Imminent Thunder

by Rachel Lee

  “We’ll have to do something about this,” Ian said, then turned in the window, leaning backward so that he could look upward. A moment later he pulled his head in. “This place is a defender’s nightmare.”

  “I wasn’t in the market for a fortress when I purchased it,” she said glumly. A fortress was what she needed now, though, and the recognition of that fact rippled coldly through her. What if somebody really did want to get to her? Just her, Honor Nightingale. What if he came back and a few locks didn’t stop him?

  Ian ignored her irritation, somehow making her feel foolish. “I don’t suppose you were,” he said indifferently. “Let’s see the other rooms. And there’s an attic?”

  She’d looked up there only briefly when the agent had shown her the place, and her thought had been that it could be transformed into a marvelous guest suite if she ever had the money to do anything about it. The stairs pulled down from the ceiling in the back bedroom, and she watched Ian climb them, knowing what he would see.

  It was a spacious attic, and the roof was steeply pitched, giving it an almost cathedral-like quality. At both ends of the house, round windows allowed in just enough dim light to reveal beautiful lathwork and a solid plank floor. In another age it might have been servants’ quarters. Now it was merely storage space, without air-conditioning or heat.

  She remained below and listened to the sound of Ian’s booted feet as he explored, especially around the two windows. Leaning against the wall, she looked out the window at the moss-shrouded branches of the tree just outside.

  The moss took nothing from the trees, merely draping itself from the branches to expose more of itself to the air and humidity from which it took all its sustenance. But it slowly killed the trees anyway, because it smothered the leaves. So far her oaks had survived, growing upward ahead of the moss. Now all but the tips of the lower branches were leafless hangers for the brownish-green curtains, and only the topmost branches showed a healthy profusion of green. At some point the balance would shift and the tree would die.

  Beautiful decay.

  Suddenly cold again, she shivered and turned to watch Ian descend the stairs. It was always cold just here at the foot of the attic stairs, she thought. It seemed like such a waste of air-conditioning when she didn’t even use this room. Glancing around, she looked for the duct, thinking that she might want to cover it with plastic. No vent was visible anywhere, though. Must be something about the way air flowed through the house.

  “The attic won’t be a problem,” Ian told her. “I think we need to assume only a reasonable amount of determination if this guy comes back. He might lie in wait for you, he might even go so far as to try to get in through a window, but to attempt to protect against anything more would probably cost a fortune and wouldn’t work anyway.”

  Rubbing her arms against the chill she couldn’t shake, she looked up at him. “Why not?”

  Nothing in his expression changed, and his gaze never wavered. He dropped his bomb emotionlessly. “If this guy is more than normally determined to get at you, there isn’t a security measure in the world that would be totally foolproof. A man who is determined enough can get past anything. I know, because I’ve done it.”

  And then what? she wondered. What did he do when he circumvented all those security measures?

  Somehow she thought she was better off not knowing. And that brought her back to the way he seemed to be taking over with breathtaking speed.

  “You really shouldn’t do this, Ian. You have a life of your own, concerns of more importance—”

  “There’s nothing more important than this.”

  “Why?” She faced him squarely, making it clear that she wasn’t going to settle for a brush-off.

  “I’ve devoted a lifetime to keeping innocents like you safe from the filth of the world,” he said, in a hard, harsh voice, his strange eyes boring into her. “I didn’t give up that duty just because I retired. If I don’t look after you, who the hell will?”

  Good Lord, she thought uneasily, the man sounded like a fanatic. Nobody talked like this. Nobody thought like this. It was creepy!

  His tone had been angry, but his face revealed nothing. He took her elbow and motioned toward the stairs. “Let’s go.”

  Honor yanked herself free of his grip, annoyed by his tone and his manhandling, suddenly completely fed up with the way he was taking over her life. “You’re weird, McLaren! You know that?”

  “I know.”

  He said it flatly, as if it were an inarguable fact. The words fell harshly into the room, and the shock of their impact drove Honor’s anger away, leaving her with a curious ache she couldn’t have identified. And in that instant before either of them drew another breath, she saw a flicker deep in his eyes. It vanished quickly, hidden once again in the cold, hard depths, but she never doubted for an instant that she had seen the shadow of old hurts.

  “Look,” she said. “I didn’t mean that. Not really. It’s just that…that I don’t know you. I was really grateful for your help last night, but you’ve just…taken over. And frankly, I don’t know if I like having you take over without so much as a by-your-leave any more than I liked finding that creep waiting in the house for me. It’s…not normal!”

  He cocked his head to one side. “Normal,” he said, with astonishing bitterness, “is walking away from a difficult situation just as fast as you can. Normal is avoiding involvement no matter what it costs someone else. Normal is turning your back when a woman screams for help. Normal is driving past an accident scene slowly enough to get a good idea of how bad it is, but neglecting to stop at the next telephone to call for help, because you don’t have time.”

  Honor stared up at him, every other concern arrested as she faced the unlikely passion of this cold man. He cared, she realized. He really cared, for all that he looked and acted so hard. That caring defeated her in a way anger or hardness never could have.

