Wakening the Past: A Time Travel Romance (Medicine Stick Series Book 2) (15 page)

“Oh, Lord!” B.J. exclaimed. “Why did you take that little girl, Bill? She had nothing to do with any of this.”

Bobbi was too scared to even register indignation at being called a little girl. Besides she wanted to hear Bill’s answer.

He glared indignantly at B.J., th
an looked to Nolan. “That’s clear as mud. If you ever watched one of them TV shows, you know you’ve got to have cover. I figured if we had a kid with us, then they wouldn’t stop us. They might not care about the rest of us, but they wouldn’t want to shoot the girl.”

Nolan snorted disapproval. “That’s crazy, Bill, crazier even than snatching me from the courthouse the way you did.”

“Got away with it, didn’t it?” Bill replied with obvious satisfaction. “Deputy Long, he was easy to fuddle. Nice enough guy, but easy to fool. And then when I grabbed hold of Terry and took you to Bonnie’s place, I knew she wouldn’t turn us away. Always had a soft spot for you, our Bonnie.”

B.J. started to protest, but he waved her to quiet. “You see we had to make it all up to you, Terry and me, we had to make things right. In the morning we’ll drive out of here and head down south to old Mexico and you’ll be free, you and Bonnie can spend the rest of your lives together.”

It was an appalling plan, Bobbi thought, but maybe it made a certain sense to a man who hadn’t had a rational thought in years.

“What about the girl?” Nolan asked quietly, nodding in her direction.

Bill looked perplexed. He hadn’t thought that far. “Guess we’ll have to take her with us.”

The thought of never seeing Granny or her parents again was surprisingly painful. “No,” Bobbi protested, glancing toward the window in appeal. She couldn’t leave her whole world behind.

“First thing in the morning,” Bill insisted. “We’ll leave before the sun’s up and because we’ve got the kid, nobody’ll dare try to stop us.”

“Maybe they won’t even notice,” Terry said hopefully. “They’ll see B.J. and the girl and think we’re just a family off on a trip. Just your ordinary, everyday family.”

Bobbi began to frantically make plans. As dawn approached, she would sneak out to where Hart was hiding and they would take off together. She wouldn’t be so scared of Mitten if Hart was with her.

“I’m gonna confess,” Bill rambled on. He snatched off a piece of paper from the scrap on which they’d been keeping score, seized the stubby pencil and wrote something down. “See,” he said. “We’ll leave that note here and they’ll find it when we’re gone. It says you didn’t kill Pop, but I did.” He looked to his brother. “I won’t confess for you, Terry, wouldn’t be fair.”

He stood up, bending over to blow out the burnt down candles that had lighted their evening. “Time to get some sleep or we won’t be able to travel in the morning. Everybody go to bed.”

As if there were beds. Bobbi snuggled deeper in her chair and pulled up the smelly blanket, prepared to wait out the night.
She felt the others moving past her, seeking their own cozy spots. Only Bill stayed at the table, finally falling sleep with the rifle laid across his lap.

She heard Mitten scream outside and hoped Hart was safe.

This was the time to try to get out. With Hart waiting out there, she was willing to brave the bobcat. She tried to tell herself that wild animals like that wanted to avoid people. As long as they didn’t actually trip across her beautiful, furry body, Mitten would stay away from them. She hoped so anyway.

Hart hovered just below the window, thankful that the rain had finally died down. Drenched as she was, she would be lucky if she survived this night and didn’t die of exposure in the next few days.

But right now she was more afraid of Bill Maxwell and his rifle than she was of the cold, wet night or even of the big cat that shattered her nerves every time she screamed from down at the barn.

When the lights went out, she waited for them to go to sleep. They were old people and would be tired. Bill and Terry had imbibed a large amount of whatever they were drinking and staggered when they tried to walk. Surely they’d pass out any minute now and she could slip in and manage to get hold of the rifle and save not only Bobbi, but poor Mr. Jeffers and his friend.

She waited, trying to be patient even though she was totally miserable and in a constant state of severe shaking from cold and fear.

When things had been quiet for more than an hour, she stood and tried to
look through the window once more. But with total darkness inside, she couldn’t see a thing.

