He succeeded in blowing out the sides of four aquaria in rapid succession.
Water and fish flooded across the floor as Kit spat curses. "Goddammit! I shouldn't have missed! Not seven times!"
"Maybe he's got to go back to London, after all?" Sven growled. "And you're out of ammo, by the way."
Kit glanced down. The slide had locked back. He'd shot the pistol dry. When he groped in his shirt pocket, he discovered nothing but emptiness. The spare magazine had fallen out during the fight and he hadn't noticed. Careless is stupid, he snarled at himself, and stupid can be fatal.
He mashed the send button on his radio.
"Kit Carson reporting. We're in pursuit, heading into Zone Eighteen! Sven and I are both out of ammo—looks like the bastard can't be killed, after all!" Either that, or he was phenominally lucky.
"Copy that, we have search teams triangulating on your location." In the background, he could hear the station announcer again. Gate Three is opening in three minutes...
"Set up blockades out of Zones Seventeen and Eighteen," Kit gasped as as they skidded around a corner. He slammed one shoulder into a ten-foot wall of stacked aquaria, which shifted with an ominous groan. Water slopped out of the topmost layer. A door slammed back and Lachley's footsteps receded upward. "Oh, hell, he's gone up a stairway!"
"Come again?" the radio sputtered.
"He took the stairs, heading for Commons!"
"Copy that and relaying."
Why was Lachley headed for Commons? Just running blind, heading up, same as many another fugitive, or was he planning something...
Kit's eyes widened. "Holy—Sven, Gate Three!"
He mashed the transmit button again. "I think he's headed for Gate Three! And even if he isn't, leave a corridor open, try to herd him into it!"
"What?" the radio sputtered. "Right into the middle of an incoming tour? Kit, are you out of your— Oh. Roger that. Kit, you are one devious bastard."
"So give me a medal—if this works. Sven, be ready for anything. I'm going to try something dangerous."
"Chasing Jack the Ripper isn't?"
He had a point, there...
How much time? Kit wondered frantically as they plunged up the stairs four at a time. Christ, how much time's left? They burst out onto Commons at the edge of Frontier Town. Chronometer lights flashed steadily overhead. The vast open floor lay deserted, as empty of life as a midnight cemetery. Their footsteps slapped and echoed off the distant girders high overhead. Kit jumped a decorative horse trough filled with goldfish, which Sven whipped around, too short to go over it.
He knew they were close when he felt the savage backlash of subharmonics from the gate. The sound that wasn't a sound vibrated through the vast, echoing stretch of Commons. A security team stood waiting at the entrance to the Wild West Gate's departure lounge, charged with keeping the in-bound tour from re-entering the station. Behind the security officers, the massive gate dilated slowly open, right on schedule. Lachley, running flat out, ran straight toward the rapidly widening black chasm which hovered three feet above the Commons floor and whipped through the open lanes snaking outward from the departures lounge. He clearly intended to shake pursuit by jumping through the moment it opened wide enough.
Kit shouted into the radio, "Get those security officers away from the gate! For God's sake, move 'em out before he veers off!"
Too late! Lachley had seen them. He skidded sideways, trying to vault over a row of chairs. Kit charged, frantically trying to recall where he'd been in early August of 1885. It didn't really matter. He was the only one in position to take out the Ripper. Kit's flying tackle caught Lachley's knees—and sent them both reeling straight through the gaping black hole of the Denver Gate.
They fell headlong down the dizzying drop. The station end of the tunnel lay at the end of a spyglass inverted, far away and shrinking. Lachley brought the knife up even as they fell like doomed meteors. The Denver end of the gate loomed huge. Kit tried to brace himself, wondered what it felt like to die... Then jarred his back. He sprawled, badly winded, across the dirt floor of the Time Tours livery stable. John Lachley snarled above him, teeth bared, knife poised to strike—
And almost made it to the floor.
His whole body wavered like candle smoke and vanished, a shadow eaten whole by a moonless night. For just an instant, a lingering look of shocked surprise floated where Lachley's face had been. Then his blood-stained knife clattered to the dirt beside Kit's ear and a heavy pouch thumped down beside it, inside a flutter of stolen, up-time clothes.
Sven thudded into the stable at Kit's feet, grunting on impact.
Kit lay flat, just gulping air, oblivious to the shocked demands erupting on all sides. Furious guides tried to calm hysterical tourists who had just watched a man die, shadowing himself. Several women were sobbing, abruptly too terrified to go anywhere near the open gate. Kit shut his eyes for long, shuddering moments, trying to convince his own muscles that it was safe to move, now.
He was still alive.
Jack the Ripper was finally dead.
Slowly, wincing at pulled muscles and bruises, Kit picked himself up and dusted himself off and gave Sven a hand up, as well. Tour guides were shouting above the general roar. Kit picked up Lachley's knife, plucking it out of the dirt with trembling fingers, and managed to retrieve the heavy pouch. He said to the nearest guide, "It's safe to bring them into the station, now. Quarantine was just lifted." Then he jerked his head once at Sven, turned his back on the whole shouting mob, and stepped back through the open Wild West Gate to go home.
Once there, he intended to get quietly, massively drunk.
I must be crazy...
Jenna Caddrick couldn't believe she'd agreed to this. Couldn't believe she'd just stepped through the Britannia Gate to confront her father in front of half the world's television cameras. Camera flashes and television crews lit up the whole departures lounge, illuminating a sea of spectators beyond the velvet-rope barricades. A sniper could be lurking anywhere in that vast, heaving mob. Noah Armstrong, silent at her side, descended the stairs with eyes narrowed, intent on the business of keeping them alive long enough to testify. She rubbed her chin nervously, wishing Paula Booker had left her muttonchop whiskers in place. But Noah had inisted the surgeon remove the implanted disguise and restore Jenna's face to her own appearance, for the benefit of the cameras. Jenna felt naked, defenseless.
Below them, Malcolm Moore's gurney had nearly reached the Commons floor, followed closely by Sid Kaederman's—or rather, Gideon Guthrie's. The man who'd trailed her from Colorado to London, bent on murder, was unconscious, his burnt hands cradled in special harnesses above his chest. Margo Smith walked beside her fiancé's gurney, holding his hand as they carried him down to the station's medical crews. Jenna's throat closed at the thought of what these people had risked for her sake. Malcolm had nearly been killed and Skeeter Jackson had undergone plastic surgery, rearranging his whole face. Skeeter had been shot outside the Carlton Club, as well, saved only by his Kevlar vest, and had almost been killed at the bell foundry...