Running Hot

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER she emerged from the post office and walked quickly toward her car. An SUV painted camouflage green and brown wheeled into the parking lot. The door popped open. A spry-looking senior citizen climbed out. Her bubble of steel-gray hair was partially covered by a billed cap. She wore military-style fatigues and heavy black boots. Her eyes were shielded by a pair of mirrored sunglasses. The utility belt around her waist was studded with various and assorted implements including binoculars, a flashlight and a high-tech camera.

  The look was Arizona Snow’s day uniform. At night when she went out on her endless reconnaissance patrols of Eclipse Bay, she switched to black trousers and pants and added a set of night-vision goggles to her ensemble.

  “ ’Mornin’, Grace,” Arizona called. “Heard you’re fixin’ to go on a little vacation.”

  Grace smiled. Arizona Snow was Eclipse Bay’s resident eccentric. She must have been in her early eighties but aside from some trouble with arthritis she showed no signs of slowing down. Her commitment to protecting the town from some mysterious, unnamed conspiracy that, as far as anyone knew existed only in her mind, never wavered.

  “News travels fast,” Grace said, coming to a halt a short distance from Arizona.

  “Not everything you hear around here is accurate,” Arizona muttered ominously. She took a notebook and pen out of one of the half-dozen pockets that festooned her fatigues. Flipping the notebook open, she clicked her pen. “Goin’ to Hawaii, eh?”

  “That’s right.”

  Arizona made a note. “Return date?”

  “Well, I’m not sure yet. I probably won’t be gone long, though. A couple of days, maybe three at the most. Why?”

  Arizona looked up, shaking her head at the naive question. “I need to know when you’ll be back so I can alert the chief in case you don’t return on time.”

  Grace was touched. Arizona had taken a keen interest in her right from the start and had been happy to rent the cottage to her. As a rule, Arizona viewed every outsider in town with acute suspicion. But with Grace she had assumed an air of comradely understanding. It was as if she had concluded that the two of them had unspoken secrets in common.

  That assumption was probably not too far from the truth, Grace thought. One thing she had discovered in the past few months was that, although Arizona had lived in Eclipse Bay for several years, no one seemed to recall exactly when she had moved into town and no one seemed to know where she had come from.

  There were rumors about her, the most dramatic being that she had once worked for a mysterious government intelligence agency. The theory was that she had either resigned or been forced to retire when she became permanently lost in her own strange world.

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to leave my return date open,” Grace said gently.

  “Understood.” Arizona snapped the notebook closed and looked around, making certain there was no one in the vicinity who might be eavesdropping.

  Satisfied that they had privacy, she edged a little closer, respectful, as always, of the distance that Grace preferred to keep between herself and others. Arizona was one of the few people Grace had met who seemed to sense intuitively that she did not like to be touched. The leather gloves offered a degree of protection but they were by no means foolproof. Touching the wrong individual, however fleetingly, could be an ordeal.

  “So, the agency is finally sending you out on a field assignment,” Arizona said in low tones. “You be careful now, honey. From what I can tell, you’re an analyst, not a trained operative. I’ll bet your experience has all been at a desk with a computer. I hope they’re supplying some muscle to keep an eye on you.”

  The irony of the situation made Grace smile. Arizona filtered everything through her skewed view of the world. Because of that, she was the only person in Eclipse Bay who had come close to guessing the truth. If Arizona ever found out that the Arcane Society existed and that it was a secretive, centuries-old organization devoted to research and study of the paranormal, she would have no problem weaving it into her own worldview.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Grace said. “I’ll have a partner.”

  “Someone with field experience.” Arizona nodded, satisfied. “Excellent. You tell him I said to take good care of you.”

  “Okay.” Like heck she would tell Luther Malone that he was supposed to take care of her. She didn’t need any help in that department. She had been taking care of herself since the day her mother died.

  “I’ll keep an eye on your cottage while you’re gone,” Arizona added. “Make sure the sons a bitches don’t try to get into your files.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  “Stay alert, stay alive,” Arizona said. She snapped off a quick salute and stalked off across the parking lot, heading for the glass doors of the post office.

  Grace got into her car. She thought about her landlady as she drove out of the parking lot and turned toward the highway that would eventually take her to Portland.

  Arizona was a powerful sensitive, although she was probably unaware of it. Her talent was similar to Fallon’s. She could see patterns in chaos. But somewhere along the line she had lost control of the paranormal side of her nature. Perhaps if she had been raised as a member of the Arcane Society community, things would have been different for her. Perhaps she could have been taught how to control her talent. Or maybe not.

  There was no question but that it was far too late to intervene now. Arizona had gone too deep into her strange, private world. Now her talent controlled her.

  Grace wondered if Fallon Jones ever worried that he, too, might someday get trapped forever in his own world of plots and counterplots, unable to find his way back to reality. He was trying to do too much, she thought. On several occasions during the past few months she had heard the exhaustion in his voice. Running the West Coast office of J&J was obviously too big a job for one person. He needed an assistant.

