“Don’t walk so fast and people won’t run into you when you stop on a dime. You need stop-and-go signals, or maybe a warning light when you downshift.”
Signals? Downshift? Styled hair? Was it possible he was from the future, too? She couldn’t come right out and ask. Instead, she thrust her hands to her hips. “Who are you? Did Daniel Grant send you to harass me?”
“Don’t know him.”
“He’s a Pinkerton agent. I thought you all hung out together, or something.”
He laughed again. “You think I’m a Pinkerton man?”
“Aren’t you? You look like one. You look like a cop.”
“Nope. Just a Marine. Name’s Rick O’Grady.”
“O’Grady? Irish, huh? Why does that name sound familiar?”
Two ladies scrunched by, and Rick motioned for Amber to move toward the chairs and out of the path of shoppers. “You might have heard your sister mention the name. My brother, Connor, has been working with her real estate agency for about a year.”
Amber was already having trouble breathing, but now she couldn’t breathe at all. What the hell was going on here? She put her finger in her ear and twisted it, hoping that would help make sense of the craziness. She took several shallow breaths.
“You’ve got that blanched pasty look going on. You better sit down,” he said.
She lowered herself to a chair and Rick sat in the one beside her. “Put your head between your knees.”
Amber bent double, folded her arms, and rested her head there. “I don’t understand,” she said. “You’re a Marine, not a Pinkerton. You know my sister.” Her voice wobbled. Then she abruptly sat up and glared at him. “Did you travel through a wormhole, too?”
He put a finger to his lips. Then he leaned forward, rested his forearms on his thighs, his slender fingers clasped together. Speaking softly, he said, “Wormhole is as good an explanation as any, I guess. I know of your sister from Connor, but I’ve never met her.”
A woman, dressed in a green riding habit, stopped and hovered next to Rick’s chair, wrapping her hand around the top rail. “I’ve never met you or Olivia, but I’ve heard so much about you both.”
Amber searched the face of a gorgeous woman with luscious auburn hair and beautiful, ageless skin. “Mary, Mother of God. Who are you?”
The woman laughed. “Not her. I assure you.”
Amber scrubbed her face with her hands. This was even crazier—if that was possible—than her arrival yesterday in nineteenth-century Leadville. She whispered, “Now that I know you’re not Jesus and Mary, who are you?”
A man vacated a chair on the other side of Amber and the woman took the seat. “We’re here to help you. I’m Kenzie McBain.” She pointed to Rick. “You’ve already met him, and…” She stretched to look around the store and signaled to a movie-star handsome man who carried himself like a warrior. Not a soldier. A warrior. The man had nothing to prove to anyone, and he knew it.
He walked up behind Kenzie and in a strong Scottish accent said, “We’re drawing attention. We need to leave.” He smiled at Amber. “I’m David McBain. Kenzie’s husband.”
“I need a drink,” Amber said. “A stiff one. No, make that two. To hell with two. Give me a whole bottle.”
“I’d prefer coffee,” Kenzie said. “Where’s Starbucks when you need it?”
“There’s a saloon next door,” Rick said. “Those who want to imbibe can have a hot toddie. Those who want a warm, but less potent libation, can have coffee.”
Kenzie glared at him, tight-lipped, with an expression that clearly said she thought he was nuts. “Imbibe? Potent libation?”
His eyes darted side to side, as if he were checking that no one else would hear what he was going to say. “I’m just trying to fit in.”
“Trust me. Talking like that doesn’t help,” Kenzie said.
Rick shrugged before offering Amber his hand. “If you feel wobbly, lean on me.”
She nudged his hand away. “I’m okay. I want to speak to Lindsey Hughes before I leave, but I don’t see her in the store. Let me ask about her.” Amber crossed the wide-planked flooring, aware of Rick’s footfalls behind her. “I’m going to stop at the counter.”
He cautiously shifted to her side. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
“Good morning, Miss Kelly,” Grandfather Craig said. “I told Mrs. Hughes about ye. We’re both looking forward to yer concert tonight.”
