Wakening the Past: A Time Travel Romance (Medicine Stick Series Book 2) (10 page)

Hart took a two minute hot shower to warm up, th
an dressed in jeans and a thick pullover, pulling on double layers of socks and her warm outdoor boots. She felt as though she’d never get warm again.

She was just slipping back into her coat again when a knock sounded at the door. “Go away, Alistair,” she called. “I don’t want to see you right now.”

In fact there was nobody she wanted to see less. Just the sight of him made her ache. He was her husband but he did not trust her. This felt like the ultimate betrayal.

“It’s not Alistair,” a low voice called through the door. “It’s Serena. I want to talk to you about Bobbi.”

She had little choice but to open the door if she planned to exit herself. She stepped out, closing it behind her. “I’m just going out, Serena,” she said as gently as she could, knowing how worried the older woman must be.

“I heard what you told your husband. You’re going to look for my granddaughter. Please take me with you.”

It was not so much the pleading look on Serena’s face or the constant knowledge that this was her sister’s daughter that convinced her, but the reminder in her brain that it wasn’t safe for her to drive, or maybe even to be alone. She might pass into that other time at any moment.

“Can we take your car? Will you drive? Alistair parked mine out at the ranch.”

Serena nodded and taking her keys from her purse led the way out to the luxury automobile she had leased for her time in Oklahoma. Hart stepped out of the sharp bite of the wind and relaxed into a superbly cushioned seat that quickly started to warm. Heavenly!

Serena starred the vehicle’s purring engine and eased from the parking lot. “Where to?” she asked, her voice slightly hoarse with tension.

“Mountainside.” The warmth of the heater flowing over her, Hart finally began to warm up. “Downtown Mountainside.”

The north wind blew against the car as they headed north, an invading army that would suck millage from their gas use, but Hart didn’t figure Serena was worried about that. All she wanted was to find her granddaughter and bring her back to safety.

The older woman kept her gaze fixed on the narrow road ahead of them. “I heard you tell your husband that a man with a gun had Bobbi.”

Hart tried to think how much she could get away with saying. Well, heck, why not let it all out. Alistair was probably going to see her locked up anyway. She wondered if she quickly ended the marriage she could stop his control over her. If Tommy as her supposed brother was listed as next of kin, he could easily be bought if things were a
s tough as Nikki said.

But then she supposed Alistair could block any attempt she made to divorce him by claiming she was mentally incompetent.

She sighed. What a mess. “Look, Serena, my husband would tell you I’m delusional. And you’d probably believe him when I tell you I think I’m really Stacia Larkin sent through time to finish out my life in Hart Benson’s body. You see, Hart is really the person who died.”

Serena’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “All I care is what you know about Bobbi.”

Well, here goes nothing!
“It seems Bobbi and I have some sort of connection. Maybe genetic. But I seem to be able to reach her.”

She waited for the car to be braked to an abrupt stop so Serena could turn around and head back to the lodge to turn her over to Alistair.

Instead Serena kept driving. “My mother told me there was something uncanny about her sister. She said she claimed, when she was very small, to change places with a girl named Hart. She told her other things that seemed unbelievable, though as she got older she quit saying such things. Mother said some people would have thought she quit imagining strange things, but she felt Stacia just learned to keep quiet.”

“A lesson I seem to have forgotten,” Hart said with a touch of bitterness.

“Mother said her father never told Stacia and warned her not to say anything but his mother had been what they called ‘gifted.’ She saw things, knew things that others didn’t. But back in her time, people didn’t think that was so strange. Their minds were open to things we no longer believe. Now my daughter and son-in-law would say it was superstitious nonsense.” She looked pleadingly at Hart. “Help me find my granddaughter before I have to tell her mother she is missing.”

They drove on through the gray morning, the granite mountains growing closer. As they drove across the intersection on the south side of Mountainside, Serena added, “Mind you, I only half believe any of this.”

Hart grinned. “That makes two of us.”

“My mother was a sensible, intelligent woman and she loved her sister dearly.”

Hart thought back to when she’d been Stacia, when time moved forward and she wasn’t caught in an endless, seemingly purposeless loop. “Helen wasn’t only my sister,” she said softly. “She was my best friend.”

They drove down Main, past Pizza Plus and Ye Old Antique Shop, the post office and the town hall. Hart directed Selena to keep going until they reached the street nearest the mountain. She pointed out the granite-sided house as they drove by, “That’s where my brother and his family live.”

Serena nodded, frowning slightly as though she were working at understanding.

“Bobb
i told me she was being held in a stone cottage on this street.” She swallowed hard. “And I saw a man with a gun. What do we do about that?”

The
stone cottage, as Hart had thought she’d remembered, was the little house at the end of the winding street of dwellings that stretched past the mountain. It had been vacant as long as she had been here as a permanent resident in Hart’s body, but she remembered as though sorting out what had once seemed insignificant facts, that it belonged to her absentee landlady, the woman who owned the downtown antique shop where she’d once leased the loft.

Mrs. Harris, who had been friends with Hart, but whom she’d never met, was reportedly at a nursing home recovering from a bad fall.

Maybe she was the white-haired woman in the vision she’d had of Bobbi and her captors. She reached out mentally, trying to feel Bobbi’s presence at this location, but found only emptiness.

That empty hole scared her. Had they hurt Bobbi? Was it too late
to help the girl?

“I want you to let me out here and then drive around slowly, coming back in a few minutes. If I’m not here, go tell Alistair.”

“I can’t do that,” Serena protested.

