by Cathy Peper
Bryce wanted coffee, but he’d never had orange juice and it sounded intriguing. “Both.”
The woman placed two cups next to his plate. “Well, we can’t deny our hero of the day, can we?”
Bryce frowned. “I did no more than anyone would do.”
“Not from what I heard. Most people aren’t willing to get stabbed for a stranger.”
“I had the advantage of surprise and didn’t think they would be difficult to take down. If I’d been paying more attention the little one would never have gotten the jump on me.”
“Oh, I see,” the woman said, although she looked bewildered by his words. “So are you, like, into martial arts?”
Bryce had no idea what martial arts were. “I will not stand by and see women abused.”
She smiled at that. “Enjoy your breakfast. The eggs are usually pretty good.”
Bryce dug into the food as she left. If Abbie was right, he would need his strength to come up with stories for the police and the press.
* * *
Anne was tired as she left work. Despite the dreary weather, it had been a busy day with few breaks between tours. She didn’t usually work weekends, but one of the part-time workers had asked to switch shifts so she could go to a concert in St. Louis. Anne’s regular daycare was closed on weekends, but a retired woman down the street looked after Hannah when she needed a sitter. Anne could count on the fingers of one hand how many dates she’d been on since Hannah’s birth, but she occasionally went out with girlfriends.
She picked Hannah up and took her home, switching on the TV to entertain the little girl while she made dinner. The news was on and she reached for the remote control to switch to the Disney Channel. Her fingers paused on the buttons, however, when a familiar face caught her eye.
The reporter, a perky woman with dark wavy hair and a toothy smile was interviewing a man in a hospital room. “How did you manage to rescue that poor woman? Why were you even in the area?”
The man, handsome in spite of the unflattering hospital gown and his pallor, looked annoyed. “I took a hike and got lost. Eventually, I found the trail again and heard voices and the sound of a struggle.”
The remote slipped through her nerveless fingers. It was Bryce. It had to be. He looked just like Bryce. Sounded just like Bryce. She chewed on a fingernail. It couldn’t be Bryce. Bryce had been dead for over a hundred years. Even if he had lived to be one hundred years old, he’d be long dead and the man in the hospital bed appeared little older than the man she had known and loved.
Could the man be one of Bryce’s descendants? Once she had discovered genealogy and all the tools available to trace family history in the twenty-first century, she had tracked down tidbits about her brother and then, after Tori’s disappearance, she had found her as well. But she’d never had the courage to look for Bryce. It would be too painful to discover he’d abandoned her only to marry another, have children and live a long happy life. It was better not to know, to pretend he would have come back for her if only…
In her shock, she’d missed most of the story. She grabbed for the remote and turned up the sound. The reporter was asking the man another question.
“Have you heard that the suspects have been captured? Two men, one suffering from a gunshot and the other a stab wound, turned up at a Kentucky hospital. The police will need to have you and the victim identify the men, of course, but I think we’ve found the perpetrators.”
The man in the hospital bed smirked. Anne’s heart clenched. How often had she seen Bryce make just that expression?
“I think we can safely assume there wasn’t another pair of men wounded in the exact same way in the same area.”
“How does it feel to be a hero?”
“As I have already explained, I don’t consider myself to be a hero. I saw a woman in trouble and I reacted. Not everyone would have responded as I did, but I think most would.”
“You fired a gun at one of the men. Do you have a permit for that weapon? The hospital informed me that it was not among your effects. What happened to the gun?”
“I must have lost it at the scene.” He clutched at his side and moaned. “I’m not feeling well. I need to rest now.”
Now it was the reporter who looked annoyed, but she could hardly badger a wounded hero while he still lay in his hospital bed. She took the hint and signed off. “This has been Di Merrell with Bob Rivers, the man who single-handedly rescued a potential rape victim from two suspects in Reelfoot Lake State Park.”
The news program went to commercial and Anne changed the station, hoping to catch another clip, but most of the stations seemed to be running commercials. The man looked like Bryce and he even sounded like Bryce. He claimed his name was Bob. Bob Rivers was not so different from Bryce Poole. She had changed her name upon coming to this time period. It had started off as a simple mistake. She’d been barely coherent when brought into the emergency room and when she told the nurse her name was Arianne, the nurse had written “Anne” down on her chart. Later, realizing English sounding names were more common now than French ones, she had supplied her last name as Rush, instead of La Roche.
But if Bob Rivers was Bryce, how on earth had he gotten here from the nineteenth century? Had he used the necklace? She had given the necklace to Tori, who had taken it with her to the nineteenth century. Proof lay nestled in her dresser drawer. Well, the marriage certificate she’d found on an online website wasn’t ironclad proof. It wouldn’t hold up in a court of law, but it was enough evidence for her. Bryce could have gotten the necklace from Tori. Since Tori had met—and married!—Sebastien, she might have figured out who Anne was. If she also knew who Bryce was, she might have sent him into the future to find Anne.
The story made a bit of sense, although it was a long shot at best. One thing was clear however, she had to go and see Bob Rivers in person.
