Cold Fire

what frightened him. He had no idea what was cranking up his anxiety, but it was escalating to a level at which adrenaline would soon start to squirt out his ears.
    As he made his way back the aisle toward the reporter, she started to get up. Then a look of resignation slid across her face, and she sat down again. She was as easy to look at as he remembered, though the skin around her eyes was slightly dark, as if from lack of sleep.
    When he arrived at row twenty-three, he said, “Come on.” He reached for her hand.
    She did not give it to him.
    “We've got to talk,” he said.
    “We can talk here.”
    “No, we can't.”
    The stewardess who had warned him about blocking the aisle was approaching again.
    When Holly would not take his hand, he gripped her by the arm and urged her to get up, hoping she would not force him to yank her out of the seat. The stewardess ', probably already thought he was some pervert Svengali who was herding up the best-looking women on the flight to surround himself with a harem over there on the port side. Happily, the reporter rose without further protest.
    He led her back through the plane to a restroom. It was not occupied, so he pushed her inside. He glanced back, expecting to see the stewardess watching him, but she was attending to another passenger. He followed Holly into the tiny cubicle and pulled the door shut.
    She squeezed into the corner, trying to stay as far away from him as possible, but they were still virtually nose to nose.
    “I'm not afraid of you,” she said.
    “Good. There's no reason to be.”
    Vibrations were conducted well by the burnished-steel walls of the lavatory. The deep drone of the engines was somewhat louder there than in the main cabin.
    She said, “What do you want?”
    “You've got to do exactly what I tell you.”
    She frowned. "Listen, I—
    “Exactly what I tell you, and no arguments, there's no time for arguments,” he said sharply, wondering what the hell he was talking about.
    "I know all about your—
    “I don't care what you know. That's not important now.”
    She frowned. “You're shaking like a leaf.”
    He was not only shaking but sweating. The lavatory was cool enough, but he could feel beads of sweat forming across his forehead. A thin trickle coursed down his right temple and past the corner of his eye.
    Speaking rapidly, he said, “I want you to come forward in the plane, sit farther front near me, there're a couple of empty seats in that area.”
    “But I—”
    “You can't stay where you are, back there in row twenty-three, no way.”
    She was not a docile woman. She knew her own mind, and she was not used to being told what to do. “That's my seat. Twenty-three H. You can't strongarm me—”
    Impatiently, he said, “If you sit there, you're going to die.”
    She looked no more surprised than he felt—which was plenty damn surprised. “Die? What do you mean?”
    “I don't know.” But then unwanted knowledge came to him. “Oh, Jesus. Oh, my God. We're going down.”
    “What?”
    “The plane.” Now his heart was racing faster than the turbine blades in the great engines that were keeping them aloft. “Down. All the way down.”
    He saw her incomprehension give way to a dreadful understanding. “Crash?”
    “Yes.”
    “When?”
    “I don't know. Soon. Beyond row twenty, almost nobody's going to survive.” He did not know what he was going to say until he said it, and as he listened to his own words he was horrified by them. “There'll be a better survival rate in the first nine rows, but not good, not good at all. You've got to move into my section.”
    The aircraft shuddered.
    Holly stiffened and looked around fearfully, as if she expected the lavatory walls to crumple in on them.
    “Turbulence,” he said. “Just turbulence. We've got … a few minutes yet.”
    Evidently she had learned enough about him to have faith in his prediction. She did not express any doubt. “I don't want to die.”
    With an increasing sense of urgency, Jim gripped her by the shoulders. “That's why you've got to come forward, sit near me. Nobody's going to be killed in rows ten through twenty. There'll be injuries, a few of them serious, but nobody's going to die in that section, and a lot of them are going to walk out of it unhurt. Now, for God's sake, come on.”
    He reached for the door handle.
    “Wait. You've got to tell the pilot.”
    He shook his head. “It wouldn't help.”
    “But maybe there's something he can