The Time Change Trilogy-Complete Collection

by Alex Myers

  “Stop him!” Abner yelled at the men and took off after Barnett.

  No matter what she thought about the way he was acting now, Frances loved Jack. Two of the four men that stayed with her grabbed her by the arms. She struggled, turned, and saw the four other horsemen racing toward Jack. She knew they had malice in their hearts, especially this one named Barnett.

  There was only one thing she could do and without thinking she yelled, “Jack, watch out! They are going to kill you!”

  One of the men holding her let go; he along with two others pulled out their guns. The fourth man let go and slapped her so hard she saw stars as she slammed into the ground.

  CHAPTER 16

  Friday, July 3, 1857

  Jack approached Kady and saw her billowing, light colored dress and long-flowing hair cascading over her shoulders. The bodice of the dress was low-slung and form fitting. His body yearned for her, but his head was still with Frances. What’s wrong with me? She’s with another man, she sent me away!

  “Well, hello stranger. I’ve been waiting. The family went to bed earlier than normal and I was able to sneak away quicker than I thought I could. Are these for me?” She reached for the flowers.

  “Yes, they are. I thought it was the least I could do…”

  She grabbed him. “Let me give you a big ole hug.”

  She hugged him and didn’t let go. As her arms closed gently about his neck, his whole body was suddenly aflame. Jack could feel her heaving breasts pressed tightly to his chest. She moved even closer, trying to melt her body into his. He felt her press her belly and push her hips forward into his.

  God, this feels good. Jack hadn’t been with a woman in over a year. It was the longest he’d been since he was fourteen. He and Frances had only held hands and barely even kissed—definitely nothing this erotic. The sensation was becoming unbearably exciting.

  One of her hands slipped down from his shoulder to the small of his back, massaged, and then moved to the side of his hip. She moved her other hand to his face, cupped his chin and cheek in her soft warm hands. She moved her hand up to his ear, gently tracing the outer edge with her finger. He could feel the heat of her gaze. Her pouty, full lips seemed like a magnet as they reached up for his.

  Instead of going for her lips, he barely brushed them and moved for the pulsating hollow at the base of her throat. She threw her head back and moaned as he seared her neck with his tongue. She used her hand to rub him into her as she lifted her hips to make herself more accessible. He pressed his tongue hard into her neck and made his way up her throat to her ear. He pushed the hair out of the way with his nose and plunged his tongue deep inside. The deeper he pushed, the more she groaned.

  Jack knew how to make a woman happy.

  Taking her face in his hands, he moved his lips so they barely were touching hers. He stared into the pools of her moonlit turquoise eyes and stopped with a shudder. Her eyes were bluish, not green; her hair was brown, not blonde. The emotion and heat he was feeling now wasn’t for the woman he was with, it was for Frances. “I can’t,” he said, and let go of her face.

  “Ohhh, you can’t stop now Jack!” She moaned and continued to lean into him.

  “What the hell are you doing with my daughter?” Barnett yelled.

  Kady stopped mid-breath, and then there was another voice, this one farther off and female, “Jack, watch out! They are going to kill you!”

  “Frances!” Pushing himself away from Kady, he turned to the sound of the voices. Four men were bearing down on them hard. One looked like Barnett and another looked to be Abner Adkins. Jack had left his gun slung over his saddle and there wasn’t time to make for it or to try to get away.

  CHAPTER 17

  Friday, July 3, 1857

  Barnett rode up full force, grabbed Kady by the arm, and pulled her farther away from Jack—and in the process swung her around and knocked her to the ground. Abner and the other men had their pistols drawn and quickly surrounded Jack. In the distance he saw one of the four other horsemen knock Frances to the ground with a backhanded slap. Jack wanted to explode, but was sure Abner and his men would kill him where he stood.

  Barnett got off his horse and jerked his daughter up from the ground. “Just what were you thinking, young lady? Did you do this just to hurt me? Answer me!” He swung her till she faced him.

  She stood defiantly, returning his stare.

  “Come on, I’m taking you back to the house.” He pushed her ahead of him and they took off walking, leaving his horse behind.

  “As for you, Jackie boy,” Abner said, “get your arse moving. I now have everyone you care about except the old man, and I’ll take care of him soon enough.”

  Barnett yelled over his shoulder, “Adkins, if you don’t kill him I will! No one treats my daughter this way.”

  “I told you, Creed wants them alive,” Abner said as he kicked Jack, “for now.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Friday, July 3, 1857

  Jack’s hands were tied and was locked in a storage shed along with Frances on the edge of the complex. Guards were placed outside the door and told to shoot anyone trying to escape. The only light entering the small ten by ten building was through two small windows on each side of the structure. Frances sat on the dirt floor on one side and Jack sat on the other. She was barely discernible through the oppressive darkness. She had yet to look at him since their capture. After what seemed an eternity, he finally said; “What are you doing here?”

  “No, a better question would be what are you doing here. Except that I know what you’re doing here. Seeing your girlfriend, Kady.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend. I just met her two days ago.”

  “Seemed awfully friendly for two days. Unless you knew her right along.”

  “She’s not from here, her family just moved down here from Chicago.”

