BOYER WALKED OUT THE DOOR AND MADE HIS WAY TOWARD THE hundreds of acres of wooded hills surrounding his cabin. Not wanting to stay with the visitors, Harlow quickly followed.
“Warm day,” she observed, breaking a ten-minute silence that had been interrupted only by the sound of the wind blowing through the trees.
When she spoke, Boyer, who had been walking about ten feet in front of Harlow, stopped and turned. He studied her for a moment and then nodded. When she stood by him, he pointed to a hillside about a hundred yards across a deep valley.
“Can you see the iris—the flowers—growing on that hill?”
“Hey,” she acknowledged, a bit put out by his words. “I know an iris is a flower. And yes, I noticed them as we began our walk up this mountain.”
“It’s a hill.”
“To you and your long legs, it is a hill. To me it is a mountain.”
A grin almost found its way to his lips, and she thought she saw his eyes sparkle a bit as he shook his head and turned his attention back to the flowers.
“They were planted by a pioneer woman more than 160 years ago. She and her husband had a place over there. Carved a farm out of the woods. Then the Civil War came along. The man and their two teenage sons left her alone to fight for the South. They never came back. They died somewhere on a distant battlefield.”
“What happened to her?”
“She continued to live here, working the farm by herself, tending her flowers. She died alone, and the neighbors buried her on that hill. In truth, that should have been the end of the story. But it wasn’t. The cabin, barn, and fences are gone, but the woods cannot choke out the flowers. As long as they continue to bloom, then a part of her lives on, blessing all who see her handiwork.”
Harlow looked again at the hillside filled with beautiful colors. “What was her name?”
“I don’t know,” Boyer replied. “No one does.”
“Yet,” she breathed, “you seem to know her so well.”
“Oh, I think I do. Any woman who stayed and worked this farm must have been tough and strong. She must have been brave and stubborn too. And she must have been so very loving. The flowers prove that. You see, you don’t really plant beautiful things unless you want to make the world a beautiful place. She did that during her life, and she is still doing that today.”
Harlow leaned against a tree and studied nature’s amazing fabric stretched out in front of her as far as she could see. With the canopy of green leaves surrounding her and the iris filling her vision, she could see nothing, not even the cabin below, that reminded her of anything made by man. This was still God’s unspoiled world, and she could understand why this man so loved being here.
Boyer pointed to a large boulder jutting from the top of the ridge. “If we climb up there, you can see the whole world. Well,” he admitted, “maybe not the whole world, but a big chunk of the Ozarks.”
“Are you sure I can make it?” she asked. “I mean, I’ve not worked out in a long time.”
He didn’t respond, just began striding toward his goal; and she didn’t hesitate to follow suit for even a second, matching him step for step. As they moved unspeaking along the trail, her deep breaths made her fully embrace the miracle of life—not just her life, but all life. She wanted to sing that message out, but she remained mute. Finally, when they had completed the long climb and stepped out onto the huge rock and sat down, she spoke.
“It’s so beautiful. It’s like a painting. Almost too perfect to be real.”
“Yeah, it is,” he agreed. “Look at the way the sun splashes across the river up at Horseshoe Falls.”
“It’s like a dancer skipping across a polished marble floor,” she said.
“That’s why I don’t want to leave this place, Baby. Not now, not forever.”
“Who would?” she replied.
“You know we have to,” he explained. “You realize that what Jim Blane spilled out today has forced us into a position of having to save the world, against great odds, with very little chance of actually being able to do it.”
“Sounds like a bad movie script to me,” she noted with more than a touch of irony. “I think we should ask the script department to rewrite the plot.”
“The whole thing is a nightmare,” he sadly acknowledged. “Just yesterday, I really believed I had everything I could ever want in life. I’d never been so happy. I had never felt so good. Now . . .”
Harlow placed her hand gently on his shoulder and then leaned her head against his arm. She whispered, barely loud enough for her voice to be heard above the wind, “Was I a part of that new happiness?”
“You were at the heart of it.” He smiled as he leaned his head against hers.
