Heat Stroke Read Online Free PDF Page B

it.
    Paul Giancarlo was sitting bent over with his head cradled in big, thick-fingered hands. Not crying—men like Paul didn’t cry, it was against the whole tough-guy code of ethics—but he was rocking back and forth, chair creaking, and I could feel his distress like heat from a stove. He wasn’t fat, but muscular, and he stressed the structural limits of the sharp hand-tailored suit he was wearing. I’d never seen him in a tie before. It was strangely sweet. I wanted to put my arms around as much of him as my embrace could reach. I wanted to sink into his bear-hug warmth and never come out again, because one thing about being with Paul, he made you feel safe.
    Funny, considering his heritage was something straight out of The Godfather.
    â€œShould’ve done something.” His words were muffled by his hands, but he was talking to the man who sat next to him. “You fucking well should have done something, Lew. What’s the use of being the biggest swinging dick around if you can’t save the people who matter? Answer me that!”
    He slapped the question at Lewis Levander Orwell. Lewis might actually be the most powerful human on the planet, but next to Paul he looked like wallpaper. Tall, rangy, with puppy-dog brown eyes and a reasonably handsome face, he could have fit the part of an ad executive, or a lawyer, or any of a hundred normal white-collar jobs. He didn’t look like a guy who could command the weather, fire, and the very power of the earth itself. But the things I’d seen him do, the sheer force I’d felt him wield . . . incredible. Humbling.
    â€œBeing the biggest swinging dick around? It’s not much use at all,” Lewis said. He had a low, warm tenor voice, just a hint of roughness around the edges. He was staring down at his hands—long sensitive fingers, the hands of a pianist or a sculptor—as they pressed down on his thighs. His suit was not nearly as nice as Paul’s—serviceable, generic, forgettable. He never had been much of a fashion plate. “I tried to save her. You have to believe I tried. It was just . . . too much.”
    â€œI guess I don’t have any choice but to believe you, right? No witnesses.” Paul sucked in a breath and sat up. His face hovered on the border between brutal and angelic. Gray salted his temples these days,which I hadn’t noticed before. He was ten years older than me, which put him close to forty, but the gray in his hair was the only indication he’d aged a day since I first saw him. I’d been eighteen, scared and irrationally arrogant; he’d been twenty-eight, and arrogant for damn good reason. He’d saved my ass then, when Bad Bob Biringanine had tried to stop me from becoming a Warden.
    I couldn’t believe he was blaming himself for not saving my ass five days ago. I wanted to smack him one and tell him it was okay, I was right here, that the Joanne he’d known might be gone but most of her—maybe the best of her—lived on. I actually did reach out, or start to, but then Lewis’s eyes focused on me.
    Unmistakably seeing me.
    Oh. Well, of course he could, he’d seen me before, at Estrella’s house, when I was new-born into Djinn-hood. Lewis could see, well, everything when he wanted to. Part of the legacy of who and what he was.
    I shaped a silent hi. He half closed his eyes and smiled. Not surprised to find me here at all. Hi yourself, he mouthed, and the warmth in his expression made me tingle all over. Yeah, it’s like that between us. Always. Nothing either of us could control, no matter how much we wanted to.
    Holding the stare, Lewis said, “She’s okay, Paul. Believe me. She’s in a better place.” About three feet to his left.
    â€œYeah? You got a fuckin’ pipeline to heaven these days? I knew you were supposed to be some kind of god, but I didn’t know you had the