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.”
“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.
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.
CHAPTER 70
Sherlock saw them merging into traffic ahead of them. “That’s Coop. In the Dodge!”
