September Sky (American Journey Book 1) (49 page)

Silas cocked the revolver and pointed it at Charlotte's temple.

"I'm going to ask you one more time, Mr. Townsend. If you don't provide me with a good answer, I'm going to kill your wife in front of you."

"I don't know!" Chuck said. "He stayed behind to talk to the driver. He's probably outside."

"You're mistaken, Charles," Wyatt said as he entered the room. "I'm inside now and more than ready to join this little get-together that Silas has arranged."

Wyatt pointed his Colt .45 at his younger brother.

"Put the gun down," Silas said. "No one has to get hurt."

"I disagree," Wyatt said. "Someone always has to get hurt."

"I won't ask again, Wyatt."

"Of course you will. You'll ask because you're a coward who can't follow through. You're a coward who can't even do his own dirty work."

"Shut up," Silas said.

"What did you promise her, Silas? Did you offer Goldie money or a house in the country? You must have promised her a lot to get her to risk prison again."

"I didn't promise her a thing."

"What about Max?" Wyatt asked. "What did you promise him?"

"He knew nothing about this," Silas said.

"I want better answers, brother. Before I kill you, I want to at least know the truth."

"Max knew nothing about Rose."

Chuck resisted the temptation to do something stupid when he saw Wyatt take a step closer to Silas. He knew that bullets were about to fly and didn't want one of them to strike his pregnant wife. The time to make a life-or-death decision was rapidly approaching.

Wyatt seemed to be in no hurry to resolve the standoff. He stared at Silas with patient eyes and addressed his brother matter-of-factly. It was obvious that he wanted answers before results.

"I suppose the next thing you'll tell me is that he didn't know about the hurricane either."

Silas grinned.

"That's the problem with you, Wyatt. You think everything is a conspiracy. I would trust the police before I'd trust a buffoon like Max Beck."

"Then tell me," Wyatt said. "Tell me the truth now. I may even let you live."

Silas tightened his hold on Charlotte.

"You want the truth? I'll tell you the truth. The fact of the matter is that I have planned this for months," Silas said. "I knew as soon as Goldie told me about your particular 'habits' that I had a chance to frame you for a capital crime. When I learned that a very nasty storm was coming our way, I decided to act sooner rather than later."

"You broke into my cabin," Chuck said.

"I did no such thing," Silas said. He looked at Chuck and then at Wyatt. "I merely instructed Goldie to make sure that your shack was up to snuff. As a good 'friend' of your landlord, she was able to obtain a key to your place rather easily. I trust your accommodations were satisfactory."

"So you're a thief as well," Chuck said.

"Spare me the outrage, sir. As one who spent several weeks prying into the affairs of others, you are hardly one to talk."

"I ought to kill you now," Chuck said.

"Sit tight, Charles," Wyatt said.

"Listen to my brother," Silas said to Chuck. "If you do, you may still have the opportunity to spend many wonderful years with your wife and the child she is carrying."

Silas smiled.

"Oh, yes. I learned all that and more. You'd be surprised what you can learn when you hold a gun to someone's head."

Chuck stepped toward Silas but stopped when Justin grabbed him and pulled him back. He had never wanted to harm anyone more than he wanted to harm Silas at that moment.

"Finish your story," Wyatt said. "You're wasting my time."

Silas smiled.

"Are you in a hurry, brother?"

"I am."

"Then I'll finish quickly," Silas said. "As I said, it all came down to opportunity. When I saw a chance to remove you from the picture without drawing attention to myself, I took it. Whether you rotted in prison or hung from a rope or drowned in jail awaiting your trial didn't matter. All that mattered is that I would not be blamed for your demise and lose my inheritance. With you out of the way, I could sell the company to the first fool willing to pay double its worth."

"I commend your creativity. It's too bad for you that you decided to return to Houston."

"I had no choice. When I learned that the authorities had seized my assets and issued a warrant for my arrest, I knew I had to do something. So I came back to access an emergency cache I had set up for just such an occasion. Don't worry. I'm leaving you the house."

"How thoughtful," Wyatt said.

