Revealed (17 page)

“I'm sure you have navigational devices of your own that you can consult,” Lindbergh said calmly. “Did you not tell me that you could spy on me anywhere, anytime?”

Defeated, Gary and Hodge both looked down at their watches.

Oh, those are their Elucidators
, Jonah realized.

Both men were silent for a long moment.

“I'm sure you'll see that after I changed the girl's age, I traveled back twelve years and eleven months in time, just as you told me to,” Lindbergh said. “The girl—what did you call it? She un-aged? Un-grew? Anyhow, I watched her change on the trip through time until she returned to being a baby.”

He made Katherine thirteen years and three months old and then went back twelve years and eleven months to turn her back into a . . . four-month-old baby?
Jonah thought confusedly.
Why? Why those exact numbers? My current age and . . .

Jonah had to force himself to finish the thought.

. . . and the age I was when I crash-landed on that airplane with all the other missing children from history.

So had Gary and Hodge wanted Lindbergh to meet them with Katherine on the airplane, maybe?

Was that why they'd asked if Lindbergh had had trouble adjusting to the plane?

Wouldn't they know whether Lindbergh had met them or not?

Jonah shook his head, starting to get lost in confusion again.

“I don't understand why you didn't just tell me to make the child four months old from the very start, rather than using the time travel to change her age,” Lindbergh was saying with a shrug. “Since you told me ages don't
have
to change with time travel. And I saw the proof of that, bringing myself and this child through the better part of a century.”

“The un-aging works best if it's done in conjunction with time travel,” Hodge muttered. “One second taken away in chronological age as a person travels a second back in time . . . until he or she reaches the right age . . . The body likes that. There's less chance of permanent brain damage, especially when we're erasing such a large portion of someone's life.”

So there is a chance of permanent damage for Mom and Dad and JB and Angela?
Jonah agonized.
Their un-aging wasn't done naturally!

“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.

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.