The Heart Heist

by Alyssa Kress

  Giving up all pretense, she gave her purse a vigorous shake. It was not unlike her to misplace a set of keys, even in as small a circle as comprised the parking lot and motel room. She just wished she hadn't had to act so dim-witted today, in front of this man.

  "You looking for these?" Gary held out her car keys.

  "How did you ‑‑ ? Never mind, I don't want to know." She reached for the keys but Gary moved them aside.

  "You absolutely insist on driving this car back to Freedom?"

  "I absolutely do."

  "Then there's a condition to getting the keys back."

  Kerrin sighed. "Now what?"

  He dangled the keys, considering. "When you get home I want you to call back here to let us know you arrived safely."

  Kerrin stopped breathing and stared. He sounded like...a mother hen! Once she recovered her voice, she thought to remind him, "I thought I wasn't supposed to know you from Adam."

  With a scowl, he gave her the keys. "Just call."

  He was still standing there looking after her as she pulled her car out of the parking lot. She could see him in her rear view mirror, his brows drawn in concern as he watched her disappear down the street.

  That look of concern disturbed Kerrin during the hour drive home more than all of the threats, veiled and otherwise, that Gary Sullivan had ever made.

  ~~~

  She was going to drive home in that sad little excuse for a car anyway, Gary saw, watching her pull out of the motel parking lot. Lord, he'd forgotten how hair-pulling stubborn women could be. The trait was almost enough to convince a man he was better off without them.

  Almost. But no, Gary couldn't forget that moment of awareness in Kerrin Horton's eyes when they'd met his in the mirror of the motel room. For one brief, fleeting moment she'd looked at him as a woman would look at a man. It had been the first such moment Gary had known in over five years. Only because it was the first, it had sent his blood racing like a thoroughbred. He had more sense than to set his sights on Miss Goody-Two-Shoes. And she had more sense than to repeat what had undoubtedly been a freak accident. No, she wouldn't do it again.

  Turning from the empty road, Gary took the stairs two at a time, working out a thoroughly inappropriate frustration. It didn't take a brain surgeon to figure out he terrified her. Fortunately she wasn't too scared of him to stand up to him. Gary was oddly glad of that.

  He came to a dead halt on the threshold of the room. Marty was no longer alone. That man was with him. Where the hell had he sprung from?

  Crazy Willie, for what it was worth, hadn't liked the man either. He'd even gone so far as to beg Gary not to take the job, sensing something stank even without the benefit of knowing all the details. Gary had made his own decision, but Willie's concern for his welfare had been touching. Willie, Gary figured, must be the only being on the planet who cared what happened to him.

  "Close the door," the man said. In a pinstriped suit that accented his close-cropped white hair, he lounged in one of the chairs at the table, carefully out of the line of sight of said door. His face betrayed no emotion, even annoyance.

  Gary closed the door, wondering if it were this lack of emotional signalling that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. The man had been trained not to show any, he supposed.

  "Where'd you come from, Rogers?" Gary asked.

  "I have the room next door." Rogers gestured toward the open connecting door.

  His sudden appearance was not such a fancy trick, then.

  "So, what do you want?" Gary forced himself to take the second chair, though Marty kept his distance from the federal agent. Gary knew it was a mistake to show a bully you were scared.

  The fed picked up Gary's packet of cigarettes and shook one out. "The woman is going to be a problem."

  A chill crept up Gary's back. "I can handle her." Probably untrue, but Gary didn't want the spook thinking he ought to try the job.

  Rogers nodded. "Yeah, I saw that, in the parking lot. Be careful, Sullivan, she's smart as a whip." The agent regarded one of Gary's cigarettes between the tips of his fingers. "Best thing to do is get her into bed. Clever female like that ‑‑ it's the only way to control her."

  Gary felt something heavy press down inside his chest. "I hired on as a security consultant, not a Lothario."

  The federal agent lifted his eyes over the cigarette to regard Gary. "It wouldn't be hard, you know."

  "She's a nice girl." Wasn't that obvious?

  "Of course. And nice girls like bad boys."

  Gary sneered. "Well, you oughta know." But inside he felt suddenly sick. Was that all the moment in the mirror had been: Kerrin's fascination with a bad boy, a thrilling taste of forbidden fruit? Whatever secret gratification Gary had been harboring over the moment slipped away.

  The special agent carefully replaced the cigarette in the pack, rolling it so that it was in the exact position from which he'd removed it. He put the pack down on the table in the precise location from which he'd lifted it. More training, Gary supposed.

  Slowly Rogers rose to his feet, allowing no reaction to the anger he must have sensed emanating from Gary. "Mark my words, one way or another that woman is going to be a problem. In fact," he continued, seeming just to remember something, "she already is."

