Synopsis:  Whitney Eisner leads a double life. In one she is a playgirl who travels and in the other she works for a secret agency that allows people from the future to travel into the past. Her life becomes even more complicated when she is implicated in a series of assaults on women travelers.   When one of the women dies and Whitney is the only suspect, she breaks all the rules when she reaches out to Atlanta Detective Lauren Shea for help.

Sex:  None yet, but we’re hopeful.

Emails are welcome at J. Brownell

1.

She was sitting with her feet propped up on the corner of her desk, staring down at the harried city of Atlanta, and sipping a glass of ice cold Coke.  It was late Friday afternoon and like every Friday afternoon, she was waiting for the status reports from the various zones.  She hated Fridays.  She was Chief of Security for the North American Central Gateway.  She had forty-eight centers in three countries under her control.  She had tens of thousands of people in her command.  Not one of those people could transmit the weekly status reports to the Operations Director at Quantico.  It was one of only a few tasks Whitney Eisner could not delegate to someone else.

She let her mind wander to later that night.  She still wasn’t sure what possessed her to accept Kim’s invitation to a backyard barbecue.  Maybe it was the wry way Kim asked herself aloud why she was even asking Whitney when she always said no.  Maybe it was the faint trace of hurt in her friend’s eyes as she waited for rejection.  Whitney sighed.  Whatever the reason, she was expected at Kim’s no later than eight.  If she were lucky, she would merely be bored.  Whitney wasn’t feeling particularly lucky.

“Well here they are-”

She turned to the voice at her doorway the same instant the beeping of an alarm broke the stillness of her office.  Her XO stood in front of her desk expectantly, the blue folder at his side forgotten.  Frowning, she moved closer to her desk and stared down at the scrolling line of text at the bottom of her computer screen.  Code White.  Code White.  Code White.

Well, hell.  She dropped her hands to the computer touch screen black glass desktop.  “Just leave it on my desk, Sam.”

Sam nodded once and laid the blue folder on her desk before leaving her office.  Whitney quickly typed in the code that brought up the GPS for the Atlanta Gateway.  She zeroed in on the blinking red light.  She first looked at the accompanying photo.  Tracy Warner was California from her sun bleached blonde hair to her Malibu blue eyes.

Traveler R32-H: Tracy Warner, 20
Student American University of California-Berkeley
Arrived 0807 11 November Atlanta Station
Billeted Room 519  11 November-13 November
Requests: None

Whitney frowned as she read the brief synopsis of Tracy Warner’s planned stay in Atlanta.  Why would a twenty-year-old college student come five hundred years into the past, book a room for two days, and have no itinerary planned?  Granted, some people did go on vacation without firm plans, but, not in Whitney’s experience, college co-eds.  She hit the command key that would show her Tracy Warner’s current location.

12441 Long Street, Atlanta, Georgia, North America
Atlanta Police Department Precinct 119

It was at that exact moment that a stabbing pain lanced across the back of her left eyeball.  Absently, Whitney massaged her eye as she reached for the phone.  She made two brief calls.  One to their law firm to get Matt over to the precinct and the other to inform Quantico of the situation.  When that was taken care of, Whitney slipped on her dark blue overcoat and grabbed her keys.

She stuck her head into Sam’s office.  “Precinct 119.  Start the paperwork for me, Sam.  I want this kid in Quantico in time for supper.  She’s R32-H.” 

Whitney forced her mind to remain blank as she rode the elevator down to the underground parking garage.  The reasons Tracy Warner was at the police station were infinite in number and rampant speculation was less than pointless.  Whatever the reason, it was a situation Whitney had to get under control quickly and get Tracy out of there.  And Tracy Warner better pray to whatever god she believed in that reason was one Whitney would understand.   

While Whitney dodged the afternoon traffic, she began to construct a logical reason for the sudden appearance of herself and an attorney.  For most scenarios, she could be a family member responding to Tracy’s phone call.  The problem was determining if Tracy had been allowed one yet.  Whitney could always pretend someone who knew the family saw Tracy brought in and called her.  She could be the older sister dealing with a delinquent sibling.

Matt Lang was waiting for her in the parking lot.  They greeted each other like the old friends they were.  They graduated from the Academy together.  “Have you been in yet?”

He looked like he had stepped off the pages of GQ.  His charcoal tailored suit fit perfectly over his gym-toned body.  Ray-Bans hid eyes she knew were black and he kept his chestnut hair in the short style favored by the military.  Matt was good looking in that way of rich, young men.  “It’s odd Whitney.  If she’s in there, she’s in there voluntarily.  No one knows anything about her.”

“So she’s not under arrest for anything?”  Whitney clarified.  She needed to know that more than she needed to know anything else.  The arrest of a traveler was a nightmare she was quickly coming to dread as she dreaded nothing else in life.  She was waiting for the day it wasn’t just misdemeanors one of her attorneys could dismiss with quick legalese.

Matt cast a quick glance to the people walking around them.  “So what do you want to do Chief?”

How could she explain their presence?  In this place, she wasn’t the Chief of Security for the North American Gateway and he wasn’t her Atlanta legal advisor.  He was a junior associate in the elite law firm of Lang, Dover, and Shi.  She was the playgirl daughter of a wealthy family.  Usually when something happened, Whitney stayed in the background and let her staff attorneys work their magic.  Sam was only as far away as her cell phone should they need help.

Before she could concoct a reasonable explanation for their presence, one side of the double doors opened and Tracy Warner stepped out onto the sidewalk with a police official in tow.  Tracy held out her hand to the petite blonde.

Whitney walked up to them with her own hand held out.  “Tracy is everything all right?  Hi, I’m Whitney, Tracy’s sister.”

She felt the young woman next to her stiffen as the significance of someone claiming to be a sister Tracy knew she didn’t have sank in.  Whitney kept her gaze on the police detective.  The light afternoon breeze ruffled her short, wavy blonde hair.  Bright green eyes were assessing as she took in the obvious differences of Malibu Tracy and dark Whitney.

“How did you know she was here?”  The woman asked.

Whitney sent Tracy a smile meant to be both teasing and chastising.  “Matt saw you here and of course, he called me.  Is this something we have to tell Dad about?”

Matt came over as his name was mentioned.  He reached out to ruffle Tracy’s hair in a big brother sort of way.  “I was concerned kid.”

Tracy’s face was paling by the second.  Whitney linked arms with the young woman.  The last thing they needed was for her to make a run for it.  Whitney did not want the detective to question their right to Tracy.  “Is she free to go?”

The detective glanced between them.  “She’s not under arrest.  Tracy, is this woman really your sister?”

Time was suspended as Whitney waited with bated breath for Tracy to give them away.  She did nothing to further arouse the detective’s suspicions, guessing rightly that if she tightened her hold on Tracy’s arm in any way those careful eyes would catch it.  She forced a laugh, as if the question was absurd.

“Yes, half-sister actually,” Tracy said finally, her voice strong and clear.  She looked up at Whitney for the first time.  “Dad doesn’t need to know.  I was only getting information.”

Whitney shot the detective a quick grin.  “Okay then, let’s go before someone else sees us and calls Dad.  You know your mother will think this is my fault.”

“Thank you for talking to me, Detective Shea.”

Detective Shea’s calculating gaze slid over the three of them one last time.  “Bye Tracy.”

Whitney walked away with a bright smile on her face.  She said through clenched teeth, “This better be good, Ms. Warner.”

~~

Shea watched the trio walk away, waiting for any overt sign to justify her suspicions.  The tall brunette never released her vice grip on Tracy Warner.  If they were sisters, even half, she’d eat her badge.  Matthew Lang’s presence added to the mystery.  The name Lang was already well-known in legal circles.  His grandfather, Matthew Lang II,  was one of the best criminal defense attorney’s in the country.  His father, Matthew Lang III, was better known for drunken incidents that landed him on the front of the paper.  This Matthew Lang was making his own reputation by his association with Prestige Hotel Suites.  It seemed that every time one of their guests had a little legal trouble, Matthew was there in short order to get them out of it.  It was just one of several odd perks Prestige offered along with their perfectly appointed suites.

She took out her little black notebook and wrote the name Whitney Warner.  Every honed instinct she had was screaming out that something was wrong with this picture.  Shea didn’t want to get down the road and find out that she should have been a little more protective of the young blonde.

Her desk was covered with files.  Some were paper-thin; others were novel thick.  A testament to the variety that was life.  She dropped down in her chair and reached for the newest file.  She flipped the slender folder open and scanned the information Tracy Warner had given her over the last hour.

Tracy came to her with “a friend” story.  This friend was visiting Atlanta, met a woman in a bar and took the woman back to her hotel room.  She was found by the hotel staff the next morning, badly beaten and barely alive.  The friend was still in a coma at the hospital.

Tracy was reluctant to give up any details.  She said she just thought the authorities should know someone like that was trolling the gay bars of Atlanta.  She didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.  The name of the friend, of the bar, of the hospital where the friend was currently comatose never passed Tracy’s lips.  Only one name was offered and that was the name of the hotel where the assault took place.

Prestige Hotel Suites.

What interested her about the story was that she had heard nothing about a vicious assault in one of Atlanta’s pricier hotels.  The news motto of  “if it bleeds, it leads” guaranteed that a young woman found almost beaten to death would be a top story on any newscast.  Shea wasn’t a devoted reader or follower of the news, but she was a police detective.  That kind of story would have gotten her attention.

When in doubt, turn to the computer.  Shea spent the rest of her shift, all one and a half hours of it, trying to track down even one verifiable fact in Tracy’s story.  She was o-for-a hundred by the time she shut down her computer for the week.  In fact, it seemed that Tracy Warner and her sister Whitney were just as fictional as the story she told.

