fine. You'll see."
He raced back to his flat and told Lynn. "I'm really sorry, but I've got to go. Stephen's in a lot of trouble and they need me to help."
"Who's Stephen?" she asked, watching him in some bemusement as he collected some things for her and stuffed them in her favourite dinosaur rucksack.
"Someone I work with, sort of," Connor explained. "I'm so sorry, Lynn."
At Miss Kirkpatrick's door, she suddenly turned and hugged him. "Love you Dad."
"Love you too, sweetheart," Connor said, then hurried off. It turned out that the guesses from the fossil record weren't sufficiently accurate to the behaviour of the arthropleura, and Connor had to make a mental note to adjust that. Staring at the anomaly, standing next to Cutter, he pleaded his case again.
"I just want to help." He thought of the real Connor, the one he was pretending to be, and knew his friend would have wanted this just as much as he did. They'd both loved dinosaurs, built the database together, wanted to be the dynamic dinosaur duo and his friend would have scolded him for not even trying. Would have been bold enough to not think twice at any of the risks that had been taken that day, just for the chance to see these things.
"You did a good job," Cutter said.
The exultation made him say stupid things, but he didn't care. This is for you, Conn.
Connor limped out of the hospital, very headachy, not quite sure how he was going to get home, hell, not even sure how he was going to get up the stairs to his flat, but determined to get back to Lynn. He'd promised he'd be home that evening for her, and he intended to keep that promise. Still, he wasn't looking forward to the bus ride there.
As he sat waiting for the bus, a car pulled up at the stop, and he was surprised to see Claudia behind the wheel. "Connor? Did you sign yourself out of the hospital?"
"Yeah," he replied. "There's just . . . not really any point in hanging around, you know?"
Her eyes narrowed. "Didn't they say you might have a concussion from when the anklesaur-"
"Ankylosaur," Connor corrected absently.
She rolled her eyes. "The point is, you landed headfirst on a tree. Shouldn't you make sure you're alright before heading home?"
Claudia had a point, but, "There's things . . . I have to get home," he said, giving up on coming up with a good explanation around the pounding in his head.
Pausing a moment, she seemed to come to a decision. "Get in."
"What?" he asked.
"I'm starting to think I should drag you back to the hospital," she muttered. "I'll give you a lift home."
Nothing loathe, He limped over to her car and hopped in, giving her directions. When they arrived at his street, Claudia began to look rather dubious. "You live here?" she asked. "Can't you get a better place?"
He was being paid a sort of minimum wage from the Home Office for working on the anomaly project, but that had all gone on paying fees for school trips and Lynn's determination to take every Saturday Morning Club children's lecture series on offer at the British Museum. "Not really," he replied to the question. "There's things I've got to pay for." The look she shot him was piercing, but he was getting better at not folding under those. "Thanks for the ride," he said instead.
Halfway to the door, he stumbled, nearly falling, and an indignant and exasperated huff was his only warning as Claudia wrapped an arm around his waist, supporting some of his weight. "Let me help you in," she said, sounding put-upon. When she saw the stairs she just sighed voluminously. When they passed the drunk who pretty much lived on the landing there, because his wife wouldn't let him drink at home, she shook her head.
"Thanks," Connor told Claudia when they finally reached his door. "I appreciate the help-"
He was about to get her to leave when the door slammed open and Lynn flung herself on him. "Dad! You're home!"
Connor staggered, lost his balance as his injured leg crumpled and hit the floor hard. "Christ, Connor, what happened?" Danny said, aghast from where he'd come up behind Lynn. "You get into a boxing match with rhino?"
"No," Claudia said smoothly, "Just a misunderstanding with one of the individuals our project works with."
Danny's eyes narrowed. "And what sort of individuals would you be involving Connor here with?"
"And who might you be?" Claudia asked, all superior government sneer.
Connor tried to get Lynn into the flat, but she was watching the pair spar like it was a Wimbledon tennis match, and Connor was in no shape to pick her up and carry her off.
"Daniel Quinn, DC," Danny said, pulling out his own sneering credentials. Then smiled briefly at Lynn. "And sometime babysitter."
This, Claudia was not prepared for. It was one thing to face down and intimidate some random idiot on the street, but a police detective wasn't a nobody to be intimidated unduly. "I'm sorry to tell you that's classified."
"Right," Danny said slowly. "Just so we're clear on this, Miss, but classified won't wash very long with me if Connor comes home battered up like that very often."
"Danny," Connor hastily interrupted, "It's alright. It was just me being stupid and not letting Stephen do what he does-"
"Bloody hotdogging idiot," Claudia muttered.
Danny shot them both a look, then said, "I'd stick around, but my shift starts soon. I'll see you later, Connor, Katydid," he finished with his nickname for Lynn.
Claudia took in the way Connor was leaning on the wall and Lynn's anxious looks and said, "Right, come on," and looped her arm around his waist again, helping him in the door, then stifling a shriek as they ran into Gertrude. "What the?"
"That's just Gertrude," Lynn said amiably. "She's there to scare off burglars. Works too," she commented idly. "When Greg from upstairs tried to break in and steal some stuff for drug money she scared him good."
Connor frowned. "When was this?"
"Last week. I was with Miss Kirkpatrick when he ran down the hall screaming about monsters." Then she continued with, "What did happen, Dad? You're hurt. And who's this?"
