Heidelberg Effect Read online

  THE HEIDELBERG EFFECT

  Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  Ella Steven’s stubborn independence is the keystone of her identity—unfettered by romantic involvements or family demands—until the day she takes an exciting new job in Heidelberg, Germany. There, she stumbles onto a hidden time portal that takes her to 1620 Heidelberg where all her modern-day techno toys and proud self-reliance can’t protect her from the brutal realities of every day life.

  Befriended by a convent of seventeenth century nuns who stand on the executioner's block of the bloodiest warlord in all of Europe, Ella, struggles to survive in this primitive and brutal time. Soon, with the help of a sexy US Marshal, she tries to break out of her closed world of protected autonomy to help her new friends. When she does, she learns the hard way that when it comes to the things that really matter in life—love, trust and friendship—sometimes opening yourself up to others is the only true way home.

  San Marco Press/Atlanta 2013

  Copyright 2013 by San Marco Press. All rights reserved.

  Published by San Marco Press at Smashwords

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  The Cairo Effect

  Chapter 1

  Ella adjusted her earpiece and squinted at the screen on her iPod. If the software sales copy could be believed, hearing the German phrases spoken while reading them was supposed to increase her language retention by thirty percent.

  “Abfahrt,” she said, and instantly noticed the woman at the next table glance at her and frown.

  Ella took a sip of her macchiato, and looked around the crowded coffee shop. Maybe it was too noisy in here to hear properly? It all sounded like so much gobbledygook. She was supposed to have a good ear for languages. Why was this one so difficult?

  “Is this chair taken?”

  Ella instantly knocked over her drink then snatched up a paper napkin to protect her new Kate Moss A-line.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” He smiled broadly at her, innocently. He used his cowboy hat to gesture toward the chair. He appeared remarkably unaffected by the damage he had just caused.

  “Take it,” Ella said, nodding at the chair and mopping up the worst of the river of coffee with the napkin. She glanced around the room in annoyance to see if it really were so crowded that her extra chair was needed.

  He pulled out the chair and sat down.

  “Do I know you?” she said with irritation. Now the wire to her earphones was dragging through the puddle of coffee on the table.

  “Not yet anyway.”

  She stared at him. A pick up attempt? Really?

  “I was just wondering if you come here much,” he said.

  “Only when I want to be alone,” she said pointedly.

  “I saw you messing with your iPod. It looked like you were doing more than just sorting out your playlist.”

  Was this guy for real?

  “I’m using it to brush up on a language.”

  “Which one?”

  “German.”

  “I took German in college.”

  “So you speak German?”

  “Not a word.”

  Ella wiped off her dripping iPod cord and turned to give her full attention to this cowboy. He was good-looking in a rumpled, afterthought kind of way. Brown shaggy hair, but combed. A grin that touched his eyes.

  The silence stretched between them.

  “What I lack, however, in language proficiency,” he said, “I make up for in being able to take a hint.” He stood up.

  “I have a boyfriend,” she said, which was a lie.

  “I’m not surprised. Well, it was worth a try. I’m Rowan, by the way.”

  “I’m Ella,” she said.

  When he continued to just stand there as if waiting for something, she pushed the pile of wet napkins from her and picked up her iPod again. “It was nice meeting you, Rowan,” she said.

  “You, too. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

  “That’d be nice,” she said. “I do come here a good bit.” He was definitely cute.

  He smiled and backed away from her, his cowboy hat in his hand.

  Ella watched him go. She still had another fifteen minutes left on her lunch hour and the last thing she wanted to do was get back to work early. Strike that, she thought, as she watched Rowan leave the coffee shop and walk toward his car in the parking lot. The last thing she wanted was to meet someone interesting mere days before she was set to move to Heidelberg, Germany and begin her new life.

  An hour later, after another relentlessly boring meeting had concluded and Ella returned to her desk, she saw that her father had called. A tinge of guilt crept into her otherwise placid mood at the realization that it had been weeks since she’d talked to him. With nothing else to do the rest of the workday but keep her chair seat warm until five o’clock, she punched in his number.

  “Dad?”

  “Sweetie, I’m so glad you called.” His voice was warm and loving. The memory of so many hugs and special chuckles flitted through her mind as she heard his deep, rich tones. “Thought you went off the grid on me there,” he said.

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” she said. “I was doing some extra stuff at work. Kind of kept me busy.”

  “Really?”

  Ella could hear the tincture of worry that was usually in his voice replace the comforting warmth. “Was it after dark? You don’t approach these people alone, do you? And you still carry the Taser I got you?”

  Ella remembered why she tended to let so much time go by between phone calls.

  “No, Dad, it wasn’t like that. All my investigative stuff is on the phone or the computer. You know that. I don’t do any fieldwork. I promise.”

