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  That made Jack smile. “Yeah, well, okay, but you’re going with us, right?”

  “I…”

  “And you’ll wait until I get out of the hospital before you put that jewel on the base, right?”

  “Oh…uh…”

  “Darci!” Jack said in warning as his father approached. “So help me, if you do anything when I’m not there I’ll—Oh, no you don’t,” he said as her eyes became pinpoints of concentration.

  “Help!” Darci yelled and Mr. Hallbrooke hurried forward. “I think he’s fainted.”

  Mr. Hallbrooke caught his son and held him upright as the pilot came running. “Paralyzing him would have hurt his wound, wouldn’t it?” he asked her.

  Darci’s face turned red. The man caught on quickly. She couldn’t help a small smile and a nod.

  The pilot and Mr. Hallbrooke half carried Jack’s inert body to the helicopter, then got him inside and strapped him in. Darci stepped away.

  “Go with us,” Mr. Hallbrooke yelled over the noise of the chopper.

  She shook her head. “I have something I must do. Do you have a car?”

  Without a question, he tossed her a set of keys, then climbed in beside his son. “What about you?” he yelled, motioning to her shoulder.

  “Healed,” she said, and couldn’t resist pulling her shirt to one side to show him the wound that had closed now.

  Mr. Hallbrooke drew in his breath, and his eyes opened wide.

  His astonishment made Darci laugh as she stepped back and let the helicopter rise into the air. She waited for a long while, until all was quiet again, then she went in search of the car that fit the keys.

  • • •

  “Where is she?” Jack asked when he was being wheeled down the hospital corridor on a bed.

  “Mrs. Montgomery?” his father, walking close beside him, asked.

  “You know exactly who I mean. Where is she?”

  “She said she had something she had to do, so I gave her the keys to my car.”

  Jack closed his eyes for a moment. “I’m going to kill her.”

  “I think perhaps she might be able to prevent your doing that.”

  Jack looked at his father. “How much do you know?”

  “Not nearly enough, and I can tell you that I plan to find out a great deal more.”

  “You won’t be able to,” Jack said, smiling at the thought that there would be something his father couldn’t find out. “No one knows about the things that happen in her life.”

  “Except you.”

  “Not even me. I know what she and I have done, but—”

  “Such as?”

  Jack chuckled. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Looking up, he saw the face of the male orderly pushing the bed. It was a uniform he didn’t recognize.

  “Where is this place?”

  “You don’t think I’d take my son to the local emergency room, do you? You’re in a private clinic and you’ll be meeting with my private physician.”

  “I should have guessed. You know that there are people out there dying because they have no health care?”

  “Perhaps you should set up a free health care service in this country.”

  Jack looked at his father suspiciously. “Now we’re getting to the heart of the matter, aren’t we? I give up my job to work for you.”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “And that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? The truth at last.”

  “Mrs. Montgomery tell you?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, unable to suppress his smile, but the movement sent pain up through his shoulder. He really was going to kill Darci. She could have healed him with her little glass ball, then the two of them could have fit the jewel into the base.

  And then what? he wondered. What would happen then? Would the world go up in smoke? Or had Devlin been telling the truth and Darci would be able to look at history?

  “Here’s where I have to leave you,” Mr. Hallbrooke said as they came to closed double doors. Throughout all of it, the man had never lost his stiff formality, had never bent from his rigid posture. “When this is over, you and I will talk. I have something to discuss with you.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Jack said. “And we’ll toss a ball around in the backyard.”

  “I hardly think—” Mr. Hallbrooke began, then gave that tiny smile. “Yes, I see. Perhaps we’ll talk about that hidden room and what’s in it. I didn’t quite tell the whole truth. I removed some of the items from the room. Perhaps you can use them to blackmail Mrs. Montgomery into doing what you want her to do.”

  For a moment Jack looked at his father with his mouth agape, then he let out a laugh that could be heard all the way down the corridor. “Now I know where I got everything,” Jack said. “Sure, Dad, we’ll talk as soon as we can.” The orderly pushed the bed through the doors.

  “Dr. Shepard will be here in a minute,” the orderly said.

  “Glad to hear it,” Jack said, closing his eyes, trying to think about all that had happened in the last few hours. His father had faked a kidnapping to get his son to come after him. “What made him think I’d do it?” Jack muttered.

  “You say something?” the orderly asked.

  “No, just mumbling.” Jack tried not to think of Darci and how she’d betrayed him. If she’d used that ball on him, he could be with her now. They could be trying to find Lavender. Instead he was on a bed, weak, light-headed, frustrated that he couldn’t do anything, and angry that his father had played him for a fool.

  “I’ll go see if I can find the doctor,” the orderly said and left the room.

  When he was alone, Jack suddenly missed Lavender so very much. In the few days since he’d seen her, he’d tried to keep so busy that he couldn’t think about her—or remember her. But now that he was incapacitated, all he seemed able to do was think about her. He remembered her eyes, her sweet ways, the night she belly danced atop the wagon. He remembered holding her hand while they both died. He hadn’t told Darci, but after they’d returned to the twenty-first century, he’d remembered the time after he and Lavey had fallen. He remembered the long, long fall down, remembered the crash onto the hard ground. He remembered touching her. He knew exactly when her spirit left her body, and he’d willed his to go with her. They’d held hands and looked down at their bodies on the ground, then they’d drifted into the light, happy at last.

  “Here, now, none of that,” said a gentle voice, and a soft tissue wiped at the tear that had trickled from Jack’s eye. “We’ll have you up and about in no time.”

  Embarrassed, Jack opened his eyes to look into…into Lavender’s eyes. He stared, unable to blink. Her head was turned slightly away from him, but he could still see her eyes. He gasped loudly.

  “I know,” she said as she cut away his jacket to get to the wound, “purple eyes are strange.”

  “Lavender,” he said hoarsely.

  “That’s what I say they are, too.” Her attention was on his arm, not his face. “But the kids all say they’re purple. Now hold still, this might hurt a bit.”

  Jack could only look at her; he couldn’t speak. There were physical differences between her and the Lavender he’d known in the nineteenth century, but he knew who she was.

  “You’re a good patient,” she said, then turned and, for the first time, looked into his eyes.

  For a moment, they stared at each other, unable to speak, just looking at each other in silence.

  The swinging doors opened with a crash. “Mr. Hallbrooke is outside and he’s antsy. Wants to know what’s going on,” a man said. When the doctor didn’t answer, he said, “Doc! Earth to Dr. Shepard. Come in, please. The man who owns the hospital has asked a question so it must be answered.”

  “Uh…yeah,” she said after a while and finally broke contact with Jack’s eyes. “Mr. Hallbrooke.”

  “Yeah, the head honcho. The big daddy.” He glanced at Jack on the bed. “What do you have to do with Hallbrooke?”

  �€