  “Chicago! Well, that explains all your trips there.”

  “I told you, I just met her.”

  “I saw you holding her. I saw the things you two were doing.”

  “And what do you care, anyway?”

  “You are right, I don’t care.”

  “After all, you broke things off with me the other night to be with another man!”

  “Another man? Where would you get a ridiculous idea like that?”

  “I talked to someone who saw you two together.”

  “That is ludicrous. I haven’t been with another man.” She shook her head and thought better of answering. “Another man has nothing to do with this.”

  “Then who was the man you left with after you chased me away the other night? The one you left with?”

  She looked at him like he was crazy. “I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer. If after all that we’ve been through, all that we shared—the honesty, the grandness of conversations. And then to have you hurl mud at it like this? This conversation is over.”

  “And it’s reasonable to treat our relationship like you did the other night?” Jack said.

  “What? Well, I might have thought that until I saw you holding hands with your girlfriend in the restaurant yesterday.”

  Now it was Jack’s turn to try to figure out what she was talking about. An eyebrow raised in amused contempt. “She grabbed my hand, what was I supposed to do?”

  “I suppose sit there, grinning like an idiot and hold her hand. Don’t play me for a fool. I know what I saw.”

  He knew this was getting them nowhere, so he tried a different approach. “I’m sorry I fell prey to a beautiful woman, but you know what? You rejected me, you rejected everything about me. You sent me away and gave me excuses that didn’t make sense.”

  “Jack, I have never lied to you and I never will.”

  The door to the shed swung open so hard that it knocked the dirt from the mud dauber nests to the ground. Abner Adkins was at the door. “Frances, get out here.”

  “Where are you taking her?” Jack asked.

  “I’m not taking her a
nywhere, Champ, she asked to be put in here with you. I agreed at first because I thought she might come up with useful information, but now I just think it’s silly. Come on, let’s go.”

  She remained seated; Jack looked to her for an explanation and saw that her hands were untied. Were they ever tied in the first place? “What the hell, Frances? Were you in here spying on me?”

  “Gentlemen, get her, this is starting to bore me.” Abner said to his two lackeys. One grabbed Frances’s hand and stood her up and the other thug used his foot and pushed Jack back down.

  “Jack, that’s not it at all. I didn’t come in here to spy on you, I came in here because I—” She never got a chance to finish because the heavy door slammed shut.

  No one came in the rest of that night or even the next morning. The door opened about noon, and a black servant woman brought Jack a hard biscuit and tea and even let him wash with a basin of water. As quickly and mysteriously as she came, she left again. A few hours later the door opened again, and Ken Barnett stood in the doorway.

  “Come on,” Barnett said, “we’ve got to hurry.”

  “Hurry? For what?” Jack asked.

  “I need your help.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Saturday, July 4, 1857

  “I looked over the papers you gave Kady and I think I might be able to get a couple of them to work.” Barnett looked embarrassed. “She also told me that she pursued you. That it was all her idea.”

  God bless Kady, Jack thought. “Where are Creed and Adkins? Where’s Frances?”

  “They are gone,” Ken said.

  “Miles took Adkins and Miss Sanger in the speed steamboat and left for Williamsburg. Creed… that’s where I need your help. Creed is going to use a poison bomb planted inside fireworks tonight at the Norfolk Fourth of July gathering.”

  “What? Why?”

  “The fireworks are being put on by the Virginia Republican Party,” Ken said.

  Jack shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows. “I’m not getting the significance here?”

  “They’re abolitionists, and Frederick Douglass is going to speak,” Ken said.

  “So what kind of bomb is it?”

  “It was something that you developed, an astrolite bomb?”

  “Oh man, this is bad. How many people are going to be there?” Jack asked.

  “About two thousand, could be more. It’s worse than that I’m afraid, though. The bombs are loaded with thallium sulfate and stingray venom.”

  “Why would you develop a bomb like that? What good could possibly come out of it?”

  Barnett threw his hands up in mock defense, “None of that stuff was developed here. From what I understand, you developed the astrolite.”

  “This is too bizarre. I’m not sure if it’s cosmic karma at work. I got in trouble in my old life for astrolite. We didn’t make astrolite as a weapon, we developed it as a propellant. I don’t know a thing about the thallium… wait, that’s rat poison. And sting ray venom?” Jack was confused.

  “The thallium is used as an inhalant and the venom has been soaked into wood shards, it’s like a scatter bomb.” Ken said.

  “And you were making them here?” Jack asked.

  “We were making them to sell to other countries, like England and France. It’s all part of an effort to create trade with foreign countries so they would recognize the Confederate States of America as a separate nation.”

  “What are they using for detonators?”

  “We have impact, graze and delay, mechanical, match combustibles, but I’m almost certain they’re using radio detonators that you all invented. You should be familiar with it, it’s all your stuff except the poisons.”

  “What frequency are the radio detonators?”

  “Not really sure I know what you’re talking about.”

  “Is it a big square detonator about four inches by four inches?” Jack said.

  “We have both, those and the rectangular ones, about four inches by an inch and a half?”

  “Those are the newest ones. Where did you get them?”

  “Kazmer,” Ken said. He looked embarrassed.

