Time Change B2 Page 8

  In the light cast by the full moon, she could see a lone rider coming down the road. She suddenly realized she was in the middle of nowhere all by herself. Seeking to avoid a potential dangerous situation, she made for a stand of trees about twenty yards off the side of the road. She would conceal herself there and wait for the rider to pass, then make for the city as fast as she could. She dismounted and waited as the man approached. As he neared a familiarity about him struck her.

  It was Jack!

  Jack! What was Jack doing riding alone this far from the city and this late at night? The moon and the stars cast deep shadows in the trees but brightly illuminated the road. He was carrying a bouquet of flowers. Frances swore he had a smile on his face. She had to know. She had to see it for herself. From a safe distance, she followed him under the cover of the trees.

  He seemed oblivious to her as he continued down the road. Dried branches and twigs snapped loudly as she moved. It seemed to her that every step her horse made Jack was likely to hear.

  After almost a mile of her darting from one stand of trees to another, she was about to give up when she saw someone in the distance. She could see a billowing, light-colored dress and knew that it was a woman. Jack must have noticed the woman at the same time because he waved and she waved back. She saw his horse approach the woman and Jack stepped down. He handed the woman the flowers and Frances felt like dying through their unending embrace. Were they kissing? She was too far away to tell.

  If I could only get closer, she thought, but the cover of trees had thinned, and to get any closer she would have to expose herself in the open. She was a lone rider silhouetted by the moon and stars. She inched herself closer, but she was still unable to really see.

  She couldn’t get any closer without being seen. Are they still in each other’s arms? Is he staring into her eyes? I bet he is telling her all the same lines he told to me. To hell with him and his dark haired bitch! If he can go from acting like he wanted to marry me to this in less than a week, he must not have cared for me much at all. Stupid, stupid, stupid what are you doing here? Just get away! You were happy. You certainly do not need a man to make your life complete. You have your work, your family. She noticed tears were rolling down her face in streams. I have to get out of here. She turned, and eight men on horseback had silently crept up on her.

  “Well, what do we have here? Frances? Looks like we have ourselves a little spy,” said Abner Adkins.

  “We need to get Riggs away from my daughter,” Ken Barnett said.

  “Now, not so fast, Barnett. You wouldn’t believe our good fortune, this is Frances Sanger. Jack Riggs’ girlfriend.”

  “And your ex-wife,” Frances said. The men all looked at Abner suspiciously.

  “Yes, and my ex-wife, but that has nothing to do with things.”

  She didn’t know whether to try to run or scream for help. The men quickly surrounded her.

  “How are we going to kill Riggs, with a witness?” Barnett asked nervously.

  “Quiet, dammit! I said she might turn out to be handy to have around.” Adkins eyed her lecherously. “You two men stay with her. The rest of you come with me. Let’s go round up Mr. Jack Riggs. And none of you dumb asses need to be shootin’ either, plans have changed. I want Riggs alive.”

  “But you said we were going to kill—“

  “I said shut up, Barnett! Mr. Creed told me what a pain in the ass you’ve become. I just told you plans have changed. He’s worth more alive to us than dead. And this woman is the grease I need to get him to cooperate.”

  “To hell with you, that’s my daughter,” Barnett said. He and his giant horse thundered away.

  “Stop him!” Abner yelled at the men and took off after Barnett.

  No matter what she thought about the way he was acting now, Frances loved Jack. Two of the four men that stayed with her grabbed her by the arms. She struggled, turned, and saw the four other horsemen racing toward Jack. She knew they had malice in their hearts, especially this one named Barnett.

  There was only one thing she could do and without thinking she yelled, “Jack, watch out! They are going to kill you!”

  One of the men holding her let go; he along with two others pulled out their guns. The fourth man let go and slapped her so hard she saw stars as she slammed into the ground.

  CHAPTER 16

  Friday, July 3, 1857

  Jack approached Kady and saw her billowing, light colored dress and long-flowing hair cascading over her shoulders. The bodice of the dress was low-slung and form fitting. His body yearned for her, but his head was still with Frances. What’s wrong with me? She’s with another man, she sent me away!

  “Well, hello stranger. I’ve been waiting. The family went to bed earlier than normal and I was able to sneak away quicker than I thought I could. Are these for me?” She reached for the flowers.

  “Yes, they are. I thought it was the least I could do…”

  She grabbed him. “Let me give you a big ole hug.”

  She hugged him and didn’t let go. As her arms closed gently about his neck, his whole body was suddenly aflame. Jack could feel her heaving breasts pressed tightly to his chest. She moved even closer, trying to melt her body into his. He felt her press her belly and push her hips forward into his.

  God, this feels good. Jack hadn’t been with a woman in over a year. It was the longest he’d been since he was fourteen. He and Frances had only held hands and barely even kissed—definitely nothing this erotic. The sensation was becoming unbearably exciting.

  One of her hands slipped down from his shoulder to the small of his back, massaged, and then moved to the side of his hip. She moved her other hand to his face, cupped his chin and cheek in her soft warm hands. She moved her hand up to his ear, gently tracing the outer edge with her finger. He could feel the heat of her gaze. Her pouty, full lips seemed like a magnet as they reached up for his.

