by Ciana Stone
“You were moving? Trying to get to the stage?”
“No. Where’s the other card?”
“In the camera.”
He got up and retrieved it. When he saw the images, he studied them for a few moments, and then switched to a detailed view of the file names. “Sara, what did you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. I know I didn’t blur a shot this bad. What did you do?”
“What makes you think—”
The ring of the phone interrupted. Morgan picked it up. “Yes… Of course. Thank you.”
“The Secret Service is here,” he announced. “They want the memory cards.”
She nodded and followed him into the living area. Neither of them spoke as they waited. They didn’t have long. Morgan answered the knock at the door. Two agents entered.
“Mr. Morgan?” the first one asked. “Mike Billings. My partner, David White.”
Morgan shook their hands. “Here are the cards.”
“Have you looked at the images contained on these cards, sir?”
“Yes.”
“And you, Miss…?” Agent Billings asked Sara.
“Sara Tosto, and yes, sir, I did.”
Billings turned his attention to Morgan. “Sir, do you have a personal computer we might use to view the images on these cards?”
“Yes, of course.” Morgan directed them to the dining area. “Are you familiar with—” The rest of the sentence was left hanging. Billings sat down at the computer, inserted the first card into the reader and waited for the images to load.
“Dave,” he called to his partner who stood beside the sofa. “Take a look.”
His partner joined him, looking over his shoulder. Sara followed and stood beside Morgan. “I don’t know if we can pull it out enough or not,” Agent White said. “Try the other one.”
Billings switched out the cards. Once the images were loaded, he and his partner looked at them, and then he looked up at Morgan. “You took these photos?”
“No,” Sara answered before Morgan had a chance. “I did.”
“You did?” Billings looked from her to Morgan and back to her.
“Yes. Morgan let me borrow the camera. It’s the older model, the D70. You can tell by the file designations.”
The agents looked at one another then again at Sara. “Miss Tosto, we’re going to have to take this card. And we’ll need a statement from you.”
“Of course,” she replied. “Now?”
“No,” Billings said. “We’ll send someone for you first thing in the morning. Right now we need to get this card back for processing.”
He turned his attention to Morgan. “Mr. Nicholaus. You did a brave thing today. You may have saved the life of the next president.”
“Thank you,” Morgan replied and stepped aside for the agents to leave.
“Nine a.m.,” Billings said to Sara.
“I’ll be ready,” she assured him.
Morgan saw them to the door then turned to her. “You want to explain now what you’re doing?”
“Fulfilling a vow,” she said quietly. She’d decided she had to come clean with him, tell him the whole truth. At least as much as she knew. There were still missing pieces in the puzzle. Pieces she suspected no one could supply but Danu. And she had no idea how to contact her.
“A vow? To who?”
“That’s kind of a long story,” she said and extended her hand. “Can we sit?”
Morgan took her hand and let her lead him to the couch. “Okay, I’m all ears.”
“Well, it happened like this…”
Chapter Eight
Sara was hoarse by the time she finished telling Morgan about her life with Nadine, not knowing who her parents were and the unusual ability she’d always possessed. She didn’t spare any detail, not even about Danu and being taken to the Isle of Sàbhail.
Morgan didn’t speak one word until she finished hours later with the statement, “…which brings us to where we are now.”
“Sara…” He shook his head, raking his hands through his hair, and then stood to pace the floor. “This is…” He turned to look at her. “Look, I’m not calling you a liar or anything, but this is…a bit much.”
“I know,” she agreed. Had she been on the receiving end of the tale she would have thought it crazy.
He shook his head again, clearly at a loss for words. At that moment the phone rang. They looked at one another in alarm. It was the middle of the night. No call at that hour could spell good news.
“Yes?” he answered.
She watched his expression change from fatigue to alarm as he listened. “I understand. Yes, we will,” he said into the phone then hung up and faced her. “The agents who were here. They never made it back. Their bodies were found half an hour ago.”
Fear spiked throughout Sara’s body so strong it took her breath. “The memory cards?” she asked in a shaky voice.
“Gone.”
Morgan hurried to her as her hand went to her face and her skin paled. “They said for us to sit tight. They’ll send police to guard the building. We’re safe here, Sara.”
“No, we’re not,” she argued softly. “Morgan, whoever did this will surely know we’ve viewed the files. They’d probably even suspect that we made copies. It’s not safe. We have to get out of here, now.”
“No, Sara,” he argued, and pulled her back down when she started to rise. “Listen to me. We’re safer here. The building has security, and the police are on their way. This is the safest place for us now.”
“But we can’t just hide in here—”
Her words were cut off by a sudden shattering of glass as the window exploded. Morgan grabbed her and threw her onto the floor, diving on top of her. They lay there, hearts pounding, clutching one another while bullets slammed into the fabric of the couch where they’d sat just moments ago.
Sara had no idea how long they lay there. Time ceased to have meaning. Morgan slid off her and belly-crawled over to jerk the cord of the lamp, sending it crashing to the floor and pitching the room into darkness.
