Timebound (43 page)

In her open palm was the bracelet. The chain was now broken, but the charm was the exact twin of the one that dangled from her left wrist. “You gave it to me,” I said. “For my birthday. And yes, I know how it got chipped. Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth. You were watching them instead of paying attention to a carriage door. In 1860-something.”

There was a pause and then Katherine gave me a small, pained smile. “Okay, I believe you. I never even told that to Saul.” She
stared at me closely again. I suspect she was wondering if I was
Saul’s
granddaughter as well, but she didn’t ask.

“When I saw that woman come out—is it Minnie or Georgiana? Minnie, I think. He went through companions very quickly,” she said. “At any rate, I assumed it was
me
locked in here, that there had been some accident on a future jump or that Holmes had gotten wind that I’ve been asking questions about a few of the women he killed.”

“But how did you know Holmes had—” I began.

“Some kid found me on the Midway and said that a lady wearing this bracelet had been taken to the World’s Fair Hotel. He said he followed you here and that I needed to help you.”

Kiernan. I had a sudden memory of the small, scuffed-up shoe I’d seen just before I fell. He must have snatched the bracelet when the crowd gathered around me. If I managed to get out, I resolved to give him every last penny I had and cover his little face with kisses.

“I could have gone back to HQ, gotten help, and come back in the easy way,” she said. “There’s a stable point on the third floor. But I couldn’t shake that
kid.
I was afraid I was going to have to tie him up or knock him out or something, and then I remembered the financial dispute between Mudgett—Holmes, that is—and one of the gentlemen on the Board of Managers for the Expo.”

Her mouth twisted. “It was all I could do to convince the boy to let me stop off to arrange the distraction, and then I wasted a good five minutes trying to get him to go back home. He finally agreed to wait in the alley. He wanted to storm straight in and see if you were okay, and I couldn’t really tell him why that would be dangerous.

“He gave me this,” she said, holding the bag out, “and a rather dirty parasol, which I ditched. This bag is mine, but with the exception of the key and the diary inside here, the rest of the stuff isn’t exactly CHRONOS-issue is it? A pink plastic toothbrush?”

“No, those are not CHRONOS-issue.” I sighed. “I was in a hurry, Katherine.”

“Why? If you’re not from CHRONOS, how can you use that key? And why do you have two keys? No one gets two keys.”

“It’s kind of complicated,” I said.

That had been true from the beginning, but now it was even more difficult to know how much I should tell Katherine. I had no way of knowing whether Simon coming back to kill her meant that Prudence had failed in her promise to stop the attacks. He might simply have shown back up before she had time to force the issue. Things would have been so much simpler if I believed that Prudence would (or even
could
) keep her word, but I really didn’t—there were just too many variables.

Given that her jump had originated from CHRONOS headquarters, Katherine couldn’t leave from anywhere other than the stable point at which she’d arrived, and I couldn’t leave until I was certain she was on her way back to her own time. That meant my safe, quick, semidressed exit was out of the question. Resigned, I dropped the dress to the floor and stepped into the middle, pulling it up over my shoulders, and then turned my back toward Katherine. “Would you mind?” I asked, pointing to the laces.

She yanked the laces as I sucked in my breath. “We have to get you out of here,” I said. “Holmes isn’t after you, but someone else is—someone with a CHRONOS key. You need to go straight back to HQ. But—you can’t tell them about me, Katherine. Believe me. Nothing is more important than this. Don’t put this in your diary and don’t discuss it with anyone, not even Saul. Convince Angelo to cancel your jumps for a few months. Take a vacation, or a sabbatical—whatever you have to do.”

“I’m not sure that’s possible,” Katherine said as she started buttoning up the dress. “I don’t run CHRONOS—Angelo doesn’t even run CHRONOS. And I can’t control other people’s actions, only my own. Believe me. I’ve tried a few times.”

She was clearly thinking of Saul. I rifled through my memory, trying to dredge up the dates. When had she become suspicious of Saul?

“I know that, Katherine, but I also know you’re a very resourceful lady. You’ll think of something.” She finished the last button and I turned to face her.

“And… the concerns that you’ve had? That maybe Saul is not sticking to protocol as closely as he should? About his friends at the Objectivist Club? Check his bag when he returns from Boston. But—you can’t confront him about any of this until April 26th. There will be an argument. You need to leave a message to let Angelo and Richard in on your concerns at that point. And you
must
be scheduled to take the jump the next day—on the 27th.”

Her expression grew increasingly skeptical as I added each new complication to the plan. Katherine was a skilled actor—she had to be in her line of work—but could she really pull all of this off? And if she didn’t, if she never made the jump to 1969? What would I find when I got back? Or would I even
get
back to my own time?

“Oh, and um… you’re pregnant,” I added with an apologetic smile as I sat on the bed and began to squeeze my feet into the boots. “You probably don’t know that yet, because it happened after the New Year’s Eve party.”

Katherine looked a bit uncomfortable at the mention of that night, and I focused on the shoes again as an excuse to look away.

“You can’t tell Saul about the pregnancy,” I said. “Not until you know how he reacts to you finding… what you find in his luggage.”

My fingers slipped on the buttons of the shoe and I cursed softly.