Chapter 4
The next day Anne pulled into the hospital parking lot and turned off her car. She had barely slept. Fatigue weighted her limbs and a nasty headache pounded in her temples. She had called her neighbor immediately after watching the TV clip and arranged for the woman to watch Hannah today. After cooking and eating dinner, she’d surfed on the web to find the hospital where Bob/Bryce would have been taken.
But now that she was here, she wasn’t sure what to do. The nurses might not let her see him unless she claimed to be a relative. However, they had let the television reporter interview him. Maybe they were allowing general visitors.
Gathering her courage, Anne stepped out of the car. At the reception desk, she asked for Bob Rivers’ room. The woman gave her a suspicious look, but apparently having no orders to the contrary, gave her the room number and then went on to the next person.
Anne took the elevator to the proper floor and found the room without too much trouble. She stood outside, staring at the plain wooden door for a long minute. She was either about to make a fool of herself or get a second chance with the love of her life.
No, she cautioned herself, don’t get ahead of things. Even if that is Bryce in there, he might not want anything to do with you. He abandoned you. Left you alone and pregnant in a time that didn’t deal kindly with such things. He might be already married. Or merely the type that lied to get what he wanted, but couldn’t commit to any one woman.
She drew a deep breath and knocked firmly on the door.
“Come in.”
The voice was muffled but held a hint of that arrogant edge that had so intimidated her at their first meeting. She opened the door and stepped inside.
The man looked up from the bed. Dressed in a regulation hospital gown and still pale from his injuries, he nonetheless looked generally healthy. His body was lean but more heavily muscled than when she had known him. A straggling growth of beard covered his cheeks and he looked older, although it had only been five years since she had seen him.
“Bryce?” she asked, her voice taut with nerves. She couldn’t believe this man was just a des
cendant of her former lover. They looked enough alike to be twins.
The man’s pallor increased as blood fled his face, highlighting the dark circles under his eyes and the new lines on his face. “Ari? How is this possible?”
“Oh, my God, it is you.” Anne stumbled to the bed and grabbed the hand that wasn’t encumbered by the IV. She squeezed it as hard as she could, unable to believe she was touching him again.
“Did I die? I thought I was on the road to recovery, but if you’re here…” His voice trailed off.
“No, of course, you’re not dead,” Anne said quickly. “I’m not dead either. But how did you get here? To the twenty-first century?”
“How did you get here? They told me you were dead, that you had died in childbirth.”
Anne’s chest tightened and she dropped his hand. Spotting a chair in the corner of the room, she drew it closer to the bed. “I very nearly died. I would have if I hadn’t been brought to this time period.”
“Is time travel common? Have you met others?”
Anne shook her head. “I’ve never met anyone else, but you can’t advertise it if you don’t want people to think you’re crazy. I suppose there could be others.” There was Tori. But she had never considered that some of her acquaintances might be time travelers. She didn’t think it likely.
“You’ve been living here for four years? This world seems so vastly different from our own. How did you manage?”
“I got lucky and made some good friends right from the start. I never told them the truth about what happened to me, but they helped me assimilate into this culture.”
“You still haven’t told me how you got here.”
“I used the necklace. You must have done the same. I can’t imagine we would both find different ways to travel into the future.”
Anne blinked back tears. “She did it. I was nearly certain, but this confirms it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My friend, Tori. I had a bad feeling that night when she left my house to play in a quartet. On impulse, I gave her the necklace. No one has seen her since. No one in this time, anyway. You must have met her.”
Bryce stiffened. “Yes, we met on the river. I knew something was strange about her from the moment I saw her.”
“How is she? Do other people think she’s strange or does she manage to fit in?”
“Most people seem to accept her eccentricities as part of being from the East Coast, but they might have been more suspicious if our whole world hadn’t gone to hell shortly after her arrival.”
“The earthquakes…” Anne’s voice trailed off. “I’ve read about them, but you actually lived through them. You must tell me all about it.”
“I guess they are in all the history books now.”
“You’d think so, but you’d be surprised. They are mostly forgotten except by some who live in the area.”
“Forgotten?” Bryce shook his head. “The earth has barely stood still since mid-December. Entire towns have been flooded and the course of the Mississippi changed. The death toll on the river is unknown, but estimated to be in the hundreds.”
“Far worse disasters have occurred since then—in numbers of casualties anyway. The Mississippi River valley was sparsely settled in our time. Now an earthquake of that magnitude would probably kill thousands. On the other hand, buildings are better constructed now.” She stopped as Bryce shot her a glare.
“You speak of it so casually. You have no idea of the horror.”
Anne ducked her head. “Well, I wasn’t there; I was here. And despite the wonders of this time period, it has not always been a piece of cake.”
“A piece of cake?”
“Never mind, it’s an expression.”
After a perfunctory knock on the door, a nurse entered the room. “I see you have a visitor,” she said, beaming down at her patient.
Anne set her jaw. What was it about Bryce that always charmed the ladies? Bryce smiled back at the woman with more friendliness than Anne would have expected considering she was African-American. He had grown up with slaves, having been raised in Virginia.
“An old friend saw me on the news,” he said.
