Cold Fire

More important, as a woman, she was more intrigued by him than she had been by any man in ages. She briefly considered taking a far more circuitous route to the airport; his lack of familiarity with the city might disguise her deception. Then she realized that the freeway signs were already announcing the upcoming exit to Portland International; even if he had not been reading them, he could not have failed to notice the steady air traffic in the deep-blue eastern sky ahead of them.
    She said, “What do you do down there in California?”
    “Enjoy life.”
    “I meant—what do you do for a living?”
    “What's your guess?” he asked.
    “Well … one thing for sure: you're not a librarian.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “You have a sense of mystery about you.”
    “Can't a librarian be mysterious?”
    “I've never known one who was.” Reluctantly she turned onto the airport exit ramp. “Maybe you're a cop of some kind.”
    “What gives you that idea?”
    “Really good cops are unflappable, cool.”
    “Gee, I think of myself as a warm sort of guy, open and easy. You think I'm cool?”
    Traffic was moderately heavy on the airport approach road. She let it slow her even further.
    “I mean,” she said, “that you're very self-possessed.”
    “How long have you been a reporter?”
    “Twelve years.”
    “All of it in Portland?”
    “No. I've been here a year.”
    “Where'd you work before?”
    “Chicago … Los Angeles … Seattle.”
    “You like journalism?”
    Realizing that she had lost control of the conversation, Holly said, “This isn't a game of twenty questions, you know.”
    “Oh,” he said, clearly amused, “that's exactly what I thought it was.”
    She was frustrated by the impenetrable wall he had erected around 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 to 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 just 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 revenant 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.

5
    That evening, in her third-floor