Imminent Thunder

by Rachel Lee

  “Something’s going on,” Ian said. “Something…unnatural. I feel it.”

  Icy tendrils wrapped slowly around Honor’s spine. She felt it, too. “Someone’s watching.”

  “I thought we’d get away from it by coming out here.” He scanned the beaches and the dunes, seeking the watcher. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Even as she went with him, she questioned his motives. For all that he seemed concerned for her safety, he spent an awful lot of time scaring her even more. What if he was trying to scare her out of her wits? To drive her away? Or drive her over the edge?

  The man is an abomination. A witch’s spawn. The words whispered through her mind again, cold and deadly. Once again she tried to ignore them. They were not real. They came from some buried corridor of the subconscious, and they were meaningless.

  Or were they?

  Rachel Lee wrote her first play in the third grade for a school assembly, and by the age of twelve she was hooked on writing. She’s lived all over the United States, on both the East and West coasts, and now resides in Texas with her husband and two college-age children.

  Having held jobs as a security officer, real estate agent, optician and military wife—“Yes, that’s a job!”—she uses these, as well as her natural flair for creativity, to write stories that are undeniably romantic. “After all, life is the biggest romantic adventure of all—and if you’re open and aware, the most marvelous things are just waiting to be discovered.”

  RACHEL LEE

  IMMINENT THUNDER

  To Leslie Wainger and Isabel Swift.

  You both know why.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER ONE

  The midnight breeze had turned soft with the hint of thunderstorms and the scent of the nearby bay. It filled the night with the restless rustle of leaves in the old live oaks. Spanish moss swayed eerily before it, creating dark, rippling curtains of shadow. Mixed with the swish of the leaves and the sigh of the breeze was a distant, low rumble.

  From the west came the approaching thunder of a storm and the flicker of sheet lightning, an ominous promise. From the north, too, there came a louder rumble, a more distinct thunder and a sharper flash of light, as bombers practiced on the military reservation. Both storms had their own kind of eeriness, the one wholly natural, the other wholly unnatural.

  Just as Honor Nightingale pulled into her driveway, beneath the sagging shoulders of a row of old oaks, a thick cloud scudded across the moon, swallowing the last bit of illumination. The night abruptly devoured everything beyond the yellow beams of her headlights. It was a wild, beautiful night, she thought. The kind of night that always made her want to kick off her shoes and run barefoot through the grass like a frisky colt.

  She pulled up to the detached garage that sat behind her ramshackle house and shoved the car door open, pausing to draw a deep breath of the northwest Florida air. Nowhere else on earth had nights like these. Nowhere else could you smell the sea and the thunder on a breeze as soft as silk and satin.

  Climbing out of the car, she smiled to herself and threw back her head to soak it all in. The wind caught at her blue hospital scrubs, snatching the fabric and molding it to her trim body. Laughing softly, she turned her head a little and let the breeze tug her hair free of its pins and whip the long, dark strands around her. It was a beautiful, beautiful night, she thought, and for just this little while she felt free of all the sorrows that had haunted her for so long.

  The wind suddenly whipped around her, feeling cold and damp, and snatched the car door from Honor’s hand, slamming it shut. Damn—her keys were locked inside. She absolutely didn’t want to cope with that right now. She had just come off a grueling shift as triage nurse in the emergency room, it was well past midnight, and not a light had been visible in any house along the dirt road leading to the highway.

  And then she recalled the damaged screen on the kitchen window beside the back door, the window with the loose latch she had discovered only yesterday. With a little patience she could probably jiggle the darn thing open. If worse came to worst, she could break the glass. So what was she standing here dithering for? Giving a last toss of her head in the breeze, she stepped toward the back porch.

  And froze.

  She wasn’t alone. How she knew that, she couldn’t have said. But suddenly her heart was in her throat and she was paralyzed by the absolute conviction that someone was watching her from the house. Her house. The house with the torn screen and the loose latch on the back window.

  Holding her breath, she sorted through the possibilities with lightning speed, the same speed that often meant the difference between life and death in the emergency room. The house up the road to her right was closer, but it was deserted. The house to her left was occupied by some kind of recluse. She’d lived next door to him for a month and hadn’t seen him once, but Millie Jackson, who lived up near the highway, said he was some kind of military man who just wasn’t sociable.

  So okay, he probably wasn’t a serial killer. He was probably some soured old warrior who would—

  A thump. Distinctly, despite the rustling of leaves and the distant rumble of bombs and thunder, she heard a soft thump, as if something had been bumped. From the house. From her house.

  That did it. Without another second’s hesitation, she whirled and took off for the recluse’s house. Whatever kind of crazy he was, he couldn’t be as bad as someone who would be waiting inside a house for a woman alone after dark. No way. She’d seen too many women in the emergency room who’d come home to find a creep waiting for them. She didn’t need to imagine a thing. She knew.

  A holly hedge separated the two properties. The recluse might have preferred to let it grow into a forest, but someone had kept it neatly trimmed, so she was able to leap it with the grace that had made her a champion hurdler in high school. She covered the expanse of his yard like the wind and flew onto the porch without her feet touching a single step.

