Lorna thought about that. She’d been attracted to him from the first moment she’d looked him in the eyes. Regardless of the fear and panic she’d felt at first, when she had met his gaze, she’d fallen headlong into lust. The debilitating coldness had come afterward and hadn’t affected her physical response to him, because when the coldness left, the attraction remained—unchanged.
“The cold went away,” she said. “Like something had been pressing me into the chair and then suddenly was gone. I thought I might fall out of the chair, because I’d been pushing back so hard, and all of a sudden the pressure was gone. That was it. We talked some more, and then the fire alarm went off. End of scene, beginning of even more weirdness.”
“And you felt the same thing in the car?”
She nodded. “Exactly the same. Except for the sex. The farther we got from the house, the more anxious and depressed I felt, as if I were really exposed and vulnerable. Then I got really cold.”
“You were definitely picking up on external negative energies, probably from the traffic around us. You never know who’s in the car beside you. Could be someone you wouldn’t want to meet even on a crowded street at high noon. What puzzles me is why you felt the same way in my office.” He shook his head. “Unless you sensed the fire that was about to burn down the casino, which is possible, if you have some precognitive ability.”
“I think I might, but only as things relate to numbers.” She told him about the 9/11 flight numbers, and the fact that she hadn’t had any visions of airplane crashes or buildings burning, just the flight numbers interjecting themselves into her subconscious. “What I felt before the fire was different. Maybe it’s because I’m—”
She stopped and glared at him. He raised his eyebrows. “You’re…what?”
“I have a hang-up about fire.” He waited, and, exasperated, she finally said, “I’m afraid of it, okay?”
“Anyone with any intelligence is cautious of fire. I’m cautious with it.”
“It isn’t caution. I’m afraid of it. As in terrified. I have nightmares about being trapped in a burning building.” He might be cautious with fire, she thought, but it still turned him on. He would make a jim-dandy firebug. Standing in the burning casino, she had felt his fascination and appreciation for the flames, felt his excitement, because he had expressed it very physically. “Anyway, maybe that’s why I felt so panicked then, and so anxious. But why would I feel that way today—unless you’re going to force me into another burning building in the next hour or so, in which case tell me now, so I can kill you.”
He laughed as he gathered up the debris of their meal, loading it on the plastic tray. She slid from the booth, walking ahead of him as they left the restaurant. “Where to now?”
“The hotel.”
They were back on the interstate within a minute. Dante slanted a glance at her. “Feeling okay?”
“I feel fine. I don’t know what was going on.”
She did feel fine. She was riding around in a Jag with the most unusual man she’d ever met, and she was thinking about going to bed with him. She glanced over at him, thinking of how he’d looked wearing just those boxers, and feeling the pleasant warmth of anticipation.
She liked watching him drive. Sunday night, going to his house, she hadn’t been in any shape to appreciate the smoothness, the economy of motion, with which he handled a car. Good driving was very sexy, she thought. The play of muscles in his forearms, bared by the short-sleeved polo shirt he was wearing, was incredibly sexy. He had to work out somewhere, on a regular basis, to keep that fit.
They were cruising in the middle lane. A car with a loud muffler was coming up from the right, and she saw him glance in the rearview mirror. “Idiots,” he muttered, smoothly accelerating into the left lane. Lorna turned her head to see what he was talking about. A battered white Dodge, gray smoke belching from its exhaust, was coming up fast. She could see several people inside it. What had prompted Dante to move over and give them plenty of room was the blue Nissan right on the bumper of the Dodge.
“That’s an accident waiting to happen,” she said, just as the blue Nissan swung into the middle lane, the one they had just vacated, and shot forward until it was even with the white Dodge. The Nissan swerved toward the Dodge, and the driver of the Dodge slammed on his brakes, setting off a chain reaction of squealing brakes and smoking tires behind him. The Nissan’s motor was screaming as the car drew even with Dante and Lorna. Inside, she could see four or five Hispanics, laughing and pointing back at the Dodge.
Traffic on the interstate was fairly heavy, as usual, but not so heavy that the driver of the white Dodge wasn’t now rapidly gaining on them.
“Gangs,” Dante said in a clipped voice, braking to let the rolling disaster that was unfolding get ahead of him. He couldn’t go faster, because there was a car ahead of him; he couldn’t get around the car, because the blue Nissan was right beside them, boxing him in. No one in the Nissan seemed to be paying attention to them; they were all watching the Dodge. If anything, the Nissan’s driver let up on the gas pedal, as if he wanted the Dodge to catch up.
“Shit!” Dante swerved as far as he could to the left as the Dodge pulled even with the Nissan. Lorna saw a blur as the left rear passenger in the Dodge rolled down his window and stuck out a gun; then Dante’s right hand closed over her shoulder in a grip that seemed to go to the bone, and he yanked her forward and down as the window beside her head shattered in a thousand pieces. There were several deep, flat booms, punctuated by lighter, more rapid cracks, then a soul-jarring impact as Dante spun the steering wheel and sent them skidding into the concrete barrier.
Chapter Eighteen
Somehow Dante had pulled her shoulder free of the seat belt’s shoulder strap, but the lap belt tightened with a jerk. Something grazed the right side of her head and hit her right shoulder so hard and fast it slammed her backward, and she ended up facedown, with her upper body lying across the console and twisted between the bucket seats. All the horrible screeching noises of tires and crushed metal had stopped, and a strange silence filled the car. Lorna opened her eyes, but her vision was blurred, so she closed them again.
She’d never been in a car accident before. The sheer speed and violence of it stunned her. She didn’t feel hurt, just…numb, as if a giant had picked her up and body slammed her to the ground. The hurting part would probably arrive soon enough, she thought fuzzily. The impact had been so ferocious that she was vaguely surprised she was alive.
Dante! What about Dante?
Spurred by that urgent thought, she opened her eyes again, but the blurriness persisted and she couldn’t see him. Nothing looked familiar. There was no steering wheel, no dash-board…
She blinked and slowly realized that she was staring at the back seat. And the blurriness was…fog? No—smoke. She heaved upward in abrupt panic, or tried to, but she couldn’t seem to get any leverage.
“Lorna?”
His voice was strained and harsh, as if he were having difficulty speaking, but it was Dante. It came from somewhere behind and above her, which made no sense.
“Fire,” she managed to say, trying to kick her legs. For some reason she could move only her feet, which was reassuring anyway since they were the farthest away; if they could move, everything between there and her spine must be okay.
“Not fire—air bags. Are you hurt?”
If anyone would know whether or not there was a fire, Dante was that person. Lorna took a deep breath, relaxing a little. “I don’t think so. You?”
“I’m okay.”
She was in