The Time-Traveling Outlaw (9 page)

“Where is this anchor?” Logan said in a low voice. 

“You should just lie back and be quiet now,” Sam said. 

“Listen,” Logan said. “You don’t know what kind of a man he is.”

Sam’s eyes flared at this. He put his face close to Logan’s. “Don’t you say that,” he said in a strained whisper. “Don’t you tell me that.”

Then it hit Logan. “What did he do to you?”

Sam straightened up, trying to compose himself. He looked over his shoulder once more, and the men had gone back to talking. “He has my daughter,” he finally said. “He’s keeping her in a house somewhere. He gives me updates twice a week. She has a nanny that he’s hired, toys, games.” Tears welled in his eyes. “He assures me she’s well taken care of. He says it’s additional motivation.”

“Sam,” Logan said. “Listen to me very carefully. We haven’t got much time.” The irony of saying that with the power of time travel at their fingertips crossed his mind, but he pushed it aside. “Send me back.”

Sam’s eyes grew wide. “Oh no,” he said. “I can’t do that.”

“Listen to me,” Logan hissed, desperate. He forced himself to speak softly the next time he opened his mouth. “I can change things.”

Sam squinted at him. “What?”

“Things are different from when sent me,” Logan said. “Little things. And if I can change little things, I can—”

“—change big things, too.” The brightness began to return to Sam’s eyes, but then almost immediately faded. “It won’t work. They’ll just force me to bring you back again.”

“What if you can’t?” Logan said. “What if I take the anchor with me?”

A smile formed at the corner of Sam’s mouth. He looked Logan in the eye, seemingly impressed that he had thought of something Sam hadn’t. “Yes,” he said. “That might work.”

“He might hurt your daughter anyway,” Logan said. “When he’s done with you. That’s what he does. But I might be able to save her. I might be able to save my—”

“But what if you can’t?” Sam asked.

“Who would you rather put your trust in?” Logan asked, knowing it was a gamble. He was banking on this man putting his trust in a convict, but over the man who had kidnapped his daughter. 

Sam glanced back one last time, then stepped away from the chair. Next to the tables with all the computer equipment was a smaller table, with a simple black box on it, wires trailing from one side. Sam pushed his fingers down on the top of it and the box hissed open, a heavy mist escaping from the cleft as it split in two. 

There, between the two halves of the box, sat an old pocket watch on a tiny black plastic pedestal.  

“Can I take it back with me?” Logan said. He raised his head and saw Sturgess and Kazu both looking at them. This was bad. He had to hurry. “Would that work?”

“Theoretically, yes,” Sam said. “The temporal field extends throughout your living tissue, so the watch would need to be surrounded by—”

“I get it,” Logan said. “Give it to me and send me back. Now!” He no longer needed to lower his voice. The cat was out of the bag. The two men were moving toward them. 

Sam saw them, too. He snatched the watch from the pedestal, put it on Logan’s chest, and plopped down in a chair in front of a computer. He began typing furiously. 

Everything happened very fast.

The restraints slid away from Logan’s arms. He reached up to grab the watch when the jolt hit him. The damned implants. Kazu was running, holding the remote in one hand.

Logan screamed, and Sam turned his head to look at him. 

“Don’t look at me!” Logan yelled at him. “Send me ba—”

Another jolt, even more painful, hit him. Thankfully the scientist turned back around and kept working. 

Logan felt like his whole body was on fire. His vision was blurred with tears as the electricity crackled through him, but he could see Sturgess reaching into his jacket. Kazu was standing over him, drawing a knife. 

Logan struggled through the pain and clasped both hands around the pocket watch. He saw two things happen almost at the same time.

Sam, hunched over, reached out with his index finger to press the Enter key. Sturgess withdrew a nickel-plated .45 from his jacket and pushed the muzzle against Sam’s forehead.

The finger pushed the key down just as the gun fired. At the same time, Kazu’s knife, looking like a twelve-inch version of a samurai sword, was plunging down toward his belly.

The world exploded into brightness. As it did, he saw a plume of blood burst out of the side of Sam’s head, his entire body jolting to the left. He saw the last faded image of the knife driving downward, the tip just above his belly button.

