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The little-old-lady glasses Cat had been wearing at the college balanced on the tip of her nose. She pulled out a tiny spiral notebook and opened it flat in front of her. “I did some research, looking at every angle of the Novikov Principle. I have to say, Michael, you really did your homework. I think it’s a possibility.”
Victory.
“Don’t get too excited yet,” she warned, shaking her head and tapping the notebook. The pages were scribbled with numbers and formulas. “There’s more work to be done. We’ve got to get every element down perfectly, so many—”
We all jumped when the back door slammed open, ricocheting against the wall. Kaleb burst into the room. “Cat, Michael, you’ll never … the house … Landers …” He bent over at the waist, hands on his knees, shoulders heaving.
“Did you run the whole way here?” Cat rushed to the fridge to get Kaleb a cold bottle of water, opening it as she handed it to him. He took several long pulls before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“No. Ran out of gas. Couple blocks over. Couldn’t stop,” he gasped, shaking his head. “It’s Landers. He’s gone.”
Michael sat up straighter in his chair. “Where?”
“What?” Cat asked at the same time.
“No one knows. Overheard a few people talking.” Kaleb drained the rest of the water and capped the empty bottle. “Arguing about how no one’s been paid in over a month.”
“How is that possible?” Michael asked. “Since Liam died, Landers has taken on more work than the Hourglass can handle.”
“It was so odd.” Kaleb twisted the cap on the water bottle open and closed, over and over, staring down at his tennis shoes. “Like they all realized at the same time that he was gone.”
Michael said, “They shouldn’t have helped him in the first place.”
“You’re missing the point.” Kaleb’s voice grew urgent. “When he ran, he took the files.”
The tension in the room intensified, pulled tight like a thread.
“But you got them.” Michael’s tone was as fierce as it had been the day he told me to mind my own business when it came to the Hourglass. “Kaleb, you said you’d get them.”
“I planned to. They were in the safe yesterday, when I opened it to get the papers the hospital needed for Mom’s admission.” Kaleb paused and pain flashed across his features for a brief second. “Landers’s guards were in the office, so I had to leave them. Then this morning, the safe was drilled through. Jewelry, stock certificates, still there. Only the cash and the files were taken.”
The thread unraveled, and the room went dead silent. Fear wrapped itself around my heart in tiny tendrils. I closed my eyes, knowing when I opened them that everyone would be looking at me.
I was right. “What’s going on?”
“My dad kept records,” Kaleb answered. I didn’t like the sound of his voice. “He’d save things on computer disks sometimes, but these files … they were hard copy only. He stored them in the family safe. That’s how private he kept them.”
I focused on Kaleb. “What do the files have to do with me?”
“If Dad received information about anyone with any type of an ability, even a hint of one, he documented it. Every incident. Every detail.” Kaleb’s fist crushed the plastic bottle, barely covering my gasp. “Every person.”
“Liam documented me.” I turned to Michael. “He documented me, and you know because you looked.”
“After I met you, that first time. I needed to prove to myself that you were real. I asked Kaleb to open the safe for me. I should’ve taken your file that day,” Michael said.
“It’s not just Emerson’s file. Think about all the people he has access to now,” Cat said. “We have to find him.”
“If the Hourglass can’t, what makes you think we can?” Kaleb argued.
“We have to. Because we all know exactly who he’s going to target first.” Michael’s face was a controlled mask. “Travelers who can go to the past are rare. Really rare. Some physicists believe they’ll eventually be able to travel to the future on their own, gene or no gene. But not to the past.”
“That’s the very thing that makes people like you and Grace so special. And now that Grace isn’t an option,” Cat said, “it only makes sense that Landers would look for someone else with the same ability.”
“If he didn’t know about you before, he will soon. He’ll know you’re in town, close by. You aren’t safe anymore. Not if he has the files,” Michael said deliberately. “He has access to everything: your records, personal information. Your family’s address. My guess is it’s only a matter of time before he comes for you.”
I fought nausea as terror washed over me. “Oh, no, Michael. Thomas and Dru … the baby.”
My eyes landed on the phone hanging on the wall, and I almost knocked my chair over in my haste to get to it, grabbing it off the hook in a panic. It was the old-fashioned rotary type, the receiver attached by a long spiral cord twisted up in knots.
