Free Redeemed by Margaret Peterson Haddix Page B

the only one who’d suggested actually doing anything.
    â€œFine,” Jordan said, his voice a little too loud for someone who was supposed to be hiding. “If you two want to be cowards about everything, let’s just ask those magic Elucidators to show us where Gary and Hodge are right now, and where Second and Mom and Dad are. And then—”
    Both Jonah and Katherine were frowning at him.
    â€œI’m not sure we should trust either of these Elucidators,” Jonah said. “We know the one you took from JB wasn’t working right to begin with, and the other one has some connection to Second, so—”
    Jordan ignored him.
    â€œElucidators, where are Mom and Dad right now?” he asked, dipping his head toward the cell phone–like object and the plastic card Jonah was holding. Strangely, the cell phone looked sleeker and more futuristic than it had the last time Jonah had looked at it, but that had to be his imagination.
    Words glowed in the air once more: I CAN’T ANSWER THAT.
    Jonah shot Jordan an I told you so look. Jordan ignored that, too.
    â€œElucidator, where are Gary and Hodge right now?” he tried again.
    At least the words changed this time: GARY AND HODGE ARE NOT PRESENT IN THIS TIME PERIOD.
    Okay. Maybe Jordan should have expected that. He’d heard their coworkers say they’d vanished. And with time travel, that probably meant that they’d vanished from this time.
    But he wasn’t going to give up, not with Jonah glowering at him.
    â€œThen where—I mean, ‘when’—are they?” Jordan asked.
    HERE IS A TIMELINE SHOWING ALL MOMENTS THOSE TWO HAVE ENTERED the words glowed back at him.
    Jordan saw a glowing line in the air with dots all over the place.
    â€œShut that down!” Jonah ordered. “That’s so bright someone could see it from outside!”
    The glowing line obligingly disappeared.
    â€œWe’re wasting time,” Jonah hissed. “I already know why Gary and Hodge aren’t answering their coworkers! Charles Lindbergh used an Elucidator I gave him and turned them into babies again, so they couldn’t cause any more trouble. So—”
    â€œWhy didn’t you tell us that before?” Jordan challenged.
    Jonah ran his hand across his forehead. Jordanrecognized that motion: It was what Jordan himself did when he was frustrated.
    Except for their clothes, Jonah already looked exactly like Jordan. Having him act like Jordan too made things even creepier.
    â€œThere hasn’t been time for me to tell!” Jonah protested. “I mean, with you grabbing things and sending us the wrong places . . . And there’s, like, more than five hundred years of stuff that happened to Katherine and me and Chip and the other missing kids that you don’t know about, so where was I supposed to start?”
    â€œI didn’t know about Gary and Hodge turning back into babies either,” Katherine said quietly. And this was not like her. Katherine was never quiet. “Did you leave them in 1932? Or—”
    â€œI don’t know!” Jonah said, as if he were annoyed with Katherine, too. “JB took care of them. All I was thinking about was getting home and getting my normal life back. . . .”
    The look he shot Jordan then was so disgusted he might as well have said out loud, I wanted to get back to my life where you didn’t exist.
    â€œSo for all you know, JB might have killed those two babies,” Jordan said, jumping to the most extreme example to get back at Jonah.
    â€œJB wouldn’t have done that,” Jonah protested.
    â€œHow do you know?” Jordan asked. “What if you’re not even right about who the good guys are and who the bad guys are?”
    â€œStop it!” Katherine interrupted. “You two are, like, almost shouting at each other. Someone’s going to find us!”
    For some reason, Jordan felt angry