Timebound by Rysa Walker Read Free Book Online

digits for each entry were always 01 through 12, and the second two digits were always between 01 and 31. “So we seem to have someone trying to blend in with the crowd in the 1890s by disguising a high-tech device as a handwritten diary. And we have two sets of dates, one from the past and one from the future. If we’re reading this correctly, and if this isn’t some elaborate forgery, this would suggest that these are entries about the 1890s recorded by someone in 2304 and 2305.”
    Charlayne nodded. “If this isn’t some sort of elaborate forgery, then yes. I’m not ruling out elaborate forgery, however.”
    I gave her a tight smile. “You weren’t on the train today. Those two guys just vanished.”
    “Are you sure you didn’t just scare them off with the Ice Princess stare, like you did Nolan?”
    I tossed a pillow at her head and she ducked, laughing. Nolan, a friend of Charlayne’s brother, was the victim in her most recent attempt to fix my love life. Nice guy, really cute, with nothing in his head other than soccer. I could have been friendlier, in retrospect, but I didn’t see the point in leading him on, especially when it was clear by the time we’d finished our pizza that Nolan and I were a total mismatch.
    I put the diary back into the ziplock bag and tucked it into my backpack. “We need to sleep. I have at least a thousand questions to ask Katherine after school tomorrow anyway, and it will just add to the list if we keep looking through this diary. And if you show up with bags under your eyes tomorrow, your mom will never let you stay over on school nights.”
    It was a long time before I fell asleep, however. Each time I tried, the vivid sensations from the medallion came flooding back to the forefront of my mind, and a pair of disturbingly passionate dark eyes followed me when I finally slipped into dreams.

    Morning came much more quickly than either Charlayne or I wanted. I inhaled a breakfast bar as I ran to the Metro, which was so packed that I had to stand. The crowd thinned out as the train headed away from the city. I sank into the first open seat, plugging my iPod into my ears to muffle the subway chatter.
    I didn’t see the pale, pudgy young man at first, probably because he was behind me. A few minutes after I sat down, however, I caught a glimpse of the left side of his face in the security mirror. I shifted slightly to get a better view. He was wearing the same shirt as the day before and didn’t seem aware of the mirror or of the fact that I had spotted him. I glanced around to see if the tall, dark guy was near, even pulling out my hand mirror on the pretext of fixing my hair, but I couldn’t locate him. Pudgy, however, was clearly watching me.
    The next stop was not mine, but I stood just as the last of the passengers were leaving and headed for the closest door. Before I could reach the exit, Pudgy was right beside me. I felt an arm around my shoulder and something cold and hard digging painfully into my ribs as the last few passengers getting off at the stop pushed past me.
    He spoke in a low whisper. “Give me the backpack and you can walk away. I don’t want trouble. Just pull it off your shoulders and give it to me.”
    Normally I would have just given it over, no questions, no hesitation. Lesson one of self-defense is that you don’t argue with the man holding the gun. But the diary was in there.
    Pudgy’s face was suddenly inches from mine and I felt a crushing pain in my toes as his heel ground into them. He whispered into my ear, “I can shoot you and be gone before anyone knows what happened.”
    “Doors closing. Doors closing,” the automated voice chimed. The sound of my pulse echoed in my ears as Pudgy pulled me toward the door, slipping the foot that had just mangled my toes between the subway doors to keep them open. I glared at him, then slid the backpack from my shoulders and handed it over. He squeezed his chubby frame through the door, pushing me