WINDOW OF TIME

by DJ Erfert

  They’d been watching each other when she’d had her “window.” The moment he thought she was in danger, he had sprung into action to save her. His compassion intrigued her. Any man who would choose to spend his career in a field exclusively helping others must be very special, and a little bit of a risk taker too. Fighting fires wasn’t for wimps.

  Lucy wished she knew who he was, but her chances of having a normal conversation with him now seemed impossible, even if she did run into him again. She’d thrown herself off a staircase. How could she ever explain that without telling the truth—a truth he certainly wouldn’t—couldn’t—believe?

  Lucy lifted her feet and kicked the boxes away in frustration. As she brushed away the dirt from her jeans, her heart sank when she discovered her purse was missing. “Cripes! No, no, no!”

  A thorough search of the surroundings turned up nothing besides trash. Lucy peered around the corner of the building and studied the street before backtracking to the office staircase. After looking down from above but unable to see through the dense leaves, she climbed up the same ficus tree that facilitated her escape just a half hour before, hoping to find the bag hanging on a limb. Besides getting some odd looks from a few people in the lobby, nobody stopped her. All she found was a piece of her shirtsleeve stuck on the end of a thin branch. Lucy pushed up her torn, short sleeve and looked at her skin.

  The small cut next to her shoulder hadn’t hurt at the time, but now her arm throbbed at being injured. Lucy leaned back and sat in the tree for several minutes, trying to figure out what to do next as the leaves stirred softly around her. The sound gave her the willies. The huge ficus grew inside a building where the natural wind didn’t exist. The air conditioner caused the movement instead of God. In the shelter of the thick leaves, she heard the whisperings of her close call.

  She’d almost been killed.

  The window had included Lucy. That was something that had never happened before. Although she hadn’t seen herself, she’d seen that man aim his gun in her direction.

  He was going to shoot her, of that she had no doubt. If she hadn’t escaped, he’d have shot five other people in a public building to get to her, and it left Lucy fuming. Such an open display didn’t make any sense. And if that wasn’t bad enough, those men-in-gray had ruined her perfect track record.

  She was a high-level courier, and the package she was to deliver to the Information Center at the LA branch of the agency tomorrow had been in her handbag’s built-in false bottom.

  Lucy was upset at herself that she’d lost the “game” because of two foreign agents too stupid to blend into the crowd. More than that, though, she was angry that she hadn’t noticed she was being followed before she reached the staircase. They’d probably found her purse and her hidden package, if they could navigate the secret compartment that is. To top it off, she didn’t even have cab fare.

  “Excuse me, lady?”

  A city cop stood at the bottom of the tree staring up at her. From the half-grin he wore, he wasn’t taking his present call very seriously. He motioned at Lucy with a quick point of his finger from her to the floor. She waved and then dutifully complied.

  “Do you have ID?” the officer asked, as he carefully looked her over.

  “I would if I hadn’t lost my purse,” Lucy said. They had protocols for situations like this. “If you’ll call my work, they’ll tell you who I am, and then I’ll get chewed out later.”

  “Okay,” he said, chuckling. “Tell me your name and your supervisor’s number.”

  The slight sarcasm she heard from the officer while he took out his cell phone wasn’t surprising. She didn’t trust anybody, so why should a man who routinely dealt with criminals trust her? “I’m Special Agent Lucy James, and my boss here in LA is Assistant Director Candice Bancroft.”

  After she gave him the phone number, she waited and watched his light brown eyes as he heard the operator greet him. Lucy let the phrase, “Central Intelligence Agency, how may I direct your call,” run through her mind and paired it with the officer’s changing expression.

  The deep dimple creasing his left cheek might have shown his initial disbelief, but it disappeared as he listened. His brows rose higher as his stare locked onto Lucy’s. He might have been impressed with what he was being told, or maybe he was intimidated. Sometimes Lucy couldn’t tell the difference between the two. After an extremely brief and mostly one-sided conversation probably with Kate Laurence, her boss’s executive assistant, the officer closed his phone and let his gaze drift down over her once again.

