Title: Time Lost
Series: Out of Time, Book Two
Author: C.B. Lewis
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: September 7, 2020
Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 114600
Genre: Science Fiction, LGBTQIA+, science fiction, gay, British, detective/police officer, law enforcement, crime procedural, engineer, programmer/decoder, murder, mystery, age gap, interracial, dirty talk, spanking, outrageous flirtation
Synopsis
A dead intruder. A missing scientist. A terrified child.
No one wants a dramatic case first thing on a Monday morning, but thatâs exactly what Detective Inspector Jacob Ofori got. It should be open and shut, but scientist Tom Sanders is nowhere to be found, a dead man seems to have appeared from thin air, and the Temporal Research InstituteâSandersâs companyâis strangely uncooperative about assisting with the case.
Jacobâs only source is TRI engineer, Kit Rafferty. He clearly wants to help, but thereâs only so much the man can and will tell him. As more and more impossible questions mount up, Jacob finds himself facing a reality that could change his world.
Excerpt
Time Lost
C.B. Lewis © 2020
All Rights Reserved
Chapter One
At first, everyone assumed it was a burglary.
The postman was the first on the scene. Heâd arrived early in the morning to make a delivery to the house in question and found the front door wedged open. No one answered when he rang the bell, so he called the police. The two constables arrived to investigate, and they were the ones who found the body.
It escalated after that.
Not even noon, Jacob thought grimly. Hell of a way to start a Monday.
His autopod shuttled along, arcing off from the main highway. As much as he missed manual controls of old-fashioned cars and early autocars, he appreciated the driverless function of the pod because it gave him time to skim through the images from the crime scene en route.
He wouldnât get a feel for the scene until he got there, but the images let him know what he was about to walk into. There were signs of a struggle in the room where the body was found, and plenty of blood, but the rest of the house seemed undisturbed.
âControl to Delta Seven. ETA to destination?â
Jacob leaned forward and cleared the images from the display on the windscreen, bringing up his location on the map. Beyond it, he could see the country roads through the glass.
âETA fifteen minutes, Control,â he replied, then muttered under his breath, âInto the backside of nowhere.â
It was half an hour beyond the miles of sprawling suburbs of the city in the middle of green fields and close to a forest. The nearest amenities had to be at least four miles from the building. He shook his head. What kind of person chose to live all the way out there anymore? It wasnât as if there were a shortage of housing in the city.
A chime indicated another image had been received.
Jacob opened it up and leaned forward, frowning.
A door, barely visible, blended into the pattern of the wall. No handle, no visible hinges.
âYou seeing this, sir?â Constable Foleyâs voice rang through the speaker.
âI am indeed, Foley,â he said, widening the image. âIs that a safe room?â
âLooks that way, sir,â the constable replied. âThe dust in front of it suggests a box was moved and recently. Looks like someone might be in there.â
Smart girl, Jacob thought with approval.
âAny response?â
âNot yet, sir, but if they were attackedââ
âThey might not be capable of replying,â Jacob finished. âKeep trying.â He minimised the image and looked out through the windscreen. âI have visual on you, Foley. Be with you soon.â
Ahead of him, the house was visible between the trees. The red brick structure had to be at least two centuries old, but even from a distance, the modern touches were obvious. The windows were thick and secure. The roof had been replaced with faux slate.
The autopod purred to a halt beside the four other vehicles lining the gravel courtyard, and the door slid aside. Jacob stepped out and glanced at the other vehicles. He recognised the coronerâs transport pod, and the standard blue-and-white- patterned squad pod, but the other two were probably the homeownerâs.
Foley opened the front door to greet him.
Half his age, she hadnât been with the force long enough to be as jaded as him yet. She smiled in greeting. âMorning, sir.â
He winced. âSay afternoon. It makes it a little more bearable.â
She laughed. âYou want a summary, sir?â
âI read up on it on the way over. Any word on the owner?â
âThomas Sanders,â Foley said, leading him toward the house. âForty-eight. Widower with one young son. Heâs a well-reputed scientist and engineer. High up in some kind of historical and scientific research program in the city, the Temporal Research Institution.â
âHave you been able to make contact with him?â
Foley shook her head, her sandy ponytail swinging. She offered him overalls to cover his suit. âWeâve tried his business and private numbers. His colleagues said heâs been on a leave of absence for health reasons for several weeks. Our best bet is the safe room.â
âAny sign of the son?â
âWe assume heâs with his father,â Foley replied.
