She pried her eyes open. All she could see was asphalt and a storm drain. Then a pair of shoes stepped in front of her vision. She looked up.
“Hey, girl, what the hell are you doing? What’s the matter with you? You trying to get yourself killed!?” a gruff, agitated voice said.
“Shit!” she snapped. “Where am I?”
She struggled to her knees and looked up and into the face of a hairy, olive-skinned, middle-aged man wearing boy-sized khaki cargo shorts and a red and black plaid shirt. He had a thick mustache, a bulging belly, and a face that was covered with gray and black stubble. A lit cigar jerked up and down in the corner of his mouth as he talked. Behind him was a yellow taxicab with its engine running, and a street sign that said Glassford Street.
He kept talking, but her ears started to ring and she could no longer make out his words.
She decided to stand up but her legs weren’t ready. She dropped to one knee, feeling her skin smash into the hot pavement. She tried again and this time she made it, though her head was spinning, making it difficult to balance. She steadied herself and looked around. She was in the middle of a street, with traffic rushing by in the opposite lane across the median. Behind the taxi, one car had rear-ended another. The sun was pounding down on her from directly above. Noon, she thought. Lunch rush hour. A small crowd of people began to gather around her. Two jumps in eight hours. Not good.
“—Going to call the cops. You must be crazy!” the short dark man said, throwing his hands up as he walked in a tight, angry circle with a cell phone stuck to his ear.
No cops, she thought.
Emily turned away, searching for an escape route.
The man—he must have been the cab driver—grabbed her above the elbow and tried to spin her around. Emily reacted instantly. She pulled away from him, twisting her dominant hand into her body, then folded her arm at the elbow as she prepared to strike. She completed a 360-degree body spin, bringing her elbow around with enough force to make contact with the man, cracking his nose. She followed her elbow strike with another roundhouse maneuver, this time landing a blow with her foot into his chest. He fell to the ground in an awkward clump.
“Compliments of Master Liu,” she told him with attitude, as her mind cleared a bit more. Her eyes began to focus normally.
She looked at each member of the small crowd that had gathered around her. Their eyes were wide and full of astonishment. Or was it fear? She couldn’t tell which.
“Did you see that?” one of them said.
“No, never,” answered one of the others.
“Back up,” a third one told the rest of the group.
Obviously, they’d never seen a naked, red-headed teenage girl take out a stout Greek cabbie with a wicked two-blow karate spin in the middle of lunchtime traffic in downtown Phoenix.
So much for laying low, she thought.
Some of the dozen onlookers took out their cell phones and pointed them at her, and then aimed them at the cab driver who was on the ground, groaning and holding his face. She’d landed both shots perfectly. Center mass, just like she’d been taught. Behind him, the cab’s door was hanging open, its tailpipe still pumping pollution into the air.
“Take the car,” a female voice said from the crowd behind her. The voice sounded familiar. She replayed it in her mind. It was her mother’s voice. But how can that be? “Mom?” she said, spinning around to find her; but Candi wasn’t there. Everywhere she looked, all she saw were men with their mouths agape and their eyes checking out every inch of her body. She covered up her breasts and pressed her legs together. She kept looking, but there was not a single woman in the crowd. But she couldn’t give up, not yet.
“Mom? Where are you? Mom! Mom!”
“Someone call 9-1-1,” one of the men said.
“Already done,” someone else said. “Cops are on their way.”
“Grab her. Don’t let her get away.”
Emily decided that it was time to disappear, and fast. She didn’t know how to drive, but decided to try it. It was better than running down Glassford Street, especially in broad daylight and with no clothes on. It’s pretty easy to follow the trail of a naked girl through the streets. You can’t exactly blend in with your cookie exposed for all to see.
She kicked the first man who approached her in the knee, sending him to the ground. Then a firm jab to the next man’s throat. The other men froze. She ran past the cabbie and through the growing crowd of gawkers, who spread apart and made a path for her down the middle. Cell phones were out, and she knew she was being videoed by at least a half a dozen people.
