“I’m ready,” Lucy said, lifting the strap of her handbag over her head and letting it hang on her shoulder. The strap crossed her body, leaving the bag against her hip.
“You look nice,” Johnny said as he stood up.
Leaning in toward the mirror above the dresser, Lucy said, “Heavy make-up helps.”
“You don’t need make-up,” he whispered. Louder, he said, “Come on, let’s go.”
Lucy tore an edge off a piece of hotel stationary and began folding it into an inch-long paper straw. Before she let him close the door, she hung the “do not disturb” sign on the outside handle and held the tiny folded paper next to the door’s hinge. When the door closed, a quarter inch or so of it was left sticking out of the jam. She winked at him before walking down the hallway.
Johnny flicked the little homemade entry alarm with his thumbnail and grinned. “Low tech, yet very clever,” he said to himself. For a while, he’d forgotten he was dealing with a secret agent.
He must have gotten too complacent in his career when Lucy walked straight over to his truck without asking which one belonged to him. The parking lot had several cars in it, but his was the only fire-engine red, extra-cab, full-sized pickup truck. Of course the fire department decals in the back window could have been a big clue for her, too. She stopped next to the passenger door and waited for him to unlock the truck. A quick press of his remote produced a low twitter, and Lucy climbed inside.
“Buckle up,” Johnny said, shutting his door. “I’d hate to get pulled over for a traffic infraction and then you get cuffed for carrying a concealed weapon.”
Lucy laughed and clicked her seat belt closed. “If you insist.”
Shifting into reverse, he asked, “Okay, where is this restaurant?”
“Take the 5 north. We’re going up to Burbank.”
Johnny glanced sideways. She had laughed for a brief moment before he saw her lips drop into a frown and wash away any trace of cheerfulness she might have been feeling.
His mood changed just as quickly. Had he imagined the whole thing? If he had, then why would this agent be so upset about him seeing those men on the staircase? As the time slipped by, Johnny started to seriously doubt his own mind.
“How’s your head?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
She answered too quickly. He didn’t believe her. It sounded like a functional greeting at a party. You always said fine even if your world had fallen apart. Johnny reached over and flicked his finger sharply against her thigh to get some sort of reaction out of her. Before he had a chance to pull his hand away, Lucy grabbed his wrist, startling him with her speed. It wasn’t what he expected, but he did get her attention.
“Why did you do that?” she snapped.
“You just lied to me,” Johnny said, her fingers still wrapped securely around his wrist. He figured he’d ticked her off when she didn’t let him go.
“Don’t do that again, Mr. Cartwright.”
“Call me Johnny.” He looked at her blushed face. “I came to you for answers, not to be lied to.”
Lucy let her hand go slack and leaned her head against the neck-rest, sighing. “I didn’t mean to overreact. And I did lie to you. I do have a headache, and I don’t know why I can’t tell you the simple truth about something so … benign as that. It’s not like it’s a secret.”
“Check the glove box.”
Lucy opened the dash compartment in front of her.
“There’s a small first-aid kit in a red pouch. I have ibuprofen packets inside.” He lifted the armrest compartment between them and took out a metallic pouch with a short straw attached to the outside. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “This is water. Drink the whole thing.”
“Okay,” Lucy whispered, following his directions.
When she had finished, he took the empty packages and put them in a pocket on his door. The deep sigh he heard from Lucy pulled at his heart. From the moment he’d seen her, he’d been attracted to her. Then he’d touched her, and she’d gotten into his mind, somehow. He had to find out why.
“How long have you been an agent?”
She didn’t bother to lift her head when she answered him. “Ten years.”
“Ten years?” Johnny asked quickly. “How old are you?” He didn’t mean to ask so abruptly. When she grinned over at him, he said, “I’m sorry, but you look so young.”
“I’m twenty-nine.”
“That means you were only nineteen when the CIA hired you?”
“Uh-huh. That’s right.”
“Didn’t you want to go to college first?”
Her grin slid into a smile that made his heart trip. “I graduated from high school two weeks after I turned sixteen. I jumped right into summer classes and earned my bachelor’s degree in three years.”
“Wow, that’s amazing. What did you major in?”
“Criminal Justice.”
“And you’re not a cop?”
“No. I had to be twenty-one to carry a gun, so they wouldn’t take my application.”
“And you became a secret agent instead?”
“I’m not a secret agent. I’m a courier.” Clutching her purse tight, she said, “What I do is top secret. And the only reason I told you that much is because you saw my ID. I really can’t tell you anymore.” Turning her stare onto his face, she scrutinized him. “How old are you?”
“I turned thirty last Saturday. My buddies took me out to our usual dive to celebrate.” He shook his head. “I don’t remember what time they brought me home. It was late.”
“
You
home? Alone?” Lucy shifted her line of sight to his left hand. “I noticed that you didn’t wear a wedding ring, but I thought that had to do with your work.”
“Yeah,” Johnny said as he ran his thumb where his gold band used to be. “Wearing jewelry of any kind is dangerous for a firefighter. When you’re fighting a fire, the flames super-heat the metal and burn the skin.” He flexed his left hand, remembering how it had felt wearing his wedding ring. He’d fiddle it with his thumb. But he’d never really gotten a chance to get used to it.
“I thought those big gloves are supposed to protect your hands.” Lucy leaned over and studied his fingers. “What happened here?” she asked, reaching for his right hand. She lightly touched his skin where a thin streak of white scar tissue wrapped around his finger where a ring should be.
Johnny nodded. “I had to learn the hard way.” She lifted his hand, turning it over. “I’d been in the department for only a few weeks, and we had a call at three in the morning. I was green. I forgot to take off my college graduation ring before leaving the bunkroom. We had an actual structure fire, my first since being hired, and I got to go in on the initial investigation.” He took a deep breath. “It was so intense. I didn’t know my finger was burning until they pulled us out for rehab.”