She was deeply touched. She had wondered if she had become more than just an assignment to Boyer. She hoped and prayed she had, but deep inside she had deep doubts. She kept telling herself they literally were from different worlds and different times. She had wondered if there was enough material in either world to build a bridge that could connect them. Now she knew the bridge could be built; maybe it already had been, and because of that, she didn’t feel nearly as lonely.
“What now, Tell?” Harlow asked. “What do we have to do? I don’t guess we can stay here and just forget about the rest of the world. I think I would like staying here forever. I really do.”
“No,” he sighed. “Not a chance. We’re a part of something a lot bigger than either of us, and what we want simply doesn’t matter anymore. We need some concrete proof that goes beyond photographs and the words of a man who could easily be dismissed and discredited. I mean, you and I know Jim is who he is, but how many others would actually buy into it? Especially when he’s saying that some of the most respected men in the world are Nazis who were born more than ten decades ago.”
“So where’s the proof you think we have to have? How can we find anything that anyone would believe?”
“The proof was in records probably already destroyed by the doctor who made this horror show all possible. It’s in fingerprints from the past matched to fingerprints from the present, and who knows if they exist? Maybe it can be uncovered by a slip of a tongue, or a brag that only a member of a devious group like the SS would make up. I just don’t know, but we have to discover that needle in a haystack.”
“They were that bad?” she asked. “I mean the SS, I’ve seen enough on television to know they were on the wrong side and they terrorized a lot of people, but you and Jim make them sound demonic.”
“If Satan had an earthly army,” Boyer sadly admitted, “then they would be in charge of it. Never in modern history has a group been as evil in their purposes and actions as the SS. No conscience, no morals—they lived to kill, and they lived for a cause that meant the extermination of anyone who was not just like them. They were pure hate put into human form and backed by an army of men who would do their bidding. Even the Hollywood movies have never been able to really present them as they really were. No actor has ever been able to capture the darkest facets of their character.”
A chill ran down Harlow’s spine. Bringing her knees up to her chest, she wrapped both arms around her legs and pulled herself into a tight ball. She thought about everything Boyer had said and considered the incredible circumstances she had been tossed into. It was numbing, overwhelming, and frightening. It seemed she had only been thrown into the future to help fight a villain from her own time. And at five foot two and 110 pounds, she felt she was not built for fighting.
“Tell,” she said, her voice rising, “the proof may be in one more place than you said.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“You said records, fingerprints, a careless word.” Harlow’s eyes met his as she talked. “But what about in the past?”
“That’s what I mean by the fingerprints.”
“No, not a mark from the past,” she quickly explained, “but a man from the past.”
“I still don’t follow you.”
“Jim has worked every angle he could. Using the Internet and every other resource, he has identified around ten of these men from that one group. Logic says that a few may have died from disease, accidents, that sort of thing. But what if some of the others haven’t lived again, at least not yet?”
“I see where you’re going,” he replied. “What if not all of them have reentered the world? What if they are still in their chambers waiting for their time?”
“Exactly! The necessary piece to unmask this legion of death might be to uncover them before they come to life.”
“We have to find the chambers,” he almost shouted. “And if they exist, we have to expose those who are still sleeping.”
Harlow chimed in, “We have an advantage too. We know about them, but they don’t know anything about us.”
“Baby,” Boyer said excitedly, “didn’t Blane say there were three pieces of property the doctor’s nonprofit group still owned?”
“Yeah, two ranches or farms and a building in Los Angeles.”
“If the labs are still running, then it would seem they would be in one of those three places.”
“Then we have a plan?” She beamed.
“Yeah, we have plan. Let’s climb down and tell Jim and the good doctor the angle we need to work. If we’re lucky, we might just find a way to save the world after all.”
As they hurried down the hill, Harlow smiled. The task was daunting, the road ahead filled with danger, but she now knew why she had been saved and why she was living in the twenty-first century. And even better, she knew this mission, even if it offered a road that ended in their deaths, would team her with the man who now held her own heart in his hands. And she couldn’t think of anywhere else she would want it.