Then suddenly, a flashlight shone, circling Bobbi who stopped abruptly in her trek toward the door. Bill Maxwell, his face a mask of aged ferocity, stood pointing his rifle with his right hand, a flashlight in his left.

She saw his mouth move and knew he was saying something she couldn’t hear and then Bobbi moved back to her chair and collapsed into its worn cushions.

When he put the gun down, she sank back into the darkness. Bill Maxwell might be old and drunk, but he was still very much on the alert.

She would have to continue her impatient waiting until another opportunity came up.

Alistair Redhawk left the resolution of the unexpected raid on the meth operation to his men and the Beckham County deputies as soon as he could and headed back in the direction from which he’d come, speeding up to the highway and moving east.

His concern for his wife increased with each mile he covered. He would never have claimed to any special intuition, but what he called ‘gut feeling’ had guided him many times in his career and tonight his gut was urging him back to her.

From the Beckham County deputies, he’d learned that a certain spot down on the river was called the old Maxwell farm. She’d seemed so certain that Bill and Terry Maxwell had taken off with Bobbi. This didn’t seem to make much sense, but he had specific directions to the family’s old place and was headed there as fast as he could.

So weary from what now seemed like days without
enough sleep, he radioed his location and his continued search to Deputy Harding as he headed back into the breaks at the point where he’d discontinued his search before, switching off the emergency lights and setting the headlights to low as he swept slowly down the rain-logged road until he spotted a car stuck in the deep ditch to the right.

Pulling over carefully to avoid getting stuck himself, he identified the stalled Lexus as a rental car and with another radio called checked out the license and confirmed his suspicion that the vehicle had been leased to Bobbi’s grandmother, Serena Hudson.

Quickly he looked over the car that Hart had taken and saw no signs of his wife inside the car or in the surrounding area. He called to her, but wasn’t surprised when there was no answer.

He knew Hart well enough to guess that she wouldn’t allow a stranded car to bring her to a halt and he was well aware that cell phone reception in this area was limited to say the least.

He drove on, edging along carefully toward the abandoned homestead where he was sure she’d headed. When he was nearly there, he pulled the car over, radioed in his intentions to proceed silently and on foot and ordered Harding and Long to join him as quickly as possible.

If Hart was right, trouble lay ahead and this time he was betting on his wife.

After what she was sure must be over an hour had passed, Hart moved as quietly as she could toward the front door. She doubted it was locked, suspected that with the house so long used only
sporadically, it probably didn’t even have a lock.

Surprise! The knob wouldn’t turn. So the Maxwell brothers hadn’t been so assured of their remote hiding place as she’d hoped. Heck, back in Mountain Stick nobody had locked their doors. People were so suspicious these days.

She crept around the house searching for a rear entrance, thankful that the downpour had finally declined into a light rain. Absorbed as she was in her attempt to rescue Bobbi, she still couldn’t help thinking longingly of hot fires, warm clothes and food of any kind. It had been a long time since she’d drunk hot coffee and eaten the sweet roll she’d purchased at the little convenience store.

Once again she found only a locked door and was standing there, considering her next move when the door suddenly opened and she found herself staring into Bobbi’s wide eyes. She gasped and Bobbi gave a muffled shriek.

The girl looked past her. “Mitten!” she said.

Bobbi didn’t know if they were blessed or cursed when she heard Bill’s voice behind her and felt what she was sure was the business-end of a rifle touch her back. “Reckon you’d better get in here, Miz Redhawk,” he said. “Mitten seems to be feeling right cantankerous. Reckon it’s the weather or she’s looking for some raw meat.”

“He’s got a gun against my back,” Bobbi said quickly. Looking more like a drowned rat than her usual elegant self, Hart quickly obeyed, shutting the door behind her.

“Reckon I saved your life,” Bill boasted. “Mitten would probably have made dinner of you.”

Hart seemed called on to argue. “Very unlikely,” she snapped. “Bobcats don’t go around eating people.”

“Sure would have scratched you up some though,” he sounded as though he thought that would be funny. “Bitten you a few times too.”

Now he handed Bobbi his flashlight and ordered her to turn it on. She did so and by the light it cast she could see clearly just how dreadful Hart looked. Well, standing out in the cold rain all night could do that to you.”