She hopped in the cab, slammed the door, grabbed the wheel, and pressed the accelerator hard to the floor. The engine revved wildly, but nothing happened. The cab didn’t move.
The people standing near the cab scattered in all directions.
The cab driver got to his feet, ran to the driver’s side and began pounding on the window. “Hey! What are you doing? That’s my cab! You can’t take my cab!”
She moved the shifter on the steering column to “D” and jammed on the gas again. The car lurched forward and sped south on Glassford Street with squealing tires and a fishtailing rear end. She figured she had five minutes, tops, before the police had the area cordoned off. Maybe only three minutes.
She thought quickly. Where to go? She turned left on East Van Buren Street, then left again on North 12th Street. If she could get to the other side of Glassford Park, she knew a spot where she could ditch the cab and score some clothes.
Then it occurred to her; she didn’t have all the facts. She knew where she was, but she didn’t know when she was. She’d assumed that this jump was like the last, only taking her three hours into the future, landing on the same day. She’d assumed the cops were still in the middle of their womanhunt, scouring the city for her after what had happened in the basement of the restaurant.
She was in full-on panic mode, trying to think while driving a car for the first time—and at high speed, no less. She aimed the cab for the narrow entrance of a four-story parking garage and went inside, stopping to take one of those ticket stubs from the machine. She waited for the security arm to rise, then jammed on the gas, hearing the tires spin and squeal on the slick surface beneath them. She was proud of herself for getting this far with the cab. She’d only hit one Toyota Corolla and a blue mailbox along the way, sending the outgoing mail high into the air. She passed seven rows of parked vehicles and pulled around the back, picking a spot behind a bread delivery truck.
She put the cab in park, took her foot off the brake pedal and put her head against the headrest. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths, trying to deal with the tingle that had just started to take root in her bones. Breathe, Em. Slow. In and out. Let the stress melt away. Focus on your breathing. You’re safe now. You escaped. Find your center. Find your calm. A minute later, the jump tingle washed away.
A cell phone was sitting on the floor in front of the passenger seat, connected by a cord to a funky charger sticking out of the cigarette lighter. It was shaped like Bullwinkle. The device looked just like the fancy smartphone that Parker carried and had taught her to use when they first met in the shelter. His was an Android phone and she assumed this one was, too.
Moment of truth, she thought.
She leaned forward and pulled the phone to her hand using the charger cord. She touched its screen and found that the phone was not screen locked.
The display read: 11:48 a.m. September 24, 2014.
Emily let out a sigh of relief. Over a year. A year! She was so happy she could almost cry. The cops must have stopped looking for her long ago. The pressure was off. Well, almost, she thought. She did just assault a few guys and steal some dude’s cab. Then she remembered that cab drivers carry cash so they can make change for fares. She checked the glove box, but found nothing. She opened the visors overhead, but only found pictures of the man’s wife and three small children—two boys and a girl, standing in front of
Disneyland’s entrance. Each of the kids had the man’s pug nose and pinched face.
She ran her hands along the underside of the dash and then around and under the passenger’s seat. Again nothing.
She searched under the driver’s seat and stopped when her fingers hit something. It was soft, three inches thick, and rectangular. She pulled it out. It was a leather wallet stuffed with money. She opened it and thumbed through the bills. All of them were twenty-dollar bills—thirty-two of them, to be exact. Nothing smaller. Just twenties. He must have just come from the bank, she decided, because who carries around this much cash? Maybe he’d just cashed his paycheck. She pulled the wad of green out and put the empty wallet back under the seat.
A faint voice called out to her, echoing gently like it was coming from the other end of the parking level. “He has a family to feed, Em.”
She recognized the voice. “Mom? Is that you?”
“Only take what you need.”
She flew out of the car. “Where are you? Mom?”
“Do the right thing, Em.”
