“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just got a vibe from him. I’d have to meet him in person to figure it out. Anyway, he remembered Billie participating in a staff ride of the Battle of New Orleans and how much she enjoyed the city, but he hadn’t been in contact with her since. He also said she was a soccer standout and could have played professionally if not for her commitment to the Army.”
Rick flipped through pages of his notepad. “As for the Battle of New Orleans, she remembered what she learned. According to Morgan Bradshaw, Billie gave her a fifteen-second spiel about the battle.”
“What about Roy? Did he have anything useful?” David asked.
“He mostly talked about the Fontenots. Roy’s wife was part of the annual reenactment of the Battle of New Orleans, and so were the Fontenots—”
“Wait a minute,” Kenzie said. “We’ve had three conversations about the Battle of New Orleans today, and one of those conversations ties not only Billie but the Fontenots directly to the battle. Since none of us believe in coincidences…” She paused. “We have to consider that’s where Billie went. The battle was in 1814. Right?”
“January 1815,” Remy said. “But Andrew Jackson arrived in N’Orlanz on December 14 to shore up the city’s defenses against the British invasion.”
“If Billie landed at the time of the invasion…” Kenzie blew out a long breath. “I know exactly how that feels. I landed in London during an air raid. I had no weapons. No protection. Nothing.”
“Ye went to where Americans hung out,” David said. “Where would Billie go?”
“I’d go straight to Andrew Jackson,” Remy said.
“That’s probably the best place,” David said. “She knows the history of the battle. She could offer her services as a scout and never have to leave the city.”
“The British never reached N’Orlanz,” Remy said. “The battle was outside the city. If she’s in N’Orlanz, she’ll be safe enough.”
“I’ll read the history of the battle tonight. Tomorrow I’ll lease a helicopter and tour the battlefield,” David said. “Rick, I’d like ye and Remy to go with me. Pete can stay here with Sophia and Kenzie. We’ll view it from the air, then tour the battlefield from the ground.”
“I don’t want to go up in a helicopter,” Sophia said, “but I’d like to see the battlefield. Can I go with you for the ground tour?”
“Sure,” David said. “Bring yer sketch pad.”
“You sound confident that’s where Billie’s gone,” Kenzie said.
“It’s the only possibility we have, Kenz. But the travelers will have to be prepared to land anywhere. That means taking costumes that are easily adaptable to different eras.”
“The good thing is that while clothing changed, it would be easy enough to make an eighteenth-century costume appropriate for the nineteenth century with only a few nips and tucks and ribbons. Men’s costumes would be even easier.”
Rick cleared his throat. “So that everybody knows, I’m going back for Billie. I’ll call Shane tomorrow and ask him to go with me.”
“Wait. Hold up. Billie’s my friend,” Kenzie said. “I’m going.”
“Kenz, ye can’t. That cast will stick out like the proverbial sore thumb, especially with the kids’ drawings all over it.”
“I’ll have it taken off,” she said.
“That makes a lot of sense,” David grumbled. “I won’t tell ye that ye can’t go, but ye’ll be a hindrance, not a help.”
Tears came to Kenzie’s eyes. She obviously knew David was right.
Sophia popped up. “I’m going with you.”
The air in the room seemed to crackle into pieces that could easily shatter all around them.
Pete almost fell off the sofa. He rolled and pushed to his feet. “Hell, no! Your last adventure was—”
Sophia didn’t sidestep his anger, but cocked her eyebrow and met it head-on. “Was what, Peter Francis? Don’t say it was a disaster. You know that doesn’t work with me.” The sharpness in her voice concealed any shakiness. “It got screwed up, but it wasn’t a disaster. And this time”—she pointed a shaking finger at Rick—“I’ll be with Rick and his brother.”
Pete’s eyes bulged, and he momentarily froze where he stood. Then he exploded with, “What about Lukas? What about me?”