Then the present was gone again.

He’d been gone five days. 

That first day, the Sheriff and his men had searched her property, finding nothing. They had left, and the Sheriff had apologized one last time. 

The next day, chores still needed to be done. Instead, Sally had sat on the porch, looking up toward the road and waiting. He would come. She knew it. Something inside her said that he was coming back. 

But the sun had inched its way across the sky, and no sign of Logan Carver had appeared. Eventually, the animals protested. They were hungry. They were thirsty. They needed fed and watered. So she picked herself up off the porch steps and went to the barn, looking over her shoulder. 

That night she had worn a gauzy pink outfit to bed, just for him. He would come in the night. He would walk through her front door without knocking and he would come to the bedroom looking for her. She would be ready for him. He would scoop her up into his arms and kiss her roughly. They would make love for the first time, perhaps on the bed, perhaps on the floor. 

But the longer she lay there, the more she began to feel stupid. He was gone. He had escaped. And there was so much that was strange about that escape. But the one thing she had been sure of was that he would come back for her. She had felt it in her bones. 

But that first night, after enough hours passed, she cried herself to sleep.

The next day, she did a little more work, still glancing up toward the road the entire time. Each day after had gotten a little easier, so that on the fifth day since he escaped she tried to convince herself that he wasn’t coming back. And yet, she couldn’t completely do that. 

Had he been some sort of confidence man? A thief? But then, what was his game? She couldn’t believe that. She knew he wasn’t a coward, either, so she couldn’t believe that he had simply run. What then?

These question gnawed at her as she fed the chickens, cleaned the coop, brushed the horses, hoed the garden. And her thoughts began to shift a little, from Logan to Sturgess. Eventually she would need to get more supplies, and she dreaded another trip into town. 

She’d taken Maisy over to the Grant farm a couple of miles up the road, to try to barter, but Maggie shook her head and asked her to politely leave. She told Sally that poor old Gus Popper had gotten three of his fingers broken after he’d sold her supplies.

But he hadn’t. His wife had. Sturgess didn’t care. He was going to starve her out by intimidating everyone in the area. 

She started to make plans for leaving. Just the thought of doing so made her heart break. But she was just one woman. What could she do? As the Sheriff had said, his hands were tied. 

At least if Logan wasn’t going to be here with her, the thought of him escaping filled her with a sense of bittersweet. She no longer imagined him riding up to her porch steps. Instead, she began to imagine him riding west, his hat off, the wind in his hair. She understood why he couldn’t come back for her. It was just too dangerous. And she’d been fooling herself that there was anything there anyway. What would a man like that want with her? She was widowed, alone, and she was nothing but trouble. 

So the fifth day since he’d gone, Sally was in the garden, on her knees, pulling up weeds. She still had a fair number of potatoes, and they would last her a decent stretch. The sky was gray, the sun trying to burn through the clouds, and the heat was mercifully being held at bay.

She sat up on her haunches and wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her gloved hand. At first she thought she was seeing a mirage. She’d never actually hallucinated, not that she could recall. But she had been pushing herself, throwing herself into the farm work, and even though it was slightly cooler today, it was still hot.

The outline of a man seemed to be walking toward her, from the direction of the road. The way the shadows fell, she couldn’t make out any of the features, but the way he moved, it was obvious it was a man.

Her heart leapt in her chest, but she tried to calm herself. She had just started reconciling to the fact that he wasn’t coming back. 

Still, she climbed to her feet, squinting to get a better look. He was still far up the path. She waved at him, and he didn’t wave back. He looked as if he were still moving forward, though, stumbling, almost like…

Sally opened the gate to the garden, not bothering to close it behind her. She started to walk toward the figure, pulling off her gloves and tossing them aside. 

Then she saw clear enough. It was him. Oh dear God in heaven, he was alive and stumbling down the path toward her home. And just as he had been the first day she had seen him, he was naked as the day he was born.

She didn’t care about this oddity, though. She lost all semblance of decorum and broke into a run. Logan didn’t seem to have seen her. His eyes, even from this far away, looked blank. 

