WINDOW OF TIME Read Free Page A

chewed out later.”
    “Okay,” he said, chuckling. “Tell me your name and your supervisor’s number.”
    The slight sarcasm she heard from the officer while he took out his cell phone wasn’t surprising. She didn’t trust anybody, so why should a man who routinely dealt with criminals trust her? “I’m Special Agent Lucy James, and my boss here in LA is Assistant Director Candice Bancroft.”
    After she gave him the phone number, she waited and watched his light brown eyes as he heard the operator greet him. Lucy let the phrase, “Central Intelligence Agency, how may I direct your call,” run through her mind and paired it with the officer’s changing expression.
    The deep dimple creasing his left cheek might have shown his initial disbelief, but it disappeared as he listened. His brows rose higher as his stare locked onto Lucy’s. He might have been impressed with what he was being told, or maybe he was intimidated. Sometimes Lucy couldn’t tell the difference between the two. After an extremely brief and mostly one-sided conversation probably with Kate Laurence, her boss’s executive assistant, the officer closed his phone and let his gaze drift down over her once again.
    “Agent James, if you want to climb the tree again, I’ll stand by and wait until you’re done ... communing.”
    Lucy sighed. “No. I’m good. Thanks.”
    ~*~
    Lucy headed back to her hotel to report the loss of her package via her laptop computer. It took over an hour to walk back to the Hotel Shelter Island. By the time she reached the front desk, her feet hurt and her shirt, soaked with sweat, clung to her back, leaving her well past irritable and deep into cranky. She should have asked the cop for a ride.
    “Miss James, you look like you could use a drink,” Ken, the hotel’s desk clerk said.
    Lucy flexed her neck to the side until she felt it crackle and tried to smile at the clerk, but she just couldn’t quite get her lips to cooperate. “You’re right, Ken, but what I need more is a new key to my room. I lost my purse.”
    “I can do that for you right away.” He placed his open bottle of water on the counter top and slid it closer to Lucy, but as thirsty as she was, she’d rather have her tongue swell to triple its size and choke off her breathing than drink from his used bottle. His hair had so much oil in it the individual strands had plastered into a single coconut-scented shell, and his pencil-thin mustache looked seven decades out of place. His trimmed sideburns actually came to points like something out of a Star Trek movie.
    He clicked a few buttons on his machine before sliding a blank card key through the slot. “I understand you’ll be leaving us tomorrow,” Ken said as he held the replacement key out to Lucy’s waiting fingers.
    “That’s right.” She tried to take the card from his hand, but he wouldn ’t let go. A less than civil thought flashed through her mind. By pinching a nerve at the base of this thumb and index finger, Lucy could create such intense pain in his hand that it would render him incapable of holding onto the card. Actually, his ability to hold onto anything for the next hour would be gone as well.
    Ken smiled. “I think this would be the perfect time for us to have an intimate dinner together, Lucille .” Leaning closer, he said, “I know the head chef at The Top Floor, and we can arrive any time you’re ready.”
    Her eyes drifted down to his scrawny neck. A quick blow with her fist to the base near his shoulder would stun him long enough for her to extract the key from his hand, casually walk to her room, and bolt the door. “Thank you, but no, Ken. I, uh, already have dinner plans.”
    He let go and held out his hands. “Ah, but you don’t know what you’re missing.”
    Lucy smiled when she said, “And lucky for you, you don’t either.” As she turned toward the stairs, Ken said something surprising.
    “Miss James, a man came to the desk asking for you about