Sophia’s head snapped back as if his question had landed like a right hook on her chin. “Well… If we travel with the diamond brooch, we’ll only be gone a few minutes. Right? I think he’ll be okay.” She checked the time. “We’ve been gone for about nine hours. Has your mother called because she couldn’t comfort him? No, she hasn’t. Lukas will never notice I’m gone.” She turned her fiery glare on Rick. “Isn’t that right?”
The heat in Sophia’s eyes forced him to take a step back. “I’m not gonna get between you and Pete. We have a rule that kids can’t travel without their parents or someone taking responsibility for them. We don’t have a rule about wives traveling without their husbands. It’s never come up before.” He glanced at Kenzie because he knew she’d defend Sophia. “We’ve got kick-ass women in this family, women who can take care of themselves, but Pete’s my bro. If I have to take sides, I’ll take his. I’d take JL’s over Kevin’s, too, so it’s not a gender issue.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear that,” Sophia said. “I’ll ask Meredith. And I know what she’ll say. Do you want to battle with her?”
“Don’t bring Meredith into this,” Pete countered with a hint of a growl. “You’re not fighting fair.”
“Stop. Just stop. That’s BS, and you know it.” Sophia uttered a rare expletive, or almost one, which took Rick by surprise. “Throwing your bro at me isn’t fighting fair either.”
Rick gave Kenzie a pleading look, although he knew what her answer would be.
“I’m on Sophia’s side,” Kenzie said. “I can’t disagree with her right to go. The women in the family are the rightful owners of the brooches. Telling one of us we can’t go on an adventure is pissing in the wind.”
“Besides, I’m the most experienced time-slipper,” Sophia continued.
Remy coughed. “How many times have you gone back?”
“Six,” she said. “Fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. And I know how to fit in easily. All I have to do is set up an easel in Jackson Square—”
“It was called Plaza de Armas until the mid-1800s when the city erected a statue of Jackson and renamed the park Jackson Square.”
David, Kenzie, Pete, and Sophia turned and stared at Remy.
“Just sayin’.” He gave an easy shrug. “Look, y’all are getting all riled up over nothin’. I signed on to protect Sophia. I know N’Orlanz history and my way around the city. She’ll be safe with me.”
“New Orleans of the twenty-first century probably doesn’t look much like it did in the early nineteenth century,” Rick said.
“The layout of the city center is pretty much the same. The buildings have changed, but I can find my way around.”
Sophia jutted a hip, planted a hand on it, and stared at Pete. “I need to go on this trip. William Edward West painted the iconic Battle of New Orleans and Death of Major General Pakenham, but he painted it a year later. If I go, I can paint an accurate rendition of the battle and have another exhibition featuring historical figures. I have to go.”
“Soph…” Pete pulled her hand off her hip and tugged her to him. “You’re scheduled for another IVF cycle. And we don’t know for sure where Billie is. You could end up anywhere. Then what?”
“Wherever we land, I can fit in. I’ve done it six times, all by myself. I’ll set up an easel and paint a portrait of Billie. Somebody will recognize her. Also, I speak French fluently and can easily communicate with the city’s residents. And besides, I need to think about something other than our next IVF cycle.”
Pete closed his eyes and sighed deeply. “If it’s that important, we’ll go. It’s my fault. You’ve wanted to go back
to Vienna in the early nineteen hundreds, and I kept putting it off. I should have taken you. Then you wouldn’t want to go on this adventure.” Pete glanced over his shoulder at Rick. “Looks like you’ve got traveling companions.”
“I still want to go,” Remy said. “Elliott told me when I started workin’ for him that I’d hear stuff I couldn’t repeat, and if I did, David would kill me. One look at McBain and I knew it was true. I told Elliott he could trust me, and that if I ever failed him, I was prepared to accept my fate.”
“You’re one brave son of a bitch,” Pete said. “I would’ve run for the door.”
“Nah, I couldn’t turn down the money. Look, I survived Afghanistan. That has to count for somethin’.” Remy turned off the basketball game and stretched. “Want to know what I did on the weekends when I was growin’ up in N’Orlanz?”
Kenzie grinned, and she teased, “Looking for trouble?”
