Dangerous

by Lee Magner

  He ran his hand down her arm and slid his fingers between hers.

  “You’re like a flame that always burned in the darkest hours of my life,” he said softly.

  She blinked tears away. His words were so full of emotion, it hurt to hear them.

  “Case…” she whispered achingly. “Oh, Case… Why didn’t you ever tell me? I wanted to be a part of your life so badly when you were here before. But you never let me see this…”

  He smiled slightly and sighed.

  “Sometimes a man likes to keep the beautiful things in life away from him.”

  “But why?” she asked, sorrow. filling her voice with pain.

  “So that they stay beautiful,” he murmured. “My life and yours are worlds apart and you damn well know it, Clare Browne. You and I…” He fell silent, letting his thoughts remain unspoken.

  “You and I,” she whispered softly. “How I longed to hear you link us together like that. You know why, don’t you?”

  He frowned and laid a hand across her lips. There was a cloud crossing his expression.

  “Don’t say it,” he warned her softly.

  She gently kissed his hand and covered it with her own. Then she lifted his palm from her mouth. He didn’t resist, but the dark look in his eyes was more of worry than of desire now. He didn’t want her to say something she might regret, she realized. Well, she wanted to throw caution to the winds of fate. There would never be a better time than now, she thought. Her heart beat a little faster though. It wasn’t easy, saying it for the first time. Especially since he hadn’t said it first.

  “I love you, Case Malloy,” she whispered, a little unsteadily.

  For a moment she thought he might have not heard her. He was so still. And then, she realized, he was moved nearly to tears. She turned his face so she could see him and, indeed, his eyes did look suspiciously bright.

  “Case?” she whispered, filled with love for him. “Is it so hard to accept that I could truly, truly love you? You are so wonderful…I can’t begin to tell you how wonderful you are.”

  He closed his eyes and his face contorted in pain.

  “I know this is crazy,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “But you are the closest thing to an angel that I have ever known, and I just can’t believe that you would actually…”

  “Love you?”

  “I knew you were attracted to me,” he admitted with a sigh. “You were as transparent as glass some of the time, but hell, you were just a kid. And I was…” He laughed a little tiredly. “I was a bad boy from the wrong part of town. I had a reputation. I was older. Sometimes young women are tempted by that kind of man.” He shook his head. “Heaven only knows why. Only a fool would risk getting involved with that kind of young male.” A fool or an angel, he added silently.

  She held his face firmly in her hands.

  “Look at me.”

  He stared into her eyes.

  “I love you, Case,” she said slowly.

  And saying it while they were looking into each other’s eyes was the most intimate thing that she could have done at the moment. He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her, and they kept their eyes open this time.

  “Clare,” he whispered, his voice hoarse with emotions too complex to unthread. He murmured her name over and over, kissing her all the while.

  Clare fell into a trance of sublime happiness. For now, he was hers. Just hers. All hers. Forever… hers.

  Making love was even better the second time.

  And incredibly, better still, the third.

  Case rolled onto his back and began to laugh.

  Clare propped herself up in bed on one elbow and looked down at him in consternation. “What’s funny?” she asked indignantly.

  He patted her on the thigh and rolled his head from side to side.

  “I thought I was being optimistic bringing a couple of condoms in my pocket,” he confessed. “And fortunately, the good hoteliers had the foresight to include one in the bedside night table. But before you run your hands over me again, we’d better search the room for additional supplies, my love.”

  Clare grinned and arched her back like a satisfied little cat. “Oh. Then I didn’t do anything… unforgettably amusing?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “No. Unforgettable, but not amusing, sweetheart.”

  He pulled her down and kissed her again. Then, very reluctantly, he turned a little away, so that her face was nestled against his shoulder.

  She could tell that he was trying to bring their tryst to a conclusion. It was getting late. And she knew they couldn’t spend the night here. She was expected back at home. And he needed to keep an eye on things at Luther’s.

  “I’m going to have a security system installed at Luther’s farm,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Keep your body where it is,” he growled. “You can listen while you’re lying against me.”

  She cuddled up closer.

  “That’s much better.” He sighed. He kissed her lightly and continued what he’d begun to say. “They should be down tomorrow to do the work.”

  “That’s a great idea. You’ll rest a little easier about them when you can’t be there.”

  “Yeah. Luther swore I had to take the equipment out when we left,” Case added, amused. “Said he didn’t want all that newfangled stuff running up his electricity bill.”

  Clare burst into laughter. “I’ve never heard that was a problem,” she said at last.

  “It isn’t, but you know Luther. I’d feel better if I could send them over to your place, and have them install a system there, too.” He ran his hand slowly over her bare hip, resting it possessively on the curve of her bottom. He kissed her chin ever so lightly, as if asking a favor. “Do you think your mother would mind?”

  Clare swallowed. “I guess not. Thanks for being worried about us, Case.”

  He sighed and hugged her close, wrapping his leg over her and pulling her into his body.

  “You’re damned welcome,” he muttered. “Now before you have your wicked way with me again let’s get your clothes on you.”

