A Flight in Time (Thief in Time Series Book 2)

by Cidney Swanson

  “You don’t have to do this,” said Littlewood.

  “Stop talking,” said Khan.

  Khan forced Littlewood to march to the other side of the moving truck, where, sure enough, the rest of the crew was standing. Or most of them. Khan counted heads. Four plus Littlewood. One was missing. “Where’s the fifth member of your crew?”

  “She’s in the basement,” said Littlewood. “What do you want?”

  “I already told you to stop talking,” replied Khan. And then, more loudly, he said, “Hands on your heads, the rest of you! Now!”

  One of the girls—the dark one—was typing on her phone.

  “Drop your phone!” Khan’s voice echoed off the nearby pool house. “All of you—phones on the ground.”

  “Jules, this isn’t you,” said Littlewood, pleading. “Think about what you’re doing.”

  The dark-skinned girl muttered something that sounded like, hey, serious.

  “Quiet!” shouted Khan.

  The dark girl said something else. Sentence, maybe?

  Khan leveled the gun at her. “If anyone says anything else, I will shoot.”

  The group became pleasantly mute after the threat. It was gratifying.

  “Downstairs,” said Khan. “And keep your hands together on top of your heads.”

  The group marched toward the front door of the house, filing into a neat line. This was going very well. He wished he could remember if the basement door opened in or out. Not that it mattered. His plan would give him the time he needed either way.

  70

  · JILLIAN ·

  Montecito, the Present

  Jillian gasped as she read the text Halley had just sent.

  Khan forcing downstairs has gun

  She had just texted their address to 9-1-1 when she heard Khan’s voice echoing in the stairwell. “You in there, throw your phone toward the door.”

  “What?” she said, stalling for time.

  “Your phone! Now! Throw it to the door where I can see it.”

  She complied, her heart pounding in her chest. Khan was here. Khan was armed. Khan was making threats. Was he here for the time machine? They’d placed a ten-by-twelve rectangle of carpet over the ground where the machine had stood, covering the telltale gouges and a few burn marks.

  Everett was the first through the doorway.

  “Everett,” she said, her throat so tight she could hardly speak.

  “No talking!” That was Khan.

  Halley walked into the room, followed by DaVinci, Edmund, and Littlewood. All of them had their hands over their heads. Last into the room came Khan, holding a gun.

  The sight made something spark to life inside Jillian. “What’s going on?” she demanded.

  “I’ll say this to you once as a courtesy,” said Khan. “No more talking, or I shoot. Understand?”

  Jillian nodded.

  “That’s better,” said Khan. “You are all going to stay down here while I go upstairs and take back what belongs to me.”

  “Hang on a minute,” said Littlewood.

  A shot rang out. Jillian ducked.

  “I said no talking!” shouted Khan. “Next time I’ll aim at one of you. Do we all understand?”

  Everyone but Everett nodded. Jillian couldn’t see Everett’s face from where she stooped beside a desk.

  “Put down the gun.” That was Everett’s low voice. It sounded deadly.

  Jillian saw Khan flinch and then turn his weapon on Everett.

  “Put it down,” Everett said again. He hurtled himself toward Khan.

  And then everything seemed to happen at once. DaVinci screamed Everett’s name. Khan grimaced and took aim at Everett. Everett tackled Khan. And Khan fired a shot.

  With a choked grunt, Everett fell.

  Jillian screamed.

  No, no, no! This wasn’t happening couldn’t happen didn’t happen.

  “Down on the ground! Now! All of you!” Khan sounded like a madman. “I have four shots left.”

  Jillian did what Khan said, but she raised her head just enough to look at Everett. He was lying on the ground.

  He was okay he was okay he was okay.

  He had to be okay.

  And then she saw the blood seeping out from under him. She tried to inhale, but it felt like her lungs had crumpled.