Remy’s white teeth gleamed against his olive skin, and a glint sparked in his hazel eyes. “I didn’t have to look. It found me, but when I wasn’t in trouble, I hunted for Jean Lafitte’s gold in the swamps.”
“A treasure?” Kenzie asked.
“The buccaneer amassed a lot of gold and silver durin’ his career as a pirate along the Texas and Louisiana coast. Legend says it’s buried out there somewhere.”
“Wow! We love a good treasure hunt,” Kenzie said. “If you get a lead, we can find it. We just need to know where to start.”
“If I meet Lafitte, I’ll find out if the rumor’s true,” Remy said.
“A missing Army Ranger and a New Orleans society couple with ties to Scotland, an evil force, a pirate’s buried treasure, and a necklace disguised as an objet d’art. Am I missing anything?” David asked.
“Just me,” Kenzie said. David opened his arms, and she seemed to melt into a bear hug.
Rick gently tapped his beer bottle on the edge of the table. “If we can hold your attention for a few more minutes. What about Charlotte’s study? I’d like to know if I have an extra chromosome or something else that’s goin’ to kill me.”
“I talked to her this afternoon,” David said, swaying with Kenzie to a tune only they could hear. “Charlotte said it made sense and mentioned a twin study on astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly. NASA did a genetic experiment to understand the effects of long-term spaceflight on the human body. They discovered that Scott’s telomeres—that’s the protective caps on the end of DNA strands like aglets on shoelaces—were unexpectedly longer than his brother’s. Charlotte said we could all take a simple blood test to see if those who have time-traveled have unusually long telomeres.”
“Will you stop moving? You’re making me dizzy,” Rick said. “So, there’s no need for a lab?”
David and Kenzie stopped but didn’t separate. Then David said, “Nope. She’ll order kits for everyone to collect blood samples.”
David released Kenzie, and she returned to her laptop while David’s eyes—and Rick’s—admired the twitch of her derriere snugged into tight-fitting jeans. She picked up a piece of paper and handed it to him.
Rick looked at the words on the page but gave up trying to decipher the medical jargon. “What will happen to us if they are longer or shorter?”
“When telomeres get too short,” Kenzie said calmly. “The cell can no longer divide and becomes inactive. The shortening process is associated with aging, cancer, and a higher risk of death. In a way, telomeres are like bomb fuses.”
“So if spaceflight lengthens telomeres, traveling through time might keep us healthier, and we’ll live longer? That’s cool.” Rick went to the refrigerator and grabbed a beer.
“If you’re getting a beer, bring me one,” Pete said.
Rick returned to the den with two longnecks and handed one to Pete. “What’s the plan for tomorrow?”
“Tour the battlefield in a helicopter, followed by a ground tour. I want ye and Pete to come with me.”
“Are you piloting it?” Rick asked.
“Aye. Ye have a problem with that?”
“Nah. Trust you more than I do a stranger.” Rick took a long pull on the beer.
Sophia snuggled next to Pete on the sofa, tucking her feet under her butt and her shoulders under the protection of his broad wing. “I’d like to go on the ground tour, but first, I’ll sketch the torc by itself and another one with it incorporated into a piece of sculpture or pottery. Then I’ll start reviewing seventeenth-century art.”
“I signed on to protect Sophia,” Remy said. “Until this mission has a checkmark, that’s what I’ll be doing.” Then to Sophia, he said, his eyes darkening, “Let’s tour the battlefield early. They’re callin’ for rain tomorrow afternoon, and I want to take you back to the square. Thunderstorms there are like thunderstorms nowhere else in the country—more violent, supercharged with lightnin’ strikes, ear-splittin’ thunderclaps—and rain spatters the pavements like spent bullets. If you listen, you can hear the roar of cannons from the fields below and smell gun smoke in the mist.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You want me to get a sense of what the battle was like by getting caught in a thunderstorm?” She laughed. “That’s not necessary. After being caught in a mob storming the Bastille, I won’t be scared by a little thunderstorm.”
