Stars Across Time (6 page)

Min-ji nodded, not appearing surprised. Andie tried not to feel annoyed that her friend had everything figured out ahead of her. If she wanted to feel like a genius, she could always hang out with dumb people, like the thugs surrounding them perhaps.

“I don’t know how far into the future we’ve gone,” Min-ji whispered, “but climates can change quite a bit in a few centuries, even naturally, and humanity was, of course, already helping things along.”

Andie mulled over the implications, mostly trying to find evidence to support her hypothesis that this could all be part of a ruse. But, the more data she gathered, the more she found that notion harder to maintain.

“So, you think we’re still in Washington?” she finally asked.

“Don’t you?”

“Yeah.” The foliage might have changed, but she was certain the peaks of the mountains she glimpsed whenever they passed through a clearing were the Cascades. There wasn’t any snow on them, though, not the way there usually was.

“Here,” came a voice from behind them.

Andie jumped. She hadn’t heard Mace’s approach, nor had she seen him for a couple of hours. When she glanced back to see what he wanted, she found herself staring at his chest—his
bare
chest. For a couple of seconds, she simply stared at it because it was a very nice chest. Muscular without any extra fat to soften the contours. A light sprinkling of dark hair that invited one to reach out and touch. Who would have thought such a handsome torso lay beneath that shaggy fur coat? As soon as she had the thought, she remembered that he was the enemy and that she should be alarmed any time these thugs started removing clothing.

“What do you want?” Andie snapped, more irritably than she had intended.

“Here,” Mace repeated, holding out his shirt and someone else’s, as well. The fur jackets had disappeared into packs, or perhaps been left in some cache for later use. “The sun will be less intense once we get over the pass, but it will still burn you, especially when...” His cheeks grew pink as he waved to indicate that, aside from socks and shoes, she was naked.

“Afraid we won’t be worth as much money with blistering shoulders?” Andie asked, glancing at the man behind Mace, the one who had been prodding them along all morning. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and sighed, but he didn’t object to this stop. Behind him, Andie could see that the other women had already been given shirts, heavy buckskin material that fell to their thighs or knees.

“I
have
heard that oozing pus can tighten a man’s grip on his wallet,” Mace said.

Up ahead, Bedene and two men who had been walking behind him had stopped, propping their boots up on rocks as they waited. They were pointing to the woods on either side and toward the trail ahead of them as they debated something. Mace watched the trees, too, and Andie wondered if the fast pace the men had set had to do with more than impatience about getting their goods to market in a timely manner. Maybe this was enemy territory or there were other kidnappers out there who would gladly steal from her kidnappers. She vowed to stay on her toes. A battle could be the opportunity she needed for escape, though escape to where? That was the question. If Min-ji was right, and they were hundreds of years in the future, it wasn’t as if she could simply find the nearest town and take a bus home.

The time machine. She doubted she would be able to figure it out, but maybe Min-ji could. If they followed the trail back to it, maybe they could use it to return home.

Mace cleared his throat and lifted the shirts. Though Andie hated to accept any gifts from these people—however self-serving those gifts were—an all-over sunburn
would
hamper her escape efforts.

She accepted the shirts and handed one to Min-ji, who held it to her chest to cover herself, but stared down at the material with a wrinkle to her brow. Yeah, it was going to be hard to dress with their hands still tied in front of them. Andie lifted her bound wrists and raised her eyebrows.

Mace stepped forward, grasped Min-ji’s wrists lightly, and dug into the knot. Min-ji kept her head down, her straight black hair falling about her shoulders. She wasn’t that shy around men in an environment where she was comfortable, such as the classroom or a lab on campus, but from the hunch of her shoulders whenever these brutes drew near, she wished she could disappear—or that the men all around them would disappear. Andie could sympathize with that wish.

When Mace turned toward her, Andie stuck her arms out, so he could do the job without stepping too close. She was aware that the gesture thrust out and squished her boobs together, and remembered the way Mace had been eyeing her earlier. She vowed to stomp on his foot if his gaze roamed now.

