Emily Heart was his Holy Grail. The story of all stories. The missing red-headed girl who hadn’t aged in decades.
He grabbed his remote, hit rewind, waited until he found the image of the girl, and then pressed pause. He picked up the phone and called his nineteen-year-old nephew, Andy, who he knew would still be asleep in bed after his late-night men’s hockey league game.
The phone buzzed for thirty seconds, then a groggy voice answered. “Hello? Mom? Is that you? What’s the matter?”
“It’s not your mother, sunshine. It’s Uncle Jim. Wake up. I need your help. Tell me how to save a screen shot from the TV onto my new tablet.”
“You need what?”
“I need to know how to do a screen capture of something on the news and save it to my tablet.”
Andy yawned. “Why don’t you get one of the geeks from the newspaper to help you? It’s their job. Not mine.”
“That might be a little difficult.”
“Why?”
“Well, technically, I don’t work there anymore.”
“You got fired?”
“I quit. They wouldn’t let me cover the stories I wanted. So, I walked.”
“Not that Emily Heart nonsense again. You need to let it go already.”
“Look, I know you and your mother think I’m nuts, but I’m telling you, there are things in this world that defy explanation. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes. Like this girl. She’s real. As a matter a fact, she’s on the news right now. That’s why I’m calling. Will you help me or not?”
* * *
“Not now!” Emily screamed at herself, fighting back a wave of panic as she watched the TV news in the Irish Cultural Center. Her body wasn’t ready for another jump, not yet. She did a quick breathing exercise she’d learned from Master Liu, a kind and enigmatic Kung Fu teacher she’d met back in the beginning, between her third and fourth jumps. It worked—she averted the adrenaline rush that would have pushed her over the top, triggering the countdown.
A sense of dread chilled her bones when various street reporters and the talking heads at the news station discussed the shootout and took turns theorizing what might have happened. In the end, what did all of their conjecture matter? The facts were clear. A little girl was missing, and two policemen were dead. She hated cops, but didn’t want any of them to die. They were only doing their job. She just wanted them to leave her alone. She knew that if the cops ever got their hands on her, they’d eventually discover who she was and where she was from, bringing her time jump ability to full light. Once they knew her secret, they’d lock her up at some black site government lab where there’d be endless experiments, blood samples, CT scans, and God knows what else. She’d be studied and dissected like a rabid dog.
Then her mind latched onto the broadcast while the anchorwoman mentioned the three dead gang members. Wait a minute—three? The two in the kitchen she could understand, but who was the third? Was it the asshole that she had given the broken wrist to? He could have picked up the machine gun with the other hand and used it when the police showed up. “Damn it,” she said, wishing she’d hurt him worse than she did. Then the officers would still be alive.
A thought popped into her mind. “Oh my God! Derek?” Her heart was hit with a sharp pain that nearly split it in half. Did Derek decide to join his pals and shoot at the police? She couldn’t bring herself to accept the possibility that he might be casualty number three. It would mean that everything she had sensed about the pretty boy in the basement was wrong. Was she losing her ability to read people and sense their intent? Jumps were getting shorter, so maybe her gifts were fading, too.
And what about Junie? Where did she go? The only explanation Emily could come up with was that Junie had heard the shootout with the cops and took off running instead of enlisting their help. That’s what Emily would have done if she’d been there and seen the situation spin sideways.
She returned her focus to the screen when someone else on the broadcast started talking about rumored connections between the Locos gang and a Russian white slavery ring that had moved into the area. They reported that the older female accomplice may have escaped the shootout, absconding with the young girl to complete the sale. Older accomplice? Absconded? What? Her mouth dropped open. They just accused her of kidnapping Junie to sell her.
“Sell her? Disgusting,” she mumbled.
Emily was furious with herself. “I only have myself to blame. I broke rule number one: no close friends, and rule number seven: don’t get involved. And look what happened.” She put her head in her hands, thinking of only Junie and her tiny smile. “She’s missing and alone, and it’s all your fault. Now the police are after you. So much for blending in. Dumb, Em, dumb.”
