"What do you use?" Skeeter asked dubiously, eyeing the stack of filthy firearms.

"Soap. Not detergent, mind, but soap and water. Modern shooters usually use one of the liquid-formula soaps or even chemical cleaners that don't require water, but you won't have that luxury down the Wild West gate. You'll carry soap flakes or shave thin strips from an ordinary soap bar, dissolve them in hot water, and scrub the disassembled pieces with gun brushes. Then you oil every piece thoroughly to prevent rust. You'll carry a small flask of a modern substitute that looks and feels like sperm-whale oil and works even better, without killing an endangered species." She nodded to the heavy little flask Skeeter held.

Kit grunted softly, scrubbing hard at his disassembled Frontier Double Action with a stiff, soapy brush. "Beats what I've used, on occasion. A lot of shooters in the Old West carried strips of leather wrapped around lumps of lard. It works, but man, oh, man, does it smell."

Skeeter chuckled. "Hot iron, burnt powder, and rancid pig fat? Yeah, I'll bet it does. Of course," he added wryly, "I did grow up with people whose idea of haute cuisine was tsampa and kvess. Anything rancid smells bad, take my word for it. Okay, show me how to shave soap flakes and disassemble these babies."

Once Kit and Ann were satisfied that Skeeter could load, shoot, disassemble, clean the pistols and shotgun, then successfully reassemble them in working order, Ann loaded him down with ammo and cleaning supplies, gunbelts and holsters, all the miscellaneous gear he'd need for carrying the weapons down the Wild West Gate. Then, and only then, did Ann and Kit consent to let him leave the gun range. Reeking of burnt gunpowder and gun oil and reeling on his feet, Skeeter took the elevator up with Kit, who clapped him on the shoulder and told him he was doing fine, just fine, then got out on a different floor and left Skeeter to make it home under his own steam.

The hot shower he crawled into felt marvellous. As water sluiced over his skin, carrying away sweat and the reek of burnt powder, Skeeter discovered he couldn't shake the feeling that something important was eluding him, niggling at the back of his mind, something that didn't quite fit.

He cast back through his memory to the day of the first station riot, the day Ianira Cassondra and her family had vanished without a trace. He finally put his finger on what was bothering him. If Jenna Caddrick's abductors had kidnapped them, who had rescued Marcus and the girls at the daycare center? Somebody had shot dead two terrorists attempting to snatch the girls. It just didn't make sense that the Ansar Majlis would've killed two of their own, did it? The terrorist leaders he and Kit had nailed were hotly protesting the kidnapping charge, claiming they'd never touched Jenna Caddrick.

Nobody on station believed them, of course, but given what had happened during that first station riot, it was just possible they were telling the truth. What if someone else was involved? Someone who'd known those murderous fanatics were planning to kill Ianira and her family? It was certain that somebody had broken up the attempted kidnapping at the daycare center—there'd been plenty of terror-stricken witnesses. Where was that somebody now? And who had he been? And if the Ansar Majlis hadn't snatched Caddrick's daughter, who had?

Skeeter narrowed his eyes and slicked back wet hair, scrubbing at his hide with soap while he went over the whole thing in his mind again, from the first sign of trouble to the disastrous end of the first station riot. Come to think of it, there'd been two people involved in the initial attack on Ianira, neither of whom fit the profile of terrorists carrying out a hit mission. There was that wild-eyed kid who'd shot the construction worker—one of the same crew that had later tried to kill Bergitta—and somebody else, who had knocked Skeeter and Ianira to the floor.

At the time, Skeeter had thought that second person had shoved them out of the way to keep the wild-eyed kid from killing Ianira, but now he wasn't so sure. Killing that construction worker might've been accidental, if the kid had been aiming at Ianira. But maybe that kid had been aiming at the construction worker, instead? Who'd been standing right behind Ianira? If that were true, they might not be looking at a relatively simple case of kidnappers running with a hostage and setting up a hit against Ianira on their way through the station.

Not at all.

A scowl tugged the edges of Skeeter's mouth down as spray cascaded down his chest. The senator's hired detective hadn't mentioned anything like this in his report. Skeeter narrowed his eyes, trying to recall every detail of that first riot. He'd glimpsed the wild-eyed kid brandishing a black-powder pistol, right about the time someone crashed into Skeeter and Ianira, sweeping them to the floor. And the kid had yelled something, too. The word "no," and a cry of fear, all slurred together like, "No! Ahh—"

Skeeter gasped and swallowed a mouthful of water.

Not "No, ahh—"

Noah! Noah Armstrong!

Skeeter blinked water out of his eyes, mind whirling in sudden confusion. Noah Armstrong was the terrorist leader who'd grabbed Jenna Caddrick. The Ansar Majlis killer who wanted the Lady of Heaven Temples destroyed. But why would a terrorist's hired gun intervene to stop his own hit, when that hit was about to be successfully carried out by his own minions on station? A coil of ice-cold fear slithered its way into the pit of Skeeter's belly despite the hot water cascading down his skin. Just what had they stumbled into the middle of, here?

If Noah Armstrong had been trying to stop Ianira Cassondra's murder... Then the information the senator had given them about Noah Armstrong and his plot to kidnap Jenna was suspect. Which meant the FBI and the senator's paid detective were wrong, too, dead wrong. He'd have to tell Kit, warn him about what they might be walking into, down the Wild West Gate. But not here, not on station. Not within reach of Senator Caddrick's electronic ears and eyes. Skeeter muttered under his breath and finished his shower. More trouble we need like a white rhino needs Chinese horn hunters.

But if Skeeter was right, more trouble had landed squarely in their laps. Even worse, it looked like Skeeter was going to have to get them out of it. And that made for a very long and sleepless night.

Chapter Four

The man travelling under the name Sid Kaederman knew something had gone seriously wrong the moment he stepped into Time Terminal Eighty-Six. While children shrieked and zoomed in and out of line, parents burbled enthusiastically about which gates they planned to tour, bored couriers waited to haul through deliveries of critical supplies, and newlyweds cooed, glued together at lips and palms, Sid Kaederman focused his entire attention on the angry, close-mouthed station security and BATF agents scrutinizing new arrivals and their identification papers.

By the time his own turn for scrutiny came, Sid Kaederman—whose real name and face were a far cry from the ones he currently carried—was sweating blood and planning out in exquisitely barbaric detail exactly what he would do to John Caddrick and his missing offspring when he finally caught up to them. The time terminal's public address system blared nonstop, belting out messages in half-a-dozen different languages until Sid's eardrums ached and his temper approached breakpoint. He bit down and held it, though, not daring to draw attention to himself.

He shuffled forward in a long, snaking line, as thick and variagated as a reticulated python, and cleared various checkpoints: baggage handling, ticket verification to validate his Primary Gate pass, medical stations where his records were scanned in and checked against his identification paperwork. Sid had no real qualms about the quality of his I.D. He could afford the best in the business. It was the other security arrangements that worried him. Adding insult to injurious invasion of his accustomed privacy, Sid Kaederman found himself, along with every other in-bound tourist entering the station, subjected to the most thorough search of luggage and person conducted in the history of TT-86.