Wrong Face in the Mirror: A Time Travel Romance (Medicine Stick Series) Read online

  “I’m married?” she finally directed the soft-voiced question at her brother, desperately afraid of being overheard. “To that man that didn’t even stop to speak to us?”

  Tommy was slow to nod. “Yeah,” he said, “you’re married to Alistair Redhawk, sheriff of Wichita County. For now anyway.”

  “Nobody said I was married,” she said, feeling as though she’d been cheated of relevant information. “It seems like they would have mentioned it. Wouldn’t my husband be next of kin? Wouldn’t he be the first one called?”

  Tommy squirmed uncomfortably, ignoring the pizza his daughters were attacking so enthusiastically. He didn’t say anything, but his wife answered, not bothering to lower her voice. “Maybe he’s mad at Tommy for accusing him of doing away with you. Maybe he’s a little upset that he spent three days in his own jail accused of murder before they found you and let him go.”

  Tommy stared down at the slice of pepperoni pizza on his plate. “Well, they say the guilty person is usually the husband or wife. And with Hart going missing just like that with not a word to us, what was I supposed to think?”

  The two girls had stopped eating their pizza and were looking worried over their parents’ argument. Hart, glancing cautiously around, saw that the other occupants of the little café were being careful not to look in their direction even though Nikki had spoken loud enough to be heard by all.

  She began to feel sick at her stomach and her head whirled so that she couldn’t seem to think clearly. “That man was arrested on suspicion of killing me?” she whispered.

  “They let him go quick enough when you were found,” Nikki said, obviously still caught up in an ongoing dispute with her husband. “Tommy looked a right fool then.”

  “It was a reasonable assumption,” her brother protested.

  “You never liked Alistair,” Nikki insisted. “You were mad as fire when you found out Hart had married him.”

  “Well, good Lord, he’s nearly twice her age and I’d never even seen that she particularly noticed him and first thing I know he’d telling me they’ve gone and got married!”

  Awful as she felt, Hart couldn’t help being sorrier for her two nieces. They were both just sitting there, looking pale and confused, while their parents indulged in a public argument.

  “Why don’t we take the pizza and eat at home,” she urged, anxious to get herself and the girls out of this too visible scene.

  “Good idea.” Nikki got to her feet. “I’ll collect the pizza and pay our ticket. Mandy, Christy, go to the truck with your dad and Hart. I’ll be right there.”

  Hart was grateful when Tommy didn’t argue, but got slowly to his feet. She was about to stand when, glancing around again, unable to resist one last look at the man they said was her husband, she saw not the table where the three men sat, but a man on horseback struggling against strong dust-laden winds with the bare granite mountains backdrop to his journey.

  She made a slight involuntary sound of surprise and turned so that she was looking full-face at the startling vision and it immediately vanished so that she stared at the tall, dark-haired man with the craggy face, whose clear eyes met her own.

  Their gazes locked and she wondered what she’d done to make him hate her so, then Tommy tugged at her arm and led her from the little restaurant, the two little girls running ahead as though they couldn’t wait to get out of the place.

  Chapter Three

  Alistair didn’t try to hide his interest as Hart Benson Redhawk fled Pizza Plus with her brother and nieces even though he was well aware that the two young constables were being made uncomfortable at the focus of his attention.

  It was almost as though they still believed he was guilty of her death even though she was obviously alive and well. With a glint of dark amusement, he wondered if years from now when he was an old man, rumors about the murder he’d supposedly committed would still be floating around Mountainside.

  He sipped his coffee, bringing his attention back to the discussion of crime in the little community, but all the time noticing that Nikki Benson quickly paid for their pizza and then, grabbing two large boxes, followed her family from the café.

  It wasn’t until after they’d eaten their dinner and he’d parted company with the constables that he allowed himself to think about Hart. She’d looked almost well, though she’d lost weight and her color was ashen in shade. The latter might have just been from the shock of seeing him once again.

  She had hidden any trace of guilt, any sense that she was facing the man she’d betrayed, but had only looked confused and a little frightened.

  Tommy said she’d lost her memory, that she had no idea who she or any of them were. He didn’t believe that for a minute. She known who he was the instant she stared into his eyes, recognized and rejected him once more.

  He got wearily into his official car and headed back to the county seat. Hart wasn’t his concern anymore. She’d made it clear she didn’t want his protection and could take care of herself.

  He wished her luck with that as he went back to facing life the way he had since the day she was found in the streets of Oklahoma City. She no longer played any part in his life and he told himself he was glad to be released from the painful bond between them.

  Two days later Hart climbed into the used car Tommy had helped her purchase and drove to the new job her brother had found for her.

  They told her she had a master’s degree in American literature, but since she didn’t have a teacher’s certificate, the opportunities for employment in Mountainside and its environs were limited to say the least. She hadn’t protested when her brother told her she would be acting as librarian and teaching a few courses at the nearby prison.

  These days she felt more like facing a group of imprisoned men than a spirited class of teenagers in a high school English class. She was sure the latter group would be more threatening to her fragile ego.

