“Like me? Like… that they’re mediators?”

“No.” Jesse shook his head. “Unafraid, like you. Brave, like you.”

I smiled a little ruefully. “I’m not brave, Jesse,” I said.

“You’re staying here,” he said, indicating the loft. “Even though you know—or think you know—something terrible is going to happen.”

“Well, sure,” I said. “Because that’s the whole reason I came. To make sure it doesn’t. Although, to be truthful…” I threw a cautious glance at Paul, in case—and he probably was—he was listening. “—really I came here to stop him. Paul, I mean. From stopping Diego. Because you see, if you don’t die tonight, you and I—in the future, where I come from—will never meet. And I couldn’t bear to let that happen. And you even—in the future—said you didn’t want that to happen. Only… only… here I am, letting it happen. So you see, I’m not brave at all.”

I doubt he’d understood a word I’d said. It didn’t matter, though. It was as close to an apology as the Jesse I had known and loved was going to get. And I felt I owed him one. An apology. For what I had done.

Which was destroy everything we’d had together.

“I think you’re wrong,” Jesse said. About my not being brave.

But what did he know about any of it, really?

I just smiled at him.

Which is when I heard it.

Chapter

eighteen

Don’t ask me how. I wasn’t born with superhearing or anything. I just… heard it.

The scrape of the barn door.

And Jesse, over by the ladder, froze. He had heard it, too. A second later, I saw Paul sit up. He hadn’t been sleeping. Not at all.

We waited in tense silence, each of us hardly daring to breathe.

Then I heard another scrape. This time, it was of a boot on a ladder rung.

Diego. It had to be. Diego was coming to kill Jesse.

Jesse must have sensed my unease, since he lifted a single hand toward me, palm out, in the universal signal for “Stay.” He wanted Paul and me to leave Diego to him.

Yeah. Right.

And then I saw them—Diego’s head and shoulders, looming massive and black against the lighter dark of the rest of the barn. His head was turned in the direction of Jesse’s supine form—he didn’t see anything else.

Slowly, obviously fearful of waking his prey, Diego climbed into the loft, his footfalls softened by all the hay. As he crept closer and closer—now he was five feet away… now four… now three—I leaned forward, ready to pounce. I had no idea what I was going to do to stop him. He was not a small man, and I’m no black belt. But shifting definitely came to mind.

Paul had his hand on me now, though, holding on to the sleeve of my motorcycle jacket, keeping me back so that Jesse could have a chance at taking care of the problem himself. Funny how in this one thing, Paul should be on Jesse’s side, when he’d never taken Jesse’s side on any other occasion.

One foot. Diego was now one foot from Jesse’s supposedly sleeping form. He reached for something at his waist—his belt. I saw the gleam of his buckle… the same buckle that, in my own time, had somehow ended up in the attic….

Then, just as Diego had wrapped both ends of the belt around either fist and yanked the part in the middle taut, to use as a kind of garrote, Jesse’s voice, cool and assured, cut through the silence.

In Spanish. He said something in Spanish.

Why? Why had I taken French and not Spanish?

Diego, caught totally off guard, stumbled back a step.

I couldn’t stand it.

“What did he say?” I hissed at Paul.

Paul, not looking too happy about playing translator, said, “He said, ‘So it IS true.’ Now shut up so I can hear.”

Diego recovered nicely, however. He didn’t lower the hands that clutched the belt. Instead, he said something.

In Spanish.

This time, Paul didn’t need any urging.

“He said, ‘So you know. Yes, it’s true. I’m here to kill you.’”

Jesse said something else. The only word I recognized was a name.

“He said, ‘Maria sent you?’”

Diego laughed. Then he nodded. Then he lunged.

I don’t think I screamed. I know I sucked in a ton of air and was going to let it out in a shriek. But I found myself holding my breath instead. Because Jesse, instead of rolling out from under Diego, as I would have done, rose up to meet his assailant.

The two men teetered dangerously on the edge of the hayloft floor, just before the twelve-foot drop to the ground below. It was hard to see exactly what was happening in the semidarkness, but one thing was certain: Diego had the advantage, weight-wise.

Now Paul and I were on our feet, completely unnoticed by the two men struggling at the edge of the loft. I tried to rush forward to help, but again Paul wouldn’t let me.

“It’s a fair fight,” he said to me.

But when, a second later, the two men broke apart, and Diego threw aside his belt with a chuckle, I saw that there was nothing fair about the fight at all. Because Diego had suddenly produced a knife. It gleamed wickedly in the light from the lantern, sitting on the loft floor a few feet away from them.

Now the air in my lungs came out in a rush. “Jesse!” I shrieked. “Knife!”

Diego whirled. “Who’s there?” he asked in English.

The distraction gave Jesse just enough time to pull from his boot his own knife… the one he’d used to cut me loose from Paul’s ropes.

“Okay, that’s it,” I said when I saw this. “Somebody’s going to get—”

“That’s what we want,” Paul said, keeping a firmer grip on me than ever. “So long as it’s the right guy.”

I couldn’t understand what Paul was doing, what he was thinking. Jesse and Diego were circling each other warily now, coming within inches with every other step of the loft ledge. We could stop it. We could stop it so easily. Why wasn’t he—

Then it hit me. Was Paul on Diego’s side? Was this whole thing some kind of weird setup? Had he really failed to find Diego during the day or had he only pretended to go and look for him, so he could have the pleasure of watching Jesse die later? Because that could be the only reason he’d have gone to these elaborate lengths—so that he could watch Jesse die—