by Rebecca York
As that thought flashed through his mind, the rain eased up a little.
They looked around to get their bearings. At first they saw only the scattered debris of campers’ hasty departures. The flood warnings had already sent most of the families packing in a hurry. The smart ones, Jonah thought.
Could we have gotten the time wrong? Could Lisa’s family have left? Alice asked.
Not according to the newspaper article.
They should be here. But where?
Jonah and Alice sloshed through puddles, looking for the Samses. The campground was divided into sections, each with its own electrical hookup. Finally, through the rain, he spotted movement that wasn’t falling water and gestured toward the right. They hurried as fast as they could in that direction and came out in a clearing where a man, woman and a couple of kids were frantically trying to pack up a wet tent.
There’s Lisa. Alice pointed to a young woman wearing a yellow slicker. She had no hat, and her blond hair was plastered to her head.
She pulled out a pet carrier and tried to stuff a sopping wet animal inside.
The dog. It wiggled out of her grasp and took off into the downpour in the direction of the river.
“Snowball, come back here. Snowball, bad dog. Come back here,” she wailed.
At least that was a piece of luck. They could follow the animal—hoping it would lead them to Hayward.
The girl was about to go after the dog when a cop car with flashing lights drove into the clearing.
A trooper in rain gear climbed out and stomped over to Mr. Sams.
“Sir, you’re supposed to be out of here.”
The father turned toward the officer. “We’re trying to pack up.”
“You should have been gone an hour ago. I ought to give you a citation.”
The father’s voice quavered. “I’m sorry. We’re going.”
The officer gave him one more long look, then turned away and spotted Jonah and Alice. “And what the hell are you doing here?” he asked.
“We’re reporters for the Garrison Times,” Jonah said, remembering the name of the local paper.
“Oh yeah; well you know this area is off limits.” He looked around. “Where’s your vehicle?”
Jonah gestured, “in the woods.”
“Get back there and get out of here.”
The only thing they could do was follow directions, feeling the officer’s eyes on them.
Finally, he got back into his cruiser and backed up, sending mud flying into the air. On the access road, he splashed up water as he hit a series of potholes.
At the Sams camp spot, Lisa was weeping. “I have to get Snowball.”
“That police officer told us to leave,” her father said.
The girl stared at him for a long moment. “No.”
The father made a grab for her, but she dodged away and took off, running in the direction where the dog had disappeared.
They heard her father curse and yell after her.
He’s gonna see us if we follow her, Alice shouted in his mind.
Yeah, Jonah answered. They separated and circled around, finally heading in the direction the girl had taken but staying twenty yards apart.
At first Jonah had no idea where the young woman had gone. Then he heard Lisa calling the pup’s name, her voice breaking as she made one more try to get her pet back.
There was no response until they heard a series of yelps over the sound of the rain and the rushing water.
“Snowball!”
Lisa ducked around some brambles, and followed the increasingly frantic yelps.
Jonah and Alice had talked about how to handle this. Following their plan, they stayed separated, one going left and the other right, each of them heading for the other side of the thicket.
Jonah came out first and saw a man, dressed in a black rain jacket and dark pants. He was holding the dog, squeezing him painfully. Lisa was standing a few yards away crying. “Stop hurting him. Give him to me,” she pleaded.
“Come and get him.”
The girl was cautious. She could see that this man was dangerous, but she wanted her pet returned unharmed.
She inched closer, and as she got within grabbing distance, Hayward tossed the dog down and reached for her, one of his big hands closing around her arm and his other hand clamping over her mouth.
As Snowball streaked away, she struggled, but to no avail.
Jonah came up on the killer’s right.
Sensing movement, the man looked up, his features hardening as he saw someone interfering with his plans.
“Let her go,” Jonah called out.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Your worst nightmare,” Jonah answered.
With one hand around the girl’s throat, Hayward whipped out a gun and held it to her temple as he pulled her against his chest.
She whimpered.
“Shut up,” Hayward ordered, before looking directly at Jonah. “Stay back. I’ll kill the little bitch if you come any closer.”
Chapter 21
Jonah stopped in his tracks, unable to take a risk that the man would follow through on his threat.
To his left, Alice stepped into view.
“Take me instead,” she called over the pounding of the rain.
The serial killer shifted slightly, peering at her. “Do I know you?”
“Not yet.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I guess you’ll find out.”
“Stay back, or the girl dies,” Hayward warned again.
“Okay,” Jonah called out. “Take it easy.”
As Hayward shifted back to him, something happened that the kidnapper could never have anticipated.
Jonah vanished.
“What the fuck?” Hayward stared blankly at the spot where Jonah had been standing.
The killer took the gun away from the girl’s neck, waving it around at chest level as he tried to figure out where the man had gone.
Seconds later, Jonah appeared behind the killer scuffing his feet in the wet leaves.
Taken completely by surprise, Hayward whirled, letting go of the girl as he leveled the gun at Jonah. But suddenly his nemesis wasn’t there again.