“What’s going on?” Terry called from the front room and Bill gestured with his rifle that they were to go ahead of him in that direction.

A little afraid that Hart might try to argue, Bobbi grabbed her by the arm and they went together into the living room where Terry was lighting the candles with his cigarette lighter.

B.J. and Nolan huddled together in the doorway that led to the bedroom, looking dazed and half asleep.

“Mrs. Redhawk,” Nolan said quietly. “You and the sheriff have come for us. Thank God.”

It was a little soon to be thanking the heavenly powers, Bobbi considered, but she wasn’t about to let on that she was fairly sure Hart had come out here alone. She’d never have talked Alistair into a wild goose chase based on the fact that she’d heard Bobbi calling from help across the distance.

Just let the Maxwell brothers think that Sheriff Alistair Redhawk, big, strong and armed to the teeth, was outside this house waiting to take them on.

Terry seemed some recovered from his drunken spree, though she’d guess his head ached and he felt sick at his stomach. He ordered the two women to chairs at the table and, fetching broad, heavy tape from the kitchen, began to fasten them into place by taping their arms and legs together, then taping them to the chairs.

“This’ll keep ‘em in place while we get away, Bill,” he said, his voice high with nervousness.

“Then we won’t have no shield in case the sheriff comes after us,” Bill protested. “You heard the girl. Redhawk may be right outside.”

“I’m so sorry, Hart,” Nolan apologized in gentlemanly fashion, “that you’ve been drawn into this.”

“It’s not his fault,” B.J. offered hurriedly. “They captured him down at the courthouse and carried him off. Me too. From my house though, not the courthouse. And before they kill us all, Hart, I want you to know that my Nolan never hurt anybody. They murdered their own father.”

This was all a nightmare, Bobbi told herself. She’d wake up any minute now.

Hart could hear water dripping off her onto the old wooden floor. The tape Bill Maxwell had used to confine her burned her wrists and ankles.

It seemed almost as cold inside the house as it had been outside and she felt now that she would never stop shivering. The woman who had to be B.J. Harris picked up the blanket that had provided Bobbi’s bedding and tucked it around her with the solicitude of a mother covering her child. “Hart’s cold,” she said. “We need to build up the fire.”

Nolan Jeffers watched her with fascinated eyes. “Didn’t know the two of you were acquainted.”

“Of course. Hart was my tenant at the loft downtown.”

Hart supposed the real Hart would have remembered, but didn’t recall ever meeting the woman before. Not that the fact was relevant at this point.

“You were always good to me,” Bobbi murmured from beside her, though no one else seemed to hear her softly spoken words.

If Bobbi was Hart reborn or remembered through some trace of genetic countdown from both Hart’s mind and Helen’s body, then here they were again. Stacia and Hart, threatened
by a murderer with a gun.

If it was a replay would Bobbi die as Hart had? No, she couldn’t let that happen, not a second time. If Hart struggled to live out the life she’d lost, then she deserved her chance. She should have an opportunity to live more years, to find the
man she loved and build a life with him.

Hart jerked hard against the confinement of the tape
, determined to escape. Bill Maxwell, seeing her effort, aimed his rifle at her, madness frothing in his gaze.

She thought about that other, earlier murder on the street in Medicine Stick. Both had kept the secret of their crimes and both had lost their grip on sanity over the dwindling years of pain and memory. Hard as Mr. Jeffers lot had been, he had emerged whole and sane because he had no such burden.

Still it was for himself Bill Maxwell feared as he aimed the rifle and fired just as Nolan Jeffers at the same time showed his true character, by throwing himself in front of the helpless Hart so that the bullet meant for her flew straight into his own body.

The woman who had never forgotten her young love gave a terrible moan of pain as he fell to the floor face-down
, a leaden weight, than she swung out and with her thin old hands grabbed the rifle from Bill. She leapt back and aimed it at him. “Don’t you make another move, Bill Maxwell,” B.J. Harris said with a sob in her voice. “Nobody in the world would blame me if I shot you down.”

And then, for the second time that night, Alistair Redhawk kicked down a door and burst into the room, his revolver thrust out from his right hand.