"Still can't tell you," he told her. "And this is sort of my boss, Claudia Brown. Claudia, my daughter, Caitlyn."
To her credit, Claudia didn't explode. "Nice to meet you," she said briskly. "How old are you?"
"Seven," said Caitlyn. "Why are you asking?"
"Lynn," Connor scolded, "That's rude, and she's twitting me, not you."
"That's not better," Lynn said, quite dryly.
"She's seven going on seventy," Connor told Claudia. "I know I promised you Xbox tonight, but can you wait a bit?"
"Okay," Lynn said. "I just got the next book that unicorn series anyhow."
When Lynn had vanished into her room, Claudia shook her head. "I can't believe it. You're a father?"
"Have been for a few years now," Connor told her honestly. "I don't like to bring her up with everyone else. People don't say nice things when you do one stupid thing as a teenager."
"Where's her mother?" Claudia asked. "Unfit?"
The slight snideness made Connor reply baldly, "Dead."
"I'm sorry," she told him contritely. "But Connor, you can't seriously be planning to keep raising her here."
"What am I supposed to do?" he demanded. "How much money do you think I have access to? I'm a student, Claudia. The Home Office isn't paying any of us that much because we all have other jobs, so to speak."
She sighed. "You have a point, of course, but . . ."
Connor shook his head. "I think the one thing that I really hate most about having to be here is the time it takes Lynn to get to school in the morning. She's going to William Gladstone Primary, and it's on the other side of London."
"That's not a public school, though," Claudia said. "You're certainly making enough to be in a better grade of council flat than this as long as she stays in a state-funded school."
"Not as long as I'm paying for her to go to the Saturday morning children's lectures at the British Museum," Connor countered. "I wish I'd had them. It's really cool and fun and she loves it. How can I say no?"
"And ballet class?" Claudia asked, picking up the bag with its pink and black dance clothes.
"The girls in her class all go, so she wanted to," he said. "I don't really know anything about girl . . . stuff."
Lynn poked her head into the room. "He's bad at girl things. I keep having to go to Jackie's before recitals so her mum can do my hair and makeup and things."
"Were you listening?" Connor asked her, trying to look severe. "Because that's rude."
"You're not talking quietly and you know everyone can hear everything upstairs and downstairs from us," she shot back.
Now that she was getting an attitude about it all, he shot her a dark look. "Keep this up and it's no pizza for a month." Lynn sighed, the most put-upon seven-year-old ever to walk the earth, but retreated to her room and her book again. "She learned that from Violet down the hall," Connor told Claudia.
The O'Neills the floor above started their nightly screaming fight, ending early this time with the shattering crash of one of them throwing a bottle at the other and the slam of a door. It was like it was a signal for every frightening thing going on about the neighbourhood to be hinted at in the sounds erupting all about. Claudia's lips tightened. "That's it," she said firmly. "I live four blocks away from that school and I have a house full of empty rooms. You're packing up tonight and coming home with me, the pair of you."
"Wha'?" Connor was aware he was gaping like some sort of idiot yokel, but . . . "Are you . . . what . . . just like that?"
"Now, Connor," declared Claudia sharply. It was like all that government authority she had came down on his head like a tonne of bricks, and suddenly, he and Lynn were packed up and in her car. "You can come back and collect the rest of your things tomorrow," she told them both.
"Including Gertrude?" asked Lynn. "We can put her by your door to discourage burglars like at ours."
"She makes a charming hat rack," Connor put in.
Claudia looked speculatively at them both while at the stoplight. "I'll consider it."
Her house was a tall, narrow, semi-detached piece of ornamental brickwork. Inside it was warm and homey and made Connor feel quite suddenly homesick for Lettie's or even the Cosgrove home where he'd grown up. The walls had that old wallpaper from the 80s with flowers on it, wooden cupboards and finishes and comfortable-looking furniture. Lynn, despite the excitement of the move and her intrigue with Claudia was fading fast, and Connor said, "It's really past her bedtime, Claudia. Can we get her to bed?"
"M'not tired," grumbled Lynn with her eyes mostly closed. Soon enough her teeth were brushed and face washed and Connor tucked her into the twin bed with its white sheets and blanket, kissed her forehead and left her to sleep curled around her favourite stuffed sauropod.
He staggered as the whole evening suddenly came crashing down on him and the headache he'd been ignoring took a turn towards the territory of a migraine. "Connor," Claudia said gently from behind him, "Don't make me have to wrestle you into bed the way you just did Lynn."
"Right," Connor agreed as he staggered towards the room designated as his. He put on a t-shirt and boxer shorts and just crawled under the covers. Over the course of the night, he was vaguely aware of Claudia coming in and waking him to check on his possible concussion, but the pain and excitement had left him too tired to think much on it. When he finally woke properly he'd not only missed getting Lynn up and ready to leave for school, he was late to the Home Office, too.
"Where the hell have you been?" demanded Cutter when he showed up finally.
Before he could formulate a response to that, Claudia swept in. "He was resting, considering the beating he took yesterday I would say it was well-earned."
Cutter stared. "How do you know?"
"Because he was still sleeping when I left this morning. Did you find my note?" she asked Connor.
"Er . . . yeah," Connor replied slowly. "Thanks for telling me where things were. And . . ." he took in a deep breath, because Claudia's help meant that Lynn wasn't in that terrible flat anymore. "Thanks for letting u - me stay."