“If I have time to get flyers printed, can I post one in your window?”
“Certainly, and I’ll keep one here on the counter for folks to read while they’re settling their accounts.”
“That’s kind of you.” Amber glanced down a hallway looking for her grandmother. “Is Mrs. Hughes here?”
“She went to the bank.”
“I’m going to have coffee with my friends. I’ll be back later to buy a few things.”
“She didn’t want to interrupt ye earlier. I’ll let her know as soon as she returns.”
Amber left the store with the McBains and Rick and followed them next door, where sawdust covered the floor in a futile attempt to keep mud from spreading to the upper levels. She shivered once, twice, as unease tiptoed up her spine and back again. Then with a shake of her head, she stepped into the smoky saloon where the pungent tinge of unwashed bodies, over-applied perfume, and alcohol was an unwelcomed embrace.
18
1878 Leadville, Colorado—Amber
The cool temperature of the autumn morning vanished in the steamy warmth of the saloon where men stood almost shoulder to shoulder drinking whisky at a marred oak bar. Almost every chair, every table was claimed by men playing at games of chance. Amber and the newcomers made their way through the haze and dim coal-oil lighting.
“Why aren’t these men working?” Kenzie asked.
“There are so many people in Leadville, who knows. Maybe they don’t have claims to work, yet,” Amber said.
Rick snagged a table tucked into a corner at the front of the saloon from two miners who had no intentions of moving until he sneered at them. They quickly quit their claim and walked away from the table and six chairs.
“That was smooth, O’Grady. Do you have a habit of intimidating people like that?” Kenzie asked.
“Nah. They weren’t even drinking. Paying customers should get the tables.”
“I don’t know why you want to be at the front of the saloon. It’d be better to sit in the back to see what’s going on.” Kenzie said.
“Not here,” Rick said. “Most men entering a saloon survey what’s in front of them. Few will notice us until they are well into the room and turn around. That gives us an advantage.”
“I guess that’s a Western saloon thing because it sure isn’t logical to me.”
“You need to catch up, Kenz. I’ll give you a list of old movies to watch.” Rick hooked a thumb at the busy bartender, whose garters resembled black slashes on the sleeves of his white shirt. “Four coffees,” he called over.
“Make mine a whisky,” Amber said.
Rick’s mouth turned up in a sexy grin. He was the type of guy she enjoyed having as a close male friend. The kind she occasionally entrusted with benefits, but never a house key.
“Make that three coffees and a whisky for the lady.” He pulled out a chair and held it while she sat. “This place does three kinds of business: gambling, prostitution, and alcohol. The working girls liquor up the miners, get a piece of their bankroll, and the gambling tables take the rest. It’s the same blueprint in every cattle town, railhead, and mining encampment in this part of the country.”
“You know all that from watching movies?” Kenzie asked. Amber’s gaze swept the room, taking in the Western-style paintings, the scarred wide-plank floors, a defaced buffalo head mounted above the bar, and an upright piano tucked at the bottom of the stairs, probably terribly out of tune.
“Pops kept me supplied with Western novels while I was overseas. But I picked up the reading habit long before I was
deployed. As a kid, that was my escape from three brothers and a bratty sister.”
“I know a lot about the nineteenth century, but it’s limited to a couple of topics. I don’t know much about the culture.” Amber put her elbows on a table in dire need of a good scrub. She was starting to unravel the puzzle that was now her life. “I know your names now, but that doesn’t tell me who you are or how you found me.” God, she was sounding exactly like Daniel.
“That’s easy. David followed your cosmic footprints,” Kenzie said.
Amber had a newborn’s impatience right now. Getting information piecemeal wasn’t improving her sense of humor or stopping her legs from bouncing. “Give it to me straight.”
A waitress brought over three coffees and a shot of whisky. Before she walked away, she wiped the tabletop clean of spills. Amber’s nose turned up at the overpowering smell of the woman’s too-sweet perfume that attempted to mask other unpleasant odors.
