“Jackson!”
He glanced up just in time to see the handcuffs. He was so off-balance and exhausted from the fight, from the desperate rush to get Bergitta to a doctor, he didn’t even have the strength or presence of mind to slip out of the way. Benson slapped the cuffs around his wrists, cold and terrifying, and tightened them down with a savage twist. “We’ve got a basement full of bodies, Jackson! And for once, you’re not gonna wriggle out of it! Not with Caddrick on station, threatening to shut us down!”
Too badly shaken to do more than stumble, Skeeter followed numbly when Benson hauled him past gaping orderlies, nurses, newsies, and injured tourists. Ten minutes later, Skeeter was in the aerie high above Commons, facing down Ronisha Azzan, Shangri-La’s tall deputy station manager. She’d clearly taken over when the feds had dragged Bull Morgan away to jail. Like Time Tours CEO Granville Baxter, Ronisha Azzan claimed Masai heritage and wore richly patterned African textiles done up in expensive suits. At the moment, she towered over Skeeter, glowering down at him from the other side of Bull’s desk, while Benson blocked the exit, standing between Skeeter and the elevator doors. Skeeter stood swaying, wrists aching where the too-tight cuffs were cutting the skin, badly shaken and beginning to despair.
Ronisha Azzan said coldly, “We’ve taken into custody half-a-dozen down-timers on murder charges, Skeeter. What I want to know is—“
The elevator doors slid open with a soft ping! and Kit Carson crashed the party.