“So Em’s being her usual self by trying to circumvent the problem and take care of it herself?”
“Yes.”
Lily’s face was screwed up in concentration, her features smoothing out as she put puzzle pieces in the right places. I didn’t want her to fit in the piece about how she ended up in this exact time and place.
“Ivy Springs isn’t a magnet for freaks,” I said abruptly, trying to derail her train of thought. I fished a stick out of a pile of leaves and peeled off the bark, throwing it on the ground.
“This many ‘special abilities’ in one tiny town makes it a magnet,” she said, disagreeing.
“How do you know there aren’t fifty freaks living in Nashville? Or five hundred in Atlanta?” I peeled off another piece of bark. “Maybe they’re keeping it a secret, too.”
“There are at least five hundred freaks in Atlanta, but that doesn’t mean any of them have a special ability.” She jerked the stick out of my hands and snapped it in half.
“Okay.” I raised my eyebrows.
“You’re trying to change the subject.” She chucked a piece of the stick toward the woods. “I don’t know why, but if you want to succeed, you’ll have to try harder.”
“One point to Lily.”
“If you don’t find Jack, and time is rewound, how do you know things wouldn’t play out the exact way they did the first time?” she asked. Too perceptive. “How do you know people wouldn’t make the same choices, live the same lives?”
“I think the people who want Jack will take him out of the picture. From what point do they take him? After he killed my dad but before he changed Emerson’s time line?”
She threw the other half, harder this time. “That sucks.”
“That sucks,” I agreed.
“If I do help …” She stopped, catching her breath, and stared over my shoulder. I turned around.
A man sat on a horse twenty feet in front of us.
“That’s … not … right,” Lily choked out from behind me.
One end of a long rope circled the man’s neck in a makeshift noose, and the other end draped over the highest branch of a black walnut tree. None of it had been there two minutes ago. His hands were tied behind his back, his feet tucked into stirrups. A shotgun came into view behind the horse he sat on, aimed at the sky.
The man attached to the gun came into view next.
“We don’t take to thieves here.” He leaned the gun against the trunk of the tree as he took the rope and tied it tightly, working it into the grooves of the bark. “Not of our livestock or our women.”
“I didn’t touch your wife.”
The sound of the shotgun pump echoed across the empty landscape. Lily’s shoulders jerked at the sound.
“I didn’t, and I’m not a thief. I thought it was my horse, I thought …” Desperation tainted the excuse. Sweat beaded on the thief’s forehead.
“I caught you red-handed with both. I took care of the woman, but you’re welcome to another turn on the horse.” The man holding the gun curled his index finger around the trigger.
“You’ll be sorry,” the thief said. “My men will make you sorry.”
“They’ll have to find me first. Enjoy the ride.”
I jumped forward, grabbing Lily’s arm. She made a sound of protest as I spun her around and pulled her into my chest.
A shot echoed through the twilight air.
The horse reared and took off at full speed, and the man jerked backward with a loud snap. His feet twitched as his face turned red, and then blue.
Lily struggled to free herself from my arms. I held her tighter. “Don’t look. Please don’t look.”