Stars Across Time (3 page)

The leader of this group of kidnappers, Russell, would watch her if he was smart; she was the kind of person who could escape and fetch the police. Or she might get ahold of one of their guns and shoot all of her kidnappers. Theron smiled tightly, relishing the thought even if he shouldn’t. He needed to stay with these thugs for long enough to find their secret market, along with the women and goods they had already stolen. They weren’t the only group of thieves operating in the mountains, and as much as he would like to see them dead, that would not allow him to accomplish his mission.

Realizing he was outpacing the men, Theron forced himself to slow down and wait. He wanted to make sure the women were doing well—as well as could be expected. This was rough terrain, and they were not following a trail or road. He couldn’t appear too solicitous, as he had reminded himself earlier, because he had been with the group for less than two weeks, and they would be suspicious of him if he seemed any different than they did. Still, if he found a chance to let the women escape without risking revealing his identity and dooming his mission, he would take it. The fewer people the thieves succeeded in kidnapping, the less risk there was of wreaking havoc with the timeline.

Staying to the side of the crooked column, Theron checked on the fighter woman first. Andie, he reminded himself, having sneaked up on the camp early enough to hear her talking with her friend, Min-ji. He had seen them using the telescope, as well, speaking of a comet in the sky, and his gut had twisted at the idea of kidnapping them. He had a telescope back home, and he, too, enjoyed studying the stars. He had been considering a way to warn them, but the rest of his party had shown up too soon, clomping and snapping their way through the woods, making enough noise that even city dwellers, as these women appeared to be, had heard their approach.

Theron had remained still for as long as he could, silently hoping they would make it to their vehicle and escape. For those who had been sleeping, their fates had been inevitable, but Min-ji and Andie had been so close to making it. It wasn’t as if the kidnappers had vehicles of their own that they could give chase in. Cars and trucks—and the gasoline to power them—were almost as rare as diamonds in his time.

Andie trod along, there being little else she could do since she was hemmed in by men and her hands were bound behind her back. But she looked left and right as she walked, determination burning in her eyes. He thought she might have glimpsed him as he passed, even though he remained silent. It was possible—even though he’d had far more wilderness training than most of these men, he wasn’t trying to hide himself—but she did not let her gaze linger on him. Why would she? He was nothing more than one more thug to her.

Trusting that she could survive the hike without trouble, Theron waited for the others, so he could check on them. Min-ji plodded along, her head down. Behind her, the teenage girl must have passed out or not been keeping up, because she had been slung over one of the men’s shoulders, like the blonde woman. Theron had not seen what had happened in those other camps, but he hoped the idiots had not killed anyone. He would have objected to the shooting of civilians under any circumstances, but in this case, he objected even more strenuously. Anybody the thieves killed or kidnapped could cause their own time to change. If they murdered some distant ancestor, they might cause some friend of theirs to completely disappear, to have never existed. Theron shuddered to think that such a thing might have already happened, that some military comrade he had once fought beside might have disappeared without Theron ever knowing the loss because all of history had changed. Or what if there might have been some version of time where he had been married and had a wife and children?

He snorted to himself, admitting that was unlikely, given how rarely he was home where he might meet women. And children? There were so few couples that managed to have children. There was a reason these thieves were kidnapping females from this time period, no matter how misguided and greed-driven their motives were. Oddly, they never seemed to kidnap fertile men to sell, probably because so many men had trouble admitting that
they
might be the weak half of the equation.

“The cave is up ahead,” someone at the front of the line said, waving one of the stolen lanterns.

Theron jogged past the column of men, stepping lightly so the dry, brittle pine needles would not crunch beneath his feet, and joined Russell at the head, careful to come in behind the man instead of in front of him.

The cave did not look like much on the outside, the entrance being little more than a vertical fissure in the rock, but the entire troop of kidnappers funneled through it with room to spare. In a chamber inside, more men waited, clad in the same dirt and furs that the other thieves favored. They stood in front of a group of young women, a much larger group than Theron’s band had acquired. It was hard to tell much else about them, since they huddled in the shadows behind their guards.

