Imminent Thunder

by Rachel Lee

  By nine she was wondering if she could call the police. Something was wrong. She felt it in her bones.

  Just as she was turning from the door to go back to the pay phone, she saw his Jeep pull into the hospital parking lot. Grabbing her purse, she trotted out to meet him.

  “Sorry I’m so late,” he said as she climbed in beside him. “I was unavoidably detained.”

  There was sarcasm in the statement, along with something else she couldn’t quite define. She turned to look at him, really look at him, and gasped. “What happened to you?”

  He looked pale under his tan, and his eyes appeared sunken. Running a professional eye over him, she realized for the first time that his olive-drab T-shirt had given way to a green hospital shirt. “Ian?”

  “I thought we’d grab a quick breakfast and then hit the base library. That okay?”

  She knew that tone of voice. Her father had often used it to indicate that a subject wasn’t open for discussion. Instead of arguing, which was what she wanted to, she decided to bide her time. Things had a way of coming out if you were patient. “Okay,” she said, and fixed her attention out the window.

  He needed a shave, she thought as she stared out at the scenery. He looked like hell, he needed a shave, and something was very, very wrong. Once or twice she heard him mutter an oath as he took a corner.

  They grabbed biscuits and sausage at a fast-food place, and large cups of hot, fresh coffee. They ate outdoors at a stone table, away from the other patrons, who were wisely avoiding the humid morning heat.

  “Is it going to clear today at all?” Honor asked as she looked up at the leaden sky.

  “I haven’t heard the weather.”

  “I came down here for sunshine,” she remarked. “I feel cheated when I don’t get it.”

  It was a stupid, inane conversation, but it kept her from asking why he was moving so strangely. So stiffly. And why his mouth tightened at times, as if he were in pain. Not that she needed him to explain that he’d gotten hurt somehow. She did wonder, though, how he’d been hurt. And how bad it was. Instead, she talked of something else. Anything else.

  “Do you really think we’ll find anything useful at the library?”

  He looked up from his third biscuit. “We’re hardly the first people in the world to be faced with this problem.”

  “Well, no.” Not likely. Not when she remembered an earlier encounter just in her own life. Tens of thousands of other people must have experienced such things.

  One corner of his mouth lifted in that faint smile she was beginning to find familiar. “The way things are, if two people have experienced something, one of them will have written a book about it.”

  She almost laughed then. He was right, of course.

  “Even if we don’t find something useful in terms of getting rid of the thing,” he continued, “every bit of knowledge we can gather is potentially useful. And in the meantime, I want you to stay at my house.”

  She blinked, startled by both the suggestion and her own response, a swift upsurge of mingled relief and yearning. “I don’t think—”

  “Look,” he said, “don’t get all coy and prissy on me. You know damn well you’re not comfortable in that house. Do you really think you’ll be able to close your eyes and go to sleep there after what you tell me you felt yesterday? Are you just calmly going to ignore it and get into your shower again?”

  Ice slid slowly down her spine. Inwardly she admitted he was right. She wasn’t going to be able to ignore the presence in the house. No amount of arguing with herself would change the fact that she would always be on edge, listening, waiting.

  “But it can’t hurt me,” she said, making one last protest.

  His answer was uncompromising. “Oh, yes, it can,” he said grimly. “It sure as hell can.”

  It was early afternoon by the time they returned home, bringing more than a dozen books with them. After the library, they’d gone to the occult bookstore, as well, and found a couple of additional volumes.

  When Ian climbed out of the Jeep, he stood in his driveway and stared across at Honor’s house. Silent, unblinking, motionless, he reminded her of a cat with its eye on a bird, its nose lifted to scent the breeze. He was a hunter.

  “Let’s get your stuff now,” he said abruptly.

  Honor was feeling as tired as she had ever felt, and her only desire at the moment was to curl up somewhere and sleep. Anywhere. Even in that damn house she had bought.

