Shadow of the Sun (Timeless #1)

Chapter 1: Top Secret

"Ella? Hello?" Sally's hand waved before my face, fingers snapping. "Ella? Are you in there?" When I didn't immediately respond, the annoying wasp lowered her voice to barely a whisper. "I always thought you got here by sleeping."

I stared at my aggravating redhead assistant through narrowed eyes. It was just like her to mutter something nasty to me, making sure she was barely loud enough to hear. Her hand continued to flap in front of me.

I knocked her hand away. "Stop that." My voice was ice. "I haven't even had my coffee yet. And don't call me Ella. It's Dr. Moretti."

Sally glared and pointed to the mug on my desk, ignoring my name tirade.

"Oh." Didn't I look like an idiot. Must've really been in my head.

My first instinct was to place a coaster underneath the misshapen mug. It had a rainbow painted on it. My niece Jules sculpted pottery for me all the time. Even though she was five, she was already quite the artist.

I held the mug close and blew gently over the surface of the liquid, making it ripple. I sipped. Room temperature. I gulped it down as my assistant stared at me, a smug look eclipsing her features.

"It's cold," I said. It wouldn't surprise me if she put it in the fridge before bringing it to me.

She straightened her spine. "Not my fault you've been daydreaming for over an hour."

"I wasn't daydreaming." I took in her shirt, which was an eye-watering green. Why oh why did Darren force me to hire his future sister-in-law?

"You were." Sally made a show of rolling her eyes.

"No, I wasn't. I was thinking about my new discovery—" I cut myself off. My knee-jerk reaction to defend myself almost had me spilling top-secret information to someone with much lower security clearance. I desperately needed sleep; my brain wasn't functioning under all this stress.

"New discovery?" Sally placed her round bottom on my desk and eagerly leaned in.

Great. Now she'll never let it go. "It's just something I'm working on in the lab." I fluttered my hand as if it was nothing. But it was. Boy was it something—something amazing and frightening.

She continued to look at me expectantly. The soft, white light behind her head made every single red hair stick out.

"You know, top-secret experiments?" I gave her a quizzical half smile, just to goad her a bit. I knew it was wrong, but it was so easy to rile her up.

She grimaced. As always, Sally hated it when I brought up the fact she wasn't allowed downstairs. Sometimes, she stared longingly at the "Restricted Access" sign on the door to the underground labs like she might a half-naked actor. I didn't even want to think about her anywhere near my equipment. Once, she nearly burned down the lunchroom by microwaving a spoon. Luckily, she wasn't hired to do scientific work; she was hired to assist me in other ways. Some days she couldn't grasp that concept, so I had to remind her.

I pushed a blue and white custody-sealed cooler her direction. "Will you take this to the post office?" There it was—the reminder of what her job was. The nearest post office was a fifteen-minute drive one way and wouldn't be open for a while. I knew this errand would keep her occupied while I took time to absorb the night's events. "This needs to be in New York City by tomorrow morning."

Sally dropped from her perch with narrowed eyes and seized the cooler. Without another word, she spun on her black high heels so quickly I thought she'd do a 360.

"And could you pick up my dry cleaning?" It was only fair I pressed her a little; she did it to me every day with dirty comments whispered under her breath. "Same place."