"I thought we were a well-matched couple," he'd said accusingly. "You should have been honest with me, Hannah. If you wanted out of our engagement, you should have just said so. There was no need to concoct this ridiculous story and embarrass me and my entire family after the wedding was all organized."
"I’m sorry.”
What more could she say? That until she'd known Logan, she hadn't known what loving meant at all?
I think it has everything to do with this, Logan had said as his mouth closed over hers that night in the workshop.
"I wish you'd just tell me the truth, Hannah,” Brad added in a peevish voice. "Where the hell were you before you wandered out of the bush? I was hounding the authorities to launch a full scale search—helicopters, volunteers, the works. I don't understand how you could just disappear like that.”
She didn’t understand herself, but not in the sense Brad meant. Those relatively few hours were one of the most difficult aspects of the whole situation for Hannah, apart from her shock and dismay at being back at all.
The women learned when they burst through the underbrush that they'd only been gone one night and a day; they'd lived two full months in Barkerville, and yet in their own time only hours had passed since their disappearance.
After all that they'd been through, Daisy and Elvira weren’t concerned about the time discrepancy; it seemed a minor paradox in an experience that was inconceivable anyway to anyone but the three of them.
But to Hannah, it seemed then and still seemed now to be a repudiation of all that had occurred. It felt as if fate was laughing at her, ignoring the magical time she’d spent with a man she loved with all her heart and soul.
The man she’d betrayed.
The familiar accusing voice inside her reminded her how she’d given Flannery the advantage by talking to Carmen Hall.
But if Logan had been hanged, why didn’t it say so somewhere in these ancient papers? A hanging in those days, in that place, was surely an event that would have made headlines.
Hannah ignored her aching head and went through the records again.
They’d reported his arrest. The next edition of the Sentinel had been totally devoted to the fire. After that, Logan was never mentioned again.
The jail must have burned to the ground, along with the rest of the town. Had he managed to escape, get clean away in the confusion? With every fiber of her being, she prayed it was so.
She was so afraid to hope, and yet a part of her refused to believe he’d died at the end of a rope. The real torture was not knowing.
"The archives are now closing. Please return all research material to the attendants. We will re-open at nine tomorrow morning,” a recorded woman’s voice announced.
Wearily, Hannah made her way to the exit and out into the dark, wet night.
She’d been staying with her mother since their return; after all her yearning for her own apartment, she found she couldn't be alone in it, at least not yet.
Friends at the hospital had tried to be supportive, but Daisy was the only one she could talk to.
Her mother listened and understood when she spoke of Logan, and held her when she wept for him.
Daisy, too, knew of love and loss. Since they’d come back, she’d told Hannah more about Michael, intimate little things that allowed Hannah to understand her father in a way she hadn't before and even to forgive him.
Daisy was a changed woman. She'd enrolled in a cordon-bleu cooking class, and she was talking about taking another course in business management so she could someday open her own restaurant.
Elvira, too, was different. She visited often, and even though as the weeks passed the three of them spoke less and less of Barkerville, the experience they'd shared was a bond between them.
Elvira was still short-tempered and opinionated, but she didn't complain about Gordon any more, and there was a new softness and contentment to her.
Hannah thought about Daisy and Elvira fondly as she walked home along the rain-washed streets. The summer air was warm and moist, heavy on her skin.
Is it snowing now in Barkerville?
Did Pandola rebuild the store and hire someone else to work for him?
Are Jeannie and Angus still living in their cabin?
Has Sophie learned to crawl?
She stopped suddenly and sat down at a bus stop, oblivious to the city bus that pulled to a stop and opened its doors for her. In her mind's eye she always saw Barkerville as she remembered it, a dusty, crude mining town, pulsating with energy, alive with gold fever. Until she accepted the fact that it was a ghost town, that nothing of what she remembered was there any longer, she’d stay locked in this terrible inertia.
Maybe there was one way of knowing whether or not Logan had been hanged.
