He stared at the walls, barely breathing, using everything he had inside to dredge up a dull, disinterested voice. "What's in Fortune Flats?"
It took her so long to answer that reluctantly he looked down at her. He knew instantly that it was the wrong thing to do.
She gave a tiny shake of the head. At the movement, a single tear fell down her cheek, and he had an absurd impulse to wipe it away. "I don't know, but it's where I landed. I thought maybe it would be the way out.'1
He blew an angry sigh. "Why are you telling me this shit?"
"I need your help."
Anger brought him to his feet. She stumbled back and fell on her butt. He grabbed her by the shoulders, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her upper arms, and yanked her to her feet.
Her head snapped back. Tears glazed her eyes, made them look fathomless and dark. The expression in them, the sadness, hit him like a punch to the gut.
"What in the Christ do you want from me?"
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"I need a guide back to Fortune Flats. That's not asking so much."
He shook her, hard, then drew her close. The words Fortune Flats flitted through his mind, but he barely heard them. All he heard were the pounding, impossible words / need. Fear and anger exploded in his chest. "It's too goddamn much from me," he growled, shoving her back. "And quit looking at me like that."
She stumbled back but didn't look away. Another tear slid down her cheeks, splashed on her throat. "There's no one else to help me."
"Too bad."
The look she gave him was hot, as vital as a touch, and it made his throat constrict. "Jesus Christ," he hissed, stumbling back from her, trying to put some distance between them. "Don't you understand? I can't help you."
"You mean won't," she said in a frayed voice that made him feel like shit.
And suddenly, as quickly as it had come, the anger was gone. Instead, he was filled with a cold, aching regret. Memories hurled themselves at him in rapid-fire succession, made him almost lift his hands to ward them off. "No," he said in a hoarse voice. "I can't."
She moved toward him. He heard each footstep, felt it like a blow to the heart. Right in front of him, she stopped. He stiffened, stared past her, seeing only the blankness of the walls, and the darkness of his memories.
"You were a hero once."
He drew in a sharp breath, backed away from her. "What do you mean?"
"Back when you were a ranger." She stared steadily up at him, her gaze unflinching in its honesty. "Some of that must still be inside of you."
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Time slowed to a crawl. The cabin spilled away, left them standing toe to toe in a darkness where nothing existed except the two of them. He heard the slow, even strains of her breathing and the thudding of his own heart. Her words settled on his chest, cold and heavy and suffocating. "How do you know that about me?"
"I wrote it."
He grabbed her again, pulled her close. "Don't get glib with me, damn it. What else do you know about me?"
"Everything."
Slowly he let her go, surprised to find that his fingers were shaking. He stepped back and tried to get a handle on his emotions. It had been so long since someone had mentioned his past. With suddenly cold fingers, he rolled a cigarette and lit up. A hazy film of smoke obscured her for a second, veiled that wrenching sadness in her eyes. He turned and walked across the cabin, putting as much distance between them as he could. Then-he sat down. The whining creak of old wood exploded in the too quiet room.
He let out an even breath and forced himself to calm down. She couldn't know everything about him. If she did, she wouldn't ask him for help. No woman who knew about his past would make that mistake. "So what do you know about me?"
Lainie flinched at the question. It felt as if a grenade had just landed in her lap, without the pin. She dragged her tongue along her cracked, dry lower lip and looked at him, suddenly afraid. The seconds crawled by, ticked, ticked.
"Now!" he barked.
She flinched and sank back on her heels beside the bed. The hard wood of the floor bit into her knees, but she barely noticed. He sat across the room from her,
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smoking, leaning forward on the chair. There was an intensity in his eyes that scared her, a coiled power in his body that reminded her of a hunting cat. She cleared her throat and met his angry gaze. "You are John Mac-Arthur Killian, born 1866 in Scotland. You arrived in America in 1880 with ten bucks in your pocket. You became a Texas Ranger, and were a good one, until ..."
He stilled, seemed almost to stop breathing. The smoke drifted across his eyes. "Go on."
