WANTED (A Transported Through Time book) (19 page)

What she’d said didn’t make a lot of sense, and yet it did. He’d met Henry. He’d liked him. Too bad he’d never see him again. Likely her, as well.

Never see her again?
He hated the thought, but he kept his face placid. He waited, his hands in the air, his horse stilled under him. He pushed Samantha from his thoughts, because right now he needed every one of his wits about him.

If any way out of this predicament presented itself, he had to take advantage of it. Ginny and Tommy were still at risk.

“You may as well show your face, Mick. I know it’s you. Can’t see you sending Joe for a job as important as this.” A robbery. Stealing from the outlaw, biting the hand that fed them. They didn’t know he had nothing for them to take.

A low chuckle behind him caused him to jerk his head around. Mick sat astride a dapple gray thoroughbred. Half his face showed in the moonlight. He struck a match to his leg, and the flame illuminated the other half. He had a blackened eye. A cut scabbed his lip.

“You ought not speak so poorly of Joe. He might liken to blow your head off.” Mick touched the match to his corncob pipe.

The man in the shadows stepped forth. Joe. A brother on either side of him, Jesse was as caught as caught could be. Even if he got off a round into Joe’s chest, Mick was there to shoot him in the back, and vice versa.

In the back. Samantha said he’d been murdered, shot in the back by these two. Well, not yet.

Not until he’d gotten them away from Ginny’s place. A few days of running them in circles, hunting for buried loot, should do the trick.

“What do you want?” His horse shuffled its feet, sensing his tension. The scent of cherry tobacco from Mick’s pipe brought memories of hiding out and evading the law with these two, all the while watching his back.

“You know what we want, Jesse.” Mick spit and took another drag from his pipe.

It had always been there, under his skin, his distrust of these brothers. In the beginning, he’d relished the gamble. He’d had little other than his sister, already settled down and soon to start a family of her own. Living on that edge had felt good.

Not anymore.

Something in him had changed, shifted. Like a key that always sat in a lock finally being turned. Something lay inside.

Right now, he wouldn’t find out what it was, didn’t want to. Now, he had to survive.

“All right, then,” he said at last.

“You always were a smart man, Jesse. Glad you aren’t going to start being stupid. Sometimes a woman can have that effect on a man.”

Jesse’s jaw clenched. Pain similar to a punch caved inside his chest. They couldn’t know about Samantha. Not unless they’d been watching him, waiting. If they knew about Sammie, they likely knew about Ginny too. A couple of days. That was all he needed. Ginny would know something was up and leave town.

Hell, since he hadn’t followed Tommy home, she might already have figured out he’d been double-crossed.

More than once, they’d planned for something like this happening, just in case.

His sister had better stick to the plan.

Joe approached from his left, but he kept his gaze steady on Mick. Of the two, Jesse feared Mick the most. Mick had a meanness in him that ran deep and true. Joe wasn’t mean so much as loyal.

Both were too dangerous by half, and together, lethal.

“Lead the way,” Jesse said. The less he admitted, the better. He went ahead and assumed the worst—that they knew about Sammie, Ginny, and Tommy.

However, they didn’t know everything.

“No,” Mick said. “You lead the way.” A plume of smoke spilled on each word.

Jesse didn’t answer, only nodded and clucked at his horse to move. He liked Mick better in the shadows, receding into the unknown.

“And don’t try anything stupid like,” Joe said, tugging the mare’s reins free and tethering her to a low branch nearby.

Too bad the mare wasn’t trained like the stallion.

Jesse turned the stallion east and headed back down into the valley, away from his sister’s place. Tommy had managed to find him at the campsite with Sammie. He’d likely find him this way, as well. Particularly since the brothers didn’t concern themselves with hiding their tracks.

Three hours later, they approached a stream, and the barrel of Joe’s rifle pressed into Jesse’s lower back.

He kept still, waiting for one of them to speak.

His breathing became shallow.

This was it. His final hour. His death. All he could think about was Sammie.

*

Samantha applauded herself.

Not only had Charles passed out on Carla’s dismally green sofa, but Samantha had recounted the best blind date of all time. Too bad not a single word of it was true. After all of the nice things he’d fictionally done for her, she was beginning to really like Mr. Spencer. The strawberries and champagne (she’d always wanted to try them ever since the scene in that movie), the walk along the beach. His yacht. Was the yacht too much?

Maybe. Oh, well.

Onward go with the tastefully sized yacht, the reason her cell phone didn’t have service, and the very place it must be now. On the starboard deck (whichever one that was. She couldn’t care less, as long as Charles bought it), right on the seat where she sat and drank the champagne and ate the strawberries.

Carla drank a bit, too. Sleepiness weighed her eyelids down. She yawned a lot, especially when Samantha went on about the stupid boat thing. Carla hadn’t taken any of her dropped hints, some subtle and some not so subtle, and brought out the file to Samantha so she could read the clippings. If Carla had, or if Samantha could have found it, she might have waited.

Who was she kidding? She wouldn’t have.

Even if she’d learned that Jesse was caught instead of killed, or that he’d married, been pardoned for all his robberies, and sired ten children, she’d go.

Samantha felt like a mother tucking in her children the night before Christmas, except tomorrow wasn’t a holiday, and instead of gifts, the two were going to get a disappointing surprise. Samantha would be gone.

Well, might be gone.

If everything went perfectly well, she would be back, with Jesse in tow. Her heart leapt at the mere idea. She tiptoed to the kitchen, found what had to be Carla’s stash, which the woman thankfully hadn’t hidden. Lucky for Samantha. Either that, or Samantha had done a good enough job of acting compliant—hiding the tug every ticking second pulled on her stomach—to smooth Carla’s concerns, enough to let down her guard.