  “What have you done with Kazmer?”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it. This Kazmer guy came down here with a bunch of stuff you all were working on to trade for a woman—“

  “Mattie Turner,” Jack said as a simple statement.

  “She wouldn’t have him. Her face got kind of messed up that night at the church.” Ken said.

  “Messed up? What do you mean by that?”

  “She fell on her face on the cobblestone road. Disfigured, the whole left side of her face.”

  “Her looks were the only thing she had going for her. What happened when she turned Kazmer away?”

  “He wanted back the items he brought here. When Creed wouldn’t allow it, he said he was going to go to the police. That’s when Creed took him to the plant and locked him up in the research wing,” Ken said.

  “That part that looks like an insane asylum?”

  “Close enough, I reckon. I don’t know much about the place; I do know they do some horrible testing on prisoners there,” Ken Barnett said.

  “I can’t believe Cooper was spying on me the whole time. Was it the money?”

  “I’m not one hundred percent sure. But one night you all were drinking and Cooper said you described a whole bunch of horrible weaponry—well, he said he couldn’t let you develop them for the North to use against our people.”

  “But they are my people, too.”

  Ken shook his head and raised both hands palm up.

  Jack was in deep thought looking around the grounds. “So, this is basically my entire complex?”

  “Yes, except for the medical facilities and research.”

  “You guys stole the rest of my shit, why didn’t you steal any of my doctors or medical research?”

  “I would have liked that very much,” Ken said. “The reason we don’t have any of it, Creed didn’t figure there was enough money to be made.”

  “Not enough money in healthcare?” Jack shook his head and thought of the trillion dollar healthcare costs in the future. Creed ain’t that smart. “What’s the story on these fireworks?”

  “Creed talks openly around me, he doesn’t include me, but he thinks I’m trustworthy. He used my house to meet with some of the Fire-eaters, Texas Senator Louis Wigfall, Edmund Ruffin, Robert Rhett and a guy named Yancy something? William Yancy? Yeah, that sounds right. He was a Senator from Alabama, big secessionist,” Ken said. “He and Ruffin are bad people. From what I could see, Wigfall was the worst of the bunch. It was his idea to send a message. He said it was bad enough the Yankees had their nigger lovers, but not here. Some of the others worried about tarnishing their reputation with the killing of women and children—Wigfall said dead women and kids would really send their message home.”

  “I’m assuming that the fireworks are tonight on the fourth?”

  “Yes, at Town Point Park, the fireworks will be on a barge in the harbor. One of the rockets near the end of the display will be aimed at the crowd, and will be detonated right above their heads.”

  “Is it going to be well guarded?”

  “It’s going to be open to the public, I’m sure they will have some men there. I know the barge will be armed to the teeth.”

  “And that is where Creed is going to be?”

  “He certainly won’t be in the crowd.”

  “Abner and Miles?” Jack asked.

  “Don’t know. Haven’t seen in Miles in a week or so until he picked up Abner and Miss Sanger and left for the SAC Plant this morning. There’s enough time for him to make it there and back to the fireworks.”

  Jack walked past and surveyed the layout. “This is the same, right down to the color of the brick in the walkway.” He scuffed the brick with his shoe. He pointed to the weapons depot on the far side of the runway. “Are you all stocked up and up to date?”

  “You never
built any of the weapons on your facility, we didn’t have access to them like we did to other things. You parceled them all out to other companies; Cooper was the best source and he never saw any of it, as far as I understood.“

  “Ken, you say this all with such nonchalance, like it was me shortchanging you all.”

  Ken interjected, “I don’t need a lecture, I need help. Now I have two repeater rifles, a repeater pistol, and a couple of boxes of bullets. We do have some other ordnance acquired from other sources and some on our own. The guns all had to come from spies at Colt and Winchester and the ammunition from Smith and Wesson and Remington. We paid dearly for those.”

  “Not quite the cheap pickings like at my place, huh? Forgive me for being a little upset, but you all out and out stole from me.”

  “It’s not a practice of mine I assure you,” Ken said, “but the SAC figured that stealing from you was cheaper than doing the research on their own. That’s what they do. They don’t let me do very much real work here, probably part of the reason I despised you so.”

  Jack was about to continue down this bent and thought better of it. “We’ll need those guns and ammunition. Have any rockets or grenades?”

  “Rockets no, grenades yes. We do have a nice supply of that smokeless powder of yours. We figured out how to make that on our own—nice supply of detonators, too.”

  “Okay, let’s walk.” Jack pointed to the weapons depot in the distance. Turning to Ken, he asked, “Do you have a telegraph line out here?”

  “Not yet, but there is one in Virginia Beach and I can send someone over.”

  “I need to get a message up to Richmond, I need to tell my man that Kazmer is at the SAC plant.”

  “And that writer friend of yours with the crazy hair, Sam—“

  “Sam Clemens.”

  “Yes, don’t know what good it’ll do, getting a message out. That place is like a fortress—especially the new prisoner side. Plus they are doing some things…” Ken trailed off. Jack looked at him and couldn’t figure out if he was embarrassed or thinking twice about talking to him. “They do some bad things to the people there.”