  “Agent James, if you want to climb the tree again, I’ll stand by and wait until you’re done ... communing.”

  Lucy sighed. “No. I’m good. Thanks.”

  ~*~

  Lucy headed back to her hotel to report the loss of her package via her laptop computer. It took over an hour to walk back to the Hotel Shelter Island. By the time she reached the front desk, her feet hurt and her shirt, soaked with sweat, clung to her back, leaving her well past irritable and deep into cranky. She should have asked the cop for a ride.

  “Miss James, you look like you could use a drink,” Ken, the hotel’s desk clerk said.

  Lucy flexed her neck to the side until she felt it crackle and tried to smile at the clerk, but she just couldn’t quite get her lips to cooperate. “You’re right, Ken, but what I need more is a new key to my room. I lost my purse.”

  “I can do that for you right away.” He placed his open bottle of water on the counter top and slid it closer to Lucy, but as thirsty as she was, she’d rather have her tongue swell to triple its size and choke off her breathing than drink from his used bottle. His hair had so much oil in it the individual strands had plastered into a single coconut-scented shell, and his pencil-thin mustache looked seven decades out of place. His trimmed sideburns actually came to points like something out of a Star Trek movie.

  He clicked a few buttons on his machine before sliding a blank card key through the slot. “I understand you’ll be leaving us tomorrow,” Ken said as he held the replacement key out to Lucy’s waiting fingers.

  “That’s right.” She tried to take the card from his hand, but he wouldn’t let go. A less than civil thought flashed through her mind. By pinching a nerve at the base of this thumb and index finger, Lucy could create such intense pain in his hand that it would render him incapable of holding onto the card. Actually, his ability to hold onto anything for the next hour would be gone as well.

  Ken smiled. “I think this would be the perfect time for us to have an intimate dinner together, Lucille.” Leaning closer, he said, “I know the head chef at The Top Floor, and we can arrive any time you’re ready.”

  Her eyes drifted down to his scrawny neck. A quick blow with her fist to the base near his shoulder would stun him long enough for her to extract the key from his hand, casually walk to her room, and bolt the door. “Thank you, but no, Ken. I, uh, already have dinner plans.”

  He let go and held out his hands. “Ah, but you don’t know what you’re missing.”

  Lucy smiled when she said, “And lucky for you, you don’t either.” As she turned toward the stairs, Ken said something surprising.

  “Miss James, a man came to the desk asking for you about forty-five minutes ago, but I don’t think he waited for you.”

  A sudden burst of adrenaline surged through her veins at the unexpected news, prickling the fine hairs on the back of her neck in alarm. After flexing her fists a couple of times to dispel milding finger tingling from the excitement, Lucy walked away from the desk as she scanned the lobby.

  Ken wasn’t paying attention to her when she reached behind her back and discreetly took out the .38 police special revolver from its holster in her waistband. She hid the small weapon by her thigh and headed toward the staircase as she scanned the lobby. She looked between the tall potted plants, the large Romanesque-type pillars, and the over-stuffed leather furniture—places where two dangerous and armed foreign agents could hide
to ambush her. There were only a few people in the lobby.

  But if one of the men-in-gray had found her key card, wouldn’t they have used the key to search her room already? But then why would they have asked for her? It didn’t make sense. This “game” was never personal. Everyone just did his job. As she reached the bottom step, she heard a rich voice directly behind her.

  “Lucille James?”

  She turned around, swinging her gun up to the chest of the firefighter with the dark brown eyes—eyes that went wide staring down at the barrel of her weapon. She immediately dropped it to her side when she recognized him.

  “It’s you,” Lucy said, trying to catch her breath. She looked around to see if anyone else had seen her brandish the gun. Glancing over at Ken, she was glad to see him busy leering at another woman standing at his counter.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” the firefighter said.

  Lucy shook her head. “You didn’t.” That was her first lie to him. His dark brows slid up his forehead.

  “I’d hate to think you greet everyone this way.”

