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“No, I shouldn’t think so,” he said. “My family is unremarkable to have their portrait in any museum.”
“Where is your family?”
“North Carolina for the time being. They’re waiting for me to assess the territory here before venturing out west themselves.”
We talked companionably as we trekked through the rough terrain, zigzagging back and forth from one creek to another. Yet, we both cautiously talked around the edges of our private lives, careful what we shared.
“How much farther?” I asked two hours later, my ankle now throbbing with every rugged step.
“Less than a mile to go.”
“I hope much less.”
He tightened his grip on my waist to help me take the weight off my ankle, saying, “I could carry you the rest of the way, if you’d like.”
I shot an annoyed look at him. “Thanks, I’ll manage.”
I winced and grunted at the next radiating throb, wondering if I could though. It was the image of Hilly’s worried pacing that kept me going.
“The first place I should go is straight to the local sheriff’s station,” I said. “I’m sure Hilly is there this minute, screaming at everyone to go out and search for me.”
“She’d be wasting her time then,” Bryant said. “I’m sorry to say that our sheriff, Ray Wilkins, wouldn’t bother pulling himself from the Silver Nugget Saloon to go look for some lost woman in the mountains.”
“Even if that lost woman had been shot at by crazy, whack-job Arcan Hunters?”
“Particularly then,” he said. “Not to worry. We’ll find your friends easily enough, if they’re in town.”
“I hope so.”
Then I would have Hilly drive me back to my hotel room in civilized Seattle where I would take a long, steaming hot shower, devour a huge steak dinner and snooze for the next ten hours in a plush, king-sized bed.
At last, we hiked up the last forested rise overlooking the town across the wide Silver River. But my instant smile melted to disappointed confusion at the collection of rustic wooden buildings and dirt roads. This was some kind of town, yes, but not Silver Falls.
“Where the heck is this?” I remarked.
My brows drew together when I then spotted several men on horseback, another driving a mule-drawn buckboard, noting that there were no cars or motorcycles or vehicles of any kind anywhere. Nor were there any telephone poles or electrical wires or boxes attached to buildings.
That’s when I also noticed the people wandering the unpaved streets—women wearing pioneer gear or long Victorian dresses.
“Silver Falls, of course,” Bryant answered, eyeing me warily.
My mouth opened as I frantically assessed the impossible sight before me, trying to find something modern, anything at all. Anything.
“Miss McEwan? Are you all right?”
I whipped my wide stare up to Bryant’s concerned expression, studying his face, a face so similar to that of Michael Bryant’s in the museum’s sepia photograph...
Not similar—exact!
“It’s the summer solstice today, so anything can happen,”Maggie had teased yesterday.
Before I had ventured into her mysterious cave of secrets.
Before I found that odd, illuminated glyph.
Before the earthquake that had knocked me unconscious and shaken my entire world to pieces.
Anything, she had said.But time travel?
