Weeks and weeks had passed since I'd spoken to someone from my own time. This one might just mean to kill me. And yet, the first words that left my mouth, after I peeked out around my husband, were, "What in God's name do you have on your face?"
"Do you like them?" Callahan turned his head, I guess to better model the glasses he wore. Like most eyeglasses from the 19th century, they had round metal frames. These, however, were of what looked like yellow glass. "They're my own invention."
My gut clenched as I remembered the blue-tinted glasses Maddie and I had gotten at the Julesburg mercantile. Had Callahan bought these in the same place before shooting her?
The invention-part was that he'd attached little mirrors sticking out from each side, vaguely like blinders on a carriage horse. The contraption made an odd contrast against the duster he wore over his almost perfect, movie-western outfit: new jeans tucked into high boots, revolver holsters on each hip, buttoned-up vest with an ammunition-belt crossing his chest, and of course the Stetson-style hat. He didn't know that most cowboys wore old clothes--some as old as the War--which meant few had taken up the jeans yet, or the Stetson. I'd seen more cowboys wearing torn derby hats than finely creased Stetsons. And nobody wore two revolvers.
"Are you trying to look steampunk?" I asked up at him, stepping a little farther out from behind Jacob, between him and the creek. Jacob shifted sideways to block more of me again, a silent command not to give give Callahan too clear a target, but the alternative was to let Jacob be the target, so I scootched around him yet again. Rather than herd me into the fast-running water, he gave up for the moment and concentrated on aiming his rifle. "Because it seriously blows the whole old-west desperado thing you were trying for in Dodge."
"You kidding? The Wild West invented steampunk! Sheesh!" He looked to Jacob as if for backup. "Young folks nowadays, am I right?"
Jacob, of course, said nothing.
"Anyhow, they're practical. Yellow glass helps you see in the dark. If you were a cyclist, you might know that. And the mirrors--they're for that friend you have hidden in the brush around here. Nobody's sneaking up behind this guy." Finally, Slade Callahan cocked his head, studied me a moment from his high perch, and drawled, "Howdy, Lil." That's what the Castaways had called me, short for Lilabit. "How ya' been?"
Jacob growled.
"I was doing a lot better before you killed my best friend."
While I might not have been able to see his eyes roll behind his glasses, his head rolled with them. "Like I told you in the letter--I didn't kill them."
"Except for Everett," I reminded him. "And maybe Mitch."
He grinned bright. "So you did read it!"
"I also heard from Fiona O'Malley, who saw everything, so pardon my skepticism. How are they alive?"
"First things first, Mrs. Garrison." He barked out a laugh with the name. "So you really did it. Knocked up, married, staying in the past. I don't know if I admire your courage or pity your ignorance."
Again, Jacob growled--either over the insult or the phrase knocked up.
"My decision has nothing to do with you, so I don't give a damn what you think about it."
"Ah. Ah-hah-hah! But see, the thing is, it does have to do with me. I helped Mitch invent this whole time-slip process! I mean sure, he did the math and the physics and all, but I brainstormed with him, and encouraged him, and I did the first product testing. That's why I'm so good at it. So yeah, yuppers, yessiree Bob, if our process gets misused or ends up increasing the population of the past, it's my business too."
Maybe it was the word product, or maybe it was his quick way of talking--back in Dodge, he'd used a deep, Marlboro-man imitation--but I suddenly asked, "Are you high?"
"Just a little awareness enhancement. I need my reflexes to be lightning-quick. You act like I'm the villain here, but remember, you guys outnumber me three-to-one."
I wanted to remind him of my maybe-dead friends again, but why upset him? I was a facilitator. Had there ever been a better time to facilitate? "You're right. And you went to a lot of trouble to set this up. Thank you for marking the trail, and snaring that rabbit for us."
"You let it go free." He sounded sulky, like a guy after a disinterested girl returns a too-expensive gift.
"We brought our own dinner. But I still appreciate the gesture, Ed." Use first names, if it's not an insult.
"I prefer Slade, in the past."
