50
“
W
hy is nobody stopping?” Conroe asked. “A hundred cars have already passed us.”
“I think I know what the problem is,” Crane said. “You stay here.”
“Where are you going?”
“Trust me—just stand right there.” He ran over to the ditch. “Luckily this ditch is dry.” He climbed down in it.
Three more cars passed by.
“It’s not working,” she said.
“Try to look sexy and vulnerable,” he yelled from the ditch.
“
Sexy and vulnerable?
You mean something like
this?
”
A black Lexus pulled over in front of Conroe.
She ran up to the passenger window.
The driver, a mid-forties guy wearing a Stetson and a business suit, rolled down the window and shot her a big smile. “Hey, darlin’, can I take you somewhere?”
Crane ran up and stuck his head in the window next to Conroe’s. “That would be great, sir.”
The man rolled up the window, nearly catching Crane’s nose in it.
They stepped back as he sped away.
“Maybe you should have waited until I opened the door,” she suggested.
“Yeah, I guess I blew it,” he replied.
They heard a siren.
Crane said, “I hope that’s not for us.”
“Old Cracker saw me leaving, but I don’t know if she would have called the police.”
“Let’s hide out, just to be safe.” Crane led Conroe over to the ditch.
They hid there, waiting for the cruiser to go by. But as the siren got louder, it seemed to be moving slower. Then it stopped. They peeked out over the top of the ditch and saw the police car and the car that the cop had apparently pulled over. The officer got out and walked up beside the other car. He talked to the driver for a minute and then ordered him to get out of his car. It became apparent what was going on when the officer made the driver try to walk a straight line.
“There’s our ride,” Crane said, climbing out of the ditch.
“Wait,” she cautioned but then followed him.
Crane ran around to the driver’s side of the cruiser and got in. Conroe hopped in the passenger side.
The cop heard the car doors and turned around.
Crane dropped the cruiser into drive and swerved around the other car, the cop, and the drunk.
51
G
eneva and Will had been riding hard for thirty minutes.
“We can’t keep up this pace,” she said.
They slowed their horses to a walk.
Geneva turned to Will. “Stop for a minute.”
They sat quietly on their horses, listening.
“I don’t hear anybody coming,” he said.
“But they will be soon. We need to hide out until Conroe and Crane make it back.”
“We can go to my house,” he suggested.
“No, our homes are the first places they’ll look. And we can’t go to the castle either. We broke the law. Yes, we did it for a good reason, but still, we broke the law, and we can’t expect the queen to harbor criminals. Besides, there’s nothing she can do to help, so we’re better off leaving her out of it. Hopefully this will all be over by morning and everything will be back to normal.”
“Right. And once Conroe is back, neither Opal nor Frederick would dare bring charges against us, considering the outrageous and illegal thing that Frederick did to Conroe by sending her to the past without her consent.”
“That’s right,” she agreed.
“But where can we go now?”
“I know a spot,” she replied.
Geneva led him through the woods to a shallow valley. “Conroe and I used to come here all the time.”
They dismounted and tied their horses to a tree.
Geneva took the time travel computer out of her saddlebag, carried it to a large tree stump, and set it down.
They sat, side by side, on a log in front of the stump.
Geneva flipped open the time travel computer and turned it on.
Will pointed to the screen. “Eighteen percent power.”
“That’s good. It’s holding up.” She ran a search for Conroe and Crane. “What are they doing in a police car? If they get caught before they can get to the return perimeter, they’ll never make it back.”
“Is there anything you can do to help them?”
“The only thing I could do is change the code to make the return perimeter larger.”
“Code? What’s that?”
“The computer code is the instructions that tell the computer what to do,” she answered.
“How do you know about these things?”
“I’ve been studying the time travel computer manual to learn about programming. I’m not very good at it yet.” She typed a series of keystrokes. “I can open this window to see the code. This section right here controls the perimeter settings.”
“Can you change it?”
Geneva studied the code. “I’m afraid to touch it. If I do something wrong, I might destroy the return perimeter altogether. Then they would have no chance of coming back. Besides, it looks like they will probably make it okay—they’re getting close now. Maybe I’d better check the bridge and the tunnel code. Frederick might have altered those routines too.”
“From what you told me, it’s always tricky making it over the bridge and through that tunnel.”
“It is,” she confirmed. “But I wouldn’t put it past Frederick to have changed the code to make it even more difficult, if not impossible. Maybe he wanted to laugh at them struggling to get inside the return perimeter, knowing that when they did, they would die on the bridge or in the tunnel. And if that happened, there would be no way to ever prove that he had murdered them since they would have died inside the computer.”
“I certainly hope you can do something to help them, Geneva.”
