Timeless Hero (Timeless Hearts Book 12)

by Peggy L Henderson

  “Scott?”

  “Hey, Vin. It’s good to see you’re finally awake.” Scott smiled for a brief moment, then his face turned serious. He leaned over him, his face close to his ear. “No matter what you see or hear, keep your mouth shut and go along with whatever I say. I’m about to return the favor for what you did for me and Amber.”

  Vin nodded. His mind still swirled with too much fog to demand answers about what had happened or his whereabouts. Something about the urgency in Scott’s voice kept him quiet. Right now, he was too weak to do anything more than lie on his back. His spine stiffened. Whoever had stabbed him was going to pay.

  Scott straightened, and a woman’s face appeared in his place. She squeezed Vin’s hand and smiled.

  “Hey, Vin. We’ve been worried about you.”

  Vin blinked again. “Miss Amber?” His face hurt as his lips parted. Her hair was longer than it had been a year ago, but it was definitely her. “I see you found Scott.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  He scrunched his forehead. The memories came rushing back. The last time he’d seen Miss Amber was at the boarding house in Heartsbridge. She and the proprietress had been talking some nonsense about sending him to another time, and that Amber and Scott had come from the future. Vin fought for a breath. His ribs and chest hurt from the effort to take in air, and he coughed, which brought more pain to his gut.

  He tensed, then slumped into the mattress. His eyes shifted away from Amber to the unnatural whiteness all around. More details started to come into focus. That incessant, short, rhythmic noise hadn’t let up, and it was gonna be the death of him if it didn’t stop soon. Awareness grew of the soft pillow under his head, as well as the various contraptions that seemed to be everywhere, each having similar unnatural lights.

  What was going on? Vin sank further into the bed. He shook his head when a sudden thought entered his mind. No. It couldn’t be, could it? He nearly laughed, but stopped when a sharp pain stabbed his insides. Hadn’t he just been thinking about visiting that proprietress, Cissie Durham, and wondering if going to a future time was possible? He must have been loco at the time.

  Vin closed his eyes, groping for a memory of what had happened. Scott had said not to ask questions at the moment, so he kept his mouth shut. Fuzzy memories blinked in and out of focus of a man and woman hovering over him while he gasped for air, writhing in pain.

  “No one in this time can save him . . .He was supposed to time travel . . . We need to get him to Cissie Durham . . .”

  They weren’t the ones who’d stabbed him. He’d shot the bastard who’d nearly killed him.

  The only thing that made sense at the moment, with all the otherworldly lights and noises around him – even though it really didn’t make any sense – was that he’d time traveled. Someone had found him after he’d been stabbed, and had known who he was and realized what they needed to do. He should be dead right now. There was no doubt who wanted him dead.

  Vin closed his eyes. Hatred boiled inside him. Jack had taken away his folks, and now he’d taken away his life, or life as he knew it. Maybe he’d done him a favor. A fresh start was exactly what he needed.

  “How’s the patient doing?”

  Vin homed in on the new voice of a man, but kept his eyes closed. Until his mind was sharper, he’d lie still and listen to what was going on. He’d eventually get his chance to talk to Scott and Miss Amber, and find out exactly where he was and how he’d gotten here.

  When someone lifted the sheet that covered him and touched the tender spot on his belly, Vin’s hand shot up and grabbed the person’s wrist. It was purely instinctive, a move honed from years of sleeping with one eye and ear open. Clearly, he hadn’t paid close enough attention the night before.

  “Whoa, easy.” The man stiffened and pulled back.

  Vin gritted his teeth at the pain his action had caused. He opened his eyes to stare up at the smiling face of a man wearing glasses and a long white coat. Had colors disappeared in the future, or was his mind so addled that he’d stopped seeing in color? Was that even possible?

  “I don’t want to sedate you again, and the next step is restraints. Let’s not go there.” The man’s smile remained, but there was a distinct warning note in his tone.

