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  Mathias whispered, Rest, honey. It’s been a long day and you’re exhausted.

  My heart constricted with a deep and painful yearning.

  Thias…

  “It’s too quiet out there, something ain’t right,” Cole was muttering.

  My legs twitched at this intrusion of sound, chucking me back to reality. I opened my bleary eyes to see Cole positioned at the edge of the window, the curtain drawn aside about an inch as he peered out at the bleak, wet night, rifle cradled in the crook of his arm. He let the faded material fall back into place and took a seat at the table, facing Malcolm and me.

  “We’ll ride out by morning’s light,” Malcolm said quietly. “If Patricia and the baby are up to it. What are you thinking, Spicer? You want to push northwest, or head toward Jalesville and your folks?”

  Cole passed a hand over his face and I silently noted the physical resemblance between him and Case; both were tall and physically-imposing, with auburn hair and brown eyes. And yet, there was a subtle edge to this man, completely unlike Case; a distinct difference of spirit. Grim and stone-faced, Cole decided, “West. I don’t want to risk getting in the Yancys’ path if we resume the journey to Minnesota.” His gaze held steady as he asked, “What of you two?”

  “I don’t have an answer for you.” Malcolm spoke from behind me, his chest rumbling with the words; instinctively, his arms tightened their grip. “We don’t know how much time we’ve left together.”

  The words had no sooner cleared his lips when something crashed against the floor directly above us, rattling the walls. Cole was on his feet and halfway up the stairs before I’d bolted from Malcolm’s lap; he grabbed his rifle as he leaped to his feet. Frantic and disoriented, I imbibed information in disjointed bursts – Monty crying, Patricia screaming, men shouting – then a gunshot, followed immediately by another. A round pierced the bedroom floor upstairs and splintered the ceiling above the woodstove. Malcolm latched a forearm around my waist and hauled me backward with the force of a tornado.

  “Stay down!” he ordered, grabbing the dining table and throwing it on its side, creating a measure of cover. He dragged it against the wall and positioned above it, aiming his rifle at the staircase. I crouched behind his bent legs, shielding my head, stunned at how quickly we’d again become vulnerable. There was a pulse of silence, the absence of sound almost louder than the gunshots.

  “Carter! Don’t shoot!” Cole hollered seconds later from the top of the steps. “Fallon was here, right in Yancy’s room, but they both disappeared. Jesus fucking Christ! I almost didn’t believe my own eyes.”

  Malcolm lowered his rifle. “We’re coming up!”

  “Derrick disappeared?” Breathless and tense, I clattered up the steps ahead of Malcolm. Cole stood in the hallway with feet widespread and his rifle at the ready, angled so his body blocked the door to Patricia’s bedroom. She hovered near the bed holding Monty up over her shoulder, patting his back. She was white with fear and I hurried to her side, gathering both of them in a hug while Malcolm and Cole investigated the room in which Derrick had been resting only minutes ago.

  “Fallon was here,” Patricia whispered, shivering in her nightgown, her honey-colored hair loose over her shoulders; she appeared no more than about fifteen years old, like a little girl playing house. Much too young for the burdens of marriage and motherhood, and probably exactly the way I’d looked after Millie Jo was born. But I’d handled those responsibilities and so would Patricia – or, so I told myself. She continued, “I woke to a crash and heard Derrick yelp. I fear…” She looked quickly to Cole. “Did Fallon kill him?”

  “I don’t rightly know. I saw them grappling and then they just…vanished.” A man who had faced plenty of danger in his time, Cole still shuddered at the remembrance. “Right before my damn eyes!”

  “Who fired?” Malcolm asked, indicating the jagged hole in the wooden planks of the floor.

  “Derrick, I think,” Cole said, with a note of approval. “He acted quick for someone without a lick of experience.”

  “It stands to reason that it was Derrick who shot at Fallon,” I added, thinking of Ruthie’s explanations. “Fallon has this thing, I don’t know, like a defense mechanism. When his life is threatened he disappears to another place or time.” My thoughts raced. “Let’s assume Fallon was just out in Montana and they fought back this time and repelled him…”

  “And he appeared here,” Malcolm concluded. “And then Derrick fired on him and he disappeared again. But why would Derrick vanish?”

