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One
Rick Masters wasn’t given to cruising around in his car. Certainly not in what was considered to be well past the shank of the evening.
It wasn’t as if he was at loose ends with nothing to do. A stack of reports waited for his perusal, a pile of documents needed his signature and hundreds of people had lives on the cusp of being rearranged, all on his say-so once he made up his mind about the relocation of the present corporate headquarters for Masters Enterprises.
This wasn’t the time to be driving around aimlessly on deserted streets.
Well, not aimlessly.
He hadn’t been aimless in a very long time. And no matter what he tried to tell himself, he knew exactly where he was going. He’d finally given in and looked her up in the telephone book an hour ago.
She still lived there. In the old house. The one he still dreamed about on balmy nights when his mind gave him no peace.
Like tonight.
Maybe it was a mistake, coming back. Maybe this was the one challenge he should have turned his back on.
Too late now.
Besides, leaving a question unanswered was too much like letting the challenge win. Ever since he could walk, he’d always been too competitive to allow that to happen.
He’d taken that light a little too fast. Rick raised his dark eyes to look in the rearview mirror. No dancing blue and red lights approached.
He had to be careful, he told himself. There was no sense in letting his emotions run away with him, stealing away his tendency to be careful.
The way they once had, leading him down a path where he was vulnerable.
It seemed like a million years ago.
It seemed like yesterday.
He glanced along the silent, sleeping streets where he had grown up. It felt strange, being back. Stranger still to know that she still lived here in Bedford. When he’d left, he’d purposely never asked about her. Never given in to his curiosity about just what path her life had taken. It was enough that it was away from him.
Out of sight was supposed to be out of mind.
Right now, the only thing that appeared to be out of mind was him, he thought. Ironic amusement curved his generous mouth as he turned right at the next corner. There was a shopping mall now. He could remember when it was just an orange grove.
Bedford had done a lot of growing up in the last eight years. Why not? He had.
And yet, had he? Part of him didn’t feel like the successful VP of Masters Enterprises. Part of him still felt like that young boy, head over heels in love with the wrong person. Except that then, he hadn’t thought she was the wrong person.
But he had learned.
Learned a lot of things. Mostly how to take the helm of his father’s company. He’d gotten to his present position on merit, not by coasting there because he was the boss’s son. If he’d coasted, no way would he have been able to take over operations after his father’s heart attack last October. The transition in management from father to son in the last six months had been an incredibly smooth one. And why not? All he did was live and breathe business these days. There was nothing else for him, not since he’d been betrayed by the last person in the world he would have thought capable of it.
Served him right for leading with his heart rather than his head. First and last time. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been warned. Both his parents had told him that someone in his position had to be careful about the friends he made, the women he cared for.
Well, he’d learned all right. The lessons that you paid for dearly in life were the ones that stuck.
So what was he doing driving through her part of town, driving onto the winding streets of her development, threading his way toward her block?
He really didn’t know.
He didn’t turn back.
Self-torture had never been his way. He’d always been the philosophical one. Things happened. You got over them and moved on. And he had. Moved all the way across country to Atlanta, Georgia, the place that, until a month ago, had been the headquarters of his father’s company. Georgia, where his grandfather had originally been from. But certain economical circumstances had arisen in the last year that made that arrangement no longer as advantageous as it once had been. Almost fully recovered from his heart attack, Howard Masters wanted to have the home office of his company moved to Southern California so that he could be closer to its operations. Tax advantages were no longer a factor. Only control was.
The old man still wanted to exercise control over the company his great-grandfather had begun in the back of a barn. Rick couldn’t fault him. Keeping control had something to do with extending a man’s mortality and Rick could sympathize with that.
Even so, he’d resisted the move at first. But then, he’d challenged himself to face up to his demons. After all, he’d been in love with Joanna a long time ago. He was smart enough now to know that love wasn’t something to build a life on.
If he doubted that, he had only to look to his parents. Two icons of the social world who’d looked perfect together on paper, in photographs, everywhere but in real life.
Love, that wild, heady mysterious substance he’d once believed to have taken command of his soul, was only the stuff they wrote songs about. It had no place in the real world, and he was part of the real world. What he did or didn’t do affected thousands of people. Heavy burden, that.
He should be turning back. It was late and he had things to do.
The April night was crisp and clear and unusually warm, even for Southern California. He’d left the windows of his classic 64 Mustang down. His father had urged him to get a car more suitable to his present station, so he drove a Mercedes to work, but he’d refused to get rid of his Mustang. He wanted the car. Even though it had been the one he’d been driving the night he’d wanted to elope with Joanna. Even though they had made love in that car.
Or maybe because of it.
Rick shook his head as he retraced his way through a maze of ever-climbing streets. Hell of a time to be playing shrink with himself.
The houses here all lined one side of the street, their faces looking out onto carefully manicured vegetation that hid the backs of other houses as they progressed up the hill.
One more block and then he’d be passing her house.
Dumb idea, Rick upbraided himself. He needed to be getting back. Those contracts weren’t going to review themselves and he believed in being a hands-on executive.
Hands. He could remember the way his hands had felt on her warm, supple flesh, remembered how it felt to lay her down on the cool spring grass and make love with her in the meadow behind his parents’ summer home. It was just the two of them there. The two of them against the world.
Until he discovered what she was really like.
Rick wrinkled his nose. An acrid smell wove its way into the stillness.
Probably just someone using their fireplace. Some people didn’t care if it was warm or not. It was just the beginning of spring and a fire in the fireplace was romantic.
His mind started to drift back again, remembering.
