Cold Fire

"Oh," he said, clearly amused, "that's exactly what I thought it was She was frustrated by the impenetrable wall he had erected about himself, irritated by his stubbornness. She was not used to having her will thwarted. But he had no meanness in him, as far as she could see, and no great talent for deception; he was just determined to preserve his privacy As a reporter who had ever-increasing doubts about a journalist's right intrude in the lives of others, Holly sympathized with his reticence. When she glanced at him, she could only laugh softly. "You're good.”

"So are you.”

As she stopped at the curb in front of the terminal, Holly said, "NO, if I were good, by now I'd at least have found out what the hell you do for a living." He had a charming smile. And those eyes "I didn't say you were as good as I am just that you were good." He got out and retrieved his suitcase from the back seat, then returned to the open front door.

"Look, I happened to be in the right place at the right time. By sheer chance, I was able to save that boy. It wouldn't be fair to have my whole life turned upside down by the media just because I did a good deed.”

"No, it wouldn't," she agreed.

With a look of relief, he said, "Thank you.”

"But I gotta say-your modesty's refreshing.”

He looked at her for a long beat, fixed her with his exceptional blue eyes.

"So are you, Miss Thorne.”

Then he closed the door, turned away, and entered the terminal.

Their last exchange played again in her mind: Your modesty's refreshing.

So are you, Miss Thorne She stared at the terminal door through which he had disappeared, and he seemed too good to have been real, as if she had given a ride to a hitchhiking spirit. A thin haze filtered flecks of color from the late-afternoon sunlight, so the air had a vague golden cast of the kind that sometimes hung for an instant in the wake of a vanishing remnant in an old movie about ghosts.

A hard, hollow rapping noise startled her.

She snapped her head around and saw an airport security guard tapping with his knuckles on the hood of her car. When he had her attention, he pointed to a sign: LOADING ZONE.

Wondering how long she had sat there, mesmerized by thoughts of Jim Ironheart, Holly released the emergency brake and slipped the car in gear.

She drove away from the terminal.

Your modesty's refreshing.

So are you, Miss Thorne All the way back into Portland, a sense of the uncanny lay upon her, a perception that someone preternaturally special had passed through her life. She was unsettled by the discovery that a man could so affect her, and she felt uncomfortably girlish, even foolish. At the same time, she enjoyed that pleasantly eerie mood and did not want it to fade.

So are you, Miss Thorne That evening, in her third-floor apartment overlooking Council city park, as she was cooking a dinner of angel-hair pasta with pesto sauce pine nuts, fresh garlic, and chopped tomatoes, Holly suddenly wondered how Jim Ironheart could have known that young Billy Jenkins was in danger even before the drunken driver in the pickup truck had appeared over the crest of the hill.

She stopped chopping in the middle of a tomato and looked out the kitchen window. Purple-red twilight was settling over the greensward low. Among the trees, the park lamps cast pools of warm amber light on the grass-flanked walkways.

When Ironheart had charged up the sidewalk in front of McAlbery School, colliding with her and nearly knocking her down, Holly started after him, intending to tell him off By the time she reached the intersection, he was already in the street, turning right then left, looking a little agitated. wild. In fact he seemed so strange, the kids moved around him in a wide arc. She had registered his panicked expression and the kids' reaction to him a second or two before the truck had erupted over the hill like a daredevil's car flying off the top of a stunt ramp.

Only then had Ironheart focused on Billy Jenkins, scooping the boy out of the path of the truck.

Perhaps he had heard the roar of the engine, realized something was approaching the intersection at reckless speed, and acted out of an instinctive perception of danger. Holly tried to remember if she had been aware of the racing engine as early as when Ironheart had collided with her, but she could not recall. Maybe she had heard it but had not been as alert to meaning as he had. Or perhaps she hadn't heard it at all because she'd been trying to shake off the indefatigable Louise Tarvohl, who had insisted on walking with her to her car; she had felt that she'd go stark raving crazy if she were forced to listen to even another minute of the poet's chatter, she knew she had been distracted by the desperate need to escape.