The vehicle slows as it reaches the corner, moving past us, and I let out the breath I’ve been holding. Then it reverses, the wheels rolling back into my field of vision as it parks on the side of the road. I tug out my medallion, getting ready to jump back, but I risk one glance upward at the car.
Georgia State Patrol.
Mitchell looks straight at me, shaking his head the way he did earlier when he said, “Lord, what a mess.” Then he gets out and slams the door. The two teenagers who were hanging out near the cars dart back around the corner and across the street, followed by two others who look about the same age, and they all take cover behind one of the cars.
Mitchell doesn’t look our way again, just yells across the street, “Get home, Harlan! Does your daddy know you’re here?” as he rounds the corner toward the front of the jail.
Harlan and his buddies don’t go home, however. They just squat down next to the parked cars, blocking our route to the trees.
But Mitchell’s car is still running.
I shove the idea away, but it comes right back. It may be our only shot.
“Abel,” I say, “I’m going to cover you. On three, open the door and slide behind the wheel. I’ll be right behind.”
“Are you insane? You want me to steal a cop car?”
“It’s that or stay here. Go, damn it!”
Abel runs forward, hunched over. I have a horrible moment when I’m certain that the passenger door will be locked, but it opens.
I dash after him, slamming the door just as Abel accelerates. He spins the wheel sharply, turning the car in the opposite direction. The rear fishtails slightly, and then we’re off.
The four kids run out into the street, pointing and yelling. One of them follows us for about half a block, then stops, doubled over. I’m pretty sure he’s laughing.
“Where am I going? And maybe you should be driving,” he adds. “Georgia didn’t hire black officers in 1938.”
“And you think they hired female officers?”
The only place I can think of to go is Kiernan’s cabin. I’d probably be able to backtrack and find it, but we’d have to turn left on Main Street and drive past the Eagle and the jail, and that’s not an option right now. “Take a right. We’ll have to find another way around.”
Abel turns right at Main, speeding away from the crowd. The gas station we stopped at earlier, now closed for the night, flies past the window. I shove the gun back in my pocket and open the glove compartment.
“What are you doing?” Abel asks.
“Looking for a map.”
“You mean you don’t know where we’re going?” He’s shouting, and while I get his frustration, it would be nice if he could scrounge up just a tiny bit of gratitude. “Any time you’re on a mission, every step needs to be planned—”
“This isn’t a CHRONOS mission, Abel. In real life, sometimes you have to improvise.”
“Stealing a cop car when you don’t even know where we’re going isn’t what I’d call improvising.”
“I was supposed to have a driver,” I say, trying to keep my voice level. “Kiernan is the one who knows his way around here. Just get us out of town, and pull off on a side road. As long as I have the key, I can jump back and get directions.”
“How are we supposed to get up with Delia?”
“Again, I have the key. I just can’t use it until we find a place to stop, okay? It’s kind of hard to set a stable point to get back to here when we’re going sixty miles an hour.”
There’s no map in the glove compartment. When I look up, however, I notice headlights flashing in the rearview mirror. I turn to get a better view, and the lights flash again, twice. Then the driver leaves the lights off long enough for me to see a black truck filled with the bright blue light from a CHRONOS key.
“Pull over as soon as you find somewhere you can hide the car,” I say. “It’s Kiernan.”
About a quarter of a mile up, a dirt path shoots off behind an old shed. Kiernan idles at the intersection while we park, and then I run over, sliding into the seat next to him.
“I don’t know whether to hit you or hug you. Where the hell did you go?”
“I could ask the same thing,” he says. “I got back to the hotel, and you’d disappeared. You should have waited. I wasn’t even gone half an hour.”
Abel gets in the truck, and Kiernan takes off again.
“Didn’t see any alternatives. Things were kind of heating up across the street,” I say.
“So? We were jumping back to fix the problem, Kate. Waiting wouldn’t have changed a thing. Ten more minutes—”
“So then why didn’t you jump back and lend a hand once you realized what I was doing?”
“Because I saw that you and Abel made it out the window. I was coming around to pick you up in the truck, and then you zipped by. If you’d waited, maybe we could have avoided stealing a police car!”
“We didn’t steal it. We borrowed it.”
I also think there’s a decent chance that we borrowed it with permission, because I know Mitchell saw us. But I don’t want to get into that with Kiernan right now. I want to know why he lied.
“And maybe I’d have waited if you’d told me the truth about there being a CHRONOS key in the middle of the crowd across from the jail. Given that you lied to me, I didn’t know for certain you were even coming back.”
He turns and stares at me, his eyes wounded. “Of course, I was com—”
“Eyes on the damn road!” Abel interjects. “Where are you taking me?”
Kiernan looks back at the road, the muscle in his jaw twitching. “It’s about five miles up. You’ll be safe there.”
I thought the cabin was a bit farther away, but I also thought it was in the other direction. The road is winding, so maybe we’re taking a different route.
Abel says, “What about Delia?”
“She’ll meet us there. I caught them before they went to the jail. That’s when they told me where Kate was.” He shakes his head. “And then I had to jump back and get my gun. I thought it was in your room.”
I glare at him. “My gun was in my room. Yours wasn’t, because you took it from me this afternoon.”
“Because I couldn’t find it in your—”
“Could we stop with the time travel conundrums?” Abel says. “I have questions. First, why are rank amateurs rescuing us instead of a trained extraction team? And second—”
I pull my phone out of my pocket and start the video I played for Delia and Grant earlier in the day. Abel’s face falls when Katherine introduces herself.
Kiernan keeps glancing over at me, but I don’t look back. I’m hoping he gave written directions to Grant, because I’m thoroughly lost. He’s taken three turns so far, and we’ve passed about a dozen farms—all dark, so either they’re early-to-bed types or else they drove into town for the excitement.
Abel clicks to replay the video, and just as it starts up the second time, Kiernan turns the truck onto a narrow side road. About a hundred feet in, we come to a metal gate. A large lock connects the two ends of a chain looped between the fence and the gate.
“This doesn’t look like the road to your cabin,” I say.
Kiernan doesn’t answer, just gets out and pulls a key from his pocket.
“Is this another of the properties you purchased with your sports investments?” I ask when he gets back into the truck.
“Not exactly.”
I look at him questioningly, but he seems to be giving me the silent treatment.
He gets out again and locks the gate behind him, then pulls out the CHRONOS medallion, probably setting a stable point. Katherine’s voice drones in the video as we keep driving, first through trees and then through an open field with a farmhouse in the distance.
As we get closer, I see several rooms are faintly lit by a yellow glow. Probably lantern light—I doubt electricity has made it this far out of town.