Shea wrote herself a quick reminder for Monday morning and taped the note to her computer screen.  She wanted to remember to call Matthew Lang.  She knew that he at least was real.  One way or the other, Mr. Lang would produce Tracy and Whitney Warner or he would tell her why he could not.  Making false statements to the police was serious.

She puzzled over the mystery as she drove home.  She wanted to believe Tracy’s story if only because Tracy Warner struck her as intelligent and intelligent people didn’t go to the police with fictional stories.  She seemed to have a good life going.  Shea didn’t see why she’d screw that up over something like this.  So, that left darker mysteries.  Like if her story was true, why did no one else know anything about it?  There was no comatose woman in any Atlanta hospital that got there by being beaten in a hotel room.  There was no police report of a woman, dead or barely alive, being found at Prestige.  Ever.  While two young women named Tracy Warner were students at UGA, there was no Whitney Warner in any database Shea could access.

Once home, Shea showered quickly and exchanged her tan slacks and red linen shirt for blue jeans and white T-shirt under dark blue sweatshirt.  Kim wanted her to come early to work the barbecue.  After the week she’d had, she was looking forward to a long night of friends, beer and barbecue.

Kim lived in a Gwinnett suburb northeast of the city.  Shea was the first to arrive.  She didn’t mind being sent outside to fire up the grill.  Her mind was still on the puzzle of Tracy Warner.  By the time she had burgers and hotdogs grilling over the burning coals, the backyard was filled with two-dozen women.  Shea accepted a bottle of Coors absently from someone.  Her eyes were drifting over the crowd, idly wondering who was with whom, when her stunned gaze fell on none other than Whitney Warner.  The woman had shed her black slacks and dark blue button down shirt for tight, faded blue jeans and red UGA sweatshirt.

Shea cast a quick glance over the sizzling meats and decided she could leave the grill unattended for a few minutes.  She was eager to see Whitney’s reaction to her presence.  She grinned at this unexpected opportunity.

Whitney was standing in a small knot of women that included Kim.  Shea wasn’t noticed at first and she allowed herself to observe Whitney openly.  She was surprised to realize Whitney was gorgeous.  Black hair fell around her face in soft, short waves.  She saw pale blue eyes that earlier were shielded behind the black mirrored sunglasses tucked safely at the collar of her sweatshirt.  Her smile softened the hard planes of her face.

Kim saw her standing with them and asked, “How’s the grilling coming?”

Shea was sidetracked from the question by the abrupt change that came over Whitney when she saw Shea was the target of Kim’s question.  She was intrigued by the flash of panic that crossed Whitney’s face briefly before a wall slammed down on her expressions.  Icy blue eyes stared at her in an expression Shea would have thought was anger if Whitney had a reason to be angry with her.  It wasn’t Shea’s fault Whitney’s little sister chose her to talk to at the precinct.

“Everything’s ready when you are,” she belatedly replied to Kim.

Whitney held up her empty Coors bottle.  “Looks like I need another.”

“So do I,” Shea said, although she still had half a bottle.  “I’ll come with you.”

Whitney gave no indication that she heard Shea or knew the detective was dogging her steps across the yard to the bucket of ice-cold beer.  Whitney shoved her sleeve up to her elbow before plunging her arm into the melting ice.  She turned with a bottle in her hand.  She said with a jerk of her head to the right, “Over here.”

“Where’s your sister, Ms. Warner?”  Her question had a dual purpose.  On the one hand, she wanted Whitney to know she was concerned about the young woman and on the other, she wanted to be in control of the conversation.

Whitney twisted the top off the bottle with a vicious snap of her wrist.  “I’m neither her keeper nor her secretary, Detective Shea.  It’s not my job to know where she is.”

“Did she tell you why she was at the precinct today?  Do you know about her friend?”

Whitney was silent for several long seconds.  Blues eyes skimmed over the party before she turned her gaze back to Shea.  “There is no friend, Detective.  I’m sorry your time was wasted this afternoon.  I’m afraid my sister is unstable and whatever she told you should not be believed.”

Shea nodded her head and smiled.  “I thought as much.  Of course, I checked into her story and found nothing to verify anything she said.  Her story had so many little details that I was surprised nothing she said was based on anything factual.”

“As I said, she’s unstable.  I am truly sorry you wasted your time because of one of her fantasies.”

Again, Shea nodded.  “I did find a few things fascinating.  Like the odd coincidence of Prestige Hotel Suites.  Tracy claims the attack happened at the one here in Atlanta and then who’s waiting for her when she leaves?  Matthew Lang.  I’d be surprised if his client list had anyone else on it besides the Eisner’s.  But you know what I found most interesting, Ms. Warner?”

Whitney simply stared at her, waiting.

Shea took a long drink of her beer.  “How’d you get here, if I may be so bold as to ask?”

“I drove.”

“You have a car?”

“Apparently.”

“So you have a driver’s license?”

Whitney’s eyes narrowed.  “If you have a point, make it.”

Shea shrugged carelessly.  “No point, really.  I was just wondering how you got here since you don’t have a license in the state of Georgia.  In fact, you don’t seem to exist at all.  How is it that in this day and age you don’t have a paper trail, Ms. Warner?”

Whitney stepped so close to Shea they were touching.  She leaned in to say softly, “Don’t ask me another question without my lawyer present Detective Shea.  This isn’t idle conversation and we both know it.  If you have further need to question me, call Matt Lang.”

“My, my.  So quick to take offense.  Whatever are you hiding Ms. Warner?”

Whitney’s smile was quick and dangerous.  “I never said my name was Warner, Detective.  You assumed that.”

Shea could only watch as Whitney spun away from her and quickly headed for the exit.  She had her phone out and was already talking to someone as she left the backyard.  Shea revised her opinion of Matthew Lang.  He apparently had at least two clients.  Which made his being outside the precinct with Whitney that much more questionable.  Was he really there for another reason and happened to see Tracy?  If so, why did he call her sister rather than come to her assistance?  If he was there because Tracy was, then the question was why was he there at all?  Did Tracy know something someone didn’t want her to know?  Was there a connection somewhere between Tracy Warner and the Atlanta hotel?

As each question came to her, as each possible answer presented itself, the more Shea wanted to assure herself that Tracy Warner was indeed all right.  Her instincts were blaring out a shrill warning she found impossible to ignore.  Without a word to her host, Shea hurried to her car.  Once she was headed towards the precinct, she organized her thoughts in her head.  The first thing she had to do was get Matthew Lang on the phone and demand he produce Tracy Warner.

Before the night was over, she wanted to talk to the young blonde one more time.

~~

When her phone rang only a few minutes after she arrived home, Whitney thought about ignoring it.  The line was her personal one and therefore did not require her immediate attention.  She answered because the day was already a lost cause.  How much worse could another phone call make it at this point?

Five minutes later, Whitney was muttering angrily to herself as she went down to the terminal center.  Her new nemesis, Detective Shea, wanted to speak with Tracy again.  Tonight.  Whitney’s first reaction was a resounding no.  She wasn’t a lawyer, but she knew Shea needed a legal reason to make any demands on them.  It was Matt’s opinion that they should not give her a reason to find one.  Let her meet with Tracy, ask whatever she wanted to ask while making it clear this time was voluntary.  Whitney liked his phrasing on that.  Yes, tonight was voluntary.  Shea would have to find that reason if she wanted to meet with them again.

She thought meeting at Prestige was suicidal considering Shea was suspicious of the hotel, but Matt had already made the arrangement with Shea.  Whatever red flags were raised by Matt telling her to meet them here would only triple if they made a call to change the meeting place now.  Shea already thought they were hiding something.

The fifth floor of Prestige Hotel Suites did not officially exist.  It was the operations center for the Atlanta Gateway, just as every other PHS worldwide housed the center for that city or area.  Her offices, the terminal center where travelers entered and exited the TimeLine, the Warehouse filled with clothes, and her penthouse apartment were the fifth floor.  The terminal center itself was dimly lit and guarded by two armed sentries.  The only transfers made after seventeen hundred hours were emergencies.  Like a twenty-year-old college student who opened a potentially disastrous can of worms.

Whitney’s call over to Denise, the Operations Director at Quantico, was brief.  She told her what was happening and that she needed Tracy ASAP.  Whitney hoped whatever Tracy was currently doing could easily be dropped.  Matt wanted a few minutes before Shea arrived to get the ground rules set down for the interview.  Whitney could only guess at his rules, but she hoped the first one was for Tracy to let Matt do all the talking.

Without warning, a cubicle slid open.  Tracy, wearing the form fitting green coverall that was standard clothing at the Quantico compound, stepped out with a guard in tow.  “Ms. Elliot thought you would want to clothe her here, Ms. Eisner.”

Whitney nodded at the guard.  “She was right.  Come Ms. Warner, let’s get you dressed to play your part.”

Matt and Detective Shea were talking in the middle of the lobby by the time Whitney and Tracy reached the ground floor.  Whitney said softly to Tracy, “Let Matt do the talking.  He’ll tell you when you should speak.”

Whitney forced a smile to her face.  “Detective Shea, I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.  Why don’t we go into one of the conference rooms?”

She turned and headed to a door behind the registration desk without waiting to see if this was acceptable to Shea.  The detective might have called this meeting, but this was her turf and while Shea had a little time invested into this puzzle, Whitney and all the others literally had everything to lose if this got out of control.

The conference room was one of the smaller ones in the hotel.  Four chairs were grouped around the matching solid oak table.  The color scheme was the navy blue, burgundy and dove gray of Prestige Hotels signature colors.  The only other items in the room were a telephone console and dry ink board.

