The Heart Heist

by Alyssa Kress

  Finally Gary had to put an end to it. He was shaking, dizzy, as he lifted his lips slowly, reluctantly from hers. For a moment he could only stand there, his head still lowered, his mouth a mere fraction of an inch from hers. Then he straightened. For one of the few times in his life he was speechless. Not a single snide, biting comment came to mind as he ventured to look down at her.

  She was gazing up at him with a profound and bottomless shock. Her lips parted in a silent 'O' as her half-lidded eyes widened. Then, putting a hand of trembling fingers against those parted lips, she took a step back, away from him.

  Gary didn't try to stop her as she turned and fled. He just stood there, watching her run on her toes across the dry, untended grass. She looked like a sprite, some otherworldly fairy, and Gary felt like an ogre.

  Apparently he'd been wrong. His kiss hadn't been like any normal man's. It had been like a convict's: utterly unacceptable.

  ~~~

  Gasping for breath, Kerrin wrenched her office door open. She slipped inside and pushed the hydraulic spring closed, then leaned limply against the door.

  Oh my God oh my God. She pressed her cheek against the cool surface of the door, her heart still racing. Jesus Christ. Kerrin had no idea what 'any normal man's' kiss might be like, but she sincerely doubted a kiss like the one Gary had just given her came along every day.

  With an agonized moan, Kerrin slid down the door to land in a cross-legged heap on the floor. The heels of her hands pressed against her forehead as her fingers tangled in her hair. What an idiot he must think her. She probably hadn't managed to kiss him back even close to properly. Heavens, she couldn't have begun to match the awesome expertise of that man's mouth, of his mere touch. He'd flooded her with a sensation of sunshine and rain, of high, rocky mountains and clear blue skies. All the physical wonders of the world had been present in his kiss. She was trembling, just thinking about it.

  And that was another thing. She'd been scared, feeling as nervous and awkward as she always did during a physical encounter with an actual man. But Gary had brushed all of that aside, he'd swept right past it as a phenomenon of no importance whatsoever. And once he'd gotten on the other side of her nerves, well ‑‑

  Kerrin moaned again, squeezing her eyes shut. Once he'd gotten past that she'd responded with shameless abandon, forgetting the most elemental fact that she was no good at this sort of thing, certainly no equal to a man like Gary.

  A knock on her door brought Kerrin's head up with nervous shock. If that was Gary ‑‑

  "Kerrin? Hey, you in there?"

  Matt. Kerrin hung her head, ready to cry with relief. After scrambling to her feet and wiping a hasty hand across her face, she opened the door.

  Matt looked up at her from his wheelchair with drawn brows. "Why'd you lock the door?"

  "No reason. I was about to leave. You want a ride home?"

  Matt's brows drew down even further. Kerrin rarely returned home this early. "Actually, no," he told her. "That's what I came to tell you. Paul's giving me a ride home."

  "Oh?" Kerrin struggled not to show astonishment. It was the first time in three years Matt was doing something with one of the kids his own age.

  Matt scowled, looking to the side. "We have to do some research together on a project for Gary's class."

  Whatever the reason, Kerrin was still amazed ‑‑ and grateful. But she knew it wouldn't do to remark on it. "'Gary?'" she queried instead. "Is that what the class calls him?"

  Matt looked guilty, as though she'd caught him at something he'd promised not to do. "Yeah," he mumbled, low. "He says 'Mr. Sullivan' takes too long to say, and besides we all know who's boss."

  "Ah."

  Matt looked at Kerrin's face. He felt pretty sure she was stifling a grin. It was probably okay he'd spilled the beans about Gary's name, then.

  "Should I tell Mom you'll be home for dinner ‑‑ ?" Kerrin asked him, but suddenly stopped. Everything about her froze.

  Turning his head in the direction of her scared-rabbit gaze, Matt saw Gary coming up the arcade from the direction of the back field. His stride broke when he saw them. Matt saw the eyes of the two of them meet. He saw the sizzle, the same sizzle he'd seen on the day of the parade.

  Then his sister abruptly turned and went for her desk, as though she had some pressing need to reach it. In the meantime Gary simply stood there, looking like someone had slugged him. Matt knew that look. He felt it himself sometimes around Cheryl Bloch. Finally Gary shook off the look, mumbled something like "see ya" to Matt and went on his way.

  Matt stared thoughtfully after Gary's back as he answered his sister. "Yes, tell Mom I'll be home for dinner."

