Part 15 (1/2)
”Give me the letter,” Liam commanded.
Her hand was shaking when she complied. ”So that's why you fought,” she said unsteadily, ”a”why your friend left you here. It was over her.”
The delicate paper crackled in his grip. ”Don't play innocent, Mac. It's a little too late for that.” His voice was deadly calm. ”What were you looking for? Any money I'd left lying around? Or was it simple spying this time?”
She shook her head. ”Two men in love with the same woman,” she said, trying to keep control of her rising alarm. ”They fight, and onea” Tries to kill his rival. Oh s.h.i.+t. ”One leaves the other with almost no supplies and goes home to his girlfriend.”
”Perry, in love with her?” he said harshly. ”He's in love with her inheritance. He's a d.a.m.ned fortune hunter. But you know that, don't you? As long as she's my ward, he'll get his hands on her over my dead body.”
His words were grotesquely appropriate. Caroline, Liam's ward?
Oh, Homer, what did you get me into?
”He didn't succeed in getting me out of the way,” Liam continued, oblivious to her shock. ”And he'll pay for his blunder.”
Mac felt for the camp stool beside the desk and sat down, weak-kneed. Maybe Perry had tried to kill him. And would have succeeded if not for Mac's intervention.
Liam was alive when he should have been dead. He was alive to return to San Francisco and marry Caroline Gresham.
But Caroline and Perry were Mac's great-great grandparents. If they didn't marry, would Mac cease to exist? And what about Homer, who'd inspired so many young minds and uncovered secrets of the past; her father, who'd save an entire platoon of comrades in Vietnama”even Jason, who had made such promising discoveries in his search for new cancer treatments?
And would this mess even end with her family?
Greater changes might come from each smaller one, until all of history itself was affected.
Mac trembled. She'd saved Liam's life, and she couldn't regret it. But now that she knew the dire consequences of her acta Only she could set things right again.
She bent over, sickened. There was no going home anymore. Even if she tried, she might never make it. She might simply disappear, never having existed. Leaving the screwup she'd made still intact.
If she couldn't go home, what was she going to do?
The answer to that was obvious. She had to stop Liam from marrying Caroline. Impossible as it seemed, she didn't have any choice.
The strength flooded back into her body, and she sat up. One by one the implications of her decision raced through her mind. To stop Liam meant being with him. Going with him back to 1884 San Francisco, where his ward-bride awaited him. Going without a plan, without knowing what she faced, alone and out of her own time.
”You're going back to San Francisco to marry Caroline,” she said to Liam suddenly. ”And to take revenge on your former partner.”
Crouched by his crates of supplies, he looked at her over his shoulder. ”What's it to you, Mac?” he said with a cynical twist of his mouth.
”Do you love your ward?” she asked flatly.
”I know what's best for hera”” Liam paused, gaze unfocused. ”She's a lady. She was meant to be protected all her life.”
”Not only from Perry?” Mac prodded.
He rose, walked halfway across the tent, and swung around again. ”From him, and from all the harshness of the world.”
There was something in his expression along with that fierce determination, something that touched on the vulnerability she'd seen in him once before.
But he hadn't said he loved Caroline. If there was something other than love behind Liam's relations.h.i.+p with his ward, it was something Mac had to understand.
”If your curiosity is satisfied,” Liam said, ”I suggest you pack your things. It'll be dark soon.”
”Pack?”
”So I can escort you back to the ruins.”
Ah, yes. Now he was willing to believe she had somewhere to go.
She clutched the pendant in her pocket. ”No.”
”What?”
”No. I'm not leaving.”
”You said you knew your way back.”
”I was wrong. My theory isn't going to work.”
”What the h.e.l.l does that mean?”
Here goes. ”I can't go back to my own time. Not from here. Ia have to go to San Francisco to find what I need to make it possible.”
He was very, very still. ”When did you discover this, Mac? After I almost had you, or after you read the letter?”
Her breath caught at the bluntness of his words. ”It doesn't matter. You owe me. And you said you'd take me anywhere I choose to go.”
His gaze could have burned through a lead wall. ”Do you think I'm so easily hoodwinked? You may have saved my life, but you won't further Perry's schemes by going with me.”
”Even if I told you that I needed your help?” She swallowed her completely irrelevant pride. ”Would you leave a lone woman out here in the jungle with nowhere to go? Because that's exactly my situation. And without you, I probably won't survive this place.” She held his gaze. ”I need you, O'Shea.”
He stared at her, angry and perplexed. Finally, he gave her a bitter, mocking salute. ”You're right. I wouldn't leave a woman out here alone, not even one like you. If it's money you want, a boat to hire, I can get them for you. But going with me to San Francisco isa””
”It's where I have to go,” she said, struggling for a remotely plausible explanation. ”At least it's a city I know better than any other. I won't be soa lost there.” She touched his arm. ”Please take me with you. I won't cause any trouble.” Except, if I'm lucky, keep you from marrying Caroline and killing Perry, she silently amended.
”No trouble?” He snorted. ”I don't understand what you hope to accomplish, or how you mean to survive, but if it's what you wanta”” He shrugged. ”I'll get you to San Francisco. I owe you that much.”
He turned to the crates of provisions in the corner of the tent. ”It's three hundred miles on bad roads, or none at all, to the port of Champerico. A hard trip for a man at any pace, and I'm going to make it a fast one. For a womana””
”At least I won't be alone.”
Canvas rustled as he pulled the covering from the crates and checked the contents. ”You'll sleep on the ground, in whatever shelter Fernando can devise.”
”I think I'll survive.”