“And we were making sure all your Elucidator commands would be simple, so you could handle them,” Gary growled. “You were supposed to follow our orders exactly!”
Lindbergh didn’t even flinch.
“Have you satisfied yourself that I did land at the meeting point you asked me to?” Lindbergh asked. “And then I instantly left to come here. And I’ll go back and finish the job as soon as you provide me proof of my son.”
Gary dug his elbow into Hodge’s side.
“Boss—the time,” he muttered. “We’re cutting it close.”
Hodge snapped a lid over the face of his Elucidator watch.
“We’ll provide your proof, all right,” he said, his usual arrogant tone returning. “My colleague and I will only need you to wait here for a few minutes. And then we’ll be back.”
“Now,” Gary said, peering intently down at his watch.
He grabbed on to Hodge’s arm. And then both men vanished.
Lindbergh looked around, his eyes wide.
“Phenomenal,” he muttered.
In his arms baby Katherine had been reduced to only whimpering. Lindbergh glanced down at her, frowned, and put her down on the table beside him.
“Don’t treat my sister like that!” Jonah yelled, as uselessly as ever. “Don’t you know babies can roll off tables?”
Lindbergh did keep one hand on Katherine’s arm to hold her in place. But he didn’t say anything comforting to her like Jonah’s parents would have—he didn’t say, There, there, or You’ll be all right. Now that Gary and Hodge were out of sight, he seemed to regard Katherine as little more than an annoying doll.
He acted much more concerned with reaching his free hand into his jacket and pulling out the camera Elucidator Gary and Hodge had given him before he’d kidnapped and un-aged Katherine.
“And would it be possible for me to see where they’re rushing off to?” Lindbergh muttered, turning the controls. He eased down into a chair beside the table and squinted at the back of the camera. “Is there anything else I can find out that they don’t know I can find out?”
Anything else? Jonah thought. What does that mean? Did Lindbergh already find out things Gary and Hodge don’t know he knows?
Jonah leaned close, hoping he could catch a glimpse of whatever Lindbergh was studying so intently.
At first Jonah thought he’d lost his balance, or maybe just his sense of equilibrium. Because it seemed like he kept getting closer. No—he was falling. It was just like when he’d fallen into the monitor and ended up dangling over the Atlantic Ocean, or when he’d fallen into the monitor and ended up almost cut by the propeller of Lindbergh’s plane.
Now, finally, after watching months of time on the monitor, Jonah was going back to 1932.
TWENTY-SIX
Why now? Jonah wondered, as he whirled dizzily toward the past. Why not five minutes earlier in what was happening in 1932—or five or six months earlier? Why didn’t I get zapped back into the same time as JB and Angela?
Even spinning and dizzy, Jonah could figure out the answer: It must not have been until that moment that Jonah in his original life had disappeared from 1932. Because he hadn’t been able to go back to 1932 as long as there was already another version of him there.
But now, evidently, his original self had vanished from 1932.
Because that’s when I was kidnapped—again? Jonah wondered. This time by Gary and Hodge, when they took me out of time and planned to take me to the future to be adopted?
It seemed like odd timing. Pointless, even.
A darker possibility occurred to him.
Or maybe because that’s when I was . . . killed? Jonah had to inch up on the word to allow himself to think it. There were lots of reasons he didn’t like this idea. He seized on the most practical ones.
But if that’s what happened, why was the fake corpse put in place to be discovered way back in May? And how could I be alive now if I already died in 1932? Unless . . . I’m supposed to die in that moment in 1932 after I was alive in the twenty-first century?
Jonah landed. He was still confused, and dizzy and timesick as well.
Listen! he told himself frantically. Blink fast, so you can see again as soon as possible.
Sounds wavered in and out; he could see nothing but a dirty linoleum floor, so close that his eyelashes fluttered against it each time he blinked.
Turn your head! Jonah ordered himself.
It seemed to take forever for his neck muscles to obey the command. Now he could make out pairs of shoes beside him.
Were those six shoes? Were three people standing beside him?
Jonah decided to focus on his hearing again.
