Khan froze, his pen ready to mark unchanged next to “No. 37: Forecast for highs and lows in Kamchatka: unchanged/changed.”
“Anything interesting there?” Littlewood asked, crossing to Khan.
Khan hastily folded the checklist, tucking it under a stack of papers. “I didn’t have a chance to investigate. I was going to, but then I got sick.”
“Ah. Of course.”
“I’ll check my e-mail,” said Khan. “I did send off for more detailed records . . .” His fingers flashed over his laptop keyboard. “Here’s something.” He opened the file and scanned through it quickly. Hmm. That was odd.
“Anything?” asked Littlewood, already halfway back to his desk.
Khan tapped his left temple as he ran his eyes over a first, second, and third graph.
A minute later, Khan said grimly, “I think you’ll want to see this.”
35
· LITTLEWOOD ·
Wellesley, Florida, the Present
Littlewood was perplexed. The evidence provided by the seismic activity in the greater Santa Barbara area all pointed in one direction: time travel. It wasn’t the larger quakes (and Santa Barbara had had its share of those two years ago) but the low-level tremors that were troubling him. These were consistent with what he’d seen here in Florida prior to and just after his use of his time machine. The tremors weren’t dangerous in and of themselves, he’d been told by the head of the geology department when he’d asked several months ago. But they were distinctive. They were suspicious. And they were in Santa Barbara—where Dr. Llewelyn Jones worked, or had worked. Where Khan had worked.
By the end of an hour’s consideration of the seismic data, Littlewood was contemplating a visit to Dr. Jones, professor emeritus. By the end of the day, he had Khan searching flights.
“Here’s one,” said Khan. “It’s a red-eye leaving tonight. It’s a straight shot to LAX and then a hop up to Santa Barbara.”
“That might do.”
“Oh, wait. There’s only one seat remaining. We can’t both get on that flight,” said Khan. “I’ll keep looking.”
Littlewood’s brow furrowed. Littlewood still hadn’t told Khan what he knew: that Khan would one day return to 2001, taking up his old position in Jones’s group. Because of this fact, however, it was impossible for Khan to accompany Littlewood to Santa Barbara and sound out Jones.
Littlewood did not relish going into all of that right now, the proof Khan would return, the necessity for his return. It was a delicate subject. Besides, Littlewood didn’t want to give Khan up just yet, even though he knew he would, one day, do exactly that. There was the risk Khan might use a search engine to look himself up, although apparently he hadn’t. Yet. “Googling,” especially of oneself, had been less ubiquitous in 2001. Littlewood had checked. Khan was reclusive enough that it might be months before he heard of the practice from anyone else.
The problem was, Littlewood didn’t want Khan to return to 2001. He needed Khan for moments like this one—moments where he had no one else to consult. Perhaps he ought to reconsider working his temporal studies issues alone. But that didn’t solve the immediate problem of convincing Khan to not travel to Santa Barbara.
“There’s the issue of ID,” Littlewood said at last. “Unless you’ve . . . resolved that?”
Khan was silent.
Had he acquired a fake ID? If he had, if Khan insisted on going, Littlewood would have no choice but to keep him away from Jones or risk opening a can of worms that could devolve into Khan refusing to return to 2001 and Littlewood having to show him proof positive that he would one day do exactly that. It would be messy.
But the expected protest didn’t come.
“Okay,” said Khan. “I’m not sure my stomach is up to travel anyway.”
Three hours later, Littlewood, his mind greatly relieved to be traveling alone without having raised the issue of Khan’s eventual return, was checking in at MCO, having handed over to Khan the proverbial “keys to the castle.” The idea that Khan might have already stolen the “keys” did not occur to him.
36
· JILLIAN ·
Montecito, the Present
She could have been mummified. Jillian tried not to think about how narrowly she’d escaped becoming a former time traveler, but it was hard to focus on anything else as she drove the half mile to her house. She’d missed that fate by a minute. Maybe two. What if she’d dawdled before getting on the platform? What if she’d bent to relace her boot? What if she’d traveled to a more recent time, which would have kept her there a minute or two longer?
