Outlaw Carson

by Janzen, Tara

  He opened one trunk, then another, and another, easing the lids back to expose not the treasures within, which appeared to be nothing more than layers of ivory-colored fabric, but the trunks themselves. The inside panels were black as the night, and made up of wooden blocks, long, narrow rectangles worn smooth at the edges. Into each block was carved, with intricate delicacy, rows and rows of script. Kristine’s hand slowly lifted to cover her mouth, and she took a step forward. Strips of leather nested between the blocks, protecting them, and were interspersed with tufts of the ivory fabric flecked with black.

  “My God,” she whispered, moving closer. She reached out with her hand but didn’t touch. Inches away, her fingers curled into her palm. The cloth was more than mere fabric. He’d packed the trunks with prayer flags, cushioning the ancient printing blocks with layers of holy invocations to the gods.

  “They’ll have to be studied,” she murmured, “put in the labs, dated and analyzed. My God.” She eased closer yet and peered inside one of the lids, forcing herself still not to touch. She tilted her head far to one side, studying the printing blocks. “It looks Mongolian, but it’s hard to tell backward, and I’m no expert.”

  “But I am, Kreestine. My partners know this and will pay dearly for the opportunity to own what I have brought. They will run their own tests.”

  She whirled back around, the words “grave robber” flashing across her mind. “You can’t sell them!”

  “Of course, I must sell them. I cannot protect them indefinitely. Already I have risked my life and the lives of many others to bring Kublai’s Kāh-gyur out of Asia.”

  The Kāh-gyur of Kublai Khan, she thought, hidden through the centuries in the monastery of Chatren-Ma. Suddenly too many things made sense: the rumors coming out of Asia, the way he’d shown up unannounced and unaccompanied, the university’s slapdash coercion, Dr. Chambers’s final warning, Harry’s reclusiveness. Everything made sense except her stupidity in buying it all at face value. She’d always considered herself heavy on the intelligent side of the brains or beauty equation, until this morning.

  “I cannot condone the theft of a priceless historical relic, the heritage of the Tibetan people,” she said staunchly. It took more courage than she’d thought she had to confront him, this strange barbarian from the frozen wastelands of “the roof of the world.” Historians didn’t take a Hippocratic oath when they received their degrees, but there were some lines she couldn’t cross. He stood on the other side of them. “I should call the police.”

  “I have been outrunning the authorities for a month, Kreestine,” he said softly. “Now would be an inopportune moment for them to catch up with me.”

  His statement caused her pulse to race and her face to flush. What had she gotten herself into? “You should have thought of that before you stole the Kāh-gyur.”

  “I did not steal anything. Your university is not the only institution concerned about the survival of Tibetan history and archaeological sites. The Tibetans themselves have a much greater stake in salvaging their heritage. They contacted me, and I promised to do what I could.”

  “The Tibetan government?” she asked, only slightly reassured.

  “The exiled Tibetan government. Do you understand?”

  Yes, she understood. She knew the Chinese, who had invaded Tibet in 1950 and forced the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and political leader of Tibet, into exile in 1959, were tearing up sacred ground as quickly as they found something they considered of value—like uranium, or gold, or a religious rallying point for an oppressed people.

  The outlaw Carson, she mused. He’d been well named. Where else would an outlawed government go for help except to another outlaw? Who else but an outlaw would have dared such an expedition? And who else but Kit Carson would have apparently succeeded?

  She didn’t buy his “things of power” routine, at least not completely. She’d done enough investigative research of her own, though, to know that when people wanted something badly enough, they usually found it. Luggage that had traveled halfway around the world, especially trunks as notably unique as his, would leave a paper trail a mile long, and it was her signature scrawled across Bob’s clipboard three days in a row. Carson had certainly found her.

