Split Second (29 page)

CHAPTER 68

Allenby Motel

Lucy froze. “Give me back the ring, Miranda. Grandfather left it for me.”

Miranda laughed, slipped the ring off the chain and into her pocket. “It wasn’t his to give to you. He stole it from Aunt Helen.”

When Lucy unlocked the motel room door, Miranda shoved her inside with such force she fetched up to the bed and sprawled over it. Miranda stood far away from her, the gun pointed at her chest. “I’ve never disliked you, Lucy, at least not until recently, even though you were always everyone’s little princess. You were too young to be jealous of, and then after Uncle Milton and the ring disappeared, it didn’t really matter, anyway. You stayed my little cousin, and I watched you grow up.

“Even now I don’t really dislike you; this is simply necessary. And necessary means I will kill you if I have to. Stay put.”

She pulled two loops of skinny rope out of a big black tote with a bookstore logo on the side. “I want you to sit on that chair.”

Lucy knew in her gut she didn’t have a choice. She didn’t want to die. She wanted to be here to welcome Coop when he got back. She sat down in the single chair.

“Put your hands on the arms of the chair, I’m going to tie your wrists to the arms.” She carefully pulled the ropes taut and knotted them, always watchful. “I’ve heard Court talk about all that martial arts stuff you do in the gym, so I’m not taking any chances with you. Hold still.”

When she moved to Lucy’s right wrist, Lucy made a fist, which lifted it a bit from the chair arm when Miranda tied the rope around it. It worked, the rope ending up not all that tight, not like her left wrist. Lucy immediately began working it, slowly, easily, so as not to draw Miranda’s attention.

Miranda placed her black tote onto the bed, shrugged out of her black coat, and sat down facing Lucy.

“Miranda, tell me what this is all about. What do you mean the ring is yours?”

Miranda didn’t answer. Lucy watched her pull the ring out of her pocket and caress it like a lover. She pressed it lightly against her chest, then brought it down again to study it. She whispered, “It’s been so long since I’ve seen this ring, since I’ve touched it, more than twenty-two years now since my Uncle Milton stole it and went walkabout—that’s what my father called it. I wonder if he ever really accepted that Uncle Milton simply walked out, left his son, his wife, his precious little granddaughter. I was a teenager at the time, all into myself, the way teenagers are, but I remember Dad saying over and over, ‘But why? It doesn’t make sense. Why?’ My mom and Court believed he’d just left, and so did I, simply because it was easier to believe he’d run away instead—instead of what? You were too young to know anything. Turns out Dad was right, it didn’t make sense, and Uncle Milton never left.

“When I found out you turned up his skeleton in Aunt Helen’s attic, we all realized the supposed walkabout was a big whomping lie. Aunt Helen hadn’t driven him away, she’d murdered him, and your father must have helped her hide his body. They lied about all of it. I wonder what else was a lie? Aunt Helen told me your grandfather had stolen the ring and taken it with him when he left. All those years I thought I had lost the ring forever, and then suddenly anything was possible.

“I started searching your grandmother’s house for the ring as soon as the police left, and whenever I saw you leave for work. Father told me you’d been looking around in her study, and that’s where I found Uncle Milton’s letter to you, his precious granddaughter, in one of Aunt Helen’s books.”

“Miranda, you took the letter?”

“Of course. Who did you think did? My father? Court? They never had a clue about the ring—Mom, either. When I read the letter, I knew for sure you had the ring and that you’d never give it up, not after you discovered what it could do, and that’s when I hired those idiot felons to take it from you. Congratulations, Lucy, either you’re very lucky or you’re very good. You got away, and you even killed one of them. I knew then the FBI would identify him and it was only a matter of time before you traced him back to me. I got everything ready to run, but I wasn’t going anywhere without this ring.”

“Miranda, how much do you know about the ring?”

“I know everything.”

Lucy said slowly, “But how?”

Miranda laughed. “Your mother’s death broke Aunt Helen’s heart. She was always secretive, at least that’s what I heard my father say, but after Claudine’s death she got really depressed; she’d stare off into space, saying nothing, looking at nothing in particular. You were too young to notice, only two. I’ll never forget the day she took me into her study and we huddled together. I had just turned twelve. She took out the ring and told me it was a special ring meant for only one girl in each generation of our family—one girl, not a boy—and I was her niece, and it would be mine someday, when she thought the time was right. At first she didn’t tell me any more than that, but every time I visited, she would show me the ring and tell me stories about it, stories passed down that her own mother had told her, stories about how she’d used the ring, and all the while she was speaking, she was darting glances around the room to be sure no one was near.