She arrived back at her empty house, shaking and exhausted, just in time to see the sun rise. She was tired, but she was thirsty, too. And very cold. Heating milk over the stove, she made a mug of hot chocolate and carried it to her room. It was 6:05 a.m.
Not bothering to shed her heavy skirt and shirtwaist, Jillian crawled under her goose-down comforter, shivering until her body heat, trapped by wool and feathers, began to warm her. As sleep threatened to drag her under, she felt again the sensation of flight: the wind in her face, the moments of weightlessness and of heaviness, the sublimity of rural France seen from above. And she hadn’t been afraid. She hadn’t been afraid.
Finally warm, she stretched out from her curled-into-a-ball position. Her bare feet brushed against something prickly. A burr. She tugged at her skirt and felt around until she found the burr and then pulled it off.
As she did so, an image popped into her mind. Everett, kneeling to pull her skirts free from a bramble. Everett. She shivered and pulled her knees back up to her chest. Whatever sort of life Everett had lived, he was dead now. She saw him rolling around on the burr-infested ground with the small French boys. She saw his eyes, piercingly blue, fixed on her. Saw him walking away, head down, fists clenched, heart broken.
She couldn’t think about it.
Sitting up, she threw off her covers and stared at the costume she wore. It was time to let the past go. It was time to think of what was in front of her, not what was behind her. She removed her cashmere skirt and shirtwaist and folded them carefully, setting them aside for dry cleaning, or brushing, or whatever Halley had recommended.
Then, sighing, she pulled on leggings and a sweater. In two weeks, she would start school in Italy. She’d flown today, or last night, or afternoon, or whatever she should call it, and she knew she would fly again. She would learn to bake. To create baguettes as they had been made for hundreds of years. As they’d been made in 1908 in sleepy Le Mans, France.
Stop it.
She had to stop thinking about Everett.
She needed a distraction. Texting DaVinci, she told her she was back a day early and asked if she wanted to go to LA and visit Halley. She didn’t mention the fact that she planned to fly there.
Two hours and two overpriced last-minute tickets later, DaVinci stood beside Jillian, waiting to board the propeller plane that would take them to Los Angeles. Jillian’s heart was beating fast, and she felt slightly sick to her stomach.
She’d found a flight on the smallest plane that flew between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, a tiny commuter with only ten rows of seating that she hoped would remind her (at least a little) of Wilbur Wright’s Flyer III.
She looked outside to the parked commuter plane. “The first airplane propellers only had two blades each,” Jillian said to DaVinci. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry.
“She said, apropos of nothing,” murmured DaVinci.
“Just trying to distract myself,” said Jillian.
DaVinci gave Jillian a quick hug. “You’ve got this.”
The two advanced toward the podium, where Jillian knew she was going to have to scan her boarding pass. Her heart began beating faster.
“So are we flying first class?” asked DaVinci.
“What?” Jillian’s stomach was twisting again. Did ginger ale help upset tummies? Would there be ginger ale? They were only two passengers away from the gate age
nt. Her legs felt like they were filled with jelly instead of bones.
“First class,” DaVinci repeated. “Are we in first?”
“Oh. First class. No.”
“Well, that’s too bad.” DaVinci scanned her boarding pass. “Do the little planes not have first class?” She reached over for Jillian’s hand—the one holding her phone. “Turn it upside down,” she said.
“This aircraft is all one class of service,” the gate agent said as she shifted Jillian’s phone slightly to the left. “Welcome aboard.”
Jillian’s heart was pounding so hard it was making a whooshing noise in her ears. Was that normal?
“You did it!” said DaVinci, linking arms with Jillian as they descended stairs to reach the tarmac. “You got past the gate!”
“I did,” said Jillian. The wind whipped at her hair, reminding her of the flight with Mr. Wright. Her pulse wasn’t pounding in her ears anymore. Maybe she could survive this.
“I wasn’t really angling for first-class seating,” said DaVinci. “I just figured you needed some extra distraction.”
Jillian felt a smile tugging at one side of her mouth. “I did.”