His body would have been buried up on the hill, in the little cemetery. At last she knew what she had to do. She had to go back to Barkerville, see it for what it was, and lay all her ghosts to rest once and for all.
The thing about jail, Logan mused, was that it gave a man a lot of time to think.
He’d been locked up for a day and a half now, and his head had finally stopped aching from the blow Carmen had dealt him. He’d been confused and only partially conscious when he was brought here, his skull feeling as though it had been split in two.
Within an hour Doc Carroll had come and examined him, frowning and asking the question that Logan at first didn’t understand.
“Logan, do you remember shooting Flannery before Carmen hit you with the poker?”
Logan had tried to focus despite the red heat of pain that zigzagged through his skull.
"I didn’t shoot Flannery,” he managed to groan. "Where’s Hannah? I need to talk to her.”
Doc harumphed. “Well, somebody shot Flannery, because he’s dead as a doornail. Shot right between the eyes, and with your derringer. Far as Hannah goes, I don’t know what the hell’s going on. Elvira borrowed my rig and rode out of town with Daisy and Hannah, and none of 'em have been seen since. A drover coming through from Quesnellemouth spied my horse and buggy about ten miles out of town and brought them in this morning. Their handbags and the remains of a lunch were in the buggy. I reported it to Bowran. He’s gone out to have a look for them."
A great fear welled up in Logan, fiercer by far than the pain in his head. He struggled to a sitting position and tried to get to his feet.
“I've got to find her," he gritted out, fighting against Doc’s hold on him. "Let go of me."
"Damn it, man, settle down. You're in jail. You couldn't go anywhere even if you were able. I’m doing all I can. I’ll let you know the minute there’s any news. Now drink this.”
Logan had, against his will, and he’d sunk into a fathomless black pit where demons stuck pins in his eyes, his head grew monstrously large, and at last his stomach rebelled.
He groped for the bucket and missed, and when the vomiting was over, he dropped again into a stupor. This time he dreamed that he and Hannah were swimming, but she slipped away from him and disappeared in the dark water and he couldn't find her. He dove until his lungs ached, but she was gone, and in his dream, he wept.
When he came out of that nightmare, Doc was there again. He'd brought a bucket of hot water and clean clothing.
“Hannah?” Logan struggled up, trying to subdue the roiling in his gut.
"No sign of any of them," Doc said as he helped Logan wash and change. “Bowran took a search party out, but there’s not a trace."
“Exactly where were they headed?"
“Damned if I know. There was a patient in the hospital. I take it Elvira got all excited when she heard what he had to say, and that’s when she borrowed the buggy." He told Logan about Daniel Connor. "I thought the man was a lunatic, but now I’m not so sure.”
He shook his head and frowned. "Elvira had some mighty peculiar ideas about medicine, knew things I never heard of. I didn’t believe all of them, don’t even now, but still…..maybe Connor did see somethin
g out there, something Elvira knew about, too.”
Logan listened, and he knew what had happened. The women had found their doorway. They’d gone back to where they’d come from, that future world Hannah had described for him so often. She was gone from him, to a place he couldn’t follow.
The agony of loss Logan felt stunned him, and he wondered how he’d be able to live with it, to go on.
After Nellie's death, he’d learned to live only in the moment. He forced himself to do that now.
"Guard,” Doc was roaring. "This cell is putrid. Get me fresh hot water and straw.”
Gratefully, Logan scrubbed, using the physical action to center his mind on now, only now.
Doc helped as well. He forced Logan to recount every single detail he remembered about the time he’d spent at Frenchie’s.
"Sounds to me like Carmen Hall’s framed you, Logan,” Doc concluded. “With Flannery dead, she’s now got Frenchie’s all to herself, and with the new girls he brought in, miners are lining up. Shell make a fortune, and that’s motive for murder, if you ask me."
Doc leveled a keen gaze on Logan. "Trouble is, she’s telling some cock-and-bull story about Flannery seducing your sister, which she says is why you wanted him dead. She says Hannah warned her you were laying for Flannery. Any truth to that?"