As she ran, she saw him take two more steps, then stumble as his foot hit a rock. He pitched forward, going down on one knee, then falling face-down in the dirt.

“Logan!” she cried, now only thirty feet or so from him. She closed the distance as fast as she could, kneeling down when she reached him. 

She rolled him over and gasped at the sight of him. His eyes were unfocused, staring at something far away. His lips were cracked. Who knew just how long he’d been wandering around out here?

He was cradling something in his cupped hands. He was mumbling. “Ill urges,” it sounded like.

“Don’t talk,” she said. “I’m here. Just hold on. I’ll bring the wagon down the road and fetch you some water as well.”

She started to get up, but he grabbed her, moving so fast it scared her. His eyes focused on hers, seeing her for the first time.

“We have to kill Sturgess,” he said. “It’s the only way.”

“Okay,” she said, putting her hand gently over his, clutching her blouse. “First things first, though. We need to get you inside.”

The sun peeked through a veil of clouds, just for a moment, and she saw the glint of something shiny in his other hand. 

“What is that?” she asked. “Do you want me to take it for you?”

He shrunk back from her. “No,” he said. “No. Got to get this to Sam. Got to pass it down. It’s important.”

He was talking crazy now, she thought. She need to get him into a bed, get him some water, and try to get Dr. Gleeson over here without arousing any suspicion.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, patting his arm. Thankfully he relaxed his grip on her. “You just hold on.”

He lay back flat against the dirt, and when his hand relaxed, she saw what he held: a silver pocket watch.

She reached out for it and he flinched, clutching the watch to his chest with both hands, mumbling something. To Sally it sounded like: “Have to guard the anchor.” Though that didn’t make any sense. He held a watch, and there wasn’t a large body of water around for miles.

“Okay, okay,” she said, drawing her hand back. “Here.” She took off her apron and folded it into a makeshift pillow, tucking it under his head. “I’m going to get the wagon now.”

She felt awful, leaving him there in the dirt, but what else could she do? She ran back to the barn and hitched Maisy to the wagon as fast as she could, leading her back up the road. 

When she returned, at first she was alarmed that he was unconscious. She gasped a sigh of relief as she held her ear to his lips and felt his ragged breath. She put her head against his bare chest and both heard and felt his heartbeat, still strong.

But now that he was out, getting him in the wagon would be nearly impossible. Sally was strong, but not strong enough to haul him up into the bed.

She knelt over him and took the watch from his hands. She turned it over, not seeing anything remarkable about it. The watch didn’t seem to work. Maybe it had some kind of sentimental value. Had he found it wandering around? She didn’t remember seeing him with a watch before. In any case, she put it in her shirt pocket, then stood up. 

Guess I’m gonna have to make a travois, she thought. She’d never made one herself, but she’d seen them a few times. 

Sally walked back up to the barn and found two long pieces of wood meant for fence posts. They’d do nicely. She went in the house and came out with an old, faded blue blanket she’d been meaning to get rid of. She grabbed a knife from the kitchen as well.

Once she had everything down by the wagon, she tore a strip from the blanket and used it to fasten the two pieces of wood together. Then she cut strips into the blanket along its edge and used those, still attached to the blanket, to fasten them to each piece of wood. The sun was rising, and she tried to work fast, but it still took her nearly an hour before she had what looked like one side of a tent hitched to the rear of the wagon. 

It’s not pretty, but it’ll do
, she thought. Then she got behind Logan, hooked her arms under his, and dragged him onto the makeshift stretcher. She secured him to the travois with more strips of blanket, then climbed into the wagon seat, already tired. She had to get him inside, though.

Considering she’d never made one before, the travois worked pretty well, well enough to allow her to pull Logan up to the front of her house. From there, she dragged him up the steps and inside, and that was slow going. By the time she hauled him up into her bed, she was exhausted.

But the weariness in her bones was offset by the joy in her heart. He’d come back. She liked to think it was mostly for her, but everything about his disappearance had been peculiar. Maybe it had happened the way the Sheriff said. Maybe he squeezed between the bars, naked as a jay, and gotten loose. Had he really been wandering outside of town for five days, though? All sorts of things about that didn’t make any sense.