The concrete patio had a new coat of tan paint. Johnny had kept with the same neutral color schemes as Vivi. Everything about the old house called to the romantic in Lucy, from the tapered square columns holding up the low-pitched roof and wide, wood framed windows, to the cobblestone fireplace gracing the living room.
After she woke in the Nassau hospital, Johnny had to return to LA and check in with his fire chief. He was immediately put on medical leave, but under their rules he had to stay in town while he recuperated. During that time he managed to save Lucy’s house sale from falling through, and then two weeks later, after he was medically cleared fit for duty, he took his vacation and flew back to Nassau until Lucy was cleared for release. She spent another week in the agency’s infirmary under Sunny’s care.
They hadn’t taken more than three steps toward the front porch before Lucy had a new emotion flowing through her chest—one that she was positive wasn’t her own. It was a mixture of anxiety and tangible excitement, and while Lucy was more than happy to finally be home, the onset of the emotions physically pushed at her like an invisible blanket lined with lead had dropped over her.
Over the past five weeks, Lucy hadn’t found the appropriate time to discuss her emotional transference theory, not with so many people standing around them all the time. Privacy had been sparse, and when they actually had time alone, conversation wasn’t the first thing on Johnny’s mind.
“Johnny …” Lucy turned and faced him. “I need to talk with you before we go inside and—” Her heart raced faster with excitement. He didn’t need to touch her. Interesting. She smiled. “What are you planning?”
His lips twitched. “What?” He shook his head and glanced at the front door. “I’m not … What makes …” He dropped his stare to the concrete driveway. “Aw, Lu! How did you know?”
Lucy laughed softly, sliding her arms over his shoulders. “Because I can feel your emotions the way you can see into my windows.”
Johnny squinted his eyes at her. “What do you mean?”
She moved closer and pressed her body against his. “It took me a while to figure out, but when you have strong emotions like …”—Lucy licked her lips—“fear, anger, excitement, or passion, I can feel them, too, as if they were my own. Until I realized what was happening to me, they interfered with my own senses. I thought I was losing my edge.”
Like so many times in the past, he believed her without question.
Johnny wrapped his arms around her back. “I’m sorry.”
“No—no!” Lucy hooked her arms around his neck and held him tight. “I’ve learned how to”—she brushed her lips in the tender area just below his ear and inhaled his woodsy fragrance deeper with every rapid breath—“block most of your feelings when I want to, but I let others pass through”—waves of desire pulsed inside her—“like now.”
“Lu—” Johnny crushed her lips with his, kissing her, holding her tighter. His amorous sensations intensified, and Lucy’s sense of self began to dissolve. Before it disappeared completely, she concentrated on the texture of his hair beneath her fingers as she ran her hand up his neck. Lucy felt the cool wind on her skin. Every thought brought her further out of the trance-like reaction she had fallen into by something as simple as a kiss. But his wasn’t any kiss. His depth of emotion was given to her with love—she could feel it.
“We probably should go inside,” Johnny said, his voice husky with passion.
“I guess—if we don’t want to ruin any plans.” Lucy grinned and turned toward the steps.
They stopped in front of the door. The framed window inset into the wooden door had been rehabilitated. The paint was fresh, and the poured glass panes sparkled like crystal in the setting sun. Johnny dangled a set of keys in front of her face.
“Welcome home,” he said.
Lucy took the keys from his fingers, true excitement building in her heart as she remembered the layout of the floor plan. The master bedroom had an old-fashioned sleigh bed that Lucy had no doubt was an antique. Vivian said she’d leave that, along with the matching dresser and chest of drawers, plus a dressing table with an attached mirror. Everything was in pristine condition, kept that way with tender loving care for sixty plus years by a woman who wore makeup even at ninety-six years old. Vivian didn’t build the house, but it was her first home.
As soon as Johnny pushed the door open, Lucy knew she had been right.
“Surprise!”
