Rachel Caine - Windfall

A strong pair of hands gently closed around my waist and helped me steady myself. I smelled expensive cologne. “All right?” a low, liquid voice asked. I managed to nod. “Do you know that man?”

I looked up to see my rescuer, and for a panicked second I didn’t recognize him.

Then all the pieces clicked together. Slightly shaggy brown hair, beard, mustache. Warm British voice.

Eamon.

I didn’t have either the breath or the time to answer his question. “Oh my God ! Jo, are you all right?” Sarah’s shrill voice ratcheted a couple of octaves higher with fright. She hit me in a flying rush, hugging me, and I winced when I felt strained muscles creak.

And then I hugged her back, grateful for the unquestioning love and concern in her embrace.

Eamon stepped away and watched the two of us, blue-gray eyes bright in the morning light. After a moment, he put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder.

“It’s all right, she’s safe now,” he said in a steadying voice. “Joanne? Are you hurt?”

I shook my head and pulled back from Sarah’s hug. “No, no, I’m all right. Thank you.”

“We were coming to see if you wanted to go to breakfast,” Sarah blurted. “Oh my God, Jo, that man—that was the same van! He was—was he trying to abduct you? Did he—”

“I’m okay,” I interrupted. “Really, Sarah, I’m okay. He was just trying to scare me.”

Eamon, apparently reassured that I wasn’t bleeding profusely or otherwise horribly injured, took a step away and looked at the street where Rodriguez’s van had disappeared. His eyelids dropped slightly, hooding the hard light in his eyes. “Looked like more than a scare to me, love,” he said. “Looked like he was really trying to hurt you.”

“As big as he is, if he’d wanted to hurt me, I’d be hurt,” I said, which was pure wishful thinking; actually, I was hurt. My arm ached like a son of a bitch.

I didn’t want to move it much. “Besides, he’s—” A cop . I don’t know why I didn’t say it. Years of concealing things. Old habit. “—He’s gone.”

“And what if he comes back?” Eamon asked, reasonably enough. “Seems persistent.”

“I can take care of myself.”

He turned that look full on me, and I felt something inside both shudder and jump at the force of it. “Can you?”

I straightened and nodded.

“Well, then,” he said. “I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it.”

“But—” Sarah frowned.

Eamon took her hand in his, and she went quiet. Well, I would’ve, too. There was something gentle and persuasive in the way he did it, not a shut up kind of gesture, but something reassuring. Comforting. “Let’s talk over breakfast,” he said, and led her back to the rental car. Handed her into the open passenger side door with an old-fashioned grace, then turned to me as he shut it. He was wearing a dark shirt today, top two buttons undone, and a freshly pressed pair of dark pants. Long, thin shoes—I was no expert on men’s couture, but the shoes looked vaguely like Bruno Magli. Expensive. Maybe even custom.

He sure didn’t look poor. Not at all.

“Coming?” he asked me, and quirked his eyebrows.

I took a deep breath. “Sure.”

He opened the back door and held it for me like a gentleman while I slid inside.

For something so powerful, a storm is oddly vulnerable. This one—born out of the heat of water and a whim of air—is no different. All it will take is a powerful west wind from the middle latitudes to cut the top off its clouds, stall it in place to starve and die. Or maybe it avoids the west winds, but it moves into cooler waters, which would slow it down. It might find drier air that would leave it tired and weak, blown apart by the first little challenge.

But none of that happens.

It advances at the rate of about ten miles an hour, sometimes slower as it encounters small patches of cooler water; it captures the cooler air it finds and wraps it around—insulates itself, keeping its energy-producing warmer air inside. Clouds find resistance at higher elevations, and pile up like soldiers storming a wall. The fluffy, blunt-headed anvil thunderheads are its war flags.

As it pushes forward—an army on the march—inside the huge, thick mass of clouds there are bright blue-white pops of energy as the generator bleeds off excess.

Just small flares. It isn’t ready yet.

But it’s getting there fast.

Eamon had exquisite table manners. For some reason, that fascinated me. The neat, precise movements of his hands, the elegance in the tiny adjustments of his knife and fork. Elbows off the table at all times. He didn’t talk with his mouth full. In fact, he didn’t say much at all, just listened politely as Sarah rambled on. And on. And on.

“I just can’t believe that happened in broad daylight!” my sister said for about the twentieth time. I took a bite of French toast, made sure it was liberally dosed with maple syrup, and savored the sugar rush. “Don’t those people you work for have any security? It’s awful!… There should be security lights in that parking lot!”

“Well, I don’t believe it would have helped, Sarah. It was broad daylight,” Eamon pointed out reasonably. Bless him, he sounded more amused than irritated. “Do you have much trouble with such things around here? Criminal trespass, assault… ?”

“Couple of car break-ins,” I said, and washed down the sugar with coffee. Which accounted for two of the major food groups. “Nothing serious. Kids, probably.”

“And am I to think he was just another hooligan?” He ate a neat mouthful of eggs and arched his eyebrows at me.

“Not him,” I admitted.

“Sarah said you were being followed,” he continued after a polite pause to chew and swallow. “The same kind of van.”

“The same van,” Sarah insisted, and turned her big eyes to me. “Was it the guy? The one from the mall?”

No point in lying about it. “Yes. But—it’s all right, really. I’ll handle it.”

“Are you certain that’s the right thing to do? You might want to go to the police,” Eamon asked. He sounded neutral about it. Around us, other diners clinked silverware on plates and went about their daily lives, which probably didn’t involve getting stalked by out-of-state cops. I shook my head. “Ah, I see. Any particular reason why not… ?”

“I know him, sort of,” I said. “I’ll handle it.”

Eamon gave me a long, considering look, then put down his fork and dug his wallet from his back pocket. I’ve always thought you could tell a lot about a man from the state of his wallet; Eamon’s was slick, black, and expensive. He pulled a business card from it and handed it over.

“Cell phone,” he said, and tapped the corner of the thick paper. Sarah was right, the cards weren’t lightweights—creamy paper, raised type, a match in price range for the wallet that held them. “Look, I know you hardly know me, and I’m sure ladies like you have no shortage of men waiting to squire you around, but best to be safe.”

I nodded. He put the wallet away.

“I don’t care if you know him, Joanne. It’s the ones you do know that hurt you.”

I looked up from the card into his eyes. Large, gentle eyes that somehow mitigated the harsher angles of his face.

“No offense,” I said, “and I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful for the rescue this morning, but are you sure you really want to get into this? The two of us together could be a whole lot of trouble. You’re just an innocent bystander. And if we hardly know you, well, you hardly know us . What if we’re—”