“Run,” Alice shouted to the girl.
She didn’t need a further invitation and took off back the way she’d come. From the woods, the dog joined her.
The kidnapper’s gun was now aimed at Alice.
She kept her gaze steady. “Kill me and you won’t have anyone to put in that cell under your mansion.”
He goggled at her. “What? How could you know about that?”
“Because I was there, and I escaped.”
“Impossible. This girl is my first.”
“She would have been.”
Before Hayward could formulate an answer, Jonah appeared behind him again, pulling up his gun hand. The weapon discharged, but it probably sounded like a clap of thunder in the rain. Jonah twisted the arm. The man screamed as a bone cracked, and he dropped the weapon.
Alice swooped in and kicked the revolver away, then delivered a kick to Hayward’s balls.
He screamed and doubled over.
“I’d love to draw this out and give you a nice long beating, but I’m afraid we don’t have time,” Alice said.
Jonah chopped at the man’s neck and he went down
They each picked him up with a hand under an armpit and dragged him toward the rushing water.
With a mighty heave, they tossed him in. The cold water woke him up, and he screamed as the swollen creek carried him away. Jonah saw a log strike his head, and he went under the surface.
They could hear running feet behind them and both whirled. A big man was coming toward them—fast—holding an ax. It was Lisa’s father.
He lowered the weapon when he saw them but still looked wary.
“Are you the two people who saved my daughter?”
“Yes,” Alice answered, swiping water out of
her face.
He gazed around, staring into the rain. “Where is the guy?”
Jonah gestured toward the water. “He slipped and fell in.”
“He did?”
“Yeah. And you’d better get out of here before that cop comes back and gives you a citation.” Jonah took Alice’s arm, and they started back the way they’d come.
“Wait. Who are you?”
“Nobody,” Jonah called over his shoulder. “Finish packing and get out of here before the water rises any farther and your whole family gets washed away.”
Without waiting for an answer, they walked rapidly through the woods. When they were out of sight and sure the father wasn’t following them, they embraced, just standing there for long moments.
“We got him,” Alice said, sounding like she could hardly believe they had done it.
“Thank God. But we’d better leave.”
Jonah reversed the process. Once again, Alice added mental energy, and he easily took them back to where they had started—only a few yards farther from the car.
Alice blinked in the sunlight. “Thank God,” she breathed.
oOo
Jonah tightened his grip on her, stroking his hands up and down her body, thankful that she was still in his arms. In truth, he hadn’t known if she would vanish after the killer was eliminated.
Lowering his mouth, he gave her a long, passionate kiss, and she responded with equal heat.
“Too bad we don’t have time to celebrate,” she said, when he finally lifted his head.
“Later.”
She grinned at him. “Those short time hops you practiced really paid off,”
“I was hoping they would give us the edge.”
“We should get on to the next project.” As she turned toward the car, she wavered on her feet, and he gripped her arm.
“Are you okay?”
Alice swallowed hard and gave the only answer she could, “Yes.”
“Good girl. I know you’re shaky, which is all the more reason to finish this thing quickly.”
“You mean because Hayward is dead, and the clock is ticking for me?” she said with a little hitch in her voice.
She was sure he wanted to deny the danger to her, but he wasn’t going to lie.
“Exactly.”
They returned to the car, quickly stripped off their rain gear and tossed it in the trunk. Now they were wearing jeans and tee shirts suitable for the current weather conditions.
Alice leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes.
“You don’t feel well?”
“I feel weighted down,” she replied.
“Can you be a little clearer?”
“Like it’s hard to lift my arms and legs. And hard to breathe,” she admitted.
oOo
Fear sizzled through Jonah. He thanked God that Alice hadn’t vanished in a flash. But he knew time was starting to crowd her out of existence because Hayward was now dead. How long did she have?
The only certainty was that they’d better hurry.
She closed her eyes and lolled against the seat while they headed for Western Maryland.
As he drove, it was tempting to speed—like an escaped soul fleeing from hell. But he ordered himself not to press the accelerator to the floor. He was thankful that this part of Pennsylvania was close to the place where Alice had been abducted, and he breathed a sigh of relief when she opened her eyes and started looking out the window.
“Almost there,” she said, pointing to a gravel road. “That’s the turnoff to the camp.”
He’d visited the place the week before and knew the camp was out of business. When they reached the location, he saw only the dilapidated buildings that had lasted into the current century.
He also knew where Hayward had staged the fake accident because the rock slide was still there. It was a gigantic pile of boulders that would have been impossible to move without heavy equipment.
He kept driving, until the road became too narrow to navigate. From the look of fatigue on Alice’s face, he hoped she could make it to the right spot.
“I used to come up this way a lot,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I loved the peace and quiet. I didn’t know a killer was paying attention to my habits.”