“Let me be frank Detective Shea,”  Matt said as they were sitting down at the table.  “This is the only voluntary meeting.  After this, you will need a warrant.  The Eisner family regrets that Tracy came to you and that you felt the need to follow up on it.  We know a police officer’s time is valuable.  I assure you Tracy will not do it again.”

Whitney had the satisfaction of seeing shock cover the detective’s face at the mention of her family’s name.  The police were notorious for shunning sticky political situations when they could.  High profile families meant high profile media attention and the police never came off good in those.  Why risk that for a case that did not involve murder, rape, or drugs?

Shea looked at Whitney.  “Eisner?  I thought you two had the same father.”

Whitney clasped her hands on the table and sent a plea of forgiveness to her parents.  She didn’t know another way out of this.  “My father had an affair.  Tracy’s mother refused to let her have his name.”

“She doesn’t care that Tracy’s here now?”

Whitney shrugged.  “She’s over eighteen.”

“So if I make inquiries into the name Whitney Eisner, I’ll find you?”

“Yes, of course.  I caution you to act discreetly.  I don’t want to read that I am being investigated by the police.”

Matt cleared his throat.  “To be specific, compensation will be sought for any embarrassment to the Eisner family.”

Shea opened her notebook and flipped to a page.  She uncapped a pen and held it poised over the empty page.  “For the record Mr. Lang, do you corroborate Ms. Eisner’s assertions that Tracy’s friend was not attacked here in this hotel?  That she is not in fact comatose at a hospital?  That nothing Tracy told me this afternoon was true?”

“It was all untrue.  Again, we regret your time was wasted.”

Shea nodded as she wrote quickly in her notebook.  She shot Matt a sideways glance.  “So every statement she made to me today was false?”

Whitney had a sudden bad feeling about the legally worded question.  She looked over at Matt and knew from his expression she had every reason to worry.  He stood up and motioned for Tracy and Whitney to do the same.  “This meeting is over, Detective.  Making false statements to the police is a misdemeanor.  I recommend you don’t try to arrest Tracy for it.  With her mental health history, she’d only get a slap on the wrist at best.”

They left Shea sitting at the conference room table.  Whitney gestured for Matt to accompany them.  Whitney handed Tracy over to her guard with the short message to Denise that she would call her in the morning.  Once inside her penthouse, she poured them each a glass of Hennessy and handed Matt his before sitting at the other end of the couch.

“How bad is it Matt?”

She knew, of course.  This had the potential to explode their lives beyond repair.  If Shea persisted in checking into Tracy’s story, she could eventually find someone who saw something.  All Shea needed was one tiny fact to point to Tracy’s story being true for her to open an investigation.  Whitney wanted to think they had perfectly contained the attack within the GSA family, but she wasn’t willing to bet their future on it.

Matt turned sideways to face her.  Like her, he was casually dressed in blue jeans and sweatshirt.  “Well, while Ms. Detective was checking into us, I checked into her.  Lauren Shea has a sterling reputation within the department.  She has a high clearance rate.  She’s a good cop and I would hate for her career to be ruined over something we both know is true.”

Whitney nodded in agreement.  “I don’t want this to come down to her or us, Matt.  Do whatever you need to do to make this go away.  I cannot choose to let her know what happened here.  There is no way to explain the truth.”

At least not in a way that didn’t expose all of them.

“Is there anything new in the investigation?”  Matt asked.

Whitney drank half the cognac before she answered.  “No.  It’s hit the same dead end the other three hit.  They thought they had something when another name popped with the first and third victims.  It didn’t pop with mine.  There’s not a lot they have in common beyond the obvious.”

The attacks on young single women travelers began six months earlier.  The first stunned the GSA because it was the first time a traveler was the victim of a crime while on one of the properties.  Obviously, in the two centuries the GSA had been operating, they’d had victims.  Muggings and assaults were common, but they had dozens of rapes and twelve murders.  Travelers were at the same disadvantages as other newcomers to a city.  Whitney and her staff stressed that they stay in crowds, not wander too far from the main roads, and keep their cell phones close.  Not everyone listened and in every group, there was that one special person who thought the rules didn’t apply to them.  Bad things happened and until the attacks, they always happened outside the hotels.

All four women were alive and in various stages of recovery.  The attacks had progressed in violence until the last victim, Tracy’s older sister Erin, was only alive due to the medical technology of the twenty-fifth century.  Doctors were losing hope she’d recover from her coma.

The cases had too much in common to be coincidence.  The biggest being the location of the attacks, namely a Prestige Hotel.  They were all gay.  All traveling alone.  All picked up in a local gay bar and taken back to Prestige, but not to their own rooms.  The room they were found in was on one of the unrestricted floors.  Travelers stayed on restricted floors so that their odd attire when they arrived and left along with their conversations did not arouse suspicion.  Sexual encounters with denizens of the twenty-first century were one in a long list of forbidden activities.  The investigators thought the first victim had ignored that rule because of where she was found.  By the time Erin was found, they had revised that to the attacker being a fellow traveler.

The odds that all four women left with a stranger only to be taken back to Prestige were too low for them to investigate that avenue.  Every one of the travelers who were present with the women had alibis.

“Would you do what Tracy did?  If this happened to Corinne?”

Whitney’s mind helpfully supplied her with a picture of her older sister lying nude on the floor of a hotel room.  Her skin mottled with deep purple and red bruises, hands painfully tied behind her by nylon rope that cut into her wrists, her face unrecognizable.  “No, I’d be harassing the investigators on the other side.  Tracy had nothing to gain by coming here.  She feels helpless and this was not a good way for her to get rid of that feeling.”

Matt drained his glass and handed it to her.  “I’ll call you if I get anymore calls from Detective Shea.  Do the same for me, okay?”

Whitney reached for his glass.  “There’s no one else I would call.  Thanks Matt.  I appreciate how you handled this.”

Matt grinned as he stepped into her private elevator.  “That’s why you pay me the big bucks.”

“Yeah, that must be it,” Whitney agreed as the elevator slid shut.

She carried their glasses to her little kitchen and washed them by hand.  Matt was lucky he didn’t get paid the twenty-first century salary for his position.  She wasn’t sure how the pretty boy would survive with such a drastic cut in his allowance.  Luckily, they all worked for the GSA in some field and all were paid according to rank.

With nothing left to do, she walked up a short flight of stairs to her office that overlooked her living room.  She sat at the computer to read the newest postings from the investigators.

The attacks all had one other thing in common-Whitney was onsite at each property the night of the attack.  So far, that wasn’t a clue being seriously investigated.  Her presence there was unexpected and no one, including Whitney, knew until after she arrived that she would be spending the night.  The only time she was alone was in her own room for the night.  While she may have had the slimmest of opportunity, she did not have a motive.

Whitney finally turned off the lights and made her way to bed a little after midnight. 

2.

“Excuse me.”

Shea held up her right hand in the universal give-me-a-sec sign and continued typing with her left.  She had to get this report finished and on her captain’s desk before he decided to use her for target practice.  She was already a week late handing it in.  She saw someone sit in the chair next to her desk from the corner of her eye.  She caught the scent of perfume and shot a quick look into the captain’s office to see that it was empty.  She had a few minutes she could spare.

“What can I do- uh for you?”  She stumbled, unable to hide her shock.  The last person she thought would be sitting at her desk on a bright winter day was Whitney Eisner.  Hell, on any day if it meant she strolled in willingly off the street.

Sunglasses hid Whitney’s eyes, but Shea didn’t need to see the pale blue to know Whitney was in tight control of her emotions.  The clenched jaw gave that away and so did the fists clasped on her lap.  “Is there somewhere we can speak in private?”

The irritation Shea felt from her treatment at the hands of Whitney and her pet lawyer came back in hurricane strength force.  She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms.  Whitney Eisner did exist, she found out.  And what she found didn’t make her like Whitney any more two months later than she did the day she met her.  “Where’s your lawyer?  As I recall you don’t want me speaking to you without your lawyer present.”

“He’s handling something else for me at the moment.  Please, is there somewhere else we can talk?”

Shea wasn’t sure what possessed her to get up and motion for Whitney to follow her.  Curiosity probably.  She wanted to know what brought Whitney to her desk, and alone.  Matthew Lang made it very clear that Whitney was off-limits.

The interrogation room was small with only a scarred wooden table, four metal chairs and large mirror across one wall.  Green paint was peeling from the floorboards.  A gray path was worn in the black linoleum.  “I’m sorry my conference room isn’t as nice as yours.”

Whitney tossed her shades to the table and stared at the mirror.  “Mine doesn’t have quite the special features that yours does.  Is anyone back there?”

Shea’s surprise at the question must have been reassuring enough for Whitney.  She waved the question away and slowly took off her black leather gloves.  Shea watched Whitney glance around the room before she looked under the table.

“This room isn’t wired for sound.  That would be illegal.”

Whitney nodded absently and glanced around the room once more.  “I’m not sure where else to go.  This isn’t the kind of help I ever thought I’d need.”

Something in her tone, something desolate, caught Shea’s attention.  She narrowed her gaze and saw the woman was pale except for the dark circles under eyes. Eyes that darted over the room, over Shea, seeing nothing.

“Is this about Tracy?”  Whitney’s younger sister had problems.  Shea wasn’t too eager to get pulled into another situation involving the young blonde.

Whitney stared at her blankly.  “Tracy?”

“Your sister?  Tracy?”

Whitney closed her eyes and let out a shaky breath.  When she opened her eyes, she stood up and reached for her gloves.  Shea watched as she carefully pulled the kid-soft leather over her hands.  She slipped on her shades.  “My sister’s name is Corinne.  Until that day, I didn’t know Tracy Warner existed.”

