Timebound (30 page)

I knew that Trey had turned off his phone during the service—or maybe he’d put it on vibrate? I just hoped that he had remembered to turn it back on after we went to the gym with the Acolytes. I sent him a short text, which seemed vague enough not to alarm him too much—“Run when I say run. Don’t look back. I made it home OK”—and then stuck the phone in the pocket of my shorts.

Even if what Connor and Katherine had said about the problems caused by trying to reconcile conflicting versions of reality was true, I was already in the office with Eve or headed in that direction. I’d see Trey for only a couple of minutes before I made the jump, and surely that couldn’t screw things up too much?

When I returned to the library, Katherine had gone downstairs, probably to scavenge about for some lunch. I sat down again in my chair by the window but couldn’t bring myself to continue reading.

“I didn’t know people literally chewed their knuckles,” Connor said. “I thought it was just a figure of speech. Is the book really so suspenseful?”

I glanced down at my hands and saw that he was right. I’d lapsed into an old habit—my first two knuckles on my left hand were bright red.

“Obviously not,” I responded. “You know why I’m nervous.”

He gave me a little smile. “He’ll make it out, Kate.”

“I think so, too—
now,
” I said defiantly. “I decided to buy a little insurance.”

“What do you mean,
insurance
?” he asked.

“I sent him a text. About two minutes ago. Telling him to run, and that I made it back okay. It can’t change much, I barely even
see him between now and then, but I just hope he turned his phone back on after the service was over.”

Connor chuckled softly, shaking his head. “It won’t matter whether he turned his phone on or not.”

“And why is that?”

“I left him a message before I went to bed, about four this morning. I told him to stay near the door of the gym and run when you said to run, and I promised him that you were safe here at the house. And I said
not
to let you know that I had texted him, under any circumstances.”

“So that’s why he was there, at the door! I was scared I’d have to hunt him down. But you said we shouldn’t…”

“I said
you
shouldn’t,” he corrected. “But the more I thought about it, there wasn’t all that much risk if I called him.”

“You couldn’t have told me? I’ve been chewing my damned knuckles off!”

He shrugged. “What was I supposed to do? Pass you a note? Katherine has been in here all morning. And speaking of…”

As he trailed off, I could hear Katherine’s footsteps on the stairs. I picked up the diary and pretended to focus, while Katherine and Connor argued about the significance of some bit of “prophecy.”

When the phone in my pocket rang about twenty minutes later, I jumped up so quickly that my copy of the book fell to the floor. Katherine muttered something about how I should be careful with sophisticated CHRONOS equipment, but I was already out the door.

As soon as I reached the bedroom, I answered the phone. I knew it had to be Trey, since the only other possibility was a wrong number, but I was still tremendously relieved to see his name pop up on the screen. And then it occurred to me—it might be Eve or some Cyrist security guard calling to say that they were holding Trey or that—

“Trey?” My voice was shaking. “Is it you? Are you okay? Where are you?”

There was a brief pause, but it was his voice that answered. “Yes, I’m okay. I’m a few blocks from the Beltway.”

I sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled in a long breath. “I was so scared, Trey. I heard you running toward me and I didn’t know if you turned around in time—or if Eve had called security. Did you get my text?”

“No, but I see I’ve got one waiting. I called as soon as I could. I got Connor’s message this morning, but he said not to tell you. I’m not sure I would have agreed if I’d known what you were walking into. Are you okay? That dog was huge, and he looked like he was going straight for your throat.”

“He was. He only got me the once, in the leg—not very deep because I kicked him pretty hard. I’m just glad you kept running.”

He gave a wry laugh. “I don’t think it would have mattered even if I’d waited. He hit the floor pretty hard and he was, uh—let’s just say I don’t think either of them had much experience with their prey vanishing into midair. I didn’t hear them start barking again until I was almost to the parking garage—and they were behind the door, so…”

“Are you sure you’re not being followed or anything?”

There was a pause, and I suspected he was checking the rearview mirrors. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, I’m not hanging up until you get here.”

There was a long silence on the other end and my mind immediately kicked back into panic mode. Was someone else in the car with him? Was he still in danger?

“Trey? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Really, Kate, I’m fine. I’ll stay on the phone if it makes you feel better—but don’t tell Katherine, okay? I promised I’d make a stop on the way over and pick up your birthday cake, and I think she was counting on it being a surprise.”

The birthday party was fun, despite the occasional lump in my throat when I remembered that this was the only birthday that my mom or dad had missed. We had pizza—I couldn’t tell Katherine that Trey and I had eaten it just a few hours before—and Katherine opened a bottle of wine for a toast. She hesitated before pouring for Trey, although he assured her that his family had a very European view of wine consumption. Then she shrugged. “Given the fact that I’m not technically
alive
in this timeline, I doubt the authorities are going to be concerned about my corrupting a minor.”

The cake was sinfully decadent, dripping with chocolate, exactly the way a birthday cake should be. Trey gave me several T-shirts with funny sayings and a gold chain made of delicate little interlocked hearts. Katherine and Connor’s present was a small video camera, which we used to record the rest of the party, including some silly footage of Daphne trying to pull the little cardboard birthday crown off my head.

I still felt horribly guilty that I’d put Trey in danger. It was hard to shake the panicked feeling I’d had before he arrived. I think he was feeling the same—we both kept finding little reasons to touch and reassure ourselves that we were both really there.

Once we’d eaten and finished our celebration, Connor showed Trey the
Book of Prophecy.
At least Trey didn’t have to fake his surprised reaction—he hadn’t realized that I’d actually managed to get something substantive out of our adventure.

