Page 23

“Jesus! Do you think it was just the phone calls?”

“I don’t know. He could’ve bugged anything, I guess.”

“Shit, El. We had sex in that house.”

“I can’t even think about that right now.”

Lydia turned toward the station and asked, “Did you get him to confess?”

“I’m not a professional interrogator, Lydia. Ididget him to say something like that, so they should be able to use it, like you said. He said it wouldn’t matter, though.”

“Why not?”

“He told me that because he couldn’t find it, he had to disappear. He’s stayed gone this whole time for a reason. I think someone else is out there looking for the device.”

“El, it’s time. We need to get rid of that thing,” Lydia suggested.

“I know. I just don’t know how.”

“We bash it with a baseball bat or something.”

“The note,” Eliza reminded.

“The note mentioned something about energy, yeah. But what does that even mean?”

“I don’t know, exactly, but energy has to be involved somehow.”

“I failed physics. Is physics the energy science?”

“Energy has to be there to transport us literally back to the past. I don’t need a physics class to tell me that. If we try to destroy it, the energy could potentially do something worse, though, or we could get stuck somewhere.”

“Like, I could end up in my own personal hell watching you have sex with an ex-girlfriend,” Lydia guessed.

“Or, I could end up having to watch my father getting murdered on a loop.”

“Yeah, that would be way worse,” Lydia replied and took Eliza’s hand. “Okay. What do we do now?”

“I want to get one of those bug-checker things online and make sure that no one’s listening to us at home or at my mom’s place.”

“Okay. We can do that. Then, what?”

“We bury it,” she said.

“Where?”

“Where no one can find it.”

“You mentioned the water before,” Lydia reminded.

“Yeah, but I worry about that because unless it’s in the Pacific Ocean, and we’re out really far, there’s still a chance someone could dive and find it.”

“So far, all this thing has done is help you solve your father’s murder and bring us back together. It’s been good to us, when you think about it.”

“Not if someone comes after us because we have it. My dad died because of whatever this thing is. I’m not going to let anything happen to you because of it, too.”

“Okay. Okay,” Lydia said and put her hands on Eliza’s hips. “You’re scared.”

“Of course, I’m scared. I’m talking to you by a creek because it’s noisy. I don’t know if they bugged our phones or anything else and can hear us right now.”