âDo we have an ID for the body yet?â
She hesitated in the hallway. âThatâs the strange thing, sir. We canât find anything on him. His prints arenât in the system. No DNA trace either. We still need to run facial recognition, but so far, weâve got nothing.â
âThatâs not unusual.â
Foley looked at him. âThereâs something off about it all. Iâll show you.â
The house was spacious inside. The lower level was split into four rooms, all branching off from a wide, sunlit hall. Foley led him down the hall and to one of the rooms at the back, her covered boots thumping on the wooden floors.
Jacob stopped in the doorway, taking a moment, then stepped across the threshold. The crime scene team was still at work.
The room appeared to be some kind of laboratory with workbenches running along one wall. Another wall was covered in old-fashioned whiteboards with all kinds of incomprehensible text and codes marked on them in half a dozen colours. Jacob studied all of it for a moment, but whatever Sanders was working on, it was far beyond Jacobâs barely adequate physics A level.
There were little machines here and there, suspended from the boards by wires. Spools of wire and gears were scattered across the floor. Several boxes had been upended from shelves and lay on their sides.
In the middle of it all, the body lay face down on the floor, a bloodied hammer close at hand.
Danni Michaels was working on the body and glanced up with a nod. âSir.â
âCause of death?â Jacob said, keeping his eyes off the dead manâs face.
âLooks like blunt force trauma,â Danni replied, nudging her magnifying glasses up her nose with her knuckles. âI donât think itâs a wild guess to say the weapon was that hammer. It was a single blow, landed here.â
Jacob gritted his teeth and looked. The left side of the manâs forehead was ruptured. His eyes were open, and he had an expression of surprise on his rigid, bloody face. He was young. Maybe thirties. Dark-haired. His eyes were dark, the pupils flared wide open, but death sometimes did that. Blood had spread in a wide, sticky pool around his body. Jacob swallowed down the familiar rising acid.
Christ, he hated the messy ones.
He glanced around the room.
A pair of slippers, several steps away from the blood pool, had left bloody prints on the polished floor. The owner must have kicked them off, and theyâd ended up at least three feet from each other. Not good shoes for running, slippers. If heâmenâs slippers, size nine approximatelyâhad already knocked down the man on the floor, then there had to be another assailant whom he was running from.
âAny sign of this manâs accomplice?â
âAccomplice?â Foley asked.
Jacob gestured to the slippers. It was easier than looking at the body. âYou donât try and run from an unconscious, nearly dead man. There was someone else here.â
âWe havenât seen any sign of anyone else,â Foley replied. âSorry, sir. I didnât even notice that.â
He offered her a brief smile. âThatâs why Iâm a DI, Foley.â He motioned to the body. âYou said there was something off?â
Foley nodded, crouching by the body. âTake a look at his right eye.â
Jacob went down beside her, propping his forearms on his knees. It took him a moment, but then he saw what she was pointing out: The pupil wasnât blown. There was no iris at all.
âWhat the hellâŠâ He leaned closer. âMichaels, can I borrow your magnifiers?â
She handed them over and obligingly shone the torch over the manâs eyes. âClever, isnât it?â
Jacob peered down and frowned. âA synthetic bionic eyeball? Is that even possible?â
Michaels shook her head. âIâve heard of people developing them, but Iâve never heard of any successful trials.â She squatted by the body and grinned. âI canât wait to get it out and see what itâs made of.â
âAnd thereâs one of those images I didnât need,â Jacob murmured, peering through the magnifier again. The pupil seemed to be a focusing lens. High-quality, high-end technology. âFoley, have you checked anywhere that might carry tech this advanced?â
âWeâre putting together a list,â she said. âBut from what weâre hearing back, this is off the charts, sir. No one has heard of technology like this before, or if they have, theyâre not telling us about it.â
He straightened up. âYou said this Sanders was a scientist?â
âDoctor in physics and engineering,â she confirmed.
âCould he have made something like this?â
She hesitated. âFrom all accounts, he didnât deal in human biology or bio-artificing.â
âDoesnât mean he couldnât.â Jacob ran a hand over his face. âWell, if we canât find this man by standard identification, maybe we can find him by the eye he doesnât have. Danni, we need all the information you can get us as soon as possible.â
âSir,â Danni said at once.
Jacob turned to Foley. âWhereâs Singh?â
âStill trying to get into the safe room.â She jerked her head. âThis way.â
The safe room was up the stairs in what appeared to be a playroom. Windows lined one of the walls, the others covered in posters and drawings. Kidsâ toys and games were scattered all over the place. Singh was working his way along the one blank wall with a scanner.
Jacob took in the mess. âYou said Sanders has a son?â
âBen,â Foley confirmed.