  “When I leave this room,” shouted Khan, “you will all remain here for five minutes.” He began to back toward the door, gun held out front, index finger on the trigger. “Come out before that, and I will shoot to kill.”

  And then he pulled the door shut and fled.

  Jillian pushed off the ground and stumbled to Everett’s side.

  71

  · KHAN ·

  Montecito, the Present

  Khan pulled the door shut as he left and then dashed up the stairs. Everything depended on these next few seconds. He reached the top of the stairs and ran to the far side of a heavy leather couch. It scooted easily over the tile floor. He gave it a final shove, and it thumped and thudded down the stairs, landing on end, jammed against the doorway exactly as he’d hoped. That would slow them down.

  And then he ran. He’d made it all the way to the driver-side door and into the truck when he heard the sirens approaching. Sirens? He swore, realizing too late the girl who had been texting must’ve said, “Hey, Siri,” and not, “Hey, serious,” followed by, “Send,” not “Sentence.” The sirens were coming for him. Reaching for the ignition, he realized he didn’t have the keys to start the truck. He swore again, more emphatically this time. How could he have forgotten the keys?

  The sirens wailed. The sound was getting close to the lower gate. Could he make it back to the basement and demand the keys? The stupid couch was in the way. It would slow him down badly. He swore a third time.

  What were his options? Any minute one of those kids might decide to come after him. The boy he hadn’t shot had looked especially murderous. Khan couldn’t drive the truck without the keys, and he didn’t have time to run back, wriggle past the couch, and snatch the keys. The game was over. He’d lost. The machine was lost to him. Swearing wasn’t going to change that.

  The sirens grew louder. He jumped out of the truck and ran for the garage. He might have lost the game, but he wasn’t about to lose his freedom. As he ran, he pulled his key ring from his pocket. BMW, BMW, which was the damn BMW key?

  Finding the key, he ran into the garage, opened the car door, and shoved the key in the ignition. The car roared to life, and Khan slammed it into reverse, backed out, and then popped it into first and drove like a crazed idiot toward the upper gate, praying the police would enter from the lower gate where the sirens were loudest.

  72

  · JILLIAN ·

  Montecito, the Present

  Jillian was doing her best to smile at Everett while Edmund staunched the bleeding.

  “The police are almost here,” she said. She could hear Halley swearing about a couch wedged in the doorway.

  “Down here,” Halley was shouting. “We need help! Someone’s been shot.”

  “It’s okay,” Jillian said to Everett, willing things to be okay. Things had to be okay. The pool of blood had stopped growing. Wasn’t that good? She looked away from the blood and focused on Everett’s eyes. “Stay with me,” she whispered.

  “Always,” grunted Everett.

  “Don’t talk,” snapped DaVinci. “Just rest. Help is here.”

  Someone cleaned and bandaged the wound. Someone assured Jillian that Everett would receive the best treatment possible. Someone explained he’d lost a lot of blood, and when she fainted, someone caught her.

  Jillian woke up a minute later, having been carried up the stairs without noticing it happening.

  “Where’s Everett?” she asked the EMT leaning over her.

  “On his way to Santa Francesca Hospital.”

  She closed her eyes and began to cry, which was how Branson found her when he arrived a few minutes later.

  73

/>   · EVERETT ·

  Santa Barbara, the Present

  Everett’s eyes fluttered open. He’d been moved. He remembered the gun and felt a sudden rising panic.

  “Jillian?” His voice sounded funny to his ears.

  “Right here,” she said.

  Where was he?

  She dashed over to his . . . bed. It was a very odd bed. Where was he?

  “You’ve been moved to a hospital,” Jillian said, answering his question before he had a chance to ask it. “You were shot. You lost some blood, but you’re going to be fine.”

  “Well, naturally I am, so long as you’re here,” he said. His throat felt parched. “Now, then, what’s a man got to do to get a drink hereabouts?”

  Jillian smiled.

  Tarnation, but she was beautiful as a painting.