Min-ji quickly put on her shirt, and the closest guard came up to retie her hands as soon as she finished.

Though Mace had to be aware of Andie’s breasts, since he had to look down in that direction to see the knots, he kept his eyes on his work and didn’t let his hands roam. The wrists weren’t exactly an erogenous zone, but Andie noticed the light brushes of his fingers against her skin as he tugged at the ropes. A hint of gooseflesh arose on her arms, the sensation of his touch flowing through her nerves and running all the way to the core of her body. Her nipples hardened, and she flushed with embarrassment, certain he would notice. How could he fail to when she was standing in front of him in all her naked glory? Of course, he was standing shirtless in front of her, too. A totally irrational urge to reach out and run a finger down his chest flashed through her mind.

Irritated with herself—he was one of her kidnappers, damn it—she almost pulled away from him. But she wanted the shirt so she could cover herself. She made herself wait. The knot fell away, and he slid the ropes off her wrists. She thought he would step back, but he grasped her forearm lightly, frowning at the raw red skin, courtesy of her sweat and the rubbing of ropes that had been tied too firmly.

“Who tied this one?” Mace asked, then clenched his jaw as he looked back down the line of men, most of whom had caught up with them.

Blackie looked toward the woods, avoiding his eyes. But Mace must have known the answer to his question, because he singled the man out, his stare cold and hard. Andie stepped back, finding the stare discomfiting, even if it wasn’t directed at her. She had been busy ogling his muscles, but there were scars on that torso, too, evidence of encounters with knives and bullets, and there was a hardness about him that one didn’t find in the desk jockeys whose musculature came solely from evening trips to the gym. Her earlier thought that Mace was a dangerous man returned to her mind, and she told herself not to forget it.

He let her back away, and she donned the shirt quickly, glad for the chance to cover up and hide her irritatingly pert nipples. Human bodies were stupid, she decided, reacting at totally inappropriate times.

“You saw how much trouble she was,” Blackie said, finally caving and responding to Mace’s continuing stare. He touched his mouth and scowled at Andie. His speech had been off ever since she had bitten him. She hoped his tongue was swelling up and would become so infected that it turned green and fell out of his mouth. “Gotta make sure she can’t get away.”

“No damaging the prisoners,” Mace said, that ice still in his voice.

In any other circumstance, Andie might have thought a man that irritated by her injuries actually cared that she had been hurt, but he was only looking out for his share of the profits. There was no doubt about that.

“What do you care, Mace?” Bedene asked from the front.

“Our share depends on what we get from selling them, right?” Mace asked. “That’s what Russell said.”

“You keep dithering around back there, and thieves will steal our treasure, and you won’t get a damned thing. None of us will.” Bedene’s face was just as hard as Mace’s as he glared back at him.

Andie didn’t know what the source of their animosity was, aside from possibly that mistake back at the cave, but she willed it to increase. Strife among the ranks could only help her.

Min-ji started walking again, as if she wanted to return to the trail without causing any trouble. Andie would have to talk to her about that. This was the place to foment trouble, especially if it could be done without drawing attention to them, rather than quietly going along with the program. The farther they got away from that time machine, the less chance they would have of finding it again. And what if the men moved it? It hadn’t been small, but unless it was solid metal, it had looked like something a couple of people could move. Even if she hadn’t seen any trucks yet, judging by the horse poop, the residents of this time period had other means of transporting large items.

Mace found a piece of cloth, ripped it into strips, and wrapped it around her wrists for padding before tying her again.

“Such a thoughtful kidnapper you are,” Andie muttered. She couldn’t bring herself to thank him, not when he was her captor and had plans to sell her. She wasn’t about to become some victim of Stockholm Syndrome, showing loyalty to her kidnappers just because they didn’t treat her as badly as they could.

He winced at her words, a flash of pain or maybe regret crossing his eyes. He recovered quickly, however, and she wondered if she had imagined it. Still, maybe she was making a mistake in being brusque with him. He seemed to have a conscience, whereas none of the others did. Perhaps some tragic circumstances had reduced him to this, thievery and kidnapping. Or maybe the world was so rough now that a person couldn’t be honest and good and get by. A depressing thought, that one.