"Not Sled?" I teased, and we both laughed. I could feel Jacob, otherwise dead-still beside me and still aiming his rifle, tensing at the familiarity.
Too bad.
Slade said, "Yeah, I really should have gone with a name like... Durango. Durango Callahan. Then my blend-name could be Dread."
"Woulda, coulda, shoulda," I offered. "Right, Slade?"
"Yeah." He laughed an uncomfortably tweaky laugh, and paced on the bridge, kicking off more pebbles. Luckily, to be far enough back to see him, Jacob and I stood out of the main rockfall. Still, some of the stones that didn't plop into the water bounced in our direction after landing.
Stopping, he said, "So, I suppose you're all wondering why I've gathered you here. Heh. I've always wanted to say that."
"I was wondering," I agreed, to facilitate things along. "Since you went to so much trouble."
"First and foremost, I just had to actually see you. You as Ms. Elizabeth Rhinehart, wayward time-traveler, and not as Miss No-First-Name Rhinehart, mild-mannered fiancé of some legitimately old-west trail boss--who I guess is this guy?"
"Where are my manners?" I asked. "Slade Callahan, this is my husband, Jacob Garrison. Jacob? Slade Callahan."
Jacob grunted in his direction.
"Is he going to put down that rifle?" Callahan asked me.
Jacob said, "Nope."
Callahan sighed, but continued. "You were good." His head bobbed his approval at me. "In Dodge City, I mean. I knew you were probably the woman I was after, between the age and the last name and all, but your hair color was off."
"My friend Rita talked me into trying a temporary hair dye to celebrate getting the job. I forgot about the company ID."
"Yeah, but it wasn't just the look. You'd already established relationships." That had been thanks to Jacob. "And you had the look and the manners down. The way you scooted back from me, when I tried scooting closer to you--Mr. Callahan, that chair was there for a reason." That last part was mimicking me. "It gave you just enough plausible deniability. Then, after the mix-up with Everett...."
"You mean when you shot him in the head?"
"That's the one. Your reaction made me think yeah, this is her, but you slipped town before I could act on it."
"You mean before you could kill me?"
"You might want to stop insisting that I'm some kind of murderer, or I could give up and go along with that." Callahan had probably narrowed his eyes but, again, behind his odd glasses, I really couldn't tell.
Jacob said, "Could try."
"He really is the genuine article, isn't he?"
Genuine. That description fit my husband perfectly. "One of his many attractive qualities," I agreed, so very glad for his strong, silent presence.
Callahan shrugged. "If you say so. So you ran straight to him when you got the hell out of Dodge, instead of taking the train east like you put out, huh?"
"I rode, but yes. 'Do not pass go....'" I quoted.
"'Do not collect $200,'" he finished with me. "I would be pissed, if I weren't so impressed. Do you know how much time I wasted in 1878 Chicago? The stockyards are flourishing, and there are pre-Upton Sinclair meat-packing plants. It's a smelly, smelly city."
"Sorry about that. In my defense...."
"You feared I was out to kill you, yada yada. Got it." He shook his bespectacled, Stetson-clad head again. "I can see why you'd think that, but still. It stings a bit."
Uh huh. "So if you never were out to kill me and Everett--and I'm not saying you were," I added, to show that I was playing nice. "Why did you come after us? And how'd he end up dead?" And what had happened to Maddie, Ted, and poor Mitch?
"I'm going to save the how--about stupid Everett's stupid-laudanum--'til last, because it's kind of my grand finale of information. As for the why, have you got paper? I have some names you might want to remember."
"I didn't think to pack paper down a cliff-side trail into a deep Wyoming canyon," I admitted, a touch sarcastic. He seemed to like sarcastic.
"Then you'll have to trust your memory. Or John Wayne's here. Or Deputy Festus, off in the bushes. Seriously, dude--" This to Jacob again. "Don't you want to put that rifle down? It's got to be getting heavy. Any minute now, your arms will start shaking, and your aim will be for shit."
"Don't try to psyche him out, Slade. Jacob Garrison doesn't psyche."
