Author's Note: My daughter informed me that there was no way this would happen in real life, to which I said, "Then it's a good thing that this is fiction." So suspend your belief and enjoy.

•

•

He ran through the canyon, which was bursting with orange poppies, wild grasses, and Manzanita. It was a cool day, but the sun glowed brilliantly in a painfully blue sky. As he rounded a bend, he saw his grandfather. Something gold glittered in the old man's hand.

"I want you to have this. Keep it with you always." His grandfather held out the treasured pocket watch, the same watch he had seen in his grandfather's vest pocket over the years. Just as he reached for it, his grandfather grew impossibly tall. "Why can't you do anything right?" the old man yelled.

Then his mother skipped by. He screamed silently as his grandfather leaned down and gave her the watch. "Too bad, so sad," she trilled.

"It's mine!" He chased after her. "I hate you!"

She only laughed.

In twisted, sweat-soaked sheets, the man awoke from the nightmare with a start. He felt ill with a pain radiating in his stomach and his head pounding.

"Oh, God," he whispered and ran for the bathroom. Afterwards, he tumbled back into bed, knocking a stack of file folders off his nightstand in the process.

He had slept later than he intended. Now it was too late. Too late! Confused thoughts jumbled in his mind. Nothing else mattered but the watch. There was no time for a careful plan or clever options. It had to be now. He jumped from the bed and threw on whatever clothes he could find.

Fifteen minutes later, he pulled up near the apartment complex. He balled up his fists and rubbed his eyes. He was thirsty, but he didn't care. Pocketing his .22, he ran to the back gate where the latch still hung broken from his visit the other night. He walked up the stairs and straight to John Gage's door.

•

•

After spending his day off camping in the nearby mountains, Johnny had just gotten home, feeling proud of the fact he had arrived in plenty of time to not be late for work. He carried his tent up to his apartment, checked his messages, and used the bathroom. He just needed to get the rest of his gear out of the Rover, take a shower, and head into the station. Relaxed and renewed, he felt ready for another shift at the job he loved.

As John opened the front door, he was surprised to find a man in a black, hooded sweatshirt poised to knock. What happened next was a blur.

The man was shorter than John, but he had the element of intention and rushed the paramedic like a defensive tackler. Slammed backward into the ground, John's head hit the carpet with a sickening thud. Dazed, he wondered why this man would wear a sweatshirt with the hood up on such a beautiful day. He also wondered why the man was pointing a gun in his face.

"Turn over! Put your hands behind your back and keep your eyes shut!"

His head throbbing, John followed the instructions to the letter. The man stood over him breathing rapidly. "Now where's the watch?"

With his hands still at his back, Johnny slipped off his Timex. "Here, take whatever you want."

"Not that watch, moron. The pocket watch!"

John hesitated. "What?"

As his captor leaned down close to Johnny's ear, the paramedic noted the man's breath smelled like a sickly combination of citrus and cough drops. "The watch you found at Emerson Canyon Park, fireman."

"What?" Johnny asked again. His thoughts raced a million miles a minute. How did this robber know he was a fireman? How did he know about the pocket watch?

"Are you an idiot? The pocket watch! Where is it?" the man thundered.

John tried to come up with a reasonable answer that wouldn't lead this man to the station where he kept the watch, but before he could, the man screamed, "Roy DeSoto! Sound familiar? I know where he lives. If you don't tell me where my pocket watch is, I'll go and…"

Panicked, Johnny exclaimed, "It's at the station in my locker!"

The man began to pace. "That was really stupid of you, fireman. All right. You and I will go to there. We'll go in without talking to anyone and get my watch."

Is this guy crazy? Johnny thought. It didn't matter; he knew he had to do whatever it took to keep this lunatic away from the station. "I can't just go in and not talk to my friends! Some of the guys will be in the locker room for sure. They'll know something is wrong!"

After a minute of silence, the man spoke. "You're right."