Lainie had to force the words up her dry throat. "Until ... Emily . . . died."
"How did she die?" he asked quietly.
"There was an outlaw?I don't think I named him?"
"Rem Clide," he answered steadily.
She frowned. "Really? I don't think I named him___"
"Go on."
"Anyway, the outlaw and his gang, they ..." She winced, remembering the violence of the scene. She dropped her head, unable to look at him. It had been therapy for her, something she'd known that someday she'd have to write, but still it had sickened her. "They raped and killed her...."
The chair creaked. He let out his breath in a long sigh, and she heard the pain in the sound, felt it as if it were her own. Slowly she brought her gaze up from her own hands and looked at him.
Sorrow and regret deepened the harsh lines in his face, made him look older, harder. "You're close," he said at last, and this time his voice sounded raw and forced.
"Close? I'm exactly right."
He looked at her then, and in his eyes she saw a bleak despair that was all too familiar. She'd felt it a million times in her life. "No."
She frowned. How could she be wrong about any-
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thing? It wasn't possible. She'd created him. That shifting, suffocating sense of weirdness descended on her again, left her feeling unsure and off balance. "Where am I wrong?"
He shrugged, as if the discrepancies didn't matter. "I was born in 1853."
She shook her head, calculating his age. That birthdate would make him forty-three. He looked forty-three; hell, he looked older than that. But still, it wasn't possible. She'd created him, devised all the vital statistics of his life. He was twenty-eight years old. "No . . ."
"Yeah, and Emily ..." He looked away. When he finally spoke, his rich voice was strained. "Emily wasn't murdered."
"What?"
"You heard me."
"But ... but I wrote that scene. It wasn't just part of your character biography, not just background information. I wrote the scene, word for word. I know what happened."
"You're wrong."
Lainie was so stunned that for a moment she couldn't speak. "But ..." Her voice was barely a whisper. "How .. . then?"
He gave a quick, almost undetectable shake of his head.
Silence fell between them. She knew she couldn't breach it, and that he wouldn't. They would sit this way forever, both feeling battered and alone, staring at each other, but seeing something else entirely.
She saw all her notes on Killian, strewn out across her desk. She'd charted and examined and written down every moment of his life, every aspect of his personality. She knew him?she thought?inside and out. But she was wrong. Somehow, she was wrong.
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She looked at him. He was sitting stiffly, his face obscured behind a curtain of gray smoke. He was staring at her, but his eyes had a glassy, faraway look. Her words had opened a doorway to the past, and he'd fallen in.
With a start, she realized that she had no idea what he was thinking about, what he was remembering. Here was a man she'd created, invented, and now, impossibly, she had no idea what he was thinking. Or who he was.
What was happening here?
Suddenly he surged to his feet and kicked the chair away from him. It skidded across the floor and crashed into the wall. "Enough," he hissed, yan
king open the door and throwing his half-smoked cigarette outside.
She scrambled to her feet. "Killian, please, all I need is?"
"I don't give a shit what you need." He scowled at her. "Don't say anything else. You got it?"
At the anger in his voice her last tenuous thread of hope snapped. He wouldn't help her. There was none of the hero left in this villain she'd created. He was as hard and mean and bitter as the past she'd given him. She'd been a fool to think otherwise, to think, even for a second, that he would help her.
She fought the urge to sag to her knees again. Instead, forcibly, she lifted her head and stared at him. "I asked for your help, but I don't need it. I can leave here on my own."
"You haven't been paying attention, Lainie. I'm God here."
She laughed bitterly. "One of the benefits of surrounding yourself with fools and losers."
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"I picked you up, didn't I?"
She pushed past him and strode to the door, reaching for the latchstring.
"They'll shoot you in the back if I give the order," he said softly.
She froze midstep. Her hand fell away from the rawhide strap. Slowly she turned around. "You wouldn't give that order."
"I already have."
She paled. "D-Don't do this. I have to get back to . . ."