  She raised a sort of . . . vase with a drinking straw made of a material he did not recognize. He took a sip. Water.

  “So,” he said, setting the water down, “this is a hospital of the twenty-first century?” His eyes traveled around the room. Everywhere he looked, he saw wonders. He reached for Jillian’s hand and realized there was a contraption taped to his index finger. “What is this?”

  “Oh. Um, it measures the oxygen in your bloodstream. I think.”

  Everett gazed at the strange device. “How does it communicate with my insides?” he asked.

  Jillian laughed. Holy Moses, he loved her laughter.

  “I have no idea,” she said.

  Everett shook his head. It would take a lifetime to learn everything he wanted to know about this century. He suddenly wondered how his other self had passed his life in the last century.

  “Jillian, you say that I . . . that a part or version of me remained in the last century when I came here with you.”

  She nodded, her large eyes solemn.

  “Why the dismay?” he asked, his voice still light.

  “Oh, Everett . . .”

  “Go on, then.”

  He listened as Jillian told him what she knew of his other life. That they’d met again, in 1908 in France. That he had been working as a handyman for one of Wright’s friends. That he had become a pilot. That he’d had a sort of reconciliation with his parents when he was twenty-six. That he’d fought the Germans, using an alias to join up. That he’d perished in 1918.

  It was a lot to take in.

  After telling Everett everything she knew about his other life, Jillian fell silent. She had to give him time to take it all in. Would he need to grieve? She remembered something Halley had said once about Edmund—that Edmund had been interested in his other life, but only in the way he might have been interested in the life of a cousin. The facts were interesting, but they’d felt at a remove from him, somehow.

  She didn’t know if Everett would feel the same.

  He gestured for the water again, drinking until he’d emptied it. After that he stared out the window overlooking the hills and one tiny corner of the ocean. She saw him grimace and shift slightly to look down at his shoulder where the bullet had hit him.

  “Do you need pain medication?” she asked. “Or is there anything else I can do for you?”

  Everett turned his focus from his shoulder to her eyes. He smiled lazily.

  “Tell me again about the first time you met me,” he said.

  “The first time I met you?” she asked, for clarification.

  “Tell me about 1908.”

  Jillian smiled. And told him again in much greater detail.

  By the time Everett was allowed to depart Santa Francesca, he’d befriended most of the staff of the small hospital, asking them questions about how absolutely everything worked, from the IV drips to the floor-buffing machine. Jillian stayed with him every day until finally, on the twenty-fourth of December, he was released.

  Christmas was a much-subdued affair at the Applegates’ estate because, as Jillian explained to her parents, Everett needed rest to make a full recovery. Her parents found Jillian’s new friend to be perfectly wonderful. So well mannered. They thanked him again and again for saving their daughter’s life (it was the version of the story Jillian insisted on, because it was the version that would make her parents ask Everett to spend the holidays with them).

  Jillian had asked for something unusual for Christmas. She’d asked to be allowed to redecorate the Green Eggs and Ham suite in the west wing, turning it into a Martian Chronicles suite instead. Jillian’s father remarked he hadn’t known she was a fan of Ray Bradbury. Jillian’s mother bought up as many first editions of Bradbury titles as could be found on short notice. After Christmas dinner and before the annual screening of It’s a Wonderful Life, to which Halley, Edmund, and DaVinci were all invited, Jillian took everyone to view the newly redecorated suite.

  The time machine took up one entire wall and extended almost to the starkly futuristic bed with its metallic bedcovering.

  “Good heavens,” murmured Jillian’s mother, pointing to the time machine. “What is that supposed to be?”

  Jillian had her story ready. “It’s supposed to be a transportation control.”

  “It’s my first attempt at performance sculpture,” said DaVinci. “I can fire it up if you want, but it runs at sixty-five decibels.”

  “No, no,” said Jillian’s mother. “I’m fine just observing it without the, er, performance aspect.”

