Secret Passage

by Amanda Stevens

  “I don’t mean to run you off.”

  “No, that’s fine. I’ll come back later.” A hand patted Zac’s shoulder. “You can count on that.”

  “DON’T YOU HAVE TO GO HOME?” Zac asked.

  “I can’t go until you do,” the boy said.

  Zac glanced down in confusion. “Why?”

  The boy shrugged. “You might not be able to find your way without me.” He took Zac’s hand. “Come on. I’ll walk you part of the way.”

  “Shouldn’t it be the other way around?” Zac asked in amusement. “Shouldn’t I walk you home?”

  “You can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  The boy paused. “Because that’s not the way it works.”

  He was a very strange little boy. And yet there was something infinitely appealing about him. Zac found he didn’t want to leave him. He knelt and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Do I know you? I don’t think we’ve ever met, but…you seem familiar to me.”

  The boy’s dark eyes glinted, and he turned away suddenly, wiping a quick hand across his nose. “We gotta go, okay? It’ll be dark soon.”

  “Tell me your name first,” Zac said. “And then I’ll go with you.”

  But it was too late. The little boy had already left without him, and Zac had never felt so alone.

  “HOW IS HE TODAY, DOCTOR?”

  Zac heard the soft voice as if from a great distance.

  “He seems to be slipping away. Pulse is weak, blood pressure dropping… It’s only a matter of time, I’m afraid.”

  “Poor thing. It’s such a shame. He’s really quite handsome, isn’t he?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that, Nurse. And, in the future, I suggest that you spend more time tending to the patient’s needs than in nurturing your own romantic fantasies about him.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  HE LOOKED TERRIBLE. Even devoid of the grime and blood from the mine, his face was so drawn and blanched that Camille barely recognized him.

  He’d once been the most virile and handsome man she’d ever known, and it hurt her now to see him like this. So pale and still. So near death…

  “I can’t go through this again,” she whispered raggedly. “I can’t….”

  And yet even in her anguish, she recognized the irony of her pain. He was the enemy now. She couldn’t let that fact slip away from her, even for a second.

  She tried to harden her heart as she gazed down at him, but instead of hatred and contempt, she felt an irresistible desire to press her lips against his mouth and breathe her own life into his lungs.

  “WHY’D YOU COME BACK?” Zac asked the boy. He seemed to have appeared from nowhere, and Zac felt an overwhelming sense of relief. He ruffled the child’s hair in affection.

  The boy drew away from him. “You have to go, mister.”

  “My name is Zac.”

  “You have to go…Zac.”

  “You keep saying that, but there’s nowhere I need to be. I’d rather just stay here with you. We could go to a baseball game or something. Would you like that?”

  The little boy shook his head, but his eyes glistened with something that tore at Zac’s heart. That made him long for something he hadn’t even known he’d lost.

  “We could play catch,” he suggested hopefully. “Just for a little while.”

  The boy shook his head again. “You have to go.”

  “Please…” But Zac didn’t even understand his own plea. He just knew that when he left, he’d never see the boy again, and the pain of that knowledge was almost more than he could bear. “I can’t leave you,” he whispered.

  The little boy lifted his hand and pointed behind Zac. He turned.

  And there she was, still cloaked in mist. Still as elusive as ever.

  “She’s waiting for you,” the boy said.

  “But she’s not real,” Zac protested.

  “She needs you. You have to help her.”

  “Help her do what?”

  The boy began to back away.

  “No, don’t go,” Zac begged.

  “I have to.”

  “Not yet. Please. Just a little while longer.”

  “She needs you,” the boy said. “You have to go to her. You have to help her.”

  Zac glanced back at the woman. He couldn’t see her face clearly—he never could—but he felt her presence. He felt another presence, too. A danger that lurked deep within the shadows. She seemed to sense it, too. She lifted a hand in supplication, and Zac suddenly had the strongest urge to rush to her, to take her in his arms and never let her go.

