Traveler trilogy Book 2.
Five years after killing Levi Cornwall, Arthur Morgan is happy. He has a wife who loves him, an honest job he enjoys, and two beautiful children named Sadie and Hiram. All of it is turned on its head, however, when Francis S...
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The Double L Ranch Summer, 2027
The sound of screaming woke Arthur that morning. "Mama! Daddy!" shrieked Sadie from her room down the hall. Groaning, Arthur sat up and rubbed his eyes, smacking his lips to help dissuade the dry, salty taste of his own tongue. He'd been sleeping solidly, nearly almost as well as a dead man, until Sadie's bloodcurdling cries had jerked him from such peaceful relaxation.
At the sound of his sister, Arthur's eighteen-month-old son, Hiram, began to cry. With two children screaming, Arthur moaned again at the din and stood up from the bed. "Darlin', you mind the baby and I'll go see about Sadie," he grunted in a deep, raspy voice that echoed just how exhausted he was.
"Ugh," said Tori in a tired voice, standing up as well to get Hiram from his crib in their bedroom.
Arthur padded down the hallway, limping gingerly on his stiff legs. He wasn't as young as he used to be, and still walked with a limp because of nerve damage from years ago, when a bullet fired from Levi Cornwall's gun had torn his thigh to hell. The leg didn't pain him much anymore, but it was still sore and unyielding sometimes, especially in the morning when he hadn't had time to stretch it yet.
"What is it, sweetheart?" Arthur asked gently as he entered Sadie's room. She sat in her bed, trembling like a leaf with tears running from her unique, blueish-green eyes. They were her father's eyes, and they were not the only way she resembled him.
Now that she was older, it could no longer be denied that Sadie looked uncannily like Arthur. It was evident from the sharpness of her cheekbones to her wide forehead to her honey-brown hair, which was a shade or two darker than Arthur's but was still several shades lighter than her mother's. She reached out to Arthur with trembling hands, and he obliged, scooping her gently into his arms and sitting down with her on her bed.
"Daddy, there's a monster under my bed!" she cried, burying her face in his shoulder as she sobbed.
She must have had a bad dream, Arthur realized, cradling her to him. "Aw, sweetheart," he mumbled softly into her hair. "Monsters ain't real. You was dreamin'."
"I wasn't!" she cried, looking up at him. Her little lip trembled and her whole body still shook. "I wasn't dreaming! I got out of bed to go look out my window, and I heard it under my bed! I think it's made of bees."
"Bees, huh?" Arthur laughed, ruffling her hair with his hand. Thinking she'd still been half asleep when she'd claimed to hear a monster, Arthur carried Sadie gently to the door and set her down. "I'll take a look for you. After all, monsters is scared of rough, mean fellers like me."
"You're not mean, Daddy," Sadie said quietly from the door as Arthur knelt down next to her bed.
He pulled up the bed skirt carefully, squinting into the darkness. All of a sudden, like a bolt of lightning, something whizzed past his face with the speed of a bullet and retracted back into the darkness. When it was finished, Arthur heard a bone-chilling sound that did indeed resemble a swarm of buzzing bees, hiding away in the darkness. "Son of a bitch," he whispered under his breath, his words catching in his throat when he realized that Sadie had been telling the truth. But it wasn't a monster under her bed.