“But
you
already know how he reacts,” she said, reaching up to pull a pin from the back of her hair. She bent the hairpin in two places with a quick twist of the hand and gave me the result—a
makeshift buttonhook. “I’m smart enough to connect the dots. He’s not going to respond in a reasonable way. But you expect me to go back, knowing all of this, and act like everything is fine for what, nearly two months? And to go through with an unplanned pregnancy that I could easily terminate at this stage?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, bending down to finish the shoes. “I know this is asking a lot. But if you can’t find a way to make this happen, exactly as I’ve said, I’m pretty sure that history is going to be rewritten on a grand scale. And, without giving too much away, you will not approve of the rewrite.”

“I don’t approve of
any
changes to the timeline,” she said, pressing her lips firmly together as she retrieved my bonnet from the cane-backed chair next to the fake window. “That’s what makes it difficult to believe what you’re saying.”

“Well, you’ve made an exception this time. At least, the Katherine that
I
know made an exception,” I said, holding her eyes with a steady gaze. “In fact, she’s spent most of the past twenty years trying to orchestrate this exception—even going so far as to arrange my parents’ meeting on the off chance they’d produce
me.
And unless you follow her lead, millions—no, let’s be honest, it’s probably billions—of people are going to die well before their appointed time.”

A long stare later, she let out a shaky breath. “Well, if that’s the case,
granddaughter,
I guess we’d better go.”

21

I really think we would have made it out of the hotel unnoticed if Kiernan had just stayed put on the sidewalk like Katherine had told him. Or if we hadn’t taken a wrong turn at the second corridor, which turned out to be one of the blind hallways Holmes had thrown into the floor plan just for grins and giggles. If either of those things hadn’t happened, Holmes would still have been in the office on the other side of the exit.

But both of those things
did
happen. The creditor Katherine had lured in to distract Holmes was downstairs, arguing loudly with Minnie, who was demanding that he wait for Holmes in the parlor. Holmes was on the landing between the first and second floors, holding a gun in one hand and the back of Kiernan’s shirt in the other.

“Good evening, ladies.” Judging from the pleasant smile on Holmes’s face and the humorous twinkle in his blue eyes, he might have been planning to engage us in a casual chat about the weather. “Does this young fellow belong to either of you?” he asked.

Katherine answered “No” at the exact moment that I answered “Yes.”

“He’s my assistant,” I said, giving Katherine an angry glance. “I’m a reporter covering the fair for the Rochester
Worker’s Gazette.
Your wife told me that you were kind enough to bring me back here when I fainted on the Midway. Thank you.”

“Good,” Holmes said. “That’s exactly what
he
told me.”

Even though I’m not a big fan of droopy mustaches, I could see why Holmes had found it easy to charm women. His eyes were almost hypnotic, and there were friendly crinkles—smile lines, my dad called them—around the edges.

I pulled my gaze away from Holmes to glance down at Kiernan. His face was pale and his dark eyes were wide and anxious. He mouthed the words “I’m sorry” silently, and I shook my head and gave him a look of sympathy. This wasn’t his fault.

Holmes was still smiling when I looked up. He nodded toward Katherine. “And who might this good lady be?”

“My mother,” I said. “She’s traveling with me.”

Katherine took her cue and stepped forward slightly, apparently deciding, as I had, that our best chance was to act as though the otherwise pleasant man on the landing wasn’t holding a pistol. “Yes, sir,” she said. “You have our deepest gratitude. I don’t know what might have happened to my daughter if you hadn’t…”

“No trouble at all, madam. In fact, it was my very real pleasure. Now if you and your ‘daughter’ wouldn’t mind taking a few steps back?” He gestured with the gun and we backed up silently. He then reached down and hefted Kiernan under his arm, carrying him up the stairs to the second floor where we stood.

“I’d be delighted to stand here and chat with you lovely ladies,” Holmes said as he reached the top step, “but I’ve had to leave my… wife to handle a rather distraught business associate and she’s really not very good at these types of situations. So I’m going to ask you to return to your room, and we’ll continue this discussion at our leisure later this evening.”

He motioned again with the gun, and Katherine and I began to back toward the corridor.

“I think we’ll move much more quickly if you turn around,” he said.

We hesitated briefly, then reversed course, retracing our steps down the hallway. A few turns later, we were again in front of the door with the bolt on the outside.

Holmes tossed Kiernan at my feet as if he were a sack of potatoes and then held the door open as we filed inside.

“Please make yourselves comfortable. I promise I’ll return just as quickly as I can.”

Still smiling, he closed the door and slammed the bolt.

The tiny bit of daylight that had shown through the small window earlier was now gone. I could feel Kiernan’s small body shaking next to me, but I couldn’t tell in the dark whether he was crying. I knelt down on the floor and pulled him toward me, as much for my own comfort as his.

“I’m sorry, Miss Kate,” he said. “I shoulda stayed in the alley.”

Katherine gave a little huff as she sat on the bed, making it clear that he’d get no argument from her on that point.

“No, Kiernan,” I said firmly, giving Katherine a dirty look, even though I knew she couldn’t see it. “You were amazing—I can’t believe you managed to grab my things right under Holmes’s nose and bring help. But how did you find Katherine? I don’t even think I’d have recognized her.”

He shrugged. “It’s just disguises. You get used to ’em on the Midway. She walks the same an’ sounds the same. I seen her aroun’ lotsa times this year. An’ she always had on a bracelet like the one you’re wearin’. The one you said was your special sign.”