  Lucy holstered her gun and read the name silk-screened to his uniform t-shirt. “Only those who sneak up on me, Mr. Cartwright.”

  “Johnny,” he said. “My name is Johnny.”

  She scanned the lobby behind him to make sure he wasn’t followed. “How did you find me?” He reached behind his back, tugging at something in his belt. Lucy grabbed her gun again, swinging it out in time to aim at—her handbag. It wasn’t a gun. Where was her head? “Don’t …” she began, exhausted, “ever do that again.” She quickly holstered her weapon before she created an incident.

  Johnny nodded. “Yeah,” he said with a lowered voice. “I’m sorry, Agent James.”

  He’d found her ID and her hotel’s key card. It hadn’t been the foreign agents after all. But how far did he search her bag? As she reached to take it, he asked a startling question.

  “Did that man in the gray suit come after you for the envelope of money you were carrying?”

  He’d seen the agent? No! He couldn’t have. Lucy reflexively stepped away from him, trying to put distance between them. Her heel caught the bottom step, tripping her. She fell backward onto the thickly carpeted stairs. Something must’ve happened after she left.

  “Oh, crap,” he said, catching a flailing arm as she fell. “I’m sorry. I thought …” He let her go and sat down beside her, rubbing his hand around the back of his neck.

  “How?” Lucy asked. How did he know about the agents? Had they approached him after she got away? Did they threaten him? Her anxiety level rose as she looked around the lobby once more in case the agents had followed him.

  He picked up the bag he’d dropped and handed it to her. “I looked through your wallet to find your name and I saw the envelope.” Johnny leaned in closer, softening his voice. “I’ve never seen ten thousand in cash in one place before.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” Lucy whispered, taking her small bag from him. After opening the zippered top, she dug out the envelope, receipt, wallet, and keycard, and set them down next to her hip. The tiny-hinged compartment popped open when she slid a small button sideways, revealing her hidden package. Relief pushed aside the anxiousness as she took out the little plastic canister and grasped it in the palm of her hand. It hadn’t been lost. She was still in the game.

  “There were two big men dressed exactly alike in the gray suits,” Johnny said, his voice barely audible enough for her to hear.

  “What?” Lucy’s gaze popped up to the solemn man’s face.

  “I only saw one shoot us, but it never really happened—”

  The hotel’s staircase spun in a sharp half-circle around Lucy. The paintings on the walls left colorful swirling trails that disappeared into sudden blackness.

  ~*~

  A dull ache behind her eyes woke Lucy up. She lifted her hand, touched a wet cloth covering her forehead, and stared at the ceiling. She tried hard to remember how she’d gotten back to her room and what she had been doing before she went to bed.

  “Here, drink this.”

  Johnny’s gentle voice startled her, but it instantly brought back her memory. She tossed aside the cloth and found him sitting in a chair beside the bed holding a plastic cup filled with water, she assumed. Lucy slowly sat up, taking in the appearance of her room. On the dresser sat her handbag and holstered gun, along with her belt. The small plastic film canister sat in front of the holster. She wriggled her bare toes. He’d taken off her ankle boots and socks. She felt her jeans. The button was undone, and the zipper backed open slightly. Angry, Lucy jumped her stare up to his eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” Johnny said softly. “We’re taught to loosen the clothing of fainting victims for better blood circulation, but that’s as far as I went, I promise.” Holding out the glass, he said, “I think you’re dehydrated. You better drink as much of this as you can.”

  It took a few deep breaths to quell her temper. She needed to believe that he had helped her and not hurt her while she was unconscious. With shaky fingers, she took the glass from his hand. It wasn’t water. It looked like something he had dipped out of the toilet, and it tasted as bad.

  “Lemon-lime sports drink cut with water.” Johnny ran his hand along her forehead and then down onto her cheek. “You don’t have a fever, so I don’t think it’s any more serious than dehydration. Have you fainted before?”

  “No,” Lucy said quickly. Another lie.

  “Never?” He lifted her torn sleeve and found her wound.

