Chapter 16 #2
Cara stopped, frustrated. "That's all there is. The rest has been torn away." She knelt by the desk, squinting into the gloom, hoping for the rest of the article. "There's nothing here."
Michael leaned down and grabbed the article from her hand, his eyes darting across the page.
"This isn't right. It can't be right." The pain in his voice threatened to undo her.
He looked terrified and she wanted to do something, anything to erase the look.
"If this is right, then everyone in my family is dead.
Patrick … my father…" He crumpled the article in his hand. "This is a lie."
"We don't know anything for certain, Michael. We don't even have the whole article."
He rounded on her, his blue eyes turning black with anger, his fingers digging into her shoulders. "My brother didn't kill any whores."
She bit her lip, trying not to cry out in pain. He wasn't even seeing her. He would never intentionally hurt her. He was blinded by rage. As if reading her thoughts, his grip loosened and he gently massaged the skin he'd been gripping so ardently.
"There's just no way Patrick would kill a woman—any woman." His words were softer now, deceptively calm. "These charges aren't true." He waved the wadded up article in punctuation of his words.
Cara tugged on his arm. "This isn't the place to talk about this, Michael. We need to get out of here. We need to get you out of here. We'll take the article. Nick won't even miss it in all this mess. Come on."
Grabbing the urn's lid from off of the desk, she pulled him into the alcove and slammed it into place. The mechanism whirred and scraped, and they returned to the immaculate office.
Michael moved slowly, his mind no doubt numbed by the things they'd discovered. She had to get him out of here. She had to get him home—to 1888.
And if she was right, she had to do it as quickly as possible.
Michael paced back and forth across the rug, his emotions tied in knots.
He was marooned in the twenty-first century and because of it, his brother and father were dead.
While he'd been cavorting like a stud in heat, someone had murdered his father and then set his brother up to take a fall. He was supposed to have protected them.
"Michael?" Cara's touch on his arm pulled him out of his reverie. "There's no sense in blaming yourself. It wasn't your fault you were shot. In fact, I'll wager it was related somehow to all of this."
"Maybe so. But how. Damn it, how? And where does Nick Vargas fit into all of this?"
"I don't know." She stared down at the crumpled newspaper article, her eyes narrowed in thought. "And I'm not sure it matters right now."
"How can you say it doesn't matter?" He knew he sounded harsh. Knew that he was hurting her, but his pain was so deep, so emasculating.
She held out the article, as if somehow it contained all the answers. "Michael, what was the date when you were shot?"
He forced himself to concentrate on her question. She was only trying to help. "I told you before—1888."
"No, I don't mean the year; I mean the date." She was still staring at the article in her hand.
"May twenty-first."
"This was written on May twenty-seventh." She pointed to the heading at the top of the page.
"So?" He struggled to pull himself out of his lethargy, to think clearly. But it was hard—damn hard.
"So today's the twenty-fifth." She stared at him, waiting for the impact of her words to reach him.
His stomach roiled and in an instant he sprang back to life, hope blossoming. "You're saying that if time passes the same here and there, then Patrick isn't dead, yet."
"Exactly."
He pondered the enormity of the thought. "So if I can get back, I can save him."
Cara's gaze met his. "It's worth a try."
Hope collided with despair. He had to go. There wasn't a choice. Patrick's life hung in the balance. But he couldn't imagine what it would be like to never hold her again. "You realize what you're saying." There was so much between them but no time for words.
She nodded, tears filling her eyes. "You have to save, Patrick. Nothing else is as important as that."
He pulled her to him with a groan, burying his face in her hair, glorying in the softness of her skin, the smell of her perfume—trying to memorize the way she felt in his arms—knowing that, without her, he would never be the same.
"You realize that we have no idea if this is even possible." Michael's voice was tight, the line of his shoulders mirroring his tone.
"I know, but we'll never know for certain unless we try." She wanted to scream or explode or do something to stop him. But she couldn't. His pain was her pain and she had to send him back. It was the only way. And no matter what she lost in the process, she was determined to help him.
They walked on in silence, and Cara forced her thoughts to the practical, running through everything they'd discovered in the last few hours, trying to make the pieces fit.
There were just so many unanswered questions.
