Page 68 of Stolen Time
Something I’d already thought about, so I wasn’t going to contradict him. “Then I guess I’ll wait here,” I said cheerfully. “I mean, no one else knows you came to this mine shaft, right?”
“No,” Seth responded, although he didn’t look very happy with my solution. “I made sure I wasn’t followed. But….” He stopped there, brows drawing together. “Why did you get in the truck, anyway?”
“Because I wanted to talk to you,” I said. “I wanted to tell you the truth.”
Now he appeared more confused than anything else. “I thought you already did.”
This was it. Even though my heart started to beat a little faster, and my stomach tightened at the thought of revealing who I really was, I knew I had to say the words. I had to leavethe lies behind and let him know the real reason why I’d felt so compelled to hide my identity.
My mouth opened. “I — ”
Before I could get any further than that, however, a new voice echoed through the mine shaft.
“Just what the hell is going on here?” Charles McAllister demanded.
20
A SHOT IN THE DARK
Seth blinked.The situation was already bad enough, thanks to the way Devynn Rowe had thought it a good idea to follow him here, but to have his brother turn up like this out of nowhere?
“It’s all right,” he said hurriedly. “We were just having a little chat.”
Charles came farther into the mine shaft, and she inched closer to Seth. Her face was pale and her dress smudged with dirt — he guessed she must have hidden in the bed of the truck, and he, so preoccupied with making sure this moonshine run went off without a hitch, hadn’t even noticed — but he noticed the way her chin set in defiance as she stared back at his brother.
“A private one,” she said pointedly, and a corner of Charles’s mouth lifted in a sneer.
“Funny place for it,” he remarked, then returned his attention to his brother. “You couldn’t even get this one simple thing right, could you? You had to bring her along, when you knew this place needed to be kept a secret.”
The dim lantern light couldn’t quite hide the flash of Devynn’s eyes. “How can it be a secret from me when this was the very spot where Seth found me two weeks ago? I suppose Ican see why you would want to keep your activities secret from the rest of Jerome, but it’s not as if I didn’t already know this mine shaft existed.”
“A fair point,” Charles conceded, although something in his voice told Seth he hadn’t much liked acknowledging she was correct about that one particular of the situation. “However, it doesn’t mean you have any reason to be here now…unless you were snooping where you shouldn’t have been. Incompetent as my brother often is, I still doubt he would have brought you here on purpose.”
An angry retort rose to Seth’s lips, but he swallowed it before he could say the words aloud. There was no point in arguing with Charles now. The only thing he wanted to do was to get Devynn away from here as quickly as possible. He would lose precious time taking her down the hill to Ruth’s house, but he absolutely couldn’t leave her here, no matter how confident she’d seemed to be when she said she was fine with waiting in the mine shaft until he returned. The trip to Prescott would take at least an hour and a half even if he pushed the truck to its top speed of forty-five miles an hour, and what was she supposed to do during that time? Simply stand here and wait for him? Sit on the dirty ground, thus ensuring the ruin of her dress?
Devynn’s hands went to her hips. “I don’t think it’s any business of yours why I’m here, Charles McAllister. That’s between Seth and me. But if you’re worried about me telling someone what I’ve seen, don’t be. I can keep a secret.”
That’s for sure,passed through Seth’s mind. However, the last thing he intended to do was let Charles know anything about all the secrets Devynn Rowe had been hiding for the past two weeks.
Charles began to open his mouth to reply, but Seth forestalled him, saying, “I’ll bring her in the truck with me.”
His brother didn’t appear at all satisfied by that solution. “And show her where the drop-off location is? I don’t think so. Besides, you’d never be able to fit the promised number of jugs in the cab if she’s in there with you.”
Fair point. Still, Seth wasn’t about to let it go that easily. “She can carry some,” he replied. “And I’ll leave her somewhere in Prescott before I get to my destination, then come back and get her. At least that way, she’ll only be alone for ten or fifteen minutes, not more than an hour.”
“Still unacceptable,” Charles said. “I’ll drive her back to Jerome, and you can go ahead with the delivery as planned.”
Seth didn’t like that idea very much. True, he didn’t see any real reason why he shouldn’t allow Devynn to be alone with his brother for the few minutes he’d be driving her down the hill — as a promised consort, it wasn’t as though he would have designs on her person or anything close to it — but still, he worried that Charles might try to press her as to the real reason why she’d followed him here.
She’d been about to tell him something…something that was obviously important to her, or she wouldn’t have attempted such a desperate gambit as stowing away in the truck in the first place.
What in the world could she still be hiding? Hadn’t she already confessed everything to him?
On the surface, Charles’s plan seemed like the most logical one. But something about the situation just didn’t smell right.
“Why were you up here at all, Charles?” he demanded. “Didn’t you trust me to show up when I said I would?”
“This has nothing to do with ‘trust,’” his brother replied. However, his gaze shifted away for just the barest second, and Seth realized he was lying, that he’d truly thought his younger brother couldn’t manage such a simple task as gathering tonight’s shipment and taking it to Prescott…something he shouldn’t have had to do in the first place, since he’d alreadydone one of these infernal runs the night before. But Charles had slipped him a note saying they needed an emergency shipment tonight as well, and Seth had known there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to protest the situation. Voice taut, Charles went on, “This was about making sure that everything continues to go smoothly. Believe me, you don’t want to make any mistakes with these people, and I needed to be sure that last night’s shipment wasn’t a fluke.”