The Sunstone Brooch : Time Travel Romance Katherine Logan (no david read aloud TXT) 📖

He took his time sipping his wee dram while watching customers come and go. After an hour, and with no one paying attention to him, he settled his bar tab and left.

He wasn’t two feet from the entrance when someone put a knife against the small of his back and the other hand on JC’s shoulder, digging his fingers into JC’s deltoid.

“Mr. Fraser. How nice to see you again.”

Adrenaline fueled and honed his readiness, making the tips of his fingers pulse. He would never forget that voice, the voice that haunted his nightmares. The man had only one inflection for all situations—callous, gravelly, and evil. Even his monotone questions had a cold-blooded acid wash to them.

“Hello, Sten. I can’t say the same about you.” JC controlled his voice so it wouldn’t reveal his fear. Sten was not a man to mess with or underestimate.

Sten chuckled. “You should have stuck around. You missed the party.”

“I got the impression I was to be the guest of honor. I figured the smartest thing to do was skedaddle while I could.”

The man tsked. “You ruined my evening, but I’m sure you’ll make it up to me. My men are waiting to see you again, with revenge on their minds. Now turn slowly and go through that door on your left.”

The door was an exit. Leaving the hotel with Sten was a bad idea. His associates were likely outside, waiting to grab him.

JC’s adrenaline surged again, and he used the heightened awareness to his advantage rather than wasting time wondering how Sten found him.

Sten and his people must have information about the brooches the MacKlennas didn’t have.

JC needed that information from Sten as much as Sten needed it from him.

“What do you want?” JC had to keep talking while he waited for the moment to strike.

“Don’t be naïve, Mr. Fraser. You know what I want. Let’s start with the brooch you used to get here.”

JC laughed. “If I had it, I wouldn’t have stuck around.”

“Of course you have it. And before the night is over, you’ll tell me where it is. Now open the door. If you make a wrong move, I’ll kill you right here.”

What an idiot. “That sort of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”

Sten pressed the knife harder against JC’s jacket and shirt, and the sharp point pricked his skin, slicing a hole in his new clothes—and that pissed him off.

“If I don’t get the brooch from you, I’ll go to the Dakotas to find Ensley Williams. How do you think she’ll handle a knife at her throat?”

JC’s stomach convulsed. “If you think she’ll whimper and tell you everything she knows…which isn’t much, by the way…you’re wrong.” JC was playing with dynamite. Sten was a brutal killer, like Erik and the other Council members. If JC left with Sten, he wouldn’t survive, and there’d be no one to protect Ensley from Sten and his assassins.

JC would have more room to fight once they were outside, but if Sten’s men were waiting there, it could be disastrous for him. He had to kill Sten—now—and finish what they started in Asia. It was now or never.

JC ran through his options in tenths of a second—that’s how it worked for him. When he was in danger, time either slowed down or his mind raced. Hard to say which.

He adjusted his body slightly to the left, and at the same time, backed up into the blade so he’d know exactly where Sten’s hand was. The heat of Sten’s breath was on JC’s neck, along with the stink of tobacco.

JC made his move.

He whipped around in the opposite direction, blocked, then grabbed Sten’s knife-wielding arm, twisting it around so the knife pointed into Sten’s side. Two seconds max. If he didn’t kill Sten now, he’d have to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder.

But before he could kill his nemesis, the door behind him opened and one of Sten’s assassins wrapped a leather strap around JC’s neck.

JC had seconds before the pressure on his carotid arteries knocked him out.

Instead of grabbing for the strap to keep from choking, he turned into the man and used a tiger-claw punch to his face, knocking him down, but it left him open to Sten. JC chambered his knee in a high position and push-kicked Sten, who landed on his back, groaning.

JC swiveled to meet another assassin, who came at him with a haymaker-type cross and then used an eagle claw to neutralize him. But as he defended against the cross, his opponent came in with a ridge hand across JC’s neck, then torqued as he stepped in behind JC and, with a hip toss, dropped him to the ground.

The assassin’s hand then came in with a straight punch to his nose, and while excruciating pain seared JC’s brain, he knew no one would come to his rescue.

And no one would ever know what happened to him.

31

MacKlenna Farm, KY (1885)—Elliott

The fog evaporated, and Elliott found himself alone in a lush green pasture. But he knew where he was—the cemetery at MacKlenna Farm was just over the hill, and the mansion, stallion barns, and breeding shed were through the trees a hundred yards or so. He’d ridden over every inch of the farm thousands of times. Every rolling hill was as familiar as the web of veins on the back of his hands.

The absence of utility poles and slowly moving hay wagons pulled by tractors—not horses—on Old Frankfort Pike confirmed he was in a different century.

There wasn’t a cloud in the blue expanse stretching above the rolling hills of bluegrass, and the white-blossomed dogwoods and pink azaleas dotted the tree line with bursts of color. The extraordinary countryside never changed, regardless of the season, regardless of the century.

But where was everyone else?

As many times as he’d traveled with Remy, the brooch never separated them—thank God. But the stones had a history of tossing family members around like pick-up sticks every time they whirled