Page 63 of The Promise
"Guess you just can't ever tell about folks," Amos Striker said. "It's a sad day..."
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,anythingto 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 getyououtof 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 backand 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.
