by BETH KERY
Ryan kicked the blond in the groin and took his gun from him as he doubled over, falling heavily on top of the other man, both of them grunting loudly. By the time the man beneath shoved the deadweight of his coworker off him, Ryan had the pistol trained on him.
"Throw it down or I'll shoot you."
"Ryan, get down!" Hope shrieked from directly behind him.
He glanced around in alarm and saw Diamond Jack standing on the other side of the pile of humanity in the doorway, a snarl of hatred on his face, a bloody hand raised and ready to fire Ryan's gun. Ryan flung his weight backward in the direction of Hope, covering her with his body. They both hit the floor with a crash, Hope unfortunately taking the brunt of his weight. The knife she'd been carrying skittered across the wood floor, but Ryan figured it was better off there than accidentally in his back.
He quickly aimed and fired at Jack. Without bothering to wait and see the result, he transferred his attention to the henchman on the floor, who was in the process of raising his pistol and aiming. Ryan winged him like he had Diamond Jack. The man grunted; the pistol clattered to the floor.
Ryan sprung up and surveyed the area for threat. Both of Jack's guards lay unmoving and there was no sign of Jack. The prostitutes stared at him slack-jawed, their faces pale with shock.
"Let's go," Ryan told Hope tensely once he'd helped her up off the floor. He pulled her with him toward the staircase, pausing to retrieve his knife. His eyes widened in disbelief when he felt her jerking back on his hand, resisting him.
"Hope, get back here," Ryan ordered furiously when she yanked her hand out of his and ran over to the prostitutes.
"Quickly! Diamond Jack will kill you when he recovers," Hope hissed at the stunned women.
"Hope, get your butt over—"
She turned around to face him, her expression anxious and desperate.
"Do you want to just leave them all here to die? What do you think Diamond Jack will do to them? They attacked that man. They helped us escape!"
"We haven't escaped yet," Ryan muttered as he scanned the hallway warily. Was it possible that only these two—the guard at the front of the stairs and the doorman—had been warned of what was occurring upstairs at the Sweet Lash? It seemed too good to be true, but Ryan had to admit the large, interior room that housed the bar and staging areas was quite a distance from the front stairs.
Several of the prostitutes started out of trances of shock and looked into the interior of the viewing room. Ryan glanced around in time to see Mel, the elder of the pair who'd performed the Slip and Whip. Her blonde hair hung askew and her cheeks and mouth were smeared crimson with blood. She steadily regarded first Ryan and then Hope in turn with sharp, brown eyes. Ryan instinctively understood that she was the leader among the women.
"Where would we go?" Mel asked Hope cautiously.
"To Addie Sampson at the Marlborough Club. She runs one of the few brothels in the Levee District that isn't controlled by Jack. A word from me and she'll protect you. You can either work for her or go where you choose. I'll provide something for the finances for those that choose to leave. You have my word on it," Hope added quickly when she saw Mel's doubtful expression.
"Decide now, Mel," Ryan said harshly as he retrieved the pistol from the unconscious doorman. He glanced pointedly at Mario. "The giant's awakening. He's not going to be in a good mood when he does."
Mel looked down and saw Mario's huge bald head moving from side to side. He mumbled gutturally in a foreign language. She nodded decisively.
"We're going. There ain't time to get nothing from your rooms, so don't let me hear a word about that. Amy, give Molly your robe." When the woman, who was apparently Amy, opened her mouth as if to protest, Mel pointed a finger at her. "If you're gonna whine, then stay behind, Amy. You got a corset on under your robe and Molly's naked.
Now, let's go."
"Wait," Ryan said to Mel. "Is Jack unconscious?"
She glanced back into the room and nodded quickly.
"Get my gun from him. And the rest of you— mover
He approached Hope as the women began clambering off a sluggishly moving Mario.
"Stupendous job of following my instructions, Hope," he murmured in exasperation.
"I'm sorry, Ryan, but I couldn't leave you out in the hallway alone. And the women—Jack'll kill them if they stay."
Ryan opened his mouth and closed it. The fierceness of her spirit left him speechless.
