He swung his legs out from under him until he was kneeling on the rafter, one hand pressed to the roof to steady himself. He brushed his eye with the heel of his hand, as if to swipe away sand, but then Jillian realized it wasn’t sand.
“Come here,” she said softly. She didn’t care what her watch said. Let him think what he wanted when she vanished. Hadn’t he said something about falling and hitting his head, and then she’d vanished? After today, she would never see him again, but she knew—she knew—that like him, she would remember him to her dying breath.
“Come here,” she said again. This time she was giving him a kiss worth remembering.
He edged toward her on the narrow rafter, seemingly unafraid of the six- or seven-foot fall below him. When their lips met this time, hers parted softly. She wrapped a hand behind his neck, laughing when sand spilled from his collar, and then she kissed him again, hungrily. There was no 1918, no 1908, no 1903, no twenty-first century. There was only now, here where land met the edge of the Atlantic, here where the wind howled. There were only the two of them, his mouth pressed to her mouth, warm and real and hers.
When her watch alarm sounded, it took her several seconds to place the sound. Everett pulled out of the kiss first.
“Do you hear something?” he said, his brow furrowed over his clear eyes.
Jillian swallowed. Thirty seconds. She would vanish, and he would see it. Twenty-eight seconds. Edmund had survived seeing Halley vanish, hadn’t he? The Edmund who remained in the sixteenth century had gone on to live a good life. Twenty-five seconds.
“I’m going to disappear,” she whispered. Her voice sounded husky.
His brow furrowed.
Nineteen seconds.
“Don’t look for me. Just know this: I’ll be fine.”
Sixteen seconds.
“And you’ll see me again, one day. I promise.”
Twelve seconds.
“I’m sorry I can’t stay.” Her voice was a bare whisper, like the wind whistling around the camp.
Ten seconds.
They stared into each other’s eyes.
Five seconds.
“Don’t forget me,” she said. And then she closed her eyes, waiting for the tug of space–time.
Four. Three. Two.
Everett’s lips on hers.
One.
50
· JILLIAN ·
Montecito, the Present
His lips were still touching hers as both of them tumbled into the twenty-first century. A sort of giddiness filled Jillian. He’d come with her. She’d brought him. Kept him. Saved him. Her eyes fluttered open; she had to make sure he was real—was really and truly with her. A pair of well-worn leather boots. A tweedy jacket spilling sand on the platform. A motoring cap still clutched in one hand. A handkerchief tucked neatly into an upper pocket.
He was here. He was real.
Euphoria. That was the word for what she was feeling. She watched as Everett’s eyes flew open. As he tried to take in the suddenly changed surroundings.
“Where are we?” he asked, raising his voice above the noise of the machine. His gaze traveled up the curve of the Tesla coils. He gave a quick shake of his head, as if the scene might shift to one he understood.
“We’ve made a journey,” Jillian said. Suddenly her emotions shifted.
What had she done?
Everett was a living, breathing, autonomous soul for whom she’d as good as made an irrevocable choice. She could have warned him. Could have said he must not touch her.
What had she done?
“Where are we?” he asked again. “What place is this? I felt myself . . . falling.” At this he stood, and after brushing sand from his trousers, he reached to help Jillian up, if she wanted help.
She accepted the hand. As she stood, she heard the shiver of thousands of grains of sand from the Outer Banks—sand from 1903—falling from her motoring coat. She stared at the sand. She had been there, and now she was here. Shrugging free of the heavy coat, she draped it over the podium.
“What is that sound?” asked Everett. “I declare, it is as noisy as one of my father’s factories.”
Jillian glanced at the time machine.
“It will quiet down in a moment,” said Jillian.
“Miss Applegate?”
“Call me Jillian, please.”
“Jillian, what is this place?”
She took a deep breath. “It’s hard to explain . . .” Her hands worried the edge of her borrowed bodice.
“Go on, then,” said Everett, smiling. “I promise I shall listen most patiently.”
“Well . . . there are people who said humans would never fly, right?”
“Plenty of people say that.” Everett let out a single triumphant laugh. “I reckon the Wright brothers just proved ’em all wrong!”
“Exactly. Until someone did it, people thought traveling through air was impossible.”
Everett looked confused. “We’re the only ones who saw it. Just a handful of us.”
“So,” Jillian continued, “in the same way that it’s possible to travel through air, there are other things people will travel through one day—things that you or I might call impossible, but we’d be wrong, because someone will figure out a way you can travel through them.”
Everett frowned. “Like . . . ice? Or . . . Earth itself? Or the heavens?”
They weren’t bad guesses, but he was stuck imagining the physical world.
“Yes. People will do those things. But I meant something else.”
“Where are we?” Everett’s voice had a more demanding edge to it.
She’d evaded the question long enough. “Not where,” she replied, “but when.”
Everett shook his head, uncomprehending. He drifted a few feet away, examining the Tesla coils with curiosity.
“One of the things people say you can’t travel through is time,” continued Jillian. “But you can. It’s possible to travel through time just like Mr. Orville Wright traveled through the air this morning. I mean, not this morning. The morning of December 17, 1903. Everett, I’ve pulled you from one time and into another. You’ve traveled to my time.”