Halfway to the mine tunnel, her overloaded brain suddenly pushed a thought front and center.
She stopped dead in her tracks. "It's the pendant. "
Michael stopped, too. "What are you talking about?"
"The pendant is the key."
He frowned down at her. "You think this whole thing was caused by a necklace?"
"No, but, I think it's part of the equation."
"Why?" He raised an eyebrow skeptically.
"Because I had it on when you found me. And again when I found you."
"So this is a special pendant?"
"Yeah, it belonged to my great-grandmother. My mother gave to me on my sixteenth birthday."
Understanding flashed in his eyes. "The night your parents' died."
She nodded miserably.
"Oh, sweetheart, I'm so sorry." He pulled her into his arms. "No wonder it means so much to you."
She nestled there for a moment, then, swallowing her pain, she pushed back so that she could see his eyes.
"It's the only thing I have of my mother's—of her family.
When my great-grandmother Faye died, my mother went to Virginia to sell her house.
In the attic she found a trunk. It had belonged to a woman named Alice Camden.
Inside she found the pendant, and a packet of letters from Silverthread. "
She leaned into him, her voice muffled against his chest. "The letters were all addressed to my grandmother Mary. They were short letters, without much news really. References here and there to life in Silverthread, but mainly they were filled with words of love. Words from a mother to a daughter."
"So Alice was really your great-grandmother?"
"Yeah. Faye was her sister. Anyway, mom tried to find out more about Alice, but there was nothing.
It was almost like she'd never existed at all.
Except that we had her pendant. So you see, it was a big deal when she gave it to me.
It represented all we had of our true heritage.
" She bit her lip, trying not to cry. This wasn't the time.
"It's a lovely story, Cara, but it could just be coincidence."
Her gaze met his. "There's more. When they couldn't find you, when they told me I'd imagined you, I couldn't stand it.
I'd lost everything. My parents, my life, and then you.
" She exhaled on a sigh, feeling his arms tighten around her.
"I thought I was going to die, too, for a while.
And then slowly, surely, I healed. But I couldn't bring myself to wear the necklace.
It symbolized all I had lost. I gave it to my grandfather and told him to sell it. "
"But he didn't."
"No, he didn't. He kept it in a drawer by his bed. One more thing he was right about." She fought to keep the pain from her voice. "It was silly to blame an inanimate object for all my troubles."
"But easier." As always Michael understood. Without the words even being spoken.
She drew in a deep breath. "Anyway, I found it when I was going through his things. I still couldn't bear to look at it, but I took it with me to the cabin. Then a few days ago, I saw it in my jewelry box and put it on. I can't explain why I did, it just felt right."
She reached up and laid a hand on his cheek. "It was the day I found you. I just didn't make the connection until now. It's the pendant, Michael. Alice's pendant."
"You think it's what pulled me through time?"
"I do. That and the connection between us. First, I needed you and then you needed me. Or maybe it was me who needed you. I don't know. It's confusing."
He brushed his lips against hers, even the slight contact making her ache for him. "I would have died if you hadn't found me in the tunnel."
"I know," she whispered. "But I would have died in the fire if you hadn't pulled me out.
" She shook her head. "Anyway, it's not important who saved whom.
What's important is that we need the pendant to get back, and I don't have it.
" She tried to keep a brave face, but the hopelessness of the situation overwhelmed her and she felt tears threatening. "I must have lost it."
"Shh." He placed a finger over her lips. "It's okay. The necklace is safe. It's in the bathroom by the sink. I took it from you the night of the fire."
She nodded, pushing aside memories of that night. She could remember later. When she was alone. "We need the pendant, Michael."
"So let's go get it." He was already turning back.
"No." The word came out harsher than she'd intended. He swung around to look at her, and she forced a smile. "It'll be faster if I go back for it on my own."
He pulled her to him and kissed her hard, his cobalt gaze meeting hers. "I'll wait for you at the tunnel."
Cara reached the porch that wrapped around her house in record time. Taking the three steps in one stride, she inserted her key and swung open the door, bursting through the little mud room almost before the door had closed behind her.
"Cara, darling, I was wondering when you'd show up."
She froze, her eyes riveted on the gun in Nick Vargas' lean hand.