WINDOW OF TIME Read Online Free PDF Page B

scheduled for the utilities to be turned over into my name tomorrow, the same day as the closing.”
    It felt good to smile. Johnny relaxed his hands and took a deep breath. “You’re making LA your home.” She nodded. “I think you’ll like living here and being the girl next door.”
    Lucy turned toward him again and leaned closer. Passion danced across her pretty face. “I’ve never been normal, not since birth, and you don’t know how much I just want to be ordinary. I want to be the typical girl next door, to have a house with plants suspended from every corner, and have a cat or two, maybe even a dog. I’d like my own car to drive, my own bed to sleep in with my own blankets and pillow that nobody else has slept on before me. I want my own washer and dryer.” She leaned against the headrest and sighed. “I don’t think I’m asking too much, am I?”
    “It sounds like all you want is a little happiness,” Johnny said quietly.
    “Yeah, I do.”
    He reached over, took her hand again, and gently squeezed. “I think that’s what we’re all looking for.”
    He didn’t expect her to gasp softly.
    ~*~
    A phantom blast of icy cold air hit Lucy across the face so hard and so quickly that it ripped her breath away, leaving her skin awash in goose bumps.
    The world went stone silent as most everything stopped moving around her. The sky, once reflecting the remnants of the sun’s fading brilliance, flattened to the dead black and grays and slippery whites. Johnny still moved in the most vibrant colors within the window that encompassed him.
    It’s happening!
    Looking around, she saw the traffic in front of them as still as an ancient black and white photograph. The landscape passed in rapid succession, but only the background within the colorful window moved. Behind them, a huge semi tractor-trailer, locked inside its own window, drove at them in vivid color. A white mini-van shared the window with the semi. Lucy knew that something very deadly would happen not only to the man beside her, but to the occupants of each of the vehicles still in color. She continued to watch, paying close attention to every detail. Lucy knew that everything was important if they were to survive within this—this window of time.
    Two overpasses that could take them off the freeway flashed by followed by a California Highway Patrol car driving south with its overhead lights on. Then, from behind, a black Suburban pulled up next to the driver’s window. It slowed down to match their speed. She could clearly see the sun-glassed face of the foreign agent that had been at the foot of the staircase that morning. He bared his teeth as he aimed his gun at Johnny and pulled the trigger.
    The window shattered in complicit silence as the bullets mangled Johnny’s handsome profile in a heartbeat. His rigid body slumped sideways. Blood sprayed in red jerking streams out of his neck, painting the windshield into a horrific piece of modern art. His pickup spun clockwise. She had a full view of the skidding semi jack-knifing toward them in a futile attempt to stop. The fuel-filled trailer swatted the mini-van off the road like a bug in its path. A volley of cascading sparks from the diesel’s blown tire ignited the trailer’s cargo into an asphalt-melting inferno—

 
 
 
Five
     
    Things changed.
    Time rewound.
    It was like it never happened.
    The sounds of the freeway crashed into Lucy’s ears as the pick-up’s engine roared unnaturally loud. Her heart raced; her breaths choked tight in her chest. Intense fear sent adrenaline surging through her veins. She shook her head and deliberately took in a deep breath, trying to clear the deep feelings of terror that filled her body. She’d learned to suppress that panic in her early teenage years as she became more confident in her ability to change the windows. Why would they suddenly emerge again—and so forcefully?
    Johnny had his left hand glued to the steering wheel while his trembling