by DJ Erfert
“Wow, you really did?” Lucy sat forward and got a better view of his face, just to see if he was serious. “Did you go through them first?” She suddenly remembered her snooping.
Johnny shook his head. “No. I figured if I hadn’t needed anything out of them since my divorce, then I probably didn’t want it any longer.” He took her hand. “But I did help load the truck, and I saw the tape on one of the boxes had been cut open.” Glancing in her direction, he asked, “Is there anything you want to ask me?”
His fingers were wrapped through hers, reminding Lucy how their lives have been intertwined since he first touched her on the staircase. She wanted to be honest with him, so she asked the hard question even when her first thought was to give him his privacy.
“How did you lose your little girl?”
“Fair question.” He tightened his grip on her hand. “Natalie and I lived together for a couple of years while we were going through Cal State University.” He took in a cleansing breath. “I asked her to marry me our senior year. We had a simple wedding on the beach that summer after graduation. Nat told me she was pregnant four months after that, and I—” He sighed. “I went out and bought stuff, in pink, and in blue, and in purple, and in yellow.” He gazed over at Lucy again. “You only opened the pink box. Anyway …”
Lucy waited and watched a muscle in Johnny’s jaw twitch. He must be clenching his teeth while he worked through his emotions. Sadness touched her heart, and then remorse at what might’ve happened, knowing the packages were never opened.
“Natalie was studying to be a psychologist. She said she needed to get her doctoral degree to stand out from the crowd and that having children didn’t fit in with her plans.”
“Oh, no,” Lucy whispered.
“Nat told me to take back all the things I had bought for the baby. She … had an abortion without ever asking me how I felt. Like I didn’t count.”
Compassion filled Lucy’s chest ’til it felt like her ribs would shatter, and heated tears pushed to the edge of her eyes. Lucy couldn’t find any words. She had no doubt that if it could have been possible for him to have had carried the child he would have, in a heartbeat—a child’s heartbeat. With as nurturing and loving as he had been to Lucy, he would have made a spectacular father.
“I tried to make our marriage work after that, but she … she wouldn’t let me touch her again. She withdrew from me, not just physically, but emotionally, too. Nat left me two months later and moved to Denver. Now she’s married again, and she wrote on her Facebook wall last month that she’s pregnant.”
“I’m sorry,” Lucy finally choked out, squeezing his hand. She felt his responding fingers wrap around her hand tighter.
“Me too.”
Lucy let Johnny concentrate on the downtown traffic while she tried to control her anger at a woman she’d never met. She hadn’t liked Monica when she’d lied to her the other morning, but she was a kitten with tiny claws compared to the shredding talons his ex-wife indiscriminately used to tear out Johnny’s heart.
Watching out the side view mirror, Lucy wiped a tear from her cheek and quietly said, “Cripes, not now, not again.”
“What is it?”
“We’re being followed.”
He looked out the rearview mirror. “Which car is it? Is it a black Suburban again?”
Lucy pointed at the next corner. “Turn here.” She kept her eyes on the car behind them. “No,” she said when he took the turn. “It’s a light blue, two door sedan. A Lexus, I think.”
Johnny let out a deep breath. “That’s Sunny’s car. Didn’t she tell you?”
Lucy dropped his hand and twisted around in her seat. She was able to see in through the windshield of the car when it turned the corner after them. An attractive woman wearing oversized sunglasses was driving, and a big, handsome man with short hair was in the passenger side. Dusty’s hulky profile was very distinctive. Lucy relaxed into her seat. “I guess I forgot Sunny would follow us.”
“Sunny’s worried about you.” Johnny took her hand again. “Almost as much as I am.”
“But I feel okay—except this headache.”
“Maybe that isn’t the only reason she’s worried about you. You were attacked this morning, remember?”
“Yeah, like I could forget.”
“Sunny told me she’d keep you safe, and I believe her.”
