Stolen Time

by Keith Hughes

  Looking over at Angie, who was sleeping soundly, he yawned, realizing he would have to rest soon as well. Frayed emotions and jangled nerves were keeping him awake more than a real need to stand guard. If Intellisys came after them there, he likely would not see them coming anyway.

  Ness mulled over the ramifications of sharing his story with Angie. He had speculated many times over the last two years what her reaction would be if she knew how he had manipulated events, if only slightly, which led to their becoming husband and wife. So far, she had proved his petty fears wrong, which he took as further proof of Angie's merits.

  Heavy pounding on the door interrupted his contemplation. His hand convulsively gripped the gun as he leaned forward to peek out the window. A man was standing at the door, but the light shone from behind him, so Ness could not make out the face. More pounding on the door erupted, and someone with a rough voice yelled something unintelligible. Angie mumbled in her sleep and turned over, revealing the smooth expanse of her upper back.

  With a sigh, Ness rose and slid the gun into the back of his waistband. He pulled the table away from the door and pressed his eye against the peephole. It didn't appear to be anyone he had ever seen before, and the figure looked much too out of shape to be one of the Things. The fellow drunkenly swayed as he reared back to pound at the door again. Ness quickly unbolted the door and opened it.

  The first thing Ness saw was the swinging fist, and the drunk staggered as he missed the door, and the arc of his swing drew him off-balance. He glared at Ness, who stepped forward to fill the doorway.

  “S'mantha!” the drunk howled.

  Ness winced at their visitor’s volume and glanced around. They did not need any attention coming their way. “You've got the wrong room,” he told him quietly but firmly. “Samantha isn't here.”

  The man's eyes lit with recognition at the name as his inebriated brain struggled to process the rest. “S'mantha?” he said dubiously to Ness, who shook his head.

  “She's not here.”

  The drunkard had been almost ready to turn away when his eyes suddenly locked onto something behind Ness. A quick glance confirmed that the inebriated man’s gaze was drawn to Angie, who was sitting in bed with the sheets clutched to her chest. Her lack of garments beneath the rumpled fabric remained evident.

  “S'mantha!” he bellowed in an accusatory tone. “Bastard! Ya took my girl.”

  “That's not Samantha. She's my — ”

  The fist swung again, that time at Ness’s face.

  His training from the dojo kicked in, allowing him to analyze events in a way that made each movement distinct, seemingly at a fraction of its normal pace. He twisted out of the way of the blow and deflected the drunk’s arm. His attacker swayed at the unexpected shift in his balance. A quick thrust with a palm to the drunkard's chest sent him staggering back before crumpling to the sidewalk. Ness took a deep breath as time resumed its normal flow. A woman's voice pierced the night from overhead, mixing with the painful groans of their visitor.

  “Roger?” she screeched in a perfect counterpoint to the man's earlier baritone.

  “S'mantha?” the inebriated man at Ness's feet moaned in a barely audible whisper.

  “Roger!” Samantha’s tone reflected both surprise and exasperation.

  Ness looked up to see a woman with sleep-tousled vibrant-red hair peering at him from the balcony. She disappeared, and Ness could hear quick footfalls as she ran to the stairs. He took a step back and pulled the room door mostly shut behind him, hiding Angie from view. In an instant, Samantha was at Roger's side, clad in a nightgown and robe.

  “Oh, and you've been drinking again, have you, Roger Murphy?” Samantha accused in a delightful Irish accent. She glanced at Ness. “And you've pulled this fine man out of his bed to deal with the likes of you?”

  She offered Ness a tired smile. “Aye, my Roger can be a right idiot when he's had a bit to drink. I apologize for his bothering you.”

  Ness acknowledged her with a smile. She expertly helped the larger man to his feet and led him toward the stairs.

  “We're on the second floor, ye daft fool,” she scolded him quietly as they mounted the steps.