The gunman lifted the receiver of the phone on the end table and dialed. After a second or two, he began to speak in a panicked tone. "Yes, I'd like to report a fire at Villa Mall. I saw a guy setting a fire in a trashcan in Sears. Wait a minute; it could have been JC Penney's. It might have been Robinsons. It was one of the big department stores. Send the fire department fast! People are going to get hurt!"

He hung up slowly. "Villa Mall is only a few miles from where you work, so I expect the crew will be searching for that fire by the time we arrive."

Desperation flooded Johnny. "Look, you don't have to do this. I'll give you the watch. No questions asked. You can take it and go."

"I do have to do this," the man said resolutely. "You saw me at the park. You know about her."

Connections started firing in John's brain and he inhaled sharply. The watch. The fire. The body.

The murderer.

Realizing he was in the hands of a killer, Johnny tried to remember how he usually spoke with agitated patients, but the gun thrust into the back of his neck took all rational thought away.

"Now get up slowly and walk to the door. I'll be right behind you. Don't look back at me."

The pair exited Johnny's apartment and went down the back stairs unnoticed by the children and parents gathered at the sparkling swimming pool in the quad.

"You're driving," the killer ordered. John slid into the driver's seat while his captor got in directly behind him. Again the puff of breath at John's right ear was fruity and wrong. He glanced up briefly into the rearview mirror and saw the man clutching his stomach. Johnny's medical training overrode his terror and he started to recognize several symptoms of a condition he had just been reading about. If he kept quiet, the man might soon pass out and he could escape. The man also might suddenly die. No matter who this person was, he was a human being and Johnny knew he had to try to help.

"Listen, man, I think you may be really sick…"

"Shut up!" the man raged. "Don't talk again or I'll kill you! Let's go!"

John backed out of his space and drove the familiar route in silence.

"Pull in here." With the muzzle pressing behind his right ear, John pulled in to the station's parking lot, which was filled with the cars of C shift's men.

"Leave the keys in the ignition," the man said. "Did you see that woman and little boy sitting at the bus stop out front?"

"Yes." John's voice shook.

"You're going to go get the watch in the next minute. If you call for help or are one second late, I will shoot them."

Johnny stole a glance at the clock in the dashboard. "Please, no one has to get hurt…"

"And after I kill them, I will drive over to Roy DeSoto's house and kill everyone there."

"No, God, no! I'll do whatever you want." Without thinking, John anxiously turned toward the man. When the butt of the gun slammed into his temple, John actually thought he saw stars.

"Don't look at me!" the man screamed.

John instinctively held his pounding head; as he pulled away his fingers he saw they were coated in blood.

"I'm not fooling around, fireman. Now go."

Johnny had run track in high school and his internal stopwatch switched on the minute he jumped from the car. Ignoring his injuries, he breathed a sigh of relief after seeing the barn was empty. None of his friends would be in danger. He tore across the empty bay to the locker room. Practically ripping the door off his locker, he grabbed the watch and shoved it in the front pocket of his shorts.

Knowing he had no time, John frantically wracked his brain for a way to communicate to his crewmates that he was in danger. With one sweep of his arm, he pushed all the papers and cards in his locker onto the floor. Then he tossed out his uniform. All that was left was his precious string of beads. Carefully but quickly, he removed it from the hook and placed it on the bench. If that didn't let his friends know something was amiss, nothing would.

With only a handful of seconds left, Johnny grabbed a pen and one of the index cards off the floor. Hastily he scrawled a few words he hoped Roy could piece together.

"Who's there?"

John's heart sank. It was Chet, and he was headed toward him. Without a second's hesitation, Johnny charged from the locker room.

"What the hell!" Chet exclaimed as his friend slammed into him, pushing the shorter man to the polished floor.

"Chet, stay down!" John hissed.

Bewildered, the fireman knew this was more than a silly prank the two usually played on one another. Frozen by his inherent trust in Johnny and the fear in his crewmate's expression, Chet obeyed and sat perfectly still.

"Gage!" he called after the retreating figure as an index card gracefully drifted down toward him like a feather.