Cold Fire

her savior had identified himself only as "Jim," and had walked off into that humid Houston afternoon before the police arrived. The thirty-year-old divorcee had clearly been smitten, for she described him as "handsome sort of muscular, like a superhero right out of a movie, with the dreamie blue eyes.”

Holly could still picture Jim Ironheart's intensely blue eyes. She was not the kind of woman who would refer to them as "dreamy," although they were certainly the clearest and most arresting eyes she'd ever.. oh hell, yes, they were dreamy. She was reluctant to admit to the adolescent reaction that he had inspired in her, but she was not any better at deceiving herself than she was at deceiving other people.

She recalled an initial eerie impression of inhuman coldness, upon first meeting his gaze, but that passed and never returned from the moment he smiled.

The seventh article was about another modest Jim who had not hung around to accept thanks and praise-or media attention-after rescuing Carmen Diaz, thirty, from a burning apartment house in Miami on the fifth of July. He had blue eyes.

Poring through the remaining twenty-two articles, Holly found two more about Ironheart, though only his first name was mentioned. On June 1, Thaddeus Johnson, twelve, had almost been pitched off the roof of an eight-story Harlem tenement by four members of a neighborhood youth gang who had not responded well to his disdainful rejection of an invitation to join their drug-peddling fraternity. He was rescued by a blue-eyed man who incapacitated the four thugs with a dazzling series of Tae Kwan Do kicks, chops, thrusts, and throws. "He was like Batman without the funny clothes," Thaddeus had told the Daily News reporter.

Two Wednesdays prior to that, on June 7, another blue-eyed Jim "just seemed to materialize" on the property of Louis Andretti, twenty-eight, of Corona, California, in time to warn the homeowner not to enter a crawlspace under his house to repair a plumbing leak. "He told me a family of rattlers had settled in there," Andretti told the reporter.

Later, when agents from the county's Animal Control inspected the crawlspace from the perimeter, with the aid of a halogen lamp, they saw not just a nest but "something out of a" nightmare," and eventually extracted forty-one snakes from beneath the structure. "What I don't understand," Andretti said, "is how that guy knew the rattlers were there, when I live in the house and never had a clue.”

Now Holly had four linked incidents to add to the rescue of Nicky O Conner in Boston and Billy Jenkins in Portland, all since the first of June. She typed in new instructions to Newsweb, asking for the same search to be made for the months of March, April, and May.

She needed more coffee, and when she got up to go to the vending room, she saw that George Fintel had evidently awakened and staggered home.

She hadn't heard him leave. Tommy was gone, as well. She was alone.

She got another cup of coffee, and it didn't taste as bad as it had before.

The brew hadn't improved; her sense of taste had just been temporarily damaged by the first two cups.

Eventually Newsweb located eleven stories in March through May that fit her parameters. After examining the printouts, Holly found only one of them of interest.

On May 15, in Atlanta, Georgia, a blue-eyed Jim had entered a convenience store during an armed robbery. He shot and killed the perpetrator, Norman Rink, who had been about to kill two customers-Sam Newsome twenty-five, and his five-year-old daughter Emily. Flying high on a cocaine, Ice, and methamphetamine cocktail-Rink had already killed the clerk and two other customers merely for the fun of it.

After wasting Rink and assuring himself that the Newsomes were unhurt, Jim had slipped away before the police arrived.

The store security camera had provided a blurry photograph of the heroic intruder. It was only the second photo Holly had found in all the articles. The image was poor. But she immediately recognized Jim Ironheart.

Some details of the incident unnerved her. If Ironheart had an amazing ability-psychic power, whatever to foresee fatal moments in the lives of strangers and arrive in time to thwart fate, why hadn't he gotten to that convenience store a few minutes sooner, early enough to prevent the deaths of the clerk and other customers? Why had he saved the Newsomes and let the rest die? She was further chilled by the description of his attack on Rink.

He had pumped four rounds from a 12-gauge pistol-grip shotgun into the mad man. Then, although Rink was indisputably dead, Jim reloaded and fired another four rounds. "He was in such a rage," Sam Newsome said, "his face red, and he was sweating, you could see the arteries pounding in the temples, across his forehead. He was crying a little, too, but the tears.