WANTED (A Transported Through Time book)
Read WANTED (A Transported Through Time book) Online
Authors: Amber Scott
“Samantha is thrown back in time
face to face with
sexy
bandit
Jesse Kincaid. This is one hot romance that will scorch your fingers with each turn of the page.”
-Elena Gray,
A
uthor
,
Widowmaker
“
Hold on tight because this one will
steal your heart.”
-Carolyn McCray
Kindle Bestselling Author,
Fated
WANTED
By Amber Scott
©2011 Amber Scott
Chapter One
Samantha Hendricks didn’t know which felt worse—the numbness that settled around her heart for long hours at a time, making her wonder if she hadn’t loved her dad, or the sudden rip of pain that shot through, taking her by surprise and removing any doubts.
Henry Hendricks might not have been the best dad. But yes, she loved him and couldn’t believe he was gone. Somewhere in the single-wide trailer, her cousin roamed around, fussing with tidying up, giving Sam some space. Maybe stocking the fridge with leftovers. Potato salad and burnt rolls.
The bed sat neatly made. Coins lay on the table. A couple thousand Post-its took up one faux wood-paneled wall. Sam sat with a huff onto her dad’s bedroom floor and stared from the taped-up cardboard box to the letter written in her dad’s elegant scroll. “Sammie, if you’re reading this, then I am dead.”
Dead. Yep. Gone.
The bank owned the trailer, and the pawnshop owned the truck title. Sam got this box when what she needed, he once again, couldn’t give her.
This side up.
She didn’t want to open it. Instead, she rotated it on the carpet with one finger. The carpet shushed with the movement.
Fragile.
Whatever that duct tape protected, maybe should stay a mystery. Right now, numb felt good. Opening that box could open up the hurt.
The single-wide’s thin walls groaned against the outside wind. Footsteps squeaking down the hall warned her that Mary, her cousin, was outside. Samantha schooled her features and smoothed back her hair.
Mary knocked before opening the door. Samantha looked up, resisted the urge to roll her eyes over the older woman’s empathetic gaze. Pity. Loud and clear. Not just because Samantha’s dad died six days ago on his way to his mailbox, or so the coroner and sheriff concluded. Mary felt sorry for Samantha for more than that. Exactly what more, Samantha couldn’t say. Her new orphan status, maybe, or her being unmarried at twenty-five and starting law school, thereby doomed to spinsterhood. Who knew?
Maybe because Samantha and her father hadn’t seen or talked to each other in more than two years. Didn’t matter now. “Heading home?” Samantha asked.
Mary nodded. Her hands wrestled each other. “Yep. Heading home. Unless you need anything?”
Samantha smiled despite the urge to scowl. Mary sounded desperate to stay, to help. She’d done so much already. “No. Thank you. Really, Mary, you’ve done far more than I could ask.” Far more. The funeral arrangements, the flower arrangements, dinner arrangements.
Mary’s hands went still and gripped each other. “Well, then, I suppose I’ll go. My number is on the fridge, should you need me. Call anytime. Herb can’t hear a thing and refuses to get a hearing aid, and I’m a night owl, always have been, so...”
Samantha nodded and shoved her hands behind her, wishing she wore jeans with deep back pockets instead of
the plain
wool skirt. “I will.” She wouldn’t. “Promise.”
“All right, then.” Mary’s hands released, and before Samantha could blink, the woman got her into a tight hug. Shorter and heavier, particularly up top, Mary felt like a big, squishy stress ball. She didn’t simply hug, she rocked. To and fro, to and fro. Samantha gave in and hugged her back in hopes it would buy her an out.
Mary only held tighter, then pulled back, holding onto Samantha’s shoulders. Her lips pursed, her eyes glistened, and Samantha’s stomach knotted tighter. “Let me walk you out, Mary.”
Another hug and another promise later, Mary and her cloud of powdery perfume left Sam alone. Samantha returned to the bedroom and her illustrious inheritance. She had to head back to Reno tomorrow. First thing in the morning, really. Mary would go through Henry’s things. Donate his clothes.
All Sam had to do was sleep. Grieve.
She could open the box anytime. Didn’t matter when.
Or did it?
Missing her jeans again, she scowled at the box. She sat on the floor and crisscrossed her legs. Tentatively, she picked it up and gave it a shake. Nothing inside moved, and it wasn’t all that weighty. Hmmp.
Slosh
.
She shook it again, listening. “Liquid?” she asked the box. What could be liquid inside? Perfume? Maybe, if it was a Christmas gift, but it had been years since he’d loaded her stocking with “all that female stuff.”