“. . . we told you we’d bring back your son,” a voice was saying.
Hodge? Jonah thought. Hodge is back? Does that mean Gary is too?
“My son is incapable of doing anything but lying on the floor?” Lindbergh asked incredulously.
Jonah felt strong arms grab him by the back of the stupid pullover sweater he’d been wearing from the 1920s. The arms—Gary’s, evidently—lifted him to a standing position.
“He’s just coming from a more distant time than Gary or me,” Hodge said apologetically. “Some people are more affected by timesickness than others.”
Jonah found himself directly face to face with Charles Lindbergh for the first time since he’d seen the man in the Skidmores’ living room. For the first time since Lindbergh had kidnapped Katherine.
Don’t punch him in the gut, Jonah told himself. Don’t kick him in the shins. Remember—he’s your father. He’s been searching for you for ages. And . . . maybe you need to get him on your side so he’ll help you save Katherine from Gary and Hodge?
Jonah sneaked one glance toward baby Katherine to see if Lindbergh was still holding on to her—he was. Then Jonah tried to get his facial muscles to pull up the sides of his mouth into a smile.
“H-hi,” he said weakly. Lindbergh looked away, back toward Gary and Hodge.
“Is this boy feeble-minded?” he demanded.
“Just give me a moment to get over the timesickness!” Jonah snapped.
He sneaked his gaze toward baby Katherine again. Maybe there was no hope of Lindbergh helping them? Maybe Jonah should just kick Gary away and snatch Katherine from the table and take off running?
Maybe after I really do get over the timesickness, Jonah thought weakly.
“Let me get a good look at the boy,” Lindbergh said, shoving away Gary’s hands from Jonah’s shoulders.
Jonah must have looked every bit as weak as he felt—neither Gary nor Hodge seemed worried about the notion of Jonah possibly running away. They just stood back and let Lindbergh walk all around Jonah, studying him.
Jonah felt a little bit like a prize dog. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Lindbergh had pulled back his lips and studied his teeth and gums.
“This is just that boy from that other time,” Lindbergh said, sounding disappointed. “Jonah Skidmore. You just put him in different clothes. How gullible do you think I am? Don’t you know how many hoaxes I’ve already seen connected to my son?”
What if he also remembers seeing me holding on to his plane over the Atlantic? Jonah wondered. What if he thinks I was trying to make him crash?
Lindbergh had such a flat expression on his face that Jonah decided that was impossible. Lindbergh had probably decided he’d just imagined seeing a face in that one quick pass of the flashlight beam.
Hodge waved away Lindbergh’s questions.
“Could we really have expected you to pluck the child we wanted from the future, if you’d known that the son you’d been searching for was standing right there beside the girl?” Hodge said.
“Do you think we’re stupid?” Gary asked, sounding insulted.
“But . . . you said . . . that girl’s future was in danger,” Lindbergh said, narrowing his eyes at Gary and Hodge. “That was the only reason I agreed to take her, to get her away from the danger. Are you
saying you left my son in danger that was just as bad? While you were playing games with me? And if you could bring back my son from the future, why couldn’t you bring back this girl on your own?”
He took his hand off baby Katherine’s arm long enough to point accusingly at her.
Now? Jonah wondered. Do I grab Katherine now?
His legs still felt like rubber. The throbbing from his old bullet wounds seemed to have come back faster than his strength—at the moment he suspected that even crawling was still a bit beyond him. Maybe he should wait.
“Calm down,” Hodge said, patting Lindbergh on the shoulder.
Lindbergh jerked away—Jonah took it as a good sign that Lindbergh didn’t want Hodge touching him.
“It’s always hard for time natives to understand the intricacies of time travel,” Hodge said in a soothing voice. “The future you saw—shall we call it Skidmore time?—that wasn’t where we’d planned to stash your son. But we had to dispose of our enemies before we could safely retrieve him. Bringing Katherine Skidmore to safety was also part of our mission, and we couldn’t do that ourselves because our enemies were watching for us. They didn’t know to look for you. And we could bring back Jonah—I mean Charlie—on our own, because he has a connection to this time period. It’s like he has a homing device in him. Linked to you and your wife. We just had to activate it, now that it’s safe.”