  She had two choices, she figured. She could sue the university for negligent, reckless endangerment of her bodily person; or she could drop down on her knees and thank the Lord and Harry Fratz for giving her such a golden opportunity. If Carson was lying, she was smart enough to distance herself from the hoax before it reached damaging proportions. That was a chance the university and Harry obviously had been unwilling to take, especially considering Carson’s means of acquiring the Kāh-gyur. If he spoke the truth, and if she could pull it off, she’d have Dean Chambers eating out of her hand. For the barest instant she imagined herself in a circle of glory, turning down offers from Yale, Harvard, Stanford, holding out for Cambridge or Oxford.

  Calm down, Kristine, she told herself. Think this thing through. But excitement and rampant curiosity were clouding her judgment. She recognized the double-whammy from lifelong experience, and from having given in to them both more times than she cared to admit. She’d agreed to marry Dr. John Garraty, her mentor at the University of Colorado, in a buzz of excitement, and that decision had turned into an unmitigated disaster that continued to haunt her life like a proverbial bad penny.

  But Chatren-Ma . . . Now there was a prize worth bending the rules for. She had the world to gain and nothing to lose but her common sense and a little sleep while Carson stayed in her home.

  Kit felt her wavering, and he felt the surprising strength of her ambition pushing her in his favor. It was all he needed to dare a slight trespass. Yet even as he reached out to caress her brow, he wondered about this new depth to the woman he’d mistaken for a concubine and a housekeeper. Courage was admirable in both, but intelligence and ambition were dangerous in the former. He’d have to watch her carefully, not only to save her from the Turk if he managed to find them, but to save her from herself if the need arose.

  He touched her in silence, letting go of his troubled thoughts for the moment necessary to insure the invitation she was allowing and he had to insist upon.

  Say yes, Kreestine. You will have no regrets, and I am too tired to argue endlessly over what has already been decided.

  Kristine stepped back, wondering what in the world had compelled him to touch her again, and wondering why in the world she’d enjoyed the brief contact. She covered her embarrassment by saying the first thing that popped into her head. “You must be tired.”

  “Yes, Kreestine.” He laughed softly. “I am tired.”

  For better or worse, she knew what she had to do. Ten minutes ago she’d been racking her brain, trying to figure out a way to get rid of him. Now she wasn’t going to let him out of her sight until she’d gotten what she wanted, a future in which she called all the shots.

  “Well, you can’t stay here,” she said. “In the house, I mean. But there’s a room above the garage, and you’re welcome to use it until you . . . until you dispose of what you’ve brought.” She hesitated again. Hardball negotiations weren’t her forte, but she was determined to make something out of her damnable luck. “I want—”

  He silenced her with the slight tracing of his finger along her chin. “For your safety and my pleasure, I will meet your condition. My only wish is to place the Kāh-gyur. I will give you my knowledge of Chatren-ma.” He touched his palms together and bowed his head in a gesture of compliance. “You may seek your destiny as you will with the gift.”

  Either the man was damned intuitive, Kristine thought, or he’d read her mind, which was, of course, ridiculous. She slanted a cautious glance in his direction. Ridiculous, she assured herself. No one could read a mind she’d obviously lost.

  * * *

  “Well, you just march right back out there and tell him to leave!” Jenny exclaimed over the phone. “Goodness sakes, Kristine, I can’t believe you invited the m
an to stay up there in the woods with you!”

  “It’s not the woods, Jenny,” Kristine said, tucking the portable phone between her shoulder and her ear as she dug through her sock drawer in search of a matched pair. “And I already have a mother. What I need is a friend who can—”

  “And I should call her right now and tell her what her crazy daughter has done. Muriel won’t like this, young lady. She won’t like this at all.”

  “Well, I’m not about to tell her, and if you don’t, she’ll never know.” Many times over the past year Kristine had doubted her decision to take on as her assistant the oldest graduate student in the history of the history department. None of the other professors had to put up with being called “young lady” by their assistants, or have their nutritional knowledge challenged at every turn. But Jenny had proven her worth more than once, especially when it came to the minutiae of research and office politics. “Besides, Jenny, you were behind this project one hundred percent.”