“I’m going to try my best. Okay, here’s the code for the bridge. Let me see if I can make any sense of it.”
52
C
rane drove the stolen police cruiser south on I-45, looking for the parking lot where Frederick had tried to shoot Conroe while they were sitting in the pickup truck.
“It’s on the other side of the highway, right?” asked Conroe.
“Yeah, and we’re getting close.” He was certain that the cruiser had been reported stolen as soon as they drove away in it, so he was driving conservatively, trying not to attract attention.
“There it is,” he said. “I just need to take this exit, U-turn at the light, and we’re home free.”
As soon as he had cleared the exit ramp, Crane spotted a police cruiser sitting at a stop sign on a side street. Its lights and siren came alive.
Crane punched the accelerator and the car surged.
Conroe looked back at the whirling lights. “We’ve got to make it to that parking lot, or we’re gonna be stuck here forever.”
Crane jammed the pedal to the floor, launching the car like a rocket, screeching the tires all the way around the U-turn. He veered to the outside lane and turned into the empty parking lot, reminding himself and Conroe, “Third row, fifth slot on the left.” He drove up next to the target slot and slammed on the brakes.
They jumped out of the car and stood between the lines of the parking slot, hoping they were inside the five-foot return perimeter.
“Take us, Geneva. Now!” Conroe yelled.
The cop drove up and jumped out of his cruiser.
Conroe disappeared.
But Crane was still standing there.
The cop pointed his gun at Crane as he walked toward him. “Hold it right there. Do not move.”
Crane stepped over to where Conroe had been standing.
“I said don’t move! I will blow your head off, boy!”
“Sorry,” Crane said, holding his hands in the air. “Geneva?”
“And shut up!”
Crane vanished.
53
E
verything was black.
But Crane knew where he was: on the bridge. “Conroe?”
“Oh, Crane, I was afraid you weren’t gonna make it.”
She was right in front of him on the bridge, where she had been every time they went into transport mode. He reached out, stepped in, and put his arms around her.
The blackness morphed into a thick fog.
“Let’s go.” She ran away from him, across the bridge.
He ran after her, unable to see anything but fog, using the handrails for guidance.
They reached the other side before the bridge started to crumble.
“That was our best yet,” he said, looking back at the bridge. The fog was beginning to clear, and the bridge was partially visible.
It creaked and cracked and broke apart, falling piece by piece into the chasm.
“Oh, no,” Conroe moaned.
“What?” He turned around to see what she was looking at. There was no entrance into the Dream Tunnel—they were standing in front of a solid rock wall. “Where’s the tunnel?”
Conroe turned around. “Over there.” She pointed to the other side.
The fog had cleared.
“We’re on the wrong side,” he said. “How did that happen?”
“I don’t know, but we’ve got to get over there somehow…or we’re dead.”
“There’s got to be some other way to get there.” He looked around. “Maybe there’s a tree branch or something we can use.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“Well, we can’t climb down to the bottom and walk across,” he said, peering into the blackness below. “But…it may be hundreds of feet deep.”
Conroe looked up. The fog that had always hung over the bridge while they were crossing it was now beginning to dissipate. “What is that up there?”
“Looks like a rope,” he replied.
A thick rope extended from one side to the other.
“That should work,” she said. “We can climb across it.”
“But how are we gonna get up there? The rock is too smooth. There’s not much to grab on to.”
“Remember how you got me out of that hole in the tunnel last time?” she asked. “We could do something like that. I think if you climb up on my shoulders, you’ll be able to reach the rope. Then you can hang from it while I climb up you.”
“Yeah, that just might work,” he agreed.
“You stand here.” She positioned Crane with his back against the rock wall. “As you’re going up, you can balance yourself against the wall.” She put her hands together, interlocking her fingers to give Crane a foothold.
“My shoes are gonna hurt your hands and your shoulders,” he said. “Do you want me to take them off?”
“No, because there’s no way you can make it through the tunnel barefoot.”
“Right.” He placed his right foot in her hands and gently shifted all of his weight to it as he lifted his left foot to her shoulder. “I’m sorry, sweetie—I know this hurts.”
“It’s okay—just keep your balance.”
He lifted his right foot from her hands and placed it on her shoulder, balancing himself with his upper back against the wall.
“Can you reach it?” she asked.
His fingertips were four inches from the rope. “No. It’s just too high.”
“Can you jump up to it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Okay. Let’s do this: I’ll count to three. Bend your knees on counts one and two, and when I say ‘three,’ then you jump up and grab the rope.”
“Got it,” he said.
“Okay, here we go. One…”
Crane and Conroe both bent their knees slightly.
“Two…”
They both bent their knees farther. Crane nearly lost his balance but quickly regained it.
“Three!”
They jumped up, simultaneously.