Amber picked up the glass and studied the contents. Judging by the dark straw color, the alcohol appeared to be, if not a first-class whisky, not the house offering either. Before drinking, she inhaled the fumes, then tossed back the shot. A sensory blast that comes with high-proof liquors cleared her throat and a fiery burn relaxed into a warm, breathless hello.
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world…” she said.
“You walked into mine,” Rick said.
“I thought you were just into Westerns,” Kenzie said.
“I like the classics, and Casablanca is always on the top-ten list.”
Amber set down the empty glass, wiggling it with her fingers, indicating to the waitress she wanted a refill. “How’d you know what gin joint I was in?”
“When you didn’t come home from your weekend at the cabin,” Kenzie began, “Rick’s brother, Connor, went up there with your sister. He spotted the puzzle box right away and sent a picture to David. Connor wanted confirmation that the box was identical to the one I was sent a few years ago. There was an emerald brooch in my puzzle box. When I vanished, David figured out I was in London during the last year of World War II and went back to find me.”
The waitress brought the refill, and Amber twisted the glass back and forth by quarter turns as she processed what Kenzie said. “World War II? God, that must have been horrible. At least there’s no war in Leadville.”
“It wasn’t easy,” Kenzie said. “I arrived during a bombing raid and quickly captured the attention of the British Secret Service. They had a few questions for me. None of which I could answer.”
“Landing in a mining town is a piece of cake compared to what you went through, but it still doesn’t answer the question of why you came after me.”
“The brooches have a reputation for abandoning women in strange places. Mine took me to London. One of our cousins landed in the middle of a Civil War battle in 1864.”
Amber gasped. “My God.”
Kenzie continued, “Another one arrived on the Upper West Side in York City in 1909.”
Wisely, Amber drank the second glass slowly, relieved that it amplified the benefits of the first. The aftertaste lingered in her mouth. “So you’re telling me that I’m the fourth victim to be shot through this wormhole?”
Kenzie fiddled with her coffee cup, then took a sip. “Another cousin chose to go back to the Oregon Trail in 1852.”
“Chose? Was she—?” Amber stopped and tamped down her surprise that anyone would choose to be dropped into another world. But then, the people sitting at the table with her had traveled by choice. “I was going to ask if your cousin was crazy, but I’d have to ask the same of you. Are you all a bit loony?”
“It runs in the family,” Kenzie said.
“What? Being loony?”
“No, wanting adventure. It’s part of being a MacKlenna. Your seven-times great-grandmother is Lindsey MacKlenna Hughes. Did you know that?”
Amber shook her head. “No. I didn’t.”
“I didn’t think so, since Olivia never mentioned to Connor a possible connection to MacKlenna Farm.”
Logic and science were subjects Amber knew or thought she did. Her world had been turned upside down in that damn wormhole, and she wasn’t sure it would ever be right side up again.
“We can all trace our family lines back to the MacKlennas,” Rick said.
Amber swished her hand to the side, clearing a mental whiteboard full of impossibilities and suppositions. “Sorry. It’s not computing. I’ll accept that I have a MacKlenna in my family tree. But that gets me nowhere. How did you know I was here? In Leadville?”
David jumped into the conversation. “I did a wee bit of research. Based on yer history and interests, I narrowed the possible locations down to Leadville, Caǹon City, and Morrison. The only reason we needed to know where ye were, was to prepare for our trip to rescue ye. If ye went to Chicago in the 1920s, we wouldn’t want to show up dressed like this. We also needed to know where to look for ye once we knew where we were going.”
“Why those places? And how did you know the year?”
“David has a fancy computer program,” Kenzie said. “He plugs in a person’s interests and”—she snapped her finger—“the answer spits out.”
“Sorry. Still don’t get it. What’s in my bio that would lead you to come here to 1878?” She had a pretty good idea why she was there, but she wanted to know how they figured it out.
