Stolen Time
Page 29
Slowly, Dorothy stood. They were on a narrow dock wedged between two grimy brick buildings. The windows were mostly smashed and boarded up, but a few slivers of glass remained in the frames, reflecting herself and Roman back to her a hundred times. She caught sight of her face in the window directly across from her.
At least she thought it was hers. The girl staring back at her might’ve been beautiful, once. Not anymore. Half her face had been shredded, and blood leaked through the fingers cupped over her eye. And her hair, her beautiful, brown hair . . .
It had turned completely white.
“I’m waiting for a name,” Roman reminded her.
Dorothy barely heard him. She took a step closer to the window, amazed. For the first time that she could remember, she saw her reflection and didn’t feel like it was a lie. The broken, ugly girl in the window was more her than she’d ever been before.
Everything’s a con, she thought and, for a moment, she felt like laughing.
It was so simple. Roman really had set her up. She thought of everything he’d done back at the complex—breaking Ash out, making sure she got into the time machine, baiting her with all that nonsense about proving herself—it had all been meant to get her here, to this moment, standing on the dock with Roman a year earlier than anyone expected.
He’d known that the ship wouldn’t make it through the anil, that she’d offer to change the EM. That she’d be lost.
Despite her pain, Dorothy felt herself start to grin. It was just an elaborate con. Her con. She’d told Roman everything that happened. She’d told him exactly how to manipulate her.
Hand trembling, she patted down her jacket, calming when her fingers found the small, cylindrical shape inside her pocket.
She heard Ash’s voice in her head: He doesn’t have any exotic matter. Even if that time machine he built actually works, physically, he can’t travel back in time.
And then Roman: There’s something else that I need. . . . Believe it or not, you’re the only person alive who can get it for me.
“I’m beginning to get impatient,” Roman said. He raised his gun.
Time is a circle, Dorothy thought. She fumbled for her jacket pocket, fingers closing around the container of exotic matter.
“Quinn,” she said, turning away from the window. The name tasted like honey on her tongue, instantly and completely right. She stood up straighter, mimicking what she remembered of Quinn’s regal posture back in the hotel room. “My name is Quinn Fox. If you let me live, I can help you.”
Roman hesitated. “Help me? How?”
Dorothy pulled the EM out of her pocket. It flashed beneath her fingers: purple and oily, and then thick, like white lava.
She held it out to him. “I have something you need.”
Acknowledgments
It seems fitting that my tenth published novel should also be the one that was in the works the longest. When I go into my email account and do a search for this novel, the earliest reference I find is from 2011, but that’s misleading—I came up with the idea for this book long, long before that, only then it was called Time Traveling Monster Hunters. And, uh, there were actual monsters involved, and not just metaphorical ones. (The monsters were cut for good reason, believe me!)
And so it stands to reason that I have a lot of people to thank, starting with my first agent, Chris Richman, who also happened to be the second person I told about this strange little book. Any writer can tell you that we have about a dozen story ideas floating around in our heads at any time. There are all sorts of reasons we decide to pursue the ideas that we do, but early encouragement is a big one. Chris’s reaction to this idea was one of the reasons I decided to keep tinkering with it, even if I wouldn’t get around to actually writing it for another five years. So, thank you, Chris. I hope you pick it up and recognize that idea I told you about years and years ago.
If Chris’s encouragement helped me start this book, Mandy Hubbard’s continued enthusiasm and support is what helped me finish it. From cheerleading me through early drafts, to doggedly helping me seek out the very best home, to holding my hand as the pub date inched ever closer, Mandy has been a better advocate for my career than I ever could’ve wished for. I reread the email she wrote me after I sent her the first pages of this book whenever I need a pick-me-up, or to remember what I’d hoped this series could be. Thank you, thank you, thank you times a million.
