WANTED (A Transported Through Time book) (15 page)

“And the year?” She struggled to keep her expression bland. Disinterested. As though she’d asked about the weather rather than the year. She braced herself for a hearty laugh after the scalding look.

Jesse squinted his eyes so much crinkles appeared at the corners, the ones that should have been made by years of smiling, that she had the feeling were really from years of concentrating, watching, preparing for the worst, like he’d done earlier.

“Eighteen seventy-one.” He stared at her, estimating her.

She could feel the scorch of his gaze from her mind to her skin. Clear-cut suspicion. No amusement. The only hint of emotion outside the assessment was a touch of—a glint really, no more, and maybe from the last rays of sunlight filtering through the tree canopy—admiration.

Samantha scowled back. Seventy-one. Eighteen seventy-one. His words carried well and clearly to her ears. Only her brain refused to accept what she’d heard. Only her mind, the very thing that decided to ask, wanted to hear it again.

“Can you say that again?” she asked in that can-you-please-pass-the-butter kind of way.

He walked two steps to her and stopped. He did it the way one might walk near a spooked animal, a wounded puppy. He did it carefully. “Eighteen seventy-one. What are you up to now?”

That’s what she’d thought he said. “What do you mean, what am I up to now?” She needed a distraction.

“You have to be the most talented actress I’ve ever come across. Not that I’ve known many. The ones I did, well, I’ll just say they weren’t on stage at the time.”

Samantha cocked her head. “Actress?”

Sheriff, employers, actress. If he were Jesse Kincaid, and the year was 1871, and she had—by some miracle of science and the space-time continuum (whatever that meant)—gotten here, and all this was real, he thought she was working as an actress for someone, trying to fool him into believing something, so she and they ... The gears chinked and turned in her brain, and Samantha chewed her lip. Her dad. The map, the buried treasure, Jesse Kincaid. Dead or Alive.

“You’ll have to answer me eventually.”

Samantha looked up. “What?”

“I said, I appreciate all your efforts, but you’ll have to answer to the truth eventually. We won’t leave these woods until you do.” He resumed stirring the contents of the kettle. “Mick and Joe underestimated me. Don’t you do the same,” he said.

Samantha understood. Somehow.

“You think your partners hired me so they could steal your money? Your money, the portion you set aside from every robbery? They think you buried it. They found a map in your saddlebag, maybe the night you and I met. They think you’ve been hoarding your share, along with the extra take, and that you buried it.”

Jesse looked struck. Not awestruck as much as stunned.

“They’ll kill you for it, Jesse. They’ll shoot you, not long from now if I remember right. They shoot you in the back. No one ever finds any treasure.”

She paused again, watching him take it in, curious and a bit nervous over how he would react. Because she had a hell of a lot more to tell him.

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

“When?” he said at last.

“I can’t remember the date. My dad must have told me a thousand times, but I can’t remember. I’m sorry.” She was.

Jesse strode to her and lifted her by the shoulders. Stiffly, but not hurting her, he shook her. “When, damn it? Who’s your father? What’s his part in this?”

His gaze darted. His lips pressed into a thin line.

“I told you, I can’t remember. I’m trying.”

“Who’s your father?” His voice was demanding, urgent.

“Henry Hendricks. He’s not your enemy, though.”

“Then how does he know when Mick and Joe plan to kill me? How does he know to tell you, unless he’s in on it?”

“Jesse, I swear to you, my father wouldn’t have done anything to cause you harm. Besides, he’s dead.”

His hold loosened, and recognition dawned on his face. He remembered her saying as much about her father. Maybe now he believed her?

“He was a fan. He spent his whole life following your history, researching your life. He even tried to find the treasure. Like everyone else, he failed.”

Jesse’s hold lost its anger, but he didn’t let go. A bird’s call echoed through the trees.

“There’s no buried loot,” he said, his voice strange, faraway. “The map shows my drop-off points, not where I’ve buried anything.”

Samantha sighed. “That makes sense.” She had to finish. She couldn’t let him continue to believe she was deceiving him this whole time. She’d rather he thought she was crazy than a backstabbing actress in cahoots with whoever their names were—Mitch and Jeff?—it didn’t matter.

“My dad never met your partners. Neither have I. You might not believe me, at first, but I don’t work for the men who plan to kill you. Or for anyone else. Neither did my dad.” She swallowed. “I’m not from here, Jesse ...”

He let go, stepped back.

She pressed on, letting it all tumble out before she lost her nerve, before the way he was looking at her made her stop.

“We met the night of my father’s funeral. He died of a heart attack ... not in this year. My father died in the year 2007.” There. She’d said it. She went silent, watching Jesse digest her words.

Only he didn’t seem to have heard her. That is, he didn’t react in a way that let her know he had. He didn’t blanch, balk, or laugh. He didn’t scowl skeptically or roll his eyes.

He stared at her, blinked, and shook his head.

“I don’t know how,” she added, “but if you’re real, and I’m not dreaming, then somehow, I’ve skipped through time.”

His eyes narrowed a hair. Like he was thinking about what she’d claimed. Chewing it over.

“Two thousand and seven?” he asked, then huffed, “You’re imaginative. I’ll give you that. Two thousand and seven.”

“I’m not making this up, Jesse. I wish I were. If you let me explain, and listen with an open mind, you’ll see it’s the only plausible explanation.” She sat back down on the log. The fire crackled, and steam wafted up from the kettle. “Think about how you found me each time. Think about what I was wearing, about how I’ve behaved.” Her cheeks grew a bit hot. “I’ll bet money women in 1871 don’t act the way I have with you. Not without a motive, anyway, or absolute necessity.” She wouldn’t say whore or hooker or prostitute, though he was probably thinking that. If he didn’t catch her meaning, oh well. She wouldn’t group herself in that realm because she didn’t want him to think badly of her or, to lose respect for her.

