THIRTY-ONE

 

 

May 23rd, 1902

Boise, Idaho

 

SOPHIE FOUND HERSELF standing beside Wade in the narrow rock crystal room, touching one of the wooden boxes. They were both dressed as they had been on the way into Grapevine Springs.

Then Sophie remembered the terror.

There had been a rockslide.

They had been hit by a rockslide.

“What just happened?” Wade asked, glancing around.

“You died,” Duster said behind them.

Both of them spun around to look at Duster as he came up and unhooked one wire from the box.

He had been touching another box to go back into the timeline just ahead of them.

“They did what?” Bonnie and Dawn both asked at the same exact moment from another box behind Duster.

“What time are we?” Sophie asked. “This still 1902?”

“It is,” Duster said, “because this is where we all jumped from originally to 1887. Let’s go out into the main room and talk about what we all did in those last two minutes.”

Dawn giggled.

Bonnie said, “Hush.”

Dawn giggled again.

Sophie was still trying to understand the terror of one moment knowing they were going to get hit with a rockslide and the next moment standing here in the cavern.

“You all right?” Wade asked her, taking her into his arms and holding her.

“Physically I feel fine,” she said. “But very confused.”

“Yeah,” Wade said.

He kissed her and she kissed him back. That helped her more than she wanted to admit.

They were both here. That was what mattered.

Her mind was not wrapping around any of this, even though she had understood the concept of being established in another time and being able to die or live a long time and not have more than two minutes go by.

She just hadn’t expected to have to test the idea that quickly.

Especially with the death part.

Beside her, Wade looked as shocked as she felt as they turned and followed Duster out of the narrow crystal room and went across the large supply room.

In the main living room area, the kitchen looked like it belonged in 1902 as did the furniture, but Sophie knew that there was ice water and a good supply of food stored in hidden rooms behind the kitchen area. And running hot water in the bathrooms.

“I’m headed for the shower first,” Duster said. He looked at Sophie and Wade. “Get something to drink and then take a shower and we’ll explain more shortly. Then maybe head into the hotel for a late lunch there.”

Sophie nodded as Duster walked off.

“So what happened?” Dawn asked Sophie as Bonnie also headed behind the kitchen to take a shower.

“Rock slide,” Wade said.

Dawn nodded. “Talus slope in the spring melt, right?”

“I think it killed us both instantly,” Sophie said, glancing at Wade, who just slowly nodded.

“Yeah, got injured real bad in a slide like that myself,” Dawn said, moving to get them something cold to drink as both Sophie and Wade sat at the wooden-topped counter. “Killed Madison and all but one of our horses. Took me ten more days to die from internal bleeding as I tried to make it back to the big cavern. That was before we built the institute here.”

Sophie watched as Dawn shook her head. “I didn’t make it.”

“So how long were you and Bonnie in the past this time?” Wade asked.

“About forty years,” Bonnie said, not even blinking. “We both love San Francisco.”

“Oh,” was all Sophie managed to say.

She and Wade had only made it less than a week, clearly Duster had waited for them and then went and found their bodies, more than likely taking many weeks, and Bonnie and Dawn had been gone forty years. All of them had arrived back here at the same point.

She leaned against Wade and he put his arm around her, giving her strength.

They needed to face that talus slope again. It had killed her once. It would not a second time.

She would learn how to be as tough as the women she studied.

A second time she would win.