Wrong Face in the Mirror: A Time Travel Romance (Medicine Stick Series) (14 page)

Nope. She was just mad enough to not mind putting him through a few minutes extra worry so she bolted the door,  turned off the television and snuggled against her pillow, waiting for the interruption that was sure to come.

It didn’t take long. Maybe ten minutes passed before she heard someone trying to enter her room with a key card, but stopped by the bolt she’d put in place. She heard muffled swearing and smothered a laugh

“Hart? You in there?”

She tried to sound like somebody who’d just been awakened from sound sleep. “What is it? What’s wrong? Who’s there? Go away or I’ll call the manager.”

“Hart, it’s me, Alistair. Let me in.”

Like a good little wife, she went and opened the door.

Not t
wo minutes ago Alistair Redhawk had been inwardly swearing that if he could only find Hart safe and sound, he’d kiss her ‘til she squealed. Now he stared at her in the blue and red stripped nightshirt with her hair tousled from sleep, and felt a rising, unreasonable anger.

Being a professional, he had to stop his troops before dealing with her. He spoke into his phone, informing the younger of his deputies that Hart Redhawk was safely found and both of the men could take themselves home for the night. He would see to his wife’s safety.

Hart didn’t remember why she was feeling particularly wonderful until she stretched her awakening form and touched a leg with her big toe.

And an arm lay across her middle. She froze in place as memory flooded back and she recalled how Alistair had turned on her in fury, obviously determined to give her the scolding of her life for scaring him.

She’d giggled like that silly Mayleen and reached up to kiss him straight on the mouth. He’d given a little growl, then pulled her into his arms. After that they’d ended up, somehow, in the bed and she’d remembered something else about just how special the weeks they’d spent as husband and wife had been.

Now she lay quite still and told herself she’d messed up big time. Alistair thought she was out of her mind and she didn’t know
a way to convince him that everything she’d tried to tell him had been the literal truth.

How could she continue with this marriage with a man willfully bent on misunderstanding her
? Mom had always said that trust was at the root of a good marriage. Husband and wife should not have secrets from each other.

And if she told this man anymore home truth
s, he’d probably have her locked up.

Then she realized his hand had tightened to grasp hold of her and she decided that she would think about truth a little later.

When he awakened the second time she was gone and he realized that it was later than he usually reported in for work. Telling himself there was no need to panic, he proceeded to do so, imagining how someone had slipped into the room and stolen her from his arms. Or maybe she’d stepped out to go for coffee or ice or anything and her nemesis had left her battered body in the hallway for him to find.

It was then with considerable relief that he saw her message scrawled on to a piece of lodge stationary left on the bedside table. ‘Gone to work,’ she had written.

He was able to breathe, though he rushed through his shower, dressing in the clothes he’d worn the night before, th
an hurried out into the hall where, of course, there was no body. As he drove to Wichita, he checked with the prison to make sure she’d arrived safely for her job. Reassured, he answered a call of an accident involving a small car and a large bale of hay dropped in a country road, smiling at himself in the rearview mirror just because it had been such a fabulous night.

At work he began to look into Tommy Benson’s latest activities to find out if he’d been gambling again and might be in particular need of money. Somehow he found it hard to believe that Tommy would harm his own sister, though as a law enforcement officer he couldn’t help but be aware that often crimes were committed against friends and relatives.

Still, if anybody was asking, he’d bet on Nikki. Intensely protective of her little family, she might see her sister-in-law as an impediment to their well being and when Kipling had written that little item about the female being deadlier than the male, he’d been talking about maternal instinct.

When she left work that day Hart debated which direction to turn her car, back to the southeast and the home she’d shared with Alistair or to the west and the lodge where she had a temporary room.

An ordinary day had provided her something of a cooling off period and she’d come to realize that no matter how strong their feelings, she and her husband had some very serious matters to work out between them.