David took a long drink of coffee then set the cup aside. He didn’t speak right away, even though three sets of eyes were focused intently on him. Finally, he said, “Every case is different, Amber. In yers, I found four markers: the activities of Drs. Marsh and Cope in 1878 and 1879, the discovery of a Stegosaurus in Morrison, the presence of an undiscovered Stegosaurus near Caǹon City that ye’re fully aware of, and yer father’s interest in the Royal Gorge War.”
Amber whistled. “You really did your homework.” She sat back and thought through what they had told her so far. Then she remembered what Kenzie had first said. Amber turned to her now. “You said, ‘I’ve never met you or Olivia, but I’ve heard so much about both of you.’ Did you hear about us from Connor or somewhere else?”
Kenzie glanced at David, and he covered her hand with his own. After a brief silent conversation between them, Kenzie turned her attention back to Amber. “My name was Kenzie Wallis-Manning. I went to West Point with your cousin, Trey. I was with him in Afghanistan.”
Amber’s shoulders slumped, and all the air seemed to leak from her body like a tire punctured by a round-head nail. “He saved your life. Is that why you came back for me? Because of Trey?”
“It’s why David and I volunteered. There were others who would have come, but I wanted to do this for him.”
“Connor wanted to come,” Rick said. “But we decided he should stay with Olivia.”
Amber perked up at the mention of her sister. “Does she know where I am?”
“We couldn’t tell her,” Kenzie said. “The sheriff’s office and the State Patrol are out looking for you. You have to go back, so they’ll call off the search.”
Amber rotated her wrists and tugged on her fingers. “Olivia is going to be so pissed, but I can’t leave yet. A little boy was in an accident yesterday, and I represented him to recover damages from Mr. Tabor. The settlement was sort of contingent upon my providing talent for a five-night performance.” She stretched her fingers and popped the joints. “I signed a contract at the Tabor Opera House to sing and play the guitar. If I back out, it could cause a problem for him and his father. And besides, my brooch doesn’t work.”
“They never do right away,” Kenzie said. “Mine didn’t either. You’re here for a reason.”
Amber rubbed the large knuckles at the junction of her hand and fingers. “I saved his life. The little boy, I mean. That’s reason enough, right?”
The question hovered in the air between them and another one of those odd looks passed between Kenzie and David, and in that look, a tome could have bee
n written. “It could be,” David said. “But I bet there’s more to yer presence here than saving a wee lad.”
Out of the corner of Amber’s eye, she spotted Daniel on the sidewalk. He saw her and pivoted. “Oh crap. The man walking into the saloon is Daniel Grant. He’s the boy’s father. He’s also a Pinkerton agent and highly suspicious of me. I guess he’s Leadville’s version of the British Secret Service. He’ll be suspicious of you, too.”
Daniel approached their table, his eyes solidly on David and Rick. “Miss Kelly.” He tipped his hat, but other than that simple polished move, she doubted there was an at-ease muscle in his body.
Kenzie looked him up and down, but David and Rick didn’t twitch a muscle at first. Then they slowly lifted their hands, placed them on the tabletop, and casually clasped their coffee cups. Daniel’s body language shifted only slightly, but he dropped his hand that had been poised near the holster hidden beneath his coat.
Amber pulled out the chair next to her and patted the seat. Might as well invite him to join them. If not, he’d just stand there and draw more attention to their table. “Agent Grant, why don’t you join us?”
Kenzie offered the first introduction. “I’m Mrs. David McBain, this is my husband, and my cousin, Rick O’Grady. And you already know my cousin, Amber Kelly.”
The three men measured each other over brief handshakes, then Daniel took the proffered seat. “I could use a cup of coffee to warm up a bit.” He nodded to the waitress. “Ellen, coffee please.”
Amber watched the waitress sashay behind the bar and return with a steaming cup. Daniel jingled coins in his hand then casually dropped them in the pocket of her apron, smiling. Then sipping his coffee, he turned his attention to the men at the table.
“What brings ye to Leadville?” he asked.
“We’re looking at business opportunities and ran into Amber in the general store. We didn’t know she was here,” Rick said.
The Amber Brooch: Time Travel Romance (The Celtic Brooch Book 8) Page 21
