Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
In Tessa Mitchell’s spare room, Rhett bolted upright with a gasp. His heart raced like a wild mustang in his chest.
He dragged a hand over his face. Sweat slicked his hairline even in the cold. The blanket twisted around his legs. He shoved it aside and got up.
He felt this eerie sensation only once before, the night Clara left this earth.
The memory throttled him.
Breathe. He counted to ten. It didn’t help.
“Clara?” he whispered.
But it wasn’t his wife who was in trouble. Clara had been gone for five years. The ominous feeling came from this century. From right now.
He sat on the edge of the bed, put his elbows on his knees, and bowed his head. A nightmare, nothing more. Except he didn’t remember dreaming.
Just tired. Too many changes. Strange place. But the sense of danger intensified. The hairs on his arms lifted, and goose flesh spread over his skin.
He rubbed the back of his neck. What had awakened him? A noise? A shift in the wind?
Or was it just bone-deep instinct?
Fiona.
Something was wrong with Fiona. Don’t ask him how he knew; he couldn’t say. He just did.
“Miss Fi.” He spoke into the darkness, his heart chugging so hard he could hear it.
The woman who called him into 2025, who welcomed him into her home, who tenderly cared for her child. Responsible. Hardworking. Trustworthy. Kind.
But also anxious, fearful, and suspicious.
He understood. The world was a scary place. Especially her world. It moved too darn fast. His central impulse was to take the burdens from her slender shoulders so she could rest, but doing so pushed her away as she curled into self-protection.
He didn’t blame her. She didn’t know him. Not really. They’d only been acquainted for five short days. But the connection between them was undeniable.
There was something there.
But would they ever be able to explore it? Or was life simply too complicated when you came from different centuries?
He pressed his palms together. The feeling of impending doom didn’t lessen but, in fact, intensified.
She needed him.
No, it wasn’t logical or sane, but the sensation sat heavy as butter in his blood.
Get to her.
But how?
The only stock Tessa kept were those toy-sized horses she hitched for Christmas jobs. He’d break their backs before he cleared the gate.
He’d have to wake Tessa and Cade and ask them to drive him to Fiona’s apartment in the middle of the night. How could he disrupt their sleep based on a hunch?
Yet how could he go back to sleep with this terrible knowing gnawing a hole in his belly?
He ran a hand through his hair. He had to get to Fiona and Jamie. Just to be sure.
Foolish or not, the need was absolute.
One knock on Tessa’s bedroom door, a few words, and Cade would be on his feet before Rhett could explain. Tessa would ask questions he couldn’t answer. What would he even say? I woke up worried.
They would look at him with pity or amusement. They’d call it nerves, or maybe lovesick foolishness. Or worse, they’d insist on coming, slow him down, and make him wait until morning.
Morning was too far away.
The pressure in his chest solidified.
He got up, yanked on his jeans and shirt, buttoned his coat, and slipped his feet into boots. The floorboards creaked, loud in the hush
He moved slowly, toe to heel, steadying each step before taking the next. Shh, don’t wake them.
Rhett stopped outside Tessa’s bedroom door and hovered his hand near the frame. For a heartbeat, he almost knocked.
He dropped his hand. He couldn’t explain this kind of knowing.
Get to her.
The urge was insistent, compelling.
By nature, he was a careful observer. He’d watched Fiona drive.
Taken mental notes. Memorized the gear shift.
She moved it to R when she wanted to go in reverse, P when she stopped, and D was for driving.
He was shaky on what the N meant, but he could figure it out. Didn’t look that hard. He could do it.
When they arrived at the ranch, Tessa hung the key to her truck on the peg by the door. He knew exactly where it was.
He headed for the door, found the key, and stared at it.
Taking her truck without permission felt like taking another man’s horse. It violated the code of the West. Tessa needed that truck just as any cowboy needed his mount.
He thought again of waking them, but Cade couldn’t drive, and Tessa would waste precious minutes trying to understand what he couldn’t explain. By the time he convinced her, it might be too late.
Better to risk Tessa’s anger than Fiona’s harm.
He couldn’t wait. He must go now. Something bad had happened. He felt it in his soul.
“Forgive me,” he murmured and pocketed the key.
Outside, under a lamp on a pole, her truck waited beneath a covered structure.
He unlocked the door, slid into the seat, his pulse slamming against his eardrums. He looked for the slot where the key went. Found that easily enough.
He let out his breath in a heavy whoosh.
Get-a-long, little dogie.
He turned the key. The engine caught with a rough growl that shook the cab. Warm air poured from the vents. Music played. A song he knew, “Jingle Bells,” but it sounded different from any version he’d ever heard. Light from the front of the truck spilled out into the night.
A lump of fear clogged his throat, but he swallowed it back. All right, the beast lived. Now to make it move.
Inhaling deeply, he found the lever and eased it into R. The truck rolled back down the hill.
Whoa. How’d he stop this thing?
Instinctively, he braced his foot against the floor and hit a pedal. The truck jerked to a stop.
Rhett peered down at his boot slammed against the pedal. Ahh, he’d found the brake.
Now what? He was free of the structure, the truck out in the open. He could go forward.
Move the lever to D?
Clenching his jaw, he slipped the device into D.
Nothing happened.
Get your foot off the brake, cowpoke. He could almost hear Tessa’s voice.
