all the men in Rhode Island, to produce an entire state of cool, unflappable types. He faced hurtling trucks and a reporter's questions with the same degree of equanimity. Just being in his company was oddly relaxing and reassuring.
She said, “That's an interesting name you have.”
“Jim?”
He was having fun with her.
“Ironheart,” she said. “Sounds like an American Indian name.”
“Wouldn't mind having a little Chippewa or Apache blood, make me less dull, a little bit exotic, mysterious. But it's just the Anglicized version of the family's original German name — Eisenherz.”
By the time they were on the East Portland Freeway, rapidly approaching the Killingsworth Street exit, Holly was dismayed at the prospect of dropping him at the airline terminal. As a reporter, she still had a lot of unanswered questions. More important, as a woman, she was more intrigued by him than she had been by any man in ages. She briefly considered taking a far more circuitous route to the airport; his lack of familiarity with the city might disguise her deception. Then she realized that the freeway signs were already announcing the upcoming exit to Portland International; even if he had not been reading them, he could not have failed to notice the steady air traffic in the deep-blue eastern sky ahead of them.
She said, “What do you do down there in California?”
“Enjoy life.”
“I meant — what do you do for a living?”
“What's your guess?” he asked.
“Well … one thing for sure: you're not a librarian.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You have a sense of mystery about you.”
“Can't a librarian be mysterious?”
“I've never known one who was.” Reluctantly she turned onto the airport exit ramp. “Maybe you're a cop of some kind.”
“What gives you that idea?”
“Really good cops are unflappable, cool.”
“Gee, I think of myself as a warm sort of guy, open and easy. You think I'm cool?”
Traffic was moderately heavy on the airport approach road. She let it slow her even further.
“I mean,” she said, “that you're very self-possessed.”
“How long have you been a reporter?”
“Twelve years.”
“All of it in Portland?”
“No. I've been here a year.”
“Where'd you work before?”
“Chicago … Los Angeles … Seattle.”
“You like journalism?”
Realizing that she had lost control of the conversation, Holly said, “This isn't a game of twenty questions, you know.”
“Oh,” he said, clearly amused, “that's exactly what I thought it was.”
She was frustrated by the impenetrable wall he had erected around himself, irritated by his stubbornness. She was not used to having her will thwarted. But he had no meanness in him, as far as she could see, and no great talent for deception; he was just determined to preserve his privacy. As a reporter who had ever-increasing doubts about a journalist's right to intrude in the lives of others, Holly sympathized with his reticence. When she glanced at him, she could only laugh softly. “You're good.”
“So are you.”
As she stopped at the curb in front of the terminal, Holly said, “No, if I were good, by now I'd at least have found out what the hell you do for a living.”
He had a charming smile. And those
“No, it wouldn't,” she agreed.
With a look of relief, he said, “Thank you.”
“But I gotta say — your modesty's refreshing.”
He looked at her for a long beat, fixed her with his exceptional blue eyes. “So are you, Miss Thorne.”
Then he closed the door, turned away, and entered the terminal.
Their last exchange played again in her mind:
She stared at the terminal door through which he had disappeared, and he seemed too good to have been real, as if she had given a ride to a hitchhiking spirit. A thin haze filtered flecks of color from the late-afternoon sunlight, so the air had a vague golden cast of the kind that sometimes hung for an instant in the wake of a vanishing revenant in an old movie about ghosts.
A hard, hollow rapping noise startled her.
She snapped her head around and saw an airport security guard tapping with his knuckles on the hood of her car. When he had her attention, he pointed to a sign:
LOADING ZONE.
Wondering how long she had sat there, mesmerized by thoughts of Jim Ironheart, Holly released the emergency brake and slipped the car in gear. She drove away from the terminal.
All the way back into Portland, a sense of the uncanny lay upon her, a perception that someone preternaturally special had passed through her life. She was unsettled by the discovery that a man could so affect her, and she felt uncomfortably girlish, even foolish. At the same time, she enjoyed that pleasantly eerie mood and did not want it to fade.
5
That evening, in her third-floor apartment overlooking Council Crest Park, as she was cooking a dinner of angel-hair pasta with pesto sauce, pine nuts, fresh garlic, and chopped tomatoes, Holly suddenly wondered how Jim Ironheart could have known that young Billy Jenkins was in danger even before the drunken driver in the pickup truck had appeared over the crest of the hill.
She stopped chopping in the middle of a tomato and looked out the kitchen window. Purple-red twilight was settling over the greensward below. Among the trees, the park lamps cast pools of warm amber light on the grass- flanked walkways.
When Ironheart had charged up the sidewalk in front of McAlbury School, colliding with her and nearly knocking her down, Holly started after him, intending to tell him off. By the time she reached the intersection, he was already in the street, turning right then left, looking a little agitated … wild. In fact he seemed so strange, the kids moved around him in a wide arc. She had registered his panicked expression and the kids' reaction to him a second or two
Perhaps he had heard the roar of the engine, realized something was approaching the intersection at