Shea was speechless as every concern she had over Tracy was confirmed.  Before she could ask any of the dozen questions bombarding her mind, Whitney withdrew a slim case from her breast pocket.  She slipped out a business card and wrote a number on the back before holding it out to Shea. 

“If you’d like to the know the story about that, call me.  Matt will be back by five.  Call before then because I may be…unavailable after that.”

Shea turned to watch Whitney quickly leave the room.  What did that odd little pause mean?  What word had Whitney censored herself from saying?  And what did her attorney have to do with it?  By the time she was in control of her body again, there was no sign of Whitney on the street.  Shea went back inside to grab her coat and keys.  It wasn’t until she was sitting in her car that she wondered where she was going.  She dug around in her pocket for the card Whitney gave her. 

Whitney Eisner
COS
888.560.1967

She flipped the card over and saw a local number written in precise script.  Shea stared at the odd business card while she waited for someone to answer the phone.  What did COS mean?  Why did Whitney have an 800 number?  From everything she was able to dig up, Whitney was a playgirl.  She didn’t work anywhere and she lived in a penthouse at Prestige.  Why she bothered to get an MBA from Stanford puzzled Shea.

“Detective Shea I’m headed for home.  I’ll wait for you in the lobby.”

Shea blinked at the unexpected voice.  “How did you know it was me?”

She could hear the smile in Whitney’s voice.  “Caller ID.”

“Ms. Eisner,” Shea asked as she pulled into the flow of traffic.  “What’s a COS?”

“All your questions will be answered Detective, but not over a cell phone.  Just pull under the portico.  I’ll have someone park your car.”

Prestige Hotel Suites was located in the section of Atlanta devoted to expensive hotels and more expensive shopping.  A beautiful navy marble tiled fountain was the first sight a guest saw when they turned through the high wrought iron gate that surrounded the hotel.  Shea followed the curved brick drive to the front door.  Whitney was standing next to a young man clad in a simple black suit.

“Park her next to me, Payne.”

The young man took her keys with an excited smile.  His coloring, especially the pale blue eyes, identified him as a relative of Whitney’s.  “Brother?”

Whitney cupped her elbow and led her into the lobby.  “Nephew.  Peyton, my brother, is Payne’s dad.”

“Is he old enough to drive?”  Shea cringed at the image of her Honda crashed into one of  the concrete pylons.

“Yes.”

“Has he ever driven your car?”

Whitney laughed as they stepped into the elevator.  Shea watched in interest as Whitney used a cardkey to a floor marked G.  “No, he hasn’t.  But only because I don’t use the valet service.  To hear him tell it, there isn’t a car in Atlanta Payne hasn’t parked.”

The elevator opened into a bi-level  room.  Whitney walked out removing her gloves.  “Have a seat, Detective.  I’m having a Coke.  Would you like something?”

Shea walked from the elevator slowly, her gaze taking in the beautiful room.  The signature colors of Prestige were prominent.  The furniture was overstuffed navy leather, glass topped tables and large abstract paintings streaked liberally with burgundy. The carpet was dark gray.  A small platform with desk and computer overlooked the room.  The only view was the floor to ceiling window behind the desk.

“What else do you have?”

Whitney came to stand in front of her with a glass.  Her smile was amused.  “Well, on hand I have Coke and Dr. Pepper and a small assortment of alcohol.  However, I can order anything you want from one of the restaurants downstairs.”

“Dr. Pepper would be great.”  Shea slipped her coat off.  “This is a lovely apartment.  I wondered why you live here.  All of this, maid service and restaurants downstairs.  How much would this cost me each month?”

Whitney handed her a glass.  “I doubt the city of Atlanta pays that well.  However, we may be able to work something out.”

“Ah yes, the problem you never thought you would have.  So if I help you, you’ll give me a discount on rent?”

Whitney’s smile was bitter.  “I expect to be arrested for murder any minute.  If you keep that from happening, you can live in this hotel rent-free for the rest of your life.  You may then will the suite to whomever you wish.”

Only quick thinking kept Shea’s fingers locked on the glass in her hand.  Otherwise, Whitney’s nice plush carpet would be soaked with Dr. Pepper.  She stared at Whitney in shock, waiting for Whitney to smile or laugh to show she wasn’t serious.  Pale blue eyes stared at her in a direct, humorless stare.

“My God, you’re serious.”

“Very.”

Shea took a cautious step back.  “Who did you kill?”

Whitney spun away from her and walked over to drop down on the couch.  “Nobody.  I didn’t kill anyone.  The evidence is pointing in that direction.  As I said, I need help.  I can’t believe we don’t have cops on the payroll.  What an oversight that turned out to be.”

“Cops on the payroll?”  Shea echoed softly.  “You mean like Matthew Lang is on your payroll?”

Whitney nodded and took a healthy drink from her glass before staring down into the dark liquid.  “Yes, like Matt, but not how you think.  This is complicated.  Maybe I should begin with your earlier question.  COS stands for Chief of Security.  I am from your future, Detective.  Well, that’s not true either.  I was born here and except for a few years of training this is where I’ve always lived.  But my people truly belong to the future.”

Shea asked the only question that made any sense.  “Just how stoned are you?”

“I’m not, but I can see how you would ask that.  I can prove what I’m saying.  So, for right now, pretend that you believe me.  I don’t have much time.”

Shea nodded and sat carefully on the couch.  “Okay, but that proof better be pretty damn good.  Otherwise, you’ll be spending the night on a psych ward somewhere.”

“It may come to that,” Whitney said darkly.

Whitney was on her second drink and Shea nursing her first by the time Whitney spilled the whole story.  The secret of the fifth floor, the truth about herself and the others, the nightmare rapidly staining her life in blood red.  Shea was left numb by the tale.  She didn’t know whether to want to believe Whitney or to call for help.  The story was outrageous and fantastic and had too many details that Whitney said she could prove for it to be anything less than real.  If  it was real, her life was never going to be the same again.

A chime sounded in the silent apartment.  Shea followed Whitney’s gaze to the doors of the elevator.  They opened and Matthew, looking like any up and coming attorney milling around the Fulton County courthouse, walked into the apartment.  His eyes widened as he saw Shea sitting on the couch.  He scowled at Whitney.  “Do I need to ask why she’s here?”

Shea looked at Whitney in time to see her shrug.  “You told me to get ready to defend myself.  They have their police.  I thought I should have mine.”

Matthew sighed in exasperation.  “How much have you told her?”

“Enough to lose my job, get tossed to the other side, and spend the best years of my life in detainment.  I’m fighting for my life, Matt.  Don’t expect me to play by the rules.”

Matthew stared at them for several long moments.  He conceded Whitney’s point with a slight dip of his head.  “You’re not under arrest yet, Whitney, but I think it’s only a matter of time.  For now, they’re willing to settle for you wearing a sensor.  Think of it as a form of house arrest.  Denise fought hard for you.”

Shea felt the tension leave Whitney’s body.  “Thank you Matt.  I can’t believe the evidence is that strong when I didn’t do this.”

Matthew set his attaché case and coat down by the doors.  “Come, we’ve got to get you tagged.  If you don’t show up soon on the GPS, they’ll come for you.”

Whitney plucked the glass out of her hand and stood up.  “I think it’s time I gave you some proof Detective.”

~~

A skeletal night crew was working in the command center.  Whitney nodded at the two sentries standing outside the large room and ushered Matt and Shea past avidly staring agents.  Whitney didn’t bring visitors to her office after hours.  She glanced at the detective’s face.  She was taking the revelations better than Whitney thought she would in the same situation.  Especially given how they treated Shea.

A large map of the North American continent covered one wall.  It was sectioned off into six color-coded sections and dotted with dozens of lights.  Most were green, but she saw San Francisco and Los Angeles were still orange.  She looked across to the senior agent.  “Get people to Frisco and LA, now.  I want those lights green in ten minutes.”

Satisfied, she turned back to Shea and waved a hand over the room partitioned by desks for the senior agents who oversaw the Atlanta Gateway and the itineraries of the many travelers who passed through every day.

“This is where we run everything.  Every traveler wears a sensor for tracking.  It also tells us if someone tries to take anything back.  We control what is taken over.  We knew Tracy was with you because her sensor sent an alarm.  Meeting with police isn’t allowed either, but it does happen when someone’s arrested.”

Shea sent Matt a considering glance.  “That’s why you’re always there whenever a Prestige guest is in custody.”

Matt nodded.  “If you check, you’ll find no one ever returns for arraignment.  We get them back and send them home.  They lose travel privileges for a while as punishment.”

While Matt and Shea talked, Whitney walked into her office.  She opened a drawer and stared over the contents before making a selection.  She sat on the edge of her desk to exchange her hoop earrings for the gold ball studs she selected as her sensors.  The sensors came in a variety of choices that was left up to the individual traveler.  Stud earrings were the most popular with both men and women.

“Good,” Matt said as he came into the room.  He sat at her desk to use her phone.

Whitney pushed off her desk and walked over to the door to stand next to Shea.  “So are you on the team, Detective?  I should be surprised they’ve agreed to let me roam free, but I guess my position deserves nothing less.”

“Your position?  Are you high ranking?”

“The highest,” Matt said as he replaced the receiver.  “Whitney’s chief of the North American continent.”

Matt clapped her on the shoulder.  “Denise says you’re on radar.  Do you need me for anything else?  I’ve got a few legit things I need to do at work.”

Several emotions washed over Whitney as she remembered the phone call that sent her ordinary day into a tailspin.  Even as she told Sam she had to go over to Quantico, that Denise needed to speak to her, it never occurred to Whitney the summons had nothing to do with her Gateway.  Armed sentries took her to a conference room where Denise sat with the two investigators working the assault cases.  Whitney didn’t give them the chance to ask any questions.  Sensing why she was there, she made an immediate request for Matt.  Denise suspended the interrogation pending his arrival.