“Yeah. Back in the early sixties nobody expected to go out for a hike and get snatched. You stay here. I’ll go investigate.” Fear had him jogging up the trail through trees with almost bare branches. He had gone perhaps two hundred yards when he saw the spot where a cliff had collapsed.
And to his relief, nobody was around.
“Thank God,” he breathed as he turned and jogged back.
Alice was sitting with her eyes closed, but they drifted open when she heard him.
“I found it. Nobody’s here.”
She pushed herself up. “We’d better hurry.”
“Yeah,” he answered. Theoretically they had all the time in the world—but not for Alice.
From the trunk, he collected supplies he hadn’t needed at the campground. After shouldering a backpack, he put his arm around Alice, helping her walk up the trail.
He could hear her labored breathing and feel her faltering steps.
Please, God, he silently prayed. Let me get her there in time.
I heard that.
He laughed, then said aloud, “It’s gonna be okay. I’m just nervous.”
After that, he tried to keep his thoughts on the task ahead, but there was no way he could keep panic from drifting into the edges of his mind.
When he heard her gasp, alarm grabbed him again. But she was only reacting to the enormous pile of rocks.
“Oh Lord. No wonder they didn’t try to find me.”
“We’ll put everything right,” he said, quickly switching his thoughts to the date and time—which they knew from the newspaper articles they’d read.
They were so close. So close to finishing this. But as he started the process of taking them back to 1961, he could feel the weakness of Alice’s energy level.
Desperately, he expended his own life force to push them back to the date she’d been taken.
They had left on a crisp fall day. They materialized into late summer, with leafy trees and chirping birds. Alice looked around and shuddered.
He tried again to gauge her health. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. It looks so pretty in summer, but this was the worst day of my life.”
“We’ll change that. Hayward isn’t here now.”
“But he captured the old me, and we’re going to scare the shit out of her anyway.”
“I’m sorry.”
oOo
It all seemed so unreal, Alice thought as she fought not to be sick.
“Come on. Come on,” she heard Jonah mutter as they lurked in the shadows, waiting for the old Alice to come up the trail. He kept glancing at his watch, the seconds ticking by.
“Could it be the wrong time?” he finally asked.
“I don’t think so,” she answered, although now she wasn’t sure.
“Should we try again and pick another time in the afternoon?”
She dragged in a breath and let it out, before whispering what neither one of them wanted to hear. “No, I don’t think I could survive another time jump.”
“Christ.”
“We have to wait.”
She knew he wanted to do something. But all he could do was help her to sit down on the mossy ground and sling his arm around her, pulling her close.
Leaning her head on his shoulder, she closed her eyes and drifted in some region of reality that she couldn’t name. She loved this man, and this might be the last time they sat together.
“No,” he said aloud, and she knew he had picked up on her thoughts. Trying to simply enjoy this time with him, she reached for his hand and felt his fingers close around hers.
She wasn’t sure how long they sat there in the shade of the trees, but finally she felt him tense.
A sizzle of alarm sh
ot through her, and her eyes blinked open. Despite knowing Hayward had been swept away by the rushing water, she couldn’t stop herself from expecting him here. But it wasn’t Hayward.
Here she is.
She saw a woman dressed in shorts and a tee shirt come up the trail. For a startled moment, she thought it wasn’t her. If you counted the time she’d been in captivity and then when she’d been living with Jonah, only a few months had passed since this moment. But she was astonished at how different she looked.
“Wimpy,” was the word she’d use—after all the physical training she’d been forced to endure. It wasn’t just that. She’d lived in Jonah’s decade for less than a month, but the new reality had definitely changed her. Plus, she’d kept up an exercise routine because she liked the way it made her feel.
Jonah got up, moving rapidly through the trees. He came up from behind Alice’s old self and grabbed her, clamping a hand over her mouth as he dragged her off the trail.
Although she struggled, she was no match for a Decorah Security agent.
Alice felt her stomach lurch as she watched Jonah carry the figure away, toward the thick grove of trees.
When they came close, Alice saw the panic in the girl’s eyes. They widened as they darted to the waiting woman, taking in the familiar features.
Alice wanted to say something reassuring.
Jonah was in too much of a hurry. He pulled a cloth from a small ziplock bag and pressed the ether-soaked fabric to the girl’s nose and mouth. As she lost consciousness, he eased her to the ground.
“Stay with her,” he said, getting out equipment he’d taken from the car.
Alice clenched her teeth as she moved closer to her former self.
She was feeling sicker by the minute, but she knew there was no help for it until Jonah finished with his job.
He’d studied the cliff—both before and after Hayward’s blast. And he’d talked to experts about the best places to set the charges.
She knew Hayward had had time to arrange the accident. Probably he’d set the charges days earlier. Jonah didn’t have that luxury because he couldn’t take a chance on someone else getting hurt.
She watched him expertly climb the face of the cliff. When he reached a spot near the top, he took off his backpack, removed some of the plastic explosives he’d brought, and began wedging the charges deep into crevices.