The men inside held torches, the flames flickering and casting dancing shadows on the walls. The natural rock chamber smelled of mildew and animals, as well as the sweat and odors of men. In his own time, the cave had been dug out and reinforced by survivalists who’d had a reason to build it into more of a base. Popping into the original—and much smaller—form had been alarming. Theron had been told that nobody ever woke up in a wall, that the machine had safety mechanisms built in to ensure that couldn’t happen, but when one stepped into a distant time and landed with one’s heel an inch from a slab of granite, one wondered.

“Bring them in,” came an unfamiliar voice from the back of the chamber. It belonged to a bald, bearded man with his muscular arms bare, despite the chill night air.

Theron’s gut tightened. He recognized the bald man from the wanted posters General Morimoto had shown him. Severus Optimus was the moniker he cheekily went by; nobody knew his real name. He might not be the ultimate leader of the time thieves, but he was high up in their organization. Unlike Russell, who was little more than a gopher in charge of mice, he might be aware of the more prominent army officers in the Alliance. If Theron was recognized here, surrounded by so many enemies, he would be dead.

He stepped to the side near the entrance, hugging the shadows and letting the rest of his group and the women filter in ahead of him. Would they all be traveling back together? It would be difficult to remain in the shadows permanently. Like Russell, Optimus wore a metallic bracer on one arm, a device that contained the controls for operating the machine, for returning the kidnappers to the present. Assuming everything worked. This was Theron’s first trip back through time, and he couldn’t help but be worried about making it back home, even if the general had assured him the machine had been tested.

Optimus’s gaze raked over the new group, mostly checking out the women, but he squinted at Theron for a long moment. Theron hoped it was only because he was a new man on the team. When Optimus’s gaze shifted away, he let out a breath of relief, but he still worried the bandit might recognize him by the light of day. Theron had been out in the field for three weeks, fighting back the desert invaders from the south, so he had already been scruffy, and he had let his hair and beard grow as soon as the general had told him about this mission, but facial hair and dirt alone might not be enough to save him from recognition. And if the coyotes realized they had a wolf in their midst, they wouldn’t appreciate it. Like the woman they had captured—he glanced toward Andie, who was standing quietly and taking in everything around her—Theron wouldn’t have a chance of fighting off so many. Worse than being killed, he would have failed his mission. All he had ever dreamed of rode upon this success. He could
not
fail, not now.

“Such a paltry few, Russell?” Optimus asked. “Four women?”

Russell ducked his head. He was older than Optimus, but Theron had not been incorrect in identifying him as a submissive underling.

“This is not a highly populated area, my lord,” Russell said.

My
lord
? Maybe seventeenth-century terminology was coming back into vogue after all.

“We did find some gasoline and other useful items.”

“Of course it’s not populated, you goat’s ass,” Optimus said. “That’s why we chose it. But Brenner’s group had no trouble finding some women.” He stepped aside, gesturing grandly at the cowering figures hunkering against the wall in the shadows. Someone lifted a lantern, so their faces were visible.

Theron clenched a fist. Women? They were scarcely more than girls. The youngest might have been twelve, and he doubted the oldest was more than sixteen or seventeen. They all wore green uniforms, the material torn and dirt-stained from what must have been a difficult journey to reach this cave. Theron couldn’t guess at the significance of the outfits, but he could tell right away that they did not have military experience, so it was nothing like that. His history-loving lieutenant, Gideon Davies, could have identified the garb. Not for the first time, Theron found himself missing his unit. If he’d had his men here, he could have done something more effective than clenching his fists. He could have taken out all of these criminals and returned the women to where they had come from. True, he wouldn’t find the market or have the opportunity to destroy the time machine if he acted here, but standing idly by grated at him like salt in a wound.

