by Amy Murray
“No need to leave. We’ve only just begun.” I stopped and bit the inside of my cheek. Standing in the shadows was Nino Roselli. I was willing to bet my life on it.
“How do you know my name?” I asked.
“I know everything about you. Although, I will admit, it’s only been just recently that we found out about you at all. I made a mistake, and while I’m loath to admit that, it’s true. I assumed, wrongly, that the girl in the painting wasn’t real.” He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and stepped around the man standing in front of him.
His boots crunched against the gravel as he walked out of the shadows. His face was weathered, with deep creases at his eyes and around his mouth, yet an air of sophistication rose around him. His silvered hair was combed and sleek, and his build was lean, with the musculature of a man who’d spent his life outdoors.
“And then, as I was going through my grandfather’s things, I found this.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a folded newspaper clipping. He moved with care and intention, so as not to damage the fragile newsprint. “She looks remarkably familiar, don’t you agree?”
I swallowed and moved my gaze from his face to the paper he now held in front of me. It was a clipping from the Galveston Daily News. The printing was faded and yellowed, the edges worn and feathered. I stared at the image and blinked several times. There were two photographs. The first was of me, and the second was of a man I recognized as Thomas Bellingham. The headline under the photos read, Two Wanted in Connection to James Bellingham Murder.
“At first, I thought the artist had seen this clipping. Perhaps he was one of the many treasure hunters out there searching for the Florentine diamond. I assumed he stumbled across this photo and thought to use this image as his muse. You know, taking something from the time period and all.” Roselli turned the paper back to face him and frowned. “Foolish. I should’ve known it was something more.”
The way he said the last words made me cringe. “I don’t understand—”
Roselli held up a hand. “Then I remembered something rather important.” He took his time folding the paper before placing it back in his jacket pocket. He walked around me, his footsteps carefully placed and quiet. When he disappeared behind my back his footsteps stopped and my muscles tensed in fear.
“You see”—his lips were unexpectedly close to my ear, and I instinctively pulled away—“The diamond had never been photographed in the setting your boyfriend painted. In fact, only one person outside my family knew my grandfather had reset the diamond at all.”
He moved in front of me, and I forced myself to meet his eyes.
“Who?” I asked.
His lips turned up into a smile. “I think you already know.”
“I don’t, and I’ve never seen the necklace.” I kept my gaze steady, but something about the look in his eye—Roselli knew.
“No?” His head tilted to the side and the bottoms of his eyes lifted with mirth. “That’s not my understanding of how this works.”
I blinked several times. “Of how what works?”
“Your ability to see your past life, my dear.” The smile that started in his eyes now spread across his wrinkled face. “I told you, I know everything.”
I stilled, staring at the black spaces between the folds in his face. “How did you find out about my drift?” Cars zoomed overhead, their sound intermittent and distant.
“Your drift?” he asked, then shrugged the word away. “What you call it doesn’t matter. I’m only here for my necklace,” he said.
I shook my head and my jaw trembled as I spoke. “I told you, I don’t know.”
Roselli studied me, and one gray eyebrow arched in disbelief. “It’s never my intention to hurt a woman. I don’t like it.” He shrugged and folded his hands in front of his chest. “But please, don’t mistake that for a weakness.” He bent forward to better look me in the eyes. “Because I will hurt you if I have to. I will hurt the people you love, and I will break you until you’re begging to tell me what I want to know.”
I swallowed against the thick lump swelling in my throat. I didn’t want to cry, and while tears never fell, I knew that fright was etched in every bend of my skin. “You don’t understand. I’ve never seen where it—”
“Enough,” his voice was just above a whisper. He held a finger for silence before tapping it against his bottom lip. “I’d be very careful if I were you. Liars, I cannot tolerate.”
I clenched my jaw and looked down at the ground, littered with cigarette butts and bottle caps.
Roselli stepped away and spoke to the man who’d brought me here, his voice too low for me to hear. When he finished, the man nodded and moved to stand behind me. Panic shot down my spine. There wasn’t any way I could logically escape, but I couldn’t die. Not like this. Not here. Not now.
“If you know about my drift, then you have to know I can’t control it. It comes and goes, and what I do see isn’t always what I need to see. I wasn’t lying when I told you I don’t know where the necklace is.” He squinted his eyes and considered me. The urge to make him understand forced me to continue. “I’ve seen it, that’s true, but I don’t know where it’s hidden.”
Roselli picked at his fingernail and gave me a slow nod. “That’s too bad. How about your friend James?” My head shot up, and my jumbled thoughts cleared. “Does he know where it is?”
I shook my head frantically. “No. He’s never seen it.”
Roselli’s lips folded in a frown. “Pardon my disbelief, but isn’t he the one that painted the portrait?”
“Yes, but you don’t understand. He doesn’t—”
“I don’t need to understand.” His lips curved in a half smile as if I were a funny thing. “You have two days to retrieve my diamond before I come back for it.” He looked me up and down. “Make sure you have it.” Roselli turned to the van and took several steps in its direction.
“What if I can’t find it?” I called after him.