  “Okay,” she said. “I get the picture. And you’re right, of course.” She had treated enough victims in the emergency room to know just how right. More times than she wanted to count, she had been appalled by the utter callousness of her fellow man.

  “If you weren’t alone, I wouldn’t butt in,” he said. “But you are alone. And I’ll be damned if I want to live with myself if something happens to you while I’m being normal.”

  Honor almost winced at the sarcasm lacing the word. Truth to tell, she was appalled at her own behavior. Yes, it was reasonable for a woman to be cautious in this day and age, and certainly she should be cautious of strangers who acted in an unusual way, but still! To call the man weird and tell him to his face he wasn’t normal, when he had done nothing at all except go out of his way to help her…well, she deserved to be slapped. “I’m sorry,” she said sincerely.

  “Don’t be.” He turned toward the stairs. “You’re wise to be suspicious of me. Of any man. And just as soon as I get this place secured, I’ll get the hell out of your life.”

  They were bombing on the range again tonight. Honor watched the eerie flashes of light as she drove home after her shift. Inside her car, with the breeze blowing through the window, she couldn’t hear any sound accompanying the flashes. It was, she found herself thinking, like some kind of science-fiction film. Or like a dream. Unreal.

  She hadn’t called Ian McLaren before leaving work, either. The thought had crossed her mind, and he had insisted on it, but it had been easy, in the bright lights of the hospital, to tell herself that it would be ridiculous to call him. After all, she’d been coming home from work alone for years now, and she would be doing so for many years to come. Her reasoning had sounded good, too, until she realized she was in the nurses’ locker room, changing out of her scrubs into the shorts she had worn to work, delaying her departure. Ordinarily she didn’t bother.

  Nor did her reasoning sound so good now that she was alone in her car. It was dark out here, moonless again, thanks to heavy cloud cover. She had left the back porch light on before leavi
ng, so that would be some help…but not much. It would be one small light bulb in a world that suddenly seemed very dark and very threatening. And it certainly wouldn’t tell her if somebody was inside the house. Not that anyone should be. Ian had done a thorough job this morning, installing deadbolts on her doors, locking bars on her windows, a steel shutter on the kitchen window by the back door. He had been mercilessly efficient, swift and silent.

  She had insulted him. She knew it in her heart and felt guilty as sin. Whatever she thought of him or his methods or his manner, she had had absolutely no right to speak that way to him. He had only been trying to help, and whatever security she would be able to feel tonight in her own bed was because of him. And she had to give him his due—he hadn’t let her attitude deter him from doing what he considered necessary.

  But he had the strangest eyes. The mere memory of them made her feel shivery. Not too many generations ago, she thought, eyes like that probably would have gotten him burned at the stake. Something about them, about their color, didn’t seem quite human.

  God, it was dark! Her driveway looked like a tunnel into pitch blackness, and the back porch light must have burned out, because it was dark in her yard. Too dark. She switched off the ignition, careful this time to hold on to the keys, then sat listening to the night sounds.

  Cicadas screeched ceaselessly; it was such a constant cacophony that she hardly heard it anymore. Tree frogs croaked their two hoarse notes, battling the cicadas for preeminence in the night. The offshore breeze was still strong, whispering of the night’s emptiness, and the live oaks rustled uneasily.

  She didn’t want to get out of the car. A terrible feeling seemed to permeate the night, as if the air were a living, malevolent being. A shudder rippled down her spine, and she had to force herself not to drive away. This is ridiculous, she told herself. Her imagination was running riot, just as it had when she was four and believed there was a crocodile under her bed. Foolish imagination.

  Finally she rolled up her window and climbed out of the car. Keys firmly in hand, she closed the car door and turned toward the house. There was, she reminded herself, absolutely no reason on earth to think the creep from last night had come back. None.

  She had taken no more than two steps toward her door when the porch light suddenly came on. She froze, and terror trickled icily down her spine. Oh, God!

  “Get in the car.”

  Whirling, she came face-to-face with Ian. He stood only a few feet away, Ranger knife in his hand. He wore black from head to toe and blended with the shadows. Her hand flew to her throat. “God, you scared me!”

  “Get in the car and lock yourself in,” he said quietly. “Give me your house keys. I’ll check it out.”

  Her heart was hammering so loudly that she could hear it, but adrenaline muffled her initial fear. “I’ll go in with you.” She didn’t want to wait out here alone, and she didn’t want him to go in there alone. Either would be intolerable, but if she went with him, at least she would know what was happening.

  “I can fight better if you’re not in the way. Give me the keys and get in the car.”

  Instead, she headed toward the back door, finding courage in the fact that he was right behind her. This is crazy, she thought wildly, but she wasn’t going to back down. Her dad hadn’t raised her to be a wimp, and life as an army brat had taught her to face things head-on. If this man was going to go in there, he wasn’t going alone.

  Bravado carried her to the door. It couldn’t, however, keep her hand from trembling wildly as she tried to slip the key into the lock. How had he gotten inside? The question hammered at her, pulverizing any sense of security all those locks might have given her.