“Although, I’ll probably never fly first class unless it’s with you,” said DaVinci. “So if you ever want to go to Hawaii, just keep that in mind, okay?”
They had reached the stairwell that extended from the body of the plane.
“After you,” said DaVinci.
Jillian stepped forward, automatically accepting DaVinci’s invitation. She could hear her mother’s voice: If someone offers to let you go first, accept graciously, and then hold the door for them next time.
As they clunked up the metal stairs, Jillian realized what DaVinci had done.
“You knew I wouldn’t refuse if you told me to go first,” she said to DaVinci. “Sneaky.”
DaVinci shrugged slightly. “I figured I should be behind you. A physical barrier to prevent escape and all.”
“Ha, ha,” said Jillian.
“Welcome aboard,” said the flight attendant, waving them both forward.
As soon as the two were seated—Jillian at the window—DaVinci turned to her friend. “So who are you, and what did you do to my flight-phobic friend, Jillian?”
Jillian bit her lip. She’d been planning to tell her friends all at the same time about her flight with Wilbur Wright, but it would be over an hour until they would meet with Halley.
“I should probably tell you what I did last night,” she said to DaVinci.
After she’d finished, DaVinci’s eyes were wide with disbelief. “How could you leave him there? Everard. Evander. Ebenez—”
“Everett,” murmured Jillian.
“You left him behind,” DaVinci said with a moan. She sank down in her seat. “Why don’t these things happen to me? I would handle them so much better.”
Jillian raised one eyebrow.
“What? I would totally handle things better. Would have handled things better.” DaVinci rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
The flight attendant’s voice sounded. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have secured the door for takeoff and will be making one final check to ensure your seatbelts are fastened. Please make sure all items are stowed under the seat in front of you, and at this time, we need all electronics in airplane mode.”
The girls turned their phones to airplane mode. Hearing the propellers start, Jillian clenched her hands.
“It’s okay,” said DaVinci. “Tell me, uh, more about propellers.”
Jillian swallowed. Outside, the propellers were spinning so fast she could see right through them.
“Or, um . . . about the cockpit, maybe?” asked DaVinci.
Jillian nodded. “On the first planes, there were no cockpits. No nose cones. No sides, no roof, no anything. Not even armrests. Just open air and a place to sit attached to the bottom wing.”
DaVinci inhaled sharply. “Okay, do you have any idea how brave that makes you? Or mentally unbalanced? Not sure which.”
“I’m making it sound worse than it seemed at the time. There were footrests.”
“Oh. Well, footrests—that makes everything better.”
The plane began to move, and Jillian grabbed her armrest.
“You got this,” DaVinci said. “Keep talking. Tell me more about Everett.”
The plane finished backing up and began to move down the runway, the engines louder than ever. Jillian’s stomach was lurching. Why had she thought this was a good idea?
“Everett,” repeated DaVinci. “Hot star of the silver screen or whatever.”
“Um . . . he looks like Hugh Allan. You know that picture my mom has in the great room?”
Jillian felt herself being pushed back into her seat.
“Mmm, the handsome one in the signed black-and-white picture,” said DaVinci.
But Jillian wasn’t paying attention to her friend. She felt the exact moment when the plane left the ground. She felt it and . . . it felt the same. It felt like 1908, like her flight with Wilbur Wright. Suddenly she felt giddy.
“It feels the same,” she whispered to DaVinci.
“Huh,” said DaVinci.
“Less windy though,” Jillian added. A small laugh escaped her. She was doing this! She’d gotten on a plane in the twenty-first century and she was flying. The plane tipped sharply to the left.
“Whoa!” said DaVinci, grabbing her own armrest.
“The turn is so we can start climbing,” said Jillian. She was smiling. She was on a plane and she was smiling!
“Okay,” said DaVinci. “You just . . . you really feel it in this size aircraft, I guess.”
“Look at Santa Barbara,” said Jillian. She leaned back in her seat so DaVinci could get a better view.
“Wow. Gorgeous.”
“Gorgeous,” agreed Jillian. It wasn’t patchwork farms and winding streams of shining silver, but it was beautiful.