  After that, everyone returned to the main house for the movie, settling into the Applegates’ private theatre with bowls of popcorn. Jillian made sure to reserve the back row for herself and Everett, behind observing eyes. During the screening, there might have been a tear or two on Everett’s part, a kiss or two on Jillian’s.

  Once “The End” filled the screen, everyone said their goodbyes, and Jillian walked Everett to his suite in the west wing, the Great Gatsby suite. Everett was very fond of his “modern” furnishings, taken from an era twenty years into the future of his original timeline.

  Once it was just the two of them in the room, Everett asked Jillian the same question he’d been asking since the twenty-third of December, when Jillian had made an unusual proposal.

  “Are you certain you wish to return to your university in the new year?”

  Jillian hesitated only a moment.

  “I’m sure.”

  She was sure she wanted Everett to have a shot at an engineering degree. She was sure she could purchase books and a laptop for him, get library books for him, even sneak him into a lecture or two if she returned to Cal. She couldn’t do any of that if she went to Italy.

  They were still working on credible ID for Everett so that he could find work, but Dr. Littlewood had explained there would be no way to get outside financial assistance for Everett to attend college next fall. School records, financial records—these would be examined with a fine-tooth comb if he applied for loans or grants or scholarships. He would have to pay cash to enroll. For now, Jillian needed to be in a financial position to offer Everett everything he needed to be ready for college by fall. To do that, she needed her allowance. To receive her allowance, she had to return to Berkeley.

  “I don’t like it,” said Everett.

  Jillian didn’t like it either, but the alternative was worse. Everett was here because of her actions, and she was going to do everything she could to make his life here a good one.

  “But I had a thought,” said Everett. “How much leisure time would you say you have each day at this university of yours?”

  Jillian had thought a lot about her free time, hoping she might find work at a local bakery.

  “Normally I can get through classes and homework and have five to eight hours a day to myself. Plus weekends. I thought I might get a job at a bakery, so I could still, you know . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t like to imply she was anything less than perfectly happy with the way things were turning out.

  “I have a better idea,” said Everett. “It involves a few changes. Firstly, you will need to transfer from the
University of California, Berkeley, to the University of California, Santa Barbara. Your friend DaVinci tells me that should not be a problem.”

  “Probably not,” said Jillian. She would rather live here, given the choice . . .

  “So long as you reside here, you will have access to the time machine. And whensoever you find yourself with five to ten hours of leisure, you take a trip to Italy.” He grinned broadly. “Thereby completing both courses of study.”

  Jillian frowned. “But if I only show up in Italy every now and again, I think they’ll probably kick me out of the program.”

  Everett’s eyes twinkled. “You can travel to Italy every single day. Attend every class. In the correct order.”

  “Oh,” said Jillian. “Oh, wow. I could, couldn’t I?”

  “You would present yourself for school the first day, and then space–time retrieves you. Then you attend the second day, and so on.”

  “Oh my gosh. I think that might actually work. Classes run five hours each day—from eight to one, with weekends off.” She met Everett’s eyes. “This is brilliant! You are brilliant!”

  “I have mapped out several options,” he said, presenting her with a stack of papers. “I used the formulas that describe the potential length of stay for each visit. Assuming you can, on average, attend three cookery classes per week from within our timeline, which I think is your best option, then the window of opportunity for your travels would open at twelve weeks after classes in Italy commence and conclude sixty weeks later.”

  “I see. And I would need to wait a few weeks before returning to, um, this January in Italy because otherwise I’d have to spend too long in Italy each time.”

  Everett nodded. “Because the passing of time happens equally in the past and your present. So, if you travel there beginning twelve weeks after classes have commenced in Italy, your length of stay in Italy would be about ten hours per visit. By fifty-one weeks, the length of stay per visit would be down to only five hours.”

  “You’ve been busy.”

  “I have been . . . ‘head timing’ with Dr. Littlewood, without whose help I would have been left high and dry.”