by Fred Holmes
Ignoring her, he untied his hair and let it flow down his back. His skin tingled, his eyes sharpened, and centuries of Cherokee lore bubbled through his veins.
He paid no attention as he transformed into DeWayne Sixkiller, Cherokee scout and expert tracker.
The foursome hadn’t tried to hide their tracks. Keeping his senses alert, he shuffled into the Indian trot that would eat up the miles and eventually lead him to his quarry.
Chapter 15
MIKE RAPPED on Ralph’s door and only paused as Ralph waved him in. Mike got a good look at the spacious corner office. The last time, he was too nervous to notice the Monets on the right and the large portrait of Ginger to his left. “Nice operation here.”
He motioned Mike to one of the leather seats and took the chair on the other side. They both turned on an angle to a more relaxed position.
“Meh,” he shrugged. “Most of the furnishings I inherited from Rummy. Ginger insisted on placing her portrait. Eyes follow you, don’t they?”
“I only met her once when I was interviewing. She struck me as a strong-willed woman. Quite beautiful, as well.”
“She’s all of that.”
The telephone rang, and Ralph picked it up. “Put her on, Trixi.” There was a pause. “Hello, Rainey. Yes, this is Ralph. Go ahead. He did, did he? Tell him I’ll be there in about an hour. Thank you, Rainey.”
“That was Rainey, from my real estate and insurance office,” Ralph said to Mike. “My dad is getting older, and I take care of the finances. We have agents that take care of sales and claims. Lotta money in insurance, but it’s boring. Not like Dyna-Tyme. Never lack for excitement here. So, what have you dug up? You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have something.”
Mike pulled two photos from his folder and laid them in front of Ralph. “Notice anything different?”
Ralph looked the images over. “She looks like she’s lost a couple of pounds, her hair isn’t so stringy, and her teeth are straighter. Other than that, she’s about the same. ” He shrugged.
“Look at her eyes.”
“In both photos, they’re blue. One’s a bit brighter.”
Mike pulled the photographs back and pointed to her eyes. “These are much brighter. I’ll bet they’re contacts, and her medical records show her to have 20/20 vision. Why contacts? If you look at the clothes, they’re stuffy. Most of that lumpiness could be clothes hiding a decent body underneath. If you look at the hair, it’s only the sides that are stringy. Could be extensions.” He put a piece of paper on each side of her face to block out the hair.
Ralph looked closer. “I see what you mean; clean her up, dress her up …”
Mike added, “Change out her teeth, and you don’t have a bad looking young woman. Then send her to finishing school so she doesn’t walk as if she’s behind a plow.”
“What does all this mean?”
“I’m not sure, but I think it has something to do with Lida. Look at this photo.” He pulled the photo out of the heart-shaped locket.
Ralph looked at it. “Just a locket with an ‘ℒ.’ What’s the big deal? Could be anything.”
“Or it could be our little trouble maker?”
Ralph snorted. “Not Lida! No. She’s not playing on that team. I know that for sure.”
“Ralph, some people will do anything to attain their evil goals. According to reports, didn’t you get sucked into one of her little schemes?”
“Boy, you certainly get around, don’t you?”
“FBI, remember?”
“What are we going to do? What do you think she’s plotting?”
Mike paused. “I think it has something to do with RTSL. There’ve been attempts to hack into our system, but so far I’ve been able to stop them. Lida claims she turned the hackers over to the FBI, but my contact hasn’t seen them in a case file. Of course, they don’t always tell me what’s going on, even as deep as my sources go.”
“Listen, Mike. I have a meeting to attend. But we need to keep an eye on Lida and Nina Rains.”
“I might just follow her the next time she makes one of her investigative trips. And we need to keep this quiet, eh?”
“Amen, brother.”
Mike headed back to his office, feeling that he’d made a friend.
Maybe he had. But as Mike would soon find out, Dee wasn’t the only one with illusions.
* * * * *
Unlike the Indian tracking them, Rummy, Traweek, and Crawford were on a flatout run with Bunny stumbling along ahead. As tough as she was, her feet took a terrible shredding without shoes. The thin dress was not much protection from the briers, and her legs were bloody. She had turned the shotgun over to Traweek a mile or so back. It was more than she could handle. She knew they wouldn’t hesitate to leave her if she didn’t keep up.
