The Watchman of Ephraim (Book Club Edition) Read Free

Honey, are you okay?!”
    “ Yeah, I’m okay. We’re not sure what just happened. I’m here at Cantor with Stacey. We think a bomb might have just gone off in the tower somewhere.”
    De Niro’s heart sank. When the phone rang and he saw it was his wife, he hoped that she might have already gone to breakfast and wasn’t in the building. For the first time, he thought about what just happened. He remembered hearing the sound of a jet flying really low right before the whole world went crazy.
    Is it possible? No reason to tell her a plane may have crashed into the building … or that I’m injured.
    “ Honey, listen, can you and Stacey make it to a stairway?”
    “ Hold on,” she replied. Then he heard his wife ask, “My husband wants to know if we can make it to the stairs?”
    De Niro heard a number of voices in the background, including at least one male voice, but he couldn’t tell who they were. Finally, she answered, “No, Cris, we’re all huddled inside a conference room with the door closed. There was smoke coming in under it, so someone stuffed their jacket there to try and stop it, but I don’t think we can open that door.”
    De Niro heard the sound of people coughing in the background as one of the male voices was saying something. Then Lisa continued, “Cris, the smoke is getting worse in here. A few of the men want to break the windows to let air in. We tried to call 9-11 but we can’t get through. No one knows what to do!”
    De Niro heard the tension building in his wife’s voice. One of the things he loved about Lisa was how cool she was in pressure situations. Lisa came from a military family. Her granddad and dad both served with distinction, in the army and her brother was a Navy SEAL. One thing was for sure, as De Niro’s dad, a Marine, once put it, Lisa was no “candy-ass.” He knew that conditions had to be dire up there for her to sound that nervous.
    De Niro felt determination run through his veins but he also felt something else, something he never felt before. His whole life, whenever he put his mind to achieving a goal, he accomplished it, without fear of failure or any doubt, no matter how difficult it might be. Looking up at the towering structure before him now, with smoke pouring out of it and his wife’s life at stake, for the first time in his life De Niro doubted himself … he was afraid.
    “ Alright, listen, honey, I’m gonna try and make my way up to you. Just stay in that room!”
    “ Make your way up to me … Cris, where are you?!”
    “ I’m right in front of the building … After I dropped Richard off … I was going to surprise you …” De Niro had to hold back his own tears as he heard the sound of tears in his wife’s voice, “Oh Cris … is it safe enough for you to come up—“
    De Niro waited a moment for his wife to continue but all he heard was silence.
    “ Lisa, are you there?! Lisa … honey are you there?!”
    He took the phone from his ear and examined it – there were no lights – it was dead. After popping the battery out and replacing it with no results, he threw the useless device to the ground in frustration. It shattered into pieces joining the rest of the debris scattered everywhere.
    Making his way back towards the revolving front doors, De Niro surveyed the area as he went. It looked like a bomb went off in the lobby of Tower One. Virtually every window was blown out and there was wreckage littered and accumulating all over the street in front of the building. As bad as it was outside, inside was a horror scene!
    As he staggered inside, De Niro heard screams coming from down the corridor. He stood in shock, in the same spot in which he and the oriental lady were standing just minutes before. There were bodies strewn everywhere, all of them scorched, some smoldering, others ablaze. The screams he heard came from a woman who looked like she was trying to run away from the fire coming from the back of her jacket and skirt. As she ran