She smiled, patting his arm companionably. "It's no trouble, Connor. Anyhow, it's just me rattling around in that house I inherited from my Aunt Frannie. I could do with the company."
Connor leaned over to whisper in her ear, "Was it much trouble getting Lynn off to school this morning?"
"Not at all," she told him. "I know how to braid hair with ribbons, after all."
Lynn had craved the girly trimmings of pink ribbons and unicorns, stickers and fairies and princesses and all. Between them, she now dressed like a miniature pink and purple Connor Temple, her own lavender fedora jauntily perched on her head most days and powder pink fingerless gloves and a variety of pastel waistcoats to go over things, but he couldn't do her hair up in ribbons or bake pony-shaped biscuits. Having someone help do her up with all the girly bits and bobs she wanted of a morning would have been enough to ensure cooperation.
"Thanks for that, too."
Cutter's jaw was hanging open. He closed his mouth finally, then asked, after watching them whisper to each other, "Claudia, are you . . . you're not . . ."
"Yes?" she asked, a tad archly.
"Are you sleeping with Connor?" he abruptly demanded. Stephen, passing by, stopped dead staring at the three of them, eyes wide, then hastily beat a retreat down the hall.
Appalled, Claudia declared, "Just for the sheer gall of asking me that here and now, Nick, I'm not going to tell you." She turned to Connor. "I'll see you at home this evening and we'll see about moving the rest of your things in." Then she strode off, leaving Connor alone with a positively steaming Nick Cutter.
Connor fled.
Living with Claudia was a bit of an adjustment for everyone, not least of which Claudia, who was rather dismayed at the appearance of Gertrude in the front hall. She developed rather an affection for the raptor after missionaries responded to her answering the door by running away, however.
Connor discovered rather a lot about women and girly things he'd never even suspected. Because Claudia began to fill in the gaps with Lynn, teaching her about dresses and makeup, fashion and all sorts of girly pink things he'd never imagined existed. Lynn's wardrobe, previously essentially the same as Connor's but in varying shades of pinks, purples and pastels, suddenly spouted pretty red dresses, and the little pink fedora was sometimes replaced with brightly coloured barrettes and ribbons.
Danny approved of the new home, flirting outrageously with Claudia, who was rather flattered at the attention, and in her pique at Cutter's implication she'd sleep with someone Connor's age like some sort of woman who was living the delusion she was still in her twenties, she'd taken to cheerfully discussing Danny's charms with Abby, (who was amused enough to play along) and Connor (who usually degenerated to pleading with Stephen to do something to get him out of it). Claudia also helped Connor in his ongoing campaign to get Danny to stop taking Lynn down to the police station, where she was the sometime mascot and learned to make very bad coffee.
In spite of his earlier troubles with them, though, Connor had remained friends with Tom and Duncan, who would do in a pinch if there was no one else about to babysit Lynn.
That was why Connor had a heart attack when Duncan asked him to meet in the university library and told him all about taking the dodo and Tom going completely mental. "What did you do with Caitlyn?" he demanded, even as he hastily dialled the line to the Home Office.
"I dropped her back with Miss Kirkpatrick at your old place," Duncan assured him. "You're not calling the police?"
Knowing his daughter was safely away somewhere let Connor focus on the problem at hand. "This is way beyond them, now," he informed his friend.
They all ran about like chickens with their heads lopped off, and after seeing Tom die like that, seeing how close Tom came to being a bullet-ridden corpse, the last thing Connor wanted to do was head into the Home Office to file any sort of report. He just wanted to go collect Lynn and bring her home and cuddle her on the couch in front of the telly watching some irredeemable girly picture with her. But if he didn't do it now, he'd just have to do it later and it would be worse when the numbness had worn off.
"Temple, my office at once," said Lester sharply.
"I'll talk to him," Stephen offered, all sympathy for once.
Connor shook his head. "It's like the reports. If it doesn't happen now, it'll just be waiting for me later."
"Alright," Stephen said dubiously.
He smiled weakly at the other man, then went to his doom.
The door closed behind him, and suddenly Lynn was clinging to him. "Dad! I was so scared! Tom started acting all weird and I'm really sorry we followed you, but I wanted to know what you do and the dodo was cute and all the books say they weren't dangerous so I didn't think it was so bad that they took it and then it made Tom go all mad and Duncan took me to Miss Kirkpatrick's, but Tom knows where that is, and I didn't want to be somewhere he knew to find me so I came here."
He'd already dropped to his knees, hugging her back and manoeuvring them to the chair in front of Lester's desk, where she snuggled into his lap. "How'd you get here?" he asked.
"You gave me the bus money for emergencies, remember?" she pointed out. He had, at that. He'd made sure she always had two bus fares worth of money on her, just in case some horrible emergency happened and she wound up having to go somewhere by herself.
"How'd you know to come here?" he asked.
"Claudia said she works here, and you said she was sort of your boss," Lynn said, all calm logic now that she was curled up with her dad. "So, obviously you have to work in the same place she does, so I came here and asked for you. Then they sent me up here, to Mr. Lester."
Lester shot him a dark look. "Imagine my surprise when your daughter appears, Mr. Temple. Especially since there's no mention of her I can find in your file. Looking a little further, I found some very interesting-"
"James," Claudia said, as she burst through the door, "I-" she took in the scene. "Well, too late for that, I suppose," she said, then shut the door and leaned against the wall.