She drove to the west. “Somebody to see you, Mrs. Redhawk,” the young clerk called from the front desk as she entered the lobby. “She’s waiting out in the restaurant.”

Hart couldn’t imagine who would have come here looking for her, but obediently headed for the pleasant dining area that looked out on the lake. She hadn’t eaten here yet, but Alistair had told her the food was good. People from the towns around came out to dine, especially on Sunday after church. Maybe she’d have dinner here this evening.

She found her sister-in-law hovering over a cup of coffee at a table next to the big windows. Nikki gestured her to take a seat and ordered
more coffee for herself and a cup for Hart.

Not now. What’s gone wrong with Tommy?
Hart tried to brush aside the thought but she was fairly sure Nikki hadn’t come out looking for her for the heck of it.

“Tommy won’t talk to you so I have to,” Nikki began. “The way I see it, that money is as much his as it is yours and you owe it to him to get him out of trouble.”

Hart considered that. She knew since she was acting in the real Hart’s place, she really should try to think what she would want. On the other hand, she had no way of knowing what that was. “What kind of trouble is Tommy in?” she asked, wishing she were anyplace but here.

“That’s really none of your business!”

Hart considered that for a moment. “You’re right,” she said and got up from her chair without having touched her coffee. She turned and left, aware that the few customers in the restaurant at this time of day were watching with interest.

“You bitch! You can’t turn your back on me this way. You
selfish rich witch of a person who doesn’t even care for her own family . .  .”

She walked away fast enough to miss the rest of the diatribe, thinking with some amusement that if her Mom had heard this, she would have washed out Nikki’s mouth with soap.

She would not eat in the restaurant tonight. She would order room service. And from now on Tommy would just have to talk to her himself if he wanted to tap into Hart’s financial reserves.

She was more than willing to help him out for the little girls’ sakes if he wasn’t simply funneling the money into gambling.

Half expecting Nikki to follow if she went to her room, she went outside instead, strolling away from the lake this time into the thin shrubbery that grew on the other side of the mountain.

This country was known to harbor rattlesnakes so she watched each step carefully, more aware of what lay under her feet than of her larger surroundings.

To her surprise, a girl leapt suddenly from behind a bush and yelled, “Boo!” then began to laugh.

“Caught you by surprise, didn’t I?” fourteen-year-old Bobbi Lawrence said, smiling at her in the friendliest fashion imaginable.

Considering everything that had happened to her, she was probably more easily startled than most. Still she managed to grin back at the ebullient Bobbi. The girl seemed to approach life with so much delight that it was hard not to be swept along.

“I am surprised,” she admitted. “I’d heard that you and your grandmother had gone back to California.”

“We did, but we hardly got settled when Granny wanted to come back. She said she felt as if her mother wanted her to come here and find out what happened to her sister.” She raised her dark eyebrows in doubt. “Usually Granny is quite sane.”

Hart hardly knew how to comment. “I’m sure she feels a commitment to her mother’s wishes.”

“She’s dead. She can’t wish anything.”

Hart wondered about that. To her Helen was still only a girl, hardly even a young woman yet, and she missed her with a sudden acute, almost painful longing. Maybe that was the way Helen had felt her whole life, as though she should be able to reach out and find her sister.

She didn’t argue. There was no way this child could understand what she was feeling.

“I understand the DNA results
won’t be in for a while.”

Bobbie shook her head energetically.
“Granny says it’ll be a long wait, but she has a feeling the woman in the lake was her aunt.”

Hart stared at the girl.
Personally she was darned sure. She’d seen Stacia shot. She’d seen her lying on the sandy street in front of the store.

She barely heard footsteps approaching. “Time to get ready for dinner, Bobbi,” Serena’s mellow voice called and then she rounded the little path to come into sight.

“Miss Benson.” She nodded politely. “So good to see you again.”

“Hart,” she responded automatically, but could manage no more in the way of a greeting as the older woman bid her a polite good evening and then walked back down toward the lodge, the girl bouncing along at her side.