Jonah opened his mouth, wanting to correct all the lies Hodge had told. Or, they weren’t even lies, exactly—Gary and Hodge did have enemies, and the entire time agency JB worked for had been watching for the kidnappers to show up in the time period where all the missing children were living. And Gary and Hodge—or someone—had certainly done something to keep the other time agents from helping JB protect Jonah and the other kids.
It was just that Hodge’s version made it sound like he and Gary were the good guys.
Jonah winced and shut his mouth and decided to wait until he was sure he could trust his voice.
Lindbergh kept looking Jonah up and down.
“I would have thought I’d have certainty,” Lindbergh said. “I thought I’d know at one glance, ‘This is my boy.’ ”
“Would you like us to un-age him back to being the same age your son was when he disappeared?” Gary asked, pointing his wrist toward Jonah. His watch Elucidator glistened. “We can do it right here. Then you’ll see—”
“—that that could cause permanent brain damage?” Lindbergh challenged. “No.”
“Then I’ll carry him through time and bring him back again,” Gary said, starting to grab for Jonah’s shoulders once more.
Lindbergh shoved Gary’s hands away.
“And what else might you do in that moment you’re away?” Lindbergh asked bluntly.
He narrowed his eyes at Jonah.
“His hair is so much darker than it used to be,” Lindbergh muttered. “And not as curly.”
“Your wife’s a brunette!” Hodge protested. “And her hair’s straight!”
“How old are you, boy?” Lindbergh asked, addressing Jonah directly for the very first time.
“Th-thirteen,” Jonah said, his voice shaking.
Were his knees stable yet? Would he have any chance at all if he grabbed Katherine and ran away now?
Lindbergh nodded thoughtfully.
“I believe I was six feet tall by the time I was thirteen,” he said. “I thought my son would be taller, more like me.”
“Your wife’s what—barely five feet?” Hodge asked scornfully. “Look, you’ve seen the boy now. That’s all you asked. Go finish the tasks you promised you’d do for us, and then you’ll see. You will have your son, and he will be the right age then. And if something’s not right . . . how are you any worse off than you were before we made our deal? You’re getting to see time travel, sir! That’s something no other gentleman of your era will ever experience!”
Lindbergh was nodding slowly, as if he were about to give in.
“Now that I think about it, maybe there is a way to know for sure,” he said. “To see if this is really my son or not.”
Make it something lengthy—stall! Jonah thought. Give my legs a little more time to be ready to run!
Lindbergh reached into his flight jacket. For a moment Jonah wondered if Lindbergh was going to pull out his notebook again and make Jonah take some sort of drawing test. Did Lindbergh think his son would automatically know how to draw an airplane engine or something like that?
But when Lindbergh pulled his hand back out, he wasn’t holding the notebook. He was holding the camera Elucidator.
And he reached out and placed it directly in Jonah’s hands.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Jonah’s muscles were out of practice after months of sitting in the time cave doing nothing but watching the monitor. And he could still feel the aftereffects of timesickness along with his bullet wounds throbbing. But maybe he’d inherited Lindbergh’s laser-fast pilot’s instincts, even if he hadn’t gotten the height or the exact hair color.
Jonah’s right hand instantly closed around the Elucidator. With his left arm he scooped up baby Katherine from the table beside Lindbergh. Jonah held her at his side, like a football. And then, before anybody else had a chance to react, he danced past Gary and Hodge and out the door of the airport office.
“What’d you do that for?” Gary screamed behind him.
“I had to see if he thinks like a Lindbergh,” Lindbergh said calmly.
Oh, no pressure, Jonah thought.
Then he wiped that from his mind, because he didn’t care if he thought like a Lindbergh or not. All he cared about was getting Katherine to safety and himself to safety and finding kid JB and kid Angela and rescuing them and fixing their ages and Mom and Dad’s ages, and of course fixing Katherine’s age too. And then hunting down and rescuing the other missing kids from history who’d vanished from the twenty-first century, and . . .
