Heart Stealers

by Patricia McLinn

“He got divorced recently, so we spend more time together now. He’s a doctor in the city.”

  “Johnny wants to be a doctor.”

  Mitch just stared at her.

  “You don’t think he’ll make it, do you.”

  “Let’s just say the odds are against it.”

  She angled her chin. “They were against me, too.”

  Unexpectedly, he reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, the same way he’d done that night at Zoe’s. The feelings she’d experienced then returned in full force.

  “Yeah, well, you’re pretty special.” His voice was deep and low and curled inside Cassie, making the shirt she’d just donned feel like a thermal blanket. Heat rose to her cheeks.

  Coughing, she dropped her gaze down to the papers, then back up to his face. “We should, um, do this. I have to leave...”

  He stared at her a minute then drew back. “So do I. I have to be in town court at six.”

  “Then, let’s get this lesson planned.”

  Sixty minutes passed. Mitch was a fast learner—he’d already internalized what she’d told him before about planning a lesson. He had good ideas, was flexible when she told him some wouldn’t work, and his wry sense of humor slipped out more than once. By the time they were ready to preview the movie, Cassie’s emotions were churning. The close proximity, his intelligence and surprising sensitivity were impossible to resist.

  Which was why, after she got up to start the video, she pulled out a chair on the other side of the table, farther away from him.

  Mitch didn’t miss the distancing gesture, and he was grateful for it. She’d been so close he could smell her—something light and fresh, shampoo or lotion she’d probably put on that morning. Had she rubbed it over her legs, now encased in those damn leg-things that he had trouble keeping his eyes off? God, did she put that outfit on to torture him? He laughed at himself. That wasn’t Cassie’s style. She was no femme fatale. She didn’t even wear makeup and obviously spent little time on her hair in the morning. As the tape began, he wondered idly when the clean, fresh-scrubbed look had started to appeal to him.

  Through sheer force of will—something he had perfected to an art—Mitch kept his mind on the somber video. He watched kids tell heartbreaking stories about using inhalants because they thought they weren’t dangerous, because they were legal, because they kicked you up so fast you got a great buzz quickly and cheaply. Though he’d heard them before, the stories wound their way into his heart; he tried to suppress the emotions, but he couldn’t.

  The last kid was Vietnamese. Mitch leaned back as he watched the boy, about the age Tam had been, recount how being a minority in a white culture had driven him to drugs. Would Tam have done that? Would Mitch have been able to preclude the loneliness and isolation that the young man on the screen so wrenchingly articulated? He could still see Tam’s sad black eyes stare at him from across the compound, could still remember the laughter bubbling out of him when Mitch gave him the little portable radio that Kurt had sent. Suddenly, superimposed over the images was a blinding flash...and screams. Terror gripped Mitch....

  “Mitch?” Cassie’s voice penetrated the dark reminiscence. She’d gotten up and moved back to the seat next to him. Her hand clutched his arm. “Mitch, are you all right?”

  Focusing on her face, he consciously slowed his rapid breathing. “I’m fine.” His words were clipped. He looked down to see both hands fisted. He immediately unclenched them.

  Gently, Cassie rubbed his sleeve with her fingertips. It felt good and helped settle his heartbeat.

  “What happened?”

  More in control, he looked at her. Concern had darkened the color of her eyes to warm steel. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine. You look—”

  Scraping his chair back, he shook her off and stood. “I said I was fine.” Jamming his hands in his pockets, he walked over to the TV. “The waste I see upsets me sometimes.” He knew she knew he was lying. He ignored it and angled his head to the video. “I told you this was good. It will affect the kids, too. Let’s talk about some points to discuss after the movie’s over.”

  Watching him for a minute, Cassie finally nodded. “Sure.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Mitch rose and picked up his coat. “It’s almost six. I’ve got to go.”

  Cassie stood. “Okay.” She smiled. “We’ve got a pretty dynamite lesson, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah.” His shoulder muscles were tense, and his back felt as if he’d been carrying an eighty pound knapsack down a jungle trail. He shrugged into his coat and briefly massaged his neck.