She followed slowly so as not to catch up with them. Troubled by the thought of the feelings that had haunted her sister’s life, she didn’t want to talk to anybody else.

For just a shadow of a second she even entertained the idea that Alistair might be right and she was suffering from some sort of brain disorder. But, no! She believed in the evidence of her own senses; something else was wrong.

But when Stacia’s body had died that night in 1947, had it taken the soul who was called Hart with it? She stumbled down to the lower level where the lodge had been built and only noticed when she stood firmly on the cliff that in the glimmering dusk she was once more looking at the little town of Medicine Stick.

“What are you doing hiding up here?” a familiar voice said from behind her and the first tiny bit of the puzzle fell into place.

Alistair was late getting back to the lodge because he drove up on a one-car accident where an elderly local man had apparently either fallen asleep at the wheel, or more probably suffered a seizure or a heart attack, and run into one of the big cottonwoods beside the road.

Unfortunately the collision had been too much for him and there was little Alistair could do but wait for the medical officer and a tow truck to arrive on the scene. And then it was his duty to break the news personally to the man’s daughter and her family, people he’d known all his life.

That was the worst of this job. When something bad happened it was rarely to a remote stranger as it would be in a city, but someone he knew well enough to recite a whole biography as well as list all the next of kin.

Anxiety nagged at him as he worked through events, a nagging fear that something might happen to Hart without him there to watch over her.

In a late afternoon
phone conversation, she had categorically refused to have a deputy following her around and he’d determined that he’d spend the night at the lodge again even if he had to sleep on the floor outside her doorway.

He was cross, sad and beginning to be angry by the time he drove up to park beside the lodge.
With the mountains and lake as backdrop, this was one of the most picturesque spots in an area mostly dominated by dry grass and rolling plains, but it was hard to enjoy it when the woman he loved was in possible danger.

Of course if it had
been anybody else, he would have said that the fire at that old building had been set by a prankster wanting to see the excitement of a fire, or maybe someone with a bone to pick with the elderly owner.

The trouble was that something had happened to
Hart before. She’d gone missing and been found unconscious on the street in a city well over a hundred miles away. Nobody seemed to have any idea how that had happened, including Hart.

It wasn’t enough to go on, not enough to convince any disinterested observer that there was a threat to Hart. And as far as the bones in the lake were concerned, well, it had been a long time ago and didn’t have anything to do with her.

She just had this crazy idea fixed in her brain . . .

Of course it wasn’t just the sound of the woman’s voice. It was also the pistol in her hand. A gun aimed with clear authority at Hart.

Only as she’d guessed almost immediately when she saw the lights of the town below, she wasn’t wearing Hart’s body anymore. If she could see herself she would see a woman with red hair and brown eyes, a taller and more curvy woman
than Hart Benson.

She swallowed hard. “What’s this all about, Sibyl?” she asked the woman who
had been in her grade at school and yet had a respected position as one of the community’s school teachers. “You mind telling me why you’re holding a gun on me?”

She’d never known the For
resters particularly well. They were part of a small set of people who had more opportunities than those afforded her family. They were better educated and lived in nicer homes than did the Larkins. Sibyl, who had been an only child adored by older parents, was attractive in a rather matronly way with her tightly curled hair and dresses that always seemed more suited to an older woman than to someone her age.

She’d grown up here in town and met her husband while she was away at teacher’s college, bringing the handsome young man proudly back to Medicine Stick where they’d both gotten jobs as teachers.

For Medicine Stick, they were success incarnate, but people whispered that her husband had a straying eye and was too attractive for his own good. And Sibyl made little scenes if any other woman paid too much attention to her husband, or vice versa.

Stacia had been careful not to put herself in that position. Not that she even thought about
being interested in young Mr. Forrester. But she sure as heck didn’t want to rile Sibyl.