“I know she felt like she let me down, especially after Sergio called in his report about the syringe.”
“Sodium pentothal, otherwise known as truth serum,” Johnny said. “Add cocaine in the mix, and it made a deadly cocktail. I’m glad that woman wasn’t able to inject any of it into you. Even your strong heart wouldn’t have lasted very long with that in your bloodstream.”
Lucy leaned her head against the neck rest and watched Johnny drive, appreciating his warm hand around hers. The strength she felt in his secure grip made her wonder if they might have a future together, as a couple. He’d hinted his feelings about her. He’d even made fairly drastic changes in his life because of her.
“No wonder Sunny’s shadowing me so closely. I think I appreciate it. Besides, I might need her help—”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence before a phantom icy wind swept across her face and ripped her breath away.
Sixteen
The world quit moving around him and sank into the dead, flat black, white, and reflective chrome Johnny remembered from the last time. The sounds of the busy traffic disappeared. He could see himself as still as a colorless photograph. Everything drained away to the same monotones grays as him, except up ahead where a huge apartment complex was still draped in the most vibrant colors.
Johnny knew something terrible, something deadly, was going to happen to a lot of people in that building.
The perspective suddenly changed. He wasn’t in the truck on the road any longer. He stood in a windowless hallway where a door had the number 201 painted on it in gold, and just as quickly he stood inside an apartment where a man was lying on a couch, asleep.
The rooms looked normal, nothing out of place. Things were neat, tidy. There was a single empty bowl with a spoon next to it on the end of the kitchen table, and the stove had a sauce pan on a burner—except there wasn’t a flame under the pan and the knob was turned. In the next instant he saw the bottom of the water heater light up like a flame thrower, igniting the room’s air and simultaneously blowing out every window, the explosion raining glass-infused fire out onto the street below.
Things changed.
Time rewound.
Johnny brought his truck to a quick stop as he closed his eyes.
“Johnny, don’t stop,” Lucy said, her voice warbling.
He opened his eyes and studied the bright cityscape with his heart thumping hard in his throat. Everything was in intense color again. He looked up ahead and saw the building he knew would be on fire—he just didn’t know how soon.
“Get going,” Lucy said. “We don’t have that much time.”
Johnny hit the accelerator and went around several cars before parking next to a curb directly beneath the windows of the apartment they intended to enter.
“Do we have enough time?”
Lucy threw open her door. “I’ve never had a window and not had enough time to change one, if that’s what I decided to do.”
“Are you up to it?”
Lucy ran to the front of his truck. “I am if you are!”
Johnny glanced behind him and saw Dusty jump out of Sunny’s car. “This is going to be impossible to explain to them, but”—he ran over to the sidewalk and grabbed Lucy’s hand—“if we can prevent this whole blasted building from going up in flames and stop even a single person from dying,”—they ran toward the lobby doors—“then that’s the job I signed up for eight years ago.”
“Thought so,” Lucy said, running along side Johnny.
They pushed through the lobby door and headed straight toward the stairwell. The elevator would be too sl
ow. Johnny felt time pressing down on his shoulders like a five hundred pound weight. They reached the second floor within seconds.
There were three hallways to choose from, but Johnny already knew which direction to go. As they started down the narrow hall, Dusty and Sunny were right behind them.
“Johnny!” Dusty yelled. “What happened?”
They stopped at the end of the hallway in front of a white door with 201 painted in gold.
Lucy took a deep breath. “I smell gas!”
“It was a gas explosion.” Johnny whispered loud enough for Lucy to hear.
Johnny and Lucy stood side by side. Each of them raised a foot and kicked the door together. The wooden doorframe splintered apart, slapping the door loudly against the wall behind it. The odor of rotten eggs flooded out of the apartment.
“Sunny, call 911 and get the fire department on its way, and then start evacuating the building,” Dusty said as he quickly moved next to Johnny.