She rolled over and watched as he crawled on hands and knees into the dining room. It wasn’t long before he returned, his camera in hand, a long zoom lens mounted on it.
“Don’t!” She grabbed his arm as he started for the window.
“It’s okay. I just want to see if I can spot anything. Get behind the couch.”
She didn’t respond but after he’d positioned himself to one side of the window and rose up to peer through the viewfinder of the camera, she hurried over behind him. She wasn’t sure what good that was doing, but she felt better close to him.
“Do you see anything?” she asked.
“No. Yes. There’s someone there. In that building.”
“I want to see.”
He switched places with her, handing her the camera. Sara peered through the viewfinder. At first she didn’t see anything suspicious. Then her eye caught movement in one of the windows. A form darker than the background behind it.
It was a man. With a long rifle.
Her heart leapt into her throat. They had to do something. Call the police, run. Something. Otherwise…
Her thought was cut short as she watched the man peer through the rifle sight. “No, no, no, no, no,” she whispered a frantic chant. “Stop, stop, stop!”
“Sara!” Morgan pulled her back from the window. “What’s wrong?”
“Stop, stop, stop,” she whispered, her entire being focused on the idea of making the man stop, giving them a chance. She couldn’t see Morgan, his eyes frantic with concern, or feel his hand gripping her arms, shaking her.
“Sara!” Morgan continued to call to her, shaking her and finally bringing her out of her trance.
“Morgan,” she looked up at him. “We have to do something. Call the police. Please. Hurry.”
“I will. Stay right here. Don’t move.”
He crawled across the room for his p
hone, snatched it up and dialed. A frown came on his face. He dialed again, and again. Finally he looked at her. “I can’t call out.”
She crawled over to him. “Is the battery dead?”
“No, it’s…” Morgan’s eyes bugged out as he looked at the phone. The digital clock on its face wasn’t blinking. His eyes darted to the clock on the digital cable box. Same thing.
“What the hell’s going on?” he whispered. “Come on.” He grabbed her arm, tugging her along as he started to the kitchen in a hunched-over jog.
“What?” she cried as he looked at the clock on the microwave.
“The clocks,” he finally answered. “Let’s get to the bedroom.”
Together they raced through the apartment. Morgan snatched the drapes closed over the window and grabbed the television remote. The screen lightened. Into a frozen image.
“What the hell’s going on?” he asked and parted the drapes to peer down at the street. “Sara, get over here! Look at this!”
She ran to the window and looked down. There was no movement. Cars on the streets were as still as small models on a toy store shelf.
The shock had her reaching for his hand in fear. “No, this isn’t right. They should be moving. Morgan, what’s going on? I’m scared.”
“It’ll be okay,” he pulled her to him.
“No!” she pushed back. “We have to go. Don’t you see? This is our chance.”
Morgan resisted when she tried to pull him away from the window. “Morgan, please! Those agents were killed and they were skilled people. We’ve been shot at and probably will be again. We can’t depend on the police. Someone could shoot you when we’re being escorted out. We need to get out of here on our own. Go somewhere we can hide and upload or email the images from my computer to the Secret Service.”
“No. We’re not leaving.”
“We have to! Morgan, the image I drew. It was here in this room. We have to get out of here. Get out of this city.”
“Sara—”
“Please,” she pleaded. “Please.”
She could see him struggling with himself. Finally he nodded. “Okay, but what if this…whatever it is wears off? We’ll be sitting ducks. We need a way to get out of the building without anyone realizing we’ve left.”
Sara hadn’t considered that. She leaned back against the wall, trying to come up with a plan. She closed her eyes, struggling to concentrate. And the next thing she knew she was opening her eyes to find herself in the bed. Morgan lay beside her, awake.
She brushed the hair from her face. “What happened?”
“You fell asleep so I brought you to bed.”
She pushed herself up, noting that the drapes were securely closed and that she was wearing only her blouse from the day before. “Are things…moving?”
“Yeah, the minute you went to sleep it all started back up.”
She didn’t even want to consider what that implied. “Did you sleep?”
“No.”
“Did the police come?”
“No.”
That alarmed her. “Morgan, something’s really wrong. The windows were shot out! Surely someone heard—called the police.”
“Apparently not.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“Not much does these days,” he said and changed the subject. “I’ve been thinking. I have an idea.”
“What?”
“We order a new couch.”
His answer was not something she expected. In fact, she wondered for a moment if lack of sleep had robbed him of his faculties.
“A…couch?”
“Yeah. We find someone who will deliver a couch today. The delivery truck will have to use the delivery entrance. When it arrives, we’ll be waiting. I’ll pay for the couch and send it back to the store. And pay the driver to let us hitch a ride back to wherever he’s going. No one will think anything about a furniture delivery. Once we reach the furniture store or warehouse, we find a way out of the city.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “That’s good. But we’ll never find anyone to deliver something on such short notice.”
“With enough money you can get people to do just about anything,” he said in a bitter tone. “Believe me.”