  “Because, I’m telling you, Ella, you can’t trust anyone to be who they say they are. You know what I mean?”

  Ella did know. An ex-CIA asset like her mother, her father had aged into an insecure, nervous wreck in retirement.

  “Dad, trust me, okay? The stuff I do is tax shit and tracking down debts and car titles and like that. I might as well be in a call center in Sri Lanka, okay? No one knows me. I’m the epitome of anonymous in my job.”

  “I hope it is as you say it is.”

  “Trust me, it is, Dad.”

  “You know, darling, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, you can’t go through this life without back up, you know?”

  “I know, Dad. I know.” God, not this again.

  “When you need help, you need to be able to ask for it. That was not something your mother could do and I have to believe she would be alive today if she could have.”

  Ella’s mother had died during a mysterious overseas operation that all and anyone could only later describe as a guaranteed suicide mis
sion.

  “Dad, I know,” Ella said. “My job’s not like that. But if I ever do need help,” she said hurriedly, “I am always first in line to ask for it. Okay? But you know, I’ve got a meeting in like about thirty seconds so I need to sign off. Talk to you later? Give my love to Susie.” She wasn’t very close to her stepmother but she knew it made her father happy when she pretended she was.

  “Alright, sweetie, I will,” her dad said, the warmth and ease back in his voice. “Don’t go so long between calls, okay? I worry.”

  “I know, Dad,” she said. “Love you.”

  After she disconnected, Ella found herself wondering, as she frequently did, how dowdy, middle-aged Susie could be so different from the exciting woman she had been told her mother was. Jane Stevens had died when Ella was five. Not for the first time, Ella wondered what the point of “full honors from a grateful nation” was if nobody knew about them.

  Rowan Pierce pulled in front of the Starbucks on Abernathy Road. He debated leaving his cellphone in the console but decided he better keep it on him in case one of his parents called and wanted him to pick something up at Kroger. He got out of the car and looked around. It was a habit he’d gotten into at Glynco which had served him well many times in the past. Besides, at thirty-two, he was too old to start learning new methods of behavior now. He naturally took in his tactical environment wherever he was, even if he was just on Abernathy Road planning to stake out a mocha venti.

  It occurred to him as he entered the coffee shop that these five weeks home with the folks were originally designed to help him recover from the gunshot wound without added stress. The combination of wanting to take care of his elderly parents together with meeting Ella was making his enforced vacation anything but relaxing.

  He couldn’t say he’d been stalking her, exactly. He had noticed her before he finally approached her. They shared the same neighborhood Starbucks after all. Every time he saw her in there, she was always focused on something—her iPod, a newspaper, her e-reader—and she rarely looked up. It wasn’t a surprise to him that she acted like she had never noticed him before. But because of his job, he always looked around at everyone and everything, which meant she had been on his radar for weeks.

  He took his venti outside, and looked for a place to sit and enjoy the pleasant October weather. He was briefly sorry that he hadn’t gone to his usual Starbucks, near his parents’ house, but he wanted to avoid making Ella uncomfortable again. Hell, could he help it that as a US Marshall, dating and stalking tended to take on the same hue? He was just out of practice. Besides, who knows? He had two weeks left on his medical leave. Maybe they’d meet up again before he went back to Alabama.

  Rowan shifted on the stone bench outside the café and sipped his coffee. No wonder there was nobody else sitting out here. The exhaust fumes from the traffic on Abernathy—not to mention the noise—reminded him of why he had always been less than in love with Atlanta. Even the birds were annoying, he thought, as he watched a bold sparrow peck at his shoe.

  “No, biscotti this time, pal,” he said, waving the bird away. It was when he stood up and slapped his jeans pockets for his car keys that he saw her.

  She walked like she drank coffee—totally focused on the task before her—so she never noticed him sitting outside the café. She was a little shorter than he’d gauged before, but slim. She wasn’t dressed for the weather, which was warm, but in a short leather jacket and a tight skirt that fit her ass like a handmade glove. Without thinking too much about it—especially since he knew the whole reason he was at this Starbucks in the first place was to give her some space—he tossed his coffee in a nearby trash bin and started to follow her in.

  The first thing Ella thought when her mind was able to connect two thoughts together was that it was all happening like some terrible nightmare that she couldn’t stop. When she marched up to the counter, she did note that it was odd for there to be no line at this time of day. Plus the cashier was looking at her strangely. It was when she saw the man standing behind the cashier that she began to realize things were not right.

  He was pawing at the open cash drawer with one hand while pointing a large black gun directly at Ella.

  Ella took a step backwards and the man raised the gun to follow her.

  “Don’t move!” he snarled. Ella looked at the face of the poor cashier, a chubby high school girl who was crying without making any noise.