“So, speaking of gorgeous,” said DaVinci, grabbing her phone, “did you google him? Is he, like, in some rest home somewhere?”
Jillian shook her head. “He’d be dead by now,” she said softly. “Even if he lived to be a hundred.”
“Oh. Yeah. I guess so.” DaVinci put her phone away. “No Internet anyway.”
Jillian heard Everett’s last words again: I’ll carry the memory of your kiss with me every day of my life, clear to my dying breath. Had he? She felt tears forming and quickly blinked them back.
“We’ll talk about something else,” DaVinci said softly.
After that, DaVinci kept up a steady stream of chatter with occasional questions, none of which had to do with Everett, for which Jillian was grateful. The trip down the coast was short, and soon Jillian felt her ears responding to the change in pressure.
They weren’t falling she wasn’t falling this wasn’t the same as falling.
“Hey, hey,” murmured DaVinci.
They hit a rough patch, and Jillian squeezed her eyes shut.
They weren’t falling she wasn’t falling this wasn’t the same.
“Hey,” said DaVinci, “it’s okay. Look at the flight attendants. Do they look concerned?”
Jillian opened one eye. The flight attendants were laughing over something in a glossy magazine. She opened her other eye. There was a definite lack of concern in the jump seats.
“It’s easy for them,” Jillian murmured. “They’re used to bumps.”
“Exactly. They’re used to them because they happen all the time.” DaVinci squeezed Jillian’s hand. “Bumps are normal. The pilot knows what she’s doing. Not to mention, she’s motivated to bring us in safely. There’s no airbags in the nose cone, or whatever you call it. Just sayin’.”
Jillian nodded. Took a few slow breaths. She caught a glimpse of the runway out DaVinci’s window. It was almost over. She was doing this, and she would do it again.
But as they touched down on the runway, Jillian’s emotions took a turn, her victory suddenly hollow. All she could think about was what Ev
erett would have given for a flight like this.
Halley was waiting for them at curbside when Jillian and DaVinci exited the terminal. She jumped out of the driver’s seat and ran for Jillian.
“You did it! I can’t believe you did it! Oh my gosh, Jillian, I’m so proud of you! You can go to Italy now!” Halley threw her arms around Jillian, practically squealing.
After a hug from Edmund, the four climbed in Halley’s Jeep—an upgrade from her old blue pickup. And then, on the slow drive through LA traffic, Jillian told Halley and Edmund the same story she’d told DaVinci.
Once Jillian finished, Halley was quiet for a minute. Finally she said, “I’m glad everything worked out, but I wish you hadn’t tried this alone—”
DaVinci interrupted. “What’s done is done, and just look what she accomplished!”
Reluctantly, Halley murmured, “Yeah.” Then she smiled and added, “The whole drive to LAX, I was half expecting a text saying you’d changed your mind.”
“I almost did,” admitted Jillian. “A few times. But DaVinci really helped.”
“You don’t have to fly back alone,” said DaVinci, who had earlier arranged to stay the night at Halley and Edmund’s when Jillian returned.
“No, I want to fly by myself,” said Jillian. “I need to make sure I can really do this in two weeks without help.”
“The great thing is,” said Halley, “you faced your fear. And you beat it.”
“You beat it like a boss,” said Edmund.
DaVinci snorted with laughter.
“Have I abused the simile?” asked Edmund, sounding puzzled.
“No,” replied DaVinci. “That was perfect. Totally perfect.”
DaVinci and Edmund continued discussing modern similes right up to their arrival at Halley’s tiny apartment. Once inside, Jillian cozied up on an ancient Chesterfield sofa her mom had gifted to Halley and cleared her throat.
“So, I saved something to ask you all at the same time. I ran into a slight wrinkle with, well, with time.”
“A ‘wrinkle’? In time?” DaVinci snorted. “Seriously, Jillian.”
Edmund looked blankly at DaVinci.
“I’ll explain later,” Halley whispered. “Go on, Jillian.”
A Flight in Time (Thief in Time Series Book 2) Page 16