  Vin released his grip on the man’s wrist and dropped his hand. The effort had cost him all his energy. Scott appeared next to the man a second later. At least he was wearing clothes that had some color to them. All that white was getting downright spooky.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor Jones.” Scott glanced from the man standing next to him to Vin. “He must still be disoriented from the anesthesia.”

  “Happens a lot.” The man Scott had addressed as Doctor Jones smiled again. “And after what he’s been through, I can’t really blame him.”

  He turned his head to look at Scott. “You said this was your cousin?”

  “Yes, Vin Kincaid. I can give you whatever information you need about him.”

  The doctor shook his head. “We can change the info we have on him in the computer. Glad he’s no longer a John Doe. Good thing Miss Lockhart was able to locate his family, even though he didn’t have any ID on him.”

  Family. Vin silently scoffed. He had no family. Perhaps Scott was related to him. He’d thought about it often over the months that had passed after they’d crossed paths. That had been the only reason he’d saved him from crazy Jeb’s hangman’s noose. That, and he’d admired Scott’s bravery for stealing his horse and riding after the whiskey wagon to rescue his woman. It was something his father might have done. His parents had loved each other deeply, and he’d seen something similar in the way Scott and Amber had looked at each other.

  Scott chuckled, bringing Vin’s attention back to him.

  “My cousin went missing a few months ago. He had it in his head to wander the country for some adventure, and he gave away everything he owned. He kept in touch with me, but he told me he’d burned his driver’s license and his social security card, so it’s going to take a while to get that information back. Whatever you need as far as insurance, though, you can get from me. I’ll take care of it.”

  The doctor’s brows had shot up. Apparently, what Scott had told him made as much sense to him as it did to Vin.

  “Admitting can deal with those details.” The doctor looked at Vin while he spoke. “Why would you burn your identification?” The question was directed at him.

  Vin glanced from the doctor to Scott. “Didn’t want to be found,” he grumbled. Whether in this time or in his own, it was a plausible answer.

  Scott laughed. “He was trying to be like Alexander Supertramp.”

  The doctor looked even more confused. “Who?”

  “You know, the guy who left the modern world behind and disappeared into the wilderness? That wasn’t his real name, but it’s what he called himself. Gave away all his money and identification, and disappeared for a few years. He was found dead in Alaska. Sad story. They made a movie about him, and after Vin saw it, he thought he’d give it a try, too. He’s always been the adventurous type, living on the edge and trying his hand at surviving like they did in the 1800’s.”

  Scott glared at Vin, the message in his eyes perfectly clear. He didn’t have his full mental faculties back yet to really comprehend what Scott had said, and there were words he’d used that were as foreign to him as if someone had spoken to him in Apache, but Vin nodded to confirm Scott’s tale.

  The doctor contorted his face and shook his head before turning his attention back to Vin.

  “As you fully wake up, you might experience some abdominal pain. Let the nurse know and she’ll give you something to make you more comfortable. Don’t try to be a hero by waiting until the pain becomes too much.”

  Vin glanced at Scott. The urge gripped him to get out of this bed and back to where things were familiar, but he remained quiet. There was nowhere for him to go, anyway.

  “How soon can I get up?”

  “Depends
on the next twelve to twenty-four hours, or so. We’ll get you up slowly, but we want to make sure you don’t bleed internally again.”

  Twenty-four hours? Damn. He’d never been in bed for that long in his life. This time would be no different.

  “Can someone make that infernal noise go away?” he grumbled.

  The doctor laughed, then turned slightly and touched his finger to a box hanging on some sort of pole from the ceiling. Lines that looked like peaks and valleys moved across the shiny front of the box. Vin blinked in an effort to clear his head. It didn’t help. Those lines continued to move. He looked away. His head was muddled enough. He didn’t need to be looking at things that made no sense and were too unimaginable to comprehend. Thankfully, the noise ended.

  “Keep your arm straight so the IV line doesn’t kink, and that should prevent any more beeping.”

  Vin groaned. What the hell was an ivy line? He glanced at his arm and had his answer. Some sort of string, no thicker than wire, but made from something clear, fed from his arm to another box. A clear bag containing water was attached to it and hung from a shiny pole. The rope fed under his skin into his arm. Vin jerked to the side. He reached over with his other hand to grope at the line.