"Now, if you don't mind, place your gun on the floor and join the others over there. If you don't, I'm afraid I'm going to have to put a bullet in your pretty little friend."

Wyatt smiled.

"It seems that you've left me no option."

"I will count to ten, Wyatt. Please don't disappoint me," Silas said.

"Do what he says," Justin said.

"One, two …"

Chuck fell victim to paralysis. For the second time in as many days, he felt utterly powerless to remedy a dire situation. He didn't know whether to rush Silas or put his faith in Wyatt. He knew only that the lives of his wife and unborn child hung in the balance.

"Three, four …"

"Please, Wyatt," Justin pleaded. "Drop the gun!"

"Five, six …"

Wyatt cocked his pistol and aimed it at Silas' head.

"Be still, Charlotte," Wyatt said. "Be
very
still."

Silas glared at his brother and pressed the muzzle of his gun against Charlotte's temple.

"Seven, eight …"

"Wyatt!"

"Nine …"

Chuck tried many times in the coming weeks to recall what happened next, but he always came up short. He could not remember if Wyatt Fitzpatrick reacted when Justin screamed or showed even a trace of emotion when he pulled the trigger.

He remembered only that Wyatt fired a bullet that split his brother's head in half and brought a chapter to an end. In one sudden, violent, unexpected moment, one life ended, at least two were saved, and justice that had been denied the first time had been delivered on a plate the second.

CHAPTER 86: CHUCK

Harris County, Texas – Thursday, September 13, 1900

Chuck stared out a window of his passenger car on the Sunset Limited and watched a slice of Texas go by in a blur. The land was pretty, he thought. It was flat and featureless, for the most part, but it was still pretty. He would miss the greenery, just as he would miss a lot of things.

The Townsends and Wyatt had boarded the westbound train at two o'clock, not long after saying goodbye to two orphans. They had risen early so that they could spend as much time as possible with the brave teen and the spunky girl who had stolen their hearts and changed how they looked at the world.

Chuck glanced at Justin, who sat next to Wyatt in the nearest of two facing seats and stared blankly into space. He wanted to say something comforting but kept silent instead. He knew that there was nothing he could say or do – at least now – to ease his son's excruciating pain.

The long goodbyes in Houston were surprisingly short. Though they were more subdued than many others in the grief center that was the Grand Central Depot, they were no less meaningful.

When Amelia Gaines, the first of the girls to leave, reached Justin at the end of a line of well-wishers, she didn't say a word. She just embraced her rescuer for more than a minute, kissed him on the cheek, and left him with a gentle smile.

Anna Beck said so long in a similar way. She gave Justin a long hug, wiped a tear from his cheek, and handed him a drawing she had created that morning. It depicted Justin, Emily, and Anna holding hands in a place that looked an awful lot like heaven.

The girls then returned to their relatives, caught trains headed in different directions, and left an impressionable twenty-one-year-old man to his thoughts. They left Justin sadder than they had found him but also far richer. That had shown him that there was beauty in tragedy and meaning in death. They had given him the perspective that he so badly craved.

Chuck gazed at his son for a moment and then glanced at a man who continued to amaze, inspire, and shock. He wondered if he would ever fully understand the mystery that was his close friend, confidant, and relative.

Wyatt hadn't planned on accompanying the others to California. He hadn't seen the point of making the trip without Rose and wanted to get on with the business of rebuilding his company and his city. He had changed his mind, however, after putting a bullet in his brother's brain.

After serving twenty days in jail for allegedly murdering his fiancée, Wyatt had decided that he didn't care much for incarceration. He hadn't wanted to take the chance that a prosecutor or a judge might view his act as vengeance rather than self-defense and send him to prison or the gallows. So he'd elected to flee to 2016 Los Angeles, a place that was beyond any 1900 bounty hunter or extradition treaty.

The grown-ups at the Fitzpatrick mansion had done what they could to put the violent episode behind them. Wyatt and Justin had buried Silas in a hidden section of the backyard. Chuck had cleaned up the bloody mess in the sitting room. Charlotte had counseled each of the girls and advised them to keep what they had seen to themselves.

