“You have an impressive kick for such a little lady,” he said. “But it’s no match for a gun.” He was moving the gun slightly from side to side with one hand as his left hand fumbled in his jacket pocket.
My heart pounded in my ears as the gun swept past where I was huddled. He can’t see you, Kate, he can’t see you, I reminded myself. And there had already been six shots—two downstairs, and four up here. I didn’t know a lot about guns, but I’d seen a few Westerns, and the one in his hand was a “six-shooter.” That meant the gun should be empty. Unless, of course, he’d stopped to reload before entering the linen closet.
He hadn’t reloaded, but it didn’t matter. His hand emerged from his pocket holding a single bullet.
As Holmes clicked the round into the chamber, I turned sideways and centered the medallion in the palm of my hand, wedging my arm against the wall to keep it steady so that I could pull up the kitchen at Katherine’s house.
He took a couple of steps backward, probably to give himself a wider view to catch any movement, his left hand stretched behind him to feel his way. His legs buckled when he bumped into one of the cots. There was a clank of glass against glass, and Holmes cursed softly, then stopped in mid-profanity to laugh.
I don’t know what instinct caused me to turn away from that laugh. It meant breaking eye contact with the medallion and I had already locked in the kitchen—I was just pulling up the date and only needed a second more, two at the most. If I hadn’t turned away, however, the liquid would have caught me square in the face.
The acid was pure flame, scorching my neck and scalp. I screamed—there was no way to avoid it even though it gave away my location. I held my breath, waiting for the shot, but I heard a different loud noise instead. It sounded like he had tripped over the cot, but he was soon on his feet again, moving toward me.
He was just playing it conservatively, I thought—with only one bullet he wanted to be certain of his target. I crawled along the floor as quickly as I could, away from him, back toward the linen closet, trying to keep from whimpering as each tiny movement worsened the blazing pain on the side of my head.
The smell of smoke was growing stronger, battling with the stench from the decomposed body just ahead. Holmes had only one escape route from the fire—the window. With any luck, he would think that was my only way out as well and maybe, just maybe, leave me to my presumed fate in a burning building. If I could keep moving and avoid slipping into shock, however, all I had to do was get out of this room and find a spot where I could concentrate and use the CHRONOS key.
The doorway had to be close. I struggled to my feet so that I could move faster. I was still seeing the little blue stars, so I leaned against the wall to steady myself before taking a step. I couldn’t see Holmes, but I heard movement from behind me.
My hand finally found the opening in the wall and I lowered my head to step through and enter the tiny linen closet. I shoved open the door to the hallway and sucked in a mouthful of air—smoky, but at least without the underlying stench of decaying flesh. Running as fast as I could in the general direction of the stairwell, I whipped around one corner a bit too fast and caught the heel of my stupid boot in the hem of my skirt. The rip echoed through the hallway—the auditory equivalent of a big red arrow pointing Holmes in my direction.
I ducked into the third corridor on the right and then darted across the hallway, taking a left at the next intersection. Hopefully, the doctor would assume that I’d taken the quicker, easier turn to the right. He had stopped to light a lantern—I could see it casting shadows against the walls as he ran.
At the third room down, I jiggled the knob on the off chance that it had been left unlocked. No luck. The footsteps grew louder and I pulled myself as close to the door as possible. Taking a deep breath, I pressed my fingers to the center of the medallion.
I didn’t think there was time to pull up a location and lock in the date—I was just going to pick a spot and blink. I remembered Connor’s caution about landing in the middle of a highway, but if the other choice was a mass murderer armed with acid and a gun, a possible collision with a semitruck sounded like a bargain. I tried to steady my hands so that I could focus and pull up the display, but it was hard to concentrate. The display wavered and then disappeared.
As I prepared to try again, I saw a faint light from the corner of my eye. The doctor turned briefly into the right corridor—then the lantern swung around and he headed straight toward me.
And then the door behind me opened and I fell backward into the room. A large hand covered my mouth, trapping the scream before it could escape my lips. Another hand, holding a white folded cloth, moved toward me.
23
The man yanked me to the right of the doorway. The white cloth was sopping wet and he pressed it against the side of my face, his arms holding me close against his body.
“Kate!” It took a moment for the familiar voice, soft but urgent in my ear, to cut through my panic. I looked up into the man’s face. It appeared strange in the blue light from our medallions, but the dark, worried eyes were the same ones that I’d stared down into only a few minutes earlier.
“Kiernan? But how—”
“Kate, please. You have to focus. I’ve pulled up a stable point, love.” The display showed a small, dimly lit room with blankets in the corner. “Just slide your fingers over it and go. I’ll be right behind you. I promise.”
I don’t know if it was his voice or just the knowledge that I wasn’t alone, but amazingly, my hands steadied as I reached for the CHRONOS key. It flickered only the tiniest bit and then it was clear. I blinked and pulled in a huge lungful of fresh, smoke-free air, before I collapsed onto the dirt floor.