She had to come up with a plan, fast. She needed to think, but she wanted to cry. Had anyone seen her? Would they know her whereabouts? She’d bumped into one homeless guy in the park after her jump, but he was totally out of it. She doubted that he even knew what was happening. Ugggh. She didn’t know. She hated not knowing. She was a mess. And when she was a mess, only one thing really worked. Master Liu’s meditation. His words echoed in her mind. No thoughts, Em. No emotions. No extremity. Return to center, embrace the moon, find the calm within.
She stood up and put her arms over her head, stretching from side to side. She let her arms fall to her sides and rolled her shoulders seven times—each with more rotational force than the previous. She sat on the floor, cross-legged, and followed the steps Master Liu had taught her ages ago. He was long dead, just a pinpoint in the distant memory of history for the rest of the planet; but it was only a year ago in her time. She missed him. She needed him.
Breathe, Em. Breathe. Lean forward. Lengthen the spine. Relax the shoulders. Center the head over the sacrum. Cup the hands together, palms up, just in front of the lower belly. Cradle the lower Dan Tian. Expand your diaphragm as you breathe in, relax as you breathe out, letting all external thoughts fade to black.
Emily closed her eyes and followed her breath into the shadows of calm.
* * *
“Okay, bud, got it. Thanks. I owe you one, Andy,” Jim Miller said before hanging up the phone, ending the call with his nephew. He walked out of the kitchen to the closet in the hallway, where he kept a box filled with all his spare computer cables. Andy had told him exactly how to grab the image from the TV and transfer it to his computer. Not too complicated, after all. He’d cleaned up the mess in the kitchen while listening to the instructions.
He returned to the kitchen with what he thought was the right HDMI cable, plugged it into the side of his tablet, and was about to run it to his flat screen when he heard the police scanner on the coffee table begin to crackle.
“All units, all available units. Code 2 Irish Cultural Center. Possible 10-29F from Code 187/207 last night downtown disturbance. Repeat, all units, all available units. Code 2 Irish Cultural Center. Repeat, possible 10-29F from Code 187/207 last night downtown disturbance.”
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Could it be true? Could it be her? The redhead who didn’t age? “Code 2” meant urgent, proceed to location without lights or siren. “10-29F” meant suspect wanted in a felony. “187” meant homicide, and “207” meant kidnapping.
Jim threw on some clothes and then decided he didn’t want to take the new tablet along. He wasn’t sure how to operate the new recording software, so he grabbed his smartphone instead. Its video resolution wasn’t as good, but the battery was charged, and it would be enough to document scenes and tape interviews.
Reporting sure had changed, he thought. It wasn’t like the old days of pad, pencil, and mini-cassette recorders. Technology was a wonderful thing, when it worked. Scratch that, it was a wonderful thing when it came with a set of instructions written in true English. Not those wafer-thin, microscopic manuals that start out written in Japanese, then get translated to German, then to Swahili, and then finally into some form of English that’s missing all the important s
tuff. Good God, the insanity of it all.
He ran out the door and hit the sidewalk in a full sprint. The Irish Cultural Center was just five blocks away from his refurbished Glassford Park bungalow.
* * *
Emily opened her eyes after her meditation trance in the Irish Cultural Center. She had made a plan.
Step One: Get the hell out of downtown. Any suburb will do. At this point, even Glendale by the Cardinals stadium, where all the hookers and pimps hung out would be better. Step two: Find a drugstore, snag supplies. Step Three: Find a bathroom. Cut hair short, dye it black. Step Four: Find shelter. Step Five: Lay low. Step Six: Repeat number 5. Don’t get anxious.
She loved Master Liu’s meditation. She would go in a total wreck and come out completely put back together. Just like this time. She was confident she could handle this situation. She’d been through worse. “It’s all gravy, Em. Just avoid the cops long enough to change your look.”
