“Not just lead into gold,” Hailey said. “If he figured this out—it’s a lot bigger than that. If you can transform one metal to another, you’re talking about restructuring materials at an atomic level. From that starting point—there’s no telling what you could do. Sure, you could turn lead into gold. You could also turn it into plutonium. You could use such a technology to engineer an instant, infinite power source. Hell, alchemists believed the philosopher’s stone could unlock the secret of immortality. Lead into gold is just a starting place. The applications would be endless. Infinite wealth, yes, but also infinite power.”

Nick didn’t understand much of what she’d explained—but wealth, power, these were concepts he couldn’t ignore.

But alchemy? Paul Revere? Nick wasn’t an educated guy; Hailey could swim circles around him in that department. But it all seemed more like magic than science. And yet here they are—

Nick’s hand suddenly froze against the throttle, and he quickly pushed down with all of his weight, lifting the motor right out of the choppy water. The skiff jerked forward as it slowed, and Hailey nearly toppled over next to him. She stared at Nick, surprised, but he just pointed past her, past Adrian and his bicycle, into the gray on gray ahead of them.

Something was rising up out of the darkness not a hundred yards ahead, something tall and familiar, something that appeared incredibly old. It took Nick a full moment to understand what he was looking at.

The central mast of a Revolution-era sailing ship.

Nick knew that the ship in front of them was actually a re-creation, from its ninety-foot, ornately decorated hull to its multiple masts and riggings. But in the darkness, with only the sound of the lapping water against the skiff, he felt instantly transported back two hundred and fifty years, to one of the most famous and significant moments in American history, something every schoolchild had heard of, even a child who had later turned to crime.

Fitting, he thought to himself, as he lowered the motor carefully back into the water, piloting them the rest of the way forward.

They were already flirting with alchemy.

They might as well add time travel to the mix.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Four

Adrian’s cycling shoes clicked against the wooden planks of an eighteenth-century wharf as he hurriedly led Hailey and Nick through the darkness, picking his way past stacks of corkwood barrels, snakelike piles of heavy docking ropes and spiderwebs of unfurled rigging. To their right, spread out beyond the wharf as far as Adrian could see, the even darker panorama of Boston Harbor, as it might have appeared two hundred and fifty years ago, marked by a distinct, if cacophonic symphony: water crashing against great, tall ships, the caw of gulls, the odd rumble of thunderclouds gathering high above.