No book is published by just one person, and Stolen Time benefited from having a truly fantastic team of people supporting it behind the scenes. I want to thank everyone at HarperTeen for everything they did to bring this book out into the world, but, particularly, thank you to my editor, Erica Sussman, who has been championing Stolen Time, and me, from the beginning. Huge thanks, also, to Louisa Currigan; Bess Braswell and Sabrina Abballe in marketing; Gina Rizzo in publicity; Michelle Cunningham, Alison Donalty, and Jenna Stempel-Lobell in design; Alexandra Rakaczki in copyediting, and finally, to Jean McGinley, Alpha Wong, Sheala Howley, and Kaitlin Loss in subrights for taking care of the Chronology Protection Agency abroad. Also, thank you to the entire Harper sales team for helping this book find its people.
This book was heavily influenced by early reads from a bunch of brilliant writers and good friends. Thank you so much to Leah Konen and Anna Hecker for helping me bring Dorothy to the future (and getting her into a pair of pants). And to Wade Lucas, Becca Marsh, Lucy Randall, Julia Katz, and Maree Hamilton, a resounding thank-you for so enthusiastically cheering me on from the very beginning. Anne Heltzel gave me brilliant notes on an early draft. Thomas Van de Castle helped me sneak into a military base (but, you know, not a real one) and provided invaluable details on the US government—which I promptly ignored so I could make up my own. And, Bill Rollins, your name is in this book because you spent years making me think about math and science even when I didn’t want to (and I never wanted to). So thanks for that. I don’t think I would’ve understood any of the theory if not for those early discussions. And, of course, a huge thanks to my husband, Ron Williams, who let me read him chapters while he was cooking, and who asked great questions and pointed out dumb mistakes and read the whole damn thing at least five times and still pretends it’s his favorite book ever. Thank you.
And, finally, I’m going to finish these acknowledgments with a story. A long time ago, in the backyard of one of my favorite wine bars, I was sipping rosé with one of my favorite people. Stolen Time was still my shiny new WIP, and I couldn’t help gushing about how excited I was to finish it, and how great it was going to be when it was done. Somewhere between the second and third glasses of wine, Jocelyn Davies—who, in addition to being one of my favorite people, was also an editor at HarperCollins—told me she wanted to buy it. And then, six months later, she did. Jocelyn is the reason that all the good parts in this book are so good, and all the bad parts aren’t quite as bad as they might’ve been. Jocelyn fixed the pace and made the love story steamier and helped me untangle the time-travel logic. The reason this book has entries from the Professor’s log is because of Jocelyn. It, quite simply, would not be the same book without her.
Thanks, J. Drinks soon?
About the Author
Photo credit Caroline Donofrio
DANIELLE ROLLINS is the author of Burning, Breaking, and the Merciless series (under pseudonym Danielle Vega). She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their cat, Goose. Find her online at www.daniellerollins.com and on Twitter and Instagram @vegarollins.
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Praise for Stolen Time
“ENDEARING, EXCITING, AND VERY CLEVER, Danielle Rollins’s Stolen Time is the kind of time-travel story I’m always on the lookout for. I know I can’t really speak for him, but I feel like Doc Brown would be on board with this one.”
—KENDARE BLAKE, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Three Dark Crowns series
“The hauntingly evocative prose seduced me, the compellingly nuanced ch
aracters captivated me, and the twisting storyline ensnared my thoughts in an infinite spiral that REFUSED TO RELEASE ME UNTIL THE FINAL WORD.”
—ROMINA RUSSELL, New York Times bestselling author of the Zodiac series
“Stolen Time is an EXPLOSIVE PAGE-TURNER set in a richly imagined new world, with characters you can’t help but root for, and a twist I never saw coming. I couldn’t stop reading!”
—MORGAN RHODES, New York Times bestselling author of the Fallen Kingdoms series
Books by Danielle Rollins
Stolen Time
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Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
STOLEN TIME. Copyright © 2019 by Danielle Rollins. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art © 2019 by Vault49
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018954401
Digital Edition FEBRUARY 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-267996-3
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-267994-9
1920212223PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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