  “You seem tense.”

  “It’s been a long day.” And I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. I kept dreaming about a wet body encased in white terry cloth.

  “Exercise can help.”

  “I work out every day.”

  Cassie’s eyes roamed over his shoulders and chest. “I believe that.” He felt her appreciation deep in his gut—and lower. Damn.

  “Ever play volleyball?” she asked.

  He remembered the pickup games in Nam. “Once or twice.”

  “After your court appearance, you could come to Hotshots. We can always use new team members.”

  More than anything he’d wanted in years, Mitch longed to accept the invitation and all that it implied. But getting close to this woman, becoming a real part of the school, was not in the cards for him. He couldn’t risk the emotional involvement.

  “I don’t think so,” he said coldly.

  For a minute, she looked as if she was going to argue. Then she shrugged, and he got a glimpse of what she must have been like as a student at this school. Pretending she didn’t care. Taking the blows to her pride with feigned nonchalance. “Suit yourself.” She walked over to her desk and sat down.

  He scowled. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to read some of the kids’ journals.”

  He glanced at the clock. “Why don’t you take them home?”

  “I’m not going home,” she said without looking at him. She picked up one of the notebooks. “I’m going to work here until it’s time to go to the game.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes, of course, here.”

  He glanced at the windows, glazed with January frost. Through them, the school grounds were dark and deserted. “It’s pretty late to be here alone at night.”

  “I’m not alone. The janitors are here. And there’s a wrestling match at the gym tonight. The school’s open to walkers, too.”

  After a moment, Mitch crossed to the doorway and inspected the hall. It was dim—and completely empty. “You’re far away from all that action. You can’t even hear it. And no one would hear you if something happened.”

  Cassie looked up at him and gave him an indulgent smile. “Mitch, I walked the streets of Greenwich Village alone when I was fifteen.” Her smile faltered. “And worse.”

  “What’s that got to do with this?”

  Purposefully, she looked at the clock. “It’s five of six, Captain. You’re due in court.”

  He didn’t like this, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. And he was running late. “All right.” He glanced down at her legs in the formfitting pants. “At least put the bottoms of that sweatsuit on so you don’t catch cold.”

  Her laughter followed him out of the room.

  It irritated him. He was feeling a lot of things right now, but mirth had nothing to do with any of them.

  * * *

  “Damn it!” Cassie swore as she stuffed her legs into her purple sweatpants. Aren’t you cold? Put the bottoms of that sweat suit on. It’s pretty late to be here alone at night. Who did he think he was, Sir Galahad?

  She plunked down on her desk chair and flipped open a journal. Though reading about her students’ daily thoughts and feelings was a favorite part of her paper load, her mind wasn’t on Nikki Parelli’s latest poem.

  Admit it, Cassie. You liked his concern
.

  “All right,” she said aloud. “I liked it.” Disgusted with herself, she reached for the cup of coffee on her desk. After Mitch left, she’d taken out the light snack she’d brought and eaten half of it. She fingered the lettering on the coffee cup. It read, “Experience is the toughest teacher. It offers the test first, and the lesson after.”

  Cassie’s experience had taught her well. It wasn’t safe to depend on anyone. For thirty-five years, she’d only trusted herself—with the exception of Seth Taylor and maybe Lacey Cartwright, the one student at Bayview Heights who had befriended her. But no one else.

  And your lack of trust ended your marriage.

  Still, she wouldn’t be sucked in by an enigmatic man with green eyes that hid painful memories. Something had happened to him while they were watching the movie. She hadn’t a clue what, and he wasn’t about to tell her.

  She respected that. A private person herself, she didn’t expect everybody to spill their guts to her.

  Johnny would call her a liar—tell her she was always trying to get all of the students in her class to open up. She leaned over and dug through the pile of notebooks until she found his. In today’s entry, she saw at the top Johnny’s precise, controlled handwriting. “Not private. Read this.”