  If the door had been unlocked, she probably would have barged right in, but the door was locked, which was probaby the only thing that saved her from getting a knife under the ribs. Or maybe not. Later she was never really sure that her neighbor would have done such a thing without checking out the situation first, though he definitely wanted her to think so.

  She definitely thought so when, after thirty seconds of her hammering, a mountain of masculinity opened the door and greeted her with the ugliest-looking hunting knife she had ever seen. It was, in fact, exactly like the one her father had had. Recognizing it, she relaxed just a hair.

  “In my house!” she gasped. “There’s someone! Someone broke in….”

  Recluse or not, the man was quick. He threw open the screen door and dragged her inside. “Where is he?”

  “He was—he was watching me from the back window when I got home. The screen is torn and the latch is loose…. I heard a sound….”

  She was talking to the air. Beyond the screen door, the night whispered of coming storms, the cicadas screeched as if the world were normal, and the air smelled like the sea.

  He had gone over there. Numbly she stared out at the night and wondered why. Why hadn’t he called the police? Any sensible person would have called the police….

  And that was precisely what she was going to do right now. She saw the wall phone over by the kitchen table. Her hand barely touched it before she realized that her neighbor could get hurt if she cal
led the police while he was over there. The cops wouldn’t care who he was or why he was carrying that Ranger knife. They would be too hyped to care, too scared to take a chance.

  Unable to do anything, she paced rapidly from one end of the large kitchen to the other, back and forth, until her nerves were stretched to breaking and she figured a primal scream wouldn’t even begin to touch the tension.

  God, what if he got hurt and she was responsible because she had asked him for help? But he shouldn’t have gone over there alone. He should have called the police. That was all she’d wanted. That was all he’d needed to do.

  Maybe she should call the cops now anyway. He’d been gone too long. Maybe he was hurt and needed help. Maybe—

  “He got away.”

  The abrupt words, spoken in a voice as deep as the night and as richly textured as black velvet, brought her spinning around with a gasp. Her neighbor stood just beyond the screen door, a dark shadow in the darker night, standing back from his own kitchen as if he feared his very presence would terrify her.

  Her hand flew to her throat, and she clutched at her scrubs. “There was someone there? I didn’t just imagine it?”

  “I didn’t see anyone, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

  Evidently he thought she was calm enough to handle him, because he pulled open the screen door and stepped into the kitchen. She hadn’t been mistaken, she realized. He was a mountainous man, surely one of the biggest, tallest men she had ever met, and every ounce of him was well-defined, well-developed musculature. He wore nothing but a pair of snug jeans, hastily donned when she’d knocked, to judge by the way they were unsnapped. Zipped but unsnapped, and that unfastened snap seemed to catch her gaze the same way the breeze had snagged her hair.

  “I’m calling the cops, Miss, uh, Miss—?”

  “Honor Nightingale.” Dragging in a deep breath, she managed to tear her gaze from the arrow of dark hair that seemed determined to point out his maleness to her. Darn it, Honor, you’re a nurse. There’s nothing there you haven’t seen a million times…. “Please, just call me Honor. You shouldn’t have gone over there. You might have been hurt….”

  The word trailed off as he flipped on the overhead light. Now nothing was left to her imagination. Hurt? He might have been hurt the way the Incredible Hulk could be hurt, or Dirty Harry, or… Heck, any rapist in his right mind would flee like the wind at the sight of this man.

  If faces could be likened to landscapes, then his was the north face of Everest, all angles, planes, sharp corners. A glacial, unforgiving face. It was a face that would never be comfortable with a smile, yet just now it smiled. Sort of. Just a quirk of one corner of his mouth, as if he found the thought of being hurt by anyone amusing. Almost as if he wished there were someone in the world who was capable of posing a threat to him.

  “Nurse Nightingale, huh?” He turned toward the phone. “Or is it Doctor?”

  “Nurse. Just nurse. And I’ve heard all the jokes.”

  “I just bet you have.” He punched in the police emergency number and began to speak to the dispatcher. “My name’s Ian McLaren. I live at 4130 South Davis, and my neighbor’s house, 4132 South Davis, has just been broken into. No, the intruder is gone now. Yes. No. The back window is open, and the screen is torn. Yes, of course.” He glanced at Honor over his shoulder and suddenly frowned. “You’d better sit down, lady. You’re as white as a sheet.”

  That was when Honor realized she had completely run out of steam. The kitchen was tilting crazily, and her ears were buzzing as if she had stepped into a hornet’s nest. And her field of vision was narrowing….

  Some last vestige of sense caused her to slump onto a kitchen chair and drop her head between her knees. “I never faint,” she muttered to her feet.

  “Thank God for small favors,” he replied, in a voice that sounded dryly amused. “Just keep your head down until I can hang up the phone. Then we’ll find out if you’ve got any blood pressure left.”