“Aunt Helen said now she was passing all the stories down to me. She said it had to be our secret, that no one was to know or she couldn’t imagine what would happen. Maybe the ring would disappear, maybe it would even stop working. That was a lie and at first, I didn’t understand. I thought she was crazy. She scared me, but the ring didn’t ever, even when she showed me what happened when she held the ring and said the word. She could always tell me if something strange was about to happen, things she had no way of knowing otherwise. It was a game she played with me. But she wouldn’t let me use the ring myself; she said I wasn’t ready for it.

“I felt such power, and I was only twelve years old. I knew it would belong to me, no one else, only me. I asked her over and over when that would be, and she smiled at me and said we’d have to see.

“And four years later, Uncle Milton was gone and so was the ring. We felt such anger, such despair, both of us together, an unbreakable bond between an old woman and a teenager.”

Lucy said slowly, “I am my grandmother’s direct heir, not you. I think if she hadn’t been so distraught when my mother died, if she hadn’t lost her bearings, she would never have spoken to you about it, shared its power and secrets with you, and you know it. She would have waited and given the ring to me.”

“Dream on, Lucy. Who cares why she picked me? The fact is, she did, whatever her reasons. You were Uncle Milton’s choice, but he had no right to decide anything; the ring wasn’t his. I was Aunt Helen’s choice. You read the letter; you know everything he wrote was true. Aunt Helen was strange, it’s true, she was obsessed with the ring, and if that sent her to me, then so be it.

“Maybe you were too young to remember, but I was always over at your house after school so she could spend time with me, teach me about the ring. I’ve thought about this ring for over two decades, thought about what I could have done with it, how it could have changed my life.

“I’m thirty-eight years old now. I think it was fate you found Uncle Milton because it brought me back this ring. Now, finally, it’s mine as it was meant to be.”

“You were twelve years old when grandmother showed you the ring, showed you what it could do. You never said anything to your parents? Your brother?”

“That’s right, I never told them. Why should I? I don’t think Father even knew about it, or if he did he paid no attention. He and Court, it’ll be a grand surprise to them when I leave with the ring, since they have no idea what I can do with it. As for my mother, she always cared about only two things in her life—being my father’s wife and looking like a million bucks. She’s the perfect wife for my father, since all he ever wanted was to make more and more money and have a beautiful woman on his arm.” Her eyes went sharp and cunning. Lucy wondered if she was thinking about humbling both of them, proving she was the superior one.

Lucy kept gently working her wrist back and forth. The rope was loosening.

“I dreamed, Lucy, I dreamed for years about what I would do with this wonderful ring.” She squeezed the ring tightly in her hand. She frowned. “Is it always cold? Odd, but I don’t remember it being hot or cold.”

Cold? What was this?
Lucy said, “Yes, it’s always cold. Miranda, what do you plan to do with it? You have only eight seconds. That’s very little time to change much of anything.”

“What did you do with it, Lucy?”

“I saved my boss’s life when a psychopathic killer shot him. I had just enough time to shove him down away from the bullet.”

“That must have been exciting. And your boss didn’t even know he was dead.” Miranda smiled at her. “Lucy, you are such an innocent. I bet if you had the ring you’d go through life trying to right wrongs, fighting your never-ending battle for truth and justice. Ms. Superwoman. Do try for a little imagination. Do you realize how much money I will make with this ring? Think about a trip to Las Vegas, think about playing blackjack. The croupier deals out the card and you say ‘SEFYLL,’ and you know exactly what the next cards in the deck will be. Think of roulette or poker, any game you wish. With a little imagination you could win at all of them at will. Can you imagine how rich you could become? And if you were careful, no one would ever suspect a thing, would they?”

“I didn’t think of that,” Lucy said honestly. But would she have thought of that after some time? As Miranda had?

“I’ve had years to think about all the things I could do.” She paused, closed her eyes, and squeezed the ring tightly. She looked, Lucy thought, radiant.

“Yes, I’ll be getting a lot of people to do most anything I want them to do—it won’t take hardly any effort at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“How often have you wished you could take back something you’ve done or said? I’ll be able to do just that, whenever it suits me. If things aren’t going my way, if someone doesn’t react the way I want them to, I’ll simply say ‘SEFYLL’ and try something else. Henry Kissinger couldn’t have outnegotiated me, because I’d know what he was going to say before he said it, or realized he would say it. You see how easy it is?”

