Free The Heart Heist by Alyssa Kress Page B

gesture.
    Quickly, Matt lowered his eyes from Rob's innocent superiority. It wasn't Cheryl's fault and it wasn't Rob's that Matt was a freak. Remembering his accident caused a wave of horrible guilt to assail him. Only by staring down at his legs and reminding himself he was paying for his guilt every day was Matt able to make the heavy tension in his chest recede.
    With a deep breath, Matt picked up the newspaper laid in his lap. Breathing out again, he automatically turned the newspaper to the tiny little article that was all they'd thought worthwhile to print about Mr. Holiday.
    Another freak.
    Maybe it took one to know one, Matt mused. For example, the editors of the paper hadn't had the balls to guess where Mr. Holiday might strike this Independence Day. Matt would have taken one.
    Just look at the facts. On New Year's Mr. Holiday had blown up a hydroelectric plant in Toronto. President's Day he'd bombed a canal somewhere near Detroit. Memorial Day that dam on the Columbia River.
    Number one, the guy always chose some kind of man-made waterway and it was always something that had been, at least at one time, controversial.
    Number two, he was moving south and west.
    Maybe for the Fourth of July he'd take a shot at Hetch Hetchy, the dam up north near San Francisco. If so, he'd make a lot of environmentalists happy. As a matter of fact, everywhere Mr. Holiday struck, a small percentage of the population was secretly pleased. And so far he'd managed not to kill anyone -- although a guard had been injured in the Columbia Dam blast. Yes, to a certain segment of society, the Holiday Bomber was something of a folk hero.
    But to Matt's mind the guy had to be caught. He was destructive and dangerous. One day he was going to wind up causing a true disaster.
    It was hard to understand why the official agencies hadn't been able to catch him yet -- particularly since Matt had a good idea that the bomber was giving them advance warning of his plans.
    After tomorrow, when he'd found out where the bomb had gone off, Matt would make more notes in the journal he'd been keeping. Okay, so he was no FBI agent, but they weren't doing so hot. Why shouldn't Matt take a stab at it?
    ~~~
    Gary had been lucky to get a room at the inn with a private bath. At least Kerrin had been keen to point that out to him half an hour ago down at the front desk. Gary stood in that private bath now, wringing a washcloth out under some cold water. With the damp cloth, he went back into the bedroom and sank onto the worn quilt bedspread. Kerrin had felt obliged to point out the room's quaint, homespun qualities to him, standing on the edge of his threshold. Gary didn't know if she'd seen him up to his room with some notion of acting like his hostess in town, or because she'd wanted to make sure he didn't skip out altogether.
    Now Gary heaved a deep, heartfelt sigh and placed the cool folded washcloth on his forehead. He closed his eyes against the splitting headache the afternoon's activities had given him. What kind of a damn fool had he turned into, agreeing to this wild scheme? But something happened to him whenever that woman looked up at him with her wide, amber-jade eyes.
    Something stupid.
    "Can't you be the summer school teacher, Gary?" she'd asked him with that sugar-soft voice of hers.
    Gary groaned and pressed the washcloth harder against his aching head. Why hadn't he just told her the truth? Pride, that's why. Hell. As if he deserved a drop of that substance.
    Now he was well and truly stuck. Once they'd come back from their little interview along the creek bed, Kerrin had strolled from one end of the picnic ground to the other with him. She'd introduced him to one and all as the new teacher for the summer session. Gary was a thief by nature, a creature who hunted by night and alone, never glimpsed by his victims. A con artist he was not. As one pair of bright and curious eyes after another had taken his measure, as one eager hand after another had