  “How did I get up here?” Lucy sipped the nasty tasting liquid and watched the fireman disappear into the bathroom. When he came out again, he had another wet cloth in his hands.

  “I carried you.” He sat down on the bed next to Lucy’s knee and gently dabbed at the dried blood around her cut. “I wish I had my medical bag up here.” Frowning, he added, “I keep one behind the seat of my truck, but I didn’t want to leave you.”

  He didn’t want to leave me? Lucy gazed into the face of the stranger who chose to help her and saw gentleness in the eyes she once thought were plain brown. In the glow of the table lamp, they were rich with tiny flecks of green and gold, making them shimmer with the warmth of melted chocolate and fringed with long dark lashes any woman would envy. His dark hair was cut short but long enough she could run her fingers through it—if she wanted to. There was strength in his square jaw, a jaw that set a perfect canvas for his sensually heart-shaped mouth, with a full bottom lip—a lip ideal for—

  “Are you okay?”

  Lucy sat up straight when she realized she’d been staring at him, for how long she didn’t know. “Sure.” She placed the glass to her mouth and quickly drank down the rest of the toilet water.

  “How’s your head?” Johnny asked, taking the empty glass from her hand.

  Rubbing her temple, Lucy thought about how she should answer. Should she tell him the first thing that popped into her head, a lie of it’s fine, thanks? Or maybe … She watched him walk across the room and pour some more of the lemon-lime swill into her cup and fill it up the rest of the way with some bottled water. His question didn’t sound rhetorical, but sincere.

  “Why?” Lucy asked sharply, causing her head more pain in the process. He turned toward her as if she had thrown a pillow at him instead of a question. “Why do you care so much how I feel?” He moved over to the chair again and gave her the drink.

  Johnny leaned onto his knees with his elbows, folding his hands tightly together. He kept his gaze down. His chest filled with air twice before he spoke. “Something happened back on that staircase in City Hall. I touched you … and …”

  Lucy set the cup down on the nightstand and swung her legs off the bed, placing her bare feet on the floor next to his big boots. He’d clenched his hands so hard his knuckles were turning white. “What happened to you after I left?”

  Johnny’s brows pinched together. He released his grip and took Lucy’s arm until her palm faced upward. His
frown deepened as he stroked several bruises shaped distinctively like finger marks on the inside of her forearm.

  “It’s not your fault,” Lucy said, watching his worried face. “Did anything happen after I got away? To you or any one else?” She removed her arm from his gentle exam and rubbed her temple. “How do you know about the shooting?”

  “I saw it happen.” Johnny lifted his eyes and held her gaze. “But it really didn’t happen at all. I … imagined it. Yet you seem to know about it.”

  Lucy felt nauseatingly dizzy again. It was impossible. She’d been dealing with her curse since she’d been old enough to crawl, but always alone. Practically no one knew what she went through, not really anyway, and they certainly had never experienced it along with her. She felt his strong hands tighten around her shoulders, keeping her upright.

  “I think you need some food,” Johnny said. “You’ll feel better.”

  “I need a shower,” Lucy muttered. “I need to clear my head and think.”

  “Not if you’re going to fall down.” He kept his hands on her arms but let up on the pressure. “We need to talk …”

  “I know we do,” Lucy said curtly, raising her voice. “But I’m grungy and smelly.” She stood up, testing her balance before moving toward the dresser. “We’d stand a better chance of getting a table at a restaurant if I didn’t stink.”

  “A restaurant? I don’t think you should go out. Let me order room service.” Johnny stood up but stayed within arm’s reach.

  She shook her head. “I’ve had the hotel’s food. It pretty much sucks.” Opening her dresser, she said, “I think my stomach can handle a little egg flower soup, and I know just the place to find some.” She always kept her belongings in the drawers at whatever place she stayed. It made her feel like it was more of a home than just a temporary flop. “I’ll try not to take too long.” After she found a pretty shirt in the closet, she grabbed a clean pair of jeans and headed for the bathroom. “But I have to warn you, I’m going to wash my hair, and it takes a while to blow it dry.”

  “Lucille—”