  He fixed Gary with a cold gaze. "Tell me, Sullivan, how did she know about you? How did she find out the DWP was planning to hire you? Think about that, why don't you, when you wonder who else might know about your mission ‑‑ the real one." He paused to give Gary a slight smile. "If I were in your shoes I'd do whatever I had to in order to discover some answers before Columbus Day."

  At the threshold of the connecting door, he halted to turn back to Gary with one eyebrow raised. "It could mean your life."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Matt waited impatiently while his father twisted two copper wires together with a pair of pliers.

  Tom Horton squinted at the connection he was forming, his forehead creased in concentration. "There, that ought to take care of it."

  Tom was a large man who filled the outdoor work shed with his height. He was surrounded by electronics tools, pieces of wire, cables, resistors, and clean sheets of copper. Everything was neat and in its place, properly labeled.

  "You want to take that up to number three-A?" Tom asked, holding the connected wires toward Matt. He turned to check a laminated map that hung on the wall. "Yes," he hummed contentedly. "Three-A."

  "Sure, Dad." Matt knew better than to try getting his father's attention at this point in the game. Tom was way deep in his experiment. "You want me to connect it to the positive or the negative node?"

  "Negative, negative," Tom hummed as he bent to fiddle with one of the readout monitors.

  Setting the wire end and a pair of pliers in his lap, Matt wheeled out of the shed and pumped his way up the hill. They'd put down wood tracks so his tires rolled smoothly as he made his way into the array of copper sheets. The sheets were each about two feet by four and they quivered in the small evening breeze. From outer space, Matt figured, the array would look like a blooming flower.

  He found the copper sheet in the third concentric circle out from the center. Taking the pliers, he fastened the wire to the negative node.

  A guy could have worse parents, Matt figured. True, they were crazy as loons, but they were nice. They hadn't even gotten angry about his accident three years ago, although it had been his own fault.

  Finished with his task, Matt dropped the pliers back in his lap, turned the chair, and coasted back down the hill with his hands loosely over the wheels, braking just enough to keep control. The copper sheets glittered in the moonlight as he sped by. Not for the first time, Matt thought how hot it would be if his parents actually did receive a message from outer space. That would put the laugh on everyone. It would be the living end.

  When Matt got back to the work shed, Tom was seated at a crude wooden desk, poring over an electronic diagram. He looked up when Matt came through the door
.

  "You wanted to talk to me about something?"

  See, that was the thing with them. One minute you were thinking they were completely out to lunch and deep in space, and the next minute they were right on you like they'd been paying attention the whole time.

  Matt rolled closer to the table. "We need to do something about Kerrin."

  "Kerrin?" His father seemed surprised. "What's wrong with Kerrin?"

  Matt stifled a sigh. And sometimes they didn't notice anything. "Well, you may have observed, she's been rather...agitated since she came back from Bishop this evening."

  "Agitated?" Tom's forehead puckered. "I haven't noticed anything beyond her usual..." Tom waved a hand in the air, "...flutteriness. And there's this Independence Day business she's all involved in tomorrow. If you think she's acting more fluttery than usual, it's probably nerves over everything turning out all right."

  Matt thought the euphemism 'fluttery' a good one. He'd have to remember it. But in the meantime he had to convince his dad that this was more than pre-party nerves. He leaned forward. "I think she has a boyfriend."

  Tom raised an eyebrow.

  "Look, she went to see him in L.A. last week, and then just today in Bishop."

  "Ye-es," Tom drawled, giving Matt a severe look. "And just what does that have to do with us?"

  Matt wanted to shake him. Didn't he get it? Okay, so his work for the government had driven him bonkers, given him a nervous breakdown. But that had happened almost forty years ago. Shouldn't he have recovered some sense of reality by now?

  "Dad, we can't let Kerrin screw up."

  His father didn't look impressed with this declaration. "I'm sure Kerrin can take care of her own social life. Besides, how do you even know this is a man?"

  Matt brightened, encouraged that his father was displaying a modicum of curiosity. "Because as soon as he called Kerrin was jumping in her car to go see him. She said ‑‑ " Here Matt made it clear what he thought of this lame explanation. "She said that he was just an applicant for summer school teacher."

  Tom Horton now raised his other eyebrow. "Well, then. I expect that's exactly what he is. The summer school teacher." He pushed his chair back and rose to his feet, signalling the end of the conversation. "The summer school teacher," he repeated musingly. "Fascinating. I'll look forward to meeting him."

  Matt watched his father amble off toward his workbench and decided he'd accomplished something after all. At least his dad wanted to meet the guy. That was almost...acting like a father. As for Matt, he just hoped to hell that if the guy really did want a job as summer school teacher, Kerrin had enough sense to give it to him.