  An unaccountable sorrow swept over him as he turned back to the boy. He had to make a choice. “I think I understand now. I have to go.”

  The child nodded and continued to slip away.

  “Wait!” Zac put out a hand to stop him. “Please. Just tell me your name.”

  The little boy hesitated. “It’s Adam,” he said. “My name is Adam.”

  And then he was gone….

  Chapter Four

  “He moved his fingers!”

  “It was probably just a muscle twitch.” The taller of the two nurses put a hand to her mouth to smother a yawn.

  “No, I saw it move,” the blond nurse insisted. “And look at his eyes, Viv. The lids are fluttering. I think he’s coming out of it!”

  Camille had just walked into the ward, and now she paused, her heart pounding, as she listened to the nurses discuss Zac’s condition. Was it true? Was he finally waking up from the coma?

  It had been so long. Nearly a week since she and Davy had pulled him from that mine. She’d almost given up hope….

  Camille closed her eyes, wanting nothing more than to succumb to the rush of emotions that threatened to engulf her, but she knew she had to fight the temptation. She couldn’t allow herself to be pulled back into Zac Riley’s universe. It hadn’t worked the first time, and it wouldn’t work now. It couldn’t.

  What she had to do instead was carry out her own mission. Too much rode on her success.

  “I’ll go fetch the doctor.” The tall, redheaded nurse started to hurry off, but the other one caught her arm.

  “Viv, wait! Look! He’s trying to say something!”

  “Can you understand him? What’s he saying?”

  Almost against her will, Camille took a step closer to Zac’s bed. She could see his lips move frantically, but she couldn’t hear him.

  “There, there,” the blond nurse soothed. “Try to stay calm—”

  With surprising strength, Zac grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him. The nurse bent over him, listening intently.

  “Can you make out what he’s saying?” the tall nurse asked anxiously.

  “I’m not sure. It sounds like a name. He keeps saying it over and over.”

  “What name?”

  “Adam. I think he’s asking for someone named Adam.”

  Camille’s knees buckled as she reached blindly for the wall.

  “COME ON, NOW. TIME TO WAKE UP.”

  The deep, no-nonsense voice penetrated Zac’s dreamworld, but he was too weak and tired to respond. He wanted to bury himself in the darkness, but the voice was having none of that.

  “Come on, wake up. You can do it. That’s it. Keep fighting….”

  Zac opened his eyes, batting his lids against the sudden brilliance. The light hurt. He wanted to close his eyes and sink back into the darkness, but it was too late. He was awake now, and there was no going back.

  Three anxious faces peered down at him.

  “Where am I?” he croaked.

  “You’re in County Hospital,” the man told him. “I’m Dr. Cullen. This is Nurse Wilson and Nurse Brody. They’ve been taking very good care of you.”

  The shorter nurse, a blonde with blue eyes and deep dimples, beamed down at him. “We’ve all been very worried about you.”

  The other nurse, a tall, slender redhead, nodded in agreement. “Indeed we have. Everyone will be so happy to hear that y
ou’re back with us.”

  Zac glanced at his surroundings in confusion. “What am I doing here?”

  “You have a head injury,” the doctor told him. “You’ve been unconscious for nearly a week.”

  “A week?” Panic welled inside Zac. He had someplace to go…something he had to do….

  “Can you tell us your name?” the doctor urged gently.

  He thought for a moment. “Zac…Riley.”

  The doctor nodded in satisfaction. “That’s the name we found in your wallet. Do you remember anything about the accident?”

  Accident? What accident? Zac shook his head.

  “You were found in a deserted coal mine,” the doctor explained. “We think you may have been injured in a cave-in, but that’s only speculation on our part. I suspect everything will come back to you shortly, and you can fill us in on the details.”

  A coal mine? What the hell was going on here? What were these people talking about?

  Zac’s gaze flickered over them. There was something odd about their appearance. The women wore old-fashioned nurses’ caps for one thing and their uniforms were long-sleeved and starchy white even though the temperature inside the hospital seemed quite hot.