He knew he shouldn’t have come this far. Annoyed with himself, Rick looked around for some place to turn his car around and go back the way he’d come.
The smell didn’t go away.
Instead, it intensified with each passing second. He wasn’t sure exactly what made him push on instead of turn around, but he kept going.
Like someone hypnotized, he pressed his foot down on the accelerator, urging his car up the incline and toward the smell.
And then he saw it.
The sky was filled with black smoke.
Joanna felt herself rebelling.
The dream was back to haunt her. The one where everything and everyone was obscured. The one that had her running barefoot, in her nightgown, through an open field enshrouded in fog and mists.
Everything was hidden from her. Hidden and threatening.
But this time, it wasn’t fog, it was smoke that curled around her legs and crept stealthily along her body.
It didn’t matter, the effect was the same.
She was lost, so very lost. And then she began running faster, desperately searching for a way out. Looking for someone to help her.
There was no one.
She was alone.
Every time she thought she could make out a shape, a person, they would disappear as she ran toward them. The resulting emptiness mocked her.
It was a dream, just a dream, she told herself over and over again as she ran. Her heart twisted within her, aching in its loneliness.
She’d be all right if she could just open her eyes. Just bridge her way back into the real world. Over and over again, she told herself to wake up.
With superhuman effort, she forced open her eyes.
They began to smart.
Joanna woke up choking. Her lungs began to ache. Had the nightmare taken on another dimension? Groggy, she sat up in bed. Her bulk prevented her from making the transition from lying to sitting an easy one. She felt as if she’d been pregnant since the beginning of time instead of almost nine months.
Your own fault. You asked for this.
Her eyes were seriously tearing now. This wasn’t part of her dream. She smelled smoke, felt heat even though she’d shut the heat off just before she’d gone to bed more than an hour ago.
And then she realized what was happening. Her house was on fire.
Stunned, her heart pounding as she scrambled out of bed, Joanna grabbed the long robe that was slung over the footboard. She was hardly aware of jamming her fists through the sleeves.
Barefoot, Joanna hurried to her bedroom doorway, only to see that her living room was flooded in smoke. A line of fire had shadowed her steps, racing in front of her. It was now feeding on the door frame, preventing her flight.
Flames shot up all around her.
Something came crashing down right in front of her, barely missing her. Backing up, she screamed as flames leaped to the bottom of her robe, eating away at the hem. Working frantically, Joanna shed the robe before the flames could find her.
Driving quickly, Rick took the next corner at a speed that almost made the Mustang tip over. He jerked his cell phone out of his pocket and hit 911 on the keypad with his thumb.
The instant the dispatch came in the line, he snapped out his location, adding, “Two houses are on fire, one’s almost gone.”
As the woman asked him to repeat what he’d just said, he heard someone scream from within Joanna’s house. Rick tossed the phone aside. It landed on the passenger seat as he bolted from the car. He barely remembered to cut off the engine.
The scream echoed in his brain.
Somehow he knew it wasn’t her mother, wasn’t some renter or some trick of the imagination.
That was Joanna’s scream.
She was in there, in that inferno. And he had to get her out.
The last house on the corner, next to Joanna’s, was already engulfed in flames. It looked as if the fire had started there and had spread to Joanna’s house. So far, from what he could see as he ran toward the building, only the rear portion was burning.
That was where the bedrooms were, he remembered. And she was in one of them.
Racing to the front door, he twisted the knob. It was locked and there was no way he could jimmy it open. His talents didn’t run in those directions. But he could think on his feet.
Stripping off his jacket, Rick wrapped it around his arm and swung at the front window as hard as he could. Glass shattered, raining down in chunks. Moving quickly, Rick cleared away as much as he could then let himself into the house.
He stopped only long enough to unlock the front door. He left it open, a portal to the outside world. He had a feeling he was going to need that to guide him out. Inside, the inferno grew.
“Joanna!” Cupping his mouth, he yelled again. “Joanna, where are you?”
The flames had momentarily frozen her in place as her mind raced on alternative routes of escape, trying to assimilate what was going on.
Was she dreaming?
She had to be. Why else would she be hearing Rick’s voice calling to her? Rick was gone. Had been gone for eight years.
Without a word to her.
Maybe she was already dead. Maybe the smoke had gotten to her and she was having some kind of out-of-body experience.
A fireman. It had to be a fireman. She only thought it sounded like Rick.
“Here,” she screamed. “I’m in here.” Smoke crowded its way into her throat, slashing at her words, sucking away her breath. “In the back bedroom.” Eyes smarting, she couldn’t make out the doorway anymore. “I can’t get out. Help me!”
Like a behemoth, the fire snarled and groaned, playing tricks on his ears, his eyes. He was sure he heard her, heard her voice, muffled but still strong, calling out. Flames belched out of the rear of the house now.
Despite the temperature, his blood turned cold in his veins.
Think, damn it, think.
And then an idea came to him. Running to the kitchen, he passed through the dining room. Rick stopped only long enough to grab the tablecloth and yank it off the table. He soaked the entire cloth in the sink, then hurried with it to the rear of the house.
Toward the sound of her voice.
There were curtains of fire everywhere. He couldn’t see more than a foot in front of him. “Joanna? Joanna where are you?”
“Here, I’m here,” Joanna called out. She couldn’t get out the door and when she ran toward the window, she found her way blocked there as well. There was no way to get to the window. The rug beneath her feet was burning.
And then suddenly, something came rolling in on the floor, crashing through the flames. As she stared, the figure took shape, rising up to assume the full height of a man.