"I'm wondering," Lester said, "How much Ms Brown knows about this situation, Mr. Cosgrove."
It had been so long since he'd heard his real name, he'd almost forgotten. Lynn, however, flew into a panic. "Don't send me back!"
"Lynn-" he tried to soothe her, but she was already clinging to Lester in a move that looked positively bizarre to Connor.
"Don't send me back! Please!" she cried, bursting into tears. "I don't want to be locked away in my room again, I don't . . . he hurt me and Da - Jake rescued me! He doesn't hit me ever, not like Clarke! And I have friends and Danny and Claudia and I don't want to be Imogen!"
Claudia stared at all this, turning to the young man she was letting stay at her house. "Connor?"
"Perhaps," Lester said, looking quite strange as he handily picked Lynn up, cuddling her as though he were well-practiced at it, "You might explain yourself."
As his story unfolded, Lester's sharp look only intensified, while Claudia looked more and more confused every step of the way. When he got to the part where Danny had found out about the corruption of the local councillor, the look on Lester's face turned grim.
"Jacob Cosgrove," Claudia said when he'd finished. "It . . . I don't know whether to be angry or congratulatory."
Jake sighed. "Whatever you do, Lester, I'm just begging you not to let Caitlyn get sent back there. Please. I'll go to prison if I have to-"
"No!" Lynn shrieked. She wriggled away from Lester and flung herself at Jake. "We'll run away again!" she pleaded. "We can go away to Australia or something, right? Or America?"
"No one will be going to prison," Lester said, that odd look still on his face. Suddenly, he realised the only reason he found it odd was that it was on Lester's face. It was sympathy. Something maybe even a little paternal. "I will speak with the Minister about this and we will determine how best to handle this all." He came over to the chair where Jake was sitting and put a hand on Lynn's shoulder. "I certainly will not send you anywhere you have been abused," he told her. Then he looked at Jake. "I will also admit to being impressed. You've fairly effectively wiped out any mention of your real identity all over the UK."
"So, we're just going to . . . let this go?" Claudia sounded confused, though not angry. Clearly the look on his face said something to her, because she smiled at Jake and said, "I'm not saying I want you prosecuted or anything else," she told him, "But . . . we're just going to . . ."
"I will have a word," Lester said, "With the authorities. It should be a relatively simple matter to ensure the official files will no longer be an issue."
"Thank you," he said, sagging in relief at this assurance.
Claudia had another question, though. "Is this why you tried to keep it all separate? Caitlyn from most people?"
He nodded. "I don't know who or where Clarke has ears and eyes, and if I could keep things separate, it might throw him off. I mean, if he ever started suspecting."
"Right," Lester said then. "So, now that this is resolved, I hope you realise you could have been arrested for violation of the confidentiality agreement you signed with the Home Office regarding the anomaly project?"
The change in subject was startling, but ultimately, this was Lester. "I know," he said. "I just . . . there are enough secrets going around for me. I hate having to keep more."
"And you wanted to show off?" Claudia asked dryly.
Lynn spoke up from where she was fiddling with a sheet of lined paper on his lap. "He wanted Duncan to help with building a detector because Duncan's an idiot savant."
"When did you hear that?" Connor asked her.
She looked at him and shrugged. "Tom always says that, you know that. I looked it up online. I think Tom's right."
Tom was dead, and he was going to have to explain that to her. Lester's face got that weird look that meant he was about to pretend he was human and not a government cyborg intent on turning everything around him into a conspiracy-ridden government white paper. "I trust you've learnt your lesson, Temple, and I'll let you head home."
Cutter, Stephen and Abby had taken the chance to flee the scene and the hallways were deserted as the three of them slipped quietly down to where Claudia had her car parked and Connor tried desperately to think of how to break it to Lynn that Tom was dead.
When they walked in past Gertrude, Claudia absently draping her jacket over the raptor's head, Connor finally had to ask, "Lynn, what's that paper you've got?"
"Mr. Lester was talking on the phone and saying nasty things to people," she explained. "So I started a list of words that I was sure were nasty but I didn't know what they meant. Mr. Lester got me a dictionary and helped me spell them."
The list read like a conversation with Lester when the man hadn't yet had his morning tea and Cutter had proposed one of his theories that were awful, but right.
He shook it off. "Sweetheart, I've got some bad news to tell you. About Tom."
She frowned. "I don't want him around anymore. He's not-"
"He won't be around," Connor interrupted. "Tom's . . . you know how after the dodo bit him he got weird?"
"Yeah," Lynn said with a shiver. "That was . . . scary."
"What?" demanded Claudia. "Why was she there?"
"Tom and Duncan were babysitting," Connor told her. "Danny's on a new shift and needs to adjust to the time and Violet wasn't going to be available for the whole stretch. Basically, it was them or no one."
Claudia made an aggravated sound of disgust. "So, they brought her along with them?"
"Would you rather they'd left her alone at their flat?" he snapped back. "They'd never once done a thing to her, and this could hardly be something they'd be able to predict."
"You're right. I'm sorry," Claudia said contritely.
"What's going on?" Lynn asked. "What about Tom?"
"The dodo made him sick," Connor told her. "Sick like . . . you know how Penny on the third floor'd get strange if she hadn't had her pills?"
