West (History Interrupted Book 1) (29 page)

You’ll need to do it soon. There’s a chance your brain could swell. It won’t be a quick or painless death. I swear, Josie, I want you to be safe and healthy. I wouldn’t suggest this if there was any other way.

Tears stung my eyes. So I was trapped in the past, and my head was about to explode, thanks to Carter. I was an absolute fool. Looking around, I realized this place wouldn’t be bad, if there was a way to stay with Taylor and Nell.

But without knowing what happened to the other girls – and real-Josie – turning off the brain chip was the third most foolish decision I’d made when it came to Carter. Not to mention that trying to figure out what he wanted with Taylor, or what lengths he’d go to in order to influence the man I was about to spend the rest of my life with, scared me.

First things first – what Carter wanted or did wasn’t going to matter, if I died in this house like real-Josie and the three imposters sent back in time. I had to survive that threat, the mysterious third agent sent back by Taylor’s agency, and then I could deal with Carter’s insanity.

I’m going to find out what happened to Josie first,
I replied to him. I hid my phone in the folded clothing on my bed belonging to Taylor. It was the first time I willingly gave up the phone, but holding it was infuriating me. I wanted distance between Carter and me, and I didn’t care if that pissed him off.

I left my room, finally ready and determined to confront the source of the whispers, and the truth about real-Josie, that lingered at the end of the hallway.

Today was the perfect day for more bad news. I was no longer trying to look only at the good in the world around me. Carter’s betrayal and the fates of the women who came before me had stretched me to my limit, and I was going to dive further into the darkness to find the final pieces of the puzzle. Feeling a little reckless, a little raw, I checked to make sure Nell wasn’t lingering and then started towards the door.

The whispers grew stronger, the images starting to form. I tried the doorknob. Finding it unlocked, I slid inside and looked around. The furniture in the large room was covered with white sheets. It resembled mine, from the familiar wallpaper to the rugs and drapes covered with the exact same stitching. The layout was a mirror copy of mine as well.

In fact, everything was.

“Okay. Weird.”

I lifted the sheet off the table near the dead hearth. I had a tray just like the one on its top. Walking to the vanity, I lifted the sheet to see the exact same items organized the exact same way as they were on my vanity. The air of the room was heavy and smelled of must, the memories waiting for me to close my eyes and admit them. Like the well, the visions were harder to capture than those from a person, as if there had to be enough energy lingering in the surroundings to release the memories.

Someone had gone to great lengths to erase real-Josie’s existence, down to rebuilding her bedroom from the ground up in a different place. There could be no good story behind the room identical to mine.

“Except for you. You don’t fit in.” I crossed to the sheet covering a piece of furniture the size of my full-body mirror but in the wrong location. I tugged the white sheet off and stood back. The beautiful wedding gown made of white brocade highlighted with silver threads and handmade lace on the stand was pristine. It appeared to have been recently pressed. There was no dust or sign of wear on it. “Wow. Lucky Josie.”

My room. The wedding dress. Nell’s tale about real-Josie leaving the night before she married.

A chill went down my spine. I looked around for other anomalies without spotting any. I began to dread learning the truth about real-Josie. The level of effort that went into the reinvention of her room wasn’t possible without her father and governess knowing.

If I lost faith in them, too …

Swallowing hard, I knelt, prepared for a longer session than normal, and closed my eyes. “Show me what happened here,” I whispered.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

“Sheriff, I brought the dead men’s belongings.”

Taylor looked up from the tin plate of dinner sitting on his desk. The excitement of the afternoon had worn off. Only four men remained from the original lynch mob, along with Speaking Wind – the elder from his tribe  - and four deputies. He had been trapped in his office nearly all day to deal with the complaints from the families whose men were murdered by Fighting Badger.

The beefy deputy standing guard outside his office didn’t let the undertaker’s apprentice enter. Taylor stepped onto the sidewalk for the first time since he’d arrived that morning. It was dark, and the chilled wind held droplets of rain.

“The others were returned to their families. We didn’t know what to do with these,” the apprentice said and held out a wooden box.

“I’ll take them,” Taylor said. Rather than return to the warm office, he sat down beneath the light of one of its windows to sort through the belongings of the two agents killed.

His agency had a protocol forbidding agents from carrying anything that identified them as someone other than who they pretended to be. Despite this, a sliver of desperate hope rendered his fingers clumsy as he sorted through everything. All he needed was one communications device, a single method to contact his agency or better yet, The Mongol, whose presence in town had been whispered about since shortly after Lance arrived.

There was nothing. Disappointed, he pushed the box aside and gazed out at the night. It was his first real breather this day, and he relished the undisturbed moment to think.

As they had since John’s death, his thoughts went first to Josie. She’d been upset when she visited earlier. He hoped it was because of Fighting Badger’s visit and not because there was something else wrong. He still smelled her scent on his skin, a reminder of the night that was supposed to be the first of a lifetime of peace and retirement.

Instead, his brother – and potentially grandfather – was about to be hanged, leaving Josie exposed to whoever it was that killed the others who came before her or worse, in the hands of The Mongol. Either way, she wasn’t going to last long without protection. His best-case scenario: they’d be on the run the rest of their lives.

After all his years of service,
this
was how his agency repaid him?

He suppressed the anger, well aware that his agency had nothing to do with Fighting Badger taking out innocent people. He was torn between gratitude that his brother had saved Josie and regret, wishing she had never crossed paths with the native.

Taylor climbed to his feet and picked up the box. “Donate anything of value to the church,” he instructed the deputy at the door and walked back in. Ignoring his dinner, the only meal he’d had that day, he went to the cell where Running Bear was laying on a bunk, recovering from the beating the town’s people had given him earlier.