They ignored the trail they left behind and the noise they made as they crashed through the underbrush. They were intent on putting miles between them and Elmira. As far as they could figure, Ruby’s directions took them southeasterly as long as they kept the tracks on their right.
Bunny asked, “Are you sure you know where you’re going?”
Crawford replied, “We’d got better directions if we hadn’t been run off by that spook friend of yours.”
They were running down a short hill when Rummy tripped on a root and plowed headlong down the rise.
Traweek stopped. “You okay, Rummy?”
“I’m whipped, Wash. You fellows are forty years younger than my old legs. You might have to leave me.”
“We won’t leave you,” Crawford told Rummy. “We wouldn’t be alive if you didn’t keep us from being poisoned by the food and water. We owe you for that. Right, Wash?”
Traweek grunted. “I’m whipped, too. I think we need to get out of these mountains and follow the river for a while. Much better footing, in any case.”
“I’ll vote for that,” said Bunny.
“You don’t get a vote. We’re going to get loose of you as soon as we can. You and that Injun tried to kidnap Rummy.”
“But he doesn’t belong here. He be—”
“Yes, I do belong here,” Rummy interrupted. “I tried to tell that fellow that I wasn’t going back, and I’m not. Why don’t you just squeeze your capsule and go back to your wor … er … where you belong?”
Traweek rose up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but Rummy stays with us. Here, James, you carry the shotgun and bring up the rear. Rummy, you lead, and we’ll proceed at your pace. That’ll slow us down. Maybe conserve our energy. I’ll follow Rummy. And Rabbit, you stay behind me. Don’t forget that Crawford has the gun. We’ll head down the mountain to the river. Let’s go.”
The little group started down the hill. If any one of the four had glanced up as they passed under a large oak, they’d have seen a large growth on a limb. As Crawford passed by, intent on keeping up with a revitalized Bunny, the growth morphed into DeWayne Sixkiller and slid down the trunk. Dee fell in behind the file, staying back. He had been prepared to make his move when Traweek reorganized his marching order. Now, it would be difficult for Dee to pull Rummy and Bunny out of the new arrangement.
They left the mountain. The terrain along the river leveled off and changed to grass, occasionally interrupted by small stands of trees and clusters of brush.
Dee held back about a hundred yards and moved from cover to cover as the situation permitted.
They had proceeded about a mile along the river bank when Traweek let out a whoop and waved everyone forward. When Dee saw the four of them climb into a small skiff and start to row away, he raced to the river edge and screamed, “Bunny, push him in.” Both Bunny and Traweek understood at the same second, and both grabbed Rummy. Bunny tried to push him out of the boat, and Traweek tried to keep him aboard.
Suddenly Traweek slipped and let go of Rummy, who fell into the river as Traweek pitched back into the bottom of the skiff. Bunny and Dee saw Rummy’s struggles at the same time. She swam to Rummy, while Dee wa
s already in the water, swimming hard. He arrived at the same time as Bunny, and between the two, they managed to pull Rummy away from Traweek, toward the bank.
“I ain’t letting you take him, Injun!” Crawford yelled. He aimed the gun and pulled the trigger.
Bunny screamed. Dee let go of Rummy and grabbed Bunny as the water swirled with blood around her.
“You hit her!” Dee screamed. “You—you shot Bunny.”
Crawford dropped the shotgun and screamed back, “If you’d mind your own business, you wouldn’t get her shot. Leave us alone.”
He jumped in the river, caught Rummy, and dragged him to the boat. Traweek helped hoist Rummy into the skiff.
Dee swam as hard as he could, holding Bunny’s head above water and at the same time, fighting the current. Dee pulled Bunny to the bank and onto the grassy ledge. With trepidation, he rolled her over, expecting the worst. There was a large bloody wound. Fortunately, it was near the left shoulder and bicep.
“O’ Lord!” Dee cried. “Please let her be okay. Please! Please!” In a few seconds, her eyes fluttered, and she coughed up some water.