“I live in San Diego, California, in the year 2007. My father, Henry Hendricks, followed the life of the legendary outlaw, Jesse Kincaid, for as long as I can remember. When he died this summer, he left me three things. A bottle of whiskey, a map, and a wanted poster. Your wanted poster. I drank the whiskey, fell asleep, and woke up in the middle of nowhere with you looking over me.”

Jesse’s eyes grew narrower with every word until that same scowl from the bushes returned. He slowly shook his head. “Impossible.”

“I’m not a talented actress. I couldn’t act my way out of a paper bag. I’m a student. I start law school in two weeks, and I sold the map and poster to pay for it. You’re either a figment of my imagination, and I’m having a very detailed and surreal nervous breakdown, or I’ve somehow skipped more than a hundred years to meet you.” She left out the part about feeling like her father orchestrated the whole thing.

Jesse crouched by the fire and picked up a small branch. He traced circles into the dirt and leaves.

Samantha searched for better words, a more lucid way to explain what seemed impossible, yet so probable. How could she make him see the same?

Why?

So he knew she wasn’t deceiving him and planning to help his partners kill and rob him.

So he trusted her.

So that, by some wonderful chance she dare not even hope for, she found a way to keep him from dying and her leaving this place. Leaving him.

Samantha’s belly burned. He meant something to her. More than he should. Sex wasn’t love. It wasn’t. Amazing sex, while it could cloud the brain and heart, couldn’t sustain a leap across time. Could it?

Silly. Silly of her to think of it. Even if she fell head over heels for this man, in real love, how could she expect him to fall for her, when she was nothing like a man in his era would possibly consider ... marrying?

“Henry?”

“Henry Hendricks,” Samantha said at his quizzical tone and nodded.

“What was he like?”

Samantha’s heart broke just a little. “He was wonderful. Smart. Funny. Obsessed.” She half-laughed at the last.

“No. What did he look like? Like you?”

“Uh, no. Not really. When I was little, and my mom was still alive, she always said we were two peas in a pod. I don’t think she meant in looks. I think I have his eyes. Wait a minute. Why do you ask?”

Jesse twirled the stick in the dirt. He shrugged one shoulder. “I met a man named Henry about a week before I met you. Reporter. I never told him who I was, and he never asked me, but he knew.”

Samantha gasped.

“Never stood out in my mind until now. Something you said reminded me, I guess. Before, I thought he was like every other reporter I’ve run across.”

“Why do you think the Henry you met was my father? What was it I said?” Her heart picked up. A pang ran down her belly. Her father?

It couldn’t be.

Could it? It might have been.

It must have been.

Jesse didn’t reply.

“Please. I need to know. What did I say?”

~~~

Chapter Fifteen

He didn’t like this one bit. Not one, single, damned bit. He was being lured. Pulled, almost, into her web. While he sensed it, and even acknowledged it, he couldn’t seem to stop it.

True, he’d met a man named Henry, and as she spoke what he figured was her last-ditch effort to win back his loyalty and trust, he didn’t know why the reporter suddenly sprang to mind. Now she was looking at him like he held the moon and stars, and he didn’t.

He didn’t
have any answers for her. Damn
it all, but the very worst of it was he wished he had.

He wanted to go to her and put an arm around her shoulders. Her pain looked so real, so raw, sitting there, staring back at him.

Jesse wouldn’t do it. He couldn’t. He looked away. Back down to the ground. What she’d said wasn’t necessarily impossible, but certainly unfathomable. The stuff of books and fables. More. Worse.

Worse, he felt himself believing it.

“Please,” she said. “I need to know.”

What could he say? “He was an inch taller than me. Skinny. A beard, but not because he grew it. Overgrowth, I imagine. Blue eyes. Almost the same blue as yours.” As he spoke, her face fell a bit, and he hated that he cared. “He asked a lot of questions about a lot of things that had little to do with my ways and a lot to do with my personal business. I told him to go to hell.”

Samantha frowned a little then smiled. “Really?”

Jesse nodded and almost smiled as well. Almost, but he stopped himself in time. The fact was, Henry Hendricks had saved his hide.

The sky was growing dark, and what he should have been worrying about was Mick and Joe finding the campsite. He needed to know where they were. He still couldn’t be sure it wasn’t them he’d seen in that flash of color passing through the trees on their way down.

All he could focus on was her face, and that they would be alone, bound together—he wasn’t willing to leave her free to escape quite yet—to sleep, or otherwise, the entire night.

What was it about this woman that befuddled his brain so thoroughly? Why on earth was he considering as true her tall tale?

He hadn’t a single answer to those questions, or to hers. He didn’t know what she said or how she said it, but the more he tried to place why, the surer he grew. Henry, the same Henry who’d warned him the law was coming, and Jesse had told to go to hell outside of Winnemucca, was Samantha’s father?

Her dead father.

“You told him to go to hell,” she said, and quirked her eyebrows. “What did he do?”

“He chuckled and told me he probably would. Then he said something strange.” Jesse paused. He’d forgotten Henry’s last words until that very moment. The memory of them flooded meaning into his mind. Clear, uncomfortable, impossible meaning.

Samantha frowned. “What? What is it?”

Jesse shook his head. “Nothing. Just remembering. That’s all.”

“Remembering what?” Her voice grew insistent.

“What I told you,” he said. Jesse stood and turned to the fire. The food should be ready. Maybe if he stuffed his gut, the unsettling feeling tightening inside it would go away.

He needed the distraction. So she wouldn’t press him any further. He had to think. With her right here, asking him questions and inciting his body despite all his suspicions, thinking was no easy task.

“Food’s ready. It’s nothing fancy, not like what you might be used to. But it’ll stick to your ribs.”