I pull out the watch, still in my jeans and set it on the desk, then open the screen, and stare at the words.
Nothing.
Eve’s footfalls land on the stairs and I hear the front door opening.
“Be careful!” I say, but it closes before I finish. It’s daylight, the sun up for at least another hour. And, if I know Eve, she has her phone, her pepper spray and like I said, she grew up with brothers. She knows how to handle herself.
Still, I watch her through m
y window, her lithe body running down the sidewalk until she disappears from view. Turning back to the computer, my gaze falls on the file box, the lid askew.
Even if I can’t go back and solve the cases, maybe they can give me writing inspiration. Yeah, I know, but desperate men reach for desperate options.
Mine includes opening up the bottom drawer of my desk and pulling out the mostly full bottle of Macallan twenty-one-year-old fine oak single malt whiskey.
Don’t judge me. The bottle’s been here for three years, and it’s only four fingers down. I empty another finger into a high ball and shoot it down.
Not a hint of muse stirs inside me so I go over to the file box, paw through the files and find the first one. The coffee shop bombings.
Bring the file back over to my desk. Open it. There, on the front page is my typed summary of the first bombing.
7:06 a.m., Monday morning, at a Daily Grind. Seven lives lost. The store was located just off Franklin Avenue, over the highway from the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis.
The first case John mentored me on. I’d forgotten that, how he showed up on the scene and assigned the case directly to me, a young Inspector.
The memory makes me reach over and pick up the watch. I put it on, adjusting the band to fit, and it’s oddly warm, as if he just took it off. The fit is right, though, settling in to the groove between my hand and my wrist bone.
Too bad it doesn’t work. Almost on impulse, I reach over and twist the dial, like I’d seen John do countless times.
It ticks. Just a heartbeat, soft, as if coming to life. I press it to my ear.
Another tick.
I stare at it, and the second hand moves.
Tick.
Weirdly, the other hands begin to spin. As if possessed of their own power, they turn, counterclockwise, winding backwards in time.
The hour hand settles on seven.
The minute hand lodges just beyond the five.
7:06.
In the distance, an engine roars. I look up, searching for the sound as it grows, sweeps over the room. It’s darkening as if a storm cloud has moved in, and as if in evidence, thunder rolls.
I get up and move toward the door. “Ashley!”
I’m not sure what I trip on, but the floor rushes up at me. Something beyond me shatters. Instinctively, I want to duck, but I don’t know where the sound issues from. “Ashley—!”
Then it all vanishes. The sound, the darkness, the engine—a hiccup of utter silence, of white, as if I’ve blinked, except my eyes are open.
I’m standing in a cafe. No, a coffee shop—the deep, earthy scent of freshly ground beans, the churning sound of the grinder, and conversation rising all around me.
I can’t place it, but in my bones I know this place. It’s an eclectic shop, with a tin ceiling, vintage couches, a brick wall with a graffiti menu, and giant hanging chandeliers.
Eve buys her coffee here. I know this in my gut, and the name of the place is starting to form in my disbelieving brain. The Cuppa…