Gayle Wilson - Rafe Sinclair's Revenge

She glanced at her watch again. It was nine-twenty, the office wasn’t open, and the world hadn’t come to an end. She needed to remember that the next time she got so damned anal.

She picked up her purse and the papers she’d taken home with her last night. Not that they had gotten read.

Of course, there was no hurry about that, either. That was part of the charm of living here. This compulsion to get things done on some kind of schedule was all hers.

She opened the door, stepping out into the heat that would become more oppressive as the day wore on. It was going to be a scorcher, as they said down here. A good day for staying inside by the air conditioner, she decided, skilled by now at evaluating the potential heat index.

It would also be a good day for finding enough work to keep her mind occupied with something besides the events of last evening. Or, rather, she amended, the nonevents of last evening.

She slammed the car door, pressing the auto-lock button on her key. At that exact instant a blast of heat and sound roiled upward from the heart of the law office, tearing it apart.

The resulting shock wave threw her backward. Her head and shoulders slammed against the pavement with enough force that for a moment she could neither breathe nor think. And then the debris of the building she should have been inside at least twenty minutes ago began to rain down around her.

Rafe awakened, as he had a thousand times, to the sound of the explosion. His body jerked upright in bed, his heart trying to beat its way out from under the sweat-drenched skin of his chest. He opened his mouth, attempting to draw air into lungs compressed by the force of the blast.

It’s just a dream. Plain vanilla, garden-variety nightmare.

He had had enough of those, God knew, that he should be able to tell the difference. As horrific as they were, they were a million times better than the other.

Finally, shaking all over, he managed to take a breath. It seemed he could smell the smoke. He could almost taste it on the cotton dryness of his tongue.

Just another dream, he reassured himself.

He opened his eyes, slitting them against the painful stab of sunshine pouring through the crack he’d inadvertently left between the halves of the motel’s plastic-backed drapes when he’d closed them last night. He ran his tongue around parched lips as his heart rate began to slow.

As soon as the frantic pulse of blood through the veins in his ears eased, another sound replaced it. Distant at first and indistinct, within seconds an identification of what he was hearing roared into his consciousness. Siren.

He listened, again not breathing. Sometimes he couldn’t tell, but he would have staked his life that what he was hearing now was real. A real siren, and therefore… Real smoke?

He tore at the sheet, frantically trying to free his legs from its tangling hold. He staggered a little when his feet touched the floor, but that was only reaction to the flood of adrenaline coursing into his bloodstream.

When he reached the window, he lifted his arm, intending to sweep the curtain aside so that he could see out. He couldn’t force his hand to grasp the material. It was as if the muscles were literally paralyzed.

Cop chasing a speeder, he told himself. Or an ambulance carrying some poor bastard with a heart attack to the hospital. Whatever is outside these windows, it won’t be what was there before.

Sweat beaded his forehead as he willed his fingers to close over the fabric of the drapes, jerking them to the side. Light flooded the room, forcing him to close his eyes. When he opened them, the pillar of oily black smoke was all he could see. All his mind could grasp.

Smoke. Fire. Explosion.

It hadn’t been a dream. The evidence of its stark reality was right before him.

Except he had long ago learned not to trust “reality.” Not his. Not about something like this.

He closed his eyes, deliberately holding them shut as tightly as he could for a few seconds before he opened them again. Nothing had changed. The column of smoke still obscured the sky, and that first lonely siren had now been joined by a chorus of others.

He lowered his gaze, examining the rest of the scene revealed by the opened curtain. Parking lot. Cars, most of them recent models. A motel sign.

One he recognized from having glanced at it last night when he’d checked in. Reassured by that recognition, he lifted his eyes again.

The smoke seemed to be billowing upward from behind the row of buildings across the street. Which meant that the fire was at least a block away, he decided, feeling the adrenaline rush begin to ease. Maybe two. No more than that.

Of course, in Magnolia Grove two blocks was practically across town. Almost—

With the realization, his heart rate, which had almost returned to normal, accelerated like a trip hammer. He ran across the room, scrambling through the sheet he’d thrown aside, trying to locate his jeans.

He dragged them on, hopping awkwardly on one foot and then the other. He pushed his feet into his shoes, not bothering to find his socks. On the way to the door, he grabbed the shirt he’d worn yesterday off the chair where he’d thrown it down on his way to bed.

As soon as he stepped outside, a wall of heat hit him, almost forcing him back. His first response, emotional rather than intellectual, was that it was from the fire. Just like before.

It took a few seconds to realize that what he was feeling was simply a typical Mississippi-in-August heat. The air, however, was thick and acrid with smoke. Just as it had been in his dream.

Or maybe this time there hadn’t been a dream. Maybe what had awakened him had been a real explosion, one that had started this fire. And if so…

He was already running toward the source of the smoke, and he wasn’t the only one. People were rushing out of the surrounding buildings, heading toward the wail of the sirens and the black cloud that seemed to fill the sky.

Despite his lack of familiarity with the town’s landmarks, his usually unerring sense of direction led him straight to his destination. As he neared it, he knew with a wave of terror that he hadn’t been wrong.

The office where Elizabeth worked was on this street. The same street from where that ominous pillar of smoke was rising.

As he rounded the corner, he made a quick visual assessment. Despite the widespread effects of the blast, there was no doubt in his mind that the structure on fire was the law office of Connell and Anderson.

And with a renewed sense of panic he realized he had no idea what time it was. No idea what time Elizabeth normally arrived at work.

Then his searching eyes found her. She was standing, talking to a fireman or paramedic. There was no blood on her clothing, but even from here he could tell her face was completely without color, the scattering of freckles stark against the milk-white skin.

Still, she was standing. Talking. Not bleeding. Apparently unharmed. His knees almost gave way with the force of his relief.

He closed his eyes in an unspoken prayer of thanks. It was a mistake, but by the time he was aware of that, it was too late to do anything about it. Images began to unwind, like the flickering frames of an old newsreel, against the blackness behind his lids.

They weren’t from any newsreel, of course. And they were all in color. The vivid, shocking brightness of freshly spilled blood. The grotesque black of skin that has been charred, peeling off the arm of a woman whose mouth was open, silently imploring him to help her.

At that moment someone running down the street careened into him. The force of collision was enough to turn him, causing him to stumble against the side of a building.