Time Between Us by Tamara Ireland Stone Page A

weren’t for the calendar, no one would know that there should be grass on the ground and leaves on all of these bare wooden sticks. We’re two months away from summer vacation, but it’s snowing hard. Again.
    I buy my latte, take it back to the store, return to my spot in the travel section, and start dividing the books on the carpet into smaller stacks. I know what I want: A balanced combination of archaeological sites and beaches, where I can run on sand and swim in a real ocean. I draw a line down the center of the paper and begin my list.
    The left column quickly fills with archeological sites: the Mayan ruins in Tulum, Chichén Itzá, and Uxmal. The right column, as it turns out, is more challenging. Cancún has the Great Mayan Reef, so that has to be on the list, but I’m not sure if I want to include better-known destinations like Los Cabos, Acapulco, Cozumel. They all look pretty, so I add them, along with small question marks in the margin.
    The hail is pounding against the window, and one of the branches of the giant oak outside keeps scraping against the pane. I’ve stopped jumping every time it happens, but it’s still unnerving. I try to ignore it and let Mazatlán’s quaint village squares and the open-air pottery and ceramics markets of Guadalajara take me away from the snow and wind.
    But when I hear the noise again, I stand up, peer around the bookcase, and creep toward the window. The storm is still whipping the tree around, but the branch that was screeching against the glass is now limp and broken, dangling silently over the sidewalk below. Then I hear a sound behind me, and I spin in place. This time it’s not coming from the street at all—it’s coming from the back room, and it’s not the sound of the storm—it’s a voice. I hold my breath and listen.
    My heart’s racing as I move to the phone at the counter. “Who’s there?” I yell toward the back room while I pick up the receiver and dial 911 with trembling hands. I stand completely still and listen, watching the back door as I wait for someone to pick up. “Answer!” I whisper into the receiver.
    Suddenly, the front door bursts open, and I whip my head around in the opposite direction as the bells jingle without their usual pleasant ring. I put the phone back on the cradle and rush toward the door. “Hi!” My voice is shaking. I rest my palm on my chest, like that will help steady the pounding, and try to act as if everything were normal. “Can I help you?”
    He looks past me, searching the store, and then over his shoulder at the street. Just as I’m about to ask him if he’ll help me check out the noise I heard in the back room, he pulls the door closed so hard the bells slam against the glass and rolls his hat down to cover his face. Then he locks the dead bolt.
    “Cash.” His voice is deep through the wool, but my attention is on the shiny metal knife he pulls from his baggy jeans. He points it straight at me. “Now.”
    It’s hard to gesture toward the front desk when my limbs are shaking so badly. “Over there. It’s not locked. Take it all.” It’s hard to speak, too.
    Before I can move farther away, he pulls me toward him, presses the knife to my throat, and pushes me past the register. “The safe!” he yells into my ear as he tightens his grip.
    “In the back—” The words come out wobbly, but I stick to the plan Dad laid out when I first started working here. “The combination is nine–fifteen–thirty-three. We don’t have an alarm. I won’t call the police. Just take the cash and leave.”
    I calculate in my head. The register might have fifty dollars in it, if even that. The safe would have closer to a thousand.
    He pulls me around to the register, opens the drawer, and releases his grip on me for just a moment while he dumps the cash into his bag. He grabs me again and pushes me to the back room, while I keep my gaze on the floor and try not to think about the cold steel of the blade on my neck