Whitney sat in the conference alone for over an hour, fuming, wondering why Matt wasn’t there.  She was entertaining herself with images of all the bottom feeding jobs she would give him when he stepped into the room.  His tone was brisk as he broke the news that Erin Warner died that morning.  He told her to go home and get ready to defend herself against capital murder charges.  It took Whitney the brief ride from Quantico to Atlanta to decide she needed a good investigator on her side.  She only knew one.

Ignoring the protocol of who they were, Whitney leaned into him for a brief hug.  “Thanks for everything Matt.  Go, be normal.  You’ll call me and I’ll call you if anything happens.”

He gave her a reassuring squeeze.  “Keep those studs on at all times.  Don’t give them a reason to take you into custody.  We need you over here.”

Whitney nodded, saying, “I promise.”

Matt left them alone in her office.  Whitney stared at the petite blonde.  “So, what do you think?”

“I think I know how Alice felt when she fell down that rabbit hole.  This becomes more surreal by the moment.”

Doesn’t it though?  The day went surreal on her when she stepped out of the cubicle at Quantico and hadn’t felt right since.  She still felt the vibration of shock once she realized she was there for interrogation.  She crammed her shaking hands into the pocket of her slacks.  “Are you hungry?  I can’t believe I am, but I suppose the breakfast I had at seven this morning can only last so long.”

Shea smiled.  “Maybe over dinner you can explain why I’m here.”

Whitney blinked at her in surprise.  “I told you why.  I need help.  I have no intention of paying for crimes I didn’t commit.”

“I don’t know you didn’t do it.”

The words cut even as Whitney acknowledged the honesty of them.  If Shea investigated her, she knew only the life created for Whitney for this time period.  To the outside world, Whitney led a pointless life indulging her passion for traveling.  She vanished for days without warning and reappeared with tales of skiing or snorkeling in some exotic locale.  Her friends were by turns envious of her life and saddened by the emptiness of it.

She took a deep breath and looked into Shea’s steady green gaze.  “Well, maybe if I can convince you, you can help me convince the investigators.  I’m not a killer.  If anything,  there are people who would like to kill me.”

Shea’s eyebrows shot up under her blonde bangs.  “Why do you say that?”

Whitney gestured with her head and walked out of her office.  “I don’t mean that too seriously, but I think people who hold a grudge against me wouldn’t be too upset if I was murdered.  My just reward and all that.  I have a huge responsibility here and a lot of power.  It’s my job to make sure nothing interrupts the TimeLine and I take that seriously.”

Instead of turning right to head them towards the penthouse, Whitney turned left and began walking down the long corridor that led to the rest of the floor.  From the corner of her eye, she saw Shea staring at the sentries.  She clasped her hands behind her back.  “I have forty-eight of these centers under my command across the US, Canada and Mexico.  Each center is staffed by at least fifty people.  I believe New York, LA and Miami have over five hundred.  At any given time, we have ten thousand visitors in the system.  They are monitored from the second they arrive to the second they leave.  I, and the rest of my senior staff, are on call twenty-four seven.”

They walked into the massive terminal center.  Two walls were lined with sliding doors.  A long counter, lined with terminal computers, ran the length of the other wall.  This room had no windows.  Prestige colors were found in the polished gray marble floor, burgundy wallpaper and navy leather chairs. 

“These are the terminals.  Everyone who comes to Atlanta, comes through here.  There is no other way from the other side to enter a city except through the terminal center.  However, those of us who live on this side, can go to any terminal in the world from any other terminal.  I can be in any GSA city on this planet in less than five seconds.”

Shea cocked her head to stare at her.  “GSA?”

“Gateway Security Agency.  There are six central gateways.  I oversee the North American Central Gateway.”  Whitney turned and headed for the hallway.  “Come, let’s order dinner.”

Shea wandered around her suite while Whitney placed their order to the bistro downstairs.  She watched the detective and wondered what price she would pay for sharing their secret with an outsider.  On the one hand she was fighting for her life and on the other, she would lose her life here even if she cleared her name.  By telling Shea anything about them, she had forfeit her life on this side.

She walked down from her desk.  “Before we talk anymore, I want to stress that you cannot tell anyone what I’ve told you.  Matt and I will deny everything under oath.  If you persist, you will be picked up and taken to the other side.  No one will ever know what happened to you.”

The GSA had emergency plans in place for every situation they thought could arise from people in the future visiting the past.  Whitney wasn’t aware of anyone being snatched by the GSA, but knew there was a protocol for that situation.

Shea tossed her wry grin.  “Do I look crazy?  Because that’s what I’d have to be and what people would think I am if I started telling this story.  I don’t think I’d look good in sanitarium white.”

Whitney refrained from stressing home the point that Shea would never see the inside of a sanitarium.  She needed Shea’s help.  The last thing she wanted to do was scare her.  As long as the detective stayed off their radar, she had nothing to fear.

She waved a hand to the couch.  “You’ve taken my revelations surprisingly in stride, Detective.  I was thinking earlier that I doubt I would be so trusting if I were you.”

Shea kicked off her battered Nikes before drawing both legs up to curl up in the corner of the couch.  She laughed as she stared down at the couch at Whitney.  “Well, to be honest, learning that you run the country’s largest travel agency explains your background a lot better than the playgirl image you’ve tried to project.  I had a chat with Kim a few days after her party.  I was calling to apologize for leaving so abruptly.  She thought we left together and was all too eager to pump me for information.  Do you know the nickname they have for you?”

Whitney shook her head as she internally winced at the names her friends could call her.  She was positive that whatever it was, it wasn’t complimentary.

“Bond, Whitney Bond.  They think you work for some super secret government agency.  If you’re interested, it’s the MBA that blows your cover.  The children of wealthy parents who do nothing but play are a dime dozen.  Very few have MBA’s from Stanford.”

It was a stunningly simple truth and Whitney was amused her cover was blown by something that should have been so obvious.  They worked hard for the cover stories every GSA person lived.  While most of the vital statistics that made up a life were true, a few meant something else if cast under a different life.  Like her MBA.  She earned it through the same hard work and dedication as everyone else who had one.  It looked to the outside observer that Whitney did nothing with hers.  Just as it looked to an outside observer that Matt worked solely for the Eisner family.  The facts were true, but the picture they made depended on which side of the puzzle you stood.

The elevator chimed and Whitney slipped from the couch.  Their meal was here.  She said over her shoulder, “Maybe on my next birthday, I should inherit money and let it be known the MBA is why.  Would that satisfy my friends?”

Shea’s light laughter carried across the room.  “Kim will be so disappointed.  You have a pretty active life in her fantasies.”

A waiter entered the suite pushing a room service cart.  Whitney directed the set up of their meal onto the low table in front of the couch.  She signed for the meals and sat down when they were alone.  Silence descended as they took off the silver dome lids and prepared to eat.  They were having French Dip roast beef sandwiches with au jus sauce, small house salad and crispy homemade potato chips.  Once Whitney had the ranch dressing dribbled over her salad and the lid off her sauce container, she moved them back to the reason Shea was in her suite.

“Whatever questions you have, now would be the time to ask them.  I have the time to answer them today.  I won’t tomorrow.  My job is demanding and I can’t neglect that, even if my life is on the line.”

She glanced over at the other woman.  Shea was busy with her own plate.  She shot Whitney a glance.  “Can you get me copies of whatever passes for police reports on your side?  We need to know why they think you’re the killer.  What is their evidence?  What do they have on you?”

Those weren’t the questions Whitney thought Shea would ask, at least not tonight.  She was giving Shea the rare chance to ask her the secrets of her life.  She was willing to answer questions that, until a few hours ago, she never thought a civilian would ever be in a position to ask her.  She told Shea outrageous things, showed her fascinating images, and all Shea could think to ask was about the case.  Whitney was stunned that Shea either believed her or was willing to suspend belief until the case was solved.  She stood up and headed for her computer.

“I have copies of all filed reports.  It’s my right as COS.  I’ll print you one.”

“Good.  Print me out whatever you filed in regards to the attack while you’re at it.”

~~

The evidence against Whitney hovered somewhere between circumstantial and slam the cell door shut behind her.  Shea knew if she had a suspect’s fingerprints at a crime scene and no legitimate reason for them to be there, she’d have that person in custody.  From Whitney’s recitation of her day, Shea knew that it was only Matt Lang’s legal skill that kept an interrogation from happening.  She wondered briefly how Matt managed that.

Whitney’s fingerprints bothered her for two reasons.  The first was Whitney’s assertion she was never in those rooms while she was on the properties those days.  When Shea asked if she’d taken a tour of the property, Whitney laughed and said she hadn’t taken a tour of the Atlanta hotel.  Why would she do that somewhere else?  Whitney went on to explain that she wasn’t in charge of the hotels and had nothing to do with their management.  The fifth floor and only the fifth floor was her responsibility.

It was the placement of the fingerprints that gave Shea pause.  They were found on the navy cover of a book of matches from Atlanta Prestige.  The only place they were found.  A small, easily moved book of matches.  Shea was positive even Matt’s legal skills couldn’t keep the wolves at bay if her prints were found on the bedpost or in the bathroom.  They couldn’t place Whitney in the room with just a book of matches.  They could, and tried, to bring her in for questioning.