  It started to rain. Fat drops spattered on the windshield. She turned on the wipers and wondered if it was raining in Hawaii. When she got bored thinking about the weather in the islands she wondered if she was pushing her luck by taking this assignment from J&J. The what-ifs loomed in her imagination. What if she couldn’t handle the mission? What if Luther Malone uncovered her secrets?

  Don’t think like that, she mentally scolded herself. How much trouble could a guy on a cane possibly be? You’ve been hiding in Eclipse Bay long enough.

  The courier from the Arcane Society—a young man who seemed thrilled to be performing a role, however small, for the legendary firm of J&J—delivered the packet to Grace at the airport hotel. He handed it to her in the lobby, so close she could feel the pulse and power of his talent. A para-hunter, she thought. She didn’t have to jack up her own senses to know that he was strong.

  “What’s your name?” she asked, automatically stepping back to put some distance between them.

  “Sean Jones, ma’am,” he said.

  Of course, she thought. The Jones family tree was filled with hunter talents of various kinds.

  She thanked him and hurried back to the elevator, ripping open the sealed packet as soon as she reached the privacy of her room. The contents tumbled onto the table—Luther Malone’s phony driver’s license on top. She picked it up and studied the picture, consumed by a curiosity she could not explain.

  Like most license photos, the shot was not intended to be flattering. It was possible that it was the lighting that made Malone look so hard but her intuition told her that the brutal planes and angles of his face would look just as austere in person. His dark hair was cut short. The note said his eyes were brown but in the picture they looked unreadable, the eyes of a lone wolf.

  The picture should have been off-putting. Malone appeared to be stone cold. But for some reason she could not stop staring at the image.

  Reluctantly she put the license down and reached for her plane ticket and the resort reservation.

  Approximately sixty se
conds later—the length of time it took her to get her shaking fingers under control—she dialed the now-familiar number in Scargill Cove.

  “You didn’t tell me that Malone and I would be registering as Mr. and Mrs. Carstairs,” she said, her voice rising in spite of her determination to remain cool and professional. “There’s only one room.”

  “Take it easy,” Fallon said, uncharacteristically soothing. “I made sure you got a suite. Take the bedroom. It has its own bath. Tell Malone he can have the pull-out bed in the living room.”

  “I don’t know if I can do this, sir. You should have warned me.”

  “I knew you’d panic if I told you that you and Malone would be checking in as husband and wife.” Fallon sounded aggrieved, the voice of a put-upon employer forced to work with a difficult, temperamental employee.

  “You were right.”

  “There’s absolutely nothing to worry about. Malone is a pro. He’s there as your bodyguard and this is the only arrangement that will allow him to do his job.”

  She swallowed hard. Fallon was right. Malone was a professional. She was the amateur. If she wanted to become a real agent for J&J, she had to start acting like one.

  “Mr. Malone agreed to this plan?” she asked warily.

  “He’ll be fine with it.”

  “Wait a second, are you saying he doesn’t yet know that he and I are supposed to pose as a married couple on this assignment?”

  “Thought I’d let you break it to him,” Fallon said.

  “Oh, gee, thanks.”

  For the first time in her association with Fallon Jones, she ended the call before he could cut the connection.

  For a long time she stood there, looking at Malone’s phony driver’s license and the hotel registration.

  Got to learn to live in the now.

  FIVE

  The concourse was crowded with tourists and business travelers from around the world. The planes landing and taking off on the runway bore the logos of nations from every part of the globe, including a few from countries that would have been unfamiliar to most people living outside the South Pacific. The warm, silken breeze carried the twin scents of jet fuel and the light mist that was sweeping down from the mountains.

  Luther lounged against the wall, his hand wrapped around the handle of the cane, and watched the dark-haired woman walking toward him. She had come into view at the far end of the walkway a couple of minutes ago. For some reason, he found his attention shifting back to her again and again.

  What the hell, he had a few minutes to kill. According to the monitors, Grace Renquist’s plane had landed on time a short while ago at the main terminal but it would take her a while to find her way to the interisland terminal. She was an elderly lady so she would probably wait for the Wiki-Wiki bus that connected the terminals rather than make the long hike along the concourse.

  The dark-haired woman disappeared behind a large tour group of senior citizens heavily draped in leis. Anticipation zinged through him while he waited for her to reappear. When she popped back into view she was closer, still coming his way. He could see her more distinctly now. She was pulling a carry-on suitcase with one hand. Her stride was lithe and purposeful and somehow sexy. A frisson of excitement hummed through his senses, all his senses. That hadn’t happened in longer than he cared to think about.

  Her hair was cut at a dramatic angle that started high at the nape of her neck and ended in two sweeping wings just below her cheek-bones. She had him riveted now but damned if he could figure out why. She was attractive in some indefinable, out-of-the-ordinary way but she was no glossy cover model; far from it. There was something proud and determined about the strong lines of her nose and jaw; a cool, touch-me-not attitude that radiated sexual challenge, at least to him. Dark glasses veiled her eyes. That was hardly unusual in Hawaii where everyone wore shades, but for some reason the glasses seemed to add to the air of exotic, sensual mystery that stirred the atmosphere around her.

