Race to World's End (Rowan and Ella Book 3) (16 page)

“At dusk or
slightly after. Four hours.”

“And why exactly
are ye going ashore at all, Cap’n?”

Sully had to give
the little bastard credit. He didn’t think he had the stones for the direct
approach.

“I am meeting my
lover, if you must know, Toad,” Sully said, fighting to keep his face straight.

“Yer…yer
lover
?”

As Sully moved
carefully down the ladder to the waiting boat with its lone sailor in it, he
bit back the laughter that was in danger of tumbling out.

As far as anyone
knew, there were only men on the island, although some of the other ships often
sailed with whores. If Toad had even an iota of wit in him, he might recognize
it when he heard it. As it was, Sully left him sputtering with confusion and
shock.

Just like Sully
preferred most people he dealt with.

15

Miami,
Florida 1925

The flight to
Miami from Cairo was only slightly less harrowing than the jaunt from Cairo to
Casablanca the month before. Once again, Ella carried Rowan’s uncle’s dog tags from
the Gulf War and enough jewelry to support her and then the both of them for
two months in 1825 Key West. She didn’t know how long it would take her to
recover from the trip this time but she assumed, coming so quickly on the heels
of her last trip, that it wouldn’t be pretty.

She had written a
note to be found on her very likely nearly comatose body with instructions that
she was to be taken to the nearest hotel or hospital. She prayed it wouldn’t be
necessary. Because she knew that memory loss was one of the concerns with time
traveling again so soon after her last trip, she’d jotted down a brief note to
herself outlining what her plan was once she reached 1825.

God forbid I should travel back a hundred years in time and
then forget what my plan is for finding Rowan.

Halima had worked
to create hair extensions for her that, with luck, she wouldn’t need to wash
before she returned home to Cairo. Prancing around 1925 pre-flapper Cairo with
a short bob was one thing. Pre-Civil War Florida, definitely another. In 1825, Ella
needed her hair.

When she landed
in Miami, she immediately booked passage on the Overland Railway to take her south.
She marveled as she looked at the magnificent train, knowing that in ten years
time the rail route would be destroyed by a hurricane and never rebuilt. She
and a few girlfriends had driven to the Keys during a college break ten years
back and the trip had taken just shy of three hours from Miami to the southern
most tip of the islands. The train ride in 1925 took nearly exactly the same
time and the views—with only endless miles of gulf and ocean on either
side as the train flew southward—were hypnotic.

Florida’s first mind-blowing thrill ride before Disney
, she thought with a smile as she looked
out the window of her first-class compartment. She would totally have to take
Tater to Disney as soon as he was a little older. A needle of sorry burrowed
into her happy mood and she shook it off—along with thoughts of her boy.
Tater was fine, she reminded herself. He had Halima. And soon he’d have his
mommy and daddy, again, too.

When she arrived
at the train depot in Key West, the humidity immediately began to frizz her
carefully coifed extensions and a curling iron had
not
been one of the things she’d packed for this trip. It was late
afternoon when she arrived, which suited her perfectly. She didn’t want anyone
looking at her too closely for the transformation part of her mission.

Night was ideal
as the setting for so many possibilities, she thought. And while one normally
thought of nighttime as being the province for the criminal element needing to
cloak its activities and intentions, it was also quite helpful for neophyte
time travelers who weren’t exactly sure of what they were doing.

Without the help
of the Internet, Ella’d had to do the best job she could in Cairo to research
hotels of Key West in 1825.

The results
hadn’t been plentiful. The only bit of information she’d unearthed that had
been at all helpful was the location of a clinic near what would later be known
as Mallory Square. From what she could decipher from the periodicals at the
library at the American University it was a clinic for rich people’s ailments.
There was even a little drawing of one of the typical hospital rooms. And since
it didn’t look to be depicting any raving lunatics in the background, Ella
decided to believe it would be suitable for her needs.

What other choice
did she have?

She picked up her
valise—this time carried slung over her shoulder with a wide leather
strap to mitigate the chances that someone would relieve her of it before she
was fully conscious—and walked to the Square.