She looked at the money in her hand, thinking about how much it would buy. She’d never have to scrounge again; at least not for a long time. She could buy trendy clothes and shoes that actually fit, go find Derek and take him out for a night on the town. She could rent a room in one of the flophouses that bordered the south side of Glassford Park and not have to sleep on the streets for months.
“Mom?” she called out, hearing only the echoes of her own voice.
She looked to her left and then to her right, searching the area for any sign of her mother. She didn’t see anyone. Just parked cars and the bread truck. She waited for the voice to answer her, but it didn’t.
She got back in the cab, took two bills out of the stack, and put the rest back in the wallet. She put the wallet into the glove box, figuring it was safer there than under the seat where she’d found it.
It was time to search the rest of the vehicle. There was nothing in the backseat except empty food wrappers, an unwrapped condom stuffed between the seat cushions—gross—and a few squashed beer cans. She opened the trunk and found a lug wrench with a pry bar on the end of it sitting next to a black gym bag. She pulled the zipper to open the bag. Inside of it was a pair of running shoes, men’s size 11, and a change of clothes. She stuck her face inside the tote and took a whiff. The stench was overpowering. The cabbie must have worked out a week ago and then left the clothes in the truck to bake.
“I don’t need clothes that bad,” she said as her stomach growled, reminding her that it needed to be fed. She smiled, grabbing the lug wrench with the pry bar and turning her attention to the bread truck parked in the stall next to her.
* * *
Four hours later, Emily walked through the front door of the Burton Barr Central Library after she’d ditched the cab in an alley a mile from Glassford Park, and snatched a pair of loose-fitting jeans and a long-sleeved white T-shirt off a backyard clothesline. She had bought a pair of fake Adidas running shoes for ten bucks from some cholo selling them out of the trunk of the car near the Five and Diner Cafe on Central Ave. He had offered her the clothes for free if she’d blow him in the backseat, but she flashed him ten bucks and told him that she was jail bait and would scream if he didn’t give her a good deal. He did, then started his car and sped off. The shoes were worth the hassle and the money. They felt great.
She stopped at a 7-Eleven to pick up a snack, then walked to Barr Central Library. The Phoenix Public Library System had been a lifesaver over the past two years, and Barr Central was easily her favorite among the plethora of book depositories funded by the city. Barr was the only one that stayed open until midnight, and it was the busiest, allowing her to slip in and move around without too much fuss. The staff at the front desk never paid her any attention; they were always distracted greeting visitors and answering questions.
She waited outside the main entrance for the right moment, then ducked in behind a group of elderly women as they waddled in and headed straight for the front desk, chatting and laughing like old women do. She veered off and went straight to the computers in the back, where she knew Sheldon would be working. She knew Sheldon’s shift started at four and ran until midnight, and he didn’t mind her having free access to the research computers for as long as she needed, provided that she brought him something sweet as payment. During the first few of her many visits, he had taught her how to use computers and the Internet. Sometimes he would carry on a little too long about movies and superheroes but she felt comfortable around him.
She stood at the check-in counter, waiting for him to look up from his physics book. Sheldon was in his early twenties, six feet tall, skinny as a straw, blond hair, always wore a bright-colored comic book T-shirt, and had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Almost an aqua color. Deep and inviting. He was studying for his master’s degree at ASU and reminded her of the captain of the chess club at her high school back in 1985. She had learned not to break his train of thought when he was buried neck-deep in a book, otherwise, he’d snap at her and tell her to leave. There was a better way to get his attention. She put a four-pack of Twinkies on the counter and removed the plastic wrap.
Sheldon sniffed twice, then craned his neck to look at her. Actually, he was looking at the snack, with a full smile on his lips. “Ummm. Golden sponge cake.”
“I missed you, too, Sheldon.”
“Long time no see, Red. What’s it been? A year?”
“Something like that,” she answered, wanting to change the subject. “I’ll bet if I had opened these at the front desk, you would’ve come running.”