Sara wasn’t about to argue or to question his bitterness. Everyone had baggage. One day she would want to know all of his. But today all she wanted was to get out of Washington. Morgan wouldn’t be safe here. She wasn’t sure where he would be safe, but she had to do whatever it took to find that place.
“Then let’s get busy,” she said. “I’ll get the phone book and we’ll start calling.”
“Ahead of you,” he said and rolled over to lift the phone book from the nightstand.
“Gotta get my pho—”
She stopped short when he tossed her phone to her.
“Mr. Johnny on the spot,” she said with a slight smile. “Okay, rip out some of those pages and hand them over.”
It took them two hours to find a furniture store that would agree to deliver a sofa the same day. But then Morgan offered an astronomical amount, along with a ludicrous tale about how he’d been smoking a cigar and inadvertently set the couch on fire and now his wife would be home that evening and his life was going to be hell unless he did something fast.
Sara had a hard time believing anyone would fall for that tale, but a small mom-and-pop furniture store did. They promised to be there by mid-afternoon.
“So now what?” Sara asked when Morgan finished making the arrangements.
“Now we wait.”
“We could get killed waiting. You don’t think that killer’s just going to sit around and wait, do you? He’s going to figure out a way to get to us.”
“We don’t have a choice, Sara. We have to wait on the truck.”
“Well, I’m not the world’s best at patience,” she said and started to get up from the bed. He pulled her back down.
“Then maybe we should keep your mind off the wait,” he suggested.
Sara’s eyes popped open wide. “You’ve got to be kidding? People are trying to kill you and you want to—”
“No one’s trying to kill me now,” he interrupted in a teasing tone, pulling her closer.
“Morgan!” she exclaimed, pushing away from him and turning to get off the bed. “Don’t you realize what’s going on here? Someone wants to kill us! We can’t just act like it’s another normal day.”
“It’s been hours since the attempt,” he pointed out. “Nothing happened all night and I don’t think there will be another such attempt. Especially not in broad daylight. It would be too risky, too much of a chance of being spotted. Trust me, whoever it is may be watching but they won’t make another move on us until we try to leave.”
“You can’t know that!”
“Yes I can.”
“How? How can you know what that killer is thinking?”
“Because that’s what I’d do,” he replied. “If I’d attempted an assassination with a high-powered rifle through a window and failed, I wouldn’t try it again. The target would be on the watch for it. Just like we are now with drapes drawn.
“And I wouldn’t try breaking in on them in a place like this. There’s too much security—guards and cameras. Again, too risky.
“But what I would do is wait until the target left, and pick them off on the street. In the resulting confusion there would be cover to get away.
“But, Morgan, just because you have it reasoned out that way doesn’t mean—”
“Sara,” he whispered. “I know. But it doesn’t matter. Not now. All that matters now is that I want you. I need you, Sara.”
No other argument would have swayed her as effectively. But her fear kept her rooted in place. Her mind filled with the image of the man in the window, that rifle pointed at their apartment. He could be out there now, waiting for a chance to kill Morgan.
“Nooooo,” she put her hands to her head. She couldn’t let that happen. They needed time. Time to mak
e their escape. Just a few short hours. If only they could be safe for just a few short hours.
She lost track of her surroundings, was unaware that Morgan had gotten off the bed and was shouting her name, shaking her. Her mind was focused on only one thought. Staying safe until Morgan’s plan could be set into action—stopping any more attempts.
“Sara, look!” Morgan exclaimed, “Please. Look at the clock!”
She snapped to, hearing only the word clock. She looked at it. Stared at it. Counted to one hundred. Time did not change.
“You did that!” Morgan exclaimed. “You stopped time.”
She shook her head. “That’s impossible. If time was stopped then wouldn’t we be stopped too?”
“Who knows,” Morgan replied and went to look out of the window. “But this much I can tell you. Nothing is moving out there.”
“What should I do? How do I make it start back?” She paced back and forth, hugging her arms tight around herself.
“Maybe we don’t want it to start. Sara, if you can keep time frozen then this might be our chance to get away. We’ll have to travel on foot but in just an hour we could be miles from here.”
“You’re right!” She started gathering up things but he stopped her. “Just get your purse.”
“But my computer—”
“It can all be replaced. Come on, let’s go.”
They hurried through the apartment and into the hall. Morgan punched the elevator button. Nothing happened. No lights, no sound. Nothing. He punched it a few more times and they waited. Still nothing.
“I guess it’s like the clocks—stopping time stopped the elevator,” she suggested.
“Then we take the stairs.”
When they reached the lobby level they stopped and gawked. The man at the front reception desk was frozen, his mouth open as he held the telephone receiver to his ear. A woman was halted in mid-stride, looking over her shoulder at the man on the phone.
“This is a little creepy.” Sara reached for Morgan’s hand and they hurried to the glass doors.
And found them immovable. The automatic opening function had frozen. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t open them. “Let’s try the stairs to the parking garage,” Morgan said and pulled her along as he raced for the rear exit.