âAbout eight?â
Foley looked at him in surprise. âSeven and a half. Is this another one of those detective things?â
Jacob chuckled. âThis time, itâs one of those dad things.â
Singh glanced over his shoulder at them, sighing in frustration. âFoley, I know you said to scan for a high intensity of fingerprints on the wall, but this whole wall is fingerprints.â He nodded at Jacob. âAfternoon, sir.â
âSingh.â Jacob approached, studying the wall. âItâs very smoothly done, isnât it?â He rubbed his short beard thoughtfully with his fingertips. âNo visible buttons or latches anywhere?â
âNone we could find,â Foley said. âI thought it might be a pressure-point system, but seems not. We requested an expert, but theyâve been delayed.â
âI think we need to un-delay them,â Jacob said, touching his earbud to activate it. âIf Sanders is wounded and inside there, we need to get him out. If not, we need confirmation, because this could be an abduction.â
While they waited, Jacob had gone down to the laboratory to take another look at the whiteboards. He didnât see what it had to do with Sandersâs work at the Temporal Research Institution. A quick search suggested the institution specialised in identifying historical discrepancies and confirming historical events. It could be something to do with locating old records and creating algorithms, he supposed. You would need a specialised engineer to do that.
âSir?â
Jacob turned. âFoley?â
âThe smith is here. I thought you might want to be present if he can open the door.â
They headed back up the stairs to the playroom. The body had been removed in the hour before the locksmith arrived, the crime scene unit now working their way out from the house across the grounds, searching for trace evidence of the intruders.
The locksmith was already working on the wall with a scanning device.
âApparently,â Singh said, joining them, âall safe room doors come installed with a registration chip, in case the mechanism needs to be deactivated in an emergency.â
âNot unlike this,â Jacob observed. âUseful.â
The locksmith glanced over. âItâs a recent make. Give me two minutes.â
In the end, he took less than thirty seconds, and the door swung outward.
Inside, there was a room big enough for a family, but only one person was there. A small tawny-haired boy shrank back into the corner of the room, his arms wrapped around his legs, his face bone-white.
Jacob motioned for the smith and the two constables to back off, and crouched a couple of feet away from the door.
âHey,â he murmured.
The boy was shivering, and tears rolled down his face from swollen, red-rimmed eyes.
Jacob took out his badge, laid it on the floor, and slid it across to the boy. âItâs okay. Iâm a policeman. My nameâs Jacob.â He watched as the boy tentatively leaned forward and looked at the badge. âAre you Ben?â
The boy nodded. âWhereâs my dad?â His voice shook as much as he was.
âWeâre trying to find him now.â Jacob offered a hand. âDo you want to come out? You donât need to stay in there.â
âDad told me to stay here.â Ben wrapped his arms tighter around his legs. âHe told me to, until he came to get me.â
âI know.â Jacob knelt and sat back on his heels. âWe want him to come and get you, too, Ben, but right now, I think heâd want you to be safe, donât you? How about we keep you safe?â
âP-promise?â
Jacob nodded. âPromise.â
Ben got unsteadily to his feet. His trousers were sodden, and there was vomit on the front of his shirt. The poor kid must have been terrified. Jacob knelt up, offering both his hands, and Benâs icy fingers wrapped around his.
âThere you go,â Jacob said as gently as he could, drawing Ben back out. âYouâre safe now.â
The little boy gave a sob and stumbled forward and wrapped his arms around Jacobâs neck, clinging to him. Jacob scooped him up and rose to his feet with the boy in his arms. He rubbed his hand in circles on Benâs back.
âYouâre okay,â he murmured. âYouâre okay.â
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Meet the Author
C.B. Lewis has been making up nonsense since she was able to talk. Now, she puts it into computers and turns it into books. She is chuffed to bits to officially be yet another one of the collective of authors from Edinburgh. Find C.B. Lewis on Facebook.
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Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Raised in Iran, Ghiassi is a renaissance in the field of art! At the age 10 after the separation of his parents he along with his father and sister moved to Iran. He soon began school in a Farsi language school and easily became adapted. In his teen years he discovered himself a dilatent in the field of art by sowing clothing, painting, dancing and high school plays. Ghiassi is a graduate with a BA in Persian literature. At the age 24 he returned to America, served as a US Marine reservist and soon found himself obsessed with writing and a brilliant outlet to manage his heavy luggage of trauma and pain. He currently now resides in Southern California, studying film and directing as an actors student in hopes to one day transform The Handsome into a full length feature.
Moonbeams over Atlanta 