  He might be gruff, he might be tough, his face might look as ravaged as a war zone, but he was essentially a nice man, she decided as she studied her white oxfords and noticed blood in the creases. There had been a lot of blood in the emergency room tonight. A three-car pileup, a woman who had been shot by her husband during a quarrel, a man who had removed half his hand with a table saw. No, she never fainted. She lifted her head.

  The next thing she knew she was lying on her back on the floor, staring straight up at the overhead light.

  “I told you not to raise your head,” said a deep, dark voice. She knew that voice, didn’t she? Oh, yes. Her neighbor.

  “I don’t faint.”

  “Nope, you sure don’t. Just stay put, will you?”

  That sounded like a good idea, she thought as her stomach did a curious flip-flop and beads of perspiration broke out on her forehead. Nausea caused sweating, and she was undoubtedly nauseated as a reaction to adrenaline. Pleased with her clinical observation of her own state, she closed her eyes and decided that she might faint, but she absolutely was not going to vomit. No way.

  “Here,” said that same deep voice a few moments later. Strong hands gripped her shoulders and eased her slowly into a sitting position. “Okay?”

  “Yes.” She gave an unsteady laugh, refusing to open her eyes, because she was afraid she would find herself face-to-face with that impressive expanse of hard, muscled chest. As a nurse, she must have seen a hundred thousand chests, but she’d never seen one under these circumstances. This was…different. “I think my blood pressure is back to normal.”

  He gave a grunt of some kind—maybe of agreement, maybe of approval—and then scooped her up with astonishing suddenness to set her once again on the chair. He had, she realized with shock, lifted her as if she weighed nothing at all. She wasn’t sure she liked the feeling. It made her too aware of her defenselessness against such great strength.

  Outside, the wind gusted, rattling the screen door in its frame and sending a wave of cooler air into the kitchen. Honor shivered.

  “I’ll make coffee,” said her neighbor gruffly. “Or would you rather have tea?”

  “Coffee would be great. Thanks.” Arms wrapped around herself, she tried not to shiver again. “I really appreciate you helping me out.” Her eyes followed him helplessly. Nurse or not, she finally had to admit she really hadn’t seen a million chests like this one. Nor a million backs that rippled under sleek muscle. Nor shoulders so broad or hips so narrow or legs so powerful… Sternly she shook herself back to reality.

  He scooped coffee into the basket of the coffeemaker on the counter and started it brewing. “Women are at risk in this country,” he said after a moment. “The statistics are shocking.”

  “I know.” She did. Too well.

  “Men aren’t doing their jobs.”

  “What?” The word was startled out of her, coming out as almost a shocked laugh.

  He faced her, looking at her with cat-green eyes. “We’re the warriors,” he replied offhandedly. “Seems like we’re doing a lousy job of making the world safe for our women and children.”

  “Oh.” A philosophical perspective, not a practical one. At the moment, it was one she could live with. He had, after all, rescued her without question. “Well, I’m sure glad you feel that way. I don’t know what I would have done otherwise. Just before I realized someone was in the house, the wind blew my car door shut. It’s locked, and my keys are inside, so I couldn’t even drive away.” And then, helplessly, she shivered again. It really wasn’t cold, but as the adrenaline subsided she was beginning to feel the fear, the reaction.

  Without a word, on feet as silent as a cat’s, Ian McLaren left the kitchen. Less than a minute later he was back, draping a soft blue thermal blanket around her shoulders.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He acknowledged her thanks with a nod, then placed the length of the kitchen between them again. He did so, she realized suddenly, so as not to frighten her. The funny thing was, she was
n’t frightened of him. Not at all. Not even the merest quiver. Which, she thought as she looked up into his bleak, unforgiving face, might really be stupid. He didn’t look like a safe man. He looked like danger on the hoof.

  He swiveled his head suddenly toward the kitchen window. “The cops are here. That was fast.”

  She thought so, too. When there was no immediate danger, cops generally took their own good time about showing up. Now, through the screen door, she could see the swirling lights of a patrol car. They would, she figured, check out her place first, and then come over here to ask questions she didn’t have any answers for.

  Her freshly brewed cup of coffee had cooled just about enough to drink when Ian McLaren ushered the two young police officers into the kitchen. He dwarfed them, she saw, and she didn’t think either of the policemen liked the feeling. Their movements around him were defensive and uneasy. Poor guy, she found herself thinking. It must be awful to have people react to you as if you were a threat just because you’re so big. In fact, thinking about it, she would almost bet that when he got in an elevator, women stepped off.

  The first questions were the usual, boring ones. “My name is Honor Nightingale. I’m a registered nurse, and I work in the emergency room at Community Hospital. I was on the 3:30-to-11:30 shift this evening.”

  “Then you were probably on when Bill Cates brought in the little girl who was in the auto accident.”

  Honor nodded. There had been only one little girl involved, a four-year-old, mercifully unconscious.

  “Bill was wondering if she was going to make it.”

  It wasn’t exactly a question, Honor realized, but she answered it anyway. “It’ll be touch and go for a while, I’m afraid. It all depends on whether they can keep down the swelling in her brain.”

  The young officer, Lambert, let it go. “So you got home a little after twelve?”