Once A Gambler. Carrie Hudson
Читать онлайн книгу.
the trunk that sat smack in the middle of the chaos. Morning light struck it with a pinpoint ray, as if it were announcing itself as different from the rest. Dust motes swam in the light above it. Ellie knelt down and set her coffee on the floor.
For six months they’d searched for Reese. No stone went unturned, no parolee unquestioned. But in the end, there were simply no clues. No ransom note. No indication according to the police that she had done anything but vanish into thin air.
“You must go back to the beginning,” that man had said. “To the trunk. That’s how you’ll find her.”
There was no doubt in her mind it was this trunk he meant. This was the last place Reese had been. This was the trunk she’d been exploring when Ellie had run out for coffee, leaving her alone. She’d left the door unlocked behind her. Everyone in Deadwood did. And that was the last time she’d seen her sister alive. She had vanished without a trace.
Ellie opened the lid on the trunk and tilted it back. It appeared to be the same as any of the other dozen weathered trunks piled in the attic. This one, still smudged black with fingerprinting dust, was stamped tin with leather straps and a crinkling wall-papered interior. She began to unload it: there were ribbon-wrapped letter collections and photos and pieces of lace, pressed flowers and hat pins and a velvet crazy quilt that was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Halfway down, she found an antique tintype camera and lifted it out of the trunk.
Sunlight glinted off the large lens as she uncovered it. It was a beauty in mint condition and she couldn’t believe they had missed this before. It must be over a hundred and thirty years old. She turned it upside down, examining it from all angles. The initials E.K. were engraved on the underside of it in beautiful scroll lettering. Who was E.K. and how had his camera ended up in her grandmother’s trunk? She wondered if it would still work and decided to take it with her when she went back to L.A.
She sat down and placed the camera beside her. She then dug into the trunk again. By the time she’d emptied it, her cell rang. She checked the caller ID and answered the call.
“Okay, are you really back in Deadwood?”
Bridget Meeks’s voice made her smile. Bridget, her best friend since high school and unofficial partner in more zany exploits than she could remember, had tracked her down via satellite. Probably in between feedings of her twin baby boys, Lucca and Isaac.
“Yeah,” Ellie said. “Nuts, huh?”
“Dane called me this morning as I was wiping the oatmeal off my face, whining about it.” She sighed. “He said you two had a fight.”
Why Dane felt that he needed to go to her best friend when things were going wrong, she couldn’t guess. “That’s right. News at six…”
“Everything okay with you two? I mean besides the fact that you’re there and he’s here?”
Were things okay? She didn’t think so anymore. “Do you think I made a mistake, Bridge?” Ellie picked up an old book of historical photography and opened it.
“What? Going to Deadwood?”
“No, agreeing to marry him.” That thought hadn’t fully coalesced until just now.
An I-don’t-want-to-say-what-I-really-think hesitation ensued. “It’s how you feel that matters, El.”
Good answer. How did she feel? Right now confusion was the only emotion she could pinpoint. It swirled inside her like the dust in the sunlight spilling across the pages of the old book in her hands. “I don’t know,” she murmured, “maybe I’m expecting too much.”
“Maybe,” Bridget suggested gently, “it’s time you expected something of somebody other than yourself.”
And there it was. Except for Reese, she wasn’t sure she had ever been able to trust anyone. Not Dane, not even his feelings for her. She thumbed through the old book of photographs. Photos of people who had lived more than a hundred years ago stared back at her from the porches of schoolhouses and walkways.
“Do you love him?”
She thought she did. But if this was it—this feeling like there was something big she was missing, could it be the real thing? “Maybe I wouldn’t know it if I saw it.”
“Oh, I think you would. Maybe you just haven’t seen it yet.” In the background, Bridget’s babies started howling. “Hear that sound? Now that’s true love.” She laughed like she always did, taking the edge off the seriousness of what she was trying to say. “I’d better go before there’s a riot in my kitchen. We’ll talk when you get back. Okay?”
“Okay, hon. Thanks. I’ll be back tomorrow or day after.” They hung up. Ellie tucked the phone in her back pocket and stared at the book in her hands, suddenly wishing she could make sense of this whole trip to Deadwood. That man’s words had sent her running here. But was she running toward something or away from it?
She flipped the pages absently until she came across a loose tintype photo tucked into the book of a couple standing in front of an arbor, gazing into each other’s eyes. He was tall and good-looking—for the 1800s. Now, if that wasn’t love, she thought…
But the pose seemed so unusual for a photo in a time when people had to freeze for minutes to get a good shot. And there was something about it…something about the woman in the picture…It was grainy and faded, but she could swear it sort of resembled…In fact, it looked almost exactly like—
Oh, my God! Like Reese!
Ellie blinked hard, rubbed her eyes, but the woman still looked like Reese. Clutching the photo tighter, she wondered if it was some great-great-relative who had merely looked just like her. But no. There was Reese’s dimple, the little mole on her neck. Even her hands…If it wasn’t Reese, it was her exact double. But how could someone so long ago look exactly like someone from now?
And then without so much as a warning, the woman in the photo swiveled her head—
—and looked directly at Ellie!
Ellie shrieked and accidentally kicked the camera sitting beside her in her scramble to get up.
As she did, there flashed a brilliant white light. It consumed the air in her grandmother’s attic and she felt herself tumbling, falling, as the ground disappeared beneath her.
Until there was nothing at all around her but the white, white light that finally faded into blackness.
ELLIE OPENED HER EYES slowly, feeling muzzy and a little nauseous, as if she’d downed several too many Long Island Iced Teas…and mixed them with a few glasses of Bordeaux. But she hadn’t been drinking. Had she? She was having trouble remembering.
A pitchy dark surrounded her, broken only by a hint of moonlight spilling through some kind of slatted wood louvers inches beyond her nose. Even worse, she was flat on her back with her feet in the air, scrunched in some small, cramped place. Something was jammed painfully into her back and she shifted against it.
It felt like…footwear?
None of that made any sense. She backed up mentally, trying again. Okay, a second ago, she’d been in her grandmother’s attic, then…then what? Think, Ellie. Think.
A flash of light echoed in her memory and a feeling that she was falling. Had she been knocked out? Electrocuted?
Died? Had she gone toward the light?
She lifted her hand to her face and felt around. Okay…okay. That feels right. Solid. So…good. Alive.
She felt around the confines of her space. Some kind of a box? Her senses returned to her one at a time: the smell of old wood and musty leather and another smell—like that sharp tang of ozone in the air following a storm; the low rumbling sound of her neighbor’s Harley engine idling in the driveway below her grandmother’s attic.
She frowned. Wait, not a motorcycle. It was too rhythmic. Too…human.
She