“Rumors that the boys were dead?” Jonah asked.
“That they were dead, that they were alive, that they’d sprouted wings like angels and flown away … name the theory, and somebody was trying to pass it off as gospel truth,” JB said. He shook his head in amusement. “Meanwhile, the boys were being quite resourceful evading capture—it was one of the greatest adventures of their lives. I feel rather bad for Chip and Alex that they missed it.”
“Sor-ry,” Katherine muttered, stretching out the word so she didn’t sound apologetic at all. “Call me crazy, but when you don’t know what’s supposed to happen, and you see someone trying to throw your friends out a window, it’s just kind of natural instinct to want to stop it.”
“If you didn’t want us to save Chip and Alex, you should have told us,” Jonah said grumpily. Though he wasn’t sure what he would have done if JB had commanded, “You’re going to see two guys who act like murderers come in and throw Chip and Alex out the window—but don’t worry. They’ll be fine. As long as you stand back and watch and don’t do a thing.”
“No, no,” JB said. “You don’t understand. The two of you saving Chip and Alex was the best outcome. We ran computer models on this. If the boys had landed just a fraction of an inch differently, they could have been maimed or killed. Or been caught by the murderers on the ground. Or been found by the rescuers, who were then caught by the murderers, who would have killed everyone. Or—”
Jonah didn’t want to hear any other ways everything could have gone wrong.
“So why didn’t you tell us ahead of time what we had to do?” he asked.
“If you’d known that those men were going to try to throw Chip and Alex out the window, would you have been able to wait until the last possible second to try to save them?” JB asked. “Or would you have jumped the gun a little, grabbing them too soon because you really didn’t want to wait until you were too late? And then the men throwing them out the window would have noticed the difference, and …”
JB didn’t have to finish his sentence. Jonah felt breathless just thinking about it. He and Katherine had had a split second to save Chip and Alex. A fraction of a second either way and they would have failed.
Jonah turned toward Katherine, expecting her to look as awestruck as he felt. But her expression was gripped with rage.
“And you didn’t even want me and Jonah to come!” she spit out. “How could you! What did you think was going to happen?”
“We thought history would repeat itself,” JB said. “We thought Chip and Alex and time itself would proceed exactly as they and it had the first time around.”
Katherine continued scowling at him.
“You were taking a lot of chances, weren’t you?” she said. “Chip and Alex are bigger than their tracers. That could have thrown things off. They were struggling a lot more than their tracers did. Flailing about. Couldn’t that have made them land differently? And—”
JB cut her off.
“We’re doing the best we can, all right?” he said. “This is the first time we’ve ever tried to return missing children to history. It’s not easy trying to account for every possible variable. We weren’t expecting the two of you to go jumping into the past, for example, so we had to rerun all our calculations. And you saw for yourselves what a dicey time 1483 was. …”
He gestured toward the scene of the royal family, the queen and her children holed up in sanctuary. But then his voice trailed off and his eyes goggled out slightly.
“No,” he moaned. “That’s not supposed to happen yet.”
Jonah immediately looked toward Chip and Alex, or where they’d been. The scene before him had changed. He no longer had a clear view of the queen and princes and princesses sitting in their private chambers. Instead he could see the outside of their sanctuary building, where guards stood forbiddingly on either side of the front door. Some of the guards held torches, waving them out into the night as if they were trying to ward off evil. In the dim torchlight Jonah could see a lone man approaching the guards.
The man moved briskly, authoritatively—he didn’t seem the type to be frightened off by guards or torches. At first Jonah could see only his shoulder-length brown hair, the tip of his strong nose, his long, swinging dark cape. The man walked right past the guards and the torches, unimpeded. Then the man turned, his hand on the door, and Jonah could see his face.
It was King Richard III.
TWENTY-FIVE
“No!” Jonah screamed.
He sprang up and raced toward the king. Jonah would have to tackle him and then yell loudly enough that Chip and Alex would hear and have time to hide, up in their sanctuary room. Or no, maybe Jonah wouldn’t be strong enough to knock down the king—maybe Jonah would have to settle for grabbing the king’s cape and hollering at the guards, “Don’t you know who this is? Aren’t you supposed to be protecting the queen and her kids from this man?”
But how good could these guards be if they were fooled by Alex’s bird trick? Jonah thought. I’ll have to try something else. Maybe—
Jonah ran smack into the wall. Instantly he remembered that he was only watching 1483 on an unnaturally realistic TV. Evidently the TV was part of a very hard wall, one that was quite painful to run into at full speed.
Jonah hit so hard he bounced back, lost his balance, and slammed into the floor.
“Are you all right?” JB asked, bending over him.
“Jonah!” Katherine shrieked, right behind JB.
“Chip. Alex. Must warn …” Jonah made his eyes focus on JB’s face, made his brain focus on what really mattered. “Send me back to 1483. Now. I have to tell them. Let them know—”