  Their hairstyles were different, too, as was the cut of the doctor’s suit. They might have all been bit players in an old black-and-white movie.

  And then a flood of memories came rushing back to Zac. “We’ve found a wormhole. A time tunnel, if you will. A secret passage that links the present with the past. To 1943 to be precise.”

  “What’s the date?” he blurted. He tried to sit up, but, instantly, the doctor’s hands were on his shoulders, pushing him firmly back against the pillow.

  “Try to stay calm,” he advised. “You’ve been through quite an ordeal, Mr. Riley. It’ll take some time to get oriented—”

  Zac grabbed his arm. “The date. What is the date?”

  “It’s the seventh day of August.”

  “And the year?”

  The two nurses exchanged a glance before one of them said, “Nineteen forty-three.”

  Zac fell back against the pillow. “It’s not too late then. I’m not too late.”

  “Too late for what?” the blond nurse asked him.

  “To save the future,” Zac muttered as he felt consciousness slipping away.

  He heard the nurse giggle, and just before the darkness claimed him again, Zac could have sworn he saw the doctor’s eyes narrow in suspicion.

  THE NURSES FAWNED OVER HIM incessantly. It was almost as if they were in a contest to see which one could lavish him with the most attention.

  Zac supposed he should have been flattered, but he suspected their clucking had more to do with the lack of eligible men during wartime than it did with his own personal charisma. But he appreciated their concern just the same, especially considering that the hospital was so severely understaffed. He’d heard the nurses chattering about how some of the more experienced personnel had recently been lured to the hospital in Oak Ridge, leaving the county facility in dire straits. The remaining staff often saw their shifts doubled, sometimes tripled, but somehow the nurses always found the time to stop by Zac’s bed as they made their rounds.

  Dr. Cullen had also taken a keen interest in Zac’s progress. He seemed amazed and truly baffled by how rapidly Zac appeared to be healing after having been unconscious for nearly a week. Zac gathered from some of the nurses’ offhand comments that the doctor had all but given him up for dead. Then suddenly Zac had “awakened,” apparently no worse for the wear. His vital signs and reflexes were normal, and he’d experienced nothing more than minor headaches and temporary blurred vision from the whole ordeal. A miracle recovery, they were calling it.

  “The doctor says he’s discharging you soon,” Betty, the blond nurse, informed him. Her blue eyes sparkled in the sunlight streaming through a window at the end of the ward. “What are your plans when you leave here?”

  Zac shrugged. “I guess I’ll need to find a job and a place to live.”

  “You really shouldn’t go back to work until you’re fully recovered,” she scolded. “And in the meantime, maybe I can help you find a place to stay, at least temporarily. I’ll talk to my uncle. My cousin Tom is in the Pacific with the 25th Infantry. He was at Guadalcanal,” she said proudly. “You can probably use his room for a little while.”

  “I wouldn’t want to put anyone out,” Zac hedged. Besides, he needed a place where he could come and go at all hours, without arousing suspicion.

  “You wouldn’t. Uncle Herbert would probably enjoy the company. He’s been pretty lonely with Tommy away. And anyway there isn’t another room to be had around here. Even the boarding houses and apartments in Knoxville are full. Some people have even rented out their chicken coops.” She gave a delicate shudder. “We’re not exactly used to living high on the hog in these parts, but it would take somebody mighty desperate to bunk down in a henhouse. Although, I’ve seen some of those places behind the fence. Hutments, they call them. They’re little more than boxes—”

  “Betty Lou, are you talking the poor man’s ear off again?” Vivian, the redhead, demanded as she strode up to the bed.

  “We were just trying to figure out a place for Mr. Riley…Zac—” Betty dimpled sweetly “—to stay when he’s released.”

  “No need to worry about that. I’ve already spoken to Mama.” Vivian gave her friend a smug look. “It’s all set. He can stay with us.”