  Ness looked around at a good number of faces peering at him from open motel room doors and through the gaps of spread curtains. He remembered he had a gun stuck in the back of his pants, and it would not do to reveal it to the neighbors. Stepping backward, Ness reentered the room, turning only when he was fully inside. He shut the door and looked at Angie. She looked rumpled and beautiful, and he battled a strong desire to shuck his clothes and join her.

  Damn it! Like it or not, Roger had brought unwanted attention to their room, and eventually, the Things would be drawn there. Ness wanted nothing else than to lie in the bed and get a few hours’ sleep, but he would have to wait.

  “You'd better get dressed,” he said to her. “We need move on before this bit of public drama attracts Intellisys’s heavy-hitters.”

  As Angie slid from the sheets, she hummed a tune with an amused smile. Ness barked a laugh as he recognized the song. The lyrics came to mind, bringing a smile to his face.

  “Everybody was kung fu fighting.

  Those cats were fast as lightning.”

  It only took Angie a couple of minutes to be ready to go, finishing by sliding her gun into her waistband and covering it with her shirt. She moved toward the door, but Ness stopped her.

  “We're going to use the back exit,” he said and led her into the bathroom.

  “Ooh, how romantic.” She grinned. “It's like we're eloping.”

  A short time later, Ness helped her from the high-set window, and they once again raced to keep ahead of those seeking to catch them. As Ness pushed his leaden legs toward the street, he contemplated how much longer they would be able to maintain their frenetic pace. In all likelihood, it wouldn't be as long as either would wish.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Discoveries

  Tuesday, June 8, 2010, 12:37 a.m.

  Because of his frequent activities behind the former Iron Curtain, Karl was fluent in reading a scene of destruction. The patterns of debris told a story, one he could discern with a surprising degree of accuracy. It was a rare gift but a skill that had served him well back in his KGB days.

  Karl stood inside the Relevonts' apartment, letting the scattered elements of their lives tell him their tale. His practiced eye saw two different types of demolition. He expected some disarray for a professional search of the room, but a large amount of the chaos came from someone taking revenge on a man's possessions. This is Reed's work.

  He took in the smashed frames and ripped photographs near the fireplace then pulled a pair of latex gloves from a pocket, slipped them on, and picked through the living room. Karl did not find anything of interest, but he had not truly expected to. Most people liked to hide things farther back in their homes. In a layout like that one, where the entrance opened directly into the main living space, human nature unconsciously rebelled against concealing anything truly important there. Better to hide valuables farther away from the grasp of the outside world. That had been a common foible he had noticed over the years.

  Next, he moved on to the kitchen, but Williams had done an efficient job of emptying the cupboards, the drawers, and the refrigerator. In the master bedroom, the sheets were in a crumpled pile, and the mattress was lying askew on the box springs. The drawers from the bedside tables were scattered on the floor. Karl peeked into the walk-in closet, where piles of clothing littered the floor. The empty walls behind the bare rods bore evidence that the garments had not been camouflaging concealed compartments. A quick glance though the bathroom produced similar results.

  That left only one room in the apartment to search, the spare room. Instead of the traditional bedroom ensemble, it had a laminate countertop along two walls and a small island in the middle. Trays and other implements for developing photographs were jumbled on the floor. A black metal device with a lens at the bottom lay near
the base of the island. Glass shards near the enlarger's lens glinted, and he shook his head sadly.

  A professional tossing was one thing, but wanton destruction had not been necessary. He sighed. Reed had earned the nickname Berserker in the fields of Vietnam for a reason, and Karl had known the risks when he had hired him. He focused on the only remaining feature in the room: the white louvered metal doors used to conceal closets in apartments everywhere. They sat open, revealing a twin set of shelves that once contained bottles of liquid solutions, canisters of powder, and packets of photographic paper. He knew the paraphernalia belonged on the shelves because it was all scattered on the floor just in front of the closet.