And of course, she was 100 percent right about the prostitutes who had participated in the attack. Diamond Jack wasn't the type to lightly accept a rebellion against his authority.
Ryan met Hope's dark-eyed gaze and nodded once.
She sighed with relief.
"Here. Do you know how to use this?" he asked as he handed her the pistol.
"No," she said, eyeing the gun like he'd just put a snake in her hand.
"The safety is on, Hope, just—"
He paused when Mel stepped over Big Mario's body, carrying his SIG. Ryan took it from her and gave her the doorman's pistol in return, pausing to give both Hope and Mel terse instructions on how to use the weapons. In fact, he'd been a little surprised at how modern seeming the pistols were despite the narrow barrels. He would have guessed they'd be revolvers, but they were, in fact, early versions of automatics.
"If you should have to fire, shoot to kill. Chances are you'll hit something if you do,"
Ryan instructed.
The women were all assembled now. He told them to wait a moment while he checked out what the situation was in the entry-way. A few seconds later he came to the top of the stairs, raised his finger to his mouth to indicate they needed to be as quiet as possible and beckoned for Hope and the women to follow.
Ryan reached the bottom of the stairs first, pausing at the sound of approaching voices.
He signaled for Hope to go behind him and lead the women out the front door while he waited for whoever approached. Most of the women had scuttled out the door by the time a middle-aged, balding man who was leaning down as he flirted drunkenly with the woman on his arm looked up to see Ryan holding his weapon on him. Ryan noticed that he had a short-brimmed ivory felt hat clutched in his hand.
"What the—"
"Shut up or I'll hurt you."
"What do you want?" the young woman asked. Ryan recognized her as being the prostitute that had been in the lap of the man Jack had clobbered earlier. Up close, she looked like she was about sixteen years old.
"That hat, for starters. It's mine," Ryan informed the man, who had somehow procured his Coach Stagg hat that he'd left at the bar.
The man handed it to him, speechless. Ryan slammed it on his head, his entire ensemble now consisting of his pants, socks, boots and the hat.
He looked at the girl.
"Mel and a bunch of the women are escaping from the Sweet Lash if you'd care to join them," he told her quietly. When her mouth dropped open as though she were about to barrage him with questions he shook his head. "No time. I'm leaving now. If you want to come—"
But Mel saved him further explanations by hissing from the opened doorway. "Sally, get your ass out here. We're leaving the Sweet Lash for good."
Sally looked up at the bald man, who wore a stunned expression.
A huge grin spread on her pretty face. She didn't seem too upset when Ryan brought down the butt of his gun on the man's temple. "Bye-bye, Charlie," Sally whispered happily after Ryan had stuffed the unconscious man's body in the entryway closet.
SIXTEEN
An hour later, Ryan wandered around the drawing room of 1807 Prairie Avenue. Hope had hastily lit a gas lantern and several candles upon their arrival. Since their mission was secret, she didn't dare illuminate any of the newly installed electric fixtures. Mel sat in a yellow print chair and watched him as he prowled around the amazing room.
Hope had left just thirty seconds ago, saying she needed to retrieve something from her bedroom. At first Ryan had insisted upon going wit
h her, still worried about something happening to her.
"Nothing dangerous is going to happen to me in my own house, Ryan," Hope had exclaimed in muted exasperation.
Ryan wasn't so sure about that, however. He still didn't know if he was helping to change Hope's fate or nudging events to make her demise more inevitable. The thought brought him close to panic. It was starting to feel like every choice he made—move right or move left?—was somehow inevitably predetermined. The one thing he knew for certain was that the year 1906 was not a healthy year for Hope Stillwater.
He needed to get her out of it as soon as possible. For some strange reason, however, Hope had been adamant that he could not accompany her to her bedroom before she'd turned away, blushing, and hurried out of the room.
Ryan's nervousness for Hope's safety had slowly been replaced by awe as he took in the interior of the drawing room.