His eyes narrowed. "To who?"
To her utter humiliation, she felt the tears again, stinging and hot. "Kelly," she whispered.
He frowned. "Who's Kelly?"
"My daughter."
"You're a motherT
She nodded without looking at him. "Yeah. I ... I don't want my baby to come home to an empty house." She lifted her gaze and implored him one last time with her eyes. "You know what that's like ... coming home to an empty house ... don't you, Killian?"
He paled, drew in a sharp breath. "Enough," he said through clenched teeth. "You want help, I'll get you help. Come on."
"Really?"
But he was already gone. He walked through the doorway and disappeared outside. Lainie lurched forward and sprinted after him, trying to match his punishing stride.
He walked and she ran down the dirt road that bisected the camp. At the last little cabin, he stopped and pounded on the door. From inside came a muffled, hoarse voice. "Come in."
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Killian shoved the door open, then turned around and grabbed Lainie by the arm, dragging her into the dark interior. "Here, Viloula, I got a crazy woman for you. Keep her the hell away from me."
Chapter Twelve
The house was small and cluttered, with newspaper-covered walls and dusty wood floors. No candles were burning at this hour, no lamps were lit. The place smelled of smoke and dirty laundry, with just a hint of something sweet and cloying.
Incense.
Pale sunlight seeped through threadbare burlap curtains, catching the steel surface of a cookstove and the iron curve of a bedpost, but no more. Stacks and heaps of leather-bound books were shadows within shadows along the far wall, disjointed spires that rose alongside canned goods and bags of sugar and flour. Socks and trousers and shirts hung from the laundry line that sagged between the bedpost and a nail alongside the window.
An old, withered black woman sat motionlessly at a rickety wooden table. A half smile curved her dark lips. Her fuzzy gray hair was drawn back from her face, giving her a shrunken appearance. Swags of ebony skin folded across her cheeks, sagged at her small, pointed chin. Broken, askew spectacles hung at the very tip of her fleshy nose and magnified two intensely alert black eyes. Absently she touched the breathtakingly beautiful necklace around her throat. It was wrought gold with a
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huge lavender stone that caught the light in the room and tossed it back in a thousand glittering shards.
Killian dragged Lainie alongside him.
The woman pushed the spectacles higher on her nose and peered at Lainie. There was something ... unnatural about the old woman's gaze, as if she saw things that no one else saw.
"She doan look crazy to me, Killian," she said at last in a singsongy voice that was surprisingly youthful. "She look scared."
He snorted. "What she looks like is trouble."
"So what you want wit' Viloula?"
"Find out who the hell she is and why she's here. She's got some ridiculous story about time travel."
Viloula drew in a sharp breath and looked at Lainie. "Dat true, child?"
Lainie bit her lip nervously. "It's true."
Viloula looked as if she were going to smile, but she didn't. She sat perfectly still, her face expressionless save for the piercing darkness of her eyes. "Dis make for a very interesting day. Sit down."
Lainie edged away from Killian and sat stiffly on the wooden chair across from Viloula. Her fingers dug into the splintery edge of the seat.
Killian made a snorting sound of disgust and reached for the door. "Good luck, Vi."
Viloula gave him a look that would curdle milk. "Both of you, sit down."
He glanced back. "I'm not listening to her horseshit, Viloula."
She crossed her skinny old arms and stuck her pointy chin out. "Den I woan neit'er."
Killian rolled his eyes and strode to the chair beside Lainie. Wrenching it backward, he sat down hard and crossed his arms, glaring at Viloula. "Happy?"
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She didn't answer. Instead, she reached up to the beautiful amethyst necklace at her throat and curled her scrawny fingers around the heavy stone. "So, young Alaina. What have you to say?"
Lainie blanched. "I didn't tell you my name."
"Didn't you?" She waved a hand carelessly. "No matter. All dat matters is de traveling t'rough time. It is true?"
Lainie took a deep breath and met Viloula's potent gaze. "Either that, or I'm completely crazy. Or else this is romance writer hell?you fall into a bad plot and can't get out."