  “Here.” Ian stepped up right behind her, so close that his chest touched her back, and took the key from her hand. His touch was gentle, warm, not at all abrupt or impatient. He slipped the key in the lock, moved her to one side, then shoved the door open. “Stay behind me.”

  He ignored the light switch just inside the door and instead flicked on a powerful flashlight that he was carrying. Slowly, methodically, he passed the beam over every inch of the kitchen. Only then did he step inside.

  “Close and lock the door,” he whispered.

  To prevent anyone from coming up on them from behind, she realized. Turning, she did as he asked, closing out the night sounds. But all the while some niggling feeling at the base of her skull told her the threat wasn’t outside. No, it was inside. Locked in here with them.

  Two doors led from the kitchen into the rest of the house. One opened on a hallway that led straight to the front door. Along one side were the doorways into the living and dining rooms. Climbing the other side was the stairway to the upstairs.

  The other door opened directly into the dining room, and from an archway there it was possible to walk directly through double doors into the living room. It was therefore possible to make a complete circle of the ground floor without retracing one’s steps, and Ian had evidently thought of that, because he closed the wooden door into the hallway and quietly braced a chair under the knob.

  “Okay,” he whispered, and opened the door that led into the dining room.

  Honor stayed right on his heels, telling herself that no one could come up from behind because there was no way for anyone to get there, but feeling the back of her neck prickle anyway.

  Someone was in the house. She was sure of it. She could feel it, almost as if their presence created some kind of pressure in the air, or as if some strange perfume were wafting through the rooms. Someone was here. Abomination. The word floated into her mind and then vanished.

  The dining room was empty. Ian stepped through it and into the living room. Honor hesitated in the archway. She had never really felt comfortable in the living room. Time and again she had told herself that the feeling was simply some kind of subliminal response to the mustiness of the room, to the dingy paint and paper and the faintly moldy smell. Fresh paint and a good dose of white vinegar would clear it out, she had believed.

  But now, standing there, it was almost as if a physical force held her back. She didn’t want to go in there. Couldn’t go in there. Ian swept the flashlight around, revealing nothing but an empty bookcase and a rocking chair. She had very little furniture, because she had planned to buy what she needed once she fixed the place up. Somehow what had seemed an innocent decision then took on ominous overtones now, as she stood there unable to cross the threshold.

  Ian stepped back beside her. “Nothing. I’m going upstairs.” His whisper was almost inaudible. “You go back into the kitchen and close the door until I get back.”

  For an instant, just an instant, her body refused to obey her brain. Then she turned and hurried back to the kitchen, her rubber soles silencing her footsteps. Her courage had vanished. She couldn’t bring herself to walk through the living room or climb those stairs in Ian’s wake, and somehow he had known it. He had known it even before she had faced it herself. That realization sent another uneasy shudder running down her spine.

  In the kitchen, she wedged a chair under the knob of the second door and then felt around for the light switch. It was then that she realized the porch light had gone out again.

  Fear locked her breath in her throat. The pounding of her heart was loud in her ears, loud enough to drown the sounds of the night outside. For endless seconds she stood frozen, her hand on the light switch, her back to the rest of the kitchen, acutely aware that someone might be right behind her. Terrifyingly aware of how exposed her back was.

  She wished wildly that she could make her heart stop for just a few moments, so that she could listen and hear if someone was behind her. Then, having no choice, unable to stand the tension another minute, she spun around and pressed her back to the door, facing into the dark room.

  Nothing. No one. Sobbing for breath, she felt around beside her for the switch. And then she froze again, wondering if she would regret turning on the light, afraid of what she might see. Terrified of not
seeing.

  Oh, God. Ian, hurry!

  Then she was lanced with an ice-cold shaft of fear. Something in the kitchen had moved, making a scraping sound.

  She wasn’t alone.

  CHAPTER THREE

  That did it. The breath left her lungs, and she pawed the light switch frantically, finally managing to flip it on.

  The light nearly blinded her, but even so, she saw no one. Just at that moment there was a pounding on the dining room door.

  “Honor! Honor, it’s Ian! Open up!”

  Drawing a huge, ragged breath of relief, she hurried over and pulled the chair from under the knob. As soon as Ian heard the chair come free, he threw the door open.

  “Are you all right?” he demanded.

  She flew into his arms. He might be crazy, he might be weird, he might be maddening, but he also represented safety, and right now she needed, absolutely needed, to feel strong arms around her.

  Without hesitation, he caught her close and surrounded her with the shield of his strength. “I got this feeling,” he said gruffly. “All of a sudden I knew you needed me….”

  He trailed off, as if embarrassed to admit such a thing, but Honor didn’t care how he had known. If he had said the wind had whispered to him, or that he had felt her fear on the currents of the air, she would have been grateful. It was enough that he was there.

  Almost awkwardly, as if unaccustomed to such gestures, Ian stroked her hair and patted her shoulder with one of his huge hands. “There’s no one in the house,” he told her, his deep voice a reassuring rumble. “There must be an electrical problem with that porch light.”

  “It went out again,” Honor said shakily, relief rushing through her. “And I heard something in here. It sounded…odd. Like a scraping noise. Or a scuttling.”