She grabbed the gym bag and stuffed as much food as she could into it. Dried goods and canned food kept the best, but they were heavy. She took a can opener from one of the drawers—clutch. A can of food was no good if you couldn’t open it. She was tempted to get another bag and fill it with food, too, but she had to keep it light. She might have to run at any moment. Stay fast, she told herself.
She slung the bag over her shoulder and checked the clock on the wall.
5:47 a.m.
Good, she thought. The streets will still be mostly empty. She could walk out the front door and act like she was supposed to be there and on her way to school. Blend in. Stay calm. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t run.
She ran downstairs and snatched a weathered Arizona Diamondbacks baseball cap she’d seen in one of the boxes. She pulled it low over her eyes and managed to stuff most of her hair into it. She took the steps two at a time on the way back up. The infusion of activity had cleared her head even more. She felt normal. Well, normal enough. The front door was a bad idea. She let herself out the side door, into the rose garden that led to North Central Avenue, right by the park.
As soon as she stepped outside, she saw cops everywhere: on the sidewalk by Central, in the park past the garden right in front of her, and coming around the side of the building to her left. There were squad cars parked in the middle of the street at both ends, blocking traffic at those weird cop angles that only cops know how to pull off.
“That’s her, man, right there!” yelled a homeless guy wearing a long, tattered overcoat, baggy blue pants that hung well past his feet and a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. He was standing on the sidewalk with a group of four cops, not fifty feet away from her. “See, I told you I saw her. Now where’s my fifty bucks?”
She turned and tried to go back into the building, thinking she could confuse them and leave from a different door. No luck. The door had locked behind her. The two cops that had been coming around the corner of the building to her left started running with guns drawn.
“Stop right there!” they both shouted. “Down on the ground, NOW!! Hands behind your head!”
She ignored them, knowing that they couldn’t shoot an unarmed girl. She sprinted across a patch of grass and vaulted herself over a low, green-painted wrought-iron fence that led to the park. The gym bag caught on one of the narrow iron caps sticking up past the top rail of the fence. She spun, off balance, and fell to the ground on her back, knocking the wind out of her. She gasped for breath as the baseball cap fell off her head, releasing her hair into the grass. The two cops were on her in a heartbeat.
One of them dug a knee into her lower back, grabbed her right arm and twisted it behind her, and then slapped a handcuff on her wrist. He grabbed her other arm and repeated the process. She felt like a twisted pig, being hog-tied for slaughter. He pulled her to her feet and got in her face. He had an ugly, sunburned bulldog face, pushed together like a twisted mashed potato. His beady brown eyes were filled with anger and his breath smelled awful, like stale coffee and cigarettes.
“Where’s the girl?” he demanded. “Is she inside?”
“She’s my friend. I didn’t kidnap her.”
“Where is she!” he yelled, pulling her arms up her back.
She screamed in pain, worried that the cop was going to break her arms. “You’re hurting me!”
“That’s the point, Red. Tell me what I want to know before I snap them like breadsticks.”
She was angry. Intensely angry, feeling her adrenaline kick in. She opened her mouth to say something, but thought better of it. She clamped it shut and held it in a tight, grim line. She was determined not to say anything. She let her anger build. Now she needed to jump—never mind the pain that waited for her on the other side.
“You want to play it like that, huh?” he growled. He turned to the cops on the sidewalk. “Search the building. The girl might be in there!” He turned back to her, running his hand over her butt. “Where you’re going, little girl, they’re going to love this little ass. Every night.”
He dragged her to one of the waiting squad cars and shoved her into the backseat face-first. Her knees hit the edge of the seat, sending her flying across the back of the vehicle, hitting her head on the door on the opposite side. She turned over, sat up, and looked back at him. He slammed the door and snarled at her through the window. Blood trickled down her forehead. She couldn’t hold back the hint of a smile that played at the corners of her mouth.