  “Look,” she said. “Why don’t I just go home and catch some sleep? I can bring my stuff over later.”

  “No.”

  No? He’d spoken that single syllable in that uncompromising way of his, and it suddenly occurred to Honor that of all the things she disliked about this man, this was the one she disliked most.

  “Damn it, McLaren, will you quit trying to run my life?”

  Turning to face her, he yanked up the loose green surgical shirt and showed her ten inches of taped stiches in his side. “See that?” he said harshly. “It damn well can hurt you, and I’ll be doubled damned if I’m going to let your stubbornness make you an easy target. We’re getting your stuff. Now.”

  He started to tug the shirt down, but Honor stopped him by touching the skin below the wound with gentle fingertips. At her touch, a tremor passed through him. “Oh, Ian,” she said shakily. “What happened?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” he said. “For now, let’s just get whatever you need for a couple of days. Now. While it’s…sleeping.”

  “Sleeping?” A chill touched the back of her neck, and goose bumps rose on her arms, despite the day’s heavy, suffocating heat. “What do you mean?”

  He shook his head. “I meant while it’s quiet. It’s quiet now.” God, he was slipping, slipping badly. He could see it in her eyes. It was almost as if some evil genius were driving him to betray himself.

  “How do you know that?”

  He looked down into her soft young face, into her concerned, frightened blue eyes, and wondered why he couldn’t have been just a normal man. Wondered why he had been so savagely cursed all his days.

  “Later,” he said. “We’re beat. We need to sleep. We can talk about everything later. Let’s just get your things.”

  Something had flickered in his cat-green eyes, something that her heart recognized as anguish. Compassion rose in her and washed away her irritation. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. But I don’t want you carrying anything, not with those stitches.”

  He looked down at her, and then, for the first time in years, he laughed. It was a rusty sound, almost unrecognizable, but it lightened the shadows in his eyes. “Lady, you’re a born dragon.”

  She would have bristled, except that she nearly lost her breath at a sudden glimpse of this man as he might have been, given a happier road in life. “I’m a nurse,” she managed to say. “And from the look of it, they should have kept you in the hospital overnight.”

  He shook his head and turned toward her house. “The nice thing about being retired is that the base hospital can’t call my commander anymore. They couldn’t make me stay.”

  She could well believe that, Honor thought, following him. She could well believe that.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Come home, Honor. It’s all right. There’s nothing in the house to hurt you. It’s the man you need to watch out for. He’s the one who’s threatening you.

  She awoke slowly in the early evening, stale air-conditioned air stirring in the room around her. Ian’s guest room. The narrow iron cot.

  She turned over and drifted, half in and half out of a dream. Her house was welcoming her, making her feel at home. The dark threat was gone, a figment of her imagination. She smiled and snuggled into her pillow, liking the sunny yellow of the kitchen.

  She turned to smile at Ian, and her contentment shattered like exploding glass. He held a knife and was moving toward her, and there was murder in his strange green eyes.

  Devil’s spawn.

  She sa
t up, suddenly cold and very much awake, and clutched the sheets to her.

  God! What an awful dream!

  Moments later, wrapped in her short cotton robe, she padded barefoot down the hall to take a shower. She needed to shake off the last of the strange dream, and this seemed the best way to do it.

  It was certainly getting to her, she thought as she stood under the hot spray and let it beat the tension out of her muscles. She had stopped having nightmares years ago, but now she seemed to be having them almost incessantly.

  And maybe, she found herself thinking uneasily, maybe there was something to the dream. Maybe her subconscious was trying to get through to her. Maybe she was looking at things from the wrong perspective.

  Back in the cell-like room, she dressed swiftly in white shorts and a red tank top, then sat on the edge of the bed to buckle her sandals. What, she found herself wondering, had actually happened?

  There had been someone waiting for her when she came home the other night. That much she was sure of. After all, she’d heard something fall. But other than that, what did she have? A feeling that someone was watching? A feeling that someone was in the house?