Wyatt had not felt at ease, however, subjecting the others to suspicion. So he had written two letters to Hannibal Butler. In the first, he confessed to shooting Silas. In the second, he requested that his assets be used to start a fund for orphans.

Wyatt had given the letters to Butler in person on Thursday morning and asked the attorney not to open them before October 1. He had wanted time to escape to South America should the time tunnel in Los Angeles prove to be less effective than advertised.

Chuck hoped that wouldn't be the case. Though he had every reason to believe that the portal would be operational when the travelers reached California on September 16, he didn't know for a fact that it would be. There was still a chance that they had already waited too long.

Chuck smiled sadly at Wyatt, who returned his smile, and then directed his attention to the woman who rested her head on his shoulder. He didn't know what words he would use to describe her, but he knew that, whatever they were, they would be drawn from poetry.

Whenever Chuck looked at the woman who spoke four kinds of French, played piano like Liberace, and made the best breakfasts in Texas, he thought of a lottery ticket. He had not just improved his lot in 1900. He had won big. He had found the perfect mate, someone who would fill the rest of his life with love and laugher and maybe a little magic.

What he admired most about Charlotte Townsend was the way she had handled adversity. Despite the murder of one colleague, the betrayal of another, and the disappearance of a third, she had maintained her poise. She had handled every setback with courage, kindness, and grace.

Chuck did worry about the difficult moments ahead, starting with Geoffrey Bell's reaction to his bringing back a pregnant souvenir from 1900. Bell would huff and puff and probably lecture him on time-travel ethics. He might even demand that Chuck reimburse him for certain expenses.

If he did, Chuck would gladly sign over what was left of his meager savings. He would rather be poor and happy than poor and miserable. He looked forward to life with the intelligent, charming, and beautiful Mrs. Townsend and the child they would raise together.

Chuck put his arm around his sleeping wife, pulled her close, and then glanced at the far door of his passenger coach. He did a double take when he saw a man look back at him and then quickly exit through the door. The man was the spitting image of Thomas Mack.

Chuck shook his head. He couldn't believe that a man who had shadowed him in Galveston for more than four months would possibly do so here and now, but he couldn't rule it out. If there was one thing he had learned in 1900, it was that he could never rule
anything
out.

The time traveler didn't give Thomas Mack or the Shadow or whoever he was a second thought. He instead made himself comfortable and gazed at the men in the facing seats.

Chuck saw that Wyatt and Justin had already settled in for the long haul. Wyatt had pulled his cowboy hat over his face. Justin had closed his eyes. He rested his head against Wyatt's shoulder. If the two were not yet asleep, they were knocking on slumber's door.

That was just as well, Chuck thought. Each of the men had had a long week and had an even longer week ahead. It was time for everyone to put Galveston and 1900 in the rear-view mirror and think of better things. A magnificent city and a gleaming new century waited.

CHAPTER 87: CHUCK

Los Angeles, California – Sunday, September 16, 1900

Chuck found the Bell house exactly as he had left it – pristine, glorious, and apparently empty. If Percival Bell's widow had sold or rented the place to someone else, that someone else was not home. That, Chuck concluded, was a good thing.

The senior time traveler grabbed his wife's hand and escorted her across the back lawn to a gap in the ground and a series of steps that led to the magic tunnel. When Justin and Wyatt joined them near the top step a few seconds later, Chuck looked at his son.

"Do you want the honor?"

"No," Justin said. "You can have it."

Justin retrieved the blue gypsum crystal that had survived two long train trips, a burglary, a hurricane, and the evidence drawer at the Galveston police station. He smiled sadly and placed the rock in his father's left hand.

Chuck reached into his jacket pocket with his right hand and pulled out a skeleton key that had rarely left his possession. He turned to face the others and saw an apprehensive wife, a heartbroken son, and a curious friend. Wyatt carried the group's two suitcases.

"Do you have any questions before we change centuries?" Chuck asked.

Three people shook their heads.

"OK then. Let's go."

Chuck led Charlotte, Justin, and Wyatt down the brick steps to a windowless door that also looked like it hadn't changed in five months. He put the skeleton key in the hole, turned the key, and opened the door to a dark chamber that
had
changed – at least in one respect.