“Did we get him?” She looked down at her wound. “Is it bad, Dee? Am I gonna die?”
“Nah, you’re too tough to die. We’ll get you back to modern times, and you’ll be okay. Does it hurt?”
“Like the devil.”
He held her up and pointed as the skiff, with its crew of three, picked up speed. He watched the mainstream sweep them down the river.
All he could say was, “We lost him again.” Then he felt near his stomach and pressed on the pouch to make sure the capsules were there, and they were. “I think we need to go back together to make sure one of us doesn’t get left behind. “Take yours. I’ll make sure you leave, and then I’ll take mine.”
“Okay,” Bunny said.
She took her capsule, and he took his. With a few seconds between them, they both shimmered and then disappeared.
From the boat, Crawford looked back. “They’re gone.”
Traweek started rowing. “You hit the Injun?”
“No, I hit the girl.”
“Good riddance, I say.”
“I dunno, she was real pretty.”
“Get up here and row for a while.”
Chapter 16
LIDA WAITED by the table for Dee to return. She had no idea where Bunny was and didn’t care. The problems Bunny caused outweighed her value. Sixkiller was highly protective of her and would take chances on her behalf that weren’t mission-specific.
The table shimmered, and two naked bodies appeared. Lida grabbed the robes, tossed one to Dee and covered Bunny with the other, and then she stopped and pulled Bunny’s robe back to expose the seeping wound. She picked up a hand towel and pressed it lightly on the torn flesh.
“What do you think?” Dee asked.
“I think she needs to see a doctor. It’s contained mostly to the shoulder, but it needs a thorough cleaning. She needs antibiotics. It doesn’t look bad, if we can hold off any infection. Tell me what happened.”
“When they shot her the first time or the second time?”
“Start with the first.”
He picked up the tale at the farmhouse. “It was strange. One moment she was standing there looking down the barrel of a shotgun, and then she reached for it. Ruby couldn’t tell me what occurred after that. I thought the buckshot hit her, but apparently it missed.”
“I think I have an explanation. It’s in the way RTSL works. First, I have to make a call to a doctor friend of mine and see if we can patch up her second wound. Then we have to figure out how we’re going to get Rummy back here without hog-tying him.”
She picked a number from her favorites on her cell and after a few minutes of discussion, she hung up and turned her attention back to Bunny. “I have someone we can trust coming over. Do you need anything, Bunny? How about some water? How are you feeling?”
“Sure, water would be great. I feel like I just got blasted by a shotgun. Surprisingly, it doesn’t hurt as much as you might think. While we’re waiting, do you have any explanation of what happened to me the first time? I know what happened the second.”
“The first time you were shot, Dee came back and left you there, so the timeline was not reset. You can’t bring some travelers back and leave some there. Everybody has to come back to trigger a reset. The second time, Dee brought you back, so he created a reset in time and everything reset to the second before you left on your time travel. This is the only way RTSL can work. Otherwise, it’d be a mess.”
“What about Rummy? Why didn’t he come back on our resets?”
“He received a different program. If you think of the movie Ground Hog Day, that’s similar to Rummy’s situation. But once he receives the new capsule, it breaks the old program and he’ll return. It’s imperative that we bring him back. You know how negotiations with big outfits go. It takes a special talent to pull it off. Rummy has the talent. Who in this room can deal with a foreign power, with experienced negotiators? Let’s see, Dee, an Indian scout? Nah. Bunny, cute and effective one-on-one, but in a board room? I don’t think so. Erik, who can’t stand crowds, smokes stinky cigars, and has the theory of relativity tattooed on his head? Gimme a break.”
“That leaves me. A hundred pound Geisha girl who is going to sashay into the board room and pull off a million dollar deal.” She reached into her briefcase and pulled out a couple of shots of Rummy. It was immediately clear to everyone what his role would be.
“Boys and, you too, Bunny, we need Rummy. A half mil is nothing. Rummy can turn this into multi-megabucks. Let’s figure out a way to get him home.”
