Doc Carroll and Rebecca, beside the three small plots that held their babies.
Angus Percival, Beloved Brother and Uncle.
A sob burst from her throat. He’d died young, only thirty-three. His beautiful, simple face rose in her mind.
She couldn’t seem to shake the conviction that it was only yesterday when she'd last seen him, holding Sophie in his arms, so proud, so loving. Rest in peace, dear Angus.
And beside him was his sister. Jeannie Chalmers, the marker read. 56 years.
She’d never remarried. But how could she trust again, after Oscar?
The graves of these people she’d known and loved were too much for Hannah to bear. They tore at her heart. She wanted to just walk away, but she reminded herself that she'd come here for a purpose.
Steeling herself against the powerful emotions, she moved on, and on again, and finally, after she’d walked every inch of the quiet graveyard and read every stone that could be read, Hannah admitted to herself that there was no sign of Logan here.
Feeling as if her legs had no strength to carry her, she collapsed on a bench beside the path and looked down on the town that had changed her life forever.
On this day long ago, you burned, Barkerville. Where was my love, that day? Did he escape? Did he leave here, never to return?
Endlessly weary, she walked back down the hill and got into her car. She sat there for a long while, her whole body trembling.
Logan was dead; that at least was certain. Her rational mind told her that he’d died long, long ago, wherever he was buried. She hadn’t found proof here that he’d died at the end of a rope, but she had to accept that time, in whatever fashion, had finally ended his life. She had to release him.
Logan, my dearest one, wherever you are, know that I love you, that I will always love you, but I have to let you go now.
It’s time to get on with my life. When she finally managed to control the sobs, she turned the key and started the car, and soon the town of Barkerville was far behind her. Her pilgrimage was over.
She'd planned to stop at the place along the highway where it had all begun and ended, but she knew already there was nothing there. Stopping would revive the agony she'd lived through in the cemetery, the agony she’d experienced that other day when she realized once and for all that Logan was lost to her.
It wasn’t healthy to keep picking at the fragile scabs on those wounds. She’d drive on past, she decided, and somehow, sometime, she’d learn to forget.
But a few minutes later, when the road wound around the hillside and she saw the place where the van had gone into the river, her foot stepped on the brake in spite of what her mind told her was sensible.
She pulled to the shoulder of the road, cursing herself for a fool.
Then she got out of the car and walked slowly down the embankment. The river gurgled, and birds sang. The sun would soon be gone.
Far downstream, she caught a glimpse of a long-haired man in a Stetson, crouched on his haunches, waiting patiently while his horse drank.
He stood up. He was wearing a white shirt and a leather vest, and something about the way he moved…..
Lord, was she going to have to go through her whole life seeing Logan in every tall, dark stranger? She turned to climb back to her car, but from the corner of her eye she saw the man tie his horse to a tree.
He was running towards her.
Terror filled her, awareness that she was in a deserted place on a stretch of empty highway. "Hannah? Hannah!”
Once before, on her first morning in Barkerville, she’d thought she was going to faint.
Now, too, the world spun in dizzy circles an instant before strong, familiar arms closed around her.
"Hannah, my love. My dearest love, thank God I’ve found you!”
Neither of them could stand. They sank to the grass, clamped in each other’s arms, laughing, sobbing, touching.
"How?” With trembling fingers she touched his soot-streaked face. "How?” It seemed the only word she could manage.
He kissed her, frantic kisses that landed on her nose, her eyes, her chin, and at last, at last, her mouth.
He tasted of love and smoke. His mustache tickled. It was a long, breathless time before he answered.
"The water, Hannah.” His words were jubilant. His eyes were bloodshot. His hair was singed at the ends. His white shirt was hopelessly torn and stained with dirt and soot.
He was wonderfully alive, and he was here.
"It’s the water, not the bridge. Billy led his horse down to get a drink, Daniel did the same. You and Daisy and Elvira, you all said your vehicle went into the water."
