Leonard taps my back again. “Keep moving.”
When we reach the living room, I notice that my original chaser is still sitting on the coffee table with the charger connected. While I had wanted them to remain joined last night, I can’t help but feel a sense of dread this morning. Lidia would have never left the machine hooked up that long unless she had something in mind.
Iffy and I are escorted to the back of the house, where we find Lidia sitting at the kitchen table, a plateful of eggs and sausage and fruit in front of her. Sitting at two of the other places are similar meals, but any illusion that the food might be for Iffy and me is quickly dispelled when we are led to the two chairs where no breakfast waits.
Once we’re all seated, Lidia says, “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”
Neither of us answers.
She smiles, amused, and then looks past us to where Kane and Leonard are seated. “Boys, please eat.”
As Iffy and I watch as the others dig into their breakfast, my stomach can’t help but grumble. The last thing Iffy or I had to eat was the sandwiches we purchased just before we got on the bus in Lone Pine.
Lidia is the last to finish. The moment she sets her silverware on the plate, Leonard gets up and collects both of their dishes. Kane lifts his plate as Leonard nears, but the giant walks right by without stopping. Flustered and embarrassed, Kane gets up and buses his things over to the sink.
“Leonard, if you could bring the saucer back in with you, I’d appreciate it,” Lidia says. “And, Vincent, there’s a container of toothpicks by the stove. Grab them for me.”
The men return with the requested items and set them in front of her before retaking their places. The blood on the saucer is now a dry, dark brown stain.
Lidia tilts it toward me. “Good enough?”
“It should do.”
Perhaps it’s odd, but I’ve been tied up since last night, and it’s only at this moment that I feel the situation is truly starting to get away from me. Once the chaser is rekeyed to Lidia, I’ll have little time left to do anything. The problem is, I have no clue what that anything should be.
Lidia uses a toothpick to scrape the blood loose. What she ends up with is more than enough material for the job.
A sense of inevitable failure pounds in my mind like the drums of an approaching army. I try to block it out, but the feeling refuses to go away.
Lidia says, “Vincent, could you be a dear and bring the other chaser in? And the charger, too, please. Don’t forget that.”
“Sure,” Kane mumbles.
As he walks out, she reaches around the back of her chair, grabs the strap that’s been slung over it, then pulls my satchel onto the table. From inside, she removes the chaser that had once been hers, and turns it toward me.
“Open, please.”
“Can’t,” I say, twisting sideways to remind her that my hands are still tied behind my back.
“Leonard,” she says.
The giant pulls a knife out of his pocket, opens it, and turns me in my chair so he can cut the rope. Once my hands are free, I flex my tingling fingers to get my circulation going again.
Lidia nudges the box. “Now open it.”
I hesitate until I hear Kane coming back down the hall and then touch my thumb to the screen.
My timing is perfect. The lid unlocks at the very same second that Kane returns. Though Lidia is still looking at the chaser in front of us, I can tell that her grandson’s arrival has distracted her.
Knowing this might be my only chance, I pull the chaser quickly to me, and move my fingers toward the emergency escape combination.
The blow that hits me in the side of the head knocks me to the floor. I lie there, not sure what happened, and for a few seconds not even sure where I am. A hand clamps down on my arm, lifts me straight up, and then deposits me back in my seat.
Leonard.
“Nice try, Denny,” Lidia says. The chaser is once more sitting in front of her, now with the flap open. “Perhaps I should do this myself.”
She goes into the kitchen and comes back with a table knife and the same paper clip I fashioned into a hook last night. She struggles with getting the panel unlocked, but she doesn’t give up, and eventually the rectangular section pops up. Once she has pulled out the tray, she pushes the bits of dried blood into the dimple. She then closes the drawer and pushes the panel back down.
“Is that it?” she asks.
It is, but there’s no need for me to confirm this as digital readouts on the display are all suddenly replaced by a single, blinking word: STANDBY.
This goes on for more than a minute before the screen goes blank and the machine reboots itself. I tense, knowing that all Lidia has to do now is push a few buttons and she could jump out of 1952, leaving us all here to be erased in her wake.
Lidia, however, does not immediately input a destination. Instead, she closes the lid and then tests if the rekeying has worked by pressing her thumb against the lock screen. As I knew it would, the lid clicks open.
While this clearly makes her happy, she still doesn’t tap in a locator number. In fact, she sets the chaser to the side and grabs the one Kane has brought in. The lid is still propped partially open by one of the charger’s cords. When she flips all the way to the side, the screen comes on.
My hope is that she’s left the device plugged in overnight only to check how the recharging went, and I think I’m right when she says, “Forty-three percent. Well, I’ll be damned. You weren’t lying.” She picks up the battery component of RJ’s charger. “So, how do I recharge this?”
I’m done helping, so I remain silent.
Looking unperturbed, she shrugs and says, “Forty-three percent should be more than enough for now.”
For now? What does that mean?
She begins scrolling through the menu options. Though I’m at an angle, I can easily see the screen, and am confused when she enters the area for instructor settings, a section used only during initial rewinder training. The highlight bar moves down the list, stopping at one I’m familiar with — slave mode. Once she selects it, there’s some back and forth she does between both chasers before the function is fully activated.
It’s obvious now why she wants both machines powered up and ready. What the slave mode does is link one chaser to another. Back in training this meant Marie would initiate a jump on her device, and my device — with me holding it — would instantly follow wherever she went. Lidia has made it so that my original chaser will mimic everything her device does.
She’s going to take someone with her, and it’s pretty clear to me who that will be.
I give Iffy a quick look. Though I know she hasn’t figured out the details, she knows we’re in serious trouble.
Lidia coils up the charger and slips it into my satchel. “Vincent, my bag is on the counter behind you. Please grab it for me.”
Kane looks almost as concerned as Iffy does, but he retrieves his grandmother’s black purse and gives it to her. From inside she pulls out a leather-bound journal. Though it’s the same size as the one Kane referenced to get us here, it’s nowhere near as aged and the design on the cover is different. I would bet everything that this is a journal her grandson has never seen.
She opens it to a page marked by an attached ribbon. I can see three handwritten columns. I can’t make out the words in the first due to the messy scrawl and the fact I’m looking at it upside down. The second column is easier, though. Numbers only, written in the distinct order one uses when writing dates. The third column is as difficult to decipher as the first. But there’s more than enough there for me to make a guess as to what she’s looking at.
It’s a list of jumps, at least a page long, though, who knows, maybe there are more pages after this one. What I don’t understand is why she’s compiled even a single page of jumps. All she has to do is go back to Massachusetts in 1775. A little hunting around, and she’d figure out how to stop me from interfering with the original path of the time line.