  And what had Ian done, except encourage her in the belief that there was something in her house? He had added to her fear, hadn’t he?

  Sitting on the edge of the cot in the bare room, she rested her elbows on her knees and wondered what was going on. Was she really feeling something? Or was Ian taking advantage of her suggestibility? Why would he want to do that? What could he possibly hope to get out of this?

  Or were they both caught up in some kind of folie à deux, feeding one another’s delusions?

  But no, she reminded herself. Yesterday, all alone in her house in the late afternoon, when she’d been thinking of nothing but cooking dinner and going to work, she had found her bathroom door open. Had felt the cold touch of something…something other.

  If that was imagination, she never wanted to imagine anything again. She couldn’t blame Ian for that, could she?

  Or could she?

  Witchcraft and satanism. Some people believed in those things. Believed it was possible to cast spells on other people. To make them see and hear things.

  Abomination. Those eyes of his were…strange. Unnatural.

  Suddenly shocked by the direction her thoughts were taking, Honor shook her head and stood up. No way. The man had done nothing but try to help her. He was a little strange, to be sure, but strangeness was not a hanging offense. Time to think of something else, she told herself. Time to think about something normal.

  Twilight was just beginning to settle over the land when Honor remembered that she hadn’t collected her mail. Feeling a little homesick, hoping one of her friends back in Seattle had written, she told Ian she was going out to the mailbox. Even with the fading of the day, the air was still too warm and muggy for comfort. In a little while, though, the breeze would start up, causing the trees to rustle and sway, and the tree frogs would begin their nightly chorus.

  Stepping into the road so that she could reach the front of her mailbox, she saw the flattened carapace of an insect that had to be at least ten inches long. Were there really bugs that big around here? The largest she had seen so far were the tree roaches, and they were only a couple of inches at their biggest. Horrified, she stared at the bug and tried to tell herself it was something else.

  “Miss Honor?”

  Startled, she swung around toward the voice, then smiled as she recognized Orville Sidell, a ten-year-old boy who lived farther up the road, deeper in the woods. He had been one of her first patients, brought in by his older brother and sister after being bitten by a coral snake. She had seen him several times since, and as usual he was wearing only a dusty pair of shorts and a grimy T-shirt. “Hello, Orville. How’s your leg?”

  “Jes’ fine.” He held it out briefly for her inspection.

  The tissue damage had been minimal, she saw with relief. Only a small pit marked the death of muscle. “That really looks good.”

  He nodded, then put his bare foot back down in the dust. “I brought you some squirrel.”

  “Squirrel?”

  “Yeah.” He brought his hand out from behind his back and held out two dead squirrels. “Shot ’em m’self.”

  “You did?” Honor had a feeling this wasn’t the time for her to react as she would have in Seattle. “You must be a good shot.”

  Orville nodded. “Ma’s got more’n she needs. Said you might like ’em.”

  Honor looked from him to the pathetic-looking squirrels he dangled by their tails. “For what?”

  He grinned suddenly, amused by her stupidity. “Eat ’em, Miss Honor. They’re good.”

  “Oh.” She regarded the squirrels uncertainly. “What do they taste like?”

  He shrugged. “Like squirrel.”

  “How do I cook them?”

  “Any way you like.”

  She guessed she was going to have to do this. She certainly didn’t want to offend Orville. “Tell you what, Orville. If you would be so kind as to clean them for me, I’ll give it a try.” She gave him an apologetic smile. “I’ve never had to skin a squirrel. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “Okay.” He started to turn away, apparently satisfied, but then he paused and faced her again. “Miss Honor, my ma says you oughta be careful of that man.”

  “Which man?”

  The boy’s brown eyes slid past her. “Him,” he said. “The army man.”

  Once again Honor felt a chill trickle of unease run down her back. “He seems like a perfectly nice man, Orville.”

  “Ma says he’s got the evil eye.”

