"Do you mean my new boyfriend's still acts like a criminal?" "Only in self defense. His dander gets up thoroughly whenever somebody tries to kill him. I've seen this before. He's exactly like his old man." he said, gesturing at the range of dark expressions they could see running through different moods on the P.I.'s face. "It's a natural reaction he gets whenever the nasty folks find out that they're being targeted by him, in his line of work." Martin said. "But this particular bad guy doesn't even know us. He's an arsonist. We just happened to have been at the wrong place at the wrong time last night." "Oh, that baddie knows you all right. You're both witnesses to his whereabouts, darlin'. That's good enough. But you don't worry. Jim'll get him in the end before he gets anybody else. He always does. He's saved my life more than a dozen times when the bad guys came after me." Sara chuckled uneasily, mentally questioning her companion's morale fiber. "Oh, so glad Jim only commits murder after letting himself get winged first. Makes me feel a whole lot better." she said, sarcastically. But then her little smile returned at his puppy dog eyes which were getting self defensive under his unhappy dad's phone tirade. "He's so cute." "What about me?" Angel muttered.  "Am I as attractive as ..as...you are beautiful?" "Huh?" Sara said, looking up, completely missing his question for the hearts in her eyes for Jim. "Uh, nothing." evaded Martin, looking out his car window at the advancing fire. "I think something just crashed and burned over there." "What was it?" Butler asked, still watching Jim judo verbally with his father through the telephone wire. "It was... nothing major."  Martin never wanted to crawl under anything and hide so badly, as he did right then. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mike Stoker wanted to hide. Immediately. He had an idea of about how long he had been unconscious from the angle of the morning sun's rays which had awakened him forty five minutes ago. It hadn't taken long at all soon afterwards, when he found himself playing cat and mouse with a crazy man and his rifle, for his life. "Did you hear that horse scream, fireman?  Squealed like a stuck pig when I shot him. That felt goooood." came the manic, cracked voice of a person driven beyond their normal faculties.  "So where are ya, hose jockey?! I'm not gonna shoot you. You're human. I only get my kicks from killin' furry things." Mike Stoker had done the only thing he knew would work to keep safe from the shooter. He had crawled into the deadly reach of the canyon fire.  It was taking all he had not to gasp and choke from the slowly disappearing oxygen levels underneath the burning pine tree canopy. That kind of un-natural sound would be heard instantly, and get pin pointed. ::That would probably mean my death, with a few bullets to the back of the head. :: he thought. ::Not that that would matter very much, soon..:: The wounded engineer could see and hear, but not feel himself dragging on hands and stomach, towards the lake and its far cooler, concealing waters.   In the back of his mind, Stoker wondered if he would bleed to death from his internal injuries, before he got there. ::Why doesn't it hurt?:: Another part of his thoughts whispered back to taunt him. ::Because you're in deep shock. You're very far along the path of actually dying, mister.::   **It's called ischemia, Mike.** Gage's voice whispered in his head. **All your organs' circulation is getting cut off by swelling and poor perfusion. There's nothing, short of a lightning strike, that can kill faster than that. People are usually dead within an hour of it beginning.**   "Johnny?"  Mike sobbed, still imagining Gage's voice. "I really need a helping hand here. R-Remember my p-perfect record of... never getting banged up while in uniform?" Stoker tried to suck in a bigger breath to stop feeling suffocated in the blistering heat surrounding him. "Well, that went to sh*t today. Never thought--- Ahhh!!" he groaned as a building, intense pressure in his abdomen grew with each throb of his heartbeat. PhewwwWWwwwff!  came the whine of a bullet. Mike cried out again as a sharp thud hit his left pinky. The near grazing tore the fingernail off in a shower of gore. "There you are, to my left, boy!" came the arsonist's cry. "There's no use trying to hide!" CrackKKK!!!  A whole burning tree top snapped completely off of its trunk, falling earthwards above the two men. In seconds, the heavy flaming mass fell on top of them, pinning them both to the smoldering beach and under the shallow water. There was no time at all to scream before it happened. Then moments later, there wasn't any room to breathe. Time had run out.

Please click the Gang         to go to Page Five