  “I don’t know about Derrick. But maybe Fallon’s losing control.” I prayed it was true. “He knows we’re on to him and maybe that messes with his ability.” My heart lurched as I suddenly considered another angle – what if Derrick had returned home to 2014, leaving me behind in 1882?

  Malcolm, watching me, saw fear overtake my face. With no words he asked, What is it?

  But another voice filled my head before I could respond, inundating my consciousness, commanding my full attention. Urgent with fear, crying my name over and over. I stepped away from Patricia and the baby, pressing hard against my forehead.

  Ruthie, I hear you!

  Where are you?!

  “Camille?” Patricia’s high, questioning voice retreated a thousand miles in the space of a heartbeat.

  Malcolm was no more than ten steps away, an impassable distance. Sounds fled but my vision did not – not yet – and I saw him racing for me in a slow-motion reel; I reached for him, I tried to speak his name. This could not be our last moment together.

  “Camille!”

  Not yet – oh God, please, not yet –

  But I was already gone.

  Time elapsed.

  At least, I assumed it elapsed; I’d been a prisoner in the blank, echoing space for minutes, hours, days, months, centuries…I had no real idea. The passage, or non-passage, in this place reminded me of humid summer days in Landon when clouds knitted themselves together so densely the sky shone blinding-white from dawn to dusk, keeping the sun’s hourly angles hidden from view, allowing no sense of time flowing from one minute to the next. Sinister in a passive way, the clouds impervious and expressionless; for all I knew, time had stuttered to a full stop. The fog surrounding me inspired madness and I huddled in a crouch, ashamed at what seemed like giving up but too terrified to continue moving forward.

  I cried out to everyone I thought may have a hope of hearing me – Marshall, Camille, Axton, Aunt Jilly, my mother.

  Nothing. Not a flicker, not a breath of response. The fog swirled around my huddled form, utterly devoid of empathy.

  Am I dead?

  Is this hell?

  One thought tortured me, replaying across my mind without letup – Marshall flying backward, struck by a bullet from Fallon’s gun. What had taken place in the moments immediately following my disappearance from our bedroom? I imagined Axton and Birdie racing through the door only seconds after I’d vanished, all of them attempting to piece together what had occurred upstairs. I refused to conceive of Marshall as anything but alive. Wounded, but alive. Birdie was probably stitching him up right now. Huddled in a crouch, I bit down on my right forearm with enough force to leave indentations in my chilled skin.

  Marshall, Marshall, oh God – be alive. Survive. Please, survive. I need you. Our baby needs you.

  A low, keening cry lifted from my throat, swelling to a scream.

  “Where the fuck am I?!”

  I suddenly realized someone was watching me.

  I returned to awareness in the dining room at Shore Leave, late afternoon. Benign sunlight rimming the windows, falling in long, slanting beams across the floor; flat on my back, I blinked and then sat straight with a wailing cry.

  Malcolm…

  I scrambled to my feet only to pitch forward and stumble, blood draining from my head as I moved too quickly. I grabbed for a chair and clung, letting the dark blotches recede from my vision, inhaling deep breaths as I scanned the familiar space. I l
et myself believe that we’d done it, that the real timeline had been restored.

  “Mom! Tish! Mathias!” I gained enough strength to stand and dashed outside, skidding across the icy porch and down the steps, next sprinting across the empty yard. My shouting garnered attention and the door to Aunt Jilly’s apartment opened, revealing my sisters. Ravaged, despairing – exactly as I’d left them.

  I slammed to a halt as swiftly as if crashing against a brick wall, looking up at their faces in the chilly light of late March. I saw. I realized. And then I went to my knees in the slush.

  “No…”

  “Ruthann.”

  I scuttled backward, away from the horror of that abnormally calm voice.

  But he advanced through the emptiness, unavoidable as death.

  “No one has ever followed me here. It is as I suspected, you are as close to an equal as I will ever have. You are meant for me, Ruthann. Deny it if you wish, but it changes nothing.”

  There was no hope of retreating. I was naked, alone, without weapons or hope.

  I am in hell.

