Taken by the Cowboy (25 page)

“I’m not finished
explaining. As I said, I went home to think about everything and
wondered what would happen if I stood in that spot again, dressed
as I was ten years ago—with everything I had in my possession when
I traveled through time. I put on my suit—and believe me, it wasn’t
easy to get into. I’ve put on a few pounds.”

Jessica waved her hand.
“Continue…”

“Yes, yes… So I put
everything on and went and stood in that spot, but again, nothing
happened, except for the tingling sensation, until I looked at my
watch and realized it had stopped ticking years ago. The battery
had run out. So I reset it for the correct date, ten years later,
which took a few tries. I wasn’t sure exactly what the date would
be—but when I found it, I was sucked up into some kind of
vortex.”

“You’re full of
it!”

“No.”

“But why are you still
here? Didn’t it work?”

Angus sighed heavily.
“It would have, I believe, if I’d let it. But I panicked. All I
could think about was Wendy.”

Jessica paused. “You
changed your mind?”

“Yes. I ripped the
watch off and flung it away, and the next thing I knew, I was lying
on the prairie again, staring up at the sky. Here in 1881, feeling
very relieved.”

Jessica squeezed the
bars. “I have to sit down.” She moved to the cot and sank onto the
mattress.

“Are you all right?”
Angus asked.

“I’m fine.”

But that was a lie.
Until this moment, she felt she had no choice about remaining here
in the nineteenth century. It was easy to choose Truman. The fact
that she loved him made it simple.

But suddenly it wasn’t
so simple anymore. She did have a choice. Did she want her old life
back? To see her parents again? Her friends, her dog? To have
indoor plumbing and cell phones and the miracles of modern
medicine?

Or did she want Truman,
and life as a renegade outlaw?

“Will you go back?”
Angus asked.

Jessica thought about
it. “What if I try, and I end up in the wrong time? There would be
no point to that. No point at all.”

"I'm sure your date of
arrival is right here." He pointed at the watch.

Jessica stared at it,
ticking away as if it really were July 19, 2011.

"Jessica...."

She looked up.

"Do you know what might
happen to you if you stay here?"

She gazed back down at
the watch. Her stomach began to lurch and roll. "Yes, but we could
defend me in court. You’re a lawyer."

"But things are
different here. There’s a reason they call it the Wild West.
There’s a lawlessness here that you just don’t understand. I really
think you should leave. As soon as possible."

"What if I don't want
to go back?"

He shook his head at
her. "But it was all you ever talked about. What about your
family?"

God, she felt so
disloyal to them right now. "Angus, I’ve found something here that
I just can’t leave behind."

He breathed deeply. "I
see, and I understand."

"I can't leave
him."

"Does he know where you
come from?"

She nodded.

"Did you tell him about
me, too?"

"No."

The door opened just
then. Truman walked in with breakfast, but stopped abruptly when he
saw Angus. "Morning. Good to see you back."

Jessica took one look
at him—so darkly handsome in the doorway, with his black hat and
long slicker, his steel badge and leather gun belt. Sensual
memories of the night before flooded her mind and body, and she
wondered how it was possible to desire someone as much as she
desired Truman. What in the world was she going to do?

* * *

"I brought breakfast,"
Truman announced. He noticed Jessica’s panicked expression and knew
immediately that something was afoot. “Care to join us, Angus?”

Jessica gave Angus a
pleading look that seemed almost desperate.

“That would be
delightful," he replied.

Truman set the crate on
the desk and removed a pot of hot coffee, a bowl of eggs, and some
cornbread. "Compliments of Dodge House."

He served Jessica
first, and took her plate into the jail cell. She gave him a
polite, yet distracted smile that didn’t help to ease his
suspicions that something was amiss.

The three of them ate
and made small talk. When they finished, Jessica brought up the
subject of her arrest.

"Is there any way you
can help us, Angus?” she asked. “You know I didn't kill Virgil.
There’s no concrete evidence."

He wiped his mouth with
a cloth napkin. "What have you found out about it, Truman?"