So what was this about?

Sibyl Forrester’s eyes were squinted into mean little lines and her lips were set tight.

“I saw you,” she said. “I saw you with him.”

She was out of her cotton picking mind.

Stacia glanced around uneasily. The lodge and all the cars were gone, of course, and only wilderness lay around her, a scene looking down on the town on a cooling winter evening.

“Who’d you see me with, Sibyl?” she stalled, knowing if the woman thought she’d seen Stacia with anyone special, she hadn’t been present.

“Don’t mock me,” Sibyl said in a shaky voice. “You’re so pretty, you could have anyone, anyone at all. That’s why I came up here looking for you. I know this is your favorite place. You come here to meet him.

This was not a favored walk for Stacia and most certainly she’d never met Sibyl’s husband anywhere. The very idea repelled her, but she supposed there was no point wishing logic on an insane woman.

Her car was parked out front, but she wasn’t in her room though when he questioned a front desk clerk who came back from break he said, “A woman was waiting for her in the restaurant when she came in at about four. I heard there was something of a scene when they met up.” He yawned, clearly not interested in the misbehavior of women older than him. He looked to be barely out of his teens.

The restaurant was busy with evening diners, but it was easy enough to find someone on staff who had witnessed the so called ‘scene.’ A waitress who was a couple of years younger than the clerk only took time from her customers because he was sheriff and insisted.

“My wife,” he said. “Dark hair, blue eyes, in her mid twenties, she met with someone here.”

Like most everyone he met, she was a local girl from Mountainside. “Sure, sheriff.” She grinned. “Hart, she’s got dignity. She just walked away without turning a hair while Nikki Benson was yelling the most awful insults.” The grin widened. “I won’t tell you what Nikki called her.”

“You don’t know whether Nikki followed her out?”

“Don’t know what happened to either of them. “Nikki just paid her check for their coffee and took off. She was red
in the face and mad.”

No one was able to update that news. Nobody seemed to have seen either woman after the incident in the restaurant, which wasn’t particularly surprising considering at that time of day not many people were around.

To his surprise he met Bobbi Lawrence in the lobby. Seated in a big chair, she was intent on a graphic novel. “You looking for Hart?” she asked when she saw him.

He nodded.

“We saw her earlier, Granny and me. She was taking a walk up that way.” She pointed to the wooded area west of the lodge.

He started to leave. “I thought the two of you had gone home,” he said, puzzled.

She nodded. “Left and came back. Granny still wants to find out what happened to her aunt. She says it nags at the back of her mind.” Her mouth quirked upward as though she was amused at the wanderings of the older generation.

He had the idea a lot of things seemed funny to Bobbi.  “Hart seemed all right when you saw her?” he asked.

She nodded. “Sure. Surprised to see me, but okay.” She went back to her book.

He had no way of knowing if she’d gone walking before or after the encounter with Nikki in the restaurant, but taking a flashlight from his car, went looking.

She’d probably just gone off by herself to think over what had happened with Nikki. She was so anxious to do her best by her admittedly difficult little family, no doubt she’d been devastated by Nikki’s public tirade.

He
followed the walking path that led up the mountain the easy way, avoiding climbing across the huge slippery boulders of the mountain.

The wind was building up from what had been a mild November day. The forecast for a cold front was coming true and he was grateful that only snow flurries were expected, nothing more extreme. He became increasingly concerned about Hart. She had to be somewhere around here; she couldn’t have gone far without her car. She couldn’t have just vanished.

Though it had happened once before. He’d never forget those awful days when he’d no idea what had happened to her. Others might have been caught up in their suspicions he’d done her harm, but he’d known that wasn’t true, that whatever had happened to his wife had nothing to do with him.

He was afraid she was somewhere suffering and in pain, or in the hands of someone who would do her untold harm. He was afraid she was dead. Surely his Hart would contact him if she was able to do so. But she’d said
she loved someone else.