“Yes, you can if you want to see Bobbi safe. I have an excuse for beings here. She . .  .that is, Hart . . .I mean me . . .I’m supposedly acquainted with the owner. I’ll just knock on the door and pretend I’m here on a business matter. I won’t push it, but maybe I’ll get some idea if Bobbi is truly here.”

Serena didn’t look very happy, but she pulled over to the curb next to the house that lay west of the cottage and allowed Hart to get out. Then she eased off and, against the brisk wind, Hart braced herself and walked across the lawn toward the front door of the cottage.

She rang the bell. No answer.
She knocked, than knocked louder, listening for any sounds from within.

Well, she shouldn’t be surprised. If she were holding a young girl and an old man as prisoners, she wouldn’t answer the door either.

The cottage had no garage, nor was a car parked near it, but as she walked searchingly around it, she could see ruts in the dirt drive where a vehicle had recently driven.

She circled the house, seeing no sign of occupancy, and found herself back at the front door and tried again to ‘feel’ Bobbi’s presence. Nothing.
Impulsively she tried the door knob and it turned in her hand.

Even though she felt that the occupants had fled, probably very recently, she still had to seize all her courage to very quietly open that door and tiptoe inside. She swallowed hard, th
an called, “Mrs. Harris? It’s me, Hart.”

This seemed the safest way to go in. If the gunman was hiding inside, at least he would think she was an innocent acquaintance, not someone who was a risk to him.

No answer. The cottage did not have an entrance hall, but opened straight into a small room furnished cozily with a sofa and chairs and several small tables, all of them classic pieces that could have come from the antique shop where she’d lived in the loft before it had burned.

The room looked like something from the fifties, a comfortable,
unpretentious place decorated in the early-American style that had been so popular in those days.

It was the room she had seen in the vision sent by Bobbi.

The house was warm and the gas fireplace appeared to have been turned off fairly recently because it still sent out a glowing warmth.

Maybe thirty minutes, she decided, that was how long they had been gone. With the cold outside, it wouldn’t stay warm for long.

Cautiously she began to inspect the house just in case Bobbi had been left tied up and gagged.

Busy directing the search, Alistair looked up in surprise when Serena Hudson burst into the office.

“Sheriff,” she said, “She went inside and she didn’t come out. She said if she didn’t I was to go for you.”

He stared at her. “She who?” he asked bluntly.

“Your wife. She went in the house to rescue Bobbi, but they must have her too because she didn’t come back out. Please come. Hurry!” Usually a poised lady, she grabbed his arm and tried to urge him from the office.

Damn! Damn! Damn! What was Hart up to now?

He went with her, calling to Deputy Harding as he passed by that he was going out to check a lead and would be in radio contact.

He led the way to his own car and opened the passenger side door for Serena. “Where is she?” he asked once he’d taken his seat, starting the engine as he spoke.

“We went to a house in Mountainside, a little
stone cottage over by the mountain. She said Bobbi was being held there.”

“Oh, yeah, the man with a gun,” he said in disgust.

“You knew?” she asked in surprise. “I thought Hart said . .  .”

He interrupted as he sped from the lodge parking lot. “Hart is delusional, Mrs. Hudson. Surely a woman of your intelligence recognized that.”

As he drove, he got in communication with a constable in Mountainside. “Rick,” he said, “do me a favor. My wife has gone over to Mrs. Harris’ place and I’m afraid she might not be feeling well. Will you go by and check on her?’

Then he turned his attention back to Serena Hudson, who was looking at him reprovingly. “She told me how you would react. Still she told me to go for you if she didn’t come out of the house within five minutes.”

“Be reasonable, Serena, people don’t communicate from a town ten miles away, not without a phone, radio or some sort of technical gadget. I’m really worried about my wife. In fact I’ve already talked to her doctor in Oklahoma City about taking her in for more treatment.”

Serena’s mouth thinned. “I believe her,” she insisted, “but since your mind is closed, there is no point arguing.”

He knew the anger he directed at her was because he was frantically worried about his wife and afraid she’d passed out somewhere and might be hurt or killed. He’d put together the last incident with the abandoned car and realized she must have had another such experience.

Maybe she had a tumor on her brain.
That would explain a lot. He felt cold at the thought that something so serious might be wrong with his Hart.

The ten mile drive took forever. His lights flashing and his siren
shrilling he passed the occasional car or truck, but traffic was light, though once he entered the little town, he slowed down in the creeping traffic and finally, finally pulled into the street next to the granite mountain. To his relief, he saw the town’s one patrol car parked in front of the stone cottage he knew belonged to B.J. Harris.

His car screeched to a halt and he jumped out, leaving Serena to fend for herself.

Pulling his gun as a caution just in case there was an intruder within and he’d taken control not only of Hart, but of the young constable, he called out, “Sheriff!” then entered through the door which stood open.

“Back here, Redhawk,” Rick Jameson’s voice called. “We’re in
the bedroom.”

He was familiar with the front of the house, but never had been in the back. He found two bedrooms, separated by a short hallway. Rick and Hart were in the back one where the bed coverings were tumbled about as though someone had recently slept here. “Where’s Mrs. Harris?” he asked, frowning.

“We think they took her with them,” the young constable pushed back a twist of long hair, his eyes looking excited. He was obviously already checking fingerprints.

“But look at this
.” Hart pointed to a small object on the bed.

He bent to look at it. “What is it?” he asked doubtfully.

“A hair clasp. The kind Bobbi was wearing. She was here, Alistair.”

Scanty evidence as far as he could see.
That clasp could have belonged to B.J. Harris. He was more interested in what the constable was finding in the way of fingerprints.