"To be quite honest,
sir, it doesn't look good."

"Why is that?"

"Virgil was shot
between the eyes, just like Lou. And after that article in the
paper about Jessica, and the fact that she accepted the reward for
Lou's death—"

"But I didn't kill him.
We all know that. Someone else did. I assumed they'd come forward
for the money, but they didn't. I only took it because I had none.
And then, when Lou's gang showed up, I was too busy worrying about
what it was that they wanted."

"Which was?" Angus
asked.

"They wanted the
combination to the bank safe, which I knew nothing about." She took
another sip of coffee.

Truman leaned back in
his chair. "Jessica and I think there might be something to those
articles in the paper. Henry Gordon was pretty secretive about
it."

"I'll tell you what,"
Angus said. "I'll pay Jessica's bail today to get her out of here.
Then you two can see what you can find out."

“Angus, would you
really do that for us?”

He leaned forward and
placed his hand on hers. "Of course. If things don't go well, I
don't want you to be locked up in here."

Jessica shook her head
at him. Truman caught the exchange, witnessed the torn expression
on her face, but said nothing. In light of what she told him last
night, he thought it best to wait until he could talk to her
alone.

Finally, Angus made a
move to leave. "Truman, you should come with me. We'll head over to
see the judge right now. He's a reasonable fellow, and he respects
me. I'll tell him Jessica will be staying at my house. I'm sure it
won't be a problem."

Truman rose and shook
Angus's hand. "Thank you, sir."

"My pleasure." He
turned and kissed Jessica on the forehead, then left the office to
wait for Truman outside.

Truman turned to face
Jessica. "What’s going on?" he asked.

"Nothing,” she replied
too quickly. “Everything’s fine."

Truman hooked a thumb
through his gun belt. It wasn’t his style to feel this uncertain.
Hell, it wasn’t his style to feel much of anything at all. "You'll
be here when I get back?"

"Of course. We’ll talk
then.”

“It sounds
important.”

“It is, but Angus is
waiting. You should go.”

He stared at those
moist ruby lips and wondered what she wanted to discuss, and hoped
it wasn’t going to be something he didn’t want to hear.

He stroked a loose
tendril of hair away from her face. "I have a bad feeling
today."

"What kind of bad
feeling?" she asked.

"I don't know. I can’t
explain it. I just feel like things are going to take a turn, and
not for the better.”

She backed away from
him. “Are you afraid I’ll hang?”

He gazed into her eyes
for a long moment, then shook his head. “I can’t say for sure. I
don’t know why, but I feel like we’re going to be separated."

Jessica rested her
palms on his chest. "I don’t ever want to be separated from you,"
she told him. "I promised I'd stay here, and that's what I intend
to do."

Her words should have
eased his mind, but for some reason he couldn’t explain, every
muscle in his body tightened with apprehension.

Truman agreed to meet
Angus at the county courthouse immediately after he had a word with
Henry Gordon, the newspaper editor—but when he reached
The
Chronicle
office, the front door was locked. Wrestling with
his growing impatience, he faced the street, thumbed his hat back
off his head, leaned a shoulder against a post, and waited.

He thought about
Jessica and what she’d told him last night. Perhaps the strangest
thing about it was that he believed her, even though it was the
most outrageous tale he’d ever heard.

But when he remembered
how she was dressed the first time he saw her—with her hair long
and loose about her shoulders, wearing red shoes and britches that
looked like they were designed to fit a woman's shapely hips, and
that bizarre zipper contraption – it all made a strange sort of
sense.

Truman shifted his
weight to the other foot and glanced up and down the street. Five
minutes passed and still no one showed up to open the newspaper
office. Unusual for a Tuesday, he thought, as he pushed away from
the post. He might as well go and meet Angus, then he’d try Henry
Gordon at home.

His spurs chinked as he
headed down the boardwalk toward the courthouse.

"Truman!"

He turned to see Angus
waving from across the street. Truman waited for a wagon to pass,
then headed in that direction.