Hannah turned and stared at the river. He was right, of course. That day, that fateful day she and Elvira and Daisy had bungled their way back, they'd all waded in the stream, even Klaus.
“Do you want to go back, Logan?”
"Back?" He drew away and looked into her eyes. “To Barkerville, you mean?”
She nodded.
"I will, if that’s what you want.”
It didn't matter to her anymore where they were. When they were. All that mattered was being together. She gestured at' the river. "We know how to do it. I’ll come with you."
"Never." He shook his head hard. “Barkerville is burning, Hannah. I barely escaped with my life. Doc Carrol forced the guard to unlock my cell, the jail was already burning. And if I hadn’t burned, I’d have hanged."
Remorse filled her, and apprehension. "Logan, I did a terrible thing. I talked to Carmen, I told her—”
"Shush.” His grimy fingers touched her lips. "It was my own fault, sweetheart, all of it. We’ll speak of it later. Be still now, and just let me hold you.”
Time passed, marked only by their heartbeats.
A car came along, slowed almost to a stop, and picked up speed again in a burst of gravel.
The horse Logan had left whinnied in terror and reared, pawing the air with its hooves, jerking the reins that held it to the tree.
“Damn, I forgot the gold." Logan sprang up, pulling Hannah with him. "We can’t let that nag get away on us, love.”
He ran full out, dragging her behind him across the rocky riverbank. "The saddlebags have our entire fortune in them."
Hannah knew he was wrong. She’d tell him so, when she caught her breath again.
Yesterday’s gold might buy them the things that only gold could buy, but she knew it was their love that made them truly wealthy.
It was a lesson she’d learned in the past, and one she’d teach their children, in the future.
—The End—
A Distant Echo: Chapter One
“You come in there with me, Jackson, you slippery son of a gun. It’s not right to make me do this alone.” Tom scowled across at his partner. They’d been arguing for the better part of ten minutes, standing beside Tom’s mud-stained red Bronco in the parking lot of the senior citizens’ residence.
It was still early afternoon, but the April sun was already dropping behind the snow-capped peaks of the craggy Rocky Mountains that surrounded both the village and the Crowsnest Valley in this remote part of Alberta, Canada.
Tom had a gut feeling he was about to lose the argument.
Jackson was digging in his pocket for a coin to flip, his favorite method of ending an altercation--mainly because he was always luckier at gambling than Tom.
“Heads, you go in and talk to her alone. Tails, I come along,” Jackson proposed, expertly flipping the U.S. quarter he finally dug from the pocket of his well tailored pants. “And it’s--- ahhhaaa---hallelujah. It’s good old Ben himself. You get a good thing, too, because like I’ve been saying all along, my talents with the fair sex don’t extend to cantankerous old women.”
Jackson Zalco’s white pirate’s smile split his handsome, tanned face, turning his features from dangerous to devilish. “Give the venerable Ms. Lawrence my regards, Tom. I’ll wait for you at the tavern. I’ve got the spare keys for the truck. You can walk
back. No telling how long you’ll be. It’s only a couple blocks. The fresh air’ll do you good.”
His traitorous partner roared off in Tom’s truck, leaving him stranded and cursing in the wet slush of the parking lot.
Tom hadn’t ever had occasion to be inside a senior citizens’ residence before, and it made him nervous. The building smelled of pine-scented disinfectant with an overtone of hot roast beef, cooked cabbage, and a generous dash of urine. He did his best to breathe through his mouth.
It was just past four, but it seemed the evening meal was already over. Elderly men and women wandered along the halls as cheerful staff members collected the orange plastic supper trays and chattered with the old folks.
The chubby pink-smocked attendant, who’d taken charge of Tom the moment he stepped through the door, bustled down the hallway beside him. He was a foot taller than her five four, and he was conscious of towering over her. He was also aware that his Western boots made an ugly racket on the mirror-bright polished floor, and that even though he was nearing forty, the men and women who stared at him as he passed their wheelchairs and walkers made him feel like a rawboned kid again.