It was just as Johnny saw it. “Dusty—” He pointed to the couch. “Get him outside.”
In three giant steps Dusty knelt by the unconscious man and pressed his fingers to his neck. “He alive!” He grabbed an arm and lifted him over his shoulder as he stood upright.
“Lu, turn off the stove and I’ll get the water heater. Go!” Johnny sprinted as Lucy turned toward the kitchen. The smallish water heater around the corner from the kitchen was a newer gas version with an electrical start. Johnny twisted a knob and turned off the heater. Then he remembered the stove. It would have the same kind of ignition. If Lucy turned the knob too slowly, the spark would blow them all up.
“Holy crap,” Johnny muttered, his heart accelerated as he ran into the kitchen. Lucy’s hand neared the knob just as he grabbed her and shoved her away. She hit the adjacent cabinet hard. “I’m sorry, Lu,” he said, turning the stove’s burner knob all the way to the right.
Johnny ran to the living room window and pushed it up. The wind blew in fresh air. He moved to the next window and opened it, creating a crosswind. Leaning out the window, he gulped in a deep breath.
The explosion never happened. The flames catapulting millions of tiny shards of glass hadn’t materialized, at least not yet. He turned around. “Did we do it?” he asked, expecting to find Lucy smiling, but instead he found her on her knees holding her stomach. “Lucy!” In the few quick steps he needed to get to her, his mind raced through all the things that could be wrong with her. He touched her, feeling how warm she was. Lifting her chin, he saw her flushed face. She’d been overcome by the gas.
“I’ve got you.” Johnny lifted her from the floor and carried her from the room. Sunny met them in the hallway. Unfortunately, the worried doctor insisted on taking her pulse just as her body temperature dropped down cold as ice.
Johnny knew two things for sure. One, they were able to change the outcome of the fire. Two, Lucy’s doctor probably wouldn’t believe anything less than the whole truth, and most likely not even that.
As they reached the sidewalk, along with a few inhabitants of the building, the first of the fire engines pulled up in front of the apartment building, blocking his truck. Johnny didn’t want to set Lucy down on the sidewalk. A rescue unit pulled up behind the big red engine. By then Lucy’s body temperature returned to normal.
“Put her down, Johnny,” Sunny ordered.
“She’s okay,” he said.
Lucy lifted her head and coughed, again and again.
Johnny dropped her legs but kept hold of her shoulders.
“She’s inhaled too much gas. And so have you,” Sunny said as she pushed Johnny toward the rescue truck. “You both need some pure oxygen. And then—we need to talk.”
~*~
“Why did you push me away like that?” Lucy lifted her oxygen mask away from her face. She sat on the gurney inside the rescue unit next to Johnny. The paramedic who had treated them had just stepped outside, leaving them alone.
“I remembered after I turned off the water heater that you said you didn’t know how to cook.”
“Uh-huh. So, you thought you’d dislocate my shoulder to encourage me to learn?”
Johnny ran his hand along her cheek and chuckled. “Did you know that modern gas stoves don’t have pilot lights burning any longer?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“When you turn the knob, there’s a small area that triggers a spark as the gas flows through the line to the burner.”
Lucy closed her eyes and groaned. “I might have blown us up by my ignorance.” She leaned into him, wrapping her arms around his chest. “I’m sorry. I can shoot a bee off a flower at a hundred yards. I can fight hand to hand with men the size of Dusty—and win. I can even push little girls off their bicycles without breaking a fingernail, yet I can’t turn off a stove without endangering a whole freakin’ building.”
Johnny pulled her closer. “It’s okay, honey.”
“I wonder,” she said as she moved her lips along his neck, “if this window really belonged to you and not me.”
He moved her back by the shoulders. “What do you mean? I can’t see my own windows. Yours leaked over to me because we were holding hands, that’s all. I don’t even have the fainting side effect like you do.”