Roselli turned and considered my question before shrugging his shoulders. “I have all the confidence in the world you will.” His eyes narrowed. “If not, I will cut James into pieces you will never recognize. Do you understand me?”
“The FBI is watching us. You’ll never get near him.”
He chuckled. “How do you think I found you in the first place? You see, sometimes it’s good to know people on the inside.” His lips parted and cracked into a sideways smile. “Tell McCormack I said hi, by the way. It is always fun to reminisce with old friends.”
A shiver, cold and sharp, ran the length of my body, and the blood drained from my face. My thoughts were paralyzed, and I could do nothing but watch Roselli step into the van and disappear into its confines.
“Lay down on yer stomach,” the man behind me said. I knelt and did as he asked, completely unable to comprehend what had just happened. “Start counting backward from a hundred. Don’t git up till ya reach zero.”
The tie at my wrists popped, and I felt the blood rush to my fingers.
“Count,” he said, his voice firm.
“One hundred…ninety-nine…ninety-eight…” I closed my eyes, reeling over Roselli’s last words. Was he implying that Mack led Roselli to me? Of course, he was. How else would Roselli know when to find me alone? The betrayal sickened me, but this wasn’t anything new. Colin had spent years lying to me in our past life; Mack was no different.
“Eighty six…eighty five…” I listened to the van leave, hearing the tires crunch over bits of rock and dirt. I continued to count even after the sounds had stopped and the only noise was from the passing of cars on the freeway overhead.
Everything had turned upside down. For all that Mack had withheld, a part of me still believed he was a good man. But now I didn’t know who he was. I just knew he couldn’t be trusted, even if he did work for the FBI.
“Thirty-three…thirty-two…” I rolled to my back, my body gelatinous now that the threat had gone, and stared at the
night sky, listening to my voice count down the numbers.
I’d neared the end when I heard my phone’s familiar ring. I listened to it like it was a dream. Like it was something that wasn’t real. It rang and rang and when it stopped, the absence was deafening.
“Nine…eight…seven…” The ringing began again. “Six…five…four…three…” Silence. “Two…one…zero.” I pushed myself to my feet and searched for the source of the sound. Fifty yards to my left and halfway up the embankment, was my bag. When I reached it, I dug through the contents, pulled out my cell, and swiped the screen.
“James,” I breathed into the receiver. “I need help.”
Chapter Thirteen
The gas station’s lights were off, and the doors were locked. I huddled under the eave, having hoped the building would cut the wind and keep me warm, but it didn’t. I was shivering when James found me squatting with my sweater pulled over my legs and my head tucked to my knees.
“Abby?” I didn’t move. James wrapped his arms around my shoulders and pulled me in to his chest. “What happened to you?”
His worried voice melted over me, and all the fear I’d been holding washed away. I fell against him, and for a moment, everything was right.
“Let’s get you warm. Come on.”
He helped me stand, and sucked in a breath when he took in my appearance. My sweater was dirty with mud and grime, and my bare legs were scraped and bloody. He turned my reddened palms up, then pushed at my sleeves. Under the fabric, my skin was angry and raw. Dried blood was crusted around the cuts made by the plastic bindings, and there was dirt caked thick under my fingernails. His face crumbled with sorrow before hardening with anger.
“Who did this to you?” He searched left and right, as if the culprits were still lingering.
“They’re gone.” I licked my lips—they were rough and dry—and shook my head. “And I’m okay.” I tried to soothe him, but the tremble in my voice made that impossible.
“I don’t believe you.”
To cover my trembling chin, I pinched my lips against my fist and didn’t pull away until I had control. “I know what I must look like.” I stared at my knees and pulled the hem of my sweater as low as it would stretch. “But I promise, it isn’t what you’re thinking.”
“You need to explain this to me now.”
I didn’t respond. Instead, I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at the dirt ground into my sleeves. “I will, but can we go?” My lips trembled. “I need to go.”
James took off his jacket and wrapped it around my shoulders before he pulled me in to his arms. “Can you walk?”
I nodded, and he turned us toward his truck. I slid into the passenger seat and let him buckle my seatbelt, knowing my hands would be shaking too hard to do it myself. When James started the ignition, I let out a breath. I was safe.
Forty-five minutes later, I was seated at James’s kitchen table while he dug through a cabinet, looking for anything resembling first-aid equipment. “I swear I had some alcohol,” he said more to himself than to me.
“I told you, I’m fine.” I walked to the kitchen sink and turned on the water. Pulling up my sleeves, I stuck my hands under the stream and sucked in a breath when the water washed over my wrists.
James grabbed a bar of soap and held it in my direction. “It’s the only thing I have.”
I took the soap but avoided his eyes; I wasn’t ready to answer the questions I knew I’d see. As I washed, the soap lather turned a murky brown as blood and dirt was pulled from my skin. I pretended concentration, but James wasn’t buying it.
“What happened tonight?” he asked.
I swallowed and rinsed my hands under the water. “Roselli. He wants the necklace, and I’ve got two days to find it.”
James scoffed. “That’s impossible. Why would he think you could find it?”
I dried my hands on a towel and met his gaze. “He knows about my drift. He knows I can travel back in time.”
James’s face went blank before frowning with confusion. “How? How did he find out?”