  “What in tarnation is that?”

  Scott appeared and placed a hand on his shoulder, preventing him from ripping the string away from his arm.

  “It’s only normal saline, but it’s necessary to keep it in to give you future medications and keep you hydrated. If you pull it out, we’ll have to find another vein, I’m afraid. You really don’t want us to do that, since you already ripped it out of your other arm earlier when you were waking up from surgery.”

  The doctor’s indulgent smile was infuriating.

  “It’s there for a reason, Vin. I’ll explain it in a minute.” Scott’s hand on his arm was as heavy as an anvil, and so was his stare, imploring him to cooperate. Vin pressed his lips together, and cursed under his breath. The world in the future had gone crazy.

  Scott turned to the doctor. “My wife’s cousin, Ashley Gilbert, is going to stay with him and make sure he behaves.” He shot Vin another warning glare.

  The doctor nodded. “That’s very helpful. If he becomes combative like he was before, we’ll have to move him back to ICU. I thought he’d be better off recovering in a private room after the first episode when he came out of anesthesia. He punched my surgical tech in the face.”

  Somewhere close by, Amber gasped. Vin’s lips relaxed into a smile. It didn’t matter what a surgical tech was, but the man had probably deserved it.

  “I’m so sorry,” Amber stammered. “I hope she’s okay.”

  The doctor frowned. “She’ll have a bruise for a few days, but she’ll be fine.”

  Vin cursed again. He’d hit a woman? He’d never stooped that low before. Maybe there was more of Jack’s blood in him than even Jack had realized.

  “My apologies to the lady,” he mumbled. “I don’t remember hitting anyone, much less a female.”

  The doctor looked down at him for a few seconds, then turned his attention back to Scott.

  “We don’t have the staff to look after him on the ward the way we would in ICU, and I really don’t want to keep him sedated or restrain him. I appreciate that you’ll have someone here to watch him.” The doctor nodded, then disappeared from view.

  “I don’t recommend you go around starting fights with anyone, especially women.” Scott’s lips twitched. “The women in this time fight back, you know.”

  Vin met Scott’s amused look. He frowned. “Where exactly am I, and how did I get here?”

  “Why don’t you wake up completely, first? Then you’ll get the full story.”

  A woman he hadn’t seen before stepped up to the bed. Vin stared at her. Perhaps he had seen her before. “Miss Durham?”

  The woman shook her head. “I’m Moira Lockhart. Cissie Durham is the woman you met in your time. I take care of things here when people get sent to the future from your time, and I send people to the past.”

  “You look like Miss Durham.” Vin stared at her. Maybe this was all a bad dream, and he’d wake up under his bedroll soon.

  The woman leaned forward. “Vin Kincaid, you’re lucky to be alive.” She stared at him with concern in her eyes. “I thought you were dead when you came through the room. I wish I could stay here with you and explain everything more fully, but I’ve been away from the diner too long already. I need to get back, but I’m leaving you in some very capable hands. Scott and Amber will fill you in on all the important stuff for now. I’ll be back to visit in a day or so, and then we can talk.”

  Vin raised his head despite the pain the action caused to his gut.

  “I ain’t staying here in this bed for several days,” he grumbled.

  He glanced up. Scott stood with Amber next to the strange-looking bed he was in. Behind them and a little off to the side stood another woman, her eyes fixed on him. Vin squinted, then blinked. Dressed like Amber in britches that looked to be painted on, and a shirt that looked like a chemise, she stood in silence, watching.

  When he made eye contact, she didn’t even make an attempt at being coy. Her chestnut hair was pulled back out of her face, and from where he lay, it was impossible to tell how long it was. Her glossy lips shimmered under the bright lights. Damn if she wasn’t the prettiest girl he’d ever seen.

  Vin’s eyes moved back to the woman who looked like Cissie Durham. She studied him with a peculiar look, then glanced over her shoulder at the girl. She stepped up to Vin and gave him a pat on the arm.