  ~~~

  At three a.m. Gary generally had the town to himself. There wasn't a soul around, including that pathetic excuse for a police officer, so he really had no need to keep to the shadows, but he did anyway, moving silently and invisibly through the sleeping streets.

  Every night it was the same. He passed the general store, two of the three gas stations, the bank. Every night the urge was there, whispering in his ear, seductive, taunting, persuading. It would be so easy. Much easier than getting through the fortress of the DWP. Just a snip here, an intelligent use of a pair of metal cutters there, flicking a switch on the wall. He could be inside the bank.

  He knew how that felt. To be alone inside the quiet lobby, the safe submissively awaiting him, a powerful surge of pride coursing through his veins. In control.

  Every night he fought the urge. No, that wasn't true. There was no fighting the urge, it popped alongside his ear no matter what. It was more accurate to say he ignored it. It wasn't easy; in fact it hurt like hell. The urge chattered and screeched and clawed at his insides, going right for where he was most vulnerable, calling him a fraud and a coward and basically no good. All right, so he was a fraud and a coward and basically no good, but he wasn't going to steal. Not tonight. Tomorrow he couldn't promise, but tonight he didn't have time.

  Gary paused on the slope that ran down to the Owens River. The area between the town and the DWP plant was undeveloped land. It was owned, Gary had learned, by the City of Los Angeles. Native brush covered the slope to about a distance of a hundred yards from the outer fence of the plant. From there the soil was shaved clean, a burnt red tone in color.

  Gary looked at the high, electrified fence and came to his first conclusion. Going through it was impossible. His eyes naturally lifted to the sky above the fence. Was there a way to get over it?

  Nah. It was too high to vault and no trees grew close enough to be useful.

  How, then? Gary paced hidden through the brush in a wide circle of the facility. He could hear the pumps working, sluicing all the water from the natural river into the aqueduct, forcing it to take a different course to serve the rapacious desires of Los Angeles. This wouldn't be the first time someone had tried to blow up the aqueduct. Gary had been doing a little research in the town library. Ninety years ago the ranchers of the Owens Valley hadn't been too pleased when the municipality of Los Angeles had weaseled in and bought away their rights to the water of the river. Bombing the aqueduct had once been a valley pastime.

  Gary stopped, looked at the fence and proceeded to his next hypothesis. Not over it. So. What about under it?

  Sheesh. A tunnel under the fence Gary didn't like to think about. That took planning and time. Lots of time. Whoever was digging it would have to start from at least a hundred yards away, where the brush would hide the start of the hole.

  No transient drifter would be able to effect such a feat. Whoever was planning to get into the facility couldn't simply drop into Freedom to take care of their business.

  It would have to be someone who was living in the town. Someone who'd been living there long enough to build a tunnel.

  In other words, it would have to be someone Gary already knew.

  The idea sent a shiver up his spine. Gary squatted and dug his fingers into the soil. Soft, alluvial stuff, from when the river
had been much higher, before it had been drained by the aqueduct. Easy to dig through. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

  It was a tunnel, all right, and it probably already existed, at least in part.

  Gary ran his eyes over the acres of brush that surrounded the facility. Somehow he was going to have to find that sucker.

  Damn!

  Or perhaps...the way to go about it was to find, not the tunnel, but the tunnel-maker.

  Gary shrank from that proposition. He was starting to kind of like the people in town. They were all so damn innocent, like a bunch of crazy Willies. He didn't want to imagine one of them as the villain.

  But as he sank his fingers into the soft soil again, Gary realized he didn't have a choice. He gazed bleakly out over the starlit scene.