Lynn nodded. "You said she was sort of sick, and that the pills were to help her stay better, but it was . . . chronic?"
"Yeah. Well, the dodo made Tom sick like that, but there weren't any pills that would make him better. He . . . the disease from the dodo it . . . it made him so sick, he just . . ." the knowledge that one of his two best friends was dead hit him like a tonne of bricks. It wasn't as bad as when Connor had died in some ways, because Connor had been family as much as a friend, but Tom was his fault.
Claudia took up the thread of the explanation when the first sob escaped Connor and Lynn started to panic. "Tom passed away this afternoon, darling."
"Passed away?" Lynn asked. "What does . . . Tom's . . . he's dead? Like the real Connor and my mum?"
"Yeah," Connor said. "There wasn't anything anyone could do."
"No," Lynn said. "No! Tom's not . . . he's nice and funny and plays Barbie Wild Horse Adventures with me without taking the mick like you and Duncan and . . . No!" she started crying, then pushed away from Connor, running up the stairs to her room and slamming the door behind her.
Connor stared after her a moment. "I feel a little like that right now myself," he said to Claudia. "You think shrieking and slamming a door would help?"
"I wish it did," she told him. "I'm sorry for your loss."
"Thanks," he said hoarsely. "I'd best go up." He paused at the foot of the stairs a moment. "Can . . . she'll want to go to the funeral, I think. Can you . . . can you help get something appropriate picked out for her?"
"Of course," Claudia said with a devastatingly gentle smile.
"Thanks." He climbed after Lynn, peeking into her room to find her curled in a ball on her bed, wrapped around her plushie sauropod. "Lynn? Lynn, I'm sorry."
"Why?" she asked. "Why'd it bite Tom? Why'd it have to make him sick? The books all say dodos're nice."
"Because the dodo was sick too," Connor said. "It must've got bit by something else that was sick."
"Why didn't it bite someone else?" she demanded stubbornly. "Someone who wasn't fun and nice."
"Because Tom was in the way," Connor said. "And I'm just happy it wasn't you, and that it wasn't Duncan too. Because I don't know what I'd've done if it were you."
"Dad . . ." She crawled into his lap and cried until she fell asleep, and Connor held her while she did, murmuring nonsense to her, hoping it would be comforting, and knowing that there was nothing he could do to make it better.
Between one thing and another, Connor was rather enjoying being Claudia's housemate. Lynn called her Aunt Claudia and the few parents who'd been rather snippy with Connor, believing that his relatively young age meant he was also thoroughly irresponsible, had been browbeaten into submission by Claudia.
He disliked being a specific bone of contention between Cutter and her, if only because Cutter seemed to still be half-convinced that his erstwhile student and erstwhile girlfriend were having some sort of fling. Actually, strangely enough, Stephen seemed to think so too, or at least, he was dropping hints that way. Really, why it was anyone thought someone like Claudia, who was far too sophisticated to be interested in Connor that way, would be interested in Connor, was beyond him. And given his own interest in Abby, because he was sure Abby would get along so well with Lynn, on top of being brilliant and gorgeous and fun . . .
He shook his head. He had to stop thinking about that.
Right now he was out on a golf course with Stephen, trying to figure out what it was that had eaten that man if it wasn't the pteranodon. Connor shook his head in disbelief. Stephen had some sort of Tarzan, in tune with nature, superhero sort of thing going on where he wasn't even displacing the grass he was walking on. This distracted Connor enough as he marvelled, that he tripped over and skinned the palm of his hand as he fell.
"Ow," Connor grumbled. Seriously, was it so much to ask that he at least be able to walk upright?
"Quiet," snapped Stephen suddenly. Connor froze, then heard a rustling in the trees that wasn't wind and a squeak that wasn't any sort of animal native to England. They both looked up. In the trees was a flock of pterosaurs. "Connor, don't move."
"And then what?" he snapped. "You think you can hold off a whole flock of them by yourself?" He pulled himself to a crouch, watching the things. They were all on point, practically quivering. Worse, the point they were on was him.
Stephen's eyes were flickering back and forth between him and the pterosaurs. "They're focused on you . . ." the blue eyes widened in sudden realisation. "The blood from your hand, it's attracting them!"
Which was when they attacked. Connor fled, Stephen right next to him. As they hurtled through the woods, they stumbled over a small sort of caretaker's shed. In one of those heroic moves Connor would never try because he'd just sprain something, Stephen kicked the door open and they both dove in. It took a moment to figure out how to wedge the door shut, then they were stuck inside the shed, the squawking horrible little creatures banging into the windows.
Stephen's mobile rang. "Ryan?" His eyes widened and he stared out the window. "I would, but I'm rather stuck for the moment." There was a pause. "A flock of pterosaurs are trying to eat Connor and me alive, actually."
Connor shook his head. Stephen was being incredibly blasé about this.
"No, that's a pteranodon. These are small buggers. Like flying piranhas." Another pause. "Yes, probably." A moment later he hung up, turning to Connor grimly. "Apparently Cutter's trapped up at the lodge and he and Claudia are under attack by the pterosaurs."
"What?" Connor asked, eyes wide. He glanced out the window at the things shrieking their dismay at being denied prey.
"It gets worse. Claudia was hurt by the pteranodon. I don't know and Ryan didn't mention, but she was unconscious."
