LITMIR.BIZ

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skin under his chin. He wouldn’t be here forever, and Noah would have to face that sad truth sooner or later.

      He pulled to a stop, put the vehicle in park and pressed the button to open the trunk.

      Thomas stepped forward. “Let me help you.”

      “No need.”

      As Noah walked around to the trunk, he caught a flash of movement and looked up to see Simon appear in the doorway.

      Moving slowly and deliberately, he approached Noah and his father.

      “I’ve been waiting for you.”

      “It’s good to see you,” Noah answered evenly, as he studied the son of his old friend, trying to figure out how this would go. One thing he knew: he didn’t like the look in the young man’s eyes or the tone of his voice.

      Simon answered with a laugh that made the hair on Noah’s scalp prickle. “You can’t fool me. You hate me.”

      “Of course not.”

      “You and my father. You’ve always been against me.”

      “Let’s go inside and talk.”

       And I’ll contact the hospital and have them pick you up.

      “You’re hiding something from me.”

      “No. Let’s go in and I’ll tell you everything.”

      Hope bloomed in Simon’s eyes, and Noah thought he had broken through.

      But the moment passed. “It’s too late for that.”

      Simon pulled a gun from under his jacket.

      Thomas’s eyes widened. “Put that away.”

      The young man aimed the weapon at his father.

      “You don’t want to hurt him,” Noah called out.

      The weapon swung toward Noah who was calculating his chances of disarming the kid before something bad happened.

      As the three of them confronted each other, Simon focused on his father again.

      “If you won’t tell me what I want to know, then you’re going to die.”

      As Simon raised the gun, Noah acted on instinct. Leaping forward, he pushed Thomas out of the way.

      He heard an explosion, felt the impact of a bullet slamming into his chest. He crashed to the ground and as he lay in the driveway, another bullet made him jerk.

      “Stop. For God’s sake, stop.” That was Thomas shouting at his son. Then he called out, “Help. Somebody help.”

      Noah’s gaze swung toward his friend’s voice, but it was too much effort to keep his eyes focused. Everything around him was dimming.

      He heard running footsteps, then scuffling sounds.

      “Get the hell off me.” That was Simon. He started babbling threats, his voice fading as someone dragged him away from the bloody scene.

      Thomas knelt over Noah. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”

Chapter Two

      Noah felt hands on his body and heard a babble of voices.

      “Careful. Get him to his bed.”

      “He needs a doctor.”

      “Forget it! He’s done for.”

      “It’s not as bad as it looks.” That was Thomas, calm and sure as always.

      They laid him down.

      “Leave me with him. I can take care of this.”

      The chaos faded into the background. Gently Thomas unbuttoned Noah’s shirt. Now that they were alone, his old friend drew in a sharp breath.

      Noah could imagine the horrible wounds the man was seeing. He had seen many like them over the years.

      His lips moved, but no sound came out. He tried to cling to consciousness, but staying awake was beyond his ability, and he drifted away to another reality. To a time long ago.

      He was an eleven- or twelve-year-old boy named Edmond George, crying and wandering through a squalid little village. Everyone else was dead from the great pestilence. That’s what they called it then. Not the black death.

      He was weak from starvation when a group of friars came through the area, praying for the victims.

      “A miracle. It’s a miracle that God spared this boy’s life,” the leader of the group proclaimed as he laid his hands on Edmond’s head.

      They took him to their monastery and nursed him back to health.

      His memories leaped twenty-five years ahead in time. He was a lean-bodied, dark-haired man who never caught the passing illnesses that plagued the rest of the brothers. And he was no longer an uneducated lout. He was a well-read man, versed in all the important disciplines of his time, highly respected by many in the monastery. Except for the ones who whispered that his health and good fortune came from the devil.

      Those were violent times, even in the church. He was in line to be the abbot when a rival poisoned him. When he didn’t die, the devil whispers became a chorus.

      One night he fought off a savage attack and fled, bleeding from a host of stab wounds.

      Staggering into an abandoned hut, he prayed to God for a favorable reception into heaven and waited to die. Instead, he awakened in the morning, amazed that he was still breathing and that the holes in his flesh had closed themselves. Another miracle.

      He was alive. He didn’t know why, but he felt a burning desire to stay that way. The monks had taught him scruples, but they had tried to kill him, too.

      Quickly he realized that his situation called for desperate measures. With no money and no place in the world, he stole a horse from the stable at a nearby inn, then robbed the occupants of a coach that was making a rest stop along the road.

      While the Earl of Bradford was relieving himself behind a tree, Edmond acquired the man’s trunk full of clothing and also enough money to live on while he figured out his next move, which was to one of the Italian city-states.

      With his classical education, his dark good looks and the political savvy he’d acquired at the monastery, he set himself up as an expert on religious artifacts, which he exported to England at very advantageous prices. He’d also acquired his first mistress and discovered the pleasures of the flesh.

      His mind took another leap—this time skipping a hundred years.

      He was Miguel Santana who had made a fortune in the wine trade and was one of the backers of a Spanish expedition to the new world. He’d funded three ships and a crew with the proviso that he traveled with the explorers across the Atlantic and then inland across a vast continent, looking for gold and trading with the natives they met.

      The party found no gold and turned around, but Miguel Santana slipped away from the explorers and stayed in the new world, where he eventually set himself up as an apprentice to an Indian shaman.

      His mind bridged another wide gap.

      He was Justin Glasgow, a rich San Francisco settler who had moved south and bought a piece of backcountry property in the hills north of Santa Barbara, where he’d built himself a comfortable estate. Then Justin had “died” and left the property to “his nephew,” William Emerson, who had eventually passed it on to his own nephew, Noah Fielding, the man he was now.

      He should have another twenty or thirty years before he had to change his name again.

      As that thought settled in his mind, he opened his eyes. When he turned his head, he saw Thomas sitting in a chair beside the bed.

      “How

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