15 Minutes- The Complete Saga Boxset

by Jill Cooper

  He waves me off. “Nothing that concerns you. Hey, you get your paperwork in time to her like you were supposed to?”

  “I did. Still our secret, right?” I lean in with a playful smile, crossing my arms to do my best to appear aloof. Flirty.

  “Always. We have to stick together!” He raises his hand and I give it an appropriately hard high five.

  “I’m having a box of those special candy donuts you like so much sent to the east wing for tonight.” I wink.

  Thomas chortles as he heads down to the escalator and I step up to the elevator with a long sigh. One more bullet dodged, but how long can I keep it up?

  ****

  There’s no sign of Patricia through the morning and I accept the fact she must be tied up in meetings. I go through my day as usual, doing my job best I can, but my mind focuses on my upcoming meeting with Miranda and test subject one in the east wing.

  When I think of Molly, my stomach ties into knots. I want to visit her and see if she’s all right. It’s not so much that I want to, it’s more I need to.

  But not yet. First my meeting with Miranda.

  Before I head to lunch, I give instructions to my crew inside the security headquarters. The rest of my day will be in the east wing like it always is, and I make sure everything at headquarters is as it should be. “Everything is running smooth, Ms. Winters,” Tony smiles at me. “Go enjoy your lunch.”

  “Thanks,” I grab my purse with apprehension. There’s still time to change my mind, not have secret meeting with Miranda Crane. I could pretend we never talked, go to Patricia.

  But I can’t. That’d be wrong. Whatever I find out, I’ll deal with it as I’ve always have.

  I take the subway away from the Back Bay and over to Cambridge switching from the orange line to the red line. The walls of the underground station have advertisements for Rewind on their walls.

  Ready to relive the past? Visit Rewind Today and sign up for a frequent travelers’ program!

  Store your favorite memories so you can relive them. There’s no time like the present to preserve your past!

  The ads are smiling families and children on the backdrop of happy living rooms and bright green meadows. They don’t talk about the illegal experiments or how the memory storage system is really looking for new candidates for the memory deletion and implantation program.

  I’m part of their conspiracy of secrecy and it sickens me.

  On the redline I’m a few minutes away from meeting Miranda and I try to center myself. I scroll through the news on my phone and when I come to an article about the restoration of the old St. George church on Liberty Street, I pause. Something about it seems familiar.

  Not right.

  A light blinds me from inside my own head and the pain ratchets up fast. I almost drop my phone, groan, and grab the steel pole in front of me. My mind surges with a memory. I’m standing in the back of a church in a long navy gown and I’m holding hands with a beautiful woman in a wedding gown.

  “No one is ever going to buy this,” my lips twist with a wry smirk in the full-length mirror in front of me.

  “You’re a cousin visiting from out of town. What’s not to buy?”

  “How about all of it?” I gaze behind us and see the young girl Molly. She stands beside us and Lara pulls her hair off her neck to slip a locket on her. It’s heart shaped and inside is a picture of us.

  Lara smiles at me. “We’re family. Nothing will ever tear us apart again.”

  Family.

  I moan as the memory fades and I’m back to sitting on the T. The pain slowly recedes but I’m left in shock with what just happened. In the memory I knew Lara, I knew Molly and we were family.

  How?

  There’s a splatter of blood on my phone. I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and stand up. My legs feel like jelly and for the first time I realize people across the way are staring at me. I clear my throat and as I approach the opening door, a woman slides away, clutching her purse.

  “It’s drugs, right?” the old lady cackles at me.

  I consider telling her off but instead I just shake my head and exit the train. I’m looking forward to my lunch with Miranda even more now.

  But, I’m afraid I won’t like what I hear. I’m afraid it could tear my whole world apart.

  Chapter Eighteen: Cassidy Winters

  I’ve shaken off what happened on the train as a strange anxiety episode by the time I arrive at the sandwich shop at Union Station. It’s small and the smell of frying grease thickens the air.

