“You’re welcome,” Lucy said, disappointed he stopped so soon.
“You better eat some more.” Johnny snatched a roll from the plate and handed it to her. “Try one of these.”
It felt warm to her fingers. “Don’t tell me.” Lucy tore the bread apart and lifted a piece to her nose. The steam wafted the delicate scent upward, making her salivate in anticipation. “You made this, too.”
If the old saying, “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” was old-fashioned, Lucy knew a new phrase should be “the way to a man’s heart is through complimenting his cooking.” The pastry nearly melted in her mouth with its buttery taste and tender texture. Bread was Lucy’s favorite part of the food pyramid. She wouldn’t mind if it was the whole pyramid. “Mmmm,” she said low and deep. “It’s delicious.” Johnny’s face glowed at her reaction.
“I knew you would like it.” Johnny dipped a piece of his bread into what was left of his soup. “What school did you go to?”
After taking another bite of the delicious bread, she said, “Arizona State, in Phoenix.”
“And after you graduated, you became a courier?”
“When I was a senior, just a month away from graduating from the university, a woman showed up outside my dorm room. She showed me her CIA identification and said they wanted me to put my application in with them.” Lucy popped another small piece of roll in her mouth and slowly chewed, remembering the events of that afternoon. “At first I thought I was being punked. My roommate kept telling me I studied too much and that I didn’t have enough fun.”
Johnny let his gaze linger on her animated face. “Was she right?”
Lucy shrugged a single shoulder. “Maybe.” She grinned slyly. “Probably.”
“And you decided to join the CIA because you couldn’t be a cop?”
“No, I really thought my roommate and her stupid boyfriend were playing a joke on me. The ID Agent Laurence showed me didn’t look real. I didn’t even know the CIA carried identification. I thought everyone was undercover, you know?”
“What made you change your mind?”
“She basically recited my whole academic history to me, including every meeting I’d had with my advisors.” Shaking her head, she took another roll from the plate. “She knew things about me that no one else did.”
“But not everything, right?” Johnny paused for a moment.“Lucy, can you tell me what happened to us on the freeway?”
He made it sound like answering his questions would be easy and casual. But she would need to reveal dark secrets about her past, and it would be difficult to explain something even she didn’t understand. Johnny caught a glimpse into the future like Lucy had done countless times over the years, and she didn’t know why.
She set the roll down and dropped her hands to her lap trying to find a place to begin. “Johnny—” Lucy kept her eyes on her intertwined fingers. “I need you to promise me that everything I tell you tonight will remain only between us.”
Johnny set his spoon down and turned toward her. “Is it that bad?” He put his hand on hers, prompting her to lift her gaze to him.
Scooting back, Lucy pulled her knees up and tightened the blanket around her legs, trying to ward off the icy memory of her youth. Leaning sideways against the couch cushions, she tried again. “You have to swear to me, or I won’t tell you anything.”
Johnny leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay, I promise.”
Leaning in closer, she studied his eyes, searching for any sign that might tell her he was lying.
A tender touch of his warm hand against her cheek made her believe. “I swear, Lucy, never to betray you. Please, I need to know.” His fingers lingered against her skin.
Lucy took a deep breath. “I can glimpse into the immediate future if someone is about to be killed and I have a chance to change the outcome.” He didn’t laugh or look shocked. Just the subtle shift of his eyebrows clued her in that he had heard her. “Johnny, did you understand what I said?”
Nodding, he said with a low voice, “I think I already knew that. But how can you do it, and why did it … leak over to me?”
“I don’t know why or how you saw it, too,” Lucy leaned her cheek against the back of the couch. “I don’t know why it happens to me.”
“How long have you been able to—to, uh, predict the future?”
“I don’t do that,” Lucy said, raising her voice. “I don’t know what’s going to happen in the morning, or even later tonight. I certainly didn’t know you were going to drench me in the shower an hour ago.” Taking a breath, she tried to calm down, to be less defensive. “I can never predict when I’m going to have one of these ‘windows.’ I don’t believe our future is set in concrete. We all choose our paths to walk. Like those men tonight. It was their decision to chase us on the freeway.”
“And,” Johnny said, “to shoot me.” He laid his head back and stared at the ceiling. “I saw it happen like I was watching a movie. I couldn’t feel anything, or hear a sound, but I … I saw that man from the staircase pull up next to my window and shoot me. It was horrible. I’d never been so scared …” He pushed his hand on his chest and took in a heavy breath. “Then the pickup swerved around and faced a semi that was trying to stop, but the trailer jack-knifed and kept sliding toward …”
“Go on,” Lucy said, waiting for the inevitable.
“It exploded, but before the fire reached my truck, I could see the road in front of me again. We were lucky I didn’t crash.”
“You learn to get over the shock faster the more often it happens to you,” Lucy said quietly. At least it used to. She felt her emotions hit her harder tonight than since she was a teenager.
He snapped his head toward her. “How many times have you had to go through”—he shrugged his shoulder—“whatever it is you go through?”
“They’re windows into the future.” Lucy ran her hand up into her damp hair and lightly touched the bump on the back of her head. “I’ve had too many to count.”
“And you can’t tell me why I saw it, too?” Johnny ran his fingers up her arm, pulling her hand away from her wound. “When I caught your arm,” he said, holding her hand, “I saw myself being shot the first time, on the staircase, along with my whole crew. But that was different. It was like an instant memory, not like what happened this evening.”
“I wish I could tell you why you’re involved with all this,” Lucy whispered, gazing down at their hands folded together.
“Do you have to change what you see?”
“No. I didn’t even know that I
could
change things before I was eleven years old.”
