Fire, The by John A. Heldt Read Free Book Online Page B

an infant in her arms. A boy of four or five stood at her side. Celia and Randolph Johnson seemed none too pleased to meet Kevin. Great-grandfather Lloyd, asleep in a blanket, didn't appear to care.
    "Take a seat," Asa said as he pulled up a chair at one end of the table. The rest of the Johnson family quickly assembled behind him. He placed his shotgun in a secure position at his side.
    Kevin did as instructed. He sat in a chair at the opposite end of the table and tried to keep calm as he processed a hundred thoughts swirling through his mind. He had found serious trouble and found it fast. Where once he had worried about whether he could return to the future in time to meet his family, he now worried about whether he could return to the future at all. He watched Asa cautiously as he blew on his cold hands.
    "Would you like some coffee?" Asa asked.
    Kevin nodded his head.
    "Celia?"
    The lady of the house placed Lloyd in a nearby crib, walked to a serving counter, and poured dark brown liquid from an enamel coffee pot into a porcelain cup. She returned to the table and placed the cup in front of the man her husband had found trapped in the stone shed. When she finished the simple courtesy, she returned to her frowning son and her smiling husband.
    While he waited for Asa to make the next move, Kevin did an inventory of his immediate surroundings. He could see from the expensive furniture in the nearby living room that Asa Johnson's ship had not only come in but also stayed in port for a while. He recognized at least two chairs and a hutch that he had last seen in 2013.
    Kevin also saw a monthly calendar hanging from a narrow strip of wall in the kitchen extension. The calendar had been flipped to February 1910. He concluded from the child-like marks that blotted out the first two weeks that Randolph was counting the days toward an important event. He concluded as well that it was Valentine's Day, a Monday.
    Kevin didn't know what to make of Asa. He looked friendly enough. He didn't expect coffee when he had entered the house. Maybe the patriarch of the Johnson clan might cut him some slack and send him on his way. For a few seconds, Kevin began to think that he might be able to walk out of the place in one piece by offering little more than a few well-chosen words.
    Then there was the other possibility. Asa might ask Kevin to open his suitcase and discover that the intruder had taken not only his diary of numbers and secrets but also a sizeable share of the gold and cash he had hidden under the guest-room floor. If that happened, then this surreally pleasant exchange could turn ugly quickly.
    Asa folded his hands on the table and stared at his new acquaintance. He dropped the smile and spoke in the measured, deliberate cadence of a businessman.
    "Make yourself comfortable, friend, but not too comfortable. The reason I offered you a cup of my wife's fine coffee and not a belly full of shot is that I'm a curious man. It's not every day I find someone inside my stone shed, particularly a well-dressed dandy like you."
    "I understand."
    "Let's start with your name."
    "My name is Kevin Johnson, sir."
    Asa laughed heartily and looked over his shoulder at his wife.
    "Did you hear that, Celia? He says he's a Johnson!"
    Kevin watched Celia smile nervously at her husband. He could see that the young wife and mother didn't like the idea of her husband bringing a trespasser into their home. Like Kevin, she appeared to be making the best of a difficult situation.
    "That's quite a coincidence. My name is Johnson, Asa Lysander Johnson. Strange as it may seem, I have not met many Johnsons in this part of the country. Had you knocked on the door of my house instead of the door of my shed, I might think of you as a relative I had yet to meet."
    Kevin flinched. He wondered what Asa – a short, slender man with a thick, neatly trimmed mustache – would think of Roger's reunion book.
    "As it is, I must think of you as a stranger – a stranger