  The counters are black and the tile surround is red and white, speckled with black. The cook takes my order and is uninterested as he jots it down on his pad. Stains of ketchup and oil cover his white apron.

  “That everything?”

  “Sure is.” I offer a meager smile and pick up my coffee and take it to the window. Cool air rises off of it and I have the perfect view of the subway. Right outside are grates in the sidewalk and steam rises up as business women hurry past.

  I sit on a bar stool and sip the steaming hot bitter coffee, enough that it burns my tongue just a bit on the tip. By the time Miranda slides on the stool beside me, my tuna melt has arrived and I’ve eaten half. She bounces with nerves as she slides her briefcase onto the counter top and it’s only a moment later that she places her order with the acne speckled waitress. Kid must’ve dropped out of college.

  “You’re early,” she says.

  “I like to get the lay of the land. I was beginning to think you wouldn’t show.”

  “If I had any sense I wouldn’t,” Miranda mutters as she sips her coffee. She licks her lips and I study her from the corner of my eye. The way she bounces, her fingers drumming on the countertop sends my police senses off.

  She’s guilty of something and dying to get it off her chest. Even if she hadn’t caught me going through her office, Miranda would’ve cracked eventually. I’m not sure how to start the conversation but words jump out of her mouth without any prodding from me.

  “Ten years ago, Patricia started asking me to falsify information to Congress about what we were doing with the memories. How we were looking for candidates. It flew in the face of what we were supposed to be doing. She was using money from dirty places.”

  “Mob?”

  Miranda nods. “They were in a hurry to get results. Big results. They wanted time travel pushed to extremes to the point where we started offering money to Vets, anyone with trauma. We found people with trauma or brain injuries were better candidates, we still don’t know why.”

  “Okay. What does this have to do with your daughter?”

  “I wanted to walk away. John found out I was having an affair.” Miranda swallows hard and tears spring to her eyes. “He worked to Rewind at the time. John was going to leave me so I promised I’d get away. We could start somewhere fresh. I didn’t want to lose my family. So I sent in my resignation letter and Patricia was furious.”

  Her words come fast. “What did Patricia do? Did she threaten you?”

  Miranda nods hurriedly. “She said she’d turn me in. She’d convince everyone that it was me, that she never knew. So, I started making tapes. I recorded everything I was doing. Meanwhile John and I planned to take Lara and…at night when it was dark, so Patricia would never know.”

  “What happened to Lara?” I ask gently and put my hand on hers.

  She swallows, visibly and her eyes grow distant. Miranda isn’t with me anymore, instead she’s trapped in her own trauma and I make her relive it—the curse of all cops. It’s what we do and what we get paid to do, but I have to hear it.

  I have to know.

  “The night before we were set to leave, someone broke into our apartment. Lara got up to go the bathroom…” Miranda’s lip quivers. “Wrong place, wrong time, that’s what everyone said.” Her eyebrows furrow together and the anger she feels is palatable.

  Was Patricia that big of a monster that she would have killed Miranda’s child to control he
r? I’m not sure but it’s clear Miranda believes it.

  “We stayed to bury our daughter and then…I couldn’t leave Rewind if they were behind Lara’s murder. Since then I’ve been trying to get evidence. John thought I was crazy, obsessed. He left and moved to Chicago. Barely takes my calls anymore but I’m getting closer.”

  Bitterly, Miranda pushes her coffee away.

  “Do you have any proof? Have you ever found anything?”

  She shakes her head. “They’re good at covering their tracks, but I’ve been building a case.”

  “What kind of case?”

  “What we do at Rewind. It isn’t just memory restoration. We’ve been looking for someone who can move through the past and change things.”

  I furrow my brow. “We can’t interact with the past.”

  Miranda raises her eyebrows. “A lie. We can but it destroys the brain if you change too much. That’s what the memory storage program is really about. Finding someone who can change the timeline. Someone who can do whatever Patricia wants and no one will be able to stop her. That’s why I’ve had to be so careful.”