“For what?”
Lucy’s tender touch captivated Johnny’s attention. He kept his hand very still while she ran her finger along the length of his hand. It felt electrifying, sending tingles up his arm, crossing over to his chest, and propelling his heart into high gear. It was a sensual stirring he hadn’t felt in a very long time. “We—” Johnny cleared his throat and tried again. “We can only spend so long in a fire before they rotate one crew out and send in fresh men with full oxygen tanks. Dehydration can happen very quickly.”
“You didn’t answer me about being married,” Lucy said. “Or would you rather not?”
He closed his fingers around her left hand. “I’m divorced.” She kept her gaze down.
“How long?”
“How long for what?”
“When did you get divorced?”
“Over eight years ago.”
“How long were you married?”
Now he felt inadequate. “Not even two years.” She didn’t respond. “Since you opened the subject for discussion, I don’t feel a ring on your finger. Is it due to your job?”
“I … I’m not married. Anymore.”
She shook her head hard enough to slide a curtain of hair along side her face, blocking her from his view. He’d asked the wrong question. Okay, he needed to steer clear of her ex-husband. That would work, since he had no desire to talk about his ex.
The setting sun touched the horizon, emblazoning the few clouds leftover from an afternoon storm with bold streaks of magenta, purple, and orange. The tension in the air steadily grew thicker the farther they drove. Johnny rubbed a hand over his jaw.
He needed to get things real again, change the subject to something not so touchy. It didn’t take long—his phone went off. Johnny had it set to a single low beep for a call, two beeps for a text. He slipped it out of his pants pocket, glanced at the small window on the front, and saw his girlfriend’s name.
Monica and he had been dating on and off for over a year. Every time he thought they might be getting serious, she’d think the timing was wrong and tell him they should go out with other people. He only had to wait a month or so before she’d call him again and suggest dinner.
He replaced the phone in his pocket without responding. He didn’t want to explain to her why he had no time to talk. For that matter, he had no interest in talking to her at all tonight.
“What were you doing in City Hall today?”
Pushing her hair behind her shoulder, she turned her face toward him, and the corners of her mouth tugged upward. “Since I joined the agency, I haven’t had a home base. Basically, I’ve been living out of hotels in different cities throughout the world. But two months ago I found this wonderful bungalow an old woman was selling. She told me she was an actress in the late 1940’s and 50’s, and she was ready to go into the old actors’ home. It’s in perfect shape, and she’s even leaving the furniture. Most of it’s antique. I’ve scheduled for the utilities to be turned over into my name tomorrow, the same day as the closing.”
It felt good to smile. Johnny relaxed his hands and took a deep breath. “You’re making LA your home.” She nodded. “I think you’ll like living here and being the girl next door.”
Lucy turned toward him again and leaned closer. Passion danced across her pretty face. “I’ve never been normal, not since birth, and you don’t know how much I just want to be ordinary. I want to
be
the typical girl next door, to have a house with plants suspended from every corner, and have a cat or two, maybe even a dog. I’d like my own car to drive, my own bed to sleep in with my own blankets and pillow that nobody else has slept on before me. I want my own washer and dryer.” She leaned against the headrest and sighed. “I don’t think I’m asking too much, am I?”
“It sounds like all you want is a little happiness,” Johnny said quietly.
“Yeah, I do.”
He reached over, took her hand again, and gently squeezed. “I think that’s what we’re all looking for.”
He didn’t expect her to gasp softly.
~*~
A phantom blast of icy cold air hit Lucy across the face so hard and so quickly that it ripped her breath away, leaving her skin awash in goose bumps.
The world went stone silent as most everything stopped moving around her. The sky, once reflecting the remnants of the sun’s fading brilliance, flattened to the dead black and grays and slippery whites. Johnny still moved in the most vibrant colors within the window that encompassed him.
It’s happening!
Looking around, she saw the traffic in front of them as still as an ancient black and white photograph. The landscape passed in rapid succession, but only the background within the colorful window moved. Behind them, a huge semi tractor-trailer, locked inside its own window, drove at them in vivid color. A white mini-van shared the window with the semi. Lucy knew that something very deadly would happen not only to the man beside her, but to the occupants of each of the vehicles still in color. She continued to watch, paying close attention to every detail. Lucy knew that everything was important if they were to survive within this—this window of time.
Two overpasses that could take them off the freeway flashed by followed by a California Highway Patrol car driving south with its overhead lights on. Then, from behind, a black Suburban pulled up next to the driver’s window. It slowed down to match their speed.
She could clearly see the sun-glassed face of the foreign agent that had been at the foot of the staircase that morning. He bared his teeth as he aimed his gun at Johnny and pulled the trigger.
The window shattered in complicit silence as the bullets mangled Johnny’s handsome profile in a heartbeat. His rigid body slumped sideways. Blood sprayed in red jerking streams out of his neck, painting the windshield into a horrific piece of modern art. His pickup spun clockwise. She had a full view of the skidding semi jack-knifing toward them in a futile attempt to stop. The fuel-filled trailer swatted the mini-van off the road like a bug in its path. A volley of cascading sparks from the diesel’s blown tire ignited the trailer’s cargo into an asphalt-melting inferno—
Things changed.
Time rewound.
It was like it never happened.
The sounds of the freeway crashed into Lucy’s ears as the pick-up’s engine roared unnaturally loud. Her heart raced; her breaths choked tight in her chest. Intense fear sent adrenaline surging through her veins. She shook her head and deliberately took in a deep breath, trying to clear the deep feelings of terror that filled her body. She’d learned to suppress that panic in her early teenage years as she became more confident in her ability to change the windows. Why would they suddenly emerge again—and so forcefully?