Lucy was hugged and kissed by Jim and Junie Brockway, and Dusty and Sunny Rhodes. Every time Lucy thought about their names, she couldn’t help but smile. They’d gotten married on the beach the day after he proposed. Johnny attended, but Lucy had only seen the pictures taken at dusk. The sunset over the ocean was unforgettable.
Rocky came, and Kate Laurence stood next to him. Captain Adam Sanderson hugged Lucy tightly before he introduced his date—a petite, blonde flight attendant based out of LAX. No surprise there.
“Is this Humphrey Bogart?” Jim asked pointing to a framed black and white photograph hanging on the long wall filled with pictures.
Lucy knew which photo Jim was looking at, and it made her smile. “Yes. Vivian Haynes, the woman I bought the house from, is in the background, just to his right. That was taken in 1942.”
“Oh, wow. She was in Casablanca?”
“It was a, uh, a bit part as she called it.” Lucy made her way over to the bragging wall. “I was hoping she’d leave these.” Pointing to the next picture, she said, “Vivi was in three of his pictures. Besides Casablanca, she was in The Big Sleep with Lauren Bacall in ’46, and Key Largo in ’48, also with the gorgeous Bacall. I loved those movies.”
“Holy crap,” Dusty said softly. “This is Gary Cooper.”
“Uh, huh. And she worked with James Cagney, and Betty Davis, and …” Lucy moved around Dusty and Sunny. “Here she is with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, with Dorothy Lamour standing in between them.”
“I don’t recognize her name,” the flight attendant said as she studied the picture of Vivian with Katherine Hepburn.
“Most people wouldn’t. She never wanted the spotlight. She was always in the background. But she earned a good enough living to buy her own house before she was thirty, and she always drove a new car. She also put her two kids through college. I’d say she did a pretty good job taking care of herself. We had quite a long conversation when I came back to give her house another look through.”
Johnny said, “She sounded very independent.”
“But she was married,” Lucy said, as Johnny slid his arm around her waist. “She lost her husband over twenty years ago.”
“How’d he die?” Sunny asked.
“She doesn’t know.”
“What?” Jim asked.
Lucy grinned at Vivi’s picture with Barbara Stanwyck. “She woke up one morning, and Fred was gone. She figured he took off with that hot blonde from the senior’s center.” Smiling widely, she added, “That young hussy couldn’t have been more than sixty.” Everyone laughed at Fred’s expense.
Lucy’s nose noticed the delicious smell of meat floating throughout the house. She went to the door leading to the huge back yard, and gazing out the window, she found why her new neighborhood smelled so good. A gigantic barbeque grill dominated the corner of her patio. The smoke rising into the evening air drifted into the citrus trees. As she reached for the doorknob, she heard Sunny scold her.
“No, you don’t, Lucy,” Sunny said.
Johnny took her by the elbow and redirected her toward a new, L-shaped couch positioned in front of the lit fireplace. Leave it to a fireman to start a fire when the opportunity arose. “I’ll get you something to drink, and when Dusty has the steaks done,” he said as he helped her sit down, “I’ll bring you your dinner.”
“Honestly, Johnny, I’m not helpless.”
“I know you’re not—”
Sunny cut in. “But I told him to make sure you listened to my orders, which includes plenty of rest.”
Lucy sighed. “For how much longer? I’ve been in bed for five weeks already.”
“You’re lucky to be alive.”
Junie chimed in. “So, stop complaining about a little more time off from work.”
“What do you do for a living, Lucy?” the flight attendant asked as she sat down at the end of the couch.
“I, uh, I’m looking into a store front for my … my flower shop, The Flower Petal Florist.” She glanced over at Johnny’s amused eyes and added, “I’m hoping to make an intelligent decision and find a good central location.”
~*~
The antique mantel clock chimed midnight, and Lucy’s housewarming party was winding down. Adam and his date had disappeared before ten, and Rocky left to go check on his plane. Kate had to make an important phone call and had left around the same time.
