"They'll install it next Tuesday," he told me. "I don't want you going down to the launderette alone."

The white picket fence gleamed on the green lawn of my mind.

"Thanks," I said. "But we could just go do the laundry together."

"Of course, but I hate those places, so why should either of us bother?"

He smiled and left to hang his sweaty workout clothes over the back porch railing. I logged off TranceWeb, closed down my system, and sat down on the couch. Ari returned with a bottle of a silvery gray sports drink and joined me.

"That looks like dishwater," I said.

He scrutinized the bottle, then shrugged. "It doesn't taste like it."

"Whatever. Um, Ari, we need to have a talk. I take it you're planning on staying in San Francisco for a while."

"Indefinitely, according to my superiors." He paused for a swallow of the bottled dishwater. "Both of them. I'll admit to both since there's no hiding it from you. There's a nexus of anti-Israel activity in this city, as I'm sure you've noticed."

"Well, yeah. I don't mean to pry."

"Pry?" He smiled, just a brief flicker of his mouth. "Good word, I suppose. Very tactful. It's one reason I love you."

I went tense.

"Don't you think I feel that?" he said. "The way you freeze up, pull away, turn into yourself, whatever it is, the minute I say something, too-oh, I don't know-too sentimental, I suppose it is. I don't have to be psychic to feel you pushing me away."

"I'm sorry." I felt like a bleating sheep, but the words crept out before I could stop them. "Ari, I've only known you-what? A couple of months? It's not long enough for either of us to know how we really feel."

"Where did you read that?" He leaned over and put the ghastly-looking drink down on the coffee table. "One of your college textbooks?"

I had to admit that my wording needed improvement. "Oh, okay. Let me amend that. Do you really think this relationship can possibly work long-term? Look, we're both really strange people, misfits, I guess I mean. We've both been wounded in strange ways."

"Who else goes in for our line of work?" He turned on the couch to look directly at me. "How many normal family men or career women do you see in your agency? I can't think of any in mine. There's too much lying, too much danger, the tedious kind of danger that's mostly waiting for the worst to happen. Only a misfit would take the job."

"That's true." I looked away and listened to my heart pounding in fear. "But I just don't see how we can make any kind of commitment to each other. Your country's always going to come first to you. I'll always be waiting for you to leave me. Not for another woman, I mean, but for Israel's sake."

"If I go, I'll take you with me."

"But I don't want to leave here. I've got my family to consider, and now, come to think of it, so do you. They've taken you in lock, stock, and barrel."

Ari smiled as if he was about to make a smart remark, then let the smile fade. "That could present a problem."

"It's not the only one, either. What am I supposed to do? Sit in some flat in Tel Aviv and worry myself sick while you're gone?"

"Gone?" He blinked at me in fake innocence.

"Yeah, gone! Wandering around the hill country pretending to be Iranian. What's your cover? Just a simple tribesman herding goats? What do you look for out there? Military installations? Missile emplacements?"

Ari whistled under his breath. "You do puzzle things out, don't you?"

"Hey, it's part of my job. What would happen if the Iranian military caught you? I bet you wouldn't live to reach a court of law."

"Probably not, no."

"Would I ever even know what had happened to you?"

"Probably not, though I a.s.sume you could guess." He grinned at me. "After all, you are psychic."

"Oh, great! And so one night I'll have a nightmare where I watch you get shot or beheaded. Only it won't be a dream. It'll be true. No, Ari. I won't live like that."

The grin disappeared. He sat silently for a couple of minutes, weighing things out in his mind, or so his SPP indicated. "Well," he said eventually, "I suppose I could compromise on my career choice."

"Career choice. What a phrase to use!"

He laughed. He actually laughed. "True," he said. "How about mission a.s.signment, then? I can turn it down in the future. No one forces that kind of a.s.signment on an operative. I've always volunteered for it."

"Know something? You're an adrenaline junkie."

"What?"

"Someone who's addicted to their own adrenaline, which starts flowing when they're doing something dangerous."

"I've never thought of it that way before." Ari paused in contemplation. "But it's a fair evaluation. Why else would I want to marry you?"

I decided that I must be psychotic to care so much about a man like him. He caught my hands in his and pulled me a little closer. His touch made me feel like melting. No, I realized that I'd already melted. Psychotic, I told myself. O'Grady, you actually love this guy. How could you?

"Nola?" he said. "Think of the Roadrunner cartoons. The coyote runs off the edge of the cliff, but as long as he doesn't look down, he doesn't fall. He can walk on the air. That's what our marriage is going to be like. Just don't look down, and we'll do splendidly."

"That's absolutely nuts!"

He raised my hands to his mouth and kissed each of them in turn. "No, it's a metaphor. It makes perfect sense."

"I'm not going to marry you. I'm not going to marry anyone."

"Oh?" He smiled his tiger's smile. "We'll just see about that."

Click here for more books by this author.

AGENCY TALENTS AND ACRONYMS.

ASTA Automatic survival threat awareness.

CDEP Chaos diagnotic emergency procedure.

CW Chaos wards CDS Collective Data Stream CEV Conscious evasion procedure.

DEI Deliberately extruded images (visible only to psychics) DW Dice walk.

E Ensorcellment HC Heat conservation.

IOI Image Objectification of Insight LDRS Long distance remote sensing MI Manifested indicators (of chaos forces).

PI Possibility Images RSL Random Synchronistic Linkage (dice walking) SAF Scanning the aura field.

SM Search mode SM:P Search mode: Personnel G:General D: Danger L: Location SAWM Semiautomatic warning mechanism.

SH Shield persona.

SPP Subliminal psychological profile.

UPC Unexplained personnel capabilities (occult powers).

Available from DAW Books:.

The Nola O'Grady Novels:.

LICENSE TO ENSORCELL WATER TO BURN.

Katharine Kerr's.

Novels of Deverry.

The Silver Wyrm Cycle:.

THE GOLD FALCON (#1).

THE SPIRIT STONE (#2).

THE SHADOW ISLE (#3).

THE SILVER MAGE (#4).