“Folks in here like to eat early. We serve dinner at four. Then there’s time for a snack before bedtime,” the attendant explained. “Meals are a big deal here, that and television. This is Miss Lawrence’s room,” she added.
The door was open, and she bustled in ahead of Tom. The room was sparsely furnished, holding only two straight-backed chairs, a wardrobe, a bedside table, a pink brocaded armchair, a television, and the hospital bed where the old woman lay. The most striking element was the wide picture window, framing a spectacular view of blue sky, snow-topped mountain peaks, and evergreens.
“Evenin’, Evelyn.” The attendant’s voice was determinedly cheerful. “Seems this gorgeous cowboy’s come all the way from the States to visit you, you lucky thing.” She gave Tom a wink and coquettish simper before she hurried out again.
The bulbous old woman in the hospital bed by the window turned to stare at him and let out what could only be described as a snort. She had sparse, frizzy white hair and an enormous pair of horn-rimmed glasses perched on a tiny nose that seemed to have sunken down into the folds of flesh surrounding it. A thick, hardbound book she’d been reading lay on the patchwork quilt mounded over her bulk.
Tom tried for a grin and held out his hand. “Evenin’, Ms. Lawrence. I’m Tom Chapman. Pleased to meet you at last.”
“Have you no manners, young man?” The voice was precise and school-marmish. “Here in Canada a gentleman removes his hat when he’s in the presence of a lady. You Yankees have a great deal of nerve and no training in etiquette, seems to me.”
The old woman’s numerous chins jiggled with outrage, and Tom snatched off his Stetson before he once again held out his hand.
She left it hanging until he withdrew it. It was obvious she wasn’t pleased at all to meet him, even though she’d agreed, with great reluctance, that he could come. She scowled over her glasses and tapped her fingers on the cover of her book.
Tom set his hat on a chair and met her displeasure with a show of bravery, studying her with as much intensity as she did him.
This unpleasant woman might hold the key to a fortune in gold ingots, and he had to do this right. He tried to figure out from looking at her whether she had all her marbles, and if she did, what might be the best way to charm her. He, like Jackson, had precious little experience with old women.
They’d discussed bringing her flowers and decided against it. This was a business meeting, after all. They didn’t want her to think they were trying to con her in any way, did they?
Though chocolates might have been a good idea. She sure as hell looked and sounded as if she could use some sweetening up, and it was obvious she liked to eat.
Evelyn Lawrence was exceedingly large, and if her clothes were any indication, she must also be color-blind. She wore a voluminous purple flannel nightdress with a thick red sweater over it, despite the fact that it was hot and stuffy in the room. There were several gravy stains down the front of the sweater.
Tom had done whatever sketchy research he could on her. He knew she was eighty-two, the spinster daughter of a local doctor, now long dead. She’d been a schoolteacher. She’d broken her hip in a fall three months ago.
That was about all he’d been able to find out, besides the annoying fact that she was something of a recluse. She hadn’t responded to a single one of his three letters and had refused four separate times to speak with him on the phone. He still didn’t quite understand what had prompted her to answer his fifth call or to agree that he could visit her.
“So you’re that pesky Yankee who kept writing and phoning me before Christmas. From some godforsaken little place in New Mexico, aren’t you?”
Her voice was wheezy, as if she was recovering from a chest cold, but it certainly sounded to Tom as though her mind was functioning.
Tom nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I wrote and called you several times from Albuquerque.” He smothered a grin at her labeling the city of Albuquerque either little or godforsaken. In his opinion, Blairmore, Alberta, more than fit that label.
“You described yourself as an adventurer.” Her gray eyes, almost buried in folds of flesh, were assessing him coldly. “A modern-day treasure hunter, I believe you put it.” There was more than a trace of sarcasm in her tone.
So she’d read his letters after all. He hadn’t been sure, because she sure as hell hadn’t answered them. “Yes, ma’am.” He gave her the smile that always endeared him to females, but there wasn’t so much as a twitch of response from Evelyn.
