WINDOW OF TIME Read Free

couldn’t see much. Two vagrants holding bottles wrapped in paper bags shared a conversation farther down the alley. Passersby on the sidewalk either talked on cell phones or looked straight ahead. Fortunately, it seemed Lucy was being completely ignored. She continued lying still under enough boxes to conceal her body while she let her mind drift back to the man in uniform with the dark brown eyes.
    They’d been watching each other when she’d had her “window.” The moment he thought she was in danger, he had sprung into action to save her. His compassion intrigued her. Any man who would choose to spend his career in a field exclusively helping others must be very special, and a little bit of a risk taker too. Fighting fires wasn’t for wimps.
    Lucy wished she knew who he was, but her chances of having a normal conversation with him now seemed impossible, even if she did run into him again. She’d thrown herself off a staircase. How could she ever explain that without telling the truth—a truth he certainly wouldn’t— couldn’t —believe?
    Lucy lifted her feet and kicked the boxes away in frustration. As she brushed away the dirt from her jeans, her heart sank when she discovered her purse was missing. “Cripes! No, no, no !”
    A thorough search of the surroundings turned up nothing besides trash. Lucy peered around the corner of the building and studied the street before backtracking to the office staircase. After looking down from above but unable to see through the dense leaves, she climbed up the same ficus tree that facilitated her escape just a half hour before, hoping to find the bag hanging on a limb. Besides getting some odd looks from a few people in the lobby, nobody stopped her. All she found was a piece of her shirtsleeve stuck on the end of a thin branch. Lucy pushed up her torn, short sleeve and looked at her skin.
    The small cut next to her shoulder hadn’t hurt at the time, but now her arm throbbed at being injured. Lucy leaned back and sat in the tree for several minutes, trying to figure out what to do next as the leaves stirred softly around her. The sound gave her the willies. The huge ficus grew inside a building where the natural wind didn’t exist. The air conditioner caused the movement instead of God. In the shelter of the thick leaves, she heard the whisperings of her close call.
    She’d almost been killed.
    The window had included Lucy. That was something that had never happened before. Although she hadn’t seen herself, she’d seen that man aim his gun in her direction.
    He was going to shoot her, of that she had no doubt. If she hadn’t escaped, he’d have shot five other people in a public building to get to her, and it left Lucy fuming. Such an open display didn’t make any sense. And if that wasn’t bad enough, those men-in-gray had ruined her perfect track record.
    She was a high-level courier, and the package she was to deliver to the Information Center at the LA branch of the agency tomorrow had been in her handbag’s built-in false bottom.
    Lucy was upset at herself that she’d lost the “game” because of two foreign agents too stupid to blend into the crowd. More than that, though, she was angry that she hadn’t noticed she was being followed before she reached the staircase. They’d probably found her purse and her hidden package, if they could navigate the secret compartment that is. To top it off, she didn’t even have cab fare.
    “Excuse me, lady?”
    A city cop stood at the bottom of the tree staring up at her. From the half-grin he wore, he wasn’t taking his present call very seriously. He motioned at Lucy with a quick point of his finger from her to the floor. She waved and then dutifully complied.
    “Do you have ID?” the officer asked, as he carefully looked her over.
    “I would if I hadn’t lost my purse,” Lucy said. They had protocols for situations like this. “If you’ll call my work, they’ll tell you who I am, and then I’ll get