by Cathy Peper
Once he reached the highway, he relaxed. It wasn’t difficult to keep the car moving straight between the lines when he didn’t have to worry about traffic lights and other drivers starting, stopping, and turning all around him. Ari was probably awake by now. She would know of his betrayal. His hands tightened on the wheel, but he kept going. He had taken the car. She couldn’t catch him on foot.
When he got hungry, he drove through a fast food place, devouring his breakfast in the parking lot before getting back on the road. He had seen plenty of people eating while driving in this century but didn’t think he should chance it just yet.
The sun shone weakly through the clouds, but the snow that had fallen the night he disposed of Reggie’s body was beginning to melt. According to the thermometer in the car, the temperature hung just below freezing. Not a bad day for January. He hoped the weather in 1812 was similar.
He missed the turn off for the ATV place the first time, but doubled back and found it. He parked in the lot and hid the car keys under the mat. Hopefully, he would be back in a few days, but if not, Ari would know where to find her car. He slung his pack over his shoulder and strode up to the squat little building where you paid for the services you wanted and could also buy snacks, drinks, tee shirts and other souvenirs.
A bearded man with a baseball cap worn backward on his head stood behind the counter. Bryce approached him and ran into his first obstacle.
* * *
The early morning sun teased Ari’s face, flickering against her eyelids and telling her to wake up. She opened her eyes and stretched, well rested, but slightly sore from her intimacy with Bryce. She had no regrets. She just couldn’t resist that man. It took her almost a full minute before she remembered that today was the day they were going home. She jerked upright, her heart beating double time. It would be all right, she told herself, they had made the right decision. Automatically, her hand slid to her throat, reaching for the mysterious blue stone which had comforted her most of her life, even before she learned its secrets.
The necklace was gone.
And so was Bryce.
She didn’t believe it at first. She came up with excuses as she hurried into her clothes. He was testing the stone. He had gone out to get breakfast. Anything except facing the horrible prospect that he had slept with her to steal the necklace and travel back into the past without her. After all their plans, why would he dump her and Hannah? It made no sense to her and she didn’t have time to think about it. She had no idea how long Bryce had been gone.
She dressed Hannah with the same speed and grim determination. Bryce had taken his own bag and a few of the general supplies. Ari gathered up the remaining supplies and put them in three bags, one for her, one for Hannah and one for miscellaneous. She hefted them up, prepared to throw them in the car, but a quick glance in the garage told her what she should already have guessed. Bryce had taken the car.
Uber to the rescue. Having never used the service before, she downloaded the app and then made breakfast for herself and Hannah. Once they finished eating, she called a driver.
“Where’s Daddy?”
“He went ahead.” Dirty rotten scoundrel.
“Why didn’t he wait for us?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re angry.”
Ari opened her mouth to deny the charge but hesitated. She was angry. She was also hurt and frightened. Hannah might only be four, but she sensed her mother’s turmoil and would know if Ari lied to her. “Yes, sometimes adults get mad at each other.”
“Did Daddy do something bad?”
How to answer that? His actions were underhanded, but he probably had his reasons. “Let’s wait and see. We might have misunderstood each other.”
When their car arrived, Ari tossed their bags into the trunk and she and Hannah climbed into the back seat. The driver, a young man with straggly brown hair and an easy smile, pulled away from the curb. “Gonna ride an ATV or do the zip-lines?” he asked.
“We’re meeting a friend there to ride an ATV.” Ari disliked getting anyone else involved, but Bryce had given her no other choice. She wasn’t going to let him leave without her if at all possible.
“Sounds like fun,” the driver said.
Ari murmured something, hoping the driver would take the hint. He appeared to, falling silent as he pulled onto the highway. Ari was glad he was young, an older driver, more experienced with kids, might have balked at allowing Hannah to ride without a car seat although she was almost big enough to do without.
The driver turned up the radio and country music filled the car. After a bit, Ari felt guilty and asked him how long he’d been driving for Uber.
“Just a few months. I only planned to do it until something else turned up, but I kind of like it and I’ve been making decent money.”
Ari filed that away, wondering how much documentation Uber required from their drivers. Bryce would need to get a driver’s license, but this might be something he could do if their plans failed and they couldn’t retrieve his treasure. Then she got mad at herself for assuming things would just go back to the status quo. Bryce had better have a good reason for leaving her behind.
She didn’t think their young driver was speeding, but they arrived at their destination sooner than she expected. The app handled all payments, charging it directly to her credit card, but Ari gave him a tip. She helped Hannah out of the car while the driver hoisted her bags out of the trunk.
“Will you be needing a ride back?”
“No, I’ll ride with my friend.” She spotted her car, parked on the other side of the gravel lot. With Hannah in tow, she marched up to the office. Was she too late? If Bryce had charmed them into giving him the ATV, her wild dash to catch him would be in vain.
Relief shuddered through her as she entered the building and saw Bryce sitting at the snack counter, his expression stony.
“I’ve been expecting you,” he said, sliding off the stool.