Shea sat back after reading the files Whitney gave her and knew she had a choice to make.  She either believed Whitney was innocent and went at the case from that angle.  Or she had doubts on her innocence and wished Whitney the best of luck in clearing her name.  Shea closed her eyes.  Various images of Whitney paraded across her mind.  She heard Kim telling her that Whitney often left abruptly after receiving a phone call or page.  She was gone for days.  Shea remembered how quickly Whitney was at the police station that day with Tracy.  She saw again the sprawling fifth floor and tried to imagine forty-eight of them.  Whitney had to be available to any one of them at a moment’s notice.  The picture painted wasn’t one of someone who had the time to plot attacks on women.

Shea began a list of questions she wanted to ask Whitney when they met tomorrow.  She needed to know why Whitney went to the hotels on those days.  Who knew she was going.  What happened if Whitney could not respond to a call.  Did Whitney smoke.  She wanted Whitney to take her through the executive’s itinerary for the days in question.  Where did she go, why, what did she do and who else saw her doing it.

There was a common thread that tied the cases together.  Every instinct she had told her Whitney wasn’t their suspect.  She had no motive and no real opportunity.  She just couldn’t see Whitney picking women up in a bar, taking them back to where she lived and worked, and beating them senseless.  While she could see Whitney talking some woman into going home with her, she could never see Whitney taking them back to Prestige if she was going to assault them.  Whitney wasn’t stupid.  She had the ability to take these women anywhere in the world.  Shea couldn’t see her taking them to a Prestige anywhere, much less one of her own.

Whitney wanted her to a take a leave of absence from her job.  Shea wasn’t surprised by the request, but was surprised by her own readiness to agree.  She was willing to put her career, and her life, on hold for a woman she barely knew.  It was intriguing and she didn’t mean just the case.  It was the idea that people from the future were visiting them, living among them.  Shea wanted to know more about that.  She had dozens of questions she wanted to ask Whitney about that, but had already decided it was more important to get to Whitney’s problem.  Her personal questions could wait.

Shea knew getting leave wasn’t a problem.  Her last partner left work one day, walked in on a robbery at a 24/7 and was still recovering from multiple gunshot wounds.  Shea was waiting for a new partner, but knew it would take a while.

Her reputation as a trouble magnet preceded her.  Max was the second of her four partners to walk in on a robbery.  Connie at least had the brains to act like a surprised customer and wait for a shot.  Serena transferred after they were car jacked on a stakeout.  Daniel was her first partner once she made detective and his two years with her was still the record to beat.  He left after they were hit by a sixteen-year-old leading police on a merry chase in a stolen Mercedes.  He spent a week in the hospital.

The department was wondering what to do with her and Shea feared a transfer to a desk job.  On the scales, her high clearance rate was being outweighed by her reputation.

She made a few more notes on her list before turning in for the night.  She didn’t notice at Whitney’s, but once she read the files, she realized there were no photos of the crime scenes.  She would like to meet the victims and talk to Tracy again.  She wasn’t sure how or even if Whitney could arrange that.  Shea didn’t think taking her to the future was an option for Whitney.

She crawled into bed and, for the first time in weeks, was looking forward to the morning.  If pushing papers was her future in the department, Shea knew her career as a detective was coming to an end.  She fell asleep wondering if Whitney’s comment about not having police on the payroll meant she was willing to consider it.

~~

The whispering from her conscience began not long after Shea left her apartment.  Whitney wasn’t a rule breaker and she’d broken most of the ones she sworn on her life to uphold.  She repeated for herself the same line she used on Matt.  The lie didn’t work as well for her because she didn’t believe for one instant her life was more important than anyone else’s.  And she knew without a doubt she’d throw anyone else who broke the same rules over to Denise in a heartbeat.  Whitney wasn’t sure what that made her, but she knew she didn’t like the feeling.

She tried to read reports, to lose herself in mindless sitcoms and gave in after only an hour.  She was angry with herself as she called Denise and asked to meet the Ops Director in her office.  She snatched up all official symbols of her office and rank, marched into the elevator and kept her gaze on the selection panel as the doors closed.  She refused to look around her apartment and wonder if she would be back.  Whatever happened, happened.  One way or another she would live with the consequences.

The sub-basement at the GSA headquarters in Quantico was attended by a lone sentry.  Whitney ignored the crisp salute from the young woman.  The only thing on her mind was getting to Denise’s office and tossing her burden onto someone else’s shoulders.  Denise Elliot was older, wiser, and Whitney’s boss.  If Denise sided with her, she could live with what she’d done.  If Denise didn’t, she could live with that, too.  What she couldn’t live with, as was apparent by her late night arrival, was the uncertainty of it.

The Director’s office door was open.  Whitney glanced into the room and smiled.  A robe clad Denise was slumped behind her massive wooden desk, slippered feet propped up on the edge and her face buried in the steam rising from a maroon mug with the GSA seal.  Whitney knocked hesitantly on the door.

Denise lifted sleepy, annoyed hazel eyes to stare at her.  Whitney felt like a first year cadet and found herself trying not to shift under the direct gaze.  “Come in and tell me just what couldn’t wait until the morning.”

Whitney obeyed and sat across from her mentor.  She wiped damp palms on her jeans.  Now that she was here, she wasn’t sure how to start.  She didn’t want to just blurt out what she’d done.  Denise was likely to spill that hot coffee all over her lap by the admission.  She thought she would pass out if she tried to beat around the bush.

“Whitney?”  Denise’s voice was gentle and she sat up.  She placed her cup on the clean desk and crossed her arms.  “It can’t be that bad can it?”

“Do you remember that Detective Tracy Warner contacted when she was over?”

Denise frowned at the seemingly left field question.  “Vaguely.  She’s a detective on the Atlanta force.”

Whitney nodded.  She met Denise’s searching gaze.  “When I left here today, I went to her.  I told her everything about the attacks and us.  I asked her to help me.”

As the words left her mouth, Whitney felt the tension fall away and relief rush to fill the void.  Time stretched as she stared at Denise’s blank face and waited for the axe to slice her cleanly from the only life she’d ever known.

Finally, Denise blinked and stood up.  She planted her hands on her desk and leaned towards Whitney.  Her tone was slow and measured.  “I want to make sure I understand this correctly.  My North American Central Gateway Chief of Security, fully cognizant of the consequences, willingly revealed our presence to a civilian?  Did you really just tell me that?”

Whitney simply nodded.  She would not offer excuses or a defense.  She didn’t have the latter and she refused to hide behind the former.

“Oh my God,” Denise said, her soft tone shaded with anger and disbelief.  She dropped into her chair with a jarring thud.  She closed her eyes and brought her right hand up to massage her temple.  “I don’t even know where to start the charges.”

Again, Whitney could only nod.  She sat forward to put her cell phone, pager, and ID on the desk.  Denise backed hastily away from the items as if they were covered in nuclear radiation.  Her startled gaze flicked between Whitney and her desktop several times. 

“Explain why you threw such a promising career away.”

Whitney found she could not sit under Denise’s demanding gaze one more second.  She pushed herself to her feet and rolled her shoulders as she turned to pace.  She almost asked why Denise wanted to know when the why of it would change nothing.  The hard rules, the ones with heavy penalties, did not come with exceptions.  Obeying them was never a choice.  She answered Denise now only because she could delay the inevitable if she talked forever.

“When Matt asked me the same thing today, I told him it was because I’m fighting for my life.  That I shouldn’t have to play by the rules.  I truly believed that when I said it.  And it is the reason I did it.”  She shook her head now, disgusted with her reasoning.  “I should have found a better way to do this.”

“If you could go back to this afternoon, would you do it again?”

The somber question caught Whitney off guard.  Technically, she could go back to that afternoon.  It was now the past.  However, it was a part of the past closed to even them.  The last two hundred years, other than the decades designated as open, were closed to them for travel for many reasons and only the unanimous consent of the Council could open it.  As far as Whitney knew, that had never happened.  But Denise wasn’t asking if she would go back.

“Yes.  I don’t know the better way to do this.  The investigators are looking for evidence against me, not for someone else.  I won’t wait until I’m arrested before I start clearing my name.”

The last of her doubts slid away as she realized the absolute truth of her words.  Yes, if given the opportunity, she would do it again.  If she had other choices, if she had different options, she couldn’t see them.  At least this way, if she cleared her name, the life she would live on this side would be free.

“How did she take it, this detective of yours?”

Whitney had to grin at how easily Shea accepted her story.  She’d shown her nothing really that was irrefutable evidence of time travelers.  “Amazingly well.  I think she still had a lot of questions over Tracy.  Learning the truth, about Matt and me, made that whole incident make sense for her.  She’s going to take a leave of absence to help me.”

Denise sighed and with her cup cradled in her hands again, sat back in her chair.  “I don’t want to lose you Whitney.  Replacing you could take the rest of my posting term.  I’ve got better things to do with that time.”

“I’m sorry Denise.  I didn’t kill Erin Warner.  I didn’t attack those women.  I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

And that was Whitney’s bottom line.  She’d broken the rules, gone outside of the GSA for help because she was not paying for someone else’s crimes.  She’d pay for her own and fully expected to lose her command, but that was as far as she was willing to go.

Denise dismissed her words with a careless wave of her hand.  “You’d be sitting in a cell right now if I even thought you capable of these acts.  You’re not and the people who will be standing on your side should it go that far will surprise you.  But you’ve made a huge mess here, Whitney, and now we have to find a way to cover it up.”

Whitney watched in slack jawed shock as Denise sat up and booted her computer.  “Sit down.  This may take a while.”

Whitney sat.  Curious, she leaned forward.  “What may take a while?”

Denise grinned at her and winked.  “We’re going to make your detective official GSA.  Tomorrow you can announce to your staff that I’ve hired a security advisor.  How did you expect her to investigate this without clearance of any kind?”

“I didn’t think that far ahead.”