She turned away from the ugly cop and looked out the window. A man was standing six feet away, holding a cell phone at arm’s length from his body, half-watching the screen, half-watching her. He had obviously just videotaped the whole scene.
Emily’s spine tingled, deep down at the base. Finally, she thought, knowing that the countdown had started.
CHAPTER FOUR
Jim Miller stood outside the Irish Cultural Center, letting the video on his cell phone roll as the police car made a U-turn and sped away. He couldn’t believe his luck—it was her. The redhead. And now he had primary video evidence that he could compare with all the photographs that he’d collected over the past eighteen years.
If someone had asked him a day earlier to be honest, he would’ve told them that he never really thought he’d crack this investigation. In the back of his mind, he’d always worried that he was wrong, or that he was missing something obvious. He’d spent countless hours studying the face of the girl in the photographs, memorizing every line, every detail, and every curve of her budding beauty. He saw her face in his sleep, and was consumed by the thought of finding her, knowing that if he ever spotted her again in a crowd or on the street, it would only be for a second, so he needed to be able to identify her instantly.
But what if he was wrong? What if the girls in the photos were not the same girl? What if they were cousins, sisters, or maybe even mother and daughter? Or just random lookalikes that his brain merged together and convinced him that they were the same girl?
His moment of doubt passed. He was one hundred percent sure. It was her. It had to be.
What he wasn’t one hundred percent sure of was why the police car had turned around and headed north, when the processing center was nine blocks south and three blocks west, depending on how you counted the blocks on the grid. Maybe the cop was agitated and had gotten himself turned around. Maybe he wanted to take the girl for a ride and cool her off before booking her. Impossible to say. Either way, Jim knew exactly where he had to take her.
He walked south, deciding to take the shortest route to West Madison, where he’d turn right and head over to wait at the entrance to the Maricopa County Jail. He knew they’d never let him inside to interview her, but there was nothing to stop him from poking around and asking a few questions. Freedom of the press was a wonderful thing. So was the new “Transparency Initiative” recently undertaken by the Phoenix Police Chief after what had happen two months earlier at a grade school only four miles away. So many senseless deaths. A misread by two of his rookie cops on patrol.
&
nbsp; He’d just crossed McKinley Street when a police cruiser passed him, speeding erratically down the street. Was it the same cruiser? He couldn’t tell. He thought so, but the car was driving too fast for him to be certain.
He watched the car swerve hard to the right, bouncing onto the sidewalk and taking out a trash can and a bus stop in the process. The car just missed two pedestrians as it caromed again, this time to the left and back into the street. The driver over-corrected and fishtailed—the back of the car swung all the way around to the left and the vehicle skidded to a stop in the middle of the road, facing the wrong way in the middle of the intersection, directly adjacent to the downtown post office.
Jim took off running and was there in less than thirty seconds. The cop who’d manhandled the redhead into the back of the car was slumped over the steering wheel, not moving. Jim looked into the backseat of the car, expecting to see the girl either struggling to get out or incapacitated by injury—but he saw neither.
What he saw was a black, smoking hole in the middle of the backseat. The redhead was nowhere to be found. He’d been watching the car the whole time—there was no way she could have escaped without him noticing.
Where had she gone?
Jim took out his cell phone and began taping the scene.
* * *
A car horn blared frantically, and the sound of skidding tires brought Emily back to consciousness—if you could call it that—after her time jump from the backseat of the police car.
She was in a mental fog and her legs and arms were shaking, making it difficult the keep her hands wrapped around her throbbing temples. Every sharp noise from the city bustling around her sent waves of pain into her ears, landing in her temples. She heard another horn and more skidding tires, followed by a loud crash—metal on metal—and the sound of breaking glass, making her head feel like it was going to explode. A wave of nausea came over her and she threw up. People were yelling. Angry people. More horns blaring.
Glassford Girl: Boxed Set (Complete Series) (Time Jumper Series) Page 4