  ~~~

  It was only ten o'clock in the morning but already the thermometer outside the courthouse was reading in the high nineties. The air of the plateau desert was dry and enervating. Heat began to lift off the asphalt track of highway that ran through the center of town.

  Nevertheless the town had come out full force for the Independence Day parade, the kick-off event for Kerrin's all-day festival. Families were lined along the closed-off highway. Senior citizens waited in deck chairs and babies crawled around on picnic blankets. Kids blew on plastic trombones and a hunchbacked old man walked up and down the main street selling American flags.

  Clad in a pioneer woman outfit, complete with sunbonnet, Kerrin stood on the podium overlooking the parade route and allowed herself some pride. It looked like the day was going to be a success.

  Except for the fact Gary Sullivan would be blowing into town.

  Not for the first time, she scanned the crowd, looking for him. Whenever she thought about the man, something funny happened in her stomach. An ulcer was forming, that's what it was. By the end of the summer she was going to have a full-blown ulcer for sure.

  "Okay, Miss Mayor, let's get this show on the road." Ollie, the former mayor, gently prodded her into action.

  Kerrin turned his way with a well-rehearsed gasp. "Oh, Ollie, I thought you said that you would give the opening speech." Most people in town would believe her scatter-brained enough to have forgotten to prepare an opening speech.

  But Ollie, his weathered face shaded by a big black Stetson, only chuckled softly in reply to this obvious falsehood. "Go on. Nobody wants to listen to me when they've got a pretty little thing like you to look at."

  Kerrin rolled her eyes. It was Ollie's down-home charm that had gotten her into this mess in the first place. Ollie had promised Kerrin that being mayor would consist of nothing more taxing than cutting a ribbon or two if a new store opened business. Right.

  She pushed back her chair and stood up. That was when she saw Gary Sullivan.

  He was down the block on the other side of the barricade. Both his elbows were propped on the open door of a white car, his weight set on one hip.

  Even from a distance of a hundred feet, she could feel the aura of pure male sex that hung about him. It was in the hard form of his body, in the way his jeans clung to his hips, and in the set of his stance. For all Gary Sullivan's faults he was pure physical grace, ability, beauty.

  And he was looking directly at her.

  Now how was she supposed to pretend she didn't know him if he was going to look at her that way? Her heart took a dive and her knees went soft as marshmallows.

  If that weren't bad enough, he had the audacity to smile. The expression utterly transformed his hard face, and he had a dimple, for God's sake, in his left cheek. Kerrin made a grab for the back of her rickety folding chair.