  Breathing a sigh of relief—she let the kids pick what they wanted to share and never violated that trust—Cassie scanned Johnny’s entry. “I’m okay, Cassie. Don’t worry about the gang. I know you don’t think I know what I’m doing, but I do. I’m in control, and I’m going to be all right. I hate working with Lansing, though. He’s an SOB, and he thinks he’s so tough.”

  Just like you, Johnny. He’s so much like you. The thought came out of nowhere and stopped her short.

  It bore some consideration, but not tonight. She tossed the journal down on the desk. Restless, she got up, adjusted the blinds and tidied the reading area. She was passing the doorway when she felt a chilling gust of air—as if someone had left the outer door open. Peeking into the corridor, she saw the door down at the end of the hall was closed. Puzzled she went back into her room and decided that she was not going to make much headway with the journals tonight. Maybe she could work on a new bulletin board. Yanking open her middle desk drawer, she pulled out the key to the storage area that connected her room with Zoe’s. She crossed to the back of the room and jabbed the key in the lock, leaving it there so she didn’t lose it. The kids teased her all the time about losing her keys.

  As she switched on the storeroom light, she blinked. The fluorescent bulb flickered briefly before it lit to full capacity. Then it dimmed. Cassie hated the light in here. It was unpredictable and gave off an eerie glow. Stepping farther into the narrow, twelve-by-five area, stacked on each side with shelves, she reached up to the top one for the construction paper. Unable to grasp it, she dragged a low stool over and had just gotten hold of her material when the door to the storeroom slammed shut. Cassie came down off the stool and grabbed the door handle. She twisted it. Nothing happened. Levering her body, she shoved at the door with all her weight behind her. It didn’t budge.

  Oh, great. She tried to visualize what she’d done with the key. Had she relocked the door after she’d opened it? Damn. She and Zoe had talked about the problem of this room locking so that you couldn’t get out from the inside, but they hadn’t filled out a work order to have it changed.

  Cassie began to pound on the solid-core wooden door. “Hank…somebody...I’m in here! Hey, somebody!” After a few minutes, the palms of her hands stung and they were red. She slid down to the linoleum floor and sat with a thunk. Her knees propped up, the toes of her sneakers hitting the opposite row of shelves, she leaned back. The air was heavy, and the light above hummed. It flickered and dimmed again.

  Taking a deep breath, she thought of all the work sitting on her desk that she could be completing. She pictured the mounds of laundry in the corner of her bedroom. And she visualized the volleyball game beginning without her. Cassie hated wasting time. It almost killed her to sit through repetitive faculty meetings and unproductive committee meetings.

  It’s pretty late to be here alone...You’re far away from all that action...You can’t even hear it... And no one would hear you if something happened.

  Suddenly she felt chilled, though the storeroom was easily ten degrees hotter than her classroom tonight, and getting warmer by the minute. No, her imagination was playing tricks on her. Mitch had spooked her, was all.

  Mitch. For a brief minute, Cassie let herself imagine being trapped inside here with him. Closing her eyes, she could feel his hands at her waist—squeezing gently at first, then grasping tighter as his lips came closer to hers. Maybe he’d ease her down to the floor. What would his body feel like covering hers? If she thought really hard, remembered really well, she could almost conjure the smell of him tonight—the utter masculine, alluring scent that was his.

  Damn. It was going to be a long night.

  * * *

  Damn. It had been a long night. The court appearance had dragged on, then Mitch had stopped at the station to get his messages. He should go home, relax and go to bed. From his car, he stared at the pink neon sign. Hotshots. What the hell was he doing here?

  We can always use more team members.

  He closed his eyes, telling himself he should simply drive away from the old converted warehouse. But the image of clinging purple spandex pants kept him from leaving. He could still feel the grip of her strong fingers on his arm. And he could still hear her slightly husky voice asking if he was all right.

  Restless, he’d tried to call Kurt earlier, but his brother was unavailable. And Mitch was tired of being alone, tired of being on the outside, tired of not being like everyone else.