  “I thought it would be a good career move for you to work with the man. I didn’t expect you to take up with him!”

  “I haven’t taken up with him.” Pink, white, blue, striped, hearts, argyles, cotton, nylon, wool. How could a person have so many socks without two of them even remotely resembling each other? Kristine wondered, digging deeper. “I need you, Jenny, bustling around the office for a week, looking busy. I’m giving you free rein. Organize whatever you want, throw out the rest.” She picked up a purple sock and, miracle of miracles, found another.

  “You’re up to something, Kristine Richards, and I want to know what it is. Every time I get near that trash can you pitch a fit.”

  “So take advantage of my temporary insanity.”

  “Tell me, Kristy,” the older woman insisted.

  Kristine sat down on the edge of the bed to pull her socks on, then immediately jumped back up.

  Searching in the pile of sheets and blankets she found her long-lost hairbrush and stuffed it into the pocket of her robe. “I’m just doing what you told me to do, Jenny. I’m making a career move, working my way up the ladder.”

  “Kristine.” Jenny spoke her name slowly, with the voice of authority granted her by her years. “I know the man has an international reputation, but it’s not all that good, and there is absolutely no way for you to sleep your way to the top in this business.”

  “You’ve shocked me, Jenny, really shocked me.” She tugged one sock on and reached for the other. “You know I don’t sleep with anybody for any reason.” The instant the words were out of her mouth, she knew she shouldn’t have opened the discussion.

  “And you’re not getting any younger,” Jenny shot back. “It’s time for you to get back into circulation. Muriel and I still don’t understand why you stopped seeing Grant Thorp.”

  “I wasn’t seeing him. We had three dates, three long, boring dates, and I wish you and my mother wouldn’t talk about me behind my back. Can we get back to business.”

  “We could if I knew what business we were talking about.”

  “Suffice to say, Carson doesn’t want the trunks moved, and he doesn’t want to leave them. Therefore, he stays here with the trunks. Simple logic.” She refrained from using the word protection, knowing it would only unnerve her assistant. “All I’m asking you to do is field any questions that might come up for the next week. Nobody seems to want anything to do with him, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble.”

  “Nobody except you,” Jenny said knowingly. “What does he look like?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” She switched the phone to her other ear as she shrugged out of her robe and hung it on a hook. A moment later it slid to the floor, but by then her hands were full with juggling the phone and trying to pull on her jeans.

  “Try me,” Jenny said.

  “Well, he’s got this auburn braid hanging down to his shoulder blades and—”

  “Red?” Jenny interrupted.

  “No. Darker, more chestnutty. When he stands in the sun you can see the red highlights, but in the shadows or inside the house it’s mostly dark brown.”

  “Hmm. What color are his eyes?”

  Kristine snapped her jeans and thought for a moment, staring off into space. “Cinnamon. Just like cinnamon, and really soft, and really old.”

  “Hmm-mmm.”

  “And he’s got these gold bracelets, a couple of pounds of them.” She broke contact with the phone for a moment to pull a black sweatshirt over her head. “I think they’re Scythian, if you can believe it.”

  “I see,” the older woman said in a clipped tone.

  “So what do you think, Jenny? Will you cover for me for a week?”

  “I will if you’ll make darn sure you cover yourself. Is Mancos there?”

  “Alive and drooling.”

  “Good. I’ll call you if anybody on this end decides to forego their reputation long enough to take an interest in Fratz’s Folly.”

  Kristine sat back down on the bed and reached for a tennis shoe. “The last I heard it was Richard’s Ramble Through the Ruins.”

  “Well, yes,” Jenny admitted, then added, “The bets are running five to one against you coming up with anything publishable by the end of the summer. Half the department doesn’t think Carson is going to show up at all. He’s never left Asia before.”

  “He did this time,” Kristine said.

  “And the other half doesn’t think he did the job he was funded to do.”

  “I’ve got seven trunks full of journals and photographs and—and other things that say otherwise.” She was glad Jenny couldn’t see her grin. “Don’t worry. Come September, you might be working for the head of the department.”