Logan told Doc about Nellie. He told him how he’d planned Flannery’s death, and how Hannah had begged him not to go through with it.
"She was in love with you.”
Logan nodded. “I wouldn’t listen, and so as a last resort I guess Hannah went to Carmen Hall, thinking Carmen had a shred of decency left in her and would help to prevent murder. The irony of it is that I'd already changed my mind, but Hannah didn't know that."
He was numb, both in body and in spirit. With Hannah gone, nothing mattered any more.
“I guess Carmen saw an opportunity to get rid of Flannery, and I played right into her hands.”
Doc nodded and they were silent for a while.
“Trouble is,” Doc finally said with a sigh, "no jury's gonna believe you—you know that. And the Judge is a fanatic when it comes to guns and shooting.”
In both of their minds was the memory of Begbie, his piercing eyes fixed on Logan, warning that if there was a shooting again in Barkerville, for whatever reason, and Logan was involved, there would be a hanging.
"Begbie's in Quesnellemouth, he'll be back around the seventeenth," Doc said. “Then there’ll be a trial. I'll go get hold of Zachary Willings right away, get him sober so he can act as your lawyer. He’s the best, long as he stays off the firewater."
Doc was doing his best, but Logan knew his only hope was to escape and run for his life before there was any trial. They both knew that in Begbie’s court, once you were convicted, hanging followed immediately.
He didn't want to live without Hannah, but he didn’t want to die at the end of a rope, either. If he was going to escape, it had to be soon.
"You said Begbie would be back around the 17th?"
Doc nodded. "Give or take a few days."
"What’s the date today?”
"September 15th.” Doc sighed and got to his feet. He banged his fist into Logan’s shoulder with a show of false bravado. "Don’t worry, lad. I’ll dry out Zachary, and we’ll get you out of this yet.”
Logan gripped Doc’s hand, grateful for his friendship, knowing that there was little either Doc or Zachary could do for him. The only thing that might still save his life was history.
Hannah and Elvira had assured him that Barkerville would burn to the ground. The jail was in the middle of town. The date of the fire, if Elvira’s memory was trustworthy, was September 16.
Tomorrow.
And if he managed to get loose somehow tomorrow, what then?
He’d try to follow Hannah. The idea was ludicrous, but it was there in his mind.
“Doc, is this Daniel Connor still in the hospital?"
Doc shook his head. “He’s probably in the nearest saloon. From the look of him, he’s a drinking man.”
"Forget Zachary. Find Connor instead. Send him over here soon as you can. I need to talk to him." Urgency and a sense of purpose were growing in him.
"What’s become of Billy Renton? I never heard of any trial.”
“There wasn’t any. Dutch got fed up waiting for Begbie to get back and didn’t press charges. Billy’s still up at the hospital, his knee's never healed right.”
“I need to talk to him, too.”
Doc frowned. "Bad Billy Renton? You sure that bang on the head hasn’t addled your brain?”
“My brain’s working better than it’s worked for months. It’s my neck I’m concerned about.”
Doc gave him a narrow-eyed look. "All I can say is I hope to hell you know what you’re doing.”
Logan just smiled.
He couldn't tell Doc he was counting on fire and water to set him free.
Yesterday’s Gold: Chapter Twenty-Six
WELCOME TO HISTORIC BARKERVILLE, the sign read, THE TOWN WHERE THE FUN’S PURE GOLD.
Arrows indicated one parking area only for vans and another for cars. A high wooden fence obscured the townsite, and even at this early hour, there were a number of vehicles parked in the lot.
Hannah pulled her red rental car into the designated area and slowly got out, her heart beating hard. It was a cool September day with just a bit of a breeze, enough to stir the evergreens on the hill above the parking lot, and she stood and allowed the wind to dry her tears before she started walking toward the Visitor Reception Area.
Since leaving Quesnel earlier that morning, she'd cried a lot, unable to control the emotions that driving along the modern highway dredged up in her.