“How did you find out?” Johnny asked as he scooted closer to her.
Lucy thought back to that warm autumn morning long ago, to how her life had changed with one simple act. “I lived close enough to my elementary school to walk during my sixth grade year. I left a little early one morning and got to the busy street in front of the school before the crossing guard had arrived. I sat on this low wall near the corner and waited for her to get there.”
Lucy closed her eyes, allowing herself to drift back in time. “That’s when I felt a freezing wind blow across my face so hard I couldn’t breathe, and everything around me turned to black and white. All the sound around me just stopped. I couldn’t hear anything, not even the birds in the trees. But I knew someone would die, so I looked around until I found the place that was still in color. It didn’t take me long to find the window.”
The tears prickled the edges of Lucy’s eyelashes, as she continued. “My best friend was riding her bicycle on the sidewalk heading toward the crosswalk.” She stared into Johnny’s compassion filled eyes. “I had to watch Pattie ride off the sidewalk and into the street just as a car sped by. He hit her, throwing her body into the air, and killed her without ever slowing down. He left her dead in the gutter.”
“Lucy,” Johnny said, squeezing her hand, “I’m sorry.”
She shook her achy head. “When things changed, and the color flooded back in, and the sounds around me pounded loudly in my ears, I saw Pattie riding her bike down the sidewalk again. She was alive, and it broke my heart to know that in a few seconds she would be killed.
“I couldn’t let my best friend die without at least trying to do something to stop it. So I ran. I ran straight over to Pattie and knocked her off her bike. A moment later I heard a loud engine, and I turned to see the car that hit—that
would
have hit Pattie—speed through the school zone. Shortly after, I had an icy cold feeling wash through my whole body. It seemed to originate from deep within my chest and flowed in waves into my arms and legs.” Making sure she had his full attention, Lucy added, “And then I fainted.”
Johnny placed his hand against her face. “In the truck, when you passed out, I thought it was a result of you hitting your head, but your body temperature went from warm to as cold as someone found in a freezer—in an instant.”
“Yes. It’s a side effect of when I change an outcome. It lasts for just over a minute. I’ve timed it. But during that time I’m completely vulnerable.”
“How do you explain it when someone notices it?”
“The crossing guard thought that I was in shock. She told the school nurse about how cold my skin felt after the incident, but the nurse took my temperature, pronounced me fine, and then sent me to class. The worse thing that happened to Pattie was a skinned elbow.” Lucy ran her hand over her head. “I lost my best friend. She said I pushed her off her bike on purpose, and I told her that I had. But then I made a serious mistake.”
“What did you do?” Johnny ran his thumb across her wet cheek.
“I told her I saw her get killed, and that I just saved her life.”
Johnny grew still. “How did she take that?”
“I never should have said anything. Not only did she not believe me, but word got around school that I thought I could predict the future, and that I was pretty much a crazy lunatic. After a month of the worst teasing, and one fight at recess, my dad pulled me out of a school I’d been going to since I was in kindergarten and enrolled me in another one across town. I learned never to tell another soul again.”
“Nobody else knows about … this?”
“My curse,” Lucy said quietly. “Only my dad knows, and … my husband knew about it.”
“Your husband.”
“Yes. Mac found out about it while we were on a mission. It wasn’t something I felt like I could explain while we were dating. I didn’t want to scare him away.”
“You worked together?”
“Technically, Mac was an operative and I was in charge of getting the packages delivered, but, yes, we went on missions together.”
“Mac …”
“Seth. His name was Seth Mackenzie. His nickname was Mac.”
“Did he believe you the first time you told him?”
Lucy wearily leaned her cheek against the couch cushion. “No. I saved him three times before he caught on and he asked me about, well, what we’re talking about now.”
Johnny leaned closer. “Just how many times did you save him?”
“Seventy-six.”
“Whoa, you remember exactly?”
Lucy’s voice caught in her throat. “I had to watch him be killed that many times, Johnny. Why wouldn’t I remember each one of them? He was my husband, and I loved him.”
“I’m sorry, Lucy. You said before that you
were
married? Did he leave you?”
“You could say that. He died saving my life.”
“He died?” Johnny shook his head. “But didn’t—couldn’t you see a window before—?”
Lucy covered her face with her hands and let the tears come as the memories of Mac’s final death flooded to the surface. No matter the reasons for his decisions during their marriage, he’d given his life for hers in the end.
Johnny didn’t let her grieve alone. He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly. The questions stopped. Instead, he gave her his compassion and a shoulder to cry on. And she needed his closeness. Lucy wrapped her arms around his chest and clung to him, years of pent up pain and loneliness draining from her eyes, wetting his shirt.
She was tired. Tired of death.
The crying ebbed. Johnny’s arms loosened, but he didn’t let her go. Lucy stayed against his chest, listening to the slow beating of his heart beneath her ear while he ran his hand down her back in gentle stokes. His steady breathing consoled her as much as his touch did.
“Thank you.”
“It’s not a problem,” Johnny said with his lips against her hair. “Do you want to stop talking?”
“No, no …” Lucy sniffed. “I want to tell you about Mac. He—he was very important to me.”
“I can tell.”
“We met in Kosovo when he gave me a package to deliver to DC. He, uh, decided to tag along with me. Our exit out of Yugoslavia wasn’t exactly smooth, and, well, we had some hardships, and a few laughs before we finally made it back to the states. We got married two months later. We had … a lot of adventures, and he taught me so many things—he made me a better agent, and he kept my secret.”
“How long were you married?”
“A little over five years.”
“Wow, and you saved him that many times in five years?” Johnny ran a caressing hand down Lucy’s hair. “He must’ve had very dangerous missions.”