He walked to the counter, never taking his eyes off the yellow sweetness. “They are my favorite.”
“I know, you’ve told me like a hundred times.”
“So, you were paying attention.”
She touched his hand and winked. “I always pay attention. To everything.”
“There’s a special showing of The Butterfly Effect this Friday. Director’s cut. Wanna go with?”
She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she was only fifteen, or that she lived on the streets. “Can’t. Busy.”
“Thought I would ask,” he said, jamming a full Twinkie into his mouth all at once, then handing her an access card. “Station 9 is open. Been saving it for you,” he said with his mouth full, garbling all the words. He smiled, showing her a creamy river of white filling across his teeth.
“That’s a good look for you, Sheldon.”
He bowed, smacking his head on the edge of the counter. He stood upright, rubbing his forehead.
She laughed, then turned and walked to Station 9 at the far end of the grid of half-wall cubicles. She sat at the computer station and logged on to the Internet, hoping to figure out exactly what had happened in the past year while she’d been traveling.
She wanted answers. First, where was Junie? Was she okay? Second, was she still wanted by the police in connection with the restaurant killings? After that, find a quiet corner and sit down to figure out what was going on with her jumps. The protocols were changing, and she couldn’t get a handle on whether the changes were good or bad.
She focused on the computer, brought up a browser window, navigated to a search engine and typed in: “missing girl downtown shootout restaurant August 2013.”
She leaned back, cracked her knuckles, and waited for the results.
It only took her five minutes to discover that Junie was fine and back with her mother. She’d hidden in an abandoned warehouse for a day and a night because she was so scared. When she came out the next morning she went straight to the police and told them the whole story—the Locos, the bag of money, everything. Emily was relieved—she was off the hook.
“Thank you, Junie,” she mumbled, leaning back in the chair with her hands behind her head. She let out a moan, stretching her arms and hands out as far as they would go. She needed sleep. She closed her eyes, letting her mind float off into dreamland,
thinking about her life before The Taking.
CHAPTER FIVE
April 6, 1985
11:47 p.m.
Emily hung up the phone after a late-night conversation with her best friend, Stacy Hester, who lived three doors down. Stacy had called from a pay phone at the mall, trying to convince her to sneak out of the house and come join her and the rest of the girls. Emily thought about climbing out her bedroom window more than once during the call, but eventually she had to say no to Stacy, which brought about a quick end to the phone call.
Emily looked at the clock and sighed. It was almost time to leave. She’d kept the hope alive all day that somehow she’d be able to wriggle out of going to midnight Mass with her mother. She was thirteen, and would rather be out with Stacy and her friends, trying to meet boys at the food court, only to find that they’d been ignored by the pretty ones and pestered by the gross ones. It had become their routine on Friday and Saturday nights.
Boys were of interest to her, but not because of some primal need or pubescent yearning. It was more out of necessity. It was the one common interest she could share with Stacy’s friends, who seemed obsessed with the idea. Emily didn’t enjoy sitting around a table at the mall, spreading gossip about who cheated on whom, or which girls lost their virginity that week. She didn’t see the point. Hers was intact, and it hadn’t been difficult to keep it that way. Emily loved Stacy and was thankful to have her in her life, so she put up with Stacy’s friends and their pointless endeavors. Otherwise, she’d never be invited anywhere.
She put the Michael Crichton novel she’d been reading on the nightstand next to an empty pint of Rocky Road ice cream and a plastic sleeve that used to be filled with a dozen Oreo cookies. She slid off the bed and walked to her TV stand, hitting the eject button on the VCR. The machine handed her the VHS tape that contained her favorite science fiction movie of all time, Runaway, with Tom Selleck. She was still fascinated by the acid-spitting spider-bots and the smart bullets unleashed by the antagonist, even after watching the blockbuster eleven times. She stacked the tape on top of her other movies, all of which were science fiction-related.
Glassford Girl: Boxed Set (Complete Series) (Time Jumper Series) Page 5