At that moment, the constant bashing on the windows paid off for the little menaces. They came bursting through the windows, and dove at the pair of them. They barely made it to the door, preferring to be in the open where there was a chance to run, and Connor noticed with some resentment that somehow Stephen was managing to stay far more free of nicks and scratches than Connor, who was being assaulted.
From the direction of the lodge on the golf course came the sound of an explosion. In a split second, Connor made a decision. The pterosaurs had killed someone, just like piranhas did. Swarming and tearing them to pieces tiny bit by tiny bit. They were being attracted by how much he was bleeding and they would probably swarm them both unless they separated. So, they were both probably going to die, and with that explosion, odds were good the pterosaurs had got into something, a boiler or some such, and had caused the explosion. Claudia might well be dead.
He was almost certainly going to die, he was pretty much shark bait . . . pterosaur bait, rather.
"Stephen! If I don't get out of this, you need to head down to William Gladstone Primary. Get Caitlyn. Temple." Then he took a deep breath and sprinted away from Stephen, diverting what seemed to be the whole flock as he ran back towards the anomaly.
"Connor!" he heard the shout behind him. Stephen was chasing after, but Connor had been running his whole childhood. Footraces, from bullies, from barking dogs and he'd kept on running on track teams. He pelted along, feeling the damned things getting in bites off his face and arms. A lucky swipe along his neck as he hit the home stretch, saw the SFs clustered around the pteranodon, and suddenly he was bleeding out. It all came together and he passed out, barely aware of Stephen pounding up behind him, cursing, and the sound of gunfire and tiny bodies dropping out of the air.
He woke up in a hospital bed. Something warm and heavy was lying on top of him. "Dad? Dad!" Lynn promptly wrapped herself around him, hugging him for all she was worth.
"Alright Lynn, be careful. He's been pretty badly hurt," Claudia said from the side.
Connor breathed a sigh of relief. "You're okay," he said to Claudia. "I thought . . . when we heard that explosion I thought you might've . . . not been okay."
"Was that why you did it?" Stephen's voice said from the door. "Because that was possibly the . . . I don't have the words to say how incredibly stupid that was."
"Dad's not stupid!" Lynn exclaimed, affronted. "He's smarter than you!" She began to mumble about stupid people who were scared of Gertrude.
Stephen came into view, and shot Lynn a look. "Most of us don't expect to be greeted at the door by a deinonychus."
"Not even one wearing a hat and coat?" Claudia asked, lips twitching a little. "I do think Lynn's right, it is an excellent burglar deterrent."
"I'm entirely certain I have no desire to know about your burglar deterrent, Temple," said Lester. He glanced around the room and said, "Lynn, since you know your father's going to be fine now, would you like to take a break, maybe get some ice cream from the canteen downstairs?"
Lynn's eyes narrowed in thought, then she said, "Okay. I can come right back, though?"
"Absolutely," Lester said. "And in the meantime, you can tell me if you're having any trouble figuring out new words for insulting people."
"Bye Dad!" Lynn said as she hopped off the bed and joined Lester, who shot all three adults a meaningful look before they left.
"I'm sorry," he said to Claudia once he was reasonably sure Lynn was out of earshot. "I was bleeding and the pterosaurs were clearly after me in particular because of it. I really thought they were going to kill both me and Stephen if we stuck together."
"And sending me to collect Lynn?" Stephen asked. "Because I have to say, I wasn't expecting a child. I was expecting you'd sent me off to tell your sister or mother about you being in hospital or dead."
"Because after the explosion . . . you'd said that Claudia and Cutter were up at the lodge, and the explosion came from there."
"You thought I was dead?" Claudia asked, a little hesitantly.
"I thought you might be," Connor admitted. "And if you were, and I was going to be dead, someone had to know to get Lynn right off, not just leave her hanging for however long it took to get her."
"Have you always been this fatalistic," Stephen asked, "Or is it some other facet of parenthood I can add to my list of reasons to avoid being one?"
"Have you always been this acerbic," Connor retorted, "Or have you been spending your spare time with Lester to learn at the feet of the master?"
Claudia glared impartially at them both. "Connor, just don't try to get yourself killed again, Lynn can't afford to lose her father and you know it, Stephen, don't twit him for trying to save your life."
"Sorry," they both mumbled at her.
"Good," she said, nodding sharply. "I'm going to make sure James doesn't teach Lynn anything else that will get Connor called in for a parent-teacher conference."
There was a long silence after she left. "I'm sorry I was so cryptic," Connor said finally. "I really did think I didn't have long before the little buggers killed me."
"It's alright," Stephen told him, shaking his head. "What I won't forgive you for is sending me to those harpies in the school office."
The penny dropped. "You mean Fanny Wellesley was on duty," Connor said, nodding. "The scary lady with the radioactive carrot-coloured hair, bright red lipstick and on the prowl for a man."
Stephen shuddered. "I still feel filthy. I walked into that office, telling her I was looking for Caitlyn Temple, and the look she gave me . . ."
Wincing sympathetically, Connor patted his arm. "I know. Trust me, I know. Did she offer you a chocolate, then make that joke about aphrodisiacs?"
"She really did do that to you," Stephen said wonderingly.
"I think she'd do it to that tech, Kent," Connor said. "She's that desperate." Then he looked at Stephen. "I think you probably made her day, though."
"Who made who's day?" Lynn asked as she came back through the door, scrambling onto the bed, careful not to lose her ice cream in the process.