You sure put paid to the idea that fat people are jolly, old lady. “See ma’am, my partner and I research old stories and myths about treasures of one sort or another, and if there’s enough basis for it, we go looking for whatever’s lost,” he explained. “Sometimes we work for ourselves. Other times we hire out. This time, we’re on our own.”
“And you’re here because of that worn-out old tale of gold buried under our Slide here at Frank.” The words dripped with scorn. “Well, you’ve come on a fool’s errand, young man, because there’s not a word of truth to it. If there had been any gold buried under that Slide, it would have been recovered years ago. The Slide occurred in 1903, you know.” She sounded exasperated.
“I realize that, and you could very well be right, Ms. Lawrence,” he lied. He didn’t think for a moment she was, but he sure as hell wasn’t about to contradict her. “Nine out of ten of the stories I research turn out to be nothing more than tall tales.” And if he hadn’t been more than reasonably certain this one fit the remaining small category, he and Jackson wouldn’t have driven across half of North America to get here.
She was studying him. “How old are you, young man?”
“Thirty-nine.”
She let out a snort. “Aren’t we all. And this treasure hunting is all you do for a living?” There was outright disdain in her voice now.
“Yes ma’am, it is.” In his mind’s eye he saw the upscale apartment building he’d just purchased in Albuquerque, the latest in a number of lucrative real estate investments he’d made in various locations throughout the United States. Unlikely as it might sound, hunting for treasure and then putting the profits into careful investments had made him a wealthy man, and he was quietly proud of it.
“And where is your home, Tom Chapman? Where do you live when you aren’t gallivanting after fool’s gold?”
That was a tough one. “I’m sort of a wanderer, ma’am. I keep a mailing address in Albuquerque, but I don’t really have a home base to speak of.” Truth was, he and Jackson kept most of what they needed in the back of whatever vehicle they were driving. Tom leased space in a warehouse where he stored his growing collection of vintage motorcycles, but he didn’t own much else in the way of possessions.
Investments, now, that was different. But things, no. He and Jackson preferred to travel light.
&n
bsp; “Humph.” Her eyes swept over his weathered buckskin jacket lined in fleece, his checkered shirt, faded, well-worn jeans, and the comfortable boots he’d polished for this visit. From the expression on her face, it was obvious that Evelyn thought it probable he was on social welfare. She studied his features one by one, and he tried not to look as self-conscious as he felt.
“You’re certainly a big, good-looking man,” she pronounced, making it sound like an indictment. “I imagine most foolish women lose whatever wits they have around you, what with that curly hair and those ridiculous eyelashes. Wasted on a man. Are you married?”
“No, I’m not,” he answered. “Never have been.” Same as you, old woman.
She humphed again. “Darned good thing, too, if you spend your precious time running around after buried treasure like a half-wit dog chasing his tail. At your age, you ought to have grown out of such nonsense.”
Whew. Jackson, you rotten sod, you were born lucky to have won that coin toss. This old gal has a mouth on her. Must have scared the living daylights out of the poor kids she taught.
Still, something about her amused him. She might look pitiful, but it was plain there was a razor-sharp mind inside all that flesh. Tom decided the best thing to do was to come straight out with what he wanted from her and take it from there. If he didn’t get down to business, he’d be here all night fending off her insults, and he had a feeling she probably wasn’t going to cooperate anyway. Better get it over with, get himself tossed out on his ear, and at least have time for a few beers with Jackson.
“I believe your father was a treasure hunter, wasn’t he?” It was her father and his memoirs that had brought Tom and Jackson to this remote region as well as their desire to see the Canadian Rockies. They’d spent an inordinate amount of time in various deserts lately, and Jackson insisted he’d always wanted to visit Banff. The National Park wasn’t far from here, a few hours’ drive west. It had seemed a perfect opportunity to combine relaxation and pleasure.
Now and Forever: Time Travel Romance Superbundle Page 62