This wasn’t the time to speculate.

She had a plan.

Once she located the whiskey bottle she’d glimpsed when Carla fetched another round, resting innocently on the counter, Samantha searched for a container. Glass would break. She just knew glass would break. She couldn’t take the bottle itself. Plastic would do, though. If Jesse drank the concoction, and she held onto him for dear life, he would—theoretically—leap back with her and return here.

Now all she had to do was pour a couple of shots into the travel mug, seal it, and take a shot herself. What if the drink sent a person only backward though time? What if Jesse went to a different place than she?

Ergh! When she’d had the chance, she should have asked Carla more questions about how it worked. It hadn’t occurred to her until now, and she would have to trust in it. Waking the woman and asking wasn’t an option. It wasn’t.

The ibuprofen had worked wonders on her pain, and she took some with her. Each time she jumped, she got worse, and she’d need the painkillers if she was to find Jesse.

As she held the bottle to her lips, her tummy flipped. She said a small, silent prayer, addressing her dad. Of course, he didn’t answer and neither did God, assuming they were in the same vicinity.

Samantha took a deep, fortifying breath and gulped down two quick swallows. She waited, her eyes closed. Two minutes passed. One more. The sound of one of her companions moving brought her eyes open in time to see Charles lift his head and squint right at her.

“What are you doing?” he asked, rubbing his face.

Samantha looked down at her cross-legged figure, travel mug hugged to her chest like a kid’s piggy bank. The dizziness set in. Charles sat up a bit, wiping the bleariness from his eyes.

Samantha opened her mouth to tell him to go back to sleep. The blackness swam up and sucked her under. Her friend’s mouth fell open. She would have told him to go back to sleep, that he was dreaming. Too late. He saw her leave. It didn’t matter. All she cared about was getting to Jesse before she was unable to save his life.

He needed her.

For the first time, someone did. She wasn’t going to let him go, not until time closed up and gave her no more chances to try. Or fail.

The dizziness faded, and the smell of burning wood penetrated Samantha’s thoughts. Slowly, she opened her eyes. Darkness reigned. Whether the same night or a different one, she couldn’t tell.

She sat cross-legged on the ground, the mug still gripped in her hands. A loud sigh expelled from her chest—deep, so deep she must have been holding her breath for some time. Birds chirped in the trees surrounding her on all sides. The sky slowly lightened, dawn nearing.

After scanning the area for signs of human activity, Samantha carefully rose to her feet. Dew blanketed the autumn leaves and grass.

Campfire.

The odor wafted through the air. She peered through the sentinels of trunks for wisps of smoke. The yellowish gray-blue of dawn showed no sign.

She walked toward the upward slope, hoping that at the downward end she might spot the remnants of a fire, and lying next to it, Jesse. Safe. Alive.

No such luck.

Stopping and squatting beside a large oak, Samantha blinked away the sting in her eyes and pushed back the hopelessness eroding her emotional state. She was here. He must be near. Each time she’d come to him, she’d arrived within his proximity. She had to trust she was close to him now.

Maybe her dad had been right. Maybe Jesse was meant for her.

She sucked in air through her nose, blew it out of her mouth, and stood again. She spun in a slow, methodical circle and looked about her. The sky had become much lighter, almost as bright as full day.

As she turned, she counted. One, two, three. Four, five, six, like spots on a clock. When she got back to one, she grew somewhat oriented. The sun rose in the east—point three—and she’d watched it go down in the west—point nine—so Jesse’s place would be at ... two? Or was it at eight?

That would depend on if she were facing away from it or heading toward it, she guessed. Being deep in the trees, she decided she must be facing away. She turned to eight, spotted nine and three again to make sure, and began to walk.

All the while, she strained to smell the fire. If the scent grew stronger, she would continue the way she was going. If it grew fainter, she would stop and reassess her dismal situation. The plan made her feel better, more in control of this madness, both the roiling in her head and her desperate circumstances.

Wouldn’t he want to move away from his home, though? If whoever came upon him when she left meant him harm, wouldn’t he lead them away from his home, better yet, away from Ginny? Then again, he probably wouldn’t be in charge of what direction, and if she were going to steal from a man, she would make him take her to his home first, because people kept their valuables in their comfort zone. Didn’t they?

Yes. She definitely remembered that from some police show. Even if he wasn’t there, she could see Ginny. Tell her the men who meant to murder Jesse had found him.

The splashing of water met her ears before the scent of smoke left her nose.

Samantha stopped and crouched. She detected something else in the noise. Something. Not a person ... a horse. Her pulse picked up speed a notch. Walking low and as quietly as a mouse hunting cheese, Samantha approached what turned out to be a creek. She listened for the horse. Yes. Most definitely a horse.

She peered around a tree, up the small stream, and in an instant, saw her. The gentle old mare Jesse had given her to ride. As it bent its neck and drank, its reins dragged in the water. Samantha couldn’t believe her good luck. No, not luck. Fate. She was meant to be here. She knew it.

She had absolutely no evidence of it, but deep in her gut and bones was a certainty that hadn’t been there before. Destiny.

With her heart in her throat, Samantha bent to look further for Jesse’s horse or any others. She saw no one, and no animals other than the mare. Part of her expectations fell, but she was simply too glad to have found the mare, and refused to let the lack of other life—think Jesse—crush her hopes or feed her worry.

Softly cooing, she walked to the mare. “Hey, girl. Remember me?” She clucked her tongue and made clicking sounds that seemed to work. The mare jerked her head up from the water and remained motionless. She regarded Samantha with more than a little wariness, but she didn’t run.

Samantha cupped her hand and reached out, like her father had told her when she was little. Up and open, so she wouldn’t lose a finger when the mare grew curious enough to reach out her head and lip Samantha’s palm for food.