Sizzle and Burn

of my father’s lab.”
    I’m doomed. Mom was right about you, Uncle Wilder. You were a real pain in the ass.
    “That wasn’t in the file,” he said aloud. He seemed to be saying that a lot lately.
    “I suppose it would have been kind of embarrassing for a hotshot J&J agent to admit that the only way he was able to get to his target was to seduce and manipulate the target’s sister. Doesn’t sound like a real heroic, manly thing to do, does it? More like sneaky, underhanded and conniving.”
    He took a deep breath. “Maybe that’s not how it was.”
    “According to Andrew, that’s exactly how it was.”
    He said nothing.
    Raine stopped outside a door. “Now, at least, I know why Aunt Vella cried so hard that night. She trusted the man she loved and he betrayed her.”
    “I’m sorry, Raine.”
    She gave a visible start. Her hand stilled on the doorknob. “That’s what he said.”
    “Who?”
    “Wilder Jones. Aunt Vella held me in her arms while the men from J&J tore the place apart. All I remember was the noise and the flash-lights and the way Vella was raging and crying. I didn’t know what was going on. I was terrified.”
    “Hell of an experience for a kid to go through.”
    “One of the men—it must have been Wilder—stopped in front of Vella and me. He said, I’m sorry, Vella . She screamed at him. Called him a lying bastard. He ordered someone to take us out of the building and put us in the backseat of a car. The next thing I recall was hearing an explosion. The night sky was suddenly filled with flames, and Aunt Vella wouldn’t stop sobbing.”
    “What happened after that?”
    “One of the men drove Vella and me back to our house. That was the end of it. I never saw anyone from J&J again until you showed up at my door in Shelbyville.”
    He exhaled slowly. “I can see how you came by your opinion of the agency.”
    “After that night Aunt Vella developed a serious phobia about fire. She never burned a single log in the fireplace in the Shelbyville house. Even burning candles made her nervous.”
    She opened the door and moved into a small foyer. When she flipped on the light, two cats appeared out of the darkness, one silver and gray, the other a mix of brown and gold shades. She put her purse down and scooped up a cat in each arm. The combined purring sounded like a couple of miniature Harley-Davidson engines.
    “This is Robin,” she said, indicating the brown-gold cat. “The other one is Batman.”
    He rubbed each cat behind the ears. “I can see why you named them after a couple of superheroes. With those markings around their eyes they look like they’re wearing masks.”
    “I got them from a shelter when they were a few months old. Their pasts are a mystery, just like Batman’s and Robin’s.”
    “Like your own?”
    “I seem to be learning a lot about my own past now that I’ve started hanging with you.”
    “That’s the reason you’re calling a halt to the hot sex, isn’t it?” he asked softly. “You’re afraid that history might repeat itself.”
    “I just think it would be best if we kept things on a businesslike footing from now on. Good night, Zack.”
    She closed the door.
    He stood there for a few seconds, listening to her throw a couple of bolts. Then he went back downstairs to his car.

Twenty-one
    T he homeless man was curled up in the limited shelter of the motel’s dimly lit breezeway. He had covered himself with a ragged purple blanket and an insulating layer of newspapers. Zack stopped a short distance away. The man’s face was hidden by the blanket pulled up over his head. The sole of one running shoe poked out from beneath the lower edge of a newspaper.
    Some street people were so disturbed by their own unstable thoughts that they radiated a kind of chronic psychic chaos in the form of an aura that even nonsensitives could often detect. Zack opened his senses cautiously.
    He waited a couple of seconds but didn’t get any crazy vibes from the homeless man. He removed his wallet from his back pocket and took out a five-dollar bill. He dropped the money into the curve of the man’s body where it would not be visible to an opportunistic street thief. The night guard in the small pickup that patrolled hourly would be around soon. The sleeper would be shaken awake and sent on his way. With luck he would notice the five.
    You weren’t supposed to give money to street people. It was a safe bet that the cash would be wasted on booze or some other