The Servants of Twilight

On impulse, he put his arms around her. Without a hint of reservation, she came against him, allowed herself to be held, her head on his shoulder. Then her arms slipped around him, too, and they were linked, and nothing had ever been better than hugging her. Her hair was against his cheek, her hands on his back, her body molded to him, her warmth piercing him, the scent of her filling him. The embrace had the electrifying quality of a new and longed-for experience and, at the same time, it was a comfortable, familiar sharing. It was difficult to believe he had known her less than one day. He seemed to have wanted her much longer than that-and, of course, he had, though until he'd seen her he hadn't known it was her that he had wanted for so many years.

He could have kissed her then. He had the desire and the nerve to put a hand under her chin and lift her face and press his lips

to hers, and he knew she wouldn't resist, might even welcome it. But he did no more than hug her because he sensed the time wasn't exactly right for the commitment that a passionate kiss implied. Now, it would be a kiss that she sought partly out of fear, partly out of a desperate need to be reassured. When at last he did kiss her, he wanted it to be for other reasons entirely: desire, affection, love. He wanted the start to be perfect for them.

When she finally let go of him, she seemed self-conscious.

She smiled shyly and said, "Sorry. Didn't mean to get shaky on you.

I've got to be strong. I know it. There's no room for weakness in this situation."

"Nonsense," he said gently." I needed a hug, too."

"You did?"

"Everyone could use a teddy bear now and then."

She smiled at him.

He hated to leave her. All the way out to the car, with the wind tearing at his coat and the rain battering his bare head, he wanted to turn around and go back in there and tell her that something special was happening between them, something that shouldn't happen this fast, something like you saw in the movies but never in real life. He wanted to tell her now, even if it was the wrong time, because in spite of all his reassuring talk, he didn't know for sure that he would be able to handle Spivey and her crazies; there was a possibility, however slim, that he would never get another chance, never see Christine Scavello again.

He lived in the hills of North Tastin, and he was almost halfway home, cruising a lonely stretch of Irvine Boulevard, thinking about Frank Reuther and Pete Lockburn, when the events of the past few hours became too much to handle, and he was suddenly short of breath. He had to pull to the berm and stop. There were orange groves on one side of the roadway, strawberry fields on the other side, and darkness all around.

At this hour, there was no traffic. Slumped back in his seat, he stared at the rainspattered windshield where the water made ghostly, speckled patterns in the backsplash of his own headlight beams, brieflived patterns erased by the metronomically thumping windshield wipers. It was unnerving and dispiriting to realize that

human lives could be erased as suddenly and easily as those rain patterns on the glass. He wept.

In all its years of operation, Klemet-Harrison had lost only one other man in the line of duty. He had been killed in an automobile accident while he was working, although it was unconnected to his assignment and could have taken place as easily on his own time. A few men had been shot at over the years, mostly by estranged husbands who were determined to harass their wives in spite of court orders restraining them from doing so; and a couple of guys had even been hit. But until now no one had been murdered, for God's sake. The private investigation business was far less violent, far less dangerous than it was portrayed on television and in the movies. Sometimes you got roughed up a bit or had to rough up someone else, and there was always the potential for violence, but the potential was rarely realized.

Charlie wasn't afraid for himself, but he was afraid for his men, the people who worked for him and relied upon him. When he had taken this case, maybe he had gotten them into something he shouldn't have. Maybe, by signing on to protect Christine and Joey, he had also signed death warrants for himself and his associates. Who knew what to expect when you were dealing with religious fanatics? Who knew how far they would go?

On the other hand, everyone who worked with him knew the risks, even though they usually expected better odds than these.

And what kind of detective agency would they be, what kind of bodyguards would they be if they walked away from the first really nasty case they handled? And how could he back down on his word to Christine Scavello?

He wouldn't be able to face himself in the morning if he left her defenseless. Besides, he was more certain than ever that he was, with irrational but not entirely involuntary haste, falling in love with her.