"Whatevs. So you know how top-secret hush-hush the time-slip project was at A Closer Look."
"I know I never heard of it until I'd been in 1878 Kansas for a week."
"Exactly. Only five executives even know about it--including the CEO--and three of them voted to send you and Everett Heard back. And I'm gonna tell you why."
Of course, what I really wanted to know about was the fate of my friends, and how I could time-slip home if necessary. I really hoped it would never be necessary. But hurrying him was unlikely to help, and I have to admit, the why business had haunted me. It shouldn't matter. I had a husband, a new old-timey life, and yet.... "Five knew about it," I repeated. "Three betrayed me."
"Technically, yes. The other two weren't exactly social justice warriors, fighting the good fight to protect you against corporate greed or anything, but they voted nay. Doing anything with the time-slip process in Mitch's absence broke their contract with him, see? They put Legal on it, but not soon enough to stop the first--"
"Who?" I demanded, in a less-than-facilitatory fashion. Maybe I wanted to know more than I'd thought.
"Donaldson, mostly. Fairbanks just did what Donaldson told her to, like usual. Reilly was out of town and had given his proxy to Fairbanks. And their underlings didn't question orders so... adios, Heard and Rhinehart.
"I don't know what you can do about it from the here-and-now, if you're really staying. Seriously? Is that man not going to even budge?"
"Nope." Jacob held steady bead on my informant.
"Anyway." Callahan shrugged. "I'm heading home soon myself, to check on Mitch and the others, and I thought you deserved to know."
There was always the chance that Ed was lying through his teeth about this and the Castaways' well-being. But I'd recognized those names from the org-charts and the corporate parties of my former life. Some half-forgotten part of me, the one who'd been happy in her apartment with her cats and friends and car, clamored for justice.
But her grievances most balanced on yet another question.
"Why? I mean, sure, I called Everett on his sexual harassment. And yes, he tried to blackmail the higher-ups with his knowledge of the timeslip program in return for their support. But they could have just paid me off, or trumped up a different reason to fire me. Hell, they could have had me killed. To send us to another time, with no warning, is so drastic! What was really going on?"
"Come again?" Callahan really did look stupid in those glasses, even as the moonlight began to dim.
"Why send me back? Was there something they wanted me to do here?" If so, I'd put it at the bottom of my to-do list for the next fifty years. "Did I pose some threat to Donaldson and the others, beyond Everett's blackmail? Did I have some vital information that I didn't know I knew?"
"Oh." He nodded. "That. No, nothing like that. You were just collateral damage."
I blinked. "What?"
"Is the moon going behind a cloud? Goddamnit!"
The creek continued to rush loudly past me on my left side. I thought I could hear Jacob's miraculously steady breathing to my right. Wolves howled, off toward the mouth of the canyon. The air smelled of water and trees and gun oil. I really was here, exactly here. An impossibility that had nevertheless come true. And I just needed to know.
"Collateral damage how?" I demanded.
"Huh?" Callahan had pointed his yellow, side-mirrored glasses toward the muted moon, but he looked back at me. "You weren't exactly targeted, Lil. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time -- or, considering your recent nuptials, the right place at the right time? Donaldson had been wanting to know for months if the process was powerful enough to force someone back in time against their will, and your name and Heard's came across his desk, and you fit the profile, so..." He shrugged. "Here you are."
"I..." Collateral damage. That seemed so... random. So unfair! "I could have been anybody?"
"Not anybody--you needed a particular genetic marker, but it's not an uncommon one, for all that Donaldson lacks it. But yeah. If he'd been having a beef with his accountant that day, it's possible that David Schwartz would have been sent back instead. Crap. It really is getting dark again. What the hell, moon?"
"Midnight," suggested Jacob.
"Midniiiight," mimicked Callahan, clearly annoyed by the obvious explanation. "I know it's night, but it's also full moon. I need you guys to be able to see me for this next bit--especially Lil. It's my grand finale."
Then he looked directly down at me and, even without being able to see his eyes, I shivered.
"Guess I'll have to skip ahead," he said.
Somehow, that sounded like a warning.