  Still she didn’t exactly look forward to starting her new job. Tommy had planned to accompany her this first morning, but instead he’d had to make a delivery in the oilfields of west Texas, routine work in his demanding job as a driver for a local hotshot business. Nikki, who was a girls’ coach at Mountainside High had to report to her own job, so Hart had no choice but to face the start of the day alone.

  It was no surprise that she didn’t remember the prison, even though it had been located on this same site for over a century now. Called a prison farm, it was a full-fledged maximum security facility these days, according to Tommy, and though he’d told her she would be perfectly safe, Hart felt a rippling of fear as she was admitted and led through various unlocking and relocking of doors, warily conscious of being under the constant view of those in the control tower.

  Naturally she had no memory of this place, she told herself, since she’d most certainly never been incarcerated before. At least she hoped not.

  The library was small and shabby, but Hart couldn’t feel anything but comfortable in a room dominated by shelves full of books. She didn’t know why, but it was so, and the elderly man who was the retiring librarian was so glad to see her that her heart lifted.

  “I’ll tell you, Miss Benson, I’ve needed to retire for two years. Emphysema, you know.” He wheezed a little to show his disorder and pointed to a nearby oxygen tank. “But I was afraid they’d close down the library if I left and then where would my clients be.”

  Clients? He meant prisoners. “Do the books mean that much to them?” she asked, somewhat surprised.

  “Not to most of them. No, they don’t. But to the ones who care, they mean everything. And I’m so grateful that you’re going to be here to keep things going.”

  A little round man who wore thick-lensed glasses, he told her that he planned to spend his retirement ‘reading just as much as I can’ and proceeded to immediately introduce her to the systems on which the small library was operated. To her surprise she found this easy to absorb, almost as though the way libraries operated were as fami
liar as the very presence of an abundance of books.

  Lunch was brought to them by an orange clad prisoner and was better than she expected, roast chicken with mashed potatoes and green beans, a salad and a roll, with a small wedge of chocolate cake for dessert. For the first time she felt actually hungry and decided that keeping her mind busy through the morning had been good for her.

  Toby Michaels, the about to be ex-librarian told her a little about the ‘clients’ with whom she would work and assured her that only the most trusted prisoners would be allowed to come into her library or attend her classes. She would serve the others by sending books to them through trustee messengers or they would be allowed to view her classes through closed circuit television.

  Guards would always accompany the prisoners. He smiled gently at her, than added, “Only the regulars will come in here. We thought with a pretty young woman taking over the library, we might see a surge in attendance if we allowed open enrollment, so only those who have shown regular interest in the past will be admitted, at least in the beginning.”

  Hart nodded. Even if she had a memories of her own, this would be a whole new world, though she knew from what she’d been told of her past, she had worked in a library throughout her college years. But then a prison library had to be an entirely different experience than a student helping out in a university library.

  She was a graduate of Oklahoma State University, they’d told her that. And she’d completed her masters at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

  She just hoped that, like her knowledge of her favorite book, she had retained some information gained in her years of education.

  After lunch, Mr. Michaels told her, they would meet with the creative writing class. He would conduct it today to allow her to get acquainted, but after this he would expect her to take over.

  Alistair Redhawk parked in the spot reserved for him at Mountainside Prison and headed toward the front entrance, his thoughts on the coming meeting with the warden so that at first he didn’t notice the slender, dark-haired woman scurrying from the complex of buildings.

  She looked up, saw him, and an expression of dismay came to her delicate features, her blue eyes widening with alarm.

  Well, it was bound to happen. They were sure to cross paths in this small community and he had heard that Tommy had gotten her a job here at the prison, a job that nobody else wanted.

  He had already planned how he would greet her when they met. He would be distant, but polite. No sense in rehashing old injuries. If she wanted a divorce, she could say so. For himself, he had no plans for the future that made legalization of their estrangement necessary.

  He touched the brim of his hat. “Hart,” he said. She could hardly expect him to call her Miss Benson when he better than anyone knew she was Mrs. Redhawk.

  For a minute she stood open-mouthed, unable to speak. He wondered if she was afraid of him, thinking that in his righteous anger he might do her harm. If so, she’d misinterpreted his character. Never would he be able to hurt someone he’d once loved.

  “Sheriff,” she whispered the title, than hesitated before going on. “I work here. I get off at three.”

  He nodded a bit stiffly. Being polite to her was harder than he’d imagined. “I heard you’d taken on the library job.”

  She nodded. “Just for a little while I get my bearings. Tommy arranged the job for me.”

  He nodded, than started to continue on past her, but to his surprise she reached out with one slender, long-fingered hand to grasp his arm. “They said . . .that is my brother and his wife told me that we are married?”

  It was a question so he answered with an ironical nod, feeling her touch burn into his arm and wishing she would let go before he was driven to say something caustic.

  “Why do you hate me?”

  Long accustomed to giving away nothing by his expression or body language, he took the jolt only inside himself. Hate her? No, he could never hate her, though his feelings were complex beyond measure.