"It is not hell, child. It is Arizona. How long have you been here?"
"Two days." She cast an arch glance at Killian. "Nimrod here won't believe me."
Viloula turned to him. "Why not?"
His answer was a disgusted snort.
Lainie shook her head, ran a hand through her wild hair. "I don't blame him. It doesn't make sense...."
Viloula was on her like a pouncing cat. "Under whose rules, in whose eyes?"
Lainie made a tiny shaking motion with her head. "The world has certain rules, scientific facts. People don't just ..."
"What, Alaina? People doan just what?"
She caught Viloula's gaze, held it. The more she looked into the old woman's intense black eyes, the more she was afraid of something. She fought the fear, pushed it back. "I made this up," she whispered. "I created it."
Viloula laughed; it was a soft, quiet sound without malice. "So you are a god."
"No, of course not. I'm a writer."
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"Ah," Viloula breathed, obviously fighting a smile. "A writer."
"I'm glad you find this so frigging funny." Lainie slammed back in her chair and crossed her arms. "I'm telling you the truth. I created this place. It's the setting for my new book."
"Lean closer, child. Put your hands out on the table."
Lainie swallowed thickly. Stretching forward, she placed her hands on the table. Viloula took hold of them, wrapped her thin, sandpapery fingers around Lainie's.
The old woman closed her eyes and began to hum softly. After a few moments, she started to sway slowly from side to side. Gradually the humming increased, grew louder, melted into some sort of dark incantation in another language. For a split second, Lainie felt an honest-to-God spark of hope.
Then, as quickly as it had begun, the music stopped, leaving behind a suffocating silence.
Viloula clasped Lainie's hands more tightly in her old, gnarled fingers. Her gaze was piercing and seemed to see into Lainie's very soul. "You t'ink you created dis place, and Killian."
Lainie nodded, saying nothing.
"And you
believe dis ... creation was pure invention."
She shrugged. "It was based on some research, of course. You know, about the time period and outlaws, the Southwest. Things like that. But the characters, I invented."
"Or t'ink you did."
Lainie gave a disgusted sigh. "Quit with the oblique references. If you have something to say, please say it. I'm aging."
"I will need to do some work, t'row de cards before I'm sure about everyt'ing, but ..."
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"But what?"
Viloula's gaze was steady, honest. "You are meant to be here. Dere's a reason."
Lainie's breath caught. Hope brought her forward in her chair. "What reason?"
"Killian," Viloula said on a sigh, a frown pulling at the heavy folds of her forehead.
"What?" Killian answered tersely.
Viloula touched her necklace, stroked it lovingly,-her eyes glassy for a second. Then, sharply, she looked at Lainie. "I have questions."
"Okay. Shoot."
"Don't tempt me," Killian muttered.
"What were you doing just before you ..."
Lainie snorted. "Fell off the face of the frigging planet? I was writing."
"Writing what?"
"This book. It's a historical romance about a woman who gets kidnapped by a villain and saved by the hero."
"Complex plot," Killian said under his breath.
Viloula ignored him. "And ..."
Lainie looked away, staring hard at the wall. Memories besieged her, brought a sickening sense of shame and guilt. "I was drinking heavily . . . and I popped a few sleeping pills. I don't do that often, but I was . . ." She laughed bitterly. "I was . . . upset. I've thought about it and thought about it. At first I thought I was in a coma at home, and this was all a dream. But it doesn't feel like a dream. I wish to God it did."
"It is not liquor dat brought you here, Alaina. Or pills," Viloula answered softly. "Why were you upset?"
"Kelly." It was all she said, just the quietly spoken name. She stared down at the table, noticing the splinters and scratches in the planked wood. "She left ... and I missed her."
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"Ah . .." Viloula said softly, almost more to herself than to Lainie. "Who else left you, Alaina?"
Lainie gasped. Her head snapped up. She tried desperately to dredge up a cocky smile. "Wh-What do you mean?"