Outside the door, Vinnie Ferragamo tapped Bruno. “Let’s go. It’s time to see the boss.”
* * * * *
Vinnie rapped on the door of Ferragamo’s Fine Meats. Another large Italian opened it and frisked him. When the bodyguard was satisfied that Vinnie was clean, he opened the door and escorted him into a large, sparsely furnished room. Yet another Italian, dapper rather than large, sitting in a wood swivel-chair, leaned back and put one foot on the edge of an open file drawer.
“You want I should stay, boss?” said the bodyguard.
“No, Roscoe. Vinnie’s my goombah. Right, Vinnie?”
“Right, Tony, right.”
Tony peered at Vinnie with jet-black eyes set narrowly in a rat-like face, topped by swept-back, raven hair. Tony Ferragamo had a pocket knife in his right hand and absentmindedly trimmed the manicured nail on the left. “So, Vinnie, what’s holding up our deal?”
“Well, boss, it looks like these hackers ain’t as good as billed. This guy Beasley seems to have them outfoxed, and they can’t quite get all the parts needed. And, now I get the suspicion that our little Miss Lida is planning to run around us to a bigger buyer. It seems that both of our outfits are joining forces and planning to cut us out of the deal.” Vinnie brought Tony up to date on everything he had overheard about Lida’s plans.
Tony pulled his foot off the drawer and pushed it shut, hard. “I don’t like this. I just don’t like people who try to play two ways. I thought this Dummy guy was just her lover, and we were letting her bring back her boyfriend. Now I find that he’s a big executive, and they’re going to use him to cut us out. That’s not going to fly. We gotta cut down the players. Yeah, too many … all looking …”
He snapped his fingers, “Everybody’s going in different directions. Some want to bring someone back, some … well; we don’t know who all is playing or what they’re planning. What we do know is, we want that formula and the sample to go to our Korean friends, so we get a nice little tax-free half a million. So we need Dummy alive, and we may just have to give him a cut if he’s as good as they say.”
“Not ‘Dummy’, boss. It’s ‘Rummy.’ And we have this meddler, Beasley. He’s sticking his nose way too far into our business.”
“We’ll have to give him the business. Get hold of that snoop at Dyna-Tyme and see if we ca
n set up a meet with this Beasley. Maybe we can talk some sense to him. Maybe he’ll see it our way. Worth a few bucks.”
“Gotcha, boss.”
Vinnie retreated to his little cubbyhole in the rear of the meat market and punched in a number. “Miss Rains. Yeah, Nina Rains. Yeah, I’ll hold.”
* * * * *
Ralph waved at a chair. “Have a seat, Carleton, have a seat. I’m glad you came to my office. I, er, we might have a problem.”
“Relax, Ralph, relax. Sit down and explain what’s upsetting you,” said Carleton Venable.
“Remember when Ginger slipped Rummy a mickey and sent him back in time to Elmira prison?”
“Yes, I remember it well. I thought we’d killed Rummy by pulling out the leads to his pacemaker.” Carleton leaned back in his chair, tipping it up on its back legs. “Come to find out that was another of his lies.”
“Rummy didn’t even have one installed.”
“Right, so what’s the problem? That’s ancient history.”
“Well, it won’t be ancient for long, Lida is trying to bring him back.”
Carleton’s chair slammed forward as he absorbed the information like a slap in the face.
“How in blazes is she going to do that? It’s been a few years hasn’t it? How is she going to pull that off? He might not even be alive.”
“I’m not sure, but I think she’s tricked my security chief and has lined up somebody who’s willing to risk going back in time.”
“You helped make the RTSL formula that’s designed to keep him back in the past, didn’t you? You said you locked the formula up tight and that you kept a part that was necessary to make it work.”
Ralph turned a slight pink.
“Well, one night she came to my office, we had a few drinks, one thing led to another and ”
“No more, Ralph. You did it again. It’s either gambling or women. It’s always something.”
“Well, Ginger wasn’t … well, you know she wouldn’t.”
“Ralph, do you know what you’ve put in jeopardy? This company, for one. Do you know how much insurance we’ve got coming? Millions, and we’ve borrowed most of it against …”