  Her story starts to sound like a woman coming unhinged. Is it possible any of this is true or is it a mental break for a woman consumed with grief for her daughter…The same daughter that I had a flash of knowing on her wedding day?

  It adds up to something, but I don’t have the right answer.

  “What do you want to do?”

  Miranda sighs. “I want her to pay for what she’s done. Her and Rex, her partner in crime. I have enough information now that proves Patricia isn’t just doing illegal experiments. She’s messing with the timeline.”

  “What proof?”

  She blinks and stares at me. “You. You’re the proof.”

  ****

  It’s like I’ve been slapped. “Me?”

  Miranda nods. “Test subject number one is…special. She knows things she shouldn’t. She spouts on about the changes to the timeline. I don’t know who she is or where she’s come from, but Patricia hovers over her like she’s a priceless jewel. She makes sure no one else talks to her and when she wakes up, Patricia sedates her again. She’s afraid of what she’ll say.”

  I stiffen and sit up straighter. What does any of this have to do with me?

  “Last time I took her vitals she told me she’s my daughter. I thought it was just spouting’s of a young girl who has had trauma, but she is the spitting image of Lara at her age. She said she knows you. That you’re from the future and that you’re my great-granddaughter.”

  Laughter trickles out of my mouth. “How is any of that possible?”

  “I don’t know, but it would prove that Patricia is messing with time travel.”

  I shake my head. It’s all too much to believe.

  Miranda senses my distrust and leans forward. “We have a girl here with a brain pattern unlike any I have ever seen. She affects time unlike anyone, easily. Almost innately and she has no physical symptoms other than she seems to know what could happen, what should happen, and what will happen, at a moment’s notice. Patricia wants to use her. She has no past just like you don’t.”

  I blink my eyes. “I have a past.”

  “Do you? Before the police force? Parents? College? Do you know any of that?”

  “Of course, I do. I’m from New Hampshire. Don always teases me about being a hick. My mother owns a small store in Conway. I grew up skipping up and down Main Street. I—.”

  I squeeze the bridge of my nose with my thumb and index finger. It feels like I’ve been underwater too long as a flash of black hits me. I’m in a different time and place that feels so long ago. I can’t see anything but hear squeaking wheels, like a cot being pushed down the hall. Up ahead bright lights blind me and I hear that voice like honey. It twangs with a British accent.

  Rex smiles down at me. “So, we meet again, dear Cassidy. In a different time, maybe you’d call me friend.”

  He slips a needle beneath my skin and my back arches. I toss my head and scream. Patricia smiles at me as she slips both of her hands against my cheeks to hold me still. “She’ll give me beautiful grandchildren, beyond what Lara ever could’ve done.”

  Rex’s laughter coos. “With a time travel gift that’s evolved for decades past what Lara and Molly can do.”

  It’s the last thing I hear before the memory fades. I stand up from the counter so fast I knock the barstool off. Miranda’s reels as she spins toward me. “What is it? What do you remember?”

  It can’t be real, it just can’t.

  I grab my purse off the counter and run out of there. I can’t stop running just as I can’t believe what I’ve seen.

  I won’t.

  Chapter Nineteen: Cassidy Winters

  I head back to work despite my raging anxiety and fear. If I don’t return, Don and Patricia will both have questions I’m not ready for. The answer is something even I don’t understand and I’m left with two options. Either Miranda has been driven crazy with grief and a personal vendetta against Patricia.

  Or she’s telling the truth. Neither are good options.

  In the security office, I settle into my cubicle and spin toward my computer with a fresh cup of hot coffee. There’s no photos or mementos in my workspace. Certainly nothing that signifies I have a life outside of work. There should be, shouldn’t there?

  I shake off my doubt and bring up the calendar on my cloud drive to try to center myself. I have a job to do, responsibilities. It’s time I do them and forget all the crazy things that Miranda said to me earlier.