Every nerve in his body seemed to vibrate with mixed shock and amazement as he studied the details of the luxurious room. The only items of decor that remained in the year 2008 were the priceless mahogany panels covering every square inch of the walls and the elaborately carved fireplace. To see all the rich paintings, oriental carpets, crystal decanters and highly polished silver brought it home with more force than anything he'd experienced yet.
He truly was walking around in a different century.
One rarely saw this degree of luxury in modern times or if they did, never was it so naturally and elegantly displayed. This was a room that was clearly lived in and enjoyed, not a stiff, stuffy place where Hope and her father occasionally ushered in august visitors with an aim to impress.
Although the furnishings were well made, with fine woods and luxurious fabrics, the couch and several of the chairs by the fire were slightly worn, indicating how much Hope, her father and their visitors sat and lived in here. Ryan picked up a delicate blue-and-white porcelain bowl. Granted, he was no expert on the subject, but it appeared to be a genuine piece of Ming porcelain. Alistair had a few Ming vases that Ryan had studied with interest on several occasions.
He looked inside the bowl and saw that Jacob Stillwater used the priceless object as an ashtray for his cigars.
He shook his head in amazement and replaced the bowl on the table. Hope's father must have inherited his wealth. Surely social reformist ministers didn't make enough financially to afford a Prairie Avenue mansion. He tried to recall if he'd read anything about Jacob Stillwater's roots in the report he'd gotten from Gail, but came up short.
Ryan squinted in the dim light as he studied the portrait of a dark-eyed, dark-haired woman above the fireplace. She wore a lavish sapphire-and-diamond necklace along with matching earrings. The woman's physical similarity to Hope was so striking that it immediately caused a person to seek out the few subtle differences— lips that were thinner in comparison to Hope's lush rosebud mouth, breasts slightly smaller than Hope's, a more aquiline nose—
"Why did you stop that man from beatin' Betsey and me?"
Ryan spun around. He'd been so engrossed in studying the portrait of what must surely be Hope's mother that Mel's question had taken him by surprise. She sat stiffly in a chair near the entryway while they waited for Hope to return, as if she were prepared to bolt at any moment and wanted a convenient location to make her escape. It struck Ryan for the first time that Mel was uncomfortable to the point of prickliness sitting in a room that was almost negligently elegant and grand. Like him, she clearly was not accustomed to being in such a place.
"I have experience with guys like that at my job. You can usually spot them from a mile off." Ryan shrugged. "Sorry I didn't get there before he started hitting you."
Mel gave a bark of laughter. She looked at him as though he were some kind of bizarre alien artifact that had just fallen from the sky and still smoked and sizzled at her feet. It took him a moment to realize she'd been shocked by his apology.
"And then you helped us escape. Why?"
"You mostly have Hope to thank for that. On my part"—he shrugged—"seemed like the right thing to do at the time."
Mel stood slowly and came toward him, her head cocked as she examined him, her squinted eyelids deepening the lines at the corners of her brown eyes. She was still dressed in the robe and riding boots she'd worn to perform in the Slip and Whip. They'd left the rest of the women at the Marlborough Club with a concerned-looking Addie Sampson. The last glimpse Ryan'd caught of Hope's colorful friend she'd been bustling about her private boudoir, barking out orders to maids for towels and hot water and personally seeing to the women's cuts and bruises.
Ryan had asked Hope on their hurried flight to Prairie Avenue to keep their presence secret from the household, including her father, for the time being. She'd agreed, although he thought she was so overwhelmed by the circumstances to question his motives. Hope had snuck them into the house by a side door that Ryan hadn't even discovered existed yet in the early twenty-first century. She'd led them quietly down the back stairs of the darkened mansion, pausing at one point and lifting a finger to her lips as they crossed the foyer. The chandelier in the enormous formal entry hall had been lit, as though to entice the missing mistress of the household back home.
Ryan had seen a light shining beneath a swinging door, which he knew from his own time period led to the kitchen, pantries and back stairs—the servants' portion of the house.
But no one, including the awake, concerned servants, had observed them as Hope led them to the drawing room and whispered for them to wait until she returned.
"Why'd you really do all that stuff back there at the Sweet Lash?" Mel asked presently, a small smile playing around her mouth.