  She giggled as he got up.

  “But first… let’s try out the shower.”

  He grinned down at her and pulled her out of bed.

  Clare had never had such fun in the shower.

  And all the way home, she prayed that no bad news would be waiting for them upon their return.

  Unfortunately, her prayers were not enough to forestall disaster.

  Chapter 12

  It wasn’t hard to find the spot on Luther’s farm that Case had used as a helicopter pad. It was now brightly illuminated, surrounded on three sides by a fire. One side of the barn had al- ready gone up in a wall of hot yellow flames. The underbrush along the post-and-rail fence behind it looked like a reddish gold snake slithering along as the fire ate its way across the ground.

  Case swore under his breath.

  Clare peered down anxiously, trying to see any signs of people.

  As they came nearer, they could see several fire engines that had already arrived on the scene and were disgorging yellow- slickered firemen. There were some fire fighters already combatting the advancing flames. They were trying to save the barn and to keep the fire from spreading.

  It already had leapt along a path toward the house, but it didn’t seem to be threatening that building. Not yet, anyway.

  “Can you see Luther or Seamus?” Case asked sharply.

  He circled around the outer perimeter of the field nearest to the farmhouse, trying to avoid the billowing smoke and the hot updrafts from the fire.

  Clare pressed her face close to the glass window, searching desperately for any signs of Luther or Seamus below.

  The area around the fire and the buildings was well lit. The house lights were on, and so were the floodlights hung on the barn’s front doors. There were large and small lights coming from the fire company equipment and some of the firemen searching the fields were us
ing flashlights as they identified good places to pitch a stand against the advancing conflagration.

  But she didn’t see the two frail, old men anywhere. Just men in yellow slickers and black boots. And tongues of hot yellow fire hissing streams of billowing dark smoke.

  “I don’t see them,” she said anxiously.

  He cursed again.

  They could see the parking area in front of the house. Clare’s car was there. So was Case’s rented one. Luther’s, covered with a tarp for the night, as he always left it, was also in its normal place.

  “Let’s pray they’re in the house and didn’t let anyone inside,” Case muttered.

  He hadn’t received any messages from them on his pager, and it was designed to take calls within a large, multistate radius. He hoped there was a good reason for that. And not the one that he feared—that someone had gotten to them before they could call him.

  “It’s too dangerous to land in the field that we left from,” he said evenly. “I’m going over to the one on the front side of the house. The helicopter has good lights. And the ground’s reasonably flat there.”

  “Hey,” Clare said with a wave of her hand. “Anywhere you want to land is fine with me,” she assured him, completely sincere.

  He tilted the helicopter toward the spot he had in mind. Five minutes later, they were on the ground and getting out of the aircraft.

  One of the firemen was coming around the front of the house as Case and Clare came across the field toward them. They couldn’t run through it, since it was dark beyond the pool of light supplied by the helicopter. By the time they reached the fence and climbed over it, the fire fighter was there to give Clare his hand and help her down.

  “You must be Case Malloy,” the fireman said.

  “Yes. Have you located the two men who were here?”

  “Uh, that would be Luther and Seamus Malloy, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know. There was some old codger standing on the front porch with a shotgun when we pulled in and I think the chief went over to talk to him. That might have been Luther. I couldn’t see well enough from where I was.”

  Clare felt a small sense of relief. At least one of them had been alive and accounted for, she thought, grateful to be living in a small town where virtually everyone knew everyone else. Even the fire fighter had met Luther several times over the years, and would have recognized him if he’d gotten close enough.

  They walked around the house and into the large open space connecting the house and the barn. The front door of the farmhouse was closed, but they could see someone in a yellow slicker inside the house.

  It seemed safe to delay checking the farmhouse for Luther and Seamus. So Case turned to the raging fire.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. Someone said they got a call from someone at the farmhouse, about a fire out in the barn. When we got here, it had spread pretty fast and pretty far.”

  Case could see that it was too early to ask if they had it under control, so he just nodded. “I’m going to check on Luther and my old man,” he said curtly.

  “Just stay here by the house,” the fireman warned. “We don’t know if we’re going to be able to save the barn or not. If we lose the barn, some of the sparks may reach the house, and it’ll be at risk, too. Be ready to evacuate the area in a hurry. Keep near the front porch here, so we don’t have to search for you, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  The fireman trotted back to one of the fire trucks and huddled with two other yellow-slickered volunteers from the fire company to assess the situation and agree on a plan of action.

  Case took the porch steps two at a time and rattled the front door. Inside, a flash of yellow caught his eye. The fireman was disappearing into the kitchen. Case wondered why he wasn’t coming to answer the door. Or why Luther didn’t.

  “Luther!” he shouted. “It’s me! Case! Open the hell up!”

  Clare stood a little behind him, anxiously waiting for Luther to appear.

  Case pounded on the door.

  Still no one came.

  Case frowned. “Why the hell doesn’t that fireman open the door?”

  “I think he’s gone out into the field,” Clare said, puzzled.

