Dean Koontz - Cold Fire

"There's nothing you could do.”

"There must be something," she insisted.

"You'd only be in the way.”

"Listen, I'm intelligent" "So what?" "-well-educated-" "So am I.”

"— gutsy-" "But I don't need you.”

"— competent, efficient" "Sorry.”

"Damn it!" she said, more frustrated than angry. "Let me be your secretary, even if you don't need one. Let me be your girl Friday, your good right hand-at least your friend" He seemed unmoved by her plea.

He stared at her for so long that she became uncomfortable, but she would not look away from him. She sensed that he used his singularly penetrating gaze as an instrument of control and intimidation, but she was not easily manipulated. She was determined not to let him shape this encounter before it had begun.

At last he said, "So you want to be my Lois Lane.”

For a moment she had no idea what he was talking about. Then she remembered: Metropolis, the Daily Planet Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, Lois Lane, Clark Kent, Superman.

Holly knew he was trying to irritate her.

Making her angry was another way of manipulating her; if she became abrasive, he would have an excuse to turn her away. She was determined to remain calm and reasonably congenial in order to keep the door open between them.

But she could not sit still and control her temper at the same time. She needed to work off some of the energy of anger that was overcharging her batteries. She pushed her chair back, got up, and paced as she responded to him: "No, that's exactly what I don 't want to be. I don't want to be your chronicler, intrepid girl reporter. I'm sick of journalism." Succinctly, she told him why. "I don't want to be your swooning admirer, either, or that well-meaning but bumbling gal who gets herself in trouble all the time and has to rely on you to save her from the evil clutches of Lex Luthor.

Something amazing is happening here, and I want to be part of it.

It's also dangerous, yeah, but I still want to be a part of it, because what you're doing is so. so meaningful. I want to contribute any way I can, do something more worthwhile with my life than I've done so far.”

"Do-gooders are usually so full of themselves, so unconsciously arrogant, they do more damage than good," he said.

"I'm not a do-gooder. That's not how I see myself I'm not at all interested in being praised for my generosity and self sacrifice. I don't need to feel morally superior. Just useful. " "The world is full of do-gooders," he said, refusing to relent. "If I needed an assistant, which I don't, why would I choose you over all the other do-gooders out there?" He was an impossible man. She wanted to smack him.

Instead she kept moving back and forth as she said, "Yesterday, when I crawled back into the plane for that little boy, for Norby, I just.

well, I amazed myself I didn't know I had anything like that in me. I wasn't brave, I was scared to death the whole time, but I got him out of there, and I never felt better about myself" "You like the way people look at you when they know you're a hero," he said flatly.

She shook her head. "No, that's not it. Aside from one rescue worker no one knew I'd pulled Norby out of there. I liked the way I looked at me after I'd done it, that's all.”

"So you're hooked on risk, heroism, you're a courage junkie.”

Now she wanted to smack him twice. In the face. Crack, crack. Hard enough to set his eyes spinning. It would make her feel so good.

She restrained herself "Okay, fine, if that's the way you want to see it, then I'm a courage junkie.”

He did not apologize. He just stared at her.

She said, "But that's better than inhaling a pound of cocaine up my nose every day, don't you think?" He did not respond.

Getting desperate but trying not to show it, Holly said, "When it was all over yesterday, after I handed Norby to that rescue worker, you know what I felt? More than anything else? Not elation at saving him-that too, but not mainly that. And not pride or the thrill of defeating death myself Mostly I felt rage It surprised me, even scared me. I was so furious that a little boy almost died, that his uncle had died beside him, that he'd been trapped under those seats with corpses, that all of his innocence had been blown away and that he couldn't ever again just enjoy life the way a kid ought to be able to. I wanted to punch somebody, wanted to make somebody apologize to him for what he'd been through. But fate isn't a sleazeball in a cheap suit, you can't put the arm on fate and make it say it's sorry, all you can do is stew in your anger.”

Her voice was not rising, but it was increasingly intense. She paced faster, more agitatedly. She was getting passionate instead of angry, which was even more certain to reveal the degree of her desperation. But she couldn't stop herself: "Just stew in anger.

Unless you're Jim Ironheart. You can do something about it, make a difference in a way nobody ever made a difference before.

And now that I know about you, I can't just get on with my life, can't just shrug my shoulders and walk away, because you've given me a chance to find a strength in myself I didn't know I had, you've given me hope when I didn't even realize I was longing for it, you've shown me a way to satisfy a need that, until yesterday, I didn't even know I had, a need to fight back, to spit in Death's face. Damn it, you can't just close the door now and let me standing out in the cold!" He stared at her.

Congratulations, Thorne, she told herself scornfully. You were a monument to composure and restraint, a towering example of self control.

He just stared at her.

She had met his cool demeanor with heat, had answered his highly effective silences with an ever greater cascade of words. One chance, that was all she'd had, and she'd blown it.

Miserable, suddenly drained of energy instead of overflowing with it, she sat down again. She propped her elbows on the table and put her face in her hands, not sure if she was going to cry or scream. She didn't do either.

She just sighed wearily.

"Want a beer?" he asked.

"God, yes.”

Like a brush of flame, the westering sun slanted through the tilted plantation shutters on the breakfast-nook window, slathering bands of coppergold fire on the ceiling. Holly slumped in her chair, and Jim leaned forward in his. She stared at him while he stared at his half finished bottle of Corona.

"Like I told you on the plane, I'm not a psychic," he insisted. "I can't foresee things just because I want to. I don't have visions. It's a higher power working through me.”

"You want to define that a little?" He shrugged. "God.”

"God's talking to you?" "Not talking. I don't hear voices, His or anybody else's. Now and then I'm compelled to be in a certain place at a certain time. ”

As best he could, he tried to explain how he had ended up at the McAlbery School in Portland and at the sites of the other miraculous rescues he had performed. He also told her about Father Geary finding him on the floor of the church, by the sanctuary railing, with the stigmata of Christ marking his brow, hands, and side.

It was off the-wall stuff, a weird brand of mysticism that might have been concocted by an heretical Catholic and peyote-inspired Indian medicine man in association with a no-nonsense, Clint Eastwood-style cop.

Holly was fascinated. But she said, "I can't honestly tell you I see God's big hand in this.”

"I do," he said quietly, making it clear that his conviction was solid and in no need of her approval.

Nevertheless she said, "Sometimes you've had to be pretty damned violent, like with those guys who kidnapped Susie and her mother in the desert.”

"They got what they deserved," he said flatly. "There's too much darkness in some people, corruption that could never be cleaned out in five lifetimes of rehabilitation. Evil is real, it walks the earth.