With her feet tucked up underneath her, Lucy sat on the couch and watched the flames of the fire with her head resting on Johnny’s shoulder while covered in an old quilt off her sleigh bed. Dusty had his arms wrapped around Sunny a little further over, while Jim sat on the floor leaning against the plush chair Junie sat in.
“Did you find out what exactly they were cooking up in the compound Lucy took out?” Sunny asked.
Jim set down his glass of melting ice next to his knee and glanced at Lucy. “Yes, finally, but you know it’s classified.”
“You shouldn’t have asked, Sunny,” Lucy told her. “Although it doesn’t really matter since Helga told us what she was doing the night we found her. I just hope that the worm I planted in their computer screwed up their network enough that the retrovirus information can’t be used from any other terminal.”
“Lucy!” Jim said sharply.
“Oh, come on, Jim, all this was in our debriefing, just from different angles. We all know what happened at that place.”
“Can you tell us anything about who manned that compound?” Junie asked.
Lucy asked, “Those men, the ones who killed Gabe—”
“The ones who almost killed us,” Sunny said quietly.
Lucy nodded. “I killed one of them, but I didn’t see the other man. As far as I can tell, he’s still out there. Can you tell us anything about them—who they worked for?”
“After all Lu went through to get to them, don’t you think she deserves to know at least that much?” Johnny asked.
Jim looked at his watch and blew out a deep breath. “Yes, she does.” He lifted his glass and drained the liquid before he spoke to Lucy. “The passport you took from one of the men in the compound had his name on the terrorist watch list. He is connected with the Abbud El-Hashem terrorist nexus. Steele Reinforcements went in and rounded up the unconscious men, and cleaned up any signs of your mission, but they also took fingerprints from some of the bodies they found, and six of those men we also connected with El-Hashem, one was identified as Badru El-Hashem, the youngest son of Abbud El-Hashem. Steele found the C-4 you planted in the lab building and returned it to us.”
Lucy leaned her head back. “I thought my phone’s timer set off the charge.”
“No, your phone stopped shrapnel from piercing your lung,” Sunny said quietly.
Lucy shuddered. “So … I didn’t get rid of the compound. Those other two are still out there.”
“Other two?” Johnny asked, holding her closer.
“Yeah,” Dusty said. “That other big guy who likes to wear that stupid looking gray suit.”
“Oh, and the woman who attacked you in the hospital,” Johnny added. “I’d forgotten about her.”
“Uh …” Jim set his glass down before taking out his phone. “While searching through the building that you referred to as the mess hall, Steele’s men found two bodies of women. They’d been crushed by falling debris.”
“Fortunately that missile blew up when it did, and not after it was fired,” Dusty said.
It took a moment, but when Jim passed his phone to her, she could see a gruesome photograph of a dead woman. The face was bloodied, but it was in clear enough that Lucy could identify her.
Johnny leaned closer to look at the screen. “That’s her.”
“I agree,” Lucy whispered.
“So, Lucy, did you have a premonition about the woman trying to kill you?” Sunny asked.
Lucy jumped at the unexpected question. “What?”
Sunny scooted forward. “You do have premonitions?”
Dusty gently pulled Sunny back into his arms. “I’m sorry, Lucy. I told my wife about what happened on our drive to the compound. She pretty much guessed it anyway, after what happened after the shootout.” He gave Sunny a disapproving look. “But she said she’d keep it a secret.”
The assertion couldn’t be denied. In fact, Lucy wondered why it took Sunny so long to bring it up. But she didn’t see a window around herself. She couldn’t. Lucy looked at Jim. As generous and kind as he’d been over the past several weeks, he was still the assistant director of an agency known for ruthless subterfuge.
“Look, Lucy,” Jim started, “we didn’t talk about this in our official debriefings for a good reason. I didn’t want it recorded.” He reached up and took Junie’s hand. “I’m sure you remember we watched your mission, and we saw those two cars speeding at you from around the bend of that narrow road.”
Junie interrupted. “Even from our vantage point—maybe especially from our vantage point—we could tell there was no way you or Johnny could see them.”