  Taking a deep breath, I reach for my coffee. I’m surprised to find it’s already cold. Have I really been back here that long?

  Glancing at the clock, I see an hour has already passed, but how it that possible? I just sat down, didn’t I?

  I sigh and rub my face. The stress of meeting Miranda, of everything she said, is taking its toll on me.

  “Well, there you are.”

  Rex’s voice scares me and I jump, spilling coffee all over myself.

  “Goodness, I’m so sorry to have startled you.” Rex picks up a few napkins off my desk and moves to clean my blouse. “Let me help you.”

  I push my chair back to get away from him and he aggressively advances. Left with little choice, I grab his hand. “I can take care of it.”

  Rex’s eyes widen with surprise but a slow smile spreads across his face. It unnerves me and a feeling a electricity passes between our skin. He’s done it but I don’t know how. I’m no longer sitting at my desk but instead I’m inside a clear, plastic cage. I’m on my knees and there’s a collar around my neck and my wrists, keeping me in place.

  Someone walks around me and he uses an electrical baton against the bare skin of my back. The pain rages from that one central point to everywhere over my body. It’s all I can think of as the male’s voice says to me.

  “Lara is your enemy. Lara destroyed your life. Now you’ll destroy her. Not just for me, but for you.”

  I gaze into his eyes and see that it’s Rex.

  As I scream, my surroundings change and I’m back at my desk and holding onto Rex’s wrist tighter than before. His smile morphs into a scowl as he tries to pull his arm free. I stand up, rush him and pin him against the wall of my office.

  “Cass—.” I don’t give him the chance to say anything else, I force my arm under his chin and throttle his head back.

  I snarl. “What the hell did you do? What kind of game are you playing?”

  “It was just coffee,” he chokes the words out. “I was wondering why you missed the meeting—.”

  I don’t believe him. He’s up to something. I position my foot on the inside of his leg to stabilize him as I ram his head into the wall. “You know something.”

  “I know a lot of things. I’m afraid you’ll have to be a lot more specific.”

  “Cassidy!” Two of my security guards come in and remove me from Rex. They hold my arms tight and I fight against them. Traitors.
>
  Rex rubs his neck and fixes his suit.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Montgomery?” Thomas asks.

  He nods. “She’s unstable. See to it that she’s removed from the building until further notice. Gather her credentials. I don’t want to see her face again today.” Rex shifts his eyes to me. “Patricia will hear about this outburst. I always knew you were a calculated gamble. You just proved you were not worth risking.” Rex walks out of the room like he’s victorious.

  Maybe he is.

  I shove Thomas off of me and glare at both him and Fabian. “We’re going to need your security passes and your gun.” Thomas extends his hand. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

  “Just like that, huh?” I hand over my badge and security pass. When it comes time to hand over my gun, I feel greater remorse. Without it, I’m less protected. Powerless.

  “It’s the job,” Thomas says sadly.

  “There’s more important things than the job,” I whisper and head out of Rewind for home. But it’s not over yet. Far from it.

  ****

  At home, I prepare for what Don might say. I order Chinese food and open a bottle of wine. I even change into his favorite red slinky dress; he likes the way it sets of the highlights of my hair. I just hope that when I get to the bottom of what’s going on, he’ll trust me. He’ll stand by me.

  His mother isn’t a good woman, something I had known all along, but to know she was capable of murder. Of harming children…

  While I wait for Donovan to arrive, I look up John Crane in Chicago. It turns out he’s a science fiction writer now, doing pretty well for himself. It takes some digging but I find his cell phone number and dial.

  “Who is this?”

  “I work with your ex-wife and would like to corroborate a few points with you if I may.”

  “You a cop or something? You talk like one.”

  “Once,” my stomach sinks. “Mr. Crane—.”

  “I’m in Boston now for a conference. I can meet you tomorrow, if that’ll suit you.”