  Like it or not, Mr. Holiday lived in Freedom.

  ~~~

  For the next three days, it was Kerrin who avoided Gary. Her evasive maneuvers were probably unnecessary. Gary was undoubtedly working just as hard to avoid herself, she supposed.

  This afternoon she'd found a safe niche in the town library. The library had been built in the twenties with solid timber framing around a plain cross plan. A dome rose in the center above clerestory windows. The librarian, Mrs. Haggerty, a woman with a perpetual expression of sour disapproval, sat behind the reception desk and stabbed at one book after another with her rubber date stamp. Beside Mrs. Haggerty, Kerrin was the only person in the building, sitting at a table tucked behind the nonfiction stacks.

  Until Gary walked in. Between the shelf of tomes on irrigation systems and that of books on forestry management, Kerrin caught a glimpse of his graceful, masculine figure, poised in a shaft of sunlight under the center dome, his head up like a wolf on the scent.

  She held her breath, hoping he wouldn't see her. Meanwhile he strode past the reception desk. He was back to wearing the sport coat and tie, though Kerrin didn't think the genteel attire made him look a whit less of an animal; a beautiful, intriguing, but nevertheless predatory, animal.

  Quietly, Kerrin took another deep breath, straining the material of her cotton dress. Maybe if she could keep perfectly still he wouldn't see her. His shoes clicked quietly on the vinyl tile floor as he paced past the stacks on the far side of the room. Kerrin let out her breath.

  Maybe he wasn't even looking for her. Maybe he was here to do some research of his own. Kerrin had noticed him poring through the old local newspapers. She'd been curious as to what he was searching for, but of course she hadn't asked.

  "There you are."

  Kerrin nearly jumped out of her skin. As it was, she knocked the top book of the stack on her desk to the floor. It dropped with an enormous, echoing thud.

  With a sigh, Gary squatted down, all lithe, physical grace, and retrieved the book. He placed it with care on top of the precarious stack, then lowered into the heavy wooden chair across from her. "I've been looking all over for you." His brows drew down. "Just relax, would you? I'm not going to jump you." He paused. "Nor am I going to kiss you again. Does that help? Feel better now?"

  The bitterness of his tone barely penetrated Kerrin's consciousness as she glanced nervously toward Mrs. Haggerty. She wished Gary would keep his voice down. Turning back, she forced herself to meet his dark eyes. The red tones in them were muted this afternoon, leaving an impression of brooding. "You've been looking for me?" she asked. "Why?"

  Gary lounged back in the stiff chair, his gaze going even darker. "I need some advice."

  Kerrin's brows shot up. "From me?"

  "Yeah, you're supposed to be the expert on this teacher-student stuff. I'm just an amateur, remember?"

  As a matter of fact, Kerrin had a hard time remembering that. "Is there a particular problem?" It was hard to imagine a situation Gary wouldn't consider entirely within his power to control.

  But he flicked his gaze from her and let out a long breath, puffing out his cheeks. "Yeah, there's a particular problem. Do you know Elaine Gerard?"

  "Elaine? Oh, yes." Kerrin knew that problem well. She'd spent the entire spring trying to get the girl out of her father's clutches. But Mr. Gerard wouldn't sign a release allowing the State to take her and Elaine wouldn't make any formal charge against the man; nor was Kerrin sure he'd ever actually hit her. Kerrin's hands had been tied.

  Now she regarded Gary curiously. She would have said his mother hen instincts were coming out, but there was a depth to his frustration that went beyond the mother hen.

  Gary's mouth twisted. "I went out to visit her house the other day. Or, rather, that rusty trailer Gerard keeps. Elaine's the oldest of the lot and she's trying to keep house, but it's just impossible. Gerard makes it even worse."

  "He's a drunk," Kerrin confirmed. "What happened?"

  Gary looked to the side again. "Gerard was sitting in some kind of easy chair out on the grass. The kids were all over the place, making a mess. He had a bottle of homemade hooch in one hand and a shotgun laid across his lap." Gary shook his head. "Lord, how I hate firearms."

  "As if that would stop you," Kerrin murmured. "What did you say?"

  "I told him to lay off Elaine."

  "And he picked up the shotgun." Kerrin thanked the stars Gerard was too much of a coward to have used it. Gary had taken a terrible chance.