“Thank goodness for that, but, Johnny, you were able to decipher what you saw in the window almost instantly. I saw a couple of rooms and a man sleeping, and then a fire started. I couldn’t smell the gas during the window, so I didn’t know what caused, or would have caused it until we were in the hallway. If you hadn’t been there, I couldn’t have kicked the door down on my own. It took both of us to do it. Yet you were there, and you knew what to do.”
Lucy shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. “If I’d been driving alone, I don’t think I’d have had that window at all. I don’t know why is it that I have to see things so horrific anyway, except to try to change the outcome for the better.” Lucy gazed out of the window across the street.
“What do you mean to try? I thought that if you had the chance to see what bad thing happened, then you would be able to stop it, like you did with us.”
Lucy traced her index finger between his furrowed brows where it had creased. She hadn’t told him everything. There hadn’t been time. “There isn’t a guarantee with these windows, Johnny. Yes, I have them, and, yes, I have the choice to interfere, but there’s been a time or two where I’ve made it worse than what the original window showed me. It’s then that I’ve regretted doing anything at all.
“And what about the rest of the deaths in the city for that matter, either accidental or murderous? I certainly can’t stop them all from happening. I read the newspaper. There was a gang shooting in a barrio the night before I had to destroy that film I was transporting, where three young teenagers died. I didn’t have a window then. Why not? Did it happen too far away? Or maybe they weren’t …” Lucy grappled to find the right words. “Worthy of saving? On the same night across town, a car crash killed a father and his two kids, crippling the mother, and I didn’t see a window then either. Why not? What can be more innocent than little children?”
Pressing her fingers to her temples, Lucy tried to subdue the throbbing ache in her skull. “Obviously I can’t be in two places at the same time, or I’d be a superhero and have to wear glasses during the day so nobody would recognize me.”
Johnny ran his knuckles along her soft cheek. “Glasses couldn’t keep me from knowing you.” He wrapped his hands around her face, sliding his fingers through her hair. “I think I’m falling in love with you, Lu.”
He held her still and kissed her, tenderly, at first. The throbbing in her head quickly became pulses of pleasure as he deepened the kiss. Lucy relaxed against his chest, letting the sensations flood every part of her body until voices outside the truck interrupted them, and he slowly pulled away from her.
Laying her head against his shoulder, she said, “I’ve never had a window that was beyond my immediate reach, but sometimes I’d
find myself going places I never intended, like when we turned down this street. We only went this way because I thought we were being followed, but if we had kept going straight then this building might be on fire right now.”
Lucy motioned out the window with a quick point of her finger. “Maybe there is a reason you came into my life when you did. You saved all those people from being incinerated by the gas explosion like—” She paused as the idea fully sank into her thoughts. She tenderly ran her hand up his muscular chest. “Like it was a gift from God.”
“So you don’t think you’re cursed any more?”
“Look at all those people, Johnny. That woman’s holding a baby. He looks only a few months old. We know they would have died a horrible, terrible death, but because of that window, they get to live for another day, or until they are very old. They won’t consider today anything more than a hiccup in their routine and maybe a good story to tell at their next family dinner. No, I think I’ve been looking at this from the wrong angle since I was little. I never understood how much of a blessing being able to head off tragedies like this is.”
“To you and to them.” Running his hand down her back, he asked, “How’s your head?”
Lucy sighed and sat up. “My head hurts.”
“It’s from the gas.”
“Why did I react so differently to it than you?”
Johnny ran his fingers through her hair around to the back of her head. “Because of your concussion. You should still be in the hospital and not out here running around saving people.”
“Or going to meetings with assistant directors?”
“Yeah, that too.”
“I hope you understand that a little headache isn’t going to change my mind about finding Gabe.”
Johnny whispered, “There isn’t anything I can say—or do—to keep you here?”
“I—I need to make sure those people don’t come after me again, Johnny. And the only way I can do that is to go after them. Please understand.”
Nodding slowly, he said, “I think I do.”