  “That’s a question you’ll have to answer for yourself,” he said curtly, pulling his arm free to walk on to his destination.

  Hart stood watching the long-legged man stride away from her and felt something she had no right to feel. It was as though she were abandoned by her dearest friend. Since she had no memory of Alistair Redhawk, this did not make any sense.

  But even as she watched him wait outside the heavy door for admittance something stirred in her peripheral vision. She glimpsed a rocky narrow opening that seemed to lead into a darkened canyon. She heard the howl of coyotes and smelled gritty nighttime air, but when she turned her head to more clearly see, the image was gone and all she saw was the prison parking lot.

  Shaken for more reasons than one, she found her way through the hot September afternoon to her own little Nissan and climbed in, wincing as her hands touched the blistering plastic of the steering wheel and as soon as she’d turned the ignition key, reached to put on the air conditioning.

  The car was so hot that only warm air blew on her as she drove through the gate, waving to the guard who had admitted her that morning, and moved slowly out onto the highway. She tried not to imagine that she was losing her mind, seeing impossible illusions, as she drove back toward the town of Mountainside, the granite mountains looming before her.

  She relaxed a little when the air in the car began to chill and told herself that she’d been ill or hurt or something. That was why she was seeing things that weren’t there. The doctors had told her she must be patient and let herself recover. But what did you do when you couldn’t trust the evidence of your own eyes?

  She knew she should call her doctor and tell him what was going on, but dreaded the possibility of more incarceration in a care facility. That had not been living, but merely waiting. It was time to get on with what she had left of a life.

  Surprisingly, however, as she edged through the downtown toward Tommy’s house, the two impossible scenes she had imagined seeing were not what lingered in her mind. Instead she saw Alistair Redhawk’s chiseled face and bronzed skin and the look of pain and disillusion that had come as he looked into her eyes.

  What had she been that the man she’d married viewed her in that way?

  After a long, frustrating meeting with the prison warden, Alistair responded to a call for assistance in the county where a farmer was missing nearly two dozen head of cattle. Rustling had taken on a modern turn with the current high price of beef and, as in this case, the thieves had pulled a trailer in during the night to take a good many thousand dollars’ worth of half grown calves.

  By the time that had been investigated and the proper contacts made, the sheriff drove slowly home, his mind on how people thought there wasn’t much in the way of crime out in the country. His sparsely populated county with only two towns with as many as five thousand residents and thousands of acres of grassland and farms seemed to be seeing more than its share of criminal activity these days. Of course drug use, sale and manufacturing, was high on the list of wrongdoing along with the resulting domestic violence and theft. But these days too many people who shouldn’t have guns, had them, and the result was often disastrous.

  Job security, he told himself grimly and, tired out, he once again contemplated changing his line of work.

  As he moved down the long drive to the isolated ranch home where he now lived alone, his spirits dropped to ground-level. For a few blessed weeks Hart had been here and they’d been planning a future together.

  Now he saw her everywhere, beginning with the way she would be out working on the flower beds where she’d planted colorful zinnias, marigolds and other hardy plants that had the will to survive the harsh Oklahoma summer. The lilac bush she’d planted in the early spring no longer bloomed, but was green and healthy while his marriage had dried up into something only worthy of being preserved in memory.

  Memory, the quality Hart claimed she no longer had.

  Sometimes he wished he could dismiss the p
ast so easily. As he walked into the spreading adobe house that his parents had built, he heard her voice everywhere and felt her slight form once again in his arms.

  Deliberately he reined in his imagination. He would forget that they’d ever been happy together. Hart had made it very clear that the life they’d had was over.

  He went into the kitchen to get cold tea and ham for a sandwich from the refrigerator, then turned on the television to watch something mindless as he ate.

  Chapter Four

  For the first few days Hart simply accepted the life she’d been designated, going to work at the prison, coming home to the meals Nikki prepared and sleeping in the little bedroom that actually belonged to Christy who now bunked with her sister. Tommy, who delivered oilfield equipment across the U.S. in his truck, was gone most of the time so she had little chance to ask the questions that were building in her mind.

  She told herself she was getting better when no more incidents of strange sightings from the corners of her eyes occurred. But then she overheard her brother and his wife arguing.

  “I’m not a housemaid,” Nikki protested in a vehement voice, “nor a cook. I didn’t sign on to look after your sister as well as you and the girls. This house is crowded enough with just us and now Mandy and Christy are fighting all the time because they don’t have their own rooms.”

  She could hear only the low mumble of Tommy’s response, but could not distinguish the words. Apparently it was like the evening in the restaurant when Nikki wanted to be heard, especially by her sister-in-law.

  Humiliated, Hart wished she’d just come out and said she didn’t want Tommy’s sister living in her home. Her first thought was to go right in and confront the two of them and let them know she was more than willing to go on her own.

  After all she must have lived someplace before. But then she remembered. Most likely she’d lived with the husband who wanted nothing to do with her.