I know she’s trying to goad me into a mindless attack, but I’m not that naïve anymore. I circle to the right, staying just out of her reach.
She raises an eyebrow as she pivots her head to match my movements. “Already taken your best shot? Now I’m really disappointed.”
I continue to move around her, saying nothing. Though I don’t look at it directly, my attention is really on my old satchel resting against her right hip. I just need to get it and run. Unfortunately, her arm rests over the top, her hand clutching the strap just above where it’s attached to the bag.
As I pass behind her, Lidia whips her head from one shoulder to the other, taunting me to attack her from the back. I have no intention of doing that, at least not yet, but her arrogance has caused her to make a mistake. In that moment when she’s moving her head and her eyes aren’t on me, I glance at the bag and see my opportunity.
Peeking out of the flap covering the smaller side pouch is the hilt of her grandson’s knife. If I can get it out, I can cut the strap like I did before and get away.
I circle around in front of her again, my eyes once more locked on hers.
“What are we playing at here, Denny?” she asks. “Ring around the rosies?”
I say nothing, and continue past her left shoulder. Like before, once her head has gone as far as it can, she starts to turn it back the other way. The moment her eyes are off me, I charge.
Sensing I’m up to something, she immediately drops into a crouch and tries to hurl me over her head. It’s a move we both learned during defensive training at the institute, but in this case it plays to my advantage. I jerk to the right as she reaches up for me, and slide across her back instead of flying over her head.
As my right arm rubs against the satchel’s strap, my hand is already searching for the pouch. Unfortunately, while I’m able to pull loose the tie holding the flap down, I’m moving too fast to grab the knife, and instead sweep past Lidia’s shoulder and onto the ground.
I quickly jump up before she has a chance to come after me.
“Nice try,” she says, grinning wider than ever. “But you’re going to have to do a lot more than—”
I launch at her again, throw my arms around her torso, and tackle her to the ground. I shove a hand over her neck to distract her and use my other to free the knife. I find the flap first, and move it out of the way so I can grab the blade. Only the pouch is empty.
A harsh, choked laugh escapes Lidia’s throat. “So predictable.”
I feel the blade cut through my shirt and slice the skin over my shoulder blade. Groaning in agony, I push myself away, but Lidia is having none of it. She jumps on top of me, her knees on my chest, and presses my newly sliced shoulder into the ground. As I yell in pain, she presses the knife against my throat, the blade nicking at my skin.
“This was fun and all, but it’s time we take one last trip together.” I must not be able to hide my confusion, because she then adds, “Someplace I’m sure we both would like to see. Well, I would, anyway.”
Since she has only the one free hand, it takes her a moment to pull the chaser out of the satchel and unlock the flap. She doesn’t input a destination, though.
I realize now that this desert was never to be my graveyard. That Lidia has had something else in mind all along.
That her mission won’t be complete until she’s shown me the hell she has wrought.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A temporary paralysis seizes a person when inside a jump. One usually doesn’t notice it because the mere fact you are traveling in time makes you not want to move. But as my own experience has demonstrated more than once in the last twenty-four hours of my personal time line, someone in motion before a jump remains in motion after arrival. So if I’m running, I continue to run, and if I’m falling, I don’t stop just because I find myself somewhere else.
As Lidia moves her finger to the chaser’s home button, I tense my arm and start it on an arc that will collide with the hand Lidia’s using to hold the knife. It’s barely off the ground when we enter the mist.
One of the longest jumps I’ve ever taken landed me in a New York hospital for several days. This jump is not quite that long but close. No matter how torturous, I need to hold on and subdue Lidia. Unconsciousness can take me after she’s no longer a threat, but not before.
The dimming of the mist finally signals that our journey is coming to an end.
As the black of the jump fades into a dark night, my arm flies up and smacks Lidia’s hand. I’m not even sure she notices. I barely realized what’s going on myself as my brain feels as if it’s on fire.
Hold on, I will myself.
I flop onto my belly and force myself up on all fours, then look around. Lidia lies on the grass beside me, eyes closed and moaning.
Crawling toward her, I tell myself, Get… the chaser.
I’m almost to her when something bites my palm. I snap my hand up, and can feel blood oozing from the puncture. I scan the ground, looking for the animal that attacked me. But the bite didn’t come from an animal at all.
Shimmering softly in the dull starlight is the knife.
I grab it with my bloody hand and continue over to Lidia. My mind is working at only a fraction of what it should, and I’m already moving the blade under the satchel’s strap to cut it free when I realize the chaser isn’t in the bag at all but lying on the ground next to her. I grab it, and then, since she’s obviously in no condition to put up a fight, I work the satchel over her head and pull it off.
She moans again as I do this, her eyes fluttering but not opening. Once I’ve strung the bag across my chest, I put the chaser inside. My hand brushes against a coil of wires and for a moment I wonder what else she’s put in the satchel until I realize it’s RJ’s charger.
I use Lidia’s limp finger to unlock the lid of the chaser and then wrap one of the charger’s cords around it several times so that it doesn’t close again. Now I’ll be able to rekey it once I can concentrate enough so that I don’t screw it up.
As I close the satchel’s flap, I breathe a sigh of relief.
It’s over. I’m the one in charge now.
While there’s still much work for me to do, Lidia can cause no further damage. I’ll start with the Mongol messengers and then slowly work my way forward through time.
But not yet. Rest first. A good long rest.
I stagger to my feet. I need to get as far away from Lidia as I can so that when I do collapse from exhaustion, she’ll never find me.
We seem to be in a shallow depression covered by tall tufts of dried grass. Nothing looks familiar, but that’s not surprising.
The home button was created to give rewinders a quick way of returning to the institute — the preprogrammed location — at the point that corresponded with one’s date of birth and how long he or she has actually lived since then.
Where we are, though, is not the location that equates to where the institute would be had the institute existed in this world. Once I committed to living in Iffy’s time line, I reprogrammed the home location coordinates to the living room of Ellie’s and my apartment. Even so, given the distance Lidia and I have just traveled, all without a companion to keep our path true, a displacement of several hundred miles is not out of the question.
I check the chaser and see that we are a little bit north of where San Diego should be. What surprises me, though, is that we’re not in 2015. The date on the device reads: October 12, 2018.
That’s impossible. I can’t go to 2018. I haven’t lived long enough. That’s three years past my home time. It must be some kind of mistake. It has to be an—
Wait. Lidia has lived an extra three years. Instead of being nineteen like I am, she’s twenty-two now. And the chaser has been keyed to her. Could it be possible that the time barrier is in effect only in relationship to the person who is connected to the chaser?