After a few minutes, we left Katherine and Connor to their analysis and headed up to my room. Trey pulled me close as soon as the door clicked shut behind us. After a very long kiss, he held me out at arm’s length. “You scared the hell out of me, Kate. What happened in there? I mean, I knew
something
was going to happen, because of Connor’s message, but…”

“She knew who I was. The only reason we got out of there at all is because Eve likes to impress her daddy. She wanted to surprise him by catching me all by herself.”

“Her
daddy
?” Trey asked.

“Conwell,” I said. He sat down on the couch and I snuggled up next to him. “It didn’t hit me until we were in the office together—same eyes, same nose. She said that temple security detected the CHRONOS key when we arrived and sent a message up to Conwell’s office. She was there when it came in. She didn’t want to disturb Conwell before the service, and security had their hands a bit full with the executive meeting, so…”

I filled in the pieces of the puzzle he had missed—my escape from Eve, the Dobermans in the center garden. He lifted the edge of the bandage on my leg and winced a bit. “I guess it could have been a lot worse,” he said.

“Yeah. We were lucky. I’m just so, so sorry for taking you into that,” I said. “It was stupid and reckless and…”

He shook his head. “I’m the one who should be apologizing to you. You didn’t know what we were getting into. I went in knowing that there was
some
sort of danger, because I was going to have to run—but I took Connor’s word that you were okay. I didn’t know you were going to get hurt. I should have told you…”

“You did the right thing, Trey. And maybe it will be worth it. Maybe there’s something in that stupid book that will help us.”

We spent the next few hours talking about other things, or nothing at all, just happy to be together and safe. It was clear that neither of us was especially eager to say good night, but I knew he had a trig final bright and early the next morning, so I pushed him out the door, reluctantly, a little after nine.

I watched him drive away and then, still a bit wound up, decided that a cup of herbal tea might help me relax for bed. Katherine was already in the kitchen, and the teakettle was beginning to whistle.

“You read my mind,” I said, reaching into the cabinet for cups. “Is there enough water for two?”

She nodded, and I selected a bag of chamomile, adding a smidgen of honey to my cup along with the hot water. Katherine opened a bag of her usual evening tea. I don’t know what’s in the blend, but it smells vaguely like Italian sausage and I always try to avoid the steam rising from her cup.

“Since you’re here,” she said as she poured the water over her tea bag, “maybe we should take a few minutes to talk.”

“Sure,” I said, sitting down at the table. Something about her tone led me to think that this was not going to be a happy conversation. “What’s up?”

“Two things. First, I have another gift for you.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a delicate silver bracelet with a single charm hanging from it. It was a tiny replica of an hourglass, about as long as my fingertip. It wasn’t a functional replica—the two bulbs were actually tiny pearls and the edges were a flat green stone that looked like jade.

“The chain is new,” she said. “The original broke long ago. The charm, however, is something that my mother gave me when I completed my CHRONOS training. A friend of hers made it especially for me, and I’ve never seen one like it. I always wore it when I traveled—a good-luck charm, I guess.”

She helped me fasten the bracelet onto my wrist. “I think it is a fitting gift. Not just for your birthday, but because you’re quite close to the end of your training, too—although yours has been a very compressed version, I’m afraid.”

I smiled at her. “Thank you, Katherine. It’s beautiful.”

“I wanted you to have it anyway,” she said, “but the gift serves a practical purpose, too. If you show this to me at the fair, I can promise that you’ll get my attention—especially if you point out the chipped edge right near the top and remind me how it happened.”

I hadn’t even noticed the tiny imperfection—just a small chip in the green stone that was suspended above the pearls by a small silver casing. “And how
did
it happen?”

“It was one of my earlier jumps—a solo trip, without Saul.” She paused for a moment, taking a tentative sip of tea, which was apparently still a bit too hot. “I’d been on dozens of jumps over the previous two years and you would think I’d have been used to seeing famous people. But as I was getting out of a carriage in New York City, where I was scheduled to attend the evening session of the American Equal Rights Association meeting—the one where they were debating whether the Fifteenth Amendment should include women?”

I nodded, vaguely remembering the discussion from history class and, more recently, from one of her trip diaries.

“Well,” she continued, “I looked out and saw Frederick Douglass arguing with Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth, all three of them just a few feet away, near the entrance to the building. And like a gawking tourist catching her first sight of the Statue of Liberty or the Capitol Building, I forgot what I was doing and somehow managed to slam the carriage door on my wrist.”

“Oh, dear.” I chuckled. “Sorry—I hope you weren’t hurt.”

“Not really—a minor cut from the door latch, but Mr. Douglass was carrying a handkerchief that he very kindly donated to the cause. That’s one souvenir I would love to have had in my bag when I got stranded in 1969.” She sighed. “But the main injuries were to my dignity and this little chip on the hourglass charm. I don’t think I’ve ever told this story to anyone—not even Saul. I was worried that anyone at CHRONOS would laugh at me for being ‘starstruck.’”

She took another sip of tea and glanced back up at me. “And now, the other thing.” There was a long pause, and then she continued. “I’m worried about you, Kate. Not about your work with the medallion,” she added quickly. “You’ve made truly unbelievable
progress. I was nearly two years into the program before I could pull up the data as quickly as you do. You have a wonderful ability to focus.”

“Then… what?” I asked.

Another pause as Katherine stirred her tea, clearly trying to decide how to phrase what she wanted to say. “It’s about Trey, Kate. I’m worried that the two of you have gotten much too close, and certainly you know this relationship can’t last?”