Anne raised her chin. Not that old.
“I’m pleased to hear it. The doctor said you could be released today if you have somewhere to go.” She glanced over at Anne. “Would your friend be willing to look after you for the next few days?”
Bryce canted his head to one side and smiled the same smile that had broken through her resistance and convinced her to lay with him, even though they were not yet married. It tugged at her once again but had caused her nothing but trouble in the past. “What do you say, Ari? Can you help me out of a bind?”
You abandoned me! Anne wanted to scream at him, but she wouldn’t cause a scene in front of the nurse. “I have no medical knowledge.”
“Don’t worry about that. It won’t be anything too complicated and I can show you what to do. We can check his insurance and see if it will allow for a visiting nurse to stop by.”
“I don’t think Br—uh, Bob, has any insurance.”
The nurse frowned. “That does make things more difficult. No visiting nurse, I expect. But I could show you how to change his bandages. Other than that, all you would have to do is give him his medication and call us if he changes for the worse.”
Anne didn’t want to agree, but what would she have done if Tori’s mother hadn’t taken her home from the hospital? “I guess I could do that.”
“Great. I’ll get them started on the paperwork and then come back and show you what to do.”
“Thanks, Ari. I really need your help,” Bryce said after the nurse left.
“It’s Anne. In this century, I go by Anne.” Anne sounded stronger, firmer, and less likely to be led astray. But she already felt like she was sliding back into bad habits.
* * *
To Bryce’s annoyance, it took a couple hours to complete all the paperwork required to discharge him into Ari’s care. Anne. He shook his head. She might go by Anne in this century, but to him, she would always be Ari.
When they were finally ready to go, he stood and hoisted his pack. Fortunately, he’d packed a spare shirt, which he now wore, along with his breeches and boots. His gun had been found at the scene, but the police were holding it as evidence. They questioned him about why he’d used an antique weapon, but he’d claimed it was a family heirloom.
“I wasn’t expecting to actually use it,” he’d told the police. “Turns out I was lucky to have it.” The police appeared to accept his story, but to his dismay, refused to return the gun until the case went to trial.
Nurse Abbie appeared at the door pushing a wheeled chair. “Anne, if you want to pull your car around, we’ll meet you at the entrance.”
Bryce looked at the chair with suspicion. “That’s not for me, is it? I’m quite capable of walking out to the car on my own.”
“Hospital rules,” Abbie said.
Bryce stared at her, but she didn’t budge. “You’re serious.”
“Bob, get in the chair and I’ll see you in a few minutes,” Ari said, humor lighting her dark eyes. She sauntered out of the room while Bryce appreciated how these modern-day breeches accentuated a woman’s backside.
Abbie cleared her throat and heat crept up his cheeks. “Waste of time,” he muttered, but he went and sat in the chair. Abbie pushed him down a hall lined with other hospital rooms. “The girl I rescued, how is she doing?”
“She wasn’t my patient, but I think she was released yesterday. Rumor has it that aside from a few bruises, she was fine, physically. Mentally, I don’t know.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“She was lucky you intervened.”
“I was raised a gentleman,” Bryce said, not wanting to get into the whole hero business again.
“You do have a rather old-fashioned charm. Guess that’s why you’re into the reenactment scene.” She drew to a stop in front of a pair
of flat metal doors and pushed a button. Not knowing what to expect, Bryce tensed. To his relief, after a few moments, the doors slid open. Inside was a very small room with no furniture or even decoration. Abbie pushed him inside and followed. An entire panel of buttons sat on the wall and she pushed one. The doors slid closed and the floor lurched beneath them. Bryce barely managed to keep from crying out, but Abbie seemed unconcerned, so he clamped his jaw shut and kept a tight grip on the arms of the wheeled chair. The unsettling movement stopped after a few moments and the doors opened once more. Abbie pushed him out of the box-like room into a large open area. People were milling around, many carrying flowers or other gifts. The hospital was huge.
Abbie pushed him to a wall of glass doors that magically opened as they approached. A road ran past the entrance and a small red car, totally unlike the utilitarian vehicle Jim Hitchcock had driven, waited there with Ari behind the wheel.
Abbie helped him inside and waved them off. Ari drove away and once again it took Bryce a few moments to adjust to the speed.
“Put your seatbelt on.”
“What?”
“Oh, sorry. I guess you don’t know what that is.” She tugged at the belt that crossed her at the shoulder. “This is a seatbelt. You wear it in case you get in an accident. It’s to your right. Grab it, pull it down and slide the buckle into the holder.”
Bryce grabbed and pulled with no problem, but it took him a few minutes to work it into the holder. “How does this help if we crash?”
“It keeps you from flying through the windshield or being ejected from the car.”
“Why can’t you drive slower?”
Ari laughed and the sound tugged at his memories. “If you’re going to survive the twenty-first century, Bryce, you need to learn to move fast.”
Bryce studied the gray interior, comparing it to what he remembered of Hitchcock’s car. There were similar gages and knobs. “A man gave me a ride the day I made the jump. His car was different. The area in the back was open, like a wagon.”
“Sounds like a pickup truck.”