  Fallon stopped a few feet away, staring down at me as I hunched with arms wrapped almost double around my body, more helpless than the ant I’d earlier envisioned. Fallon could crush me beneath his boot or keep me trapped in this jar, at his whim; he had maintained the upper hand to the bitter end.

  “So much anger. Never mind. You’ll move past it.” His gaze flickered south and his brows lifted. He crouched so that our faces were on the same level. With obvious astonishment, he observed, “You’re pregnant.”

  My lips parted, primal rage exposing my clenched teeth.

  His pale, terrifying eyes held mine as he considered something before speaking. He gripped the lower half of his face as he whispered, “I was wrong. Patricia is not the one who will produce the heir. You are.” He became at once solicitous, ingratiating. “Come, I’ll find clothing for you. No additional harm will come to you.”

  I blinked, so shocked words refused to take form on my tongue.

  Fallon continued thinking aloud. “I’ve been betrayed in more than one way today, it seems. Things have been kept from me. Dredd’s counterpart, for example. Apparently he too is able to jump.”

  I swallowed, tasting sour bile, limbs frozen in place.

  “Come,” he ordered, with a growing edge of impatience. “Stand up.”

  Only my eyes seemed capable of moving, darting like moths entranced by an open flame. Panicked. Out of control. Seconds from becoming ash.

  “Get. The. Fuck. Up.”

  The moths flew upward in an unexpected arc, alerted to rapid movement just beyond Fallon’s right shoulder. He must have been startled by the change in my expression because he shifted – but was too late to duck the powerful blow delivered to the back of his skull. I skittered sideways to avoid Fallon’s sprawling body, my stunned eyes alighting on a sweating, wild-eyed Derrick Yancy. He gripped a sturdy snow boot – one of his own, I noticed, in a stupor of blank astonishment – the heel of which had just knocked Fallon to his stomach.

  “Quick, move!” Derrick ordered, harsh and breathless. “He’s not out!”

  I obeyed without a word, scrambling away, skittering to my feet as Derrick raised the boot above his head. He would have delivered another solid strike but Fallon rolled to one side and kicked Derrick’s legs out from under him.

  I moaned.

  Oh God oh God…

  I can’t outrun him. There’s nowhere to hide!

  Fallon was no stranger to a fight, gliding like a snake to straddle his brother, pinning him by the neck in order to slam white-knuckled punches into Derrick’s face.

  I hesitated for only a fraction of a second before realizing what I had to do.

  Help him!

  I figured I might as well die right now, attempting to save us – the alternative included my baby and me existing as Fallon’s prisoners.

  Flat on his spine, Derrick groaned and struggled. Fallon’s back was angled toward me and so I leaped forward, hooking my right arm around his neck, thinking of Aemon Turnbull once doing the same thing to me, long ago in Howardsville. Aemon had kept his head to one side to avoid a backward strike and I did the same, squeezing Fallon’s fragile windpipe against my elbow. Outrage lent me courage and strength. Fallon released his hold on Derrick, immediately clamping both hands around my forearm, allowing Derrick the seconds he needed to buck free and grab Fallon’s wrists. I grunted with the effort to apply more pressure, bent in a half-crouch, fear replaced by pure red fury. This man had caused harm to those I loved for the last fucking time.

  “He’s disappearing!” Derrick rasped.

  Tish raced down the outside steps, clinging to the wooden railing, Ruthann on her heels.

  “Milla! Where have you been?”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Is Derrick with you?”

  Agony exploded in my chest. I had failed. Nothing had changed here – nothing had been resolved. They were still trapped in the offshoot timeline.

  “Take me back,” I begged, face upturned to the fading blue sky as I knelt in cold, wet slush. “Take me back there. Take me back…”

  Tish had almost reached me, scurrying through the slush in stocking feet.

  “Did you find them?!”

  I couldn’t bear their desperate cries. If I couldn’t save us from this timeline I didn’t want to continue existing in it; cowardly or not, I couldn’t bear the pain. I covered my ears and repeated, “Take me back…”

  “Don’t go!” Ruthie cried, sharp, escalating terror in her voice. “Don’t leave!”

  The violence increased with each passage. My body was hollow, raw, utterly defenseless. Removed from my physical self I watched from a short but impenetrable distance as I hurtled through an endless, narrow corridor of time, racing toward my anchor point – the only security I possessed. I cried out his name and was at once surrounded by a profound and fleeting awareness, perceiving my soul as an entity separate from flesh and blood.

