Читать книгу Footprints in the Snow - Cassie Miles - Страница 11

This huge army base hadn’t been here yesterday. It hadn’t been here for the past fifty years. It didn’t exist anymore.

Shana blinked furiously, hoping to erase the visual evidence. When she stared down the slope, nothing had changed. Camp Hale spread out before her like a black-and-white photograph come to life. Apparently, Luke wasn’t crazy. She was.

Her mind searched for a logical explanation.

Possibly, the site had been recreated as a historical place. With all those barracks? Housing for ten thousand troops? The cost of running the base would be too high.

If someone had rebuilt Camp Hale, they had to have a lot of cash. A movie? That made more sense. Hollywood people might be extravagant enough to reconstruct the base to make a movie about the legendary 10th Mountain Division.

But when she peered down toward the camp, she saw nothing resembling the lights and cameras needed by a movie crew. Instead of a movie crew led by Steven Spielberg, there were soldiers in fatigues. The only vehicles were vintage army jeeps. And mules.

More gunfire echoed behind her, and she startled. The obvious escape led straight down the hill into the camp, but she didn’t want to go there. Once she entered that 1945 world, she might never be able to return to her own time, her own millennium. She didn’t want to be swallowed up by the past.

This vision had to be an illusion, an aftereffect of altitude sickness. Luke had told her it was 1945. His suggestion must have triggered this fantasy from the photographs she’d seen in Leadville.

A fantasy? That wasn’t the way her mind worked. Shana was a scientist. Her life was based on rock-solid facts and rational analysis. She didn’t believe in fairy tales and had very little need for imagination. Last night with Luke was the closest she’d ever come to a fantasy.

Did their kiss even happen? Or was that a part of this winter mirage? Think, Shana. Somehow this had to make sense. Maybe she’d died on the slopes and Camp Hale was limbo. She wasn’t someone who…traveled backward through time.

This wasn’t happening; she refused to accept Camp Hale no matter how real it looked. The important thing was to find her way back to reality. Forcing her legs to move, she turned away from the encampment. Ignore it. Pretend that you never saw Camp Hale. Ski back to the rental car, back to Leadville.

“Halt,” came a shout from down the hill.

Two men—dressed like Luke in all-white snow gear—charged up the slope toward her. Their movements seemed labored; neither of them were as proficient on skis as Luke. While one man continued to approach, the other dropped to one knee and leveled a rifle at her chest.

“Raise your hands above your head.”

Shana did as she was told. Even in an imaginary world, she had no desire to be shot.

“You’re a girl,” said the guy who reached her first. He turned and waved to his partner. “Lower your weapon.”

He did as ordered and came toward them.

The first man asked, “What the hell are you doing up here, girlie?”

Though her mouth was dry, Shana forced words past her lips. “I’m with Luke. Luke Rawlins.”

“No kidding?” He turned back to his partner again. “She says she’s with Sergeant Rawlins.”

The second man joined them. When he pushed back the fur-lined hood of his parka, she was surprised to see how young he looked. This tall, lanky kid couldn’t have been more than eighteen. He frowned at her. “I don’t believe it. The sergeant isn’t a womanizer, and he knows better than to bring a girl up here.”

“She could be a spy. Take a look at her skis. I’ve never seen anything like those before. They’re made out of plastic.”

“Fiberglass,” Shana said. She’d spent enough time on drilling sites to know how to deal with men who didn’t trust her opinions and skills. It was important to immediately establish that she wasn’t a brainless twit. She kept her voice calm. “I’m sure there’s an explanation for everything, gentlemen. May I lower my hands?”

“Not yet,” said the young guy. He came close and patted her down in a clumsy frisk. “Take off that knapsack and hand it to me.”

She obeyed his order and watched as the two of them pawed through the contents of her pack. The younger man flipped open her wallet. “International Driver’s License,” he said accusingly. “Your name is Shana Parisi?”

“Yes. And you are?”

“Private First Class Henry Harrison.”

She turned to the other man. “And you?”

“I don’t have to tell you my name.”

He pushed back his hood, revealing black hair in a bowl cut like one of the Three Stooges. She decided to think of him as Moe. He took the wallet from Henry and studied her license. “Parisi, huh? Are you Italian?”

“My grandparents were from Italy. Naples.”

“The land of Mussolini.”