"Stephen and Ms Wellesley in the school office," Connor told her.
Lynn shot Stephen a considering look. "She was touching Stephen when Miss Jensen brought me to the office." She took a considering spoon of ice cream, adding, "It was like in that video they showed us that time the policeman came to our class."
"Which video's that?" Connor asked, having a sneaking suspicion about it.
Taking another spoonful placidly, Lynn said, "The one about when you're supposed to scream that someone's not your mum or dad and not to touch you like that."
Knowing that vengeance from his coworker would be swift and thorough if he took the mick about that, Connor found himself shaking as he tried not to laugh. Claudia had no such compunction and was in stitches. Lester, with a small and twisted smile on his face commented to Stephen, "Really, Hart? Was it like that, then?"
"The temptation was there," Stephen admitted, wryly.
Connor couldn't hold back anymore and laughed until his stitches started to hurt.
"What's so funny?" demanded Lynn.
"I'll tell you in a few years if you still remember," Connor promised. "But right now you'd tell all your schoolmates and then people would think I was a bad parent for explaining it to you."
"Is this more becoming a grownup makes you have lots of chemicals in your brain that make you go mad stuff?" Lynn asked.
Stephen, Lester and Claudia all stared. "Becoming a grownup makes you have lots of chemicals in your brain that make you go mad stuff?" Claudia echoed. "What are you telling her?"
"Puberty makes people go mad," Connor said with a shrug. "It's the only rational explanation, really. I figure, best she knows when she's about thirteen everything's going to change, and she's all ready when she starts thinking mad things, like that boys aren't some sort of other species but are interesting to look at."
Claudia sighed. "There is so much damage control I'm going to have to do, it's not even funny."
Stephen thought about it a moment, then said, "Oddly, it makes sense."
"Never have children, Hart," Lester said.
Lynn nodded to herself. "So, it is more chemicals in your brain stuff."
"Did you tell your classmates?" Connor asked.
"No," Lynn said, shaking her head. "They wouldn't believe me if I told them. Patricia said her mum said it was a beautiful process of flowering or something, but I didn't really understand. Then she starting talking about monthly gifts or something and Patricia said she didn't really understand that part at all either."
"Of all the stupid . . ." Claudia trailed off a moment, then said, "You're not going to spend any time with Patricia's mum."
Lester and Stephen exchanged glances, and in a rare moment of perfect accord, fled the room together, leaving Connor alone with Claudia, who spent much of the afternoon querying Lynn and Connor on the precise details of what Lynn had been told about What Happens When You Grow Up.
Connor was startled awake by the sound of someone doing things in the kitchen. Making his way cautiously downstairs, he saw Claudia sitting at the table looking exhausted as she slowly stirred a cup of tea.
"I'm not sure more caffeine will help you sleep," he said.
She started, sending the cup to the floor with a crash. "Oh! Connor, I didn't see you."
"So I see," he said, edging away from the shattered porcelain on the floor. "I'll get the broom."
"Thank you," she said tiredly, starting to collect the larger pieces.
He slipped on a pair of shoes quickly and fetched the broom. He got back just in time to hear her hiss and curse. She was holding a hand, a cut on the palm where she'd been picking up bits of mug. "Hold on," he said, gently pushing her into a chair. He passed her a tissue and quickly swept up the shards and dried the floor. Then he collected the plasters from the bathroom, cleaning up the thankfully small cut and bandaging it. "There. Any particular reason you're up, or just can't sleep?"
She sighed. "Just bad dreams."
"So bad you can't sleep?" Connor asked, concerned.
Tired head on her hand, Claudia sort of shook her head against that hand. "I close my eyes and then all of a sudden, there's that gorgonopsid, trying to eat me. In the office, at home. It's like it's following me."
"Well, I think we can pretty much guarantee one's not following you. Be pretty hard to miss in London," he joked weakly. "Seriously, though. Is something bothering you?"
"I don't know," she told him. "That's part of the problem. I'm worried about Helen Cutter, I'm worried about Nick, about the whole project, but nothing I can put a finger on. If I believed in that sort of thing, I'd think I was having premonitions of some sort."
Eyebrows raised in surprise, Connor said, "You must be tired."
"I know it's foolish," Claudia said defensively. "I can't help it, though. I just . . . I keep seeing it," she told him.
"I'm sorry," he told her. "I didn't mean anything by it, just that you must be tired for it to be getting to you like that."
Grinning a little, she told him, "I half expected you to tell me it was a premonition and to try to determine how."
Connor rolled his eyes. "Right. I may love speculative fiction, but I'm not that far gone." He gave her a speculative look. "Would you like me to distract you a while? See if you can't forget about it enough to fall asleep?"
"I'd appreciate it," Claudia replied. Ten minutes later they were watching Funny Face and Claudia was decrying the value of thinking pink while Connor played devil's advocate and stood up for Lynn's side of things, and more importantly, Lynn's pink fedora, which she wore when she didn't feel like wearing the lavender one.
Halfway through the film Claudia drifted off to sleep, and Connor carefully carried her up to her bed, then fell into bed himself. The next morning, while he was making some adjustments on his database, Claudia came over, and with a strategic smile at Cutter, kissed Connor on the cheek, saying, "Thank you for last night."