Key West in 1925
was a far cry from what she could expect in 1825, she knew. Right now, it appeared
to be owned by the rich. Fashionable, well-dressed men and women strode down
the matching boardwalks lining Whitehead Street, flanked by dress shops, art
galleries, hotels and dining establishments. She noticed La Concha Hotel
towering high above all the other structures on the horizon.

The streets were
paved and full of cars and trucks, although there were more than a few roosters
pecking around the perimeters of the alleyways that emptied into the main road.
But then, they were there in 2013 too.

She was surprised
at the noise level in the city. Between people talking, laughing, vendors
hawking and the sounds of the traffic, it was almost deafening. She stopped at
a street vendor. She’d been able to change currency in Miami and so purchased a
cold chicken sandwich and a bottle of beer, which she ate slowly at a wooden
picnic table off of Duval Street watching the street traffic. She had plenty of
time before she had to find the spot where the clinic would be located in 1825.

Might as well not go back in time hungry.

After she’d
eaten, Ella walked to the site where the clinic would be in 1825. It looked
like it was a souvenir shop of some kind now. Next door was a hotel. It wasn’t
terribly fashionable but it didn’t look to be a flophouse either. She went in
and booked a room. Resisting the urge to start her journey fresh in the
morning—and reminding herself that
fresh
would likely work against her attempt to cross over—she stripped off her
1920s clothes and once more, pulled on the heavier 1820s costume.

Why can’t I do this someplace that’s not a hundred degrees
humidity for a change?
she thought as she buttoned up the snug bodice of the cotton gown and
refastened the chignon she’d worn her hair in from Egypt. As she locked her hotel
room and stepped into the street, she was startled to see a woman standing on
the opposite street corner wearing almost exactly the same outfit that Ella,
herself, was.

Shocked, and
wondering for a moment if she had already switched back, Ella took a few steps
closer to the woman to see that she was posing next to a man clearly hired to
look like a pirate. She was smiling as another man took their photograph.

Tourists
,
Ella thought. As she watched, a woman came from behind the pair and helped the
woman out of the costume. It was a garment worn as a backward coat or smock
over one’s clothing, Ella realized as the second woman turned to a line of
people and helped another woman don the garb.

Well, at least I won’t turn too many heads walking around
1925 Florida dressed like I’m looking for the planter’s ball
, she thought wryly.

Not that she
intended to be in 1925 long. She walked to the corner of Duval Street with the
rest of the gathering crowd to watch the sunset—famous even in
1925—mesmerize and dazzle the crowd of tourists. It occurred to her that
the perfect time to try to cross over was when everyone else was transfixed by
the show of the sun retiring for another day. She moved away from the crowd
and, with her back to one of the brick shop fronts, tucked the note into her
bodice that would alert anyone who found her to take her to the nearest
hospital.

She took a half
step into the alley, checking first to see that it was empty, then popped the
top button of her dress, reached in and grasped her mother’s necklace.

Need your help, Mom
,
she thought, closing her eyes to concentrate better
. Need to find my husband
.
Need
to get back to my baby
. Tears sprang to her eyes as, once again, the
necklace vibrated in her hand and the vision of her mother holding Tater came
to mind—the mother who never held her was cooing to her grandchild.

Anger and
indignant resentment broke through the pain and the sadness until Ella felt
like she needed to slam her fist into something.
You let me down, you bitch! You abandoned me when I needed you! What
kind of mother does that?
And when the immediate swirl of recognition and
guilt engulfed Ella, causing her stomach to suddenly reject her recently eaten
lunch, she was already sinking to her knees in the mud and the filth in the
alley of 1825
Cayo Hueso
.

***

Later, Lawrence
would wonder what possessed him. Later, when he had come to his senses and
realized what he’d done, he’d allow himself a moment of horror and
self-loathing to know that he could be even capable of doing it. And not just to
commit the act—but to do it without a second’s thought or hesitation.

