LITMIR.BIZ

      4

      BOYCE AND WRIGHT looked up as Matt emerged from the room. The pounding rain was unrelenting, sending the hollow, pinging sound throughout the darkened interior. It increased Matt’s moodiness.

      “Get a little while you were in there, Taylor?” Boyce snarled softly.

      “Shove it.”

      Boyce grinned, watching Taylor in the semidarkness. The flicker of a Coleman lantern drove away the circle of blackness that surrounded them. “When you got a good-looking broad like her around, that’s all I’d think about.”

      Matt rubbed the bruised, bloodied knuckles on his right hand. Boyce appeared more subservient after the fight. Maybe it had been worth almost busting up his hand, after all. The swelling around Boyce’s left eye had blackened; the eye was nearly shut. “You’d better be thinking about contacting Easton again. It’s almost seven o’clock.”

      “Yeah, yeah,” Boyce griped. He threw the cards down on the table, picked up his jacket and shrugged it over his meaty shoulders. “I’ll be back.”

      Matt walked silently around the warehouse, checking out the possible entrance-exit points. The cops of Houston would be looking for them in earnest. And so would the local FBI agents. He stopped, thrusting his hands into his jeans’ pockets, surveying the steel girders above his head in the gloom. His mind swung back to Kai and their discussion. Why couldn’t they have met under different circumstances? He was drawn to her, rightly or wrongly, as sunlight was to warm, fertile earth. She was like the earth, he thought, continuing his sentrylike duty inside the building. There was a natural sensuality to Kai.

      Matt could imagine the military men who had been injured in the line of duty responding to her wonderful smile and melodic voice. Kai’s touch would be sure. His mind wandered over the prospect of what it would be like to love her. He imagined what her thick hair would feel like as he ran his fingers through it. He imagined the velvet feel of her pliant, youthful skin against his own. Kai was fascinating. She was the only woman since Maura who had intrigued him enough to make him want to think about living again instead of just surviving. Dragging in a deep breath, Matt forced himself back to his duties. He halted, studying an old door half torn off its hinges. The rain was slashing in, leaving large puddles on the cracked concrete floor. He stared at them in thoughtful silence.

      Was life always a road map filled with contours, wrong turns and dead ends? His eyes narrowed as he studied the lines radiating from beneath his feet. Didn’t it ever have a foreseeable beginning and ending, without the obstacle course that would eventually change life’s direction? No, Matt reminded himself, life was little more than a survival school composed of one gray day after another.

      He ambled toward Wright, who remained seated. How did Kai interpret the world? Obviously quite differently than he did. Where he saw perpetual darkness, she saw light. She did her best to heal men’s broken, torn bodies and urge them to reach out and live once more. He smiled slightly as he completed his tour.