"I paid the bail,”
Angus said when the met. “You can let Jessica out, but Judge
Whittier wants her to stay in Dodge."

"What if she doesn't
stay?" It was half question, half warning. “You’ll lose your
money.”

Angus shrugged. "I
won’t miss it."

Truman nodded and gave
Angus a light slap on the shoulder. "Thank you."

"My pleasure. Here you
go." He handed over the bail certificate and leaned in to speak
quietly. "I presume you’ll take her away?”

Glancing around to make
sure no one was listening, Truman nodded.

“Where will you go?"
Angus asked.

"Don't rightly know.
Somewhere they won't find us. Maybe north. Maybe even as far as
Canada."

Angus considered this,
then relaxed his shoulders. "With any luck, you won't have to leave
town at all. Did you talk to Henry Gordon?"

"Not yet. The newspaper
office was locked up tight."

"Did you try his
house?"

"That’s where I’m
heading now."

Angus and Truman walked
down First Avenue to the corner, then stepped onto the boardwalk in
front of Kelley's Opera House. A pack of hounds tore by, barking
all the way, stirring up a cloud of dust.

"How well do you know
Jessica?" Truman asked, wondering how much Angus knew about what
was really going on.

"Quite well,” he
replied. “Why do you ask?"

Truman paused. "Do you
know where she comes from?"

Angus stopped on the
boardwalk. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do." He lowered his voice.
"I understand she told you."

Two ladies carrying
parasols walked by, and Truman tipped his hat at them. “Nice
morning,” he said casually.

As soon as they passed,
he continued. "She told me everything. Kind of hard to believe,
don’t you think?"

"Yes, it most certainly
is."

"Do you believe
her?"

Angus hesitated. "Do
you
?"

Truman hesitated for a
moment as he thought about it. "I love her, Angus. So I guess that
means I’ll believe just about anything she tells me."

Angus smiled and laid a
hand on his shoulder. "Good. Because it's true. Every last
word."

They started walking
again.

"Has she talked to you
about her family?" Truman asked.

"Yes. At first, it was
all she talked about—getting home to them—but as time moved on, she
spoke of them less and less, and began to talk of other things.
You, for one."

Truman looped both
thumbs through his gun belt. "Will she be happy here, do you
think?"

"Two weeks ago, I would
have said no. She was determined to get home, no matter what it
took, but now I believe she wants to stay. Even though we finally
know how to get back."

Truman stopped in his
tracks. "You know how to get back?"

Angus gazed uncertainly
at him. "Oh, dear. Perhaps I shouldn't have said anything."

"She told me there
wasn’t a way."

"There wasn't, before
today, but last night I figured it out. I believe, if we do
everything just right, she can go back anytime she wants."

Truman swallowed over
the peculiar dread and apprehension that had been eating away at
him all morning. He tried to make sense of everything, to
understand where he stood in all this.

"Can she travel back
and forth?” he asked. “I mean, could she go there, and then come
back here? Like, on the stagecoach?"

Angus wrinkled his
nose. "I don’t think so, not without risking her life. She was
lucky to have survived the first time."

Truman's gut began to
churn. "Could she take someone with her?"

"I’m not sure. I don't
think so. But you could always try."

Truman suspected
Angus’s was just being polite.

All at once, his mood
darkened. He knew the town wanted to hang Jessica. Was it selfish
of him to keep her here? To help her break the law, ride out of
Dodge, and turn her into an outlaw?

Maybe she was destined
to go home. Maybe Angus figured this out yesterday for a
reason.

"So, how does it work?"
he asked, facing Angus. "How can she get home? I want to know
everything."

On the way to the
jailhouse, Angus explained it—from the car crash to the missing
watch. Truman listened carefully to every word.

"She has to wear
exactly what she had on when she arrived?" he asked.

"Yes, I believe so. The
watch had been missing, but now we have it. I don’t think there's
anything stopping her."

Truman turned away,
leaving Angus in front of the jailhouse. "Tell Jessica I'll be back
soon. There's something I gotta do."