The look Cutter levelled at Connor could have shattered glass and he stormed off. "You know, as much as I admire you for taking on the role of dad for Claudia's daughter, it might be easier for all concerned if you both simply admitted it," Stephen said from behind him.
Connor choked. "What?"
"I'm just saying-"
"First of all, Lynn isn't Claudia's daughter, she's mine," Connor snapped, "So if anyone's taking on a role, it's Claudia, and second, I'm just a pawn in her games with Cutter, so don't start on that with me."
Stephen stared. "Your daughter?"
"Yes," Connor grumbled at him. "What did you do, anyhow? Tell Cutter he's got definite proof now of the affair?"
"No," said the tracker, now hesitant. "I didn't want to get in the middle of it all, what with . . ." he paused, then seemed to rethink what he was saying. "So, you and Claudia aren't?"
"No," Connor snapped. "We're not. She saw where Lynn and I were living before and insisted on us moving in with her for Lynn's sake."
The whole conversation seemed to throw the other man off, and he avoided the topic rather strenuously for the next few days. In fact, he didn't broach it at all until they were back in the Forest of Dean. Just as Cutter was about to head through the anomaly, Claudia kissed him, and said, "Come back. I promise, I'll even explain about Connor to you. I promise, I'm really not sleeping with him."
Cutter left, some weird ironic interchange with his ex-wife going on that Connor didn't understand and didn't really want to. There was a long silence after the departure.
"So, you're both going to tell Nick the truth?" Stephen asked, breaking that silence.
Connor shrugged. "I suppose. I mean, he's been going mad." He turned to Claudia, and added with ironic stress, "Claudia."
"All right," she said with a sigh. "I was just so irritated when he leapt to the conclusion I was sleeping with you I just couldn't help letting him think it. Then he persisted."
"Nick's persistent," Stephen told her. "You'll have to get used to that, you know."
She sighed. "I know." She also got progressively more and more uneasy, pacing anxiously. Then Connor got the call from the lab that the bat predator was male. Something flashed past, too fast for anyone to see.
"What happened?" Claudia asked, as they all glanced around, uneasily.
Connor felt a moment of foreboding himself. "I'm not sure," he said, starting to scan the treetops for another bat thing.
"Did you see something?" Claudia asked Stephen.
"Nothing," he replied, beginning to look as nervous as Connor felt. Connor, as much for something to do as anything else, pulled out his compass to check the anomaly.
Claudia turned to him at once. "Is the anomaly getting weaker?"
"No. No change," he replied. They exchanged looks. All her nightmares and premonitions of doom leapt to mind at once. The anomaly pulsed, and in a moment that seemed to move so slowly he could see everything as it went wrong, and too fast to correct, a ripple expanded from the tear in the space-time continuum, too fast for Connor to do more than think he should get her through, into the past, move her outside time before she was erased, and then she was.
Claudia was gone.
But the ripple didn't stop there, because Stephen had been faster than Connor, was closer, so were the SFs. The ripple went through them too, changing them from postures and expressions of alarm, to vague concern and boredom. He had no time to react to any of it, just brace for the ripple to hit him, too.
There was a brief pang of sorrow, wondering how things would be different, and pity for Cutter, who might come back to a world he'd never recognise, then disorientation, then . . .
Connor grimaced at Leek, ever grateful Lester had kept the skeevy little man from finding out about Lynn. God only knew what he'd make of it. The man took the mick enough already, as though somehow Connor were the complete loser of the pair of them.
Cutter came out of the anomaly, shell-shocked, accompanied by Helen Cutter, who proceeded to cheerfully destroy Cutter and Stephen's friendship for no reason other than that she could. "Harpy," he heard Abby mutter.
"No kidding," he muttered back while the drama unfolded.
Then Helen walked back through the anomaly, and Cutter looked around, his face suddenly concerned. "Where's Claudia?" he asked.
Connor frowned, wracking his brain for anyone involved in the project named Claudia, then expanded to his fellow students, other professors . . . nothing.
Lester's querying, "Claudia?" bore out Connor's confusion.
"Where's Claudia Brown?" Cutter demanded, suddenly anxious.
Lester raised a sceptical eyebrow at him. "I don't know anyone of that name."
Looking a little desperate, like he thought this was a joke, Cutter said, "No, come on. Where is she?"
"We really, we . . . we don't know what you're talking about," Stephen told him.
He knew it was the wrong tack, even as the words left his mouth, "Never heard of her."
Cutter lunged at Connor, grabbed his waistcoat, reeling him in and looking a lot like he was going to hit the geek. "What the hell are you talking about? You live with her!"
"Cutter, I don't know her!" Connor desperately struggled to pull away from the man. Abby came to his rescue.
"No one knows her!" she said, lunging forward to pull Cutter off him. Nick let go of him, turning to the anomaly, a look rather a lot like fear on his face.
"Wait, something's wrong," he said. He turned back to them, struggling to put into words something that might be beyond explanation. "This isn't right. Something's gone wrong. Something's happened. Something's changed. We've done something, we've . . . something that we've done has changed the past and she's not here anymore." Something about what Cutter was saying pinged something in the back of Connor's mind, it was a little like when you recognised an actor in an advert and just knew you'd seen them before, but couldn't recall where. The anomaly rippled a few more times, going unstable, and Connor wondered what other upending would happen in his life, now that Cutter seemed to have become disconnected from reality.
He spared a mental apology to Lynn, because it looked like he was going to be late home again.