Moe and Henry exchanged a meaningful glance and nodded. The land of Mussolini? Oh, please. Anger surged through her veins. “I’m not a spy.”

“Then what are you?” Moe demanded. “You’re not one of those Mafiosos, are you? A girlfriend of Al Capone?”

Could he possibly be more stereotypical and insulting? Obviously, “political correctness” had not been part of the vocabulary in 1945. “Not all Italians are part of the Mafia.”

Young Henry thrust her cell phone toward her. “What’s this thing?”

“A telephone. It’s not working right now.”

“That’s a load of malarkey.” He gave a snort. “A telephone without wires. Like a walkie-talkie. This looks like spy equipment to me.”

Moe snapped her wallet closed. “This license is a bad forgery. They got your birthday wrong. Says here that you were born in 1974. That’s almost thirty years from now.”

Because it’s 1945. That idea was beginning to sink into her consciousness. These two men—Henry and Moe—were clearly from a bygone era.

“You got one more chance,” Moe said, “And you better be telling me God’s own truth. Why are you here in this restricted area?”

“If you talk to Luke,” she said, “he can explain.”

Moe scowled as he shoved her belongings into her backpack and tossed it toward her. “We’ll take her to Luke,” he said as if it was his very own idea. “Come on, Henry. Let’s escort Miss Parisi into camp.”

FRUSTRATION BOILED in Luke’s blood. The men he’d been chasing had gotten away clean. He’d failed in his pursuit.

When he’d spotted them, they were peering down at Camp Hale with binoculars. They fled when he approached, then opened fire with their handguns. Luke was sure he’d winged one of them before they skied out of range and hopped into a waiting vehicle. He should have had them, should have aimed more carefully, should have skied faster.

Though Captain Hughes hadn’t reprimanded him, Luke knew he’d screwed up a simple mission of protecting the perimeters at Camp Hale. After his years of training in mountain combat, he should have been more effective.

And now, he had Shana to deal with.

He stormed into the vacant office where she was being held. Closing the door behind him, he said, “I told you to wait for me at the cabin.”

“I don’t take orders from you.”

“Maybe you should. You’re in serious trouble, lady.”

As she stood and faced him, he realized that this was the first time he’d seen her fully dressed and in control. She was impressive, very composed. Her confidence was high, and her bearing reminded him of the lady officers in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.

With her thick black hair tamed in a knot at the nape of her neck and her maroon turtleneck tucked neatly into her black ski pants, she looked nothing like the passionate woman from last night…until she smiled with those full, ripe, kissable lips.

Calmly, she said, “I might have stayed in the cabin if you’d told me there were gunmen wandering the slopes. Or that I might be in danger.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“You should have explained.”

She was right. He should have taken the time this morning to tell her that Camp Hale was heavily guarded while the scientists from Project Y were on the premises. Instead, he’d allowed his emotions to overrule his common sense.

When he woke up this morning and realized that he’d rescued such a beautiful woman, something inside him shifted. Their kiss reminded him that he was still alive, still capable of passion. Still a man.

He hadn’t felt that way since his tour of duty in Italy when he saw the devastation of battle firsthand. Small villages shattered under the boot heel of war. Families torn asunder. The suffering. The pain.

Luke was a soldier; his duty was to follow orders. But the first time he’d looked into the eyes of a German soldier and pulled the trigger, the first time he saw a man die, he was changed. He’d gone numb inside. Become a hollow man.

Roberto had given him a reason to hope, but he had to leave the boy behind. The emptiness consumed him. He’d felt nothing until last night with Shana. This morning, he should have been thanking her instead of running away in confusion.

She cocked her head and looked up at him. “Why do your men think I’m a spy?”

“Are you?”

Her beautiful brown eyes narrowed to angry slits. “Of course not.”

He shrugged. “If you were a spy, you wouldn’t tell me.”

Henry and Martin were convinced that she was Mata Hari. They’d waved her International Driver’s License in front of his face, pointed to her weird fiberglass skis and the little mechanical device she claimed was a telephone. However, Henry and Martin were idiots. Luke didn’t put much stock in their opinion.

He has suspicions of his own. Yesterday, she’d appeared out of nowhere. Last night, she attempted to seduce him. “You’re pretty enough to be a spy.”

“Give me a break.” She scowled. “I work for AMVOX Oil. I’m a geologist. Remember?”