He edged his foot off the brake. The truck rolled forward a few inches, then stopped. He blew out his breath and watched the glass fog. The truck just sat there, awake but idle.
What now? How did he make it go forward?
Hurry. Urgent. Fiona needs you. His conscience needled him.
He closed his eyes. Think, think. What did Fiona do to make her car go?
It came to him, the memory: Fiona turned to look at him as a light at the intersection near Jamie’s school turned green. She moved her leg.
He peered down at the floorboard. Sure enough, there was another pedal beside the brake. This had to be it.
Cautiously, he pushed on the second pedal, and the truck leaped forward.
Hallelujah! He’d figured out the essentials. He was on his way.
Hang on, Fiona, I’m coming for you.
* * *
Fiona hit the frozen ground with enough force to drive every bit of air from her lungs.
Pain radiated up her spine as snow bit into her exposed skin, and for one terrifying moment, the world eclipsed into a swirl of white and then black.
Breathe. Just breathe.
She dragged air into her chest; each breath excruciating. The wind whipped through Rhett’s oversized coat and the thin nightgown beneath, cutting straight to her bones.
Her hands trembled and she pushed herself upright, the snow crackling beneath her palms with a loud snap in the vast silence. Within seconds, her feet went from burning to numb.
She blinked hard, trying to make sense of what surrounded her. Nothing but flat, endless white stretching in every direction. No horizon line, no landmarks, no indication of which way she should go.
“Jamie!” His name tore from her throat, but the wind snatched it away before the sound could carry. “Jamie, baby, where are you?”
A movement in the darkness caught her eye, something massive. Her heart leaped before she realized it was only cattle, standing calm and unbothered despite the brutal cold, their breath forming ghostly clouds in the frigid air.
Their peaceful presence should have been comforting, but it only made her feel more frantic, more alone.
She pulled the coat tighter around herself, and the familiar scent filled her nose. Rhett. It smelled like him, that quiet strength she had come to depend on without even realizing it. The scent was an anchor in this wonky world.
Focus. You can do this. Figure out which way to go.
She turned in a slow circle, her heart sinking with each rotation, she saw nothing but snow and darkness. The nightgown was already soaked through, clinging to her legs, and she felt ice form on the coat hem.
“Jamie!” She started walking, choosing a direction at random because standing still felt like giving up. “Answer me, sweetheart! Please!”
The tears came hot against her frozen cheeks, crystallizing at once. How long had she been out here? Minutes? Hours? She lost all sense of time and distance. Everything blurred into this nightmare of cold, fear, and desperate searching.
Her toe caught on something buried in the snow, and she pitched forward, landing hard on her hands and knees.
Pain spread through her wrists. She looked down.
Footprints. Her own footprints, half-filled with fresh snow, looping back to where she started.
“No.” She said it again, louder this time, as if volume could change reality. “No, no, no.”
She staggered to her feet, swaying. The same cattle watched her with dark, indifferent eyes. The same empty field stretched endlessly in all directions.
“Jamie.” Her throat felt raw, torn. “Baby, where are you?”
Only the wind answered, howling across the frozen plain.
She stared out at the blank landscape until her eyes burned and the white and black ran together like watercolors in the rain. The Christmas card. She saw him in that painted image, standing in the snow beside Rhett holding his wooden top.
But what if I was wrong?
What if the card sent Jamie to another time or place? What if her desperate leap through time landed her in the incorrect century, and her son was somewhere else—some when else—beyond her reach?
She pressed her fist against her chest, trying to breathe through the panic. The magic was real, she knew that now with absolute certainty. She was here in another time. But magic didn’t come with instructions or guarantees. What if she misread everything?
And even if Jamie was here, somewhere in this frozen 1878 Montana, what then? A small boy in Spider-Man pajamas, appearing out of nowhere in a world without child services or autism awareness.
Would anyone help him? Would they understand his silence, his need for routine and familiar things? Or would they think him damaged, broken, something to be hidden away?
The terror of that thought was more than she could bear. Her legs gave out, and she sank into the snow, the cold seeping through every layer until she couldn’t tell where her body ended and the winter began.
The Christmas card.
She left it on the living room floor in her desperate rush to follow Jamie. Her only connection to home, to her own time, abandoned in her panic.
The reality settled over her. No card. No phone. No plan. None of the careful systems and strategies that had gotten her through the impossible years since Jamie’s diagnosis.
For the first time since she could remember, there was nothing she could control or fix or manage.
The cold stopped hurting so much, which some distant part of her brain recognized as dangerous.
But she was so tired of fighting, of being strong, of keeping them both safe in a world not built for people like Jamie.
Maybe it would be easier to just stop. To let the cold take her. To rest at last.
All those years of planning and preparing, of researching and advocating and fighting for every single accommodation and service. And here she was, lost in the literal middle of nowhere, powerless to save the one person who mattered more than her own life.
She pulled Rhett’s coat tighter, wrapping herself in what little warmth remained.
Don’t let go.Don’t you dare let go of him. Not now. Not ever.
A sound broke free from her chest. Half sob, half Jamie’s name, all desperation.
The wind screamed across the empty field, but still she called out to him, again and again, because love, wild and desperate and irrational, was the only thing keeping her alive. And as long as that love burned, as long as she could draw breath and speak his name, she refused to give up.
She would find him. No matter what.