I ran a finger over the marks on my left wrist and flinched at the sting. “I have an idea.”
James rubbed at the scruff on his cheek. “We need to tell McCormack.” He moved to pull his phone from his pocket.
“No,” I said.
James answered with a wrinkle of his forehead. “Abby, he should know. As much as I don’t like him, it’s his job.”
I hugged my arms to my chest. “I don’t trust him right now. He’s withheld so much from me, and then—” Needing to move, I walked into the living room. James was a step behind me. “Roselli mentioned that someone in the FBI led him to me.” I paused to stare out the window overlooking the backyard.
“Did he say who?”
“Not exactly.” The sun was beginning to rise, casting a dull blue light across the sky. Turning from the window, I faced James. “But he told me he and Mack were friends.” James didn’t respond. “They know each other, and from how Roselli spoke—just the tone in his voice—I’d say they know each other well.”
“What did he say? Exactly.”
“I told you, it wasn’t what he said, but how he said it.” I shook my head and looked at the ceiling. “But that’s not all.” I swallowed and blood rushed in my veins with renewed force. “Mack—” I didn’t know how to tell him.
James’s eyes darkened to an impossible onyx, and when he spoke, his voice was slow and held an observation rather than a question. “He’s a part of this, isn’t he?”
I nodded. “Yes.” The tears came hard and fast. I wasn’t able to control the flood of emotion, the hurt, the betrayal, the fear. It was all too much.
“Hey.” He pulled me to his chest and stroked the length of my hair, his fingers catching in the tangles. “Don’t cry. I promised I would figure this out, and I meant it.”
“This is all so messed up. How am I supposed to find something lost a hundred years ago when I don’t even know where to look?”
“You’re not.” I pulled away and looked at James in question. “Not this instant, anyway. You need to sleep.”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to,” I said as I moved toward the sofa.
Just as I was about to sit, James redirected me to the first bedroom in the hall. It was sparsely furnished. His full-size bed was made up simply with a blue patchwork quilt, and stacked in a neat pile next to the bed were several sketch pads and a jar of charcoal pencils.
“I’ll take the couch,” James said as he straightened the sheets and pulled down the quilt.
I ran my fingers over the bedding and looked back to James.
“You’ll be okay in here?” he asked, and when I nodded he continued. “There’s a bathroom through there.” He pointed to an adjoining door. “And towels are in the cabinet.”
We stared at each other for another few seconds before he left the room with a parting nod. For a moment, I stared at the door and debated the shower, but one look at my scraped knees and filthy clothes and I turned toward the bathroom.
My skin burned under the heat, but it was a good kind of burn. The kind that scoured my skin and left me red and tingling. I wrapped a thin towel around my body as I made my way into the bedroom.
I pulled the string hanging from the closet ceiling and turned on the light. James’s clothes, like his furnishings, were sparse. He had exactly three pair of blue jeans, five hanging shirts, two sweaters, a sweatshirt, and one pair of sweatpants. It looked like he hardly lived here at all.
Grabbing his sweatshirt he single shelf, I slipped it over my head. His smell surrounded me before winding its way through me. It was a familiar smell that evoked so many different emotions. There was the immediate thrill of feeling so close to him, followed by an overwhelming contentment that put me at ease.
An ache that began in my center seared its way up to my heart and filled me with an incredible sense of loss. It was as if a forgotten wound, spread apart by an event too distant to r
emember, opened in my chest. I shrank away from it and clenched the fabric of the sweatshirt between my fingers. Bringing it back to my nose, I inhaled, and memories of late summer nights and days by the beach encircled me. Warm ocean air tugged at my hair, and dense, muddy sand pulled at my feet.
I sat because I could no longer stand, and I closed my eyes. When I did, I tasted salt in the wind before my drift pulled at my consciousness. Pressing my back against the wall, I let myself go. Not because I wanted to, but because I knew I had to.
Lounging back on his hands, James stared at the rolling ocean as the water kissed his toes with every breaking wave. He had been sitting still for so long I’d have thought he’d forgotten about me.
“Do you want to tell me what you’re thinking about?” I asked him as I wrapped my arms around my knees and dropped my cheek against them. James took a breath before turning toward me.
“I’m just glad I found you.”
The expression in his dark eyes made me uncomfortable in a way that caused me to smile and roll my eyes. “That is not what you’ve been chewing over these last two hours.” He had the decency to look wounded. “But I’ll take it.”
He smiled, slow and deliberate. “You’re wrong. It’s exactly what I’ve been thinking.” He sat up and dusted the sand from his palms. “But you’re also right. There’s something else.”
“I knew it,” I said with a triumphant shake of my head.
James stared back out at the ocean and twisted his lips into grimace. “It’s my brother. I think he’s mixed up with something bad.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. He told me he’s in love.”
“The travesty,” I said with a laugh, but James didn’t so much as crack a smile. “Is that such a bad thing?” I’d often heard James wish Thomas, as the older brother, would hurry up and get married so their parents wouldn’t keep harping about it. He has a responsibility to the family, he’d said. They both did. It was one of the reasons I never understood his interest in me. I mean, it wasn’t like he could actually marry me.