  Instead of going for her lips, he barely brushed them and moved for the pulsating hollow at the base of her throat. She threw her head back and moaned as he seared her neck with his tongue. She used her hand to rub him into her as she lifted her hips to make herself more accessible. He pressed his tongue hard into her neck and made his way up her throat to her ear. He pushed the hair out of the way with his nose and plunged his tongue deep inside. The deeper he pushed, the more she groaned.

  Jack knew how to make a woman happy.

  Taking her face in his hands, he moved his lips so they barely were touching hers. He stared into the pools of her moonlit turquoise eyes and stopped with a shudder. Her eyes were bluish, not green; her hair was brown, not blonde. The emotion and heat he was feeling now wasn’t for the woman he was with, it was for Frances. “I can’t,” he said, and let go of her face.

  “Ohhh, you can’t stop now Jack!” She moaned and continued to lean into him.

  “What the hell are you doing with my daughter?” Barnett yelled.

  Kady stopped mid-breath, and then there was another voice, this one farther off and female, “Jack, watch out! They are going to kill you!”

  “Frances!” Pushing himself away from Kady, he turned to the sound of the voices. Four men were bearing down on them hard. One looked like Barnett and another looked to be Abner Adkins. Jack had left his gun slung over his saddle and there wasn’t time to make for it or to try to get away.

  CHAPTER 17

  Friday, July 3, 1857

  Barnett rode up full force, grabbed Kady by the arm, and pulled her farther away from Jack—and in the process swung her around and knocked her to the ground. Abner and the other men had their pistols drawn and quickly surrounded Jack. In the distance he saw one of the four other horsemen knock Frances to the ground with a backhanded slap. Jack wanted to explode, but was sure Abner and his men would kill him where he stood.

  Barnett got off his horse and jerked his daughter up from the ground. “Just what were you thinking, young lady? Did you do this just to hurt me? Answer me!” He swung her till she fac
ed him.

  She stood defiantly, returning his stare.

  “Come on, I’m taking you back to the house.” He pushed her ahead of him and they took off walking, leaving his horse behind.

  “As for you, Jackie boy,” Abner said, “get your arse moving. I now have everyone you care about except the old man, and I’ll take care of him soon enough.”

  Barnett yelled over his shoulder, “Adkins, if you don’t kill him I will! No one treats my daughter this way.”

  “I told you, Creed wants them alive,” Abner said as he kicked Jack, “for now.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Friday, July 3, 1857

  Jack’s hands were tied and was locked in a storage shed along with Frances on the edge of the complex. Guards were placed outside the door and told to shoot anyone trying to escape. The only light entering the small ten by ten building was through two small windows on each side of the structure. Frances sat on the dirt floor on one side and Jack sat on the other. She was barely discernible through the oppressive darkness. She had yet to look at him since their capture. After what seemed an eternity, he finally said; “What are you doing here?”

  “No, a better question would be what are you doing here. Except that I know what you’re doing here. Seeing your girlfriend, Kady.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend. I just met her two days ago.”

  “Seemed awfully friendly for two days. Unless you knew her right along.”

  “She’s not from here, her family just moved down here from Chicago.”

  “Chicago! Well, that explains all your trips there.”

  “I told you, I just met her.”

  “I saw you holding her. I saw the things you two were doing.”

  “And what do you care, anyway?”

  “You are right, I don’t care.”

  “After all, you broke things off with me the other night to be with another man!”

  “Another man? Where would you get a ridiculous idea like that?”

  “I talked to someone who saw you two together.”

  “That is ludicrous. I haven’t been with another man.” She shook her head and thought better of answering. “Another man has nothing to do with this.”

  “Then who was the man you left with after you chased me away the other night? The one you left with?”

  She looked at him like he was crazy. “I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer. If after all that we’ve been through, all that we shared—the honesty, the grandness of conversations. And then to have you hurl mud at it like this? This conversation is over.”

  “And it’s reasonable to treat our relationship like you did the other night?” Jack said.

  “What? Well, I might have thought that until I saw you holding hands with your girlfriend in the restaurant yesterday.”

  Now it was Jack’s turn to try to figure out what she was talking about. An eyebrow raised in amused contempt. “She grabbed my hand, what was I supposed to do?”

  “I suppose sit there, grinning like an idiot and hold her hand. Don’t play me for a fool. I know what I saw.”

  He knew this was getting them nowhere, so he tried a different approach. “I’m sorry I fell prey to a beautiful woman, but you know what? You rejected me, you rejected everything about me. You sent me away and gave me excuses that didn’t make sense.”

  “Jack, I have never lied to you and I never will.”

  The door to the shed swung open so hard that it knocked the dirt from the mud dauber nests to the ground. Abner Adkins was at the door. “Frances, get out here.”

  “Where are you taking her?” Jack asked.

  “I’m not taking her anywhere, Champ, she asked to be put in here with you. I agreed at first because I thought she might come up with useful information, but now I just think it’s silly. Come on, let’s go.”