Though he didn’t want to believe that she was spying, her profession dovetailed with the work of the government scientists he was here to protect. It would be a hell of a thing if she turned out to be the enemy. “We’ve had intruders in the vicinity. I don’t suppose you were up here with anyone else.”

“I saw you chasing two men. Shooting at them.” She shook her head. “I have nothing to do with them.”

Her beautiful dark eyes regarded him steadily and seriously. If she was lying, she was damn good at it. “I have to detain you, Shana. It’s procedure. You’ll have to stay here until we check out your background.”

“That doesn’t work for me. My project in Rifle starts in five days. I need to be there.”

“This won’t take long,” he promised. “Just give me the name of someone I can call, someone who can verify that you’re an innocent geologist on a ski trip.”

“There isn’t anyone I can call.” Before his eyes, her composure crumbled. Her gaze dropped to the floor and stuck there. “I don’t know anybody.”

“Your supervisor,” he suggested. “Or a family member.”

“There’s no one.” She sank into the hard-backed chair beside the cleared desk, doubled over and buried her face in her hands. “I can’t think.”

The enormity of her situation weighed on her shoulders like a ten-ton boulder. How could she explain? Of course, Shana knew people, important people. Her father was a career diplomat with connections in high places. She knew the CEO for AMVOX. But none of those people were available. In 1945, her father would have been two years old.

She looked up at Luke. He leaned his hip against the wooden desk in this plain square office that was cleared of all paperwork. His arms folded across his chest. He’d been right when he said she was in serious trouble.

She was stranded here. Without a bank account. Neither her credit cards nor her ATM card would work. She was homeless, completely without resources.

“I don’t have anyone I can contact.” Not here. Not in 1945. “I can’t remember…”

“Are you telling me that you have amnesia?”

She seized on this excuse. “That’s right. I can’t remember anything.”

“Except that you were in the Middle East.” His tone was suspicious. “You told me that last night.”

What else had she said? Last night, they hadn’t done much talking. Between her headache and her intense attraction to him, she hadn’t told him much. Now, his lack of information might work to her advantage.

“I have amnesia.” She rose to her feet to emphasize her words. “I need to get to a doctor in Leadville.”

“We have medical personnel here on base.”

But she didn’t want to stay here, trapped in 1945. If she left Camp Hale, she might be able to find the way back to her own millennium. “I need a specialist, a psychiatrist. Or a neurologist. Please, Luke.”

His jaw set in a firm, stubborn line that made her think he had little intention of accommodating her wishes. “Where were you staying in Leadville?”

“A hotel.”

“Which hotel?”

Her lodging probably didn’t have the same name as it did in 1945. It might not have even existed. “I don’t remember the name. I left the receipt in your cabin. I wrote a goodbye note on the back.”

“You must have driven to get up here. Where’s your car parked?”

“When I was skiing, I got lost. I don’t know where my car is.” That much was true. “You have to take me to Leadville. From there, I can find my way back to Denver. Or I might find a specialist in Aspen.”

“Aspen?” He gave her a puzzled look. “You won’t find much of anything in that sleepy little town.”

Of course not. The development of Aspen into a glittering, world-class ski resort took place after World War II. If she remembered correctly, returning soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division were largely responsible for that growth.

The door to the office swung open and a stocky man dressed in old-fashioned ski knickers strode inside. “I have been looking for you, Luke. You promised to show me the best trails.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We will leave soon. Very soon.” His accent was Italian. His dark eyes sparkled when he noticed Shana. “But first I must meet this charming young lady. You are?”

“Shana Parisi,” she said. “Buon giorno.”

Obviously delighted, he responded in Italian. Shana used rudimentary Italian she’d learned from her grandmother to make polite conversation about the weather and the scenery.

He took her hand and lifted it to his lips in a courtly gesture. “I am Enrico Fermi.”

“The Nobel Prize winner?”

“You know my work?”

“Absolutely.”

He was one of the most brilliant physicists of all time, the father of nuclear fission. She’d studied his theories, seen his face in textbooks. Fermi worked on the Manhattan project and had been at Los Alamos where the atom bomb was developed.

A realization struck her. The first atomic bomb test had taken place in 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico. Shana even recalled the date because it was the same as her sister’s birthday, and their father always called her sister a bombshell. July 16, 1945.

“What’s the date today?”

“May seventh,” Luke said.

In two months, Dr. Enrico Fermi and the other scientists at Los Alamos would change the world.