  No idle boast, Kristine realized ten minutes later as she prowled through the one trunk he’d allowed her access to. This one was made of plain wood and held only legal research, no forbidden treasure. The man’s documentation was meticulous. Notes and photographs were collated and color-coded, dated, numbered, and inventoried into a master list with a backup file, and his knowledge was astounding. He’d made inferences and conclusions she would never have dreamed of making. A quarter of a way through a preliminary review of his journals, she stopped long enough to call Jenny back. He’d practically written the book himself.

  “I’ll meet any bet dollar for dollar, double for Harry,” she said.

  “He’s in for twenty,” Jenny said.

  “Then he’s out for forty, that spineless wimp.”

  Hours later, Kristine was still entering Carson’s master file into her computer, double-checking each serial number and description with its corresponding photograph. A lock of hair fell over her face, and she anchored it back into the untidy bun she had finger-combed into a tangled disarray on the top of her head.

  “Wonderful,” she murmured around the pencil clenched between her teeth, as she held a photograph under the light of her desk lamp. She may have been crazy to let him stay—the longer she thought about it, the less concern she had for his bandit theories—but the project itself was everything she’d dreamed it could be. And this was without the extra tantalizing prize he’d offered. She had to write up the legal findings first, that went without saying, but afterward she was going to set Asian history and Dr. John Garraty on their heels.

  She picked up her coffee mug and slumped back into her chair, almost laughing out loud. Yes, Dr. Garraty was in for a surprise. She dropped her reading glasses on the desk and slowly swiveled her chair around, changing her view from one wall of bookcases to another wall of bookcases, then past the glass doors leading to the deck and overlooking the city, then right smack dab into Kit Carson.

  She pressed her toes into the floor, abruptly halting her swiveling. A splash of coffee soaked into her sweatshirt, and she hastily brushed at the stain.

  He’d showered, shaved, and changed his clothes, and she was in no way prepared for the sight of him in his jeans and a T-shirt. The long shirtlike garment he’d worn earlier had hidden
much of what she’d felt when he’d held her close. Without it, she had to come to grips with a lean, muscled body, dark-skinned arms, narrow hips, and broad shoulders outlined by pure white cotton.

  “Namaste, Kreestine.” He smiled as he tied off his braid with a strip of chamois leather.

  The house wasn’t big enough for both of them, she thought. Not with his way of filling up a room by barely stepping into it, and not when she felt surrounded by him when he was a good ten feet away.

  “Namaste . . . Kit.” She spoke his name for the first time and felt another barrier crumble, one she quickly tried to reconstruct. “You must be hungry. I made you some dinner. Why don’t we go into the kitchen.” At least it was a much bigger room than the one they were squeezed into at the moment.

  She pushed out of the chair and rounded the desk, silently willing him to move out of the doorway before she got there, and almost wishing he could read her mind.

  “I hope you’re not a vegetarian,” she went on. “I’m a little low in the fruits and vegetables department right now. I usually do my shopping on Thursday and today is Wednesday, so I’ll go tomorrow.” She rambled on but he hadn’t moved an inch. “If you need something special, I’ll be happy to—”

  His warm hand wrapped around her upper arm, stopping her in her tracks and jarring her pulse into overdrive.

  “I’m not a vegetarian.” His gaze roamed over her face, without once meeting her eyes.

  “Well, good,” she said. “Then you won’t mind—” What was he doing? “Won’t mind—” She raised her hand to stop him as he raised his own hand to her hair.

  She’s done the most amazing thing to her hair, Kit thought. He admired the sheer force of will it must have taken to tame the wild mane, but it wouldn’t do. He pulled a bobby pin free.

  “Do you mind?” she gasped, picking the pin from his hand and trying to push it in as he took out another one. In the heat of all her buzzing excitement, she’d conveniently forgotten the more personal effect he had on her, as well as the less than professional moments of their initial meeting. He’d just reminded her of both in no uncertain terms.