Split Second

“Lucy, you want some of this rice?”

She snapped back, fully aware he’d seen her distraction and known it for what it was.

She spooned up some rice and took a big bite, not caring if it was getting cold, because she hadn’t eaten since that morning and she was starving. As she chewed, she felt the weight of her sins pushing down on her head. She swallowed the last bite, fanned her hands in front of her. “So much has happened. I didn’t mean to worry you or alarm you. It was very nice of you to care enough about me to come over, and then you brought me dinner and told me about Bruce Comafield.”

A black eyebrow went up. He said in that deep, calm voice of his, “It’d be nice if you’d talk to me, Lucy, if you’d tell me the truth about how you’re feeling, and what you’re thinking.”

She looked guilty, she knew it to her heels, but she couldn’t help it. She could keep her mouth shut, and so she did. She shook her head.

He searched her face, then nodded as if to say, So be it. “Coop will catch you up on everything. He and Sherlock will be back from New York later tonight. I’m thinking things will move smartly forward now that we know about Bruce Comafield. If he was her supply line from the real world, he can’t be that any longer. Now he’ll be with her full-time.” He tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “I’m concerned about you, Lucy. Coop told me you visited a safe-deposit box today, picked up something that belonged to your grandfather?”

She nodded. “Yes, and it upset me, Dillon.” She drew in a deep breath. “The box contained an old ring, but nothing more than that.” She kept her head down so he couldn’t see the lie in her eyes, and pulled the ring out of her shirt and showed it to him.

He held out his hand. He could tell she didn’t want to, but she unfastened the gold chain, let the ring slide into her palm. She waited only a moment, then gave it to him. She watched him examine it. “Was there any explanation of this ring in the box?”

Lie, lie, no choice. “No, but I thought it could be the ring I remembered my grandmother screaming about, the ring she stabbed her husband to death over, when he took it from her.” Her words hung between them. He said, “And he left it in a safe-deposit box, specifically for you?”

“Yes.”

He waited a beat, then, when she didn’t say anything, he said, “What did you do this afternoon?”

He was giving her that steady sort of questioning look now, one that made her want to fling herself at his feet and confess every sin she could remember committing since the age of three. “I slept some. I didn’t feel too well, and then I had bad dreams, about my grandfather.”

Savich sat back, pushed away the remains of his dinner. He looked again at the ring on his palm. “This ring must have meant something significant to both of them. Isn’t that ironic? She killed him, put him in that steamer trunk, covered him with a white towel, never imagining that he’d put this ring in a safe-deposit box for you. And that’s a question, isn’t it, Lucy? You weren’t yet six years old when he went missing, yet what he’d done was save the ring for you. How did you discover it was there, waiting for you?”

“Our old family lawyer called me, told me my grandfather’s instructions were to give it to me after the death of my father.”

She knew this raised a lot more questions in his mind, but to her relief, he said, “The ring looks very old, doesn’t it? Is that a triangle of dull rubies set on top of it?”

“It is very old, and yes, it’s ugly, too, Dillon, not worth much, I don’t think. The stones aren’t rubies; I’m thinking carnelians. I have no clue why Grandfather bothered to save the ring for me.”

Yeah, right. You’re really a bad liar, Lucy. But what are you lying about? Savich wanted to shake her, but trust was a funny thing.

He said, “These symbols, I don’t recognize them. Do you?”

“No. I’ve never seen them before.”

“They could designate some society, or sect, or cult of some kind. And that inscription, ‘SEFYLL.’”

Lucy froze. He was holding the ring when he said the word, but he had no reaction. He would have known, he would have been shocked, as she had been, if everything had happened again for him, starting eight seconds ago, or would all he feel be a shimmer in the light? Or was that what her grandfather meant by her having a gift? Could no one else experience what she had?

She had to ask, had to. “Do you know the word, Dillon?”

“Easy enough to find out.” He pulled out his cell phone.