Richard Doetsch - The 13th Hour

She grabbed a flashlight off the pantry shelf and a digital camera from her car and re-entered the basement. She took an inventory of what was missing, snapping pictures of the broken case, the open safe. There was a specificity to the robbery, the storage room surprisingly untouched, despite the crates containing tens of millions in paintings. The thieves’ only focus had been the armory items and the simple safe.

While Julia had possession of the inventory on all the art, antiques, and gems that Shamus updated a few times a year, she did not have the specifics on the safe. Other than the fact that he stored several pouches of diamonds and some personal effects, the contents of the two safes remained a mystery.

Once back upstairs, she called Shamus Hennicot at his summer home in Massachusetts to give him the bad news. She didn’t hesitate as she dialed the number-she had learned early in life that bad news couldn’t wait.

When his assistant, Talia, told her Shamus was unavailable, handling some family emergency, Julia simply asked Talia to have him call her as soon as possible and to tell him there had been an incident at Washington House. Julia followed his directions concerning incidents to the letter. He didn’t want the police involved on any matter until he knew the facts and could decide the best course of action. That was his decision and she would respect his wisdom as she had done for the last three years.

Shamus had been sick for the last few weeks, but for a sick man of ninety-two, he still had more energy than she could muster at the age of thirty-one. They had spoken two weeks earlier regarding a loan of some of his Monet collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, but as was so often the case, their conversation had veered to matters of family and life. She had such respect for Shamus and his accomplishments, she so trusted his advice and counsel, that she often found herself confiding in him, seeking his perspective on matters far beyond business.

Though he had no children of his own, Shamus always spoke of what was truly important in life: love and family, the true legacy of success, the true key to happiness. As anxious as Julia had been to tell Nick her news, she was equally looking forward to telling Shamus, knowing the genuine joy he would feel for her. Julia’s parents were older when they had her and had passed away several years earlier. In an odd way, Shamus Hennicot had filled that empty space in her heart, becoming like a surrogate grandparent, praising her achievements, sharing wisdom, imparting guidance with a warm smile and cheer in his voice.

She was genuinely touched by the man’s selfless spirit, his charity and nobility. He was a gentleman in a world where that word had become forgotten. He was a man who still cherished the written word, sending her letters in his impeccable cursive handwriting, avoiding the impersonal world of email.

It troubled her to have to tell him of the burglary, of the theft of his family’s valuables that had been passed down through the years. While she knew he would simply say, “Not to worry dear, pieces of metal and rock and canvas are not the true valuables in my life,” she wondered if he would be troubled by the incident, if there was something more to the collection he possessed that was not in the inventory.

As Julia exited the house, her PDA began humming with an incoming email from her office. Surprisingly, it was the Hennicot files and security data. She realized it was the download protocol when a power failure hit: Her offices were obviously under the same blackout that had hit this part of town.

As she drove out of the driveway, police and fire trucks flew by. The traffic lights were out, and people milled in the streets, all looking south. And as she finally turned her head, she saw the giant plume of black, acrid smoke.

Now, sitting in her Lexus, fifteen miles north of the crash site, Julia could see the dissipating smoke hovering on the southern horizon. She looked at the clock on the dash of her SUV. It was just after two and she had yet to speak to Nick. She had picked up her cell phone to try him again when the passenger door opened and an old man climbed in.

“Thank you for the ride,” the man said as he fastened his seat belt. “I’m Dr. O’Reilly.”

“Julia Quinn,” Julia said as she extended her hand.

As they shook hands, Julia looked more closely at the old man. Though his hair had gone to white, his eyebrows were as black as night and seemed to imbue him with a touch of youth. Tilting her head in curiosity, she asked, “Have we met before?”

“I don’t think so.” O’Reilly shook his head. “Unless you had business with the medical examiner’s office more than five years ago. Sadly, my retirement has been ended by today’s tragedy.”

The doctor looked out the window, ending the conversation, becoming lost in what could only be horrible thoughts about what he was heading off to see.

Without another word, Julia started the Lexus, drove out of the driveway, and headed back to Byram Hills.

NICK SAT IN his leather office chair behind the desk in his library. He was soaked, heaving for breath, his mind a jumble in its disorientation. He had thought himself dead as his mind went blank on the bottom of the lake, his last thought that he had failed Julia.

Calming himself, he looked at the wallet clutched in his hand. It was calfskin leather, black, Gucci. He had taken it from the pocket of the dead man on the bottom of the Kensico Reservoir. He opened it, finding it filled with hundred-dollar bills. There was a black American Express Card and a Gold Visa, but he bypassed it all, finding the driver’s license, the object of his search, right on top.

But identifying the dead man was not a eureka moment; it instead created more questions than Nick had had an hour earlier. He reread the license once more: 10 Merion Drive, Haverford, Pennsylvania. Born May 28, 1952. Five feet ten inches tall, brown eyes, the organ donation box checked. Paul Dreyfus, the owner of the security company that did the installation on Shamus Hennicot’s building, was dead, drowned, his body at the bottom of the Kensico Reservoir.

Nick ran upstairs and tore off his wet clothes, quickly throwing on another pair of jeans and a white shirt. He grabbed another dark blazer from the closet and emptied out the pockets of his drenched pants and jacket. He found Marcus’s letter to Marcus, along with the letter from the gray-haired man he’d received in the interrogation room, the ink on the exterior envelopes only slightly running. He picked up the watch and flicked open the watch cover. The timepiece was well crafted and watertight, seemingly unaffected by its submersion, as the second hand swept past twelve to read 2:05. His phone was another matter, shorted out. He was actually glad it was ruined, as that had erased Julia’s death image from the world. He grabbed his wallet and keys, the St. Christopher medal, Dreyfus’s wallet, and the letters and tucked it all in his pockets.

He ran downstairs, back to the library, and opened the safe. He let out a wide grin as he found his gun sitting there along with a supply of cartridges. This wasn’t some kind of magic. It hadn’t leaped here through time from Dance’s car. As it was now 2:05, it simply had not yet left the safe.

Nick grabbed it, along with several cartridges, and tucked it in his waistband, at the small of his back. He moved the stack of papers on his desk aside and found his personal cell phone sitting there dry as a bone, ready for use. He momentarily laughed, but the humor quickly faded as he became angry with himself. He had almost died, and in so doing, he would have taken Julia along with him. He had been foolish and arrogant, thinking he could simply ride backward in time and easily save Julia.