  She must have just arrived from the mainland, he concluded; someplace where it had been raining probably because she wore a lightweight trench coat. Was he an ace detective or what? The coat was unbuttoned over a pair of dark pants and a classically cut shirt in a deep coppery color. The collar of the shirt was pulled up high and flared out a little, framing her throat and somehow subtly protecting it. A black leather handbag trimmed with bronze buckles was hooked over one straight shoulder. The hand that wasn’t wrapped around the handle of the suitcase was tucked into the pocket of the trench.

  He could not take his eyes off her. Maybe it was just him. No one else seemed to be paying any attention to the woman. This was a fine time for his long-dormant sexual appetite to wake up and go on the prowl. Life had been so peaceful since he’d sunk into his own private well of gloom. Maybe Wayne and Petra and Milly were right. Maybe he had been flirting with depression. But at least life had been calm.

  It had also been damned uninteresting.

  She was close enough now. He jacked up his senses. Light and dark inverted. Most of the people in the crowded concourse were instantly transformed into human glowworms, their auras flaring and pulsing in the usual hues and patterns that he had learned to associate with those who did not possess strong psychic talents.

  Power flared around the dark-haired woman, however. She stood out in the crowd like some incandescent butterfly surrounded by a swarm of pale, nondescript moths.

  She was a strong talent of some kind. That was probably what his senses were responding to. Even on the normal plane he had picked up the exciting strength of her psychic energy. Here in the paranormal realm, it was just as compelling. He wanted to get closer, a lot closer.

  He tightened his hand on the handle of the cane and straightened away from the wall. He had a few more minutes until the elderly genealogist arrived.

  He took one step forward and halted abruptly. What was he thinking? He was here to do a job. Let her go, you idiot. Just two psychics passing in the night. It happens.

  Yes, but it had never happened like this, not to him. He’d met other strong sensitives before, lots of them. Two months ago one had tried to kill him. He’d never responded to any of them with this kind of gut-deep awareness.

  She was less than six feet away now. Before he could move to intercept her, she halted directly in front of him, dazzling him with a fire that threatened to ignite his senses. He knew in that moment that she had made him as another sensitive, just as he had recognized her.

  Damn. What were the odds?

  “Mr. Malone?” she said quietly.

  He snapped back into normal focus. The iridescent fire around the woman disappeared but his hungry fascination did not. The memory of Fallon Jones laughing on the other end of the phone flashed through him. An elderly, gray-haired librarian, my sweet ass.

  “I’m Malone,” he said. “Grace Renquist?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, what do you know. Fallon Jones has a sense of humor, after all.”

  She smiled slightly. “Badly warped, I’m afraid.”

  “Only to be expected. He’s still Fallon Jones.” He held out his hand. “A pleasure, Miss Renquist. Uh, it is Miss, isn’t it? Or did I get that wrong, too?”

  “It’s Miss.” She inclined her head politely. “Who or what were you expecting?”

  He glanced down and saw that she was still gripping the suitcase handle with one gloved hand. Her other hand was firmly planted out of sight in the pocket of the trench coat. He lowered his own hand.

  “Let’s just say I had the impression you would look a lot more mature,” he said.

  She removed the dark glasses. Dry amusement gleamed in a pair of smoky, sage-green eyes.

  “Gray-haired, perhaps?” she said. “Maybe equipped with a hearing aid?”

  “Fallon encouraged me to leap to a few conclusions.”

  “If you think I’m something of a surprise, wait until you see your new ID packet.”

  She took her hand out of her pocket for the
first time, revealing another thin, expensive-looking leather driving glove.

  “Little warm for a coat and gloves,” he said neutrally.

  She ignored the comment just as she had his attempt to shake hands earlier. Instead, she took the leather bag off her shoulder, opened it and reached inside for an envelope. When she handed it to him she was careful not to let her gloved fingers brush against his bare skin.

  Just his luck. The most exciting woman ever to walk into his life had some kind of serious phobia about touching other people. Well, hey, it’s not like I’m real normal, either.

  He opened the envelope and removed a driver’s license, a couple of credit cards and the folded hotel registration. A quick glance at the license and the plastic told him that his new name was Andrew Carstairs and that he lived in L.A. The registration informed him that he was married. He looked up.

  “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Carstairs,” he said, refolding the form.

  To his surprise, she blushed and quickly shoved her gloved hands back into the pockets of her coat. “Mr. Jones didn’t tell me about our cover until it was too late for me to back out of the assignment.”

  “Jones has a way of getting what he wants from his agents.” He glanced at his watch. “We’ve got some time before we leave for Maui. Want something to eat?”

  “I’m not hungry but I could use a cup of coffee.”

  “Sounds good.”

  They walked a short distance to a coffee bar. Grace ordered her coffee black, he noticed. It was how he drank his. Hey, something in common. Focus on the positive.

  They sat together at one of the tiny tables.

  He studied Grace’s hand, which was currently wrapped around her cup.

  “You’re going to have to lose the gloves before we get on the plane to Maui,” he said quietly.

  She paused, the cup halfway to her mouth. “Why?”

  “Because if you insist on wearing them, you’re going to stand out like, well, like a sore thumb.”

  She winced and looked at her gloved fingers. “I was afraid you would say that.”