all over yesterday, after I handed Norby to that rescue worker, you know
what I felt? More than anything else? Not elation at saving him-that
too, but not mainly that. And not pride or the thrill of defeating
death myself Mostly I felt rage It surprised me, even scared me. I was
so furious that a little boy almost died, that his uncle had died beside
him, that he’d been trapped under those seats with corpses, that all of
his innocence had been blown away and that he couldn’t ever again just
enjoy life the way a kid ought to be able to. I wanted to punch
somebody, wanted to make somebody apologize to him for what he’d been
through. But fate isn’t a sleazeball in a cheap suit, you can’t put the
arm on fate and make it say it’s sorry, all you can do is stew in your
anger.”
Her voice was not rising, but it was increasingly intense. She paced
faster, more agitatedly. She was getting passionate instead of angry,
which was even more certain to reveal the degree of her desperation. But
she couldn’t stop herself: “Just stew in anger.
Unless you’re Jim Ironheart. You can do something about it, make a
difference in a way nobody ever made a difference before.
And now that I know about you, I can’t just get on with my life, can’t
just shrug my shoulders and walk away, because you’ve given me a chance
to find a strength in myself I didn’t know I had, you’ve given me hope
when I didn’t even realize I was longing for it, you’ve shown me a way
to satisfy a need that, until yesterday, I didn’t even know I had, a
need to fight back, to spit in Death’s face. Damn it, you can’t just
close the door now and let me standing out in the cold!”
He stared at her.
Congratulations, Thorne, she told herself scornfully. You were a
monument to composure and restraint, a towering example of self control.
He just stared at her.
She had met his cool demeanor with heat, had answered his highly
effective silences with an ever greater cascade of words. One chance,
that was all she’d had, and she’d blown it.
Miserable, suddenly drained of energy instead of overflowing with it,
she sat down again. She propped her elbows on the table and put her
face in her hands, not sure if she was going to cry or scream. She
didn’t do either.
She just sighed wearily.
“Want a beer?” he asked.
“God, yes.”
Like a brush of flame, the westering sun slanted through the tilted
plantation shutters on the breakfast-nook window, slathering bands of
coppergold fire on the ceiling. Holly slumped in her chair, and Jim
leaned forward in his. She stared at him while he stared at his half
finished bottle of Corona.
“Like I told you on the plane, I’m not a psychic,” he insisted. “I
can’t foresee things just because I want to. I don’t have visions. It’s
a higher power working through me.”
“You want to define that a little?”
He shrugged. “God.”
“God’s talking to you?”
“Not talking. I don’t hear voices, His or anybody else’s. Now and then
I’m compelled to be in a certain place at a certain time. . .”
As best he could, he tried to explain how he had ended up at the
McAlbery School in Portland and at the sites of the other miraculous
rescues he had performed. He also told her about Father Geary finding
him on the floor of the church, by the sanctuary railing, with the
stigmata of Christ marking his brow, hands, and side.
It was off the-wall stuff, a weird brand of mysticism that might have
been concocted by an heretical Catholic and peyote-inspired Indian
medicine man in association with a no-nonsense, Clint Eastwood-style
cop.
Holly was fascinated. But she said, “I can’t honestly tell you I see
God’s big hand in this.”
“I do,” he said quietly, making it clear that his conviction was solid
and in no need of her approval.
Nevertheless she said, “Sometimes you’ve had to be pretty damned
violent, like with those guys who kidnapped Susie and her mother in the