  “What?”

  She pointed off to the east, where a small bit of yellow was disappearing into the darkness.

  Case got a bad feeling then. “Maybe he isn’t a fireman,” he muttered.

  He looked around, trying to find something to break a window with.

  That’s when his pager buzzed.

  Case undlipped it from his belt.

  The number displayed on its digital readout belonged to the cellular phone that he had given to Luther.

  “Do you have your phone?” he asked Clare. “Mine’s back in the plane.”

  She lifted hers out of her purse and handed it to him.

  Case dialed the number.

  “Luther?”

  “Well, who else would it be?” groused the old man.

  “Where the hell are you?”

  “Look inside the biggest fire truck.”

  Case turned and looked. A hand waved out the window, and a familiar old face leaned out into the light. It was Luther.

  “Is Seamus…?”

  “Right next to me. A little pooped from walking all the way out to the truck, but otherwise all right, I guess.”

  “Why aren’t you in the damned house, locked in, where I left you?”

  “’Cause someone started rattling around the house just before the fire trucks rolled up. So I took my shotgun and when the fire chief came to the front porch, we all came back and holed up in the truck. The fire chief called the police. They’re on the way.”

  Even as he spoke, Case saw two marked cars, lights flashing, rolling up into the driveway and squeezing past the fire engines.

  “Well, there was a fireman in the house,” Case said.

  “That can’t be,” Luther argued irritably. “The fire chief pointed all his men to the fire, except that one he just sent out to get you and Clare.”

  “No. There was a fireman in a yellow slicker in the house,” Case said, frowning.

  “Where the hell is he now?” Luther demanded angrily.

  “Clare saw him going out into the field around the east side of the front of the house.”

  “There’s no fire anywhere close to that,” Luther stated. “And just ‘cause he was wearin’ a yellow slicker doesn’t mean he’s a fireman. Just means he got close enough to a slicker to put one on!”

  “And that let him melt right in,” Case muttered. He handed the phone to Clare. “Talk to Luther and go join them,” he said, pointing toward the fire engine where Luther and Seamus were safely holed up for the moment. “I’m going to see if I can find that ‘fireman’ we saw.”

  “Let the police do it,” she pleaded as Case ran to the end of the porch and started over the rail.

  “Tell them where I went,” he said as he swung his leg over the railing. He looked back at her. “And stick with Luther till I get back.”

  “Case!”

  But he jumped down and was making his way into the fields, following the direction the yellow-slickered man had gone a short time before.

  Clare hurried over to the police car that was parking and gave them the information as quickly as she could. The two policemen radioed in the information and went in pursuit of Case. Another police car pulled in after them and those officers joined the fire chief to discuss the emergency and coordinate their efforts.

  Clare looked anxiously back toward the field where Case had gone. She saw no sign of anything, or anyone. And no yellow slicker, bobbing through the night.

  She went to the fire engine and turned the cellular phone off. Luther greeted her with a grizzled grin and opened the door to let her slide in next to him on the seat. Seamus, slumped against the door and sitting on Luther’s other side, looked bad. He did manage a small smile for Clare, however, w
hen she reached out to squeeze his hand comfortingly.

  “Where’s…Case?” Seamus asked, wheezing, as though he were having trouble catching his breath.

  “He went looking for the fireman who was in the house.”

  Seamus lifted worried eyes to her and then gazed at Luther.

  “I heard what Luther said to Case on the phone,” Seamus muttered. “He shouldn’t have gone after him. What if…?”

  Seamus couldn’t finish the thought. Neither Clare nor Luther finished it for him.

  But they were all thinking the same thing. What if that was the killer? And what if he cornered Case in the dark?

  Clare swallowed and turned her face toward the darkness where she had last seen Case.

  “Come back to me,” she whispered. “Please… come back….”

  The waiting seemed interminable.

  And the heat and noise from the fire didn’t help.

  Luther kept muttering advice to the firemen and urging them to save what they could of his barn. Seamus had closed his eyes and was breathing in short, shallow, erratic breaths.

  The first two policemen came out of the darkness, finally. One of them was carrying a yellow slicker. The other had a flashlight in his hand and was illuminating the path.

  Behind them, Clare saw a figure emerging from the field.

  “Case!” She wanted to jump out of the truck and run to him and hug him in her relief. But Luther and Seamus were old and vulnerable, and she knew that Case would feel better if all three of them stayed together until he could join them. When he glanced in her direction, he smiled at her tiredly and shook his head.

  ” What’d he say?” Luther queried irritably.

  “I don’t think they caught the man, whoever he was,” Clare said. “But it looks like they found his slicker.”

  “I don’t wonder! It sticks out in the dark like a lit candle,” Luther muttered.

  Clare wondered where the man masquerading as a fireman was. Not knowing was terrible. He could be anywhere. Anyone. She saw the mayor’s car pull up and, not far behind, Franklin’s.

  “Oh, great,” she moaned tiredly. “I suppose the local newspaper reporter is next.”