Ari could almost feel the tension arc between them. If they weren’t careful they might set the stone off without needing the defibrillator. “How dare you take the necklace from me,” she whispered when he got close enough to hear. “I told you it was given to me by my mother and we made plans to go together.”
“I don’t want you to go and I certainly don’t want Hannah to go.”
“I know the danger involved, but we’re talking about saving my brother’s life. I think it’s worth the risk. And I won’t be separated from Hannah. She needs me whatever time period we’re in and we don’t know for sure we will be able to get back.”
“We don’t know if any of this will work at all.”
“If it doesn’t, then we move forward, knowing we have done our best. But I have to try, Bryce. How could you try to keep this from me?” Their voices rose as the argument escalated, although she didn’t think anyone could actually hear their words.
“Everything all right?” asked the man behind the counter.
“Yes,” Bryce said, baring his teeth in a fake grin. “My friend has finally arrived. The one with the name on the reservation.”
Ari sighed. She had been hoping all the way down that Bryce would either change his mind or that they wouldn’t let him take out the ATV without any identification and with her name on the reservation. It seemed she was right about the latter, but not the former.
“Great,” the man said, adjusting his baseball cap. “I’ll just have to see some ID.”
Ari showed him her driver’s license and the man walked them out to where they stored the three-wheelers.
“Ever driven one of these?”
They shook their heads. The man showed them how it worked, directing most of his attention towards Bryce.
Typical man. Assuming a man will be driving even in the twenty-first century. She let it go. It wasn’t worth getting upset over and Bryce might well do most of the driving. Since neither of them could drive an ATV, they were on equal footing.
Once they w
ere alone, they loaded their luggage, Bryce took the driver’s seat and Ari climbed into the other seat and pulled Hannah up on her lap. The little girl looked excited.
“This is cool. I can’t wait to tell the kids at school.”
Ari’s breath caught in her throat. Would Hannah return to her friends or would they all end up trapped in the nineteenth century? Bryce glanced over at her and she saw the same question in his eyes.
“Do we do this? Think about Hannah.”
“I’m also thinking about Sebastien and Tori. Besides, you want your treasure.”
“I do, but I wanted to go alone.”
“I don’t want to be separated from you either, even if I am mad at you.”
Bryce smiled grimly. “Everyone we take adds to the complexity. One person would have a better chance of completing the mission and returning.”
“Ever heard of The Three Musketeers?”
“One for all and all for one?”
She nodded. Bryce had always been quick to understand her.
“Then let’s do this.” He started the engine and drove in the direction of Reelfoot Lake.
Ari clung to the metal frame as she bounced around and just hoped they wouldn’t end up as The Three Stooges.
Chapter 13
Once they had traveled to the edge of the property, Bryce searched for a secluded area where they wouldn’t be interrupted. They chose a small clearing ringed with oak and maple trees. It would be pretty in the fall with the brilliant colors and luxuriant in the summer while fully leafed out, but now, in January, the bare branches reached to the gray leaden sky. Ari shivered. Was she really prepared to do this? Even when she’d lived in the nineteenth century she’d spent most of her life in a house, not nearly as warm or comfortable as her home in Ste. Genevieve, but still heated by a fireplace and full of her father’s thick furs. Until her time on the Fury, she’d never really roughed it and look how that had turned out.
Buck up. She wasn’t pregnant and she was far stronger now than she’d been then. She’d learned to take care of herself and a child. She could do this. Her brother and her best friend were counting on her. She grabbed the medical kit as Bryce removed the necklace from his pocket. He spread it between them and they placed the pads on it. Made for a human, the pads dwarfed the small stone and trailed off onto the chain.
Bryce gave her a grim look. “Sure hope this works.”
Ari nodded. For all her trepidation, she would be devastated if their plan failed. “We have to stay clear. The shock can stop a beating heart.”
Bryce nodded. “Clear, but close enough to be sucked through the funnel.”
As good an explanation as she could come up with for the unsettling feeling of traveling between centuries. It had been four years since she’d made her journey, but she had not forgotten the confusion, nausea, and dizziness. Science fiction stories might call it a vortex or portal, but funnel worked for her. “Hannah, take my hand and Daddy’s. Don’t get too close to the necklace.” It was cramped in the ATV, but they formed a circle of sorts around the stone, holding hands, but careful not to touch the stone.
Bryce met her gaze, his furrowed brow accentuating the stress lines radiating out from his eyes. Not only had he had accumulated extra muscle from years of hard living, but small wrinkles as well.
“Here goes nothing,” she said and held her breath as he pushed the red shock button. Presumably, a surge of electricity poured into the stone and almost to her disbelief, the deep blue rock began to glow. It was working! A pulse throbbed within the air and she could feel the heat coming from the stone even from a foot away. The trees surrounding them shimmered and she screwed her eyes closed as a wave of nausea consumed her. She held on tight to her daughter’s hand and to Bryce’s, not wanting to lose either of them. The air itself thrummed with a faint rhythm. She could feel the power, but would it be enough to transport the three of them and the ATV with their supplies two hundred years into the past?
“Hey!” A shout broke through the clearing.
