OverTime 03: Slipping (First 70 Chapters)

Chapter 59: The Only Option (Lillabit) -- warning, f-words

The envelope said, To Mrs. Elizabeth Rhinehart Garrison: Howdy.

Pay these children ten dollars, please.

On the one hand, I didn't like taking orders--or requests--from the man who had killed my friends! On the other hand, Callahan's sheer chutzpa, in promising the children my money, kind of amused me. Either way, Katya and Leo weren't at fault for his sins. They'd taken quite a risk to make sure I got this letter.

Since a benefit of trousers is pockets, and I never knew whether my decisions for my future might require paying someone to milk Sundae in my absence, I'd taken to carrying around some change. Coins still count as change, right? Even ten- and twenty-dollar coins?

Anyway, as the children rode away to their historically accurate lives, I tore open the envelope to see what a time-traveling bounty hunter had found so important as to arrange this hand-off.

I'm ashamed to admit that I also just wanted to hear from one of my own people--even a murderer.

Dear "Mrs. Garrison," it read. The quotation marks, BTW, were his.

If Operation Use-Cute-Children has succeeded, you're finally reading this, my fifth (yes, 5th) attempt to contact you since my abrupt departure from Julesburg.

Wait--what?

"This is his fifth letter?" I demanded. I couldn't see Garrison's face, from my seat behind him, but I felt his shoulders tense. I saw the way Benj quickly looked away from us.

What.

The.

Hell?!

As awkward as I'd found the side-saddle at first, trying to dismount Jacob's horse from a straddle position, without my own stirrup, equaled it. Oh sure, I could have just pushed right off the gelding's rear end, but immediately behind a horse is a bad, baaad place to stand, even temporarily. I ended up having to clutch my husband extra tight around the waist as I swung my right leg over the gelding's rump and then dropped to the ground on the horse's left.

At least it wasn't a monster-sized horse like the kids had ridden.

Now I could look up and see my husband's stony face as I repeated, "Five letters."

"Four," corrected Benj helpfully, but closed his mouth when I glared over at him.

Garrison said, "Only found three." I couldn't tell if he was angrier about the fact that a murderous time-traveling bounty hunter wanted to be my pen pal, or about having missed a single letter on the vast high plains.

Knowing Jacob Garrison? I'm betting that last was his biggest concern.

"Oh, so you only kept three letters from me? That's okay then." I could see from his immobile expression that he didn't buy my sarcasm this time. "Three letters? Addressed to me? I want to see them. Where are they?"

"Destroyed 'em."

I...? He...? "Well of course you did. God forbid I receive my mail. What did they say?" Something else occurred to me. "Would you both please dismount? My neck hurts, looking up at you two."

The men exchanged glances before complying, because of course they did. Garrison's partnership with a wife would always come second to his true marriage with his partner. I would always come second, which was another reason to keep cash on me, just in case.

I needed some kind of power, somehow. With other people, if not with these two.

Once they'd swung down to mere mortal height, with a creaking of leather and a whumphing of boots, I folded my arms and waited.