Soldier Mine Read online

  Hopping off the raised wooden sidewalk, I strode across the street and glanced over my shoulder. Carter, the table and survey sign were gone.

  Then I realized I had left too quickly to get my gift card. “Broke for another week.” I sighed. “Oh, well.”

  I spotted my aunt – a slender woman with bleach-blonde hair – and jogged towards the middle of Tombstone. My uncle was short and squat in comparison, a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon with a warm smile and a wife he turned from pretty into an ageless beauty.

  “Great news, Josie,” my aunt started. Her loud words were like her dress – exaggerated. From the obscenely wide-brimmed hat to the bug-eyed sunglasses and fuchsia cowboy boots, there was no chance of my over-the-top aunt fitting into the dusty, laid back environment of Tombstone. “We’re staying here tonight!”

  “Here? Where?” I asked.

  “Your uncle won a drawing for a free night here in Old Tombstone!” she exclaimed.

  “Oh, okay,” I murmured. Looks like I’ll be able to meet Carter for a drink after all.

  My quiet uncle appeared to be proud of himself while my aunt beamed him an adoring smile. As different as they were, they’d always been a doting couple. As an adult, I viewed a relationship like theirs as enviable, even though they used to embarrass me when I was younger.

  “You have time to look at more rocks,” my aunt added.

  “Yes, because that’s all a rock hobbyist is interested in,” I said with a sigh. I had given up explaining why I became an amateur geologist. My aunt had never gotten past the fact I was more interested in rocks than jewelry and accessories. “I do love them, though,” I added, excited about the multiple rock shops I’d visited already.

  “I’m sure there are some fascinating specimens in these shops,” my uncle added. “They have a lot of dinosaur fossils here, too.”

  “And meteorites. Maybe there’s some space peridots,” my aunt said.

  We stared at her, surprised she had noticed something about a gem that wasn’t a price tag or whether or not her wealthy neighbors already owned something similar.

  “Come on!” she said, oblivious. “Let’s find our bed and breakfast. It’s supposed to be authentic!”

  “I really hope that doesn’t mean we’re peeing in buckets,” I said with a laugh, recalling the first tour we went on when we arrived to Tombstone.

  “You and me both.” My uncle smiled then led us down the road to an intersection. His warmth always melted my impatience with my aunt, a reminder of how much I had always wanted a real father when growing up. My uncle was as close as I had gotten, and he’d always been sweet and supportive – but not really mine. He had three other kids that called him father while I called him uncle.

  Orphaned when I was young, I was grateful that my aunt and uncle had taken me in and treated me the same as any of their biological children. None of my cousins were roped into this crazy trip across the southwest in search of some kind of rare turquoise my aunt had heard about. Of course, none of them were geological hobbyists who could help her find what she wanted.

  My uncle guided us around one of the buildings to a three story, restored Victorian house that appeared to deliver on the promise of being authentic by its wooden façade. The ground floor was a saloon with a hanging sign in front that read, Victorian Vittles Inn and Saloon.

  Another sense of déjà vu washed over me as I stepped onto the porch. I had never been here before, but like Carter, it was almost familiar.

  Shaking my head, I followed my aunt and uncle into the foyer dividing the saloon from a more formal dining area. To my surprise, Carter was already seated at the bar. I looked twice, not sure how he managed to get here before us, but curious about him to the point I didn’t really care.

  “Hey, I’m gonna grab a drink,” I said to my uncle.

  “Here.” He handed me a twenty.

  I accepted it and walked to the bar. “Mind if I join you?” I asked and plopped down beside Carter.

  “I thought I’d see you here,” he said with another excited smile.

  “You’re kinda weird, Carter.” I laughed.

  “Well … I didn’t mean … I’m sorry. I just …” He sighed.

  “It’s okay. I understand.” I didn’t, but he was flushed again, and I felt bad for embarrassing him.

  The quiet was awkward. I ordered a beer and waited for Carter to say something. For having invited me, he was strangely quiet, staring at his bottle.

  “How did your surveying go today?” I asked finally.

  “Slower than usual.”

  “Hmm.” I wasn’t good at pretending to be interested in things that really held no importance to me. “So, uh, you like history.”

  “I like changing history. The idea,” he added quickly. “Theorizing. Researching. That kind of thing.”

  “If you went back in time, would you change things?”

  “Yes. I have it calculated.” He pulled out a cell phone. “You could spend two weeks in the eighteen forties to stop a million deaths. You’d just have to find this man named Running Bear and another one named Taylor Hansen.”

  “They caused everything?”

  “Sort of.” He glanced up. “Am I … weirding you out?”

  “Not yet.”

  He perked up and began talking. I wasn’t really interested, but I paid attention to him as much as possible while he began an epic tale about how one change could have prevented a million deaths. His detail and knowledge of the past was astounding, along with his passion.

  Drinking beer after beer, I was more interested in watching him speak than in what he said. The sense we were friends in a past life or had met somewhere in this one grew stronger the longer he spoke, and I found myself laughing and enjoying his company.

  Somewhere around beer four, more people trickled into the saloon for dinner, and the lantern-like lights went on around us. My uncle texted me what room I was in while my aunt mentioned a wine tasting bar they were headed to. I, however, liked being around Carter. Bubbly and cheerful, he had a natural, happy energy that compelled me to stay.