He caught Andie with her fists clenched, too, her shoulders tight as she strained at the rope wrapping her wrists. Theron toyed with the idea of cutting her free and sticking a knife and a gun in her hand, then fighting alongside her. It wouldn’t be quite like going into battle with Johnson, Tackle, and Cougar at his side, but he would like seeing her fight again.

“They’re real nice,” Russell said, his eyes gleaming as his gaze raked the teenagers. “All fertile breeders?”

Theron pulled his attention back to the leader of the kidnappers, reminding himself that this wasn’t the time for fantasy. Besides, if he gave Andie a knife right now, she would try to stick it into
his
gullet. She had no way to know he was an ally, and he dared not tell her, lest she knock away his cover.

“We’ll leave the marketplace to determine that,” Optimus said.

The marketplace
where
, Theron longed to ask. According to the general, it was somewhere around the Puget Sea, but nobody in the military had been able to find it yet. It didn’t help that most of the units had been busy fighting outside invaders hungry for water and food the last three years. They hadn’t expected to have to put men and resources they didn’t have into dealing with criminals operating from within the Alliance.

“We’ll split into two groups, to minimize our losses if we’re discovered,” Optimus said. “I’ll take the virgins. They’ll bring in gold by the bar—I’m sure of it. Russell, you’ll go ahead and take the others. If you come across any trouble, I expect a warning. But
don’t
get into trouble.” His eyes narrowed. “I don’t want to lose anyone. Even the older women are plenty young enough to bear a couple of babes at least.”

Theron wondered if he would continue to be in Russell’s group. He hoped so; in part because none of those men had shown an inkling of recognizing him yet, and in part because he wanted to make sure Blackie and the others didn’t get their wish, to take advantage of the captives on the way to this market.

“Market?” one of the older uniformed girls asked. “What do you mean? Where are you taking us?”

Theron leaned forward, his attention sharpening. He didn’t expect Optimus to openly tell the girl, but maybe he would reveal more than he had thus far.

But all Optimus said when he turned toward her, eyeing her with unabashed avarice, was, “Where women are needed.”

“China?” Min-ji asked. She had managed to maneuver closer to her friend.

Andie’s shoulders shifted, like she might be trying to work her bonds free. She had her back close to the stone wall, so Theron could not see, but he wondered if the two women were up to something. Had Min-ji managed to pass something to Andie? Her hands had also been tied, but they were in front of her instead of behind her back. Nobody else seemed to being paying attention to them. No, most of the men were ogling the younger women. Theron reminded himself that he wasn’t responsible for keeping Min-ji and Andie from escaping and that he would be pleased if they managed to do so.

“What?” Optimus frowned at her.

“Are you taking us to China?” Min-ji asked. “There’s a bride shortage there, isn’t there? Because of the one-child rule the government has been enforcing and people preferring boys for so long?”

“One-child rule?” Optimus truly appeared stunned at the statement. Whether it was because he simply couldn’t imagine such a thing or was unaware of the population problems that had been a huge part of this century, Theron couldn’t guess. He would think someone who dipped into Roman history for his name would be more of a historian. “Such a strange problem to have,” Optimus finally muttered, then raised his voice. “You’ll find out when you get there, girl. Now tell me, do you belong in the virgin group or not?”

Min-ji’s mouth sagged open. These kidnappers
did
have an off-putting bluntness. Among other things.

“If you don’t tell us, we’ll have to do an inspection.” Optimus smiled, nothing friendly about the gesture as he eyed Min-ji and the other women.

Inspection? Theron looked to the ceiling, to the heavens. Even with the Lord’s strength, how could he stand by and do nothing while such a thing occurred in front of him? He found himself looking around, assessing the numbers again, wondering if he could possibly do something by himself. In addition to the women, more stolen goods were stacked against one of the walls of the cave: food items, a few electronic devices, camping gear, and several jugs of gasoline. If he could dump out one of those jugs, expose the gasoline to the oxygen in the air and light it, maybe he could cause enough chaos that he could gain the upper hand in a fight.