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 poi
nt.
“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.
Chapter Twenty Three
Bobbi couldn’t seem to feel anything as she watched Alistair quickly strip the tape from his wife’s body to free her, then handed her the gun, telling her to keep both Maxwells under guard and shoot if either of them moved. B.J. also kept the unwavering rifle fixed on Bill, her face grim.
This was done in a minute and then Alistair went to Nolan Jeffers, who lay unmoving on the floor. “He’s still breathing,” he said quickly and B.J. gave a little cry, then with a stern look at Hart put the rifle down carefully, then went to Alistair’s side.
There seemed to be a lot of blood and she could see that were working to staunch the flow. Alistair then left Nolan in B.J.’s hands, saying he had first aid equipment in the car. Minutes later he came running back, not even out of breath, bending to apply medicines and bandaging to the left side of Nolan’s chest.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” B.J. asked in a broken voice.
“Bad,” Alistair said bluntly. “I’ve sent for an ambulance with paramedics, but I think we should head out of here to meet them. It’ll save time.”
“You gotta save him, Sheriff,” Terry Maxwell pleaded as though he really meant it. “He’s my best friend.”
Quicker than an ambulance could possibly make the miles from any town into the breaks, Bobbi heard sirens and then two men, a young one and an older one, broke in, guns out. Sizing up the situation, they quickly took over the prisoners and Hart was able to put her husband’s gun down. She collapsed into a chair, tears running down her face as she watched them work with her friend on the floor.
They all seemed to have forgotten Bobbi, still taped in her chair. She didn’t mind, but felt as though she weren’t really here in this moment.
When Bill fired his rifle, she’d heard the shot back at Medicine Stick once more and for an instant she’d thought she was about to die a second time.
In disbelief she’d watched Nolan Jeffers tumble to the floor instead and she’d sat frozen, feeling nothing.
She still slumped in her chair, all her emotions locked away as memories of two lifetimes raced through her head. She was Hart who had grown up in Mountainside and occasionally visited Stacia’s life in Medicine Stick and she was Bobbi whose on-going life had been a bonus for the woman who had sacrificed her life for another.
Inside her she ached for the love Hart had lost and would never find again, seeing a dear face but not being able to put a name to it, and in these moments alone she was more Hart than the woman walking in her form could ever be.
As for Bobbi, she felt nothing.
Hart felt as though she had held up as long as she could. Soaked to the skin, tired beyond measure, every bone in her body aching, she was ready to collapse.
But there was no time. The others were in worse condition. She had to leave her old friend Mr. Jeffers to Alistair and his deputies; they had the training to know what to do in such an emergency. She couldn’t feel hopeful about the elderly man’s chances of survival. She went into the kitchen, finding a few sticks of wood to stir up the fire, and filled the coffee pot, putting it on to heat.
She was worried about B.J. Harris, who was after all in advanced years and had just seen the man she’d loved since youth shot down by another man she’d considered an old friend. She found a blanket and tucked it around the other woman’s shoulders and had her hand patted in reward.
Joey and Deputy Long had taken charge of the prisoners, handcuffing them and putting them into a car for transport. All by himself Alistair gently lifted Nolan into his strong arms and carried the frail old man to put him down in the back seat of his own vehicle. B.J. climbed in also, cradling Nolan’s head in her lap.
Hart directed her attention to Bobbi, who had sat so quietly while emergency actions were taken, and began, as gently as possible, to pull off the tape that held her prisoner. She knew this hurt since she’d been through it herself, but the girl didn’t even wince.
Alistair hurried back for them, wrapping the still dripping Hart in his own coat, then one arm around her and another around Bobbi, walked them to his car where he placed them in front, then ran around to start the car and lead the way, sirens blaring and lights flashing, down the road.
Hart saw her abandoned car as they passed by with a sense of surreal wonder. Such a short distance from there to the house and yet covering those miles had cost her the struggle of her life.
She felt burning hot and shaking with cold at the same time and when they met the ambulance coming from Wichita, not only Mr. Jeffers was transferred into the paramedics’ care. After one look at her, they took her aboard also. Her wet clothes stripped off, she was wrapped in warm blankets and fell into a kind of stupor as they rushed toward the hospital.
It was only then that she began to realize that she was experiencing not only her own pain, but something coming from Bobbi that wasn’t quite right.
She was Hart and Bobbi with all the strange mixture that they conjoined and didn’t know what to do with all that overload entering her brain.
The child was in severe shock and needed help. She tried to tell them, tried to tell the paramedics, but somehow she couldn’t get the words out.
Alistair recognized when he was running on sheer adrenalin and though he followed in the wake of the ambulance as it headed to the county seat hospital at fast speeds, he focused all his attention on driving safely.
That was why he didn’t notice until they were almost in town that neither of his passengers was doing particularly well. Bonnie Jo Harris had protested mightily at being separated from Nolan and now, as though her only reason to hold up had been to look after him, she slumped against the back of the passenger seat, her eyes closed and her face drained of color.
Bobbi, in between the two of them, sat stiffly erect, her gaze fixed ahead, not glancing either to the right or the left.
“Almost there,” he said cheerfully.
B.J. opened her eyes, glanced at him, then closed them again. Bobbi didn’t act as though she’d even heard.
“We’ll head straight for the hospital, B.J. You’ll be able to see how he’s doing.”
The elderly woman managed the slightest of smiles. Bobbi
didn’t twitch a muscle.
Dawn lighted the sky as they drove into town and the few cars on the street this early in the morning pulled aside to avoid slowing their progress. Alistair followed the ambulance into the emergency entrance. He didn’t know a woman with a recently healed broken hip could move so fast, but B.J. Harris was out of the car almost as quickly as he and he stood back while she tottered up to the first stretcher being unloaded into the willing hands of helpers from the hospital, all of them friends and neighbors.
A uniformed state trooper stepped up behind her, but Alistair shook his head, forbidding his approach. This was his county and his case. He didn’t intend to see either B.J. or Nolan harassed by officials who didn’t know what had been revealed this night.
After he’d seen them safely inside, he turned back to the second stretcher now being brought from the ambulance. His duty done, he could see to Hart, who had spent most of the long night exposed to the elements and was no doubt suffering from exposure. They’d wrapped her tightly in blankets and intravenous fluid was already being administered.
“You’re a heroine, darling,” he whispered, bending close to place a kiss on her hair, ignoring the fact that they were surrounded by people.
“Bobbi,” she croaked in a hoarse, barely discernible whisper. “Help Bobbi.”
Reminded, he turned to look for the girl. She sat still in the sheriff’s car, alone and unmoving.
Summoning medical personnel, he raced to the car and lifted her out as though she were three and not fourteen. She was stiff and unresponsive in his arms.
“Shock,” he heard a paramedic say, and yielded the girl to expert help.
“Hart?” Hart whispered nonsensically with all her strength. “Bobbi-Hart. Hart-Bobbi.” Her gaze followed the paramedic as he carried the child inside the automatically opening doors into emergency.
Wakening the Past: A Time Travel Romance (Medicine Stick Series Book 2) Page 15