Whitney felt numb as she watched Denise build a life for Lauren Shea in the future.  When she walked back into her apartment a few minutes after midnight, she held Shea’s new life in one hand and her own in the other.  This time when she stepped from the elevator, she let out a deeply held breath as her gaze moved slowly over the room.  She wasn’t here much.  There wasn’t much about the room that reflected her personality.  She would have it missed it more than she knew. 

She went up to her desk and left the cell phones, pagers and her ID.  Tomorrow her life changed.  For better or worse, she didn’t know.  Before she walked into her bedroom, she turned back to the room lit by a full moon.

Unless they actually managed to hang the murder on her, this was hers.

Home.

Who knew she would cross any line to fight for it?

3.

Nephew Payne wasn’t parking cars late the next morning when Shea arrived at the front door of Prestige.  This man was slightly older than Payne, probably a college student, and his eyes weren’t the trademark Eisner blue.  He opened her door before she could and greeted her with a smile too friendly to be the typical valet grin.

“Good morning Ms. Shea.  Ms. Eisner left a message for you at the front desk.”  He plucked the keys from her hand and left her staring as he drove away in her car.

The day just wasn’t going as planned.  She stopped by the precinct first, thinking her request for leave was a mere formality.  Apparently, she wasn’t as expendable with the department as she thought.  Captain Ross saw her request as a prelude to her resignation and wanted assurances that she wasn’t leaving the department.  She gave it easily and could look him in the eye when she did.  For that moment in time, she had every intention of coming back to her job.

Now, she was finally where she wanted to be all morning and the person she wanted to see wasn’t there.  Shea felt deflated as she walked into the busy lobby.  She wanted to dive into the investigation.  Once she made up her mind to believe in Whitney’s innocence, she was eager to get her hands on the case.  The last thing she wanted was to cool her heels waiting.

Before Shea could join the line of people waiting at the front desk, another smiling co-ed dressed in black slacks and maroon oxford walked up to her and took her arm.  “Ms. Shea, I’m Amanda, Whitney’s assistant.  Whitney’s in a meeting right now.  If you’ll come with me, we should have everything finished by the time the meeting ends.”

First shock and then intrigue had Shea following the perky red head down the hallway behind the reservation desk.  So, Whitney was on the premises.  And what was “everything” that would be finished by the time the meeting ended?  Amanda led her into a small office and gestured for her sit in front of the desk.

Amanda took a folder from a pile and opened it.  With a skill borne of practice, she quickly set out several forms facing Shea and marked spots with a hastily crossed X.  “Once your suite is ready, we’ll decorate it to you preferences.  Whitney requested that it be on the fifth floor for obvious reasons.  We have special parking in the garage so we are discouraged from using the valet service.”

Despite her deeply ingrained reluctance to sign any legal papers she had not read, Shea signed and initialed every spot Amanda indicated.  She listened with half an ear as the woman went through the usual benefits of the GSA and the additional privileges of being at the headquarters of the North American Central Gateway.  Shea wanted to ask just what position she now held at the Atlanta hotel, but didn’t want to blow whatever cover Whitney was providing for her.

Amanda gathered up the papers as efficiently and handily as she dealt them out.  She closed the cover on the folder with a bright smile.  “All that’s left is to get your new ID, a shirt for today, and find out what parking slot is open for you.”

Nearly half an hour later, Shea was alone in the elevator, headed for the fifth floor and had traded her white knit shirt for a navy oxford.  The GSA dress code was dictated by PHS.  Amanda explained that everyone dressed like staff to avoid confusion among guests.  Shea thought it was more to keep the GSA members hidden among the hotel staff.  When Amanda asked if she knew the way to the command center, Shea said yes.  She was reasonably sure she could find the command center once she was on Whitney’s floor.  She stared at the items in her hand in amazement.  She had an official GSA ID card that, in addition to her name, gave her title as Special Security Advisor.  She had a parking decal for the GSA parking lot.  She had a new cell phone and pager.  She would wait until later to read the copies of the papers she’d signed.  She hoped whatever she  agreed to do didn’t include living the rest of her life five hundred years in the future.

The fifth floor was bustling.  Shea weaved a path down the long corridor and tried not to stare.  The clothing in Whitney’s time was…different.  There seemed to be a lot of shiny materials with brightly clashing colors.  Did they become color blind in the future?  As she neared the terminal center, a familiar voice caught her attention.  She slowed and stepped into the oddly silent room.

Every eye was on Whitney as she faced off with a husky woman with twinkling neon green hair.

“You were told what you could and could not wear.  Your hair is unacceptable for this era.  You will change it or you will go home.  Those are your only options.”

“Do you know how much this cost?  I’m not changing my hair.  I’m not going home.  I’ve paid for three days.”  The woman’s loud, demanding voice was a shrill contrast to Whitney’s cool, controlled tone.

Whitney waved over one of the sentries.  “Next time follow the rules and you’ll be allowed to stay for three days.  Quantico,” she said to the muscular man.

“You can’t- Hey!”  The woman reached for Whitney as she was turning away and Shea stepped forward, grasped her arm and twisted it behind the woman’s back.

Shea tightened her grip when the woman began to thrash.  The guard snapped a pair of flexcuffs from his waist and between the two of them, they locked the plastic restraints on her wrists.  Shea straightened her jacket and turned to find Whitney grinning at her.

“All right, let’s get back to work,” Whitney said and let her gaze sweep over the room.

Once she was satisfied, she glanced at her watch.  “Are you hungry?  I’m having lunch sent to my office and you can ask me all your questions.”

“What questions?”  Shea asked.  “Like how did I suddenly become a GSA employee?”

Her tone was teasing and while she did want to know the story behind her new status, she wasn’t very concerned about it.  Oddly, she trusted Whitney.  The woman lied to her during a quasi-official investigation.  She was being investigated for assault and murder.  And Shea trusted her.  The grin she angled up at Whitney fell from her face at the stony expression on Whitney’s.  A quick shake of her head had the rest of her teasing words dying on her lips.  She didn’t need to be a mind reader to know Whitney didn’t want this conversation continued in the hallway.

The command center was fully staffed this morning.  Phones rang.  Voices rose and fell over the cacophony.  The rich aroma of coffee hung in the air.  The large map was dotted with green, yellow and orange lights.  Shea followed in Whitney’s wake and was surprised when Whitney veered from her open door to the closed one next to it.  Her brisk knock was met with a command to enter.

A slim man with a windblown mop of sandy hair sat behind a black glass desk.  He glanced up from the paper he was writing and then sat back with a puzzled smile when he saw Whitney standing in front of him.  Like Whitney, he was sharply dressed, his button down oxford a slate gray while Whitney’s was maroon.

“Sam, I wanted you to meet Lauren Shea.  We’re going to be locked in my office for about an hour going over what I need for her to do here.”  She turned to Shea with a smile.  “Shea this is my Executive Officer Sam Martin.  If you ever need anything and can’t find me, find Sam.”

Shea held her hand out to the man.  Sam had dark brown eyes and Shea caught herself before she shifted uncomfortably under his calculating gaze.  Without him having said a word to her, she knew Sam Martin did not like her.  The feeling was mutual.  His handshake was soft and weak and she suspected he had to fight not to wipe his hand off on his slacks. 

“We’ll let you get back to work,” Whitney said.

Because she was facing Sam when Whitney turned to leave his office, she saw disgust flash in his eyes before he sent her a dismissive smile.  “Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Shea.”

“Yeah, you, too.”

Shea followed Whitney into her office and mentally put Sam on her list of suspects.  Whitney walked behind her desk and smiled at Shea.  “Lunch is here.  I ordered cheeseburgers and fries.  Is that all right?”

Shea had skipped breakfast.  “I hope it taste as wonderful as it smells.”

Whitney reached over and pulled the silver lid off the tray sitting on the visitor side of her desk.  “Better.”

Shea hoped Whitney was as honest about everything else as she was about the food.  As she ate the best cheeseburger she’d ever had, she thought about her questions.  When she arrived that morning, her only ones were about the case.  Now she had others and she wasn’t sure where to start. 

~~

Whitney had only question she wanted to ask.  If Shea didn’t give her the right answer, then everything Denise did the night before was moot.  She waited until Shea was dragging her last steak fry through a smeared puddle of ketchup on her plate.  “Did you get your leave of absence?”

Shea laughed and nodded.  “Just barely.  I thought I was on my way out.  Captain Ross made me promise I’d be coming back.”

The answer surprised Whitney.  She remembered Matt telling her that Shea had a sterling reputation in the department.  “Why on your way out?  According to Matt, you’re one of the best.”

Her words surprised Shea, and angered her.  “You checked me out?”

Whitney had to laugh at the outraged naiveté.  “Of course I did.  Just as you checked me out.  So, answer my question.  Why did you think you were on your way out?”

Her quick grin was embarrassed.  “My partners have a short shelf life.  No one’s died yet, but the attitude seems to be that sooner or later someone will.”

“Now it’s your turn,” Shea said and sat back in her chair.  “Why I am suddenly a GSA employee?”

Because she expected Shea to ask that, Whitney was ready with an answer that did not include her late night dash to Quantico.  Shea didn’t need to know about her attack of conscience.  “For you to do this job the right way, you need clearances I can’t give you.  I talked to my boss and she decided the best thing was for everyone to think you’re GSA.  She set it up so that if anyone checks you look legit.”

“How legit?”  Shea asked in obvious surprise.

Whitney sat forward.  “As legit as I am here.”

She watched Shea sit back and blink as thoughts raced across her mind.  Whitney watched the green eyes and wished she could read minds.  She was certain she’d be very entertained by Shea’s. 

“I thought you said if anyone on that side knew about me, I’d be scooped up and never heard from again.”