Maybe that someone had come by the lodge and she’d gone off with him. He closed his eyes, remembering last night and told himself that couldn’t be true. He believed with all his being that she loved only him.

“Hart!” he called as loudly as he could so that she could hear him over the wind. A reply came as though a whisper from a faraway a distance. “Alistair. Help me.”

His light went out.

He stumbled in darkness, his arms outstretched to avoid the trees, hurrying as fast as he could in the direction from which he’d heard her call.

“Who was that?” Sibyl demanded nervously, the pistol wavering wildly in her hand.

“Alistair!” Hart called desperately.

“Shut up,” Sibyl whispered the command, grabbing her arm and pressing the mouth of the gun against her throat. She steered her away from the sound behind them of someone stumbled through the woods, trying to find them. She began to push her down the slope toward the town that now lay in darkness before them, the cold of the gun against the side of her throat, Sibyl’s grip hard on her arm.

“What’s happened to the town?” she whispered. “Where are the lights
?”

“They turned off the power at midnight. You know that. Everybody’s gone and at dawn they’ll open the dam so the water begins to flow downstream.
Medicine Stick will be no more.”

The idea was frightening, smothering to think of all that water pouring down on her home.

“Everybody’s out. They had the Guard out to check building by building. The homes are empty, the streets are abandoned.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I knew you would be here.” Sibyl continued to push her down the slope, past the area where the lodge stood in the present day, and down the rougher incline that led to Medicine Stick. “I heard my husband calling to arrange the date with you. I locked him in the cellar at my aunt’s house and came up here.”

She couldn’t hear Alistair, either the sound of his voice or of his thrashing through the trees trying to get to her. He couldn’t be here anyway. This wasn’t his place or time and he wouldn’t even recognize the woman named Stacia.

Only the howl of the wind disturbed the silence of the abandoned town, that and the clatter of a loose board as they walked past the house where she’d lived with her family. Surely they would have missed her. Surely they wouldn’t have left without her.

Sand stirred in the street and she breathed in the grit as the cold wind blew through her cotton dress and on her bare legs. They must be walking right up to the disaster point when whatever happened took place. Stacia knew she had to fight for her own life and for that of Sibyl’s husband who must be locked up in the cellar in back of their house. “
You don’t want him to drown?” she asked abruptly.

“I’ll go back for him after it’s over. He knows I would never hurt him.”

Stacia wasn’t sure she actually heard a man’s frantic but muffled yells, almost lost in the wind, and wondered if it was Sibyl’s husband calling for help.

“Sibyl,” she tried to sound very, very reasonable. “You know
Raymond I have never been interested in each other. Not in the slightest.”

“I thought that. There were others, but not you. I thought you were a good person. And then you changed.”

Stacia’s heart dropped. She had indeed changed. Trading places with Hart certainly hadn’t been deliberate, but she’d gone forward and fallen in love with Alistair and hadn’t wanted to come back. Maybe the same thing had happened here. Had the reserved, thoughtful Hart found herself desperately loving Sibyl’s husband.

“It was right after Christmas that you changed. You were quieter, didn’t laugh as much. My husband always liked quiet girls and he started noticing. He even said how pretty you were. I never thought he liked redheads.”

Oh my! What had studious, shy Hart set off here in Medicine Stick? What would her parents and Helen have thought if their Stacia got involved with a married man?

It wasn’t me
, she wanted to say.
It was never me.
But they couldn’t hear. Right at this moment they would be settling uneasily into two homes in Mountainside, taking up temporary residence before moving to California. And at each house, her family members would think she was at the other. And then tomorrow when they couldn’t find her, they’d hope she was with friends.

And later when they couldn’t find her at all, they would fear she’d been injured or trapped some way back in Medicine Stick, drowned when the waters were released.

Her sister would spend a lifetime wondering what had happened to her, a burden so pervasive that she’d passed it on to her daughter Serena.