She’d recognized the place where the van had been towed from the river, but Hannah hadn’t stopped there.
She hadn’t recognized many landmarks along the highway, but she hadn’t expected to. Her research had told her that the modem highway followed an entirely different route into Barkerville than the old Cariboo Road, and some part of her was glad.
"Welcome to Barkerville.” The motherly woman behind the desk smiled and accepted the entrance fee. “Been here before, dear?"
Hannah swallowed hard. “Not for a very long time.”
"I expect you’ll find lots of changes. Later today we'll have some special ceremonies you might like to attend. This is the anniversary of the day Barkerville burned back in 1868, you know.”
Hannah did know. For some obscure reason, it had been symbolic to come here on this day.
She was burning her memories.
The woman handed her a paper with a map of the town and a list of the events scheduled.
"Judge Begbie will be holding court in the courthouse at 11 A.M.”
Hannah gasped, and then realized that of course there were actors who recreated famous characters. All the same, she wouldn't go anywhere near the courthouse.
"Wake-Up Jake's Restaurant is open for lunch, as well as Goldfield’s Bakery. Enjoy your visit.”
With her heart in her throat, Hannah made her way past the barrier and out the door, down the steps, and into the recreated town. Breathing as if she’d been running, she stood for a long moment, staring at this place where she’d lived and loved.
It was different from the town she remembered, of course.
She’d been here before the fire, and this was how the town must have looked afterward. Many of the businesses were the same, because the very morning after the fire, people began rebuilding their businesses and homes.
The smell was different. There were no steaming piles of manure from horses, no choking clouds of dust from cattle being herded down the main street.
There were no men hacking and spitting on the boardwalk, and no Elvira to give them the sharp side of her tongue.
The Cornish waterwheels were silent. No dogs yapped; no men’s voices called greetings or insults. It was a ghost town, populated only by tourists and actors.
As i
f in a dream, Hannah moved along the street, seeing it both as it had been and as it was. Her heart thumped and her breath caught.
Here, right here, the Nugget had stood.
There was no sign of it now. Instead, there was a firehouse. How ironic that the building Logan had campaigned for would be built on the very site of his saloon. He’d be pleased.
Tears gathered in her eyes and dripped down her cheeks.
Here was Wake-Up Jake's, where they’d gone for breakfast that first morning.
Here was the livery stable, where Logan had kept his horse.
Pandola's Grocery was gone. Another building stood in its place, called the House Hotel.
The boardwalk was still there, but it was much improved from the one she remembered.
She peered through the fenced-off door of Moses Barber Shop and smiled, remembering the gentle black man advising her discreetly on what was suitable to wear under the long skirts she was buying.
She wandered through the town for several hours. She ate a sandwich and had coffee at Wake-Up Jake's, and concluded with a sad smile that the food was much improved. Finally, with a lump of fear in her chest that made it hard to breathe, she found enough courage to walk up the hillside, along the winding path that led to the cemetery.
There had been increasing numbers of tourists down in the town, but this lonely place was deserted except for her. When she’d been here at her great-great-grandfather's funeral, the burial spot was only a small clearing in the woods.
Now, it seemed there were hundreds of graves. Hannah’s heart twisted at this silent reminder of how many had lived and dreamed their dreams and died in this little mining town.
The old portion was fenced off, its wooden gravemarkers with their simple carved messages standing amidst tall pine trees that hadn’t begun to grow when she was there last.
Hannah easily located Ezekial’s resting place. The grave was sunken, but the wooden marker was there, its surface dark and weathered, its message still legible.
Sacred to the memory of Ezekial Shaw, August 8, 1868.
Blood thundered in her ears as she walked up and down the rows, searching for a marker that said Logan McGraw, praying that she wouldn’t find it. Many of the old wooden tombstones were illegible, and some of the graves had no markers at all. Others, however, were engraved with names she recognized.
Now and Forever: Time Travel Romance Superbundle Page 61