Experimenting with people, manipulating them—“It wouldn’t really be living your life, more like living your own personal video game.”

“I know what I want, Lucy, and I’m smart. I know no one in my family thinks I’m worth much at all—you included—but I am smart, do you hear me?”

“You’re practically yelling it at me; of course I hear you.”

“I’ve seen my father look at my mother and shake his head. This last time I moved home, he offered to find me a job, and he has before, boring jobs that were a waste of my time and my talents. How could I care about a payroll account or checking some idiot’s job benefits after holding this ring in my hand?

“Yes, I’d sit there while Dad went on about his stocks and bonds, preening at his own brilliance, and all the while I was thinking about what I could do with eight seconds—eight whole seconds to buy or sell. I could be the richest person in the world, if I wanted to be.” Miranda kissed the ring, then thrust it up in a victory signal, and took a waltz step around the small room. She laughed.

Lucy watched her as she continued to work her wrist.
Another minute.
She wondered what Miranda could have become if Lucy’s grandmother had never shown her the ring. “Miranda, since you ordered those men to kill me and take the ring, you obviously didn’t think you needed me. So why did you even bother to bring me here?”

Miranda still clutched the ring in her hand. “Do you know, I regretted having paid those men to kill you. All I really wanted from you was my ring. But they said you were an armed FBI agent, and no matter what I wanted from you, they weren’t going to leave any witnesses. I should probably have done it myself.

“Do you realize, Lucy, that the real magic of the ring is that no one—absolutely no one—ever knows that anything has changed in those eight seconds? To them, time is time and what happens simply happens. You have this extraordinary power, yet no one knows you have it.” Miranda paused for a moment and frowned, then she squeezed the ring again and a blazing smile lit her face. “But you will know, Lucy, when I make it work, won’t you? You won’t experience it with me, but you’ll know, and you will believe me when I say it, because you’ve done it yourself. You’re the only other person in the world who’ll know, and understand the power of it.

“What do you think my first experiment should be? Should I shoot you, and then undo it? You won’t know, but I will. And when I tell you that you were dead eight seconds before you died, you will believe it.”

Yes, she would, indeed. Lucy swallowed. “Why not try another experiment, Miranda? Like crashing that clock to the floor and saying ‘SEFYLL,’ and then see if it’s back on the nightstand again?”

“Shooting you would be such a glorious proof.” She sighed. “But all right, it’ll be my first time, best try something easy. All right, the bloody clock.” She threw it to the floor and yelled, “SEFYLL.”

CHAPTER 69

North Carolina

She’d shot him. Coop yelled with the shock of the sharp punch of pain in his side. He lay there panting, trying to get hold of himself. He felt blood spreading over his side, through his shirt, onto his shearling coat. He had to slow the bleeding or he’d die, since he couldn’t picture Kirsten hauling him to an ER.

Kirsten was smiling down at him. “Not such a big mouth on you now, Mr. Agent. All laid out and bleeding. Here, get the bleeding stopped, I don’t want to drive.” She threw him a black T-shirt from a pile of clothes she’d heaped on the backseat. “Lucky for you I kept some of Bruce’s clothes. That T-shirt ought to do it. It’s clean enough. Too bad. I was going to keep that shirt.”

Coop pulled up his shirt, eyed the wound. Thank God it was through and through, and shallow, but it was still bleeding. He folded the T-shirt, pressed it over both the entry and exit wounds, and fastened his belt around himself. That should hold it. He drew a deep breath, getting his brain to accept the pain and set it aside. There was blood on the inside of his shearling, but somehow no bullet hole. Realizing he’d even thought about his coat made him smile.

“What are you smiling about? I shot you, you moron! Come on, move! You don’t drive, then you die here, your choice.”

Slowly, Coop got to his feet. He could function, but he knew it wasn’t enough. At least she’d proved she didn’t want to kill him yet; she wanted to use him as a hostage, or at least as a driver. But it was up to him to stop her, there was no one else to do it. “I’ll drive.”

“Thought you would. Let’s go, haven’t got all day, now, do we? In a couple of hours, we’ll stop at a motel, get some sleep.”

When they reached the highway again, Coop saw a flash of black. It was a Porsche, Savich’s Porsche.