  "Oh, all right, little filly," Ollie groaned, lumbering to his feet. "If it's gonna get you this frizzled, I'll do the speech."

  "No, no. I'll do it." Shaking her head, Kerrin told herself to stop acting absurd. Sullivan would look that way at any woman, any woman. Besides, he was a three-time loser. Even if the attention of most men made her ridiculously nervous, that shouldn't be true of Sullivan.

  Dragging her gaze from the man behind the barricade, she approached the microphone. Her prepared speech flew right out of her head, replaced by a completely different one, one directed specifically at the man standing by his white car.

  "Freedom is not a right." With a brilliant smile, she heard herself cheerfully start improvising for the crowd. "Freedom is something earned." She continued in that vein, sternly adding that, "only when all respect the rights and property of their fellow men can true freedom be found."

  "Independence is a state fraught with peril," Kerrin concluded. "Some nations have floundered under the burden. Others have ceded it voluntarily in vain hopes of greater gain. But we in these United States of America, we in Freedom, California, are determined to meet the challenge. Freedom, then, for one and all!"

  Kerrin stepped back from the microphone, a little stunned by the round of applause that erupted from the sides of the street lining the parade route. And then, because she just couldn't help herself, she looked toward Sullivan, curious to see his reaction.

  He wasn't there. Nor was his white car. In their place stood a large highway patrol officer. His legs were splayed, his arms crossed over his tan uniform.

  Something crashed in Kerrin's chest. Had the police already blown Gary's cover? Had by some freak chance one of the local officers recognized him and taken him into custody? He wouldn't even have a chance to attempt his job for the DWP. By now he was probably sitting in some squad car, hands cuffed behind his back, sweltering in the heat and looking forward to a long drive back to Chino.

  Ten years, she remembered him telling her, and the ache in her chest got worse. Did she know how long ten years was?

  Excusing herself, Kerrin made her way down the steps of the wooden podium, ignoring Ollie's vociferous protests that she was leaving too early. Gathering her long skirts, she threaded her way around families craning their necks to watch the high school marching band. It seemed to take forever to get down the block to the barricade.

  The highway patrol officer was Tim Holloway, a local boy. Two years ago he'd been in her high school
class ‑‑ not the brightest of students, but well-meaning. Surely he would tell her what they'd done with Gary.

  "The man with the white car?" Tim asked, in response to Kerrin's carefully worded query. "Now, let me see, was there a guy with a white car? What kinda car, do you know?"

  "No, I don't know what kind of car." Kerrin did her best not to wail. Did you arrest someone, a dangerous criminal, in the past ten minutes, you sad excuse for a lawman?

  "Oh, yeah," Tim finally remembered, his lips curving upward. "That guy. I sent him up the hill to the visitor parking in Horace Winter's back pasture."

  Kerrin closed her eyes and breathed a long, traitorous sigh of relief. She felt crazy. Why was she sighing with relief on Gary's behalf?

  Meanwhile Tim rocked onto the balls of his feet, looking smug. "Though I guess soon enough he won't be considered a visitor, eh, Ms. Horton?"

  Kerrin went still. "I ‑‑ I beg your pardon?"

  "Well." Tim scratched his jaw. "He's hardly going to be a visitor once he starts teaching summer school, now, is he?"

  "Teaching summer school?" Kerrin squeaked. "He ‑‑ he's teaching summer school?"

  "Sure he is ‑‑ I thought you would know that if anybody did," Tim chided her. "Leastways, your brother seemed to think so." Tim began to look uncertain. "But I guess you're the boss, being the principal now and all so you would know best. Isn't he going to be the summer school teacher?"

  The summer school teacher, for her teenagers. Gary Sullivan. Dear Lord. "Excuse me." Kerrin turned on her heel. She had to find Matt. He had to be the source of this misinformation. But how in the world had Matt connected Gary Sullivan to the "applicant" she'd said she was interviewing? And so fast!

  Rumors in Freedom were like wildfires in the brush. Kerrin would have to move like lightning if there were any hope of crushing this one while it was still only smoking.