  Strong, rough hands grabbed Ella’s purse and jerked it off her shoulder. Her instinct was to hold onto it and to turn to face her assailant. She was surprised she hadn’t noticed him before; the smell was overpowering at this close range. When she turned, the man backhanded her and she felt the café begin to melt away into darkness with the crash of pain but he held her firmly so that she didn’t fall away from him. In the back of her mind, she could hear the two men speaking to each other in Spanish. Now she could hear the girl’s sobs, too.

  The left side of her face was an explosion of pain and fire and she thought she could taste blood in her mouth. She had no idea how it could be that she was still standing. She knew she was breathing rapidly, she could hear her own panicked breath coming in jagged rasps. The desire to get away, to shrink away was overwhelming. She heard herself gasping as if for breath and realized the man holding her—an angry cartoon of facial hair and broken teeth—was screaming at her. Ella closed her eyes as if by blotting him out she could make him disappear.

  “Lievar su!”

  Ella’s rudimentary high school Spanish came back to her as if from another world. Bring her. The man who held her tightened his grip and pushed her in front of him. As she stumbled toward the front door, she saw that the café was indeed full of people—all of whom were crouching or cowering by their tables.

  Dear God, would she survive this day?

  Ella clutched at her jacket lapels as the thug with the bag full of cash brushed past her. The other robber propelled her roughly forward from behind. The glimpse of the sunny day outside the front doors seemed such a lie to Ella as she staggered forward, her skin clammy with fear.

  The moment the doors were kicked open, the sunlight blinded Ella. She clenched her eyes closed but continued moving, feeling the warmth of the late afternoon on her face. When the man holding her slammed to a stop, her eyes flew open. There was an incoming customer standing in front of them on the sidewalk outside of the front door as if he’d just materialized. Ella wanted to tell him to run. She wanted to tell him not to come near. She wanted to beg him to help her.

  The customer on the sidewalk spoke: “You boys helping my wife home again tonight?”

  “Fuck off, chorra,” the thug in front snarled. He made what looked like a feigned lunge at the man, but a second later, he was on his hands and knees retching up his lunch on the sidewalk. Ella stared at the vomiting man and the bag of money dumped on the curb at his feet. She looked up at the customer who had put him there.

  It was cute cowboy guy.

  The cowboy plucked the gun off the man on his knees and aimed it at the man behind Ella. He instantly let her go. As she slowly collapsed to the ground, she realized he had been supporting her more than guiding her.

  “Okay,” said the cowboy. “Stand over there by the dickhead, mouchouchou, and put these on. Comprendo?”

  Ella didn’t know what the guy said or did that prompted the cowboy to shoot in the air near his head. But whatever the reason, within a minute, her rescuer was crouching next to her and helping her to a sitting position. She could see that the two thugs were plasti-cuffed to each other.

  She looked into his eyes and her own eyes filled with tears. Struck mute by how fast everything had happened, she simply sat and stared at him stunned to find herself thinking his was quite possibly the handsomest face she had ever laid eyes on.

  “It’s okay,” he said, pulling out his cellphone. “You’re okay, now.” He spoke into the phone and she watched him as he spoke. He smiled briefly, reassuringly, at her.

  “
Anybody hurt inside?” he asked.

  She shook her head slowly although she didn’t really know.

  “Okay, hold on,” he said. “Cops’ll be here in a second.”

  Ella found herself reaching out to touch the sleeve of her rescuer as if to prove to herself that he was real. He looked at her and grinned when she did.

  Who was this guy?

  Chapter Two

  The handsome cowboy handed her a large mug of coffee while the police were questioning the Starbucks customers and employees. Ella was surprised that someone was still brewing and serving coffee during all this. It occurred to her that the cowboy seemed so capable, he could easily have whipped it up himself. The two of them sat at an outdoor table. Ella didn’t have the stomach to return to the inside of the café. She noticed as she lifted the coffee to her lips that her hands were still shaking.

  She watched him as she sipped her coffee. He had such a charismatic, commanding way about him. How had she not noticed that when she’d met him the other day?

  “No way. You’re a US Marshal?”

  “Deputy US Marshal, yes ma’am.”

  “How did you know what was happening? Were you following me?”

  “I can see how you might think that, but no. Totally coincidental. In fact, the whole reason I was at this Starbucks was to give you some space at our neighborhood one.”

  “You totally saved me. When I think what nearly—” She shivered and wrapped her fingers around her coffee cup as if for warmth.

  “Well, don’t think about it,” Rowan said. “But if you won’t let me see you home, at least have dinner with me tonight.”

  For a moment, she entertained the idea of saying no. She was going to be on an airplane heading to her new life in Germany in exactly three days from now and she didn’t need to begin anything complicated that would stall that.

  But he looked so cute and sexy with his crinkly blue eyes. And he did just save her life.