  She remained seated; Jack looked to her for an explanation and saw that her hands were untied. Were they ever tied in the first place? “What the hell, Frances? Were you in here spying on me?”

  “Gentlemen, get her, this is starting to bore me.” Abner said to his two lackeys. One grabbed Frances’s hand and stood her up and the other thug used his foot and pushed Jack back down.

  “Jack, that’s not it at all. I didn’t come in here to spy on you, I came in here because I—” She never got a chance to finish because the heavy door slammed shut.

  No one came in the rest of that night or even the next morning. The door opened about noon, and a black servant woman brought Jack a hard biscuit and tea and even let him wash with a basin of water. As quickly and mysteriously as she came, she left again. A few hours later the door opened again, and Ken Barnett stood in the doorway.

  “Come on,” Barnett said, “we’ve got to hurry.”

  “Hurry? For what?” Jack asked.

  “I need your help.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Saturday, July 4, 1857

  “I looked over the papers you gave Kady and I think I might be able to get a couple of them to work.” Barnett looked embarrassed. “She also told me that she pursued you. That it was all her idea.”

  God bless Kady, Jack thought. “Where are Creed and Adkins? Where’s Frances?”

  “They are gone,” Ken said.

  “Miles took Adkins and Miss Sanger in the speed steamboat and left for Williamsburg. Creed… that’s where I need your help. Creed is going to use a poison bomb planted inside fireworks tonight at the Norfolk Fourth of July gathering.”

  “What? Why?”

  “The fireworks are being put on by the Virginia Republican Party,” Ken said.

  Jack shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows. “I’m not getting the significance here?”

  “They’re abolitionists, and Frederick Douglass is going to speak,” Ken said.

  “So what kind of bomb is it?”

  “It was something that you developed, an astrolite bomb?”

  “Oh man, this is bad. How many people are going to be there?” Jack asked.

  “About two thousand, could be more. It’s worse than that I’m afraid, though. The bombs are loaded with thallium sulfate and stingray venom.”

  “Why would you develop a bomb like that? What good could possibly come out of it?”

  Barnett threw his hands up in mock defense, “None of that stuff was developed here. From what I understand, you developed the astrolite.”

  “This is too bizarre. I’m not sure if it’s cosmic karma at work. I got in trouble in my old life for astrolite. We didn’t make astrolite as a weapon, we developed it as a propellant. I don’t know a thing about the thallium… wait, that’s rat poison. And sting ray venom?” Jack was confused.

  “The thallium is used as an inhalant and the venom has been soaked into wood shards, it’s like a scatter bomb.” Ken said.

  “And you were making them here?” Jack asked.

  “We were making them to sell to other countries, like England and France. It’s all part of an effort to create trade with foreign countries so they would recognize the Confederate States of America as a separate nation.”

  “What are they using for detonators?”

  “We have impact, graze and delay, mechanical, match combustibles, but I’m almost certain they’re using radio detonators that you all invented. You should be familiar with it, it’s all your stuff except the poisons.”

  “What frequency are the radio detonators?”

  “Not really sure I know what you’re talking about.”

  “Is it a big square detonator about four inches by four inches?” Jack said.

  “We have both, those and the rectangular ones, about four inches by an inch and a half?”

  “Those are the newest ones. Where did you get them?”

  “Kazmer,” Ken said. He looked embarrassed.

  “What have you done with Kazmer?”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it. This Kazmer guy came down here with a bunch of stuff you all were working on to trade for a woman—“


  “Mattie Turner,” Jack said as a simple statement.

  “She wouldn’t have him. Her face got kind of messed up that night at the church.” Ken said.

  “Messed up? What do you mean by that?”

  “She fell on her face on the cobblestone road. Disfigured, the whole left side of her face.”

  “Her looks were the only thing she had going for her. What happened when she turned Kazmer away?”

  “He wanted back the items he brought here. When Creed wouldn’t allow it, he said he was going to go to the police. That’s when Creed took him to the plant and locked him up in the research wing,” Ken said.

  “That part that looks like an insane asylum?”

  “Close enough, I reckon. I don’t know much about the place; I do know they do some horrible testing on prisoners there,” Ken Barnett said.

  “I can’t believe Cooper was spying on me the whole time. Was it the money?”

  “I’m not one hundred percent sure. But one night you all were drinking and Cooper said you described a whole bunch of horrible weaponry—well, he said he couldn’t let you develop them for the North to use against our people.”

  “But they are my people, too.”

  Ken shook his head and raised both hands palm up.

  Jack was in deep thought looking around the grounds. “So, this is basically my entire complex?”

  “Yes, except for the medical facilities and research.”

  “You guys stole the rest of my shit, why didn’t you steal any of my doctors or medical research?”

  “I would have liked that very much,” Ken said. “The reason we don’t have any of it, Creed didn’t figure there was enough money to be made.”

  “Not enough money in healthcare?” Jack shook his head and thought of the trillion dollar healthcare costs in the future. Creed ain’t that smart. “What’s the story on these fireworks?”