When he first saw
her, he assumed he was indulging in his usual habit of late of imagining every
woman he saw who was remotely her same height and size to be the beautiful,
mysterious
bella
Ella, as he’d dubbed
her in those urgent moments in the middle of the night when, under the covers
and in his mind, she would come to him and beg him to make her his.

So it wasn’t a
total surprise to see her and to believe it was her. The game had caused so
many hours of pleasures—and inevitable hours of depression and anger and
disappointment. Just not so many he was capable of stopping. But when he went
closer—as he always did—to punish himself, to underscore his own
weakness and frailty of appetite, for that moment when the lady would turn and
she would not, could not, be his Bella—this time, she changed in front of
his very eyes until it was revealed that it was her.

Breathtakingly,
impossibly, her.

“Ella!” The name wrenched
out of his throat without thought. She stood, half slumped against the brick
wall in back of the crowd that had gathered to see the sunset, her hair tumbled
down into her face, her valise lying on the ground at her feet, a broken strap dangling
from her shoulder and the bodice of her dress open at the neck to reveal a
hint, just a hint…and then she looked at him.

It was her.

In two strides he
was at her side, his hands on her shoulders as he had never dared to do in
Casablanca. He tilted her chin to see if she were ill or injured and came
within a hair’s breadth of kissing those plump, pink lips, parted so slightly
as she gazed up at him.

“Ella,” he said.
“It’s me, Lawrence. Lawrence Bingham. What has happened? Have you been
assaulted?”

She looked at him
as if she didn’t recognize him. True, it had been nearly four months since not
only did she
not
meet him for
breakfast as promised, but since she had disappeared completely.
How in the world could she possibly be here
now?
He was sure she had not taken passage on the
Miranda
. He had been over every inch of that ship nearly every day
on the desperate chance he might find her.

As she allowed
him to take her by the elbow and lead her out of the alley and past the evening
crowd, he noticed she was totally compliant, almost as if stunned.

“Where are you
staying?” he asked. “I’ll escort you to your hotel. Are you sure you’re all right?”
Although she had yet to say a word, it was clear she was not “all right.”

He was startled
and delighted to find that she was holding onto his arm rather tightly, her
breasts pressing against it. Perhaps that was the singular moment that pushed
him over the edge. He had never escorted a woman before that resulted in such presumed
intimacy and he felt quite undone by it.

“Who…who did you
say you were?” she asked as they walked. She looked at him with such trust and
hope and confusion. That was the moment that finished him. He allowed a beat
and then the words were out of his mouth before he even knew to stop them, let
alone think them.

“My dear, have
you had a fall? Surely you know me. I am your fiancé.”

***

The last thing
she remembered was pyramids and sand. Had she been on vacation in Egypt? Ella
sat on the edge of the narrow bed in the ornately outfitted guest room and
stared at the painted pine paneling. She could smell the sea even with the
windows closed. She tried to remember why she might have been traveling in
Egypt.

She had no earthly
idea.

Have I had a stroke? How did I get here, and where is “here,”
and am I really engaged?

For the
thousandth time since she’d awakened in the alley, Ella looked down at her
gown, a heavy brocaded cotton that cinched at her waist and dropped straight to
the ground.
And the biggest question of
them all: why the hell am I dressed like Scarlet O’Hara?

When the English
guy, Lawrence, brought her to this clapboard house a few blocks from where he’d
found her, all Ella wanted to do was take an ibuprofen and lie down. At the
time, she was sure if she could just take a moment to get things clear in her
mind, she would be fine.

That was before
she went through her suitcase.

In it, she found
six pairs of panties, a set of dog tags for somebody named Elliott Kincaid, an
old-fashioned tin of aspirin, sanitary napkins, a velvet bag containing a
diamond bracelet and several rings: one ruby, three emeralds and a large opal; a
black and white photograph of a little boy being held by a dark-skinned woman
in some kind of middle eastern dress, another photograph of a total
hottie—tall, with thick dark hair, and very sexy eyes—she had no
idea who he was—and a passport under the name of
Ella Pierce
.