She set the box down and fingered a lip of the tape. How long ago had he put this box together? No dust. The tape looked and felt new. Her curiosity climbed. And with it, ever so slightly, the awful numbness receded.
“Screw it.”
She got enough of the tape loose to rip the rest off. One strip at each seam. Off and wadded into a ball that she tossed at the particle-board dresser. She put her palms on the papery surface and took a deep breath. She could do this. It would bring her closure. That’s what she needed. Closure. So that she could function again instead of live like a zombie.
Sam tipped up one flap, the next. Pink foam popcorn spilled over as she dug a hand in to feel around. Her hands felt smooth glass. She pulled out the bottle by the neck. Brown liquid sloshed inside an old wax-sealed bottle. Samantha rubbed the contours, confused. Booze? He gave her booze?
Shaking her head, she dug through the popcorn some more, not caring how much spilled out. She felt down to the very bottom. Plastic. Like a book report sleeve from middle school biology. She pulled out two pages of it. Her heart sank to her toes. One sleeve contained a well- worn map a pirate would give his left hook for. The other, an all-too-familiar sketched image of gentleman bank robber, Jesse Kincaid.
WANTED: Jesse Kincaid. Dead or Alive.
Shocker. Her inheritance was the paraphernalia of her dad’s lifelong obsession? Gee. Thanks, Dad.
What else had she expected, though? Money for college? Photo albums? Jewelry?
Better yet, what in hell did he expect her to do with this stuff? Keep it? Carry on the quest in his stead? Sure, right between her next
attempt to high score the LSAT
and the first day of law school. Conveniently, his death letter failed to mention why she got any of it—only that she did, and that one day she would know why.
Samantha read the letter again. No. Not “know why.” “Understand.” One day she would understand. She snorted. Not likely. She never understood her father’s obsession. Why bother starting now? Much as she might one day want something sentimental of his, some keepsake to show her future children, herself, that she had been loved and well thought of, these were not proof. The measly six—make that seven—lines (including the cliché opener and the closing, “I will always love you.”) would not do the job, either.
No one to dispute this and put it through probate. No siblings to fight over the treasure map, and no one to toast a shot of whiskey with her, either. Inky black eyes stared up from the poster.
Wanted.
What she wanted was the $10,000 reward the stupid thing promised. Probably a pretty penny back then. Not much now. Enough to get her through
USD’s
law school’s doors this fall, no more. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she told Kincaid.
A heart attack, of all things, when her dad had been reasonably young and fit, a daily runner, and only an occasional pipe smoker. Unless things had changed in two years.
Setting aside the poster, Samantha sagged back against the aged double bed and studied the map. She turned over the thick, waxy paper. It looked old, but looks were deceiving. Probably a replica rather than an original. Taped to the back was a worn photocopy of the original map, marked and annotated in her father’s handwriting. All these copious notes, and marks that guided her eyes through the map, would make a Kincaid treasure enthusiast drool.
The whiskey—she could only assume the amber liquid was, in fact, whiskey—perplexed her. It didn’t even have a label, only watery slaps against foggy glass.
The whole place smelled like him, but mostly in here. Stale, cherry-scented smoke and Brut. She hadn’t thought she’d ever miss his smell, or him. She found she did. Now only scent remained to burden memory, his life wasted chasing a pipe dream.
Samantha swiped away a tear and surveyed the room. He’d died a better housekeeper. Neat. The same bed her mother used to tuck Samantha into, snuggled between them on cold mornings, lay made. Everything was clean, tidy in a symmetrical way she didn’t recognize. She didn’t know what it all meant. She barely knew her father in life. Why would death be any different?
Jesse Kincaid stared up at her, the whiskey next to his stubble-shadowed chin.
What about the outlaw had so fascinated Henry Hendricks all these years? When had it started? Before Mom died? After?
The gentleman robber. Glimpses, recollections of sitting with her father, and an Old West fairy tale tugged at her mind. Samantha pushed them back and shook herself out of her thoughts. She should call home. Charles, her roommate and closest friend, would want to know she’d made it through the day, and what hour to expect her back. “The post mortem, babes, pun intended,” he’d said. Charles liked to keep an eye on her, and he would worry.
She didn’t move to her cell phone or her father’s rotary phone next to it on the nightstand. Instead, she stared at Jesse Kincaid’s cunning eyes and those stupid words. Wanted: Dead or Alive.
Somewhere in her memory, his robbery count, even some of the locales, sat dormant, unused since childhood, stories told and retold while she sat on her father’s lap. Buried treasure.