  So he’d come to Hotshots.

  He hadn’t changed his clothes, though. He had no intention of actually playing. No, he’d just order a beer, sit on the sidelines and enjoy the game.

  Mitch climbed out of his car and made his way inside. The volleyball courts were in the back, so he stopped at the bar, got a draft beer and walked slowly to the rear.

  Scanning the teams on the court, he recognized a lot of the people. Some of the older teachers, mostly the new ones. A couple of administrators. Idly—or so he told himself—he perused the group for sassy purple pants and an even sassier... He cut off the thought but continued to look for her.

  She wasn’t there. Methodically, he went back and checked out each person. Cassie was not among them.

  The game ended and a beer break was called. Mitch waited as Zoe wandered off the court with Ross Martin, one of the other At-Risk teachers, and the young vice principal, Alex Ransom. When Zoe spotted Mitch, she smiled warmly. “Hi, did you bring Cassie?”

  His heart beat stumbled. “No. Isn’t she here?”

  Zoe shook her head, her eyes narrowing. “She was supposed to meet us at seven. She never showed.”

  “We thought maybe she was with you,” Ross added. “We knew you two had a meeting.”

  Plunking the glass down on the table to his right, Mitch fished in his pocket for his keys. “I left her at school at exactly six o’clock.” He found his keys and looked up at Cassie’s three colleagues. “Did you call her house?”

  “Yes, of course,” Zoe told him.

  “School?”

  “You can’t call school at night, Mitch,” Ransom said.

  “Does she have a cell phone?”

  “No.”

  Abruptly, Mitch turned to go, but pivoted back for a minute and touched Zoe’s arm. “It’s probably all right. I’ll go by the school and call you here when I find her.”

  If I find her.

  The thought echoed in his mind and bounced off the interior of his car for the entire twelve-minute trip back to Bayview Heights High School. He made it in seven, thanks to his portable flashing red light and siren. Once at the complex, he drove right up the bus loop and left the door open and the engine on as he ran to the front of the school. As he’d feared, the
outside door was locked.

  He gunned the engine over to the gym entrance. His long legs eating up the distance into school, he reached the east corridor, only to find the double fire doors locked.

  Damn.

  “I-am-the-Phantom-of-the-Ope-ra.” The lyrics were being belted out from somewhere on his left. Spotting the janitor, Mitch called out, “Hank, over here. Unlock this for me.”

  The old man came down the hall at what seemed a snail’s pace. “Everything okay, Captain?”

  Mitch remembered the tender look on the guy’s face when he talked to Cassie. “Yeah, I think so. I just need to see Cassie again. Thanks.” He took off down the dark, deserted corridor.

  Cassie’s door was wide open. Inside, he could hear the faint rock music coming from her radio. The middle drawer of her desk was ajar, and a napkin lay wadded up by a cup of coffee. He touched the mug. It was cold.

  “Cassie?” he called.

  No answer.

  “Cassie?”

  Silence.

  He raised his voice. “Cassie?”

  Then he heard it. The pounding from the back of the room. Coming from behind a door. He strode to it and yanked on the knob. It didn’t budge. Glancing down, he saw the key and twisted it viciously. He pulled open the door.

  Cassie was standing on the other side, her face flushed. She’d removed both the sweatshirt and pants, but still her hair was damp and there were beads of perspiration on her brow. Roughly he grabbed her arms.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.” She looked at him quizzically. “What are you doing here?”

  “What happened?”

  “I got locked inside the storage closet.”

  “How?” When she didn’t answer right away, his hands tightened on her shoulders. “How?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. Look, I’d like to get out of here.”

  Reluctantly, he stepped back and withdrew his hands. He didn’t know what he’d expected—certainly not that she’d throw herself into his arms in a terrified storm of weeping. But also not this cool, collected response to being locked up for hours.

  He watched as she walked over to the desk, looked down at it, then turned to face him, her arms crossed over her chest. “Why did you come back?”