Excerpt 1

FBI Badge of one Cassandra Becker

from Chapter 1, page 8 of Justice for All Time

The first man had made it off his horse and had raised his gun to end the scuffle when the warrior who had been shot leapt on him, snarling. Now two couples of men were rolling and fighting as Cassie finally made it to the ground, pulled the gun and cocked it, all in one fluid motion and fired at the warrior closest to her.

The bullet took him in the shoulder and damn near took off her arm with its recoil.

He went flying backwards off his stunned opponent who looked dazedly up at Cassie.

Meanwhile another shot rang out behind her and she whirled, pointing her gun and finding one pointing right back at her.

Cassie realised that the shot had come from the second man, who had shot point blank at the warrior he’d been wrestling with and then turned his gun on her.

Looking up from the barrel at the man holding it she noticed sharp green eyes looking at her from beneath a wide-brimmed cowboy hat. She also noticed the star on the man’s chest, emblazoned with the word “Sheriff.”

For the first time since waking up in that cave, Cassie felt two things – relief in finding ‘her people’ and the disbelief in her situation falling away. She was in the past. 1853 to be exact. She didn’t know how or why, but it was time to stop denying the facts laid out before her and deal with it.

She thought fast: she needed to figure this out, and to do that, she needed time. How to buy time? Well, start by not getting killed by mistake.

Cassie took her finger off the trigger and relaxed her stance, straightening and lowering her right arm so that the gun hung at her side. She raised her left hand palm out, fingers splayed.