  Gentle undulations of pure, transparent energy. No sorrow, no fear. Stars rotated on tiny axis points, flaring across my line of sight in orbits of vibrant color, so impossibly bright I squinted at the glittering brilliance. I saw my children’s faces and heard their voices, a thousand and more scenes from their individual existences, flashing with all the radiance of lives fully lived. Of lives brimming with love.

  Mathias whispered, I can’t imagine being apart from you for a few days, let alone a lifetime.

  Malcolm spoke next, his voice indistinguishable from Mathias’s. I’ll wait right there for you. No matter how long it takes.

  I told them, Then I will find you there. Nothing will stop me.

  And with those words I was delivered.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “DON’T LET HIM GO!” I SHOUTED, ALREADY KNOWING WE could not stop it. We didn’t possess enough power to combat his basic defense mechanism.

  Fallon’s struggling ceased as he sensed his body losing form and matter.

  “NO!” I screamed, clenching his throat all the harder.

  Seconds later Derrick and I faced each other with nothing between us, alone together in the bright, vacant space.

  “Oh my God,” he gasped, shrugging immediately from a hooded sweatshirt and wrapping it around me, appalled at my nudity. “You’re naked. Jesus Christ. Are you hurt? Oh, my God. There’s blood on your mouth. You’re Ruthann, aren’t you? Did he hurt you?”

  He helped me into the sweatshirt with the kindness of a father, tugging it as far down my thighs as it would go, both of us struggling to reconcile what had just happened. Fallon had escaped again – we couldn’t prevent it. Tears gushed, fury choking out my voice before I could ask any questions, namely how Derrick had come to be here. I couldn’t stop crying or shaking, much to my aggravation.

  Derrick, however, couldn’t stop babbling. “Come here, you must be freezing. Oh Jesus.” He gathered me into a loose, awkward hug, cupping my head. “It’s all
right, I won’t leave you here. Where did…how did… you’re not the Ruthann I met a few days ago in Landon, are you?”

  The taste of bitter defeat filled my mouth. Derrick smelled like horses and sweat, comforting, familiar scents, and I clung to the temporary security of his physical form, even as a wailing cry resounded across my mind.

  Fallon got away…

  “Where are we?” Derrick wondered aloud. “Do you know? Have you been trapped here? God, I don’t know what the hell just happened. Fallon showed up at the foot of my bed and I tried to shoot him. If I’d have moved faster, I might have gotten him. I tried to jump on him but he vanished and I got…I guess I got pulled with him. I don’t know how else to explain it. I ended up here, wherever the fuck here is, and then I heard him threatening you. God, he’s so fucking insane. I’m sorry I didn’t kill him. Did he hurt you?”

  “How…” I whispered.

  “Are you hurt?” he insisted. “Did he attack you?”

  “No, not here. But he…he…” I broke down at the thought of Marshall.

  “Shit. Oh God. Shit. Here, let’s sit down,” Derrick invited, helping me to the floor. “I’m so sorry, this is so fucked up. Where were you before you arrived here? Who did Fallon hurt? Did he burn down the Rawleys’ house? That’s what Camille and I tried to prevent.”

  I enfolded my legs in the baggy sweatshirt, facing Derrick as he sat cross-legged a few feet away. I hadn’t set eyes on this man since the night of Marshall’s twenty-ninth birthday, when Derrick had approached Tish and me in the parking lot at The Spoke. He’d tried to warn us about Fallon that very night, but we hadn’t understood. His words penetrated my pinwheeling thoughts and I scrubbed tears from my cheeks, whispering, “Burn their house?”

  Derrick’s lips compressed. “Let me back up a bit.”

  I returned to the exact moment I’d been ripped from, landing on hands and knees at Patricia’s feet. Malcolm almost fell over me, dodging to the side at the last second. He, Cole, and Patricia clustered close, Monty crying, everyone talking at once. Malcolm set aside his rifle so both his arms were free to enfold me; I clung, seeking stability in the flow of time. My head throbbed; I felt trampled, aching all the way down to my bones.