One thing at a time, maybe? Jonah thought.
He spun around the corner of the building, because the only other choice seemed to be running flat out across the empty airfield, in plain sight.
But maybe Gary and Hodge would expect me to hide around the corner of the building? Jonah thought, even as he crouched down low, running past a window.
In his arms baby Katherine started to make fussing noises again.
“Shh, shh,” Jonah hissed. “I’m saving you! Don’t give us away!”
She screwed up her face like she was ready to let out a full-blown wail. Jonah didn’t exactly remember what Katherine had been like as a tiny baby the first time around, but probably she wasn’t that different from the Katherine she’d been after that: When she was upset, there wasn’t much you could do to shut her up.
Jonah peered down at the camera Elucidator Lindbergh had put in his hands.
“Get us out of here!” he demanded in a hushed, frantic tone. “Take us back to the time cave!”
Words lit up the back part of the camera: I CAN’T. BECAUSE OF THE WAY I’VE BEEN PROGRAMMED, I CAN OFFER YOU ONLY A LIMITED NUMBER OF DESTINATIONS. WOULD YOU LIKE TO MAKE ANOTHER SELECTION?
“Somewhere safe!” Jonah said impatiently, barely remembering to keep his voice down. “Somewhere it won’t matter if Katherine’s loud!”
THAT IS NOT A SPECIFIC ENOUGH INSTRUCTION, the back of the camera flashed at him, and even the typeface seemed to be scolding him. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE YOUR CHOICES?
“Yes!” Jonah hissed.
Tiny type began to scroll across the camera back. Jonah could hear footsteps coming around the corner behind him. He didn’t have time to read anything right now.
“I can change where I’m going while I’m traveling through time, can’t I?” Jonah asked the Elucidator.
OF COURSE, appeared on the camera back.
“Then aim Katherine and me toward the farthest place on that list!” Jonah demanded.
The stucco building beside him and the dusky airfield beyond instantly disappeared. The sound of t
he running feet behind him instantly stopped. Now he and Katherine were floating through Outer Time.
They’d gotten away.
“I didn’t do too badly, did I?” Jonah bragged to baby Katherine. “And I didn’t even have you trying to tell me what to do!”
He looked down at her tiny form. He was holding her upside down now, and palming her head like a basketball. It was probably a good thing there wasn’t exactly gravity in Outer Time, or else he would have dropped her. It was also amazing that she hadn’t started screaming yet, because that couldn’t be a comfortable position.
Jonah shifted her weight in his arms, clutching her more securely. Now he could see his sister’s face more clearly: She was wide-eyed and awed-looking, turning her head to peer around at the darkness and scattered lights of Outer Time. It was like this was the first time she’d ever seen such a thing—well, maybe it was, technically. Maybe after Lindbergh had un-aged her, he’d kept her so tightly wrapped in blankets that she couldn’t see anything.
A tiny wrinkle appeared between Katherine’s eyebrows, as if it had just occurred to her baby brain that Outer Time might be as terrifying as it was amazing.
“Hey, hey, don’t worry,” Jonah said quickly, jiggling her a little to keep her happy. “We’ll be fine. We’re just going to—”
He remembered he didn’t have the slightest clue where they were going.
Baby Katherine was peering up at him now, her expression just as astonished and clueless as when she’d been staring at Outer Time. It was unnerving to have her looking at him like she didn’t recognize him. It was unnerving to be holding her, and to have her be such a little baby.
It was unnerving that she couldn’t even talk.
“Okay,” Jonah said. “First order of business. Elucidator, as we’re traveling through time, let Katherine age back up to her right age. Eleven and . . . let’s see . . . eleven years, eleven months and fourteen days. That’s it. Then—”
AGING HUMANS TO THAT CHRONOLOGICAL MARKER IS NOT A TASK I CAN ACCOMPLISH, the Elucidator camera glowed up at him. And then, as if to make sure Jonah understood, it flashed the words, NO CAN DO.
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