  “Yes, I think you’ll be in very good hands here,” she mused, then turned and walked from the room.

  Chapter 5

  “Don’t worry about a thing. Waitressing in a small desert town and dealing with truckers and bikers all the time has given me plenty of experience in talking with all sorts of characters. I think I can handle one wayward outlaw from the past.”

  Ashley plastered a wide grin on her face and gave her cousin a hug. Amber pulled back, casting a worried look at Scott, and then into the hospital room where Vin Kincaid was sleeping. Although he’d been awake for a while, the guy was still out of it and had dozed off a few minutes ago. No doubt his foggy mind couldn’t handle any more of the things Scott and Amber were telling him.

  Two women who looked almost identical, one living in the eighteen hundreds and the other one in the present, sending people back and forth through time, was a bit much for Ashley to swallow, too. It seemed rather ridiculous and unbelievable, but she’d seen Moira Lockhart’s watch, and the woman had confirmed everything.

  Then there was the guy lying in a hospital bed with stab wounds to his abdomen, who clearly knew Scott and Amber, yet seemed completely disoriented about his surroundings. A plastic hospital-issued bag lay in a corner of the room, stuffed full of Vin Kincaid’s clothes. It included an old leather duster, worn boots, and denims that looked a lot different than the jeans that were in style these days. Moira had said Vin’s shirt had been torn to shreds and soaked with blood, and she’d told the hospital staff to throw it away.

  “I removed his gun belt before the ambulance arrived,” Moira had said in a hushed tone. “There was no gun in the holster, but it still would have raised questions. Hopefully no one looked too closely at his clothes. We can stick to the story that he was mugged and I found him behind the diner.”

  According to the doctor, Vin had been in bad shape when Moira had called for the ambulance and he’d been brought to the hospital. Apparently, his recovery from anesthesia after his surgery hadn’t gone as smoothly as it usually did with most other patients. It would probably take the rest of the night for him to fully wake up, since they’d needed to sedate him a second time to prevent him re-injuring himself, and to keep him from punching any more doctors or nurses.

  Ashley squeezed Amber’s hands. “You guys are going to miss your flight to Anchorage.”

  “I still don’t feel good about leaving him
like this.” Amber looked at her with worried eyes.

  Scott shrugged. “Vin seemed fine with it.”

  “That’s because he wasn’t fully coherent yet,” Amber argued. “I bet he didn’t understand half of what we were telling him.”

  Scott brought his arm around the back of Amber’s waist and drew her close to him. “Moira will look in on him while he’s here in the hospital, and she’ll take him to Heartsbridge when he’s discharged. When we get home from our honeymoon, we can decide what to do, or better yet, Vin can make up his own mind. You know how this works.”

  Amber frowned, but let it go and nodded. “A month is a long time. He might not even be here anymore. It didn’t take the watch that long to slow down for us, remember?”

  “If he’s still here when we get back and doesn’t want to return to his time, he can come with us to Montana. That’s all we can do for now.” Scott smiled. “I could sure use his help with the outfitting business.”

  Amber’s brows shot up as she glared at her husband in apparent confusion.

  “Think about it.” Scott’s typical enthusiasm came through in his voice. “He’d be an excellent backcountry guide. He’s lived that way all his life. I couldn’t get a better expert than him on primitive survival techniques.”

  Amber stared at her husband for a second, then turned to Ashley.

  “We really appreciate you doing this. Just make sure he doesn’t say things that could land him in the psych ward.”

  “Everything’s settled with the Admissions Department, too. All they care about is getting paid, and I told them to bill me.”

  Scott reached into his back pocket, then handed Ashley a credit card. “If you need anything, use this. I’ll make a phone call on the way to the airport to authorize you to use this credit card.”

  Ashley took the card and nodded at Scott. Good thing the Kincaid family had plenty of money. She gave her cousin and Scott a final farewell hug and assured them again that everything would be fine. Once the couple disappeared around the corner of the corridor, she turned and entered the hospital room. Quietly, she closed the door behind her.