Whitney grinned.  From anyone else, that question would hold at least a trace of concern.  Not from Shea.  Perhaps because she signed papers giving her official standing in the GSA rather than being met by armed men had something to do with her indifference.  Whatever, it was trait in the detective she was beginning to admire. 

“You have friends in high places now.”  It was as close to the truth as she would admit. 

“And when this is over, they’re going to let me just walk back to my little life?”

Again, the question lacked the concern Whitney would expect. 

“Yes.”  She hadn’t asked Denise that question.  Hadn’t thought to.  It didn’t matter.  If Shea wanted to go back to her life, Whitney would break whatever rules she had to for that to happen.

Shea reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a small notebook.  “I’m holding you to that.  Now, give me a run down on your people here.”

Whitney was thrown off by the change of subject.  “What people?  My parents?”

“Department heads.  Supervisors.  Whatever you call the people who report directly to you.  I think you’re being framed.  I think it’s someone close to you.”

Whitney knew she was being framed.  Because she was still focused on that, she hadn’t thought to wonder who would want do this to her.  Now, with Shea sitting across from her stating the obvious, Whitney was chilled by the truth.  Someone close to her, either friend or co-worker, attacked those women and killed one.  Why?  For what purpose?  The questions tumbled in her head.

“Whitney!”

Her head came up at Shea’s sharp call.  “What?”

Shea’s narrowed gaze swept over her face and Whitney knew she was pale.  She saw when Shea made the connection.  Her face softened and her eyes were a sympathetic green.  “That didn’t occur to you yet, did it?”

“No,” Whitney admitted, “I’ve been thinking only that I didn’t do it.  I haven’t thought to wonder who did.”

Shea smiled and poised her pen over her notebook.  “That’s my job.  Tell me about your people.  Start with your XO.”

Whitney was reluctant to point fingers at her staff.  They were good people and that wasn’t just her personal opinion.  Everyone who went into the GSA was given psychological tests every step of the way.  She doubted someone with that kind of brain defect could reach this level. 

“Perhaps you’d do better reading their personnel files.  I know them professionally.  I know they do their jobs.  I don’t know them socially or personally.”  Whitney believed it was impossible that someone from her staff was framing her.  So, she’d let Shea explore their lives until she was as sure of it.

Shea nodded and jotted something down.  “That works.  I need to see the scenes.  Can you arrange that?”  She glanced up.  “Is talking to the victims out?”

Whitney glanced down as a message scrolled across her computer.  Code Blue.  Medical emergency.  She stood up and walked over to open her door.  She smiled at the young woman sitting at a desk in front of her office.  “Amanda please show Shea to her office.  Get her whatever she needs.  Let Sam know I’ll be off site for a while.”

She turned back to Shea.  “I’ve got a medical emergency to attend.  I don’t know how long I’ll be.  Amanda will help you with the files.  You have my number if you need to reach me.”

~~

Working for the GSA had major perks, Shea decided, as she sat in a plush leather chair behind the black glass topped desk.  Amanda stood next to her, leaning at the waist as she touched a corner of the desk.  A slim computer monitor slid soundlessly up from the glass and blinked a colorful GSA logon screen at her.  Another touch had a keyboard screen sliding down at an angle. 

Amanda stood and turned her back to look out at the Atlanta skyline.  “If you’ll type in a password, I’ll show you our site.”

With a thought to someone trying to break into her files, she chose her badge number and locker combination.  Once it became common knowledge what she was doing, whoever was framing Whitney would want to know the status of her case.  She didn’t hope to believe Whitney’s system was hacker proof, especially if the hacker had every right to be in the system.  So she’d put reports on file and later, if it came to it, she could set a trap.  “Okay, I’m in.”

Amanda spent several minutes showing her the Gateway Security Agency intranet.  The first screen that popped was a list of all six Central Gateways.  The North American Gateway was the only active link.  Amanda sent her an easy smile.  “Only Whitney has access to the other Gateways.”

With a press of her finger on the monitor, she pulled up the North American Gateway welcome screen.  From this one screen, Shea realized she could find anything she wanted.  If she wanted to pull up a particular Gateway, she had only to type in the name of the city.  Atlanta was already in the box.  She scanned down her lists of choices.  Administration seemed the best place to begin her search.

As if she understood her presence was no longer needed, Amanda stood up and walked around the desk.  “I can be reached on extension 89 if you need me.  Whitney is 01 and Sam is 02.  Is there anything else I can help you with now?”

Shea skimmed her eyes over the neat, sparsely furnished office.  “I need a pen and some paper.  If you’ll point me in the right direction, I’ll get it.”

“The credenza behind your desk is fully stocked.”

“Great.  Thanks Amanda.”

“You’re welcome, Ms. Shea.”

The second her door closed, Shea turned in her chair and began opening drawers.  Amanda wasn’t kidding about it being fully stocked.  Shea gathered items as she came across them.  She had several yellow legal pads, a pen and three different colored highlighters on the desk within minutes.  She discovered the credenza also held a slim laser printer with reams of paper, a medium sized safe and tiny refrigerated shelf stocked with cold cans of Dr. Pepper.

She took one of the cans and knew she could get used to this kind of service. 

Several hours later, Shea had two legal pads half filled with writing.  One was scribbled with questions she had for Whitney.  The other outlined the command structure of the NA Gateway.  She had a much better understanding of Whitney’s world.  The command center didn’t have one staff.  It had two.  One, consisting of most of the people who sat at the desks in the outer room, ran the Atlanta Gateway.  They were responsible for the traveler’s itinerary.  They made reservations to restaurants, bought tickets to events and arranged for transportation if requested.  They handled the traveler’s clothing needs while on this side.  Confirmed medical conditions and made accommodations if needed.  If a traveler had a normal stay, he or she never came into contact with the second staff. 

Until today, that staff was Whitney, Matt, Amanda, and the Regional Supervisors that oversaw the six Zones of the North American Gateway.  Shea was startled to see her own name listed after Matt’s.  She knew that touching a name brought up a file for that person.  She touched her own name uneasily, wondering what she would find.  Whitney said she had a legit cover for this job.  Now she would get to see just what that meant.

Personnel files came in two parts.  The first was available to anyone who had access to the intranet.  The second was only available to those with a password.  Shea scanned over her public file with a grin.  They had taken the essential facts from her life.  She was single, lived in Atlanta and had just retired as a lieutenant from the Department of Civil Defense.  She was now a security consultant for the GSA.  Her professional record was sealed per Alliance Code 19-874-3A.  Inquires were directed to Denise Elliot.

Shea unlocked the hidden file with only a little trepidation.  Again, they borrowed from her life.  Her masters in Criminal Justice now came from the American University-Georgia instead of Georgia State.  She still began her career in law enforcement at twenty-one, but in their version she had moved swiftly through the specialized divisions of the DCD.  She was a Class One Expert on the late 20^th Century and held certifications in Firearms and Forensics.  She glanced at her commendations and saw that they, too, mirrored her record.  She wondered absently how they managed to gain access to her personnel file.    

The only difference between her and the rest of the North American Gateway staff was that they were born on this side and she was not.  Shea made a note to ask Whitney why that wouldn’t raise a flag for anyone who checked her out.  Everyone involved with the GSA was born in this time and Shea had found no exceptions.  If she stumbled across someone who wasn’t, she would want to know why.

What she found in the personnel files was intriguing.  The people who worked the entry-level jobs for the GSA were all teenagers in training at Quantico or college students working internships.  Whitney herself was a ticket taker at sixteen, event’s buyer at seventeen, and interned as an assistant to the San Francisco Gateway Manager while she attended Stanford.  Her first assignment after graduation was as an assistant to the South Pacific Regional Supervisor.  She got her first center a year later.  She steadily moved up to the bigger centers until she was over New York by the time she was twenty-five.  At twenty-seven, she was the North Pacific Regional Supervisor.  Five years ago, at age thirty, she was made Chief of Security. 

While few had enjoyed Whitney’s rise to the top, everyone had advanced degrees in various fields.  Amanda, Shea discovered, was a junior business student at Mercer.  She didn’t wonder anymore how they were able to operate their business for as long as they had without anyone catching on.  They hid in the perfect environment and ran it with highly intelligent, uniquely qualified personnel.

Shea backtracked to the GSA senior staff.  Sam was the Eastern Regional Supervisor as well as her Executive Officer.  She reached for her legal pad of questions.  She wanted to know why Sam was both, if she had to chose one of the six for that job and if so why him.  She turned her attention to the six Regional Supervisors to see if they crossed Whitney’s path at some other point.  She’d start at the top and work her way down from there. 

Flipping to a clean sheet, she started her search with Samuel H. Martin. 

~~

Nine-year-old Joey Danielson was already dead by the time Whitney arrived at New York’s Bethesda Hospital.  His father was already in surgery.  Because nothing she could do would change either of those facts, she sat next to Joey’s mother and held his four-year-old sister as they waited.  She spent several minutes in the New York center familiarizing herself with the family of four and learning the details about the drunk driver who plowed through a crowd crossing a Park Avenue intersection.  Three were dead and five injured.  Two of the eight were hers.

“Mommy,” Andrea lisped, “I’m hungry.”

Brenda Danielson was a slim, tall woman with dark blonde hair and golden brown eyes.  She’d had a bright, mischievous smile in her file photo.  Now those eyes stared at her daughter blankly.  Whitney watched her blink, watched reality hit her hard enough to flood her eyes with tears, watched as the woman turned those anguished eyes on hers in a desperate plea for help. 

Whitney laid a hand on her shoulder and squeezed before smiling down at the little girl who didn’t know her world had changed.  “Do you like hotdogs, Andrea?”

“Andi,” Brenda said hoarsely, “We call her Andi.”