But if he
did
have a conscience, and didn’t truly have his heart in this escapade, could she maybe convince him to let her and Min-ji go before they reached their final destination? Or, even if he wouldn’t dare betray his colleagues, maybe she could convince him to leave her bonds loose the next time he tied her. That could be all she needed.

“Why are you doing this?” Andie asked softly as he finished tying her knots. He had found a configuration that did not irritate her raw skin much, but the bonds were no less tight than they had been before.

His brows rose, and he met her eyes. Maybe she had been too quick to change tones, to soften to him. Well, nobody had ever told her that she was a fine actor.

“There are people who are counting on me,” he said.

“Do you have a family? Children?” she asked, guessing he might mean that he had to make money one way or another to feed young ones.

He winced again and gave her a short, “No.”

Andie might have asked more, but Bedene spoke from the front of the line.

“Let’s get moving. No more breaks. We don’t get them there before the market moves on, we’ll have to keep them for ourselves.”

Mace’s eyes sharpened. Did he like that thought? Andie sensed that he was attracted to her, but she couldn’t have guessed why. Min-ji had a young, sweet innocence about her that always drew more men. Andie had a tendency to look blatantly at people in a way that, she had been told, they found challenging. That wasn’t usually her intent, but she knew she had her flaws, including a leaning toward obstinacy that not everybody adored.

As the group continued along the trail, Mace chose to walk at her side. Andie thought he might have a question to ask, but he did not speak, at least not for the first half hour that they strode along. He did not seem to mind that he occasionally had to step over logs and divert around trees to stay near her, since the path wasn’t roomy. If they hadn’t passed branches that had been cut away and the occasional piles of horse poop, Andie would have assumed it was more of an animal trail than anything designed for human use.

After a time, the group stretched out into a line again, with the younger women straggling behind. Talk of blisters occasionally drifted to Andie’s ears. She was glad she had good broken-in boots and that she was used to long marches. So far, her feet were fine, even if she was missing her underwear.

“Are you a soldier?” Mace asked, the question coming out of nowhere. Well, not quite nowhere. He had been watching her out of the corner of his eye, maybe trying to guess about her past. Or maybe he had simply been waiting for the moment where they could have an unmonitored conversation. Mostly unmonitored. The man walking behind Andie was not that far back. Bedene was farther ahead and shouldn’t hear them.

Andie considering lying or not answering at all, but Mace had seen her fighting. He already knew what skills she could claim.

“I’m a student now,” she said, “but I was in the Air Force for almost ten years. I’m still in the Reserve.”

“Air Force.” Mace glanced skyward. “Flying?”

Andie nodded. “I was a fighter pilot.”

His brows rose so high, they nearly disappeared under his shaggy black hair.

“You can fly airplanes,” he said slowly, as if he wanted to make sure he hadn’t misunderstood.

Did they even have airplanes here anymore? If not, that could account for his unfamiliarity with the notion. Andie struggled to imagine a world where technology—everything—had regressed instead of advancing. Logically, she knew it was possible—hadn’t there been periods in human history when that had happened among certain populations?—but it was still difficult to fathom. A part of her expected that they would come down out of the mountains and that the gleaming skyscrapers of Seattle would be there, just as they had always been for her, with the usual bumper-to-bumper traffic inching along I-90. Just because she hadn’t heard an engine yet, either on the ground or in the sky overhead, didn’t mean anything. But that juniper tree popped into her mind, shattering her illusions that nothing had changed. It wasn’t the only one she had seen this morning.

“Fighter jets specifically,” Andie said. “I picked that because... hm, it’s a long story.” One she didn’t want to share with some strange man she had only known for a few hours, even if the strange man did have a nice chest, and even if she did find herself wondering what he would look like after a haircut and a shave.

“She wants to be a pilot for NASA,” Min-ji said, looking back at them.