  By beer number seven, the bar had grown loud, the televisions were blaring a college football game, and Carter and I were plotting how to change history.

  The drunker we got, the more sense it made.

  “So would you go?” he asked some time later above the noise of the evening crowd. “Like a two week vacation to the Wild West.”

  “Yes,” I said with no hesitation. “All you have to do is figure out how to time travel.”

  “I can do that.”

  “I believe you. You’re one of those geniuses aren’t you?”

  He grinned. “Yes, I am.”

  “I so knew it!” My words were slurred, but so were his. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had this much fun at a bar.

  “You go back in time. I’ll stay here so I can help you find the right people. We can text each other,” he said.

  We stared at each other for a moment before we both began laughing at the amazing yet ridiculous idea.

  “But wait, Carter!” I exclaimed suddenly. “I can’t speak Choctaw … Choctawan. Whatever. How do I convince him to wear jeans?”

  “Oh I can fix that,” Carter said. “I created a brain chip … I mean … micro chip for your brain and it’ll let you understand and speak every language known to man. It translates everything into … American English.”

  “Seriously?” I gave him an astonished look. “I could’ve used that for French class.”

  He laughed. “You want to … to use billion-dollar technology to cheat on a French exam?” For some reason, that tickled him, and he laughed until he was crying.

  I ordered us another round of beers.

  Wiping tears away, he drew a deep breath.

  The loud crowd was growing out of focus. After all the parties I attended in college, I knew where I was on the drunk chart: driving – no, stairs – only if necessary, another round – the last.

  “I have
another one that is like an internet. In your brain,” Carter continued. “It has all of history on it and my research.”

  “Another what?” I asked, easily lost while drinking.

  “Microchip. For your brain. Because there’s no internet in the past.”

  “Oh, that’s brilliant, Carter!”

  He smiled. “I am brilliant.”

  “Do I need shots?” I told him. “Because they had diseases back then.”

  “I didn’t think of that.” He appeared thoughtful. “That explains a few things.”

  We both giggled, even though I didn’t really understand why.

  “I can get you shots.” He leaned forward. “Do you wanna know a secret, J… Josie?” He asked drunkenly.

  “Yes!”

  “I have a time machine.”

  “No way!”

  “Way way.”

  “Why didn’t you say something before?” With the line between reality and the imaginary blurred, I was so excited, I was barely able to get off my stool without falling. “Then why haven’t we gone back? C’mon, Carter. The past is waiting.” I took his arm and pulled him through the crowd to the warm night outside. “Where did you park it?”

  Carter laughed and caught himself against a pillar on the porch. “I didn’t park it! It’s in my lab.”

  “Okay then let’s go there. We can rescue people and come back by morning, right, like on Doctor Who?” I made my way down the stairs. A thrill worked its way through my drunken haze. The idea of saving a million people, of seeing what Tombstone looked like almost two hundred years ago, was the most incredible adventure my drunken mind had ever gone on.

  “You need brain chips first.”

  I laughed, nearly collapsing. “Like potato chips in my brain!”

  He tripped and sprawled onto the sidewalk. Quakes of laughter tore through us both, and we stayed on the ground until we were able to walk again.

  Helping one another up, we started walking, arm in arm. “You … are amazing, Josie,” he said. “They told me so and now I know.”

  I looked up at him, his handsome profile outlined in the moonlight. “Who told you?”

  “Oh. No one.”

  “You’re so weird, Carter.”

  “Josie, wait.” He faced me, as serious as could be. “It really is an honor to meet you. A great honor.”

  “Thank you, Carter.” I held out my hand and shook his rigorously. “It’s an honor to meet you, too. Let’s go to your lab.”

  “Yes, let’s!”

  Together, we half walked, half staggered back to the storefront where I took the survey earlier. It took four attempts before he was able to unlock the door and pushed it open.

  Brilliant light spilled out into the night, too bright to see into the room.

  “It’s … there,” he said proudly. “My lab. Your brain chips.”

  A tingle of awareness slid through me, one that warned me I was wandering around in the middle of the night with a complete stranger. It just as quickly fizzled, replaced by the comfortable warmth of being drunk and the idea of time traveling like Doctor Who.

  “Let’s go,” I said and strode into the light.

  I squinted to see what was inside.

  And then the world went dark.

  *****

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: Petr

  Chapter Two: Claudia

  Chapter Three: Petr

  Chapter Four: Claudia

  Chapter Five: Claudia

  Chapter Six: Petr

  Chapter Seven: Claudia

  Chapter Eight: Claudia

  Chapter Nine: Petr

  Chapter Ten: Claudia

  Chapter Eleven: Petr

  Chapter Thirteen: Petr

  Chapter Fourteen: Petr

  Chapter Fifteen: Petr

  Chapter Sixteen: Claudia

  Chapter Sixteen: Claudia

  Chapter Seventeen: Petr

  Chapter Eighteen: Claudia

  Chapter Nineteen: Petr

  Chapter Twenty: Claudia

  Chapter Twenty One: Petr

  Chapter Twenty two: Claudia

  Epilogue

  Exclusive excerpt: “West” (time travel romance!)