  At any other time, under any other circumstances, Honor would have been hard-pressed not to laugh. Right now, all she felt was a crawling sense of unease. “Well, he hasn’t done anything to hurt me,” she told Orville. “He’s been very helpful. You can tell your mother I said that.”

  Orville simply stared at her, clearly nonplussed.

  “Hey, Orville!”

  Honor looked down the road and saw Orville’s older brother, Jeb, wave the boy over. Jeb had been with Orville the night he came to the emergency room. He was an extremely big, slow-witted man who made a living at manual labor, and there wasn’t a doubt in Honor’s mind but that he loved his younger brother dearly.

  “Comin’!” Orville shouted back. He started to leave, then glanced over his shoulder at Honor. “Ma says the old preacher used to shun him.”

  “Shun him? Who?”

  “The army guy.” Then he was off and running, the squirrels dangling from his hand.

  Honor stared after them until they disappeared around a bend in the road and were hidden behind the dense foliage. Shunned. What on earth had he done to deserve that?

  Damn it, now she was going to demand some explanations. He was still avoiding the question of his injuries, with his nose buried in all those books he’d gotten today. Surely she deserved some answers. Surely she deserved to know a little about the man whose roof she was sharing?

  Clutching her mail, she turned toward the house and again noticed the huge squashed insect. Why hadn’t she stayed in Seattle?

  Ian was still seated at his kitchen table, with books spread all around him. Photos purporting to be pictures of apparitions stared up at Honor from several of the opened volumes.

  “Find anything?” she asked.

  “Plenty, but nothing that looks really useful yet.” An hour’s nap seemed to have nearly restored him. When he looked up at her, his eyes didn’t appear nearly so sunken. “You must be getting hungry. I should make dinner.”

  “It can wait. How’s your side?”

  “Sore.”

  The sudden intensity of his gaze left her wondering if he had somehow sensed her determination to tolerate no further evasions. Feeling nervous, she pulled out a chair facing him and sat. “I’ve been waiting all day for an explanation,” she said, refusing to chicken out, even though he had never looked more forbiddin
g or more terrifying than he did at this moment. “How did you get hurt?”

  For a moment, he didn’t answer. He stared at her with those odd eyes of his, looking as if he could see past her surface to deeper things. Deeper feelings. “What,” he asked, “makes you so sure you’re entitled to any explanation at all?”

  Honor gasped, as stunned as if she’d been struck. The man was incredible, she found herself thinking. She’d never met anyone like him for sheer, uncompromising, unapologetic rudeness—when he felt like it. Then she got mad. “What makes me think I deserve an explanation? How about you yanking up your shirt earlier to show me twenty or thirty stitches and then telling me that…that thing could hurt me? How’s that for a reason?”

  He gave an infinitesimal nod, but she was too wound up to register his agreement. “How about the fact that you’re insisting I live under your roof? How about the fact that you keep telling me I need to be protected, but you won’t tell me what from? How about—”

  He laughed. Amazingly, incredibly, astonishingly, he laughed. The sound instantly halted Honor’s diatribe, and she stared at him in utter amazement. He looked so…different when he laughed. So attractive. So nice. So warm. So…sexy. So damn irritating.

  “What is so funny?” she demanded. “Why are you laughing at me?”

  Still grinning, a wonderfully attractive expression on his face, he answered on a chuckle. “I’m not laughing at you. You just surprised me. I can’t remember the last time anybody yelled at me.”

  “Well, of course not,” she said sharply. “I imagine everyone is too terrified of you.”

  His smile broadened a shade. “Probably. But you aren’t.”

  The casual statement struck her forcefully, reminding her afresh of how big he was, how powerfully built. A much smaller, weaker man with his Ranger training would be dangerous. A man like Ian McLaren would be lethal with very little effort.

  His smile faded, almost as if he had sensed her renewed uneasiness. In the blink of an eye, he once again became the dark monolith she had first met, the extraordinarily powerful, solitary man who needed nothing and no one. The man who wore loneliness like a concealing cloak.