“Your time?” Everett’s clear eyes seemed to cloud. “What is your time?”
“This is the twenty-first century.”
Everett’s eyes flew wide. “Tarnation,” he mumbled under his breath. His eyes searched the room in which they stood. “We’re not in . . . 1903?”
Jillian shook her head slowly. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. The machine had quieted to a mere susurration. “I’m so sorry.”
Everett stood completely still for a count of five and then crossed rapidly until he stood directly in front of Jillian. He lifted her face in his hands and kissed her until she couldn’t breathe. Until the room was spinning. Until she forgot how sorry she was that she’d brought him here without explaining. Until it was just the two of them, Jillian and a young man who had loved her for ten minutes, for five years, for a century.
When he released her, she found herself sucking in a breath, hungry for air.
“Thank you for bringing me here,” he said. “How long do we have? When do I have to go back? How much can you show me?”
“Um . . .” So many questions. Such big questions. “We have . . . all the time. I can show you anything. But Everett—” She hesitated. “I can’t actually take you back.”
“But you just said people can travel through time—”
“Only in one direction,” said Jillian. “That is, I mean, it’s not about direction so much as it is that once you’re here, you . . . belong to this timeline and space–time won’t let you return—not permanently, anyway. Sort of like how Mr. Wright could only stay in the air so long and then had to land again.”
“I don’t understand,” said Everett.
“I don’t either. Not entirely.”
“So I’m going to . . . to live here? In the twenty-first century?”
Jillian bit her lo
wer lip before replying. “I’m afraid so.”
“Does mankind travel by air in this age? As well as by . . . time?”
“Oh, yes,” replied Jillian. “Everyone flies now. If you want to go anywhere, you can fly there. But most people do not travel through time. That is not normal. It’s a secret, in fact. You can’t go telling people, or they’ll think you’re crazy.”
Everett placed a hand on the side of Jillian’s face. “Maybe I am crazy. Maybe I’m living inside a dream.”
“I should have warned you,” she whispered. “I should have explained you would come with me if we were touching.”
Brushing two fingers along the side of her face, Everett stopped at the corner of her lips. She shivered. When Everett spoke again, his voice was just above a whisper.
“Would it have been possible for you to . . . to remain in 1903?”
She shook her head. “That’s what I was trying to tell you. That I had to leave. That you couldn’t call on me because I wouldn’t be there.”
“Well, if you had asked me what I wanted,” said Everett, a lazy smile playing over his mouth. “I would have replied I’d like to come with you to your century.” He shrugged. “If you had asked.”
Jillian felt heat rising from her collarbones, flaring upward. Her eyes fell to Everett’s mouth, those beautiful full lips. She was just about to kiss him again when a loud sound caught her attention. Someone was breaking into the basement. Someone was at the door.
51
· JESÚS TORRES, JD ·
Montecito, the Present
Jesús Torres had a problem. A basement full of problems, actually. He had no idea how Khan had gotten some of the items stored in the basement down the stairs, and even less idea how he was supposed to get them back up the stairs. Some of it, no doubt, would just have to remain in the basement, becoming the property of whoever bought the estate. And then there was the issue of what belonged to whom. Before yesterday’s chance run-in with Dr. Littlewood, Torres had assumed everything in the basement was Khan’s. Why wouldn’t it be?
But after running a few checks on Dr. Littlewood last night, Torres had concluded Littlewood didn’t seem the sort of man to lie and was probably telling the truth about the large piece of science equipment being on “loan” to Khan. It was a bit strange that Littlewood seemed amenable to purchasing it, but in Torres’s limited experience with physicists, they were an odd bunch.
Meanwhile, Torres was on his way back to the estate to inventory what was in that basement. He’d left early to avoid traffic out of LA, and he’d made great time. It was still an hour before dawn when Torres pulled up to the main house. He was glad he hadn’t killed the motion detector lights—it would be easy to trip over the fallen branches. They were everywhere. With the death certificate in, it was time to get a grounds crew set up. One more thing to do.
Torres experienced a momentary panic when he checked his briefcase for the basement key and didn’t find it, but then he remembered he’d put the replacement key from the locksmith on his own key ring “temporarily.” Another detail to take care of.
When he parked and opened his car door, he heard something. It was that same darned noise he’d heard on one of his other visits—the noise he’d been pretty sure came from the basement. What was going on with that? By the time he got inside the house, the noise seemed to be dying down, but it was definitely coming from the basement. Could someone be here? Cleaning? Or . . . vandalizing? Whatever was making the racket in the basement, it was probably automated. Khan had loved automation. But who had turned the power back on? The cleaning crew? It didn’t seem likely. . . .
Retrieving his phone, Torres entered 9-1-1. He didn’t hit “Send.” He was just being cautious, after all. He located the basement key and was about to insert it into the lock when he heard something. Voices, just discernable above the enginelike noise. The racket was definitely quieting down. There were at least two voices.
No one was supposed to be here. Torres turned the key in the lock, and then, before opening the door, he tapped “Send” on his phone. Better safe than . . . the opposite.