  He inspected the shelves and prodded the pile of supplies lying on the floor with his shoe. As far as he could determine, the closet held nothing useful, but still, something felt wrong. He took a step back and stared at the shelves, his mind only partially engaged with the input from his eyes. There must be something here, and I need to find it.

  When he pulled himself out of his reverie, he realized his eyes had located an oddity while his mind wandered. He swept aside the clutter in the closet opening with his foot, confirming the detail his eyes had detected automatically. The bottom of the left-hand shelving unit stopped short of the carpeted floor, the legs barely brushing it. In comparison, the shelves of the right-hand unit bit into the thin pile.

  Karl pulled on the shelf, trying to see if it would open on its hinges, but it did not budge. Instead, he pressed on the front, and it slid backward. With a smile, he pushed it as far as it would go. It stopped after about a foot, barely enough to clear the depth of the right-hand shelving unit. Another push to the right, and the shelves slid behind the others, revealing a safe mounted in the wall.

  “Da bist du ja,” Karl murmured, as if the safe had been playing hide-and-seek with him. There you are.

  He pulled a small electronic device from his pocket and affixed it to the safe's door then turned the dial quickly to the right and slowed when an amber light illuminated. When the light turned green, he stopped and spun the dial counterclockwise. A few seconds later, another green light lit, and he turned the knob to the right again. With the advent of the third light, Karl heard a distinct click within the door. He removed his device and tucked it away before pulling the handle of the safe. It opened easily, and he was soon rifling through passports, birth certificates, and other minutiae. There had to be something more. Relevont would not have a safe installed and hidden in such an elaborate manner simply to secure the title to his 2004 Saturn Ion.

  Near the bottom of the stack, Karl found a small dark-blue envelope devoid of any markings. It was unlike anything else in the safe. He slipped a finger under the seal and removed a small piece of paper with three numbers written on it: 42.663977, -83.089471, and 318.

  Karl pulled out his cell phone and took a picture of the numbers for future reference. He also sent the numbers to a special email address at Intellisys. A proprietary search program would compare the numbers against hundreds of databases both private and public. If the computer found a match, he would know soon enough.

  The rest of the papers in the safe were unremarkable, so Karl stuck the blue envelope back in the middle of the stack and closed the thick door. He spun the dial and pulled the shelves back into place. If Relevont returned, it would be better if he did not suspect that his secret had been discovered. Karl pulled another gadget out of his pocket, a white cylinder about an inch high and half as wide. He climbed on the countertop and pressed it into place high in the corner opposite the door then pressed a button on the device, and a red light blinked. It would do so for the next sixty seconds, then the light would go out, and the device would activate.

  The cylinder contained a small wide-angle camera, a motion detector, and a transmitter. The next time someone entered the room, it would snap a picture and send it to his cell phone. Working for a firm with access to the brightest minds undoubtedly had its perks in the electronics department. In Karl's opinion, Relevont would be extraordinarily foolish to return, a trait he had not shown so far, but it never hurt to be prepared.

  Leaving the apartment, he weighed the significance of the enigmatic numbers. Assuming the search program succeeded in divining their meaning, he would be much closer to Relevont and the device. After wiping the outer door with a handkerchief, he pressed the elevator button and stripped off his gloves. As he waited, his phone chirped with a message from the search program.

  That did not take long. He opened the e-mail. The program had used the first two numbers to return a link to a location on an Internet map. The last numbers correlated to Angela Relevont's birthday, March 18. He opened the link, and a map appeared in his phone's browser, centered on the middle of a forested park in Rochester, about half an hour north of the apartment. Karl sneered as the elevator opened, and he stepped inside. He had a lead, and his instincts told him it would guide him to Relevont, the device, or both.

  * * *

  Adventures are a pain in the feet, Angie grumbled.

