Free Revealed by Margaret Peterson Haddix Page A

many didn’t disappear today?”
    JB turned around.
    â€œJust one,” he said, his eyes burning. “Only Jonah.”

TWELVE
    Jonah fell down. Angela instantly dived on top of him.
    â€œDon’t you disappear now too!” she screeched. “We won’t let you! JB—help!”
    Jonah lifted his head from the rock floor pressed against his cheek. Forget being a pilot or physicist or airport worker—what Angela really had a talent for was football. He didn’t know any other thirteen-year-old who was this good at tackling people.
    â€œI just tripped,” he muttered. “I just . . .”
    He didn’t want to admit that his knees had crumpled beneath him at the thought of being the last missing child left, the only one stolen from history who hadn’t been stolen once again from the twenty-first century.
    Andrea , he thought. Andrea, Chip, Alex, Brendan, Antonio, Dalton, Emily, Gavin, Daniella. And Ming, and . . .
    He and the other missing kids were from different places and different centuries, and in the beginning the only connection they’d had was that Gary and Hodge had kidnapped all of them and put them on the same airplane. And then abandoned all of them when they were being chased by time agents.
    But that was a lot to have in common. It was almost like they were his family now too. Today Jonah hadn’t just lost his sister and the adult versions of his parents—he’d also lost all the kids who were most like him.
    â€œWhy?” Jonah asked. “Where did they all go? Who took them?”
    JB shrugged helplessly. Jonah shoved Angela aside and stood back up.
    â€œI don’t see Charles Lindbergh in any of those scenes,” Jonah said, peering at one screen after another. JB had apparently set them on a loop, so the disappearances kept replaying. It made things that much worse, to watch thirty-five kids vanish again and again and again. “Why did he show up in our living room to grab Katherine, but everyone else just vanished?”
    â€œBecause Katherine’s not a missing kid from history?” Angela said. But she didn’t sound sure even of that.
    â€œI am, though,” Jonah said, his voice shaking. “Why didn’t I disappear along with everyone else?”
    â€œMaybe because Charles Lindbergh was already there in your house kidnapping Katherine at about the same time?” JB suggested. “Like, his presence jammed the frequencies somehow?”
    Losing my sister protected me? Jonah thought.
    It wasn’t a bargain he would have made, if he’d had the choice. Maybe three months ago, when Katherine was annoying him constantly, but . . .
    No, not even then , Jonah thought.
    â€œWait a minute,” Angela said. She was still sitting on the ground, but squinting up at the wall full of screens. “ Was Katherine kidnapped at the exact same time that everyone else vanished?”
    â€œThese are low-tech monitors,” JB said apologetically. “I can’t get exact timing without hooking them to an Elucidator that actually works.”
    â€œCan you show us Katherine being taken away?” Jonah asked.
    â€œSure,” JB said.
    He typed something into the keyboard on the wall, and one of the monitors shut down in the midst of its endless loop of missing children vanishing over and over again. Instead Jonah watched himself and Katherine gaping at the tall man who’d suddenly appeared in their living room; he saw Lindbergh checking items off hislist; he saw Lindbergh grab Katherine and vanish.
    Jonah gulped.
    â€œReplay it,” he told JB, because he’d forgotten to watch for the one detail he’d wanted to see.
    â€œAre you sure?” Angela said. “You kind of look like you might faint or something.”
    â€œI’m sure!” Jonah insisted.
    This time Jonah kept looking back and forth between Lindbergh and the clock on the mantelpiece