"Why'd you stop Diamond Jack from shooting me?" Ryan asked. Mel had given Hope and him a breathless description of what had occurred in the viewing room at the Sweet Lash as the three of them hurried through the dark night, leaving the seedy Levee District behind.
Mel's grin deepened. Ryan realized he'd never seen her smile before—at least in any genuine sense. The single dimple in her right cheek made her look about fifteen years younger. Ryan squinted at her in disbelief.
"Ramiro?"
Mel gave him a "what's your problem, asshole?" look that only confirmed his sudden suspicion that Jim Donahue wasn't the only person he knew who had an existence in Hope's time period.
Son of a bitch, this was amazing.
"What did you call me?" Mel asked suspiciously.
"Sorry. You just sort of reminded me of someone for a second."
She shook her head. "You're a strange man. Nice, but strange. And to answer your question, I stopped Jack because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time."
"Guess we're even, then."
"Guess so," Mel replied, suddenly looking more relaxed than Ryan had ever seen her.
They both glanced over when the drawing room door shut softly and Hope hurried into the room.
Ryan's eyes widened in amazement. It struck him for the first time that he'd never really seen her fully clothed. Seeing Hope in the garb of an early-twentieth-century gentlewoman sent another shock wave through him.
"What?" Hope whispered when she saw his face.
Ryan blinked, realizing he'd been gaping. She wore a long, checked tan-and-black skirt with a white ruffled sort of blouse that buttoned all the way up to her neck. Instead of spilling down her back her hair had been affixed to her head. With the black belt highlighting her tiny waist, the few loose curls around her cheeks and the snug, form-fitting white blouse, she looked fresh, feminine and thoroughly alluring.
"Nothing," Ryan replied, clearing his throat.
She drew a long, midnight blue velvet box from a deep pocket in her skirt. She opened the box and took out something that flashed with muted fires in the dim room.
"This is for you," Hope whispered, reaching out to Mel. "I have already told Addie you will bring it to her. Addie has helped me dispose of such things before when I needed funds for various projects. A jeweler she knows wil
l give you a fair price, and you and the others will have some spending money to start anew."
Mel accepted what Hope offered. For several seconds she just stared at her hand. Her brown eyes flickered up to the portrait over the mantel. Abruptly she reached out, using one hand to grab Hope's wrist and the other to return the object into her palm.
; "What?" Hope asked in rising confusion. She gently pushed her hand back toward Mel but the older woman was unwilling to take what she offered.
"I may have been raised in an Indiana cornfield and been stupid enough to believe the lies Jack's man told me when I was sixteen years old, but I'm not a fool, Miss Stillwater."
Hope's gaze flickered over to Ryan uneasily as though asking for assistance in understanding. "I'm sorry. I'm not sure what you mean. I told you I would give you something to help you and the others financially—"
"So you're giving me that? Are you mad, girl?"
When Ryan saw Hope's slain expression he grabbed her hand and pried back her fingers.
An exquisite platinum, sapphire and diamond necklace lay across her palm like a supple, jeweled serpent— the same necklace that Hope's mother wore in the portrait.
"Hope ... no, honey."
Hope looked at Ryan, then at Mel and back to Ryan again. A look of grim determination suddenly overcame her face. She took the necklace from Ryan and shoved it at Mel's belly until she grunted and raised her hands reluctantly.
"Stones. Rocks. That's what they are. Do you think they mean more to me than human lives? Don't tell me they mean more to you," Hope challenged fiercely when Mel opened her mouth to protest.
"No. Of course not," Mel said after a stunned moment.
When Hope noticed the tough older woman's chastened expression she seemed to regret her aggressiveness. Her cheeks colored in embarrassment. "Don't worry. I still have my mother's sapphire earrings . .. and many other mementos of hers as well. Besides," Hope said, raising her chin proudly. "My mother would have approved wholeheartedly."
"With a daughter like you, miss, I'm sure she would have."
Ryan couldn't have said which woman looked more surprised or embarrassed by Mel's tender words.
