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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I missed my chance, Jenny thought angrily, letting a round fly from the revolver in her right hand. I missed my fucking chance, and now he's gone for good!
A bullet flew by her face as she ducked back behind a crate next to Arthur who, despite wheezing like an old man, was still fighting for his life. "He's gone," she murmured to herself, peeking out to send another round into a Pinkerton's skull. "Micah's gone, and I don't get to shoot him after all."
"Jenny, focus!" John yelled beside her. "There's more important things going on right now!"
But it somehow felt like Jenny was in a dream. The scent of blood and gunsmoke wafting through the hazy air, the rough wood of the crate she hid behind for cover as it scrabbled against her hand and cheek, all of it. It just didn't seem real somehow; like a waking nightmare, lucid and terrifying, with no end in sight.
"Arthur! Jenny!" she heard John shout at them. "We gotta go through the caves!"
The caves. Right. Perhaps there was a way out of this scrap after all. And if there was a way out, there might still be a way to kill Micah. If she could somehow track his horse - if she could find a way to see where he'd gone - perhaps her bullet might still find him. Perhaps there was still hope.
Arthur's hand on her arm as he grabbed at her to pull her after him jolted her out of her trance-like state. His fingers were cold and pale from poor blood circulation, and it almost felt like a corpse's fingers were grasping at her, clawing with a vice-like grip that would drag her down to Hades if she wasn't careful.
And yet, she allowed him to pull her to hell all the same, through the hail of bullets and into the safety of the massive cave behind them. She could hear Pinkertons shouting threats behind them as they ran, but the angry voices didn't register. Jenny had tunnel vision, and only hope kept her going.
Not hope that they would make it out of the cave and everything would be right with the world, but hope that perhaps a bullet with Micah's name on it waited for her at the end of this.
"Keep going!" John shouted encouragingly back at them as Arthur finally turned loose of Jenny's arm. Her body ached from the effort of this full-on sprint after hiking through the woods all day, but she had no choice. She had to keep going, through the dark passages of the cave. Her boots crunched gravel and old, wooden floorboards, and more than once she stumbled on a rock she hadn't seen in time, but she kept at it, her eyes refusing to leave John's back as he ran ahead of her to show her and Arthur the way.
"Those bastards left me and Jenny for dead!" John yelled as they drew deeper and deeper into the dark cave, where the air smelled of rot and mold and old blood.
"Seems that's what they do now!" was Arthur's response from behind Jenny.
Ahead of them glowed a lantern, an oasis of light in the hellscape around them. Next to the light was a ladder which led up, towards sweeter smelling air. The way out was just ahead. Hope was ahead. All she had to do was climb.