  Her arches ached, and occasionally, a sharp stab of pain rocketed along her heel and calf. She grimaced as her muscles twitched in response to another jolt and stopped walking. They were passing an entrance to yet another housing complex, which had a low wall as a marker. Angie sat on the barrier made of field rock and slipped off her shoe. It felt glorious to sit, and as she massaged her foot, the pain lessened. Ness stopped to stand at her side. He looked dubiously at her flats lying in the grass. She glanced at them as well, knowing all too well the ineffectual cushioning they provided.

  “A little thin on the padding, eh?” Ness said.

  “If you had told me yesterday that we would be running for our lives, I would have worn better shoes.” Angie widened her eyes in a doe-like expression. “A gentleman would give a lady some idea of what he was planning for an outing so she could dress appropriately,” she said in her best Southern belle voice, and Ness gave a hearty laugh. She grinned back at him. One of the many things that made their relationship work was that each thoroughly enjoyed the wit of the other. It also gave her a much-needed break from the tension of their current plight.

  She examined her feet for possible blisters, and though she didn’t see any, from the way her soles were throbbing, they couldn't be long in coming. When she looked back at Ness, he was staring north, the direction they were headed.

  “How much farther do we have to go?” The mile-long blocks created by the grid of streets told her they had already hiked almost two miles from where they had left their last bus.

  “About another mile,” Ness said with an apologetic look. “When we pass somewhere with shoes, we can get you a better pair, but I don’t believe we’ll find anything on this road.”

  Angie slipped her flats back on and stood. “I'll manage,” she said. “I only needed a short break.”

  She took his hand, and they continued. Ness had been uncharacteristically mysterious about their destination, which until that point would not have been a trait she would have applied to her husband. They had jogged a few blocks from the motel then stopped at an all-night diner for a light breakfast. As they ate, the city wakened around them. When they were finished with their meal and lingering over coffee, Ness fiddled with his cell phone. Using a pen borrowed from the server, he wrote a series of numbers two at a time on a napkin. In a couple of minutes, he had two figures on the napkin, including a long string of decimal positions. One of the numbers had a dash next to it.

  She had questioned him about them, and he had taken off his watch then pressed buttons on it for a few minutes before handing it to her. Angie was puzzled but took it from him.

  The watch also functioned as a GPS device, as they had used it several times to go geocaching. Their most exciting outing had been when they were the first to find a cache. She had loved filling out the logbook with their information and enjoyed the rush of blazing new ground. Ness had left a small plastic camera that showed images of Detroit
landmarks through the viewfinder. While only a child's toy from a dollar store, it had been appropriate.

  Angie looked at the watch and saw an arrow pointing north by northwest. “A cache?”

  Ness told her how he had hidden the coordinates in his cell phone contacts, among other places, to his secret cache, and they just needed to retrieve it. Buses had taken them most of the distance, but the rest of the way had to be trekked by foot.

  Between the ache in her feet and the sheer impatience to find the location Ness was tracking on his watch, Angie found her terror of their predicament fading into a grumbling disquiet. She was angry with their pursuers for running them from their home, at her choice of crappy shoes, and at Ness for choosing such an out-of-the-way location to hide his cache. She tried to hide it from him, knowing it would be unfair of her to take her emotions out on him.

  Less than a mile from their destination, they stopped in a convenience store for a soft drink and a snack, which they consumed as they marched onward.

  Eventually, odd popping noises came from the distance then resolved into the sound of gunshots. She gave Ness a worried glance, but he returned a reassuring smile. A little way farther along the road, she found out why. A battered red sign proclaimed Detroit Sportsmen’s Congress, and an outdoor firing range took up most of the property. The land to the north held a dense expanse of trees. As they neared the thicket, Ness left the road and entered the grove, which reminded Angie of Little Red Riding Hood. As Angie followed her husband into the woods, she prayed they would not find any wolves.

  * * *

  The dark car came to a stop, and Karl peered into the trees lining the lot. Did I see a woman entering the trees? He did not usually doubt the evidence of his eyes, but the shadow of the timberland made visibility poor near the base of the trees. The figure looked like it could have been Relevont's wife.