TimeRiders: City of Shadows (Book 6) by Alex Scarrow Read Free Book Online

coming
     along?’ Rashim looked sheepish. ‘Am I in your … what do you call
     it? Your
team
?’
    ‘Yuh … I guess,’ Maddy
     smiled. ‘Sure, if you want?’
    He smiled. ‘You’re joking,
     right? A choice between staying in 2001 or going back to 2070?’ His face cracked
     with a wide grin. ‘It’s a head-slap. I’d very much like to
     stay.’
    ‘Then that’s the deal.’
     She offered her hand across the table. ‘We need some kind of oath or something,
     but I guess a handshake’s good for now.’
    They reached across and shook awkwardly. The
     sort of uneasy gesture of two geeks unsure whether to high-five, chest-bump or
     knuckle-kiss and in the end pulling off a fumbledcombination and Maddy
     nearly knocking her drink over. Sal rolled her eyes.
    ‘So, we’ll set off tomorrow
     morning. Have a last night in the arch.’
    Liam nodded. ‘A last night to say
     goodbye to the ol’ place.’
    Maddy sighed. ‘It’s a
     freakin’ brick archway. That’s all.’
    ‘No, that’s not fair. I’d
     say it was a bit more than that.’
    ‘Yeah, me too,’ said Sal.
     ‘It was sort of
home
.’
    Maybe they were both right. It had begun to
     feel a bit like that. ‘Let’s just look ahead, guys. OK? We’ve still
     got a job to do. And maybe now … we’re doing the job on our terms?
     We’re calling the shots.’
    That felt like a leader-ish sort of thing to
     say. Like the right thing to say. Maddy looked sideways at Foster and he gave her a
     subtle wink.

Chapter 6
    11 September 2001, New York
    Liam lifted the last of the bags into the
     back of the SuperChief. Maddy took them from him. ‘That the last of the stuff
     piled in the middle?’
    He looked back into the dark interior of the
     archway. ‘Aye.’
    ‘Good. Because there’s no room
     left anyway.’ She ducked back inside, looking down the middle of the vehicle, an
     assault course of plastic bags and cardboard boxes. And that was just their essentials.
     ‘I guess I’ll find somewhere to tuck these. What’s in these bags
     anyway?’
    ‘Some of me books.’
    ‘We can replace books,
     Liam.’
    He shrugged. ‘And a few
     comics.’
    Maddy sighed, leaned over and pulled open
     one of the bags. ‘Oh, come on … and the Nintendo too?’
    ‘Well …’ He looked
     sheepish. ‘I thought …’
    ‘Jesus, we can pick another one of
     those up at any computer game store.’ She shook her head. ‘Just the
     difficult things. Just things we can’t easily replace, I’m
     afraid.’
    He sighed and swung the bag ruefully into
     the open rubbish bin beside the vehicle.
    Maddy poked her nose into his other bag.
     ‘OK, I guess these books can come aboard.’ She took the bag off him and
     disappeared inside the RV.
    Liam looked back under the shutter. It was dark
     and gloomy: a vacant space once more, strewn with the cables and rubbish, boxes of
     tools, cartons of nuts and bolts, spools of electrical wire. A desk with the gutted
     remains of a dozen Dell computers left beneath it.
    A large wardrobe that had contained, until
     this morning at least, a bizarre collection of garments. A twelfth-century leather
     jerkin, two Wehrmacht army tunics. Several Roman togas. An Edwardian-era suit and
     lady’s gown, a steward’s tunic and more. The clothes were all squirrelled
     away aboard the RV now.
    It looked like the abandoned premises of
     some black-market, cash-in-hand PC repair shop. A sweatshop, a squat, a student
     dosshouse; the Aladdin’s cave of some foraging vagrant.
    He offered it a lukewarm farewell wave.
Thanks for the shelter.
And smiled with amusement at his own mawkish
     sentimentality. How daft it was that a pile of damp bricks and crumbling mortar could
     make him feel guilty for abandoning it like this.
    The RV’s motor rattled to life.
    ‘Come on, Liam.’ Maddy’s
     head was poking out of the passenger-side window at the front. ‘The sooner
     we’re off, the better!’
    ‘Aye.’ He raised his hand in