Remy gave her a polite nod and reclined in his chair, fingers clasped over his flat belly. “Okay, but I’m goin’ to remind you that you doan take me seriously.”
“I’ll go to the square with you,” Rick said. “I don’t need to be reminded of the sounds of battle. I survived the land mines of two deployments. But just to add a little gasoline to the fire, I need to go there to be sure…” He paused and looked down at his boots. He hated to see concern scribbled on everyone’s faces—an emotion he couldn’t erase from his own—and hear their platitudes. Sympathetic murmurs rippled around the room, all of which added a dark undercurrent to his increasing apprehension.
“You want to know if the sounds will trigger war memories and turn on your body’s alarm system, activating your PTSD,” Kenzie said. “I get it. How about I go with you? We can monitor each other’s reactions.”
The lines around David’s eyes tightened, his dark eyebrows drew together, and a ripple of worry surged across his face. “Ye don’t have to put yerself through that, Kenz. I understand why Rick thinks it’s necessary, and maybe it is, but ye don’t need the reminder.”
“This time I do, McBain. There’s too much at stake to have a weak link in the defense. I might not be going into a war zone, but we can’t deny a battle is shaping up around us.”
David opened his mouth like he was going to say something further, but instead, he threw her a big kiss.
Rick understood what was at stake. He understood what it would demand of them. And he understood what it would take to survive.
But sometimes understanding just wasn’t enough.
10
Barataria (1814)—Billie
The man holding the gun pressed against Billie’s head whistled, and two other drug smugglers materialized as if they popped out of a genie bottle. One grabbed her bag. The other grabbed her. She didn’t resist, not even when he slung her over his shoulder. Until she knew what she was up against, it wouldn’t be smart to show her fighting skills. Her survival might depend on her captors underestimating her, probably the only way she’d get the chance to steal a map and a vehicle and get back to New Orleans.
His rank body odor nearly knocked her out. Her head flopped on his back while he rubbed her ass, and her stomach roiled while sweat trickled into her eyes, burning them. Her mind took her back to that dark room, to the mission that nearly got her raped a second time…
She shook her head. She would not go there now. Her brain needed to stay in the present—sharp and focused on survival.
The man carried her into the estate house and dropped her on a gleaming hardwood floor, laughing. The creep must have been planning all along to dump her on her ass. Bastard. Sexual assault must be foreplay for
him.
She only needed three seconds to scan the lofty-ceilinged room, looking for weapons and avenues of escape. The room was decorated in an old-world Spanish style, with Aubusson carpets and imposing tapestry chairs with nail-head trim. The tables, chests, and cabinets were walnut and mahogany, with wrought-iron hardware and decorative inlays of bone, ivory, and tortoiseshell. The room was beautiful and masculine, and, under other circumstances, she could envision planning an event here.
Stop thinking about an event and look for weapons. Candlesticks? Bookends?
Bootheels clacked against the hardwood, and a man in shiny boots stopped inches from her head. Without a word, one of her guards grabbed her hair. She slammed her hand over his, punched the muscle below his elbow to force him to release her hair, then swung her legs, taking his feet out from under him. He landed hard, rattling glass lanterns on a nearby table.
Billie popped to her feet and exploded like a Roman candle. “I don’t like having my hair pulled!”
The guard rolled to his feet, his hands fisted. The man in the shiny boots crossed his arms, threw his head back, and roared with laughter from earring to earring.
The guard took a step toward her. She took a step toward him.
Shiny Boots signaled with a slight lift of his chin, and the guard obediently left the room, glaring at her. She didn’t consider it a victory. That creep would get her back and do worse than pull her hair. Her defenses jumped into high gear.
Shiny Boots stood well over six feet, thirty-ish, impeccably groomed, clean-shaven except for a trim beard marking his chin like an exclamation point, dark hair pulled back and tied in a ponytail, and dressed in conservative black. His pants were tight and fitted, his boots came to his knees, and he was loaded with enough firepower to take out the British singlehandedly if he’d been fighting a nineteenth-century battle.
The Topaz Brooch Page 13