I faded in and out of consciousness for a while. Kiernan’s voice would pull me to the surface for a few moments before I slipped back under. The clearest memory I have was the sensation of water being poured in a steady stream on my neck. It hurt, but the pain was far worse when the water stopped. He forced me to sit up at one point, his hands gentle, and made me swallow a few capsules. My eyes closed again and I slipped back into the fog.
It was daylight when I fully woke. Kiernan’s sleeping face was the first thing that I saw, his long dark hair damp against his skin. He was sitting with his back against the corner of the cabin. I was wrapped in blankets, my head resting on his thigh, his fingers laced through my own. The smell of smoke was strong and pungent in his clothing. I pulled my free hand up to the right side of my neck and felt a large swath of gauze, held in place by medical tape. Several bottles and containers of ointment were scattered around us and the remnants of a fire were smoldering in the fireplace. My green dress lay in a crumpled heap, with the damp dirt floor showing through the numerous spots the acid had dissolved.
My body was stiff and I needed to readjust my position. I moved slowly, reluctant to wake Kiernan, but his eyes flashed open at once. “Kate? Are you all right?”
I tried to nod, but that wasn’t a pain-free option, so I stopped and gave him a weak smile. “Yes. It hurts, but I’m okay. This is the cabin—on the Wooded Island, right? But when are we?”
“Around 5 A.M., I think—it’s just the next day,” he answered. “There’s no one here—there won’t be many people here at all today. The closing ceremonies were canceled because of the mayor’s assassination. And it was easier for me to set everything up here. I’m—it takes a lot out of me to jump long distances. Little jumps are easier, but I’ve been making a lot of them lately—I didn’t want you to be too far away, just in case I had to walk here to reach you.”
“Holmes? And Katherine, did she…?”
“Holmes escaped, just as he was supposed to. He’s probably on the train to Colorado today. The fire wasn’t supposed to happen for a few more weeks, but I don’t think it will change anything with his eventual capture and trial. And yes, Katherine and I made it to the stable point. I took her by a back route and we didn’t run into any problems.”
I sighed, relieved to know that at least that much of the plan had succeeded. “Tell me how you knew, Kiernan. Why did you come back? How did you know to be in that room?”
He stared into my eyes for several moments before he spoke. “It took me a long time to put the pieces together, Kate. You were always there, at the back of my mind year after year, but I never knew for certain whether you made it out of the hotel. I went back that night, after taking Katherine to the Wooded Island, and the place was in full blaze—the firefighters said there couldn’t be anyone alive inside. There wasn’t anything I could do but go home.
“I did as you told me. I never removed the medallion. I even kept my hand on it when I bathed. We moved back to the Cyrist farm—there really weren’t many options once my mother took ill. I let them teach me to use to the CHRONOS key. I’m not as good with it as many of the others, but that never mattered much to Prudence,” he added with a bitter laugh, “and she generally determined who would be given privileges.”
“She didn’t—” I broke off, hesitant to say what I was thinking. “You were so young.”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that. She wasn’t that much older than me most of the times she came to the farm. About your age, maybe, the first time I saw her as a young woman. I was only sixteen—it’s very hard to say no to a willing girl at sixteen, Kate.”
“Didn’t you know that she was—well, that you knew her when she was older? And when you were younger…” I shook my head and then winced as the bandages shifted against the burn. “I mean, you seemed convinced that she had something to do with your dad.”
“Yeah… but that was Pru when she was older, y’know? I don’t know what she did later—I still don’t have any proof one way or the other—but none of that had happened for her when she was eighteen.”
“Christ, that makes my head hurt,” I said. “It doesn’t make you crazy? Thinking of an older Prudence knowing you when you were younger and then the two of you, together as teenagers?”
“I keep forgetting that you’re—how do you say it—a ‘newbie’?” Kiernan said with a teasing grin. “You’ll get used to the twists and turns soon enough. At eighteen, Pru was just a confused kid, not entirely sure of what Saul wanted her to do or of her place in all of this. She wasn’t a bad person, then, from what I could tell. After a while, I decided it wasn’t fair to judge her on the basis of something she wasn’t—or at least wasn’t yet. Does that make sense?”
“No,” I said. “I mean, I understand, but I can’t say it makes any sense at all. None of this does.”
“I’m not proud of that relationship,” he said. “I’m not sure I would say that I used Pru—at least not any more than she used me—but my feelings were complicated by my past. I mean, if I never looked at her eyes when we… well, she reminded me of you. I was just a kid when we were here together, but I never forgot you, Kate.” He paused for a moment, tracing my lower lip ever so softly with his finger, and a shiver ran all the way through my body. No, Kate, I thought, no, no, no. You’re exhausted and grateful and… yes, damn it, incredibly attracted to him. But no.