Ari opened her eyes and through the shimmering heat saw another rider on a single ATV. Female, she noted, although everything was blurry and the rider wore a helmet.
“What are you doing?” The rider vaulted off her vehicle and strode towards them, removing her helmet as her long legs ate up the distance between them. Through the increasingly thick atmosphere, Ari recognized the reporter who had dogged their footsteps and made their life miserable.
“Stay back!” she yelled, as much for their sake as the woman’s. The last thing they needed was to bring a reporter back to the nineteenth century. Soon the whole world would know time travel was possible.
Di hesitated, no doubt sensing the stone’s energy even from where she stood. She opened her mouth to say something, but whatever it was, Ari never heard it. With a clap of thunder, the vortex closed and the clearing, reporter and all, vanished from sight.
* * *
Ari lifted her head, stomach still churning and vision blurring. The bare trees still ringed them and despair filtered through her physical misery. Despite all their efforts, they had failed and now would have to face that persistent and annoying reporter and try to explain why they were gathered around the ATV like it was a campfire and they were singing Kumbaya. She sighed, pushing herself up with shaking arms. Bryce still lay across the wheel of their ATV and Hannah was curled into a ball, moaning. She stepped from the ATV, gathering her scattered thoughts so she could come up with an acceptable story for Di Merrell.
Except Di wasn’t there anymore. She and her ATV had disappeared completely. Ari blinked. It wasn’t like the reporter to give up on a story. She glanced up at the sky, which was still a dull gray, studded with clouds. But the trees were shorter and more numerous, the clearing not so much an open area as a few young trees struggling for sunlight in a thicket of underbrush. Except for one giant tree towering over it all like a benevolent grandfather. A tree that had not been there previously. She would have noticed its grandeur, the rough bark of its skin, scarred here and there from the travails of life. They were in the same place and yet they weren’t. Time alone would tell if they had reached their destination.
“Bryce!” She shook his shoulder. “I think it worked.”
He looked up, eyes unfocused, the color drained from his skin. “Ari,” he said, his voice tinged with wonder as if he hadn’t spent the last week living with her.
“Are you okay, Bryce,” Ari asked, belatedly recalling he was still suffering from a serious injury. He always seemed in control, above regular human weakness.
He shook his head and clarity returned to his eyes. “We did it!” He grinned, looking boyishly handsome and more like the man she had known four years ago. “My treasure stash should be no more than an hour away if we can use the ATV.”
They looked around the vast forest in dismay. Although it might be called an all-terrain vehicle, it wasn’t really. People rode them on trails, not across brush and stumps. They might end up on foot after all, so it was a good thing they had packed their gear in backpacks.
Ari turned her attention to Hannah, rousing the girl and offering her a water bottle from their stash. After a few moments, Hannah also appeared less dizzy and disoriented.
“Are we lost?” she asked. “Where’s the trail? Are we going to see Uncle Sebastien and Aunt Tori?”
“Sort of and yes,” Ari answered. “We aren’t lost, we just don’t know exactly where (and when?) we are. But we will find out and then we’ll look for Sebastien and Tori. I can’t wait to see your uncle’s face.”
“We dig up the treasure first,” Bryce reminded her.
“Why? I’ve told you all along we don’t need the money.”
“Money always makes things easier. And by my calculations, we only have a few days until Reelfoot Lake is born, and our chance to get it disappears.”
“But we don’t know what happens to Sebastien. What if the quake kills him?”
“I don’t see what my traveling
to the future would have to do with Sebastien being killed by the quake. If the quake was going to get him, it should happen with or without me.”
“Unless you do something to save him.”
“I just don’t see that happening. Your brother and I weren’t on the best of terms. We were rival keelboat captains.”
Ari frowned. “Wait a minute. I don’t know why this never occurred to me until now, but why would Sebastien have anything to do with you? He always was overprotective of me. I’m surprised he didn’t just beat you to a pulp.”
“I used an assumed name.”
“To escape Sebastien’s wrath?”
“No!” Bryce looked offended. “Well, perhaps in part. I didn’t want him to know who I was. But I took on a whole new persona when I bought my keelboat. I was green, but I didn’t want it to be obvious. The river is a tough place.”
“I know. Sebastien’s told me tales. Plus I lived on his boat for a few months.” She studied Bryce for a moment, realizing they had told one another very little about their lives since they had been parted. Both had gone through hardships and trials that had shaped them into who they were now. She shivered as she recalled the sound of the shovel caving in their assailant’s skull. She had no doubt Reggie would have killed them had he gotten the upper hand, but still, Bryce had reacted with terrifying efficiency. He had always been a hard man, but in their years apart, he’d grown harder. That wasn’t a bad thing. She was used to men who could take care of themselves. And she wasn’t the same person either.
“I’ll go scout out the nearest deer or man-made track and we will see if we can get the ATV to it,” Bryce said.
“That reporter saw us.”
“But what did she see? Three people and an ATV vanish into thin air? No one is going to believe her.”
“What happens when we don’t return with the vehicle? They will search for us and won’t be able to find us. That will give her story credence.”