Crane latched onto the rope with one hand and then the other.
Conroe sat down on the stone pathway.
“I made it, sweetie! It worked! Conroe?”
She whimpered.
“Sweetie? Are you okay? It sounds like you’re crying?”
“My shoulders and my back hurt—but I’ll be okay,” she answered, getting to her feet.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’m coming up.” She grabbed onto the bottom of his pant legs and then worked her way up by grabbing handfuls of material.
“I’m losing my pants,” he said.
“Just a little farther and…”
The waist of his jeans slipped down below his hips.
Conroe nearly lost her grip. “No!”
Crane wrapped his legs around her and locked her in place. “Are you okay?”
“I can’t reach your shoulders,” she said.
“I’m gonna help you.”
“No! Hold onto the rope with both hands.”
“It’s the only way. Get ready—it’s got to be fast,” he said.
“Okay. Go.”
He let go of the rope with his left hand, and offered his forearm to her.
She took hold of it.
Releasing his leg lock around her torso, he jerked his forearm upward.
She quickly transferred her hands from his forearm to his shoulders.
He reached back up to the rope and was barely able to get his finger around it. “Hurry, baby. Please hurry.”
She planted her feet on top of his hipbones and jumped for the rope.
Crane gasped, partly from the pain but mostly from knowing that if she missed the rope, there was nothing he could do to save her.
But she didn’t miss it. She caught it with both hands.
“Thank God!” he yelled, his voice echoing.
They hung nose to nose, sweat pouring down their faces.
“We’re both gonna need a long, hot bath when we get back.”
He laughed.
She turned herself around on the rope to face the other direction. “Okay, let’s do it.” She began to work her way across the rope, hand over hand.
Crane followed her. “I hope there’s not a time limit on this rope.”
“What do you mean?”
“The bridge had a time limit. It always started falling apart after so many seconds.”
“Good point,” she said, increasing her speed.
“What’s that smell? It’s like something’s burning.”
Conroe looked back. “It’s the rope, behind us!”
They sped up to a frantic pace.
The rope burned through and detached behind them, turning it into a Tarzan vine.
“Hang on!” he shouted as they swung toward the rock wall.
Conroe slammed into the wall. Crane slammed into her legs.
“You can let go,” he said, wrapping his arms around her waist. “I’m standing on the ground.”
She released the rope, and he set her down.
Conroe turned and hugged him as they caught their breath.
“We’d better get into the tunnel,” he said. “And maybe we can use this burning rope for light.”
“But the other end is still attached to the rock.” She yanked on it, and the end of the rope slipped out of the rock and fell at their feet.
They looked at each other in horror.
“Sure glad that didn’t happen a minute ago,” he said.
They went into the Dream Tunnel. Crane carried the bundled rope, holding up the burning end like a torch.
“The other end of the tunnel is already open,” she yelled. “Run!”
But before they had gone ten feet, the opening closed.
They turned around. The opening they entered from had also closed.
“Now what are we gonna do?” he asked. “It not even a tunnel anymore. It’s just a cave, and we’re trapped in here.”
“Spiders!” she screamed, pointing.
“
Spiders?
Those things are huge! They look like eight-legged rats!” Crane dropped the excess rope at his feet, holding onto the torch end. He stepped toward the spiders, waving it at them.
The spiders backed away.
“Looks like they’re afraid of the fire, so as long as—”
He tripped and nearly fell into a large hole, losing his grip on the rope, dropping the torch end into the hole. He reached down to pick up the other end of the rope, and fire exploded from the hole, sending him and Conroe backward. A blue blaze shot up to the ceiling of the cave and then settled down to a six-foot flame, illuminating the entire cave. It was as though there were a broken gas line at the bottom of the hole.
“Look at all the spiders,” Conroe gaped. “There must be hundreds of them.”
Crane pointed. “I guess those were too close to the hole and got scorched.”
Two spiders limped away from the fire hole, toward the wall. A group of their peers surrounded them and then pounced, ripping them to shreds.
Conroe said, “I’m afraid that’s what is gonna happen to us if the fire goes out.”
“I don’t get it. Why are things so different this time? We came in backwards on the bridge, the rope caught on fire for no apparent reason, and now the tunnel closes off too soon. And look at it—it’s so small compared to before. It’s just a round cave with no exits.”
“It’s got to be Frederick. He must have figured out how to reprogram his time travel computer.”
“You know about programming computers?”
“No, but Geneva does. She’s been studying the manual.”
“I didn’t know it came with a manual,” he said. “But if Geneva knows how to program it, maybe she can help us get out of here.” Crane looked around at the spider-covered walls.
Conroe gazed up toward the ceiling. “Geneva, you’re our only hope. But I know you can do it.”