52
· JILLIAN ·
Montecito, the Present
Someone was using a key to let himself or herself into the basement. Had Branson delivered the note to DaVinci in the middle of the night? Who else could it be? As soon as she asked the question, she remembered Khan. Suddenly her stomach felt as cold as ice.
She whispered to Everett, “Let me do the talking.”
He nodded.
But when the door swung open, it revealed a complete stranger.
“What are you doing here?” asked the stranger.
“Nothing,” said Jillian. Looking cool and collected under pressure was an Applegate area of expertise, and Jillian made use of it.
She grabbed Everett’s hand. “We were just leaving.” And then, marching toward the door (and the stranger), she began what she hoped would be a dignified exit.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said the stranger, holding one hand out like a crossing guard. “You’re trespassing.”
Jillian looked coolly down her nose. “So are you. If you’ll excuse us—”
“I’m Jules Khan’s attorney, Jesús Torres,” said the stranger. “Furthermore, I’m the trustee of his estate, which means I have every right to be here. So who are you?”
In the distance, Jillian thought she heard the wail of a siren.
“That’s the sheriff,” said the man called Torres. “You can talk to me or you can talk to him.”
All the color drained from Jillian’s face at once. The sheriff? Coming here? Oh no. There would be questions. Which might point back to Halley. Oh no. Jillian felt like she might be sick.
“Jillian?” murmured Everett at her side. “Are we? Trespassing?”
She needed to think of a way out of this. The sirens were getting closer. She couldn’t think. The sirens wailed.
“What can I do to help?” asked Everett.
“I don’t know.” No. Actually she did know. “Don’t answer any questions. They can’t compel you to. Don’t say anything about how you . . . arrived here. Understand?”
Everett nodded.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to ask,” said Torres. “What is with the . . . Wild West look here?”
Jillian drew herself as tall as possible. Thinking quickly, she replied, “It’s not a Wild West look. This is a Donatella Valerio. You can’t get more fashion-forward than Valerio.”
“Okay, okay,” said Torres, hands up as if conceding the point.
“We’ll just be on our way,” she said, moving toward the door again.
“That’s not going to happen,” replied Torres. He held up his phone and snapped a picture of the two of them.
“I’ve got your faces stored in the Cloud,” he said calmly. “I don’t plan to let you get past me, but if you do, I can promise the police will get a nice look at both of you. Now, do you want to tell me what you’re doing here?”
“You wouldn’t believe us,” said Everett.
“Try me,” replied Torres. “I’m an attorney in Los Angeles. I’ve heard it all.”
Jillian was pretty sure he hadn’t heard this.
“We’re not saying anything more,” she said, glancing swiftly to Everett. And then, in a tone of resignation Applegates rarely had cause to exercise, she added, “I want to speak to my lawyer.”
53
· JILLIAN ·
Santa Barbara, the Present
Jillian repeated to the officer who placed her in the back of the sheriff’s car that neither she nor Everett were talking until after they spoke with her lawyer. She said the same thing to the officers who attempted to check them in for holding at the Santa Barbara Police Department on Figueroa. When neither Jillian nor Everett had been able to produce ID, they were warned to think carefully about their choices. After this, Jillian overheard a conversation to the effect that these were kids, and they shouldn’t be dumped in the drunk
tank.
In the end, they were placed together in the SBPD’s only other cell. Everett remained stoically resigned to whatever was happening, although every so often, a huge grin would light up his face when he noticed something like a florescent tube or a walkie-talkie. Not everyone in the holding cell was mortified to be there, thought Jillian. And when he took her hand in his, she felt a little less mortified, too.
After nearly an hour of explaining things like florescent lights and wireless communication to Everett, Jillian was allowed to make her phone call. Instead of calling her family’s attorney, however, she called Branson.
“Where are you?” he asked.
She explained as quickly as possible.
“I saw the note you left for DaVinci, and then I discovered you weren’t in your room—”
“I’m really sorry about that,” Jillian said.
Branson sighed and continued. “So I called your friends, and DaVinci insisted I read your note out loud, which I did.”
“Oh,” said Jillian. And then, remembering what she’d written, she repeated herself. “Oh . . .”
“I still don’t understand half of it, but your friends are on their way up from Los Angeles, and Jillian, honey, I think you should consider having me call your lawyer and your parents.”
Jillian swallowed. “Call the lawyer first. I could use some advice. But could you please wait on my parents? I’m not in any danger. At least not at the moment.”
A long pause followed. “Your parents would be well within their right to fire me for withholding this,” Branson said at last. “But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll text them—”
“My parents are awful about reading texts,” said Jillian.
“Exactly. I will text them that they should call me as soon as they get the text.”
“Oh. I see. That’s . . . ingenious.” She paused. “Thank you.”
“You’re going to be okay,” he said. “I’ll get your lawyer over there right away. Bye for now, honey.”
“Bye, Branson.” Her voice hitched a little on his name.
54
· JESÚS TORRES, JD ·
A Flight in Time (Thief in Time Series Book 2) Page 21