  Gary's jaw clenched as he concentrated on a spot over Kerrin's shoulder. "Accused me of sleeping with her ‑‑ dammit, Elaine was watching the whole thing from the door of the trailer. She heard him call her a slut, and a bunch of other dirty names I don't need to repeat." Gary brought his gaze back to Kerrin's face. "Tell me there's a way, legally, to make the guy pay."

  Kerrin bit in her lips and shook her head. "Gerard's not physically abusive which, though a blessing, makes it next to impossible to do a thing. Believe me, I tried."

  He looked wretched. "I don't get it. The law won't do anything to help her?"

  "There has to be some evidence."

  "Shit." He jumped out of his chair and took a pace away from the table. "She's afraid."

  "Yes," Kerrin confirmed.

  Gary ran a hand through his hair. "It's more than what he's doing to her on the outside ‑‑ don't you see? It's what he's doing to her on the inside, twisting the anger back in on itself. It's crippling."

  It occurred to Kerrin that Gary seemed to have a very close image, one might say an intimate one, of this particular situation.

  "What do you want to do?" she asked.

  He ran a hand through his hair again, making the bronze-brown strands fall over his forehead. "I want to get her out of there."

  "What about the younger kids?"

  With a snarling noise of frustration, Gary sliced his hand through the air. "That's probably why she's staying."

  "Yes." Kerrin picked her words carefully. "Maybe you can do something for her, though. Maybe not as much as you want to, but something."

  Gary looked cautiously hopeful. "Like what?"

  Again, Kerrin was careful how she phrased her suggestion. "Maybe Elaine could use some...positive reinforcement, seeing as how she's getting such a negative view of herself from her father."

  Gary's eyes were close on her. "Go on."

  Kerrin took a deep breath. "I think Elaine could use a job."

  Something shifted behind his dark eyes. "From me?"

  "Why not? At the moment you're probably the person she feels most ashamed in front of. She could use an ego boost from you. Besides," Kerrin went on, "you'd make a good male role model, considering she doesn't have much of one in her father."

  Belatedly, Kerrin realized what she'd just said. Her lips parted as her eyes locked with Gary's. He stared at her one long, pregnant moment and then, slowly, smiled.

  "Oops," he said, grinning. Then he walked up to her seated form and dropped a hand on her shoulder. The weight of his hand was warm and she could sense the latent strength of the fingers that closed around her. It felt...good.

  "That's okay." Gary lifted his hand. "I get the picture. And I'll
think about your advice ‑‑ if it's still your advice?" He raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  "It's still my advice," Kerrin replied, her voice croaking.

  It occurred to her as he strode out of the library, the sun gilding him briefly as he passed through the door, that Gary Sullivan might not be the worst male role model she'd ever seen.

  Who else did she know, after all, who was honoring an agreement that would put him back in prison? Gary could have been in Mexico ten times over by now. He was loyal to his friends and he was protective of those weaker than himself. He had the respect of twenty-five teenagers and that was no mean feat.

  Of course, Kerrin had seen better role models. But, excepting her father, she couldn't come up with a single one, and she spent the rest of the afternoon trying.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It wasn't yet seven on Saturday morning, the sun was only just cresting the Panamint mountains in the east, but Gary was not happily snoozing in bed, as he'd planned. Instead, yawning and with a severe craving for coffee, he was squatting beside a stream of water about the temperature of a witch's teat. As if that weren't bad enough, he'd just been informed by the red-haired kid seated to his side that he was expected to wade right into the stuff.

  "Damn." Matt concentrated on a length of tangled nylon string. "This got knotted up somehow." His fingers worked quickly on the knots.

  Gary yawned again and breathed in deeply of the fresh mountain air. It sure was beautiful here, he had to admit, physically tranquilizing. All the same, he'd rather have been in bed. Saturday and Sunday were the only two days he had a chance to sleep late ‑‑ or much at all. But when Matt had asked him if he'd like to go fishing, Gary had found himself mysteriously unable to refuse.

  He'd come up to the Horton house yesterday afternoon, ostensibly to work out with Matt's weights. As a matter of fact, he'd secretly hoped to get a glimpse of Kerrin. Sheer masochism. Since their conversation in the library she hadn't been avoiding him quite as much as she would an ax murderer. No, now it was only as if Gary had one of those highly communicable diseases his class group was going to teach about.