  Betty looked aghast. “And just where is he going to sleep? Both your bedrooms are three kids deep. Don’t tell me you’re going to put him in with Junior. That baby howls louder than a flea-bitten hound dog—”

  “Well, it would beat listening to your uncle go on and on about the shrapnel he took in certain…delicate areas during the Great War,” Vivian shot back. “And did I hear correctly? Were you actually suggesting Mr. Riley sleep in a chicken coop?”

  “I bet he’d rather sleep with the chickens than put up with all those brats at your house,” Betty muttered.

  “Actually, I have a spare room,” a female voice said from the doorway. “It’s nothing fancy, but I can guarantee you some peace and quiet.”

  She was framed by so much light that Zac couldn’t see her features at first. He assumed she was another nurse. Then she walked over to the end of his bed, and he caught his breath. She was the most striking woman he’d ever seen. Tall, slender, with dark hair and gorgeous eyes set off by the blue dress she wore. The garment was simply cut, but the straight skirt and fitted waist displayed curves that were soft and enticing. Her sleek hair was parted on the side and fell forward against her cheek before pooling on shapely shoulders.

  There was something strangely familiar about her features, and yet, for the life of him, Zac couldn’t place her. How in the hell could he have forgotten a woman like her?

  As their gazes met, his heart tightened with an emotion he didn’t understand.

  “Do I know you?” he asked uncertainly.

  She moved to his bedside. The nurses seemed to instinctively realize the newcomer had captured his undivided attention, and they backed off, but not without a measure of resentment.

  Zac barely noticed. He had eyes for only one woman.

  “Do I know you?” he asked again.

  She tugged at a small gold locket she wore around her neck. The light shimmered off the chain, reminding him of the medallion Von Meter had given to him. Zac hoped it was still there, hidden away where he’d left it in the mine.

  “My name is Camille Somersby. I’m the one who dragged you from the mine. Although I can’t take all the credit. I had some help from my neighbor’s sons. They’re the ones who found you.”

  Zac frowned. Something she said tugged at a memory, but the image seemed to hover in the shadows, just out of his reach.

  “I suppose I owe them, and you, my life,” he muttered.

  “Yes, I suppose you do.” There was something strangely reluctant about her demeanor, as if she�
��d come here not of her own accord but of a necessity she couldn’t quite bring herself to acknowledge. “So,” she said briskly. “Have you remembered what you were doing in that mine in the first place?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. I know I came here looking for a job on the reservation. I’ve had some experience in construction, and I’d heard they were hiring.”

  “Some of the nurses seem to think that you must have heard about the mine in town, and, when you couldn’t find a place to stay, you decided to go up there and camp out. Does that ring any bells?”

  “It’s all still a haze, I’m afraid.” Zac decided it was time to change the subject. “Speaking of a place to stay, you mentioned something about a room for rent?”

  “Yes. I have a spare room. As you must have discovered, living arrangements have become something of a problem around here. I don’t know how much you know about Oak Ridge….”

  “Enough to know that whatever the military is doing behind that fence is causing a lot of resentment in the folks around here.”

  “Yes, well, whatever goes on behind the fence stays there,” she said. “We’re not allowed to talk about it.”

  “We?”

  “I work at one of the plants.” She glanced around the ward, as if to make sure no one had overheard her. “So, what do you say? Do we have a deal?” When he hesitated, she said quickly, “If it’s the rent you’re worried about, don’t be. There’s a lot to do around the cottage. A leaky roof and such. I’m sure you’ll be able to earn your keep until you find a job. Maybe I could even speak to someone for you.”

  He gave her a wary smile. “You’re being awfully generous to someone you don’t even know. If I were the suspicious type, I might wonder why.”

  “There’s nothing mysterious about it,” she said, but the nervous flutter of her hand as she reached for her locket told him something else. “I have a vested interest in your welfare. I helped save your life, remember?” She smiled, but something in her eyes, a lingering dusk, led Zac to believe that Camille Somersby was a woman with secrets. Dangerous secrets.