“You all right?” he asked softly with a glance over his shoulder to ensure they had some small amount of privacy now that the crowd was gone.

“I am well.” Running Bear sat up with effort and gripped his chest.

Probably broken ribs,
Taylor thought. “What the hell happened? How did you get involved?” he asked aloud.

“Our brother was not in his cave when I went to visit him this morning. I tracked him to your new home and then onward to town. He took the life of a man behind the tavern. Someone saw him, and I tried to intervene.” Running Bear fell quiet.

Taylor didn’t need to hear the rest to understand what happened. “They want to hang you Saturday. I can get you out of here, but we probably can’t return to Indian Territory ever again once we’re gone.”

“No, brother.” Running Bear stood and came to the bars of the cell. One of his eyes was swollen shut and his features bruised. “Protect Fighting Badger. He is our brother. I believe he broke his promise to us for a reason. He told me someone was after your wife.”

Taylor’s hands clenched into fists.

It wasn’t Fighting Badger’s fault; it was
his.
Fighting Badger acted only to protect those he cared about since he had taken an oath to his brothers seven years before. “I should be in there,” Taylor muttered. “I should’ve protected her or known or … prevented this somehow.”

“We cannot undo this,” Running Bear said. “Take care of him and your wife. I will not see you homeless. Our people know what that is, Taylor, to be taken from the home of your ancestors and sent elsewhere. If my life will prevent that and keep the peace, then I will give it freely.”

“But you don’t deserve to die.” Taylor rested his head against the bars, sorrow creeping into his mind.

“The night you fell from the sky, I was supposed to cross the river with my cousins to hunt bison. Instead, I went to the crater and found you, a child, crying and lost.”

Taylor smiled at his most treasured memory. Running Bear had gathered him up in his arms and carried him back to their village and his mother, whose shocked expression at seeing her son holding a boy that fell from the sky was Taylor’s second favorite memory.

“That night,” Running Bear continued, “Everyone in my hunting party was killed when the river flooded its banks and wiped out the wash and all who had taken shelter for the night there. You have granted me twenty-two years of life I would not have had. I wish to give our brother that chance now.”

Taylor cocked his head to the side. “I never heard that story of your cousins,” he said, his mind leaping in a new direction. “That night, you were supposed to die, and Fighting Badger would’ve taken the place as shaman instead of you?”

Running Bear nodded. “He had a strong connection to the spirits but was wild. I think he could’ve been trained.”

“Then he would …”
become the man who would be my grandfather.
He didn’t know how to take the news that his blood was tainted by the same madness as Fighting Badger. And who would marry the crazy Indian? Did the death of his brother in the original timeline alter Fighting Badger’s position in the tribe, his madness?

There was always danger when it came to going native in a new time, the potential for unwittingly messing with the past. He had lived a quiet life here, one without much interaction or impact with the world outside of the town. He was always careful about altering the history of a time period, even one with little to no impact on the course of major events in history. The name of this town didn’t make it into history; it was of no real importance, a quiet hamlet where he could retire and get to know his family tree without worrying about altering the past.

“I am not worried, Taylor,” Running Bear said. “You must do what you must. We must preserve the peace, and my death will do that.”

“I won’t let this happen,” Taylor told him firmly. “Speaking Wind is staying here tonight, along with the deputies I trust. You’ll be safe. I need to talk to Josie about what we can do.”

“Very well, but I believe the spirits have spoken.”

Taylor shook his head and strode away, unwilling to accept Running Bear’s offer to go quietly to his death. Troubled, he gathered his things and left with a nod to the deputies. By all rights, he should’ve stayed in town until morning in the hopes the latest autumn storm cleared up.

But he was edgy, worried about Josie and Running Bear, and didn’t fully believe the deputies he sent to look over Josie were any match for The Mongol.

Wired with urgency he wasn’t able to control, he raced home.

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

It took effort and more time than usual for the images to crystalize out of the abundant whispers. The room grew cooler, and I opened my eyes once to see the sun was setting before closing them to focus once more on my task.

The elusive visions formed after some time. I clutched the material of my dress, unable to believe what I saw, unable to stop the visions or stop watching.

A burning hearth … a cool fall day. The wedding gown was in its place by the window.

John was pacing near the fire. He was angry, yelling. It was the night before the wedding just after the largest feast he’d ever given.

A woman who could’ve been my doppelganger screamed back at him.

The picture did our likeness no justice, and I stared at the woman who could’ve been my twin in astonishment. Aside from our hair – real-Josie’s was straight – there was virtually no difference.

“No wonder he didn’t know the difference,” I murmured. In one year, John had gone from robust, healthy and a little overweight to the shell of a man I mourned.

Unable to hear their words, I could at least see what happened.

Real-Josie was screaming and crying, and John’s face grew redder, his eyes flashing in a way I wasn’t able to imagine after my brief interaction with him.

By the way both gestured to the wedding dress, it was as Nell suspected: Real-Josie didn’t want to marry the man chosen for her by her father.

Josie rested a hand on her stomach, and John froze, staring at the spot with a mix of horror and fury. Real-Josie laughed and spun away from her father. He grabbed her arm and hit her once. Stunned, Josie stared at him.

Reeling from what he’d done, he took a step back.

“Walk away, John,” I whispered tightly. “Please walk away.” Tears warmed my cheeks. There was one reason I could think of that this room had been preserved from that night and recreated for the daughters that kept showing up at his door. I saw John mouth the words
with child
, and my heart sank. If an unwed woman going out alone was an issue in this era, an unwed woman who was pregnant had to be the ultimate gossip-worthy transgression.

Real-Josie laughed again, this time gesturing at John angrily. She grabbed the wedding dress and tore it off its stand, flinging it and the priceless heirloom jewelry that rested on it all over the room.