account in the whole rag!"

Joan looked at him thoughtfully. She said, "Well...."

"They fired me once," he snarled. "Why should I crawl back?"

"It was your own fault, Webb. You know it."

He turned on her, and again his face had the look of a mean dog. "That," he said, "is none of your damned business."

She faced him stubbornly, her sapphire eyes meeting his slitted grey-green ones with just a hint of anger.

"You wouldn't be a bad sort, Webb," she said steadily, "if you weren't so lazy and so hell-fired selfish!"

Cold rage rose in him, the rage that had shaken him when Madge told him she was through. His hands closed into brown, ugly fists.

Joan met him look for look, her bright hair tangling over the collar of his sweater, the strong brown curves of cheek and throat catching the early sunlight. And again, as it had in that moment on the cliff, something turned over in Fallon's heart.

"What do you care," he whispered, "whether I am or not?"

For the first time her gaze flickered, and something warmer than the sunlight touched her skin.

"You saved my life," she said. "I feel responsible for you."

Fallon stared. Then, quite suddenly, he laughed. "You fool," he whispered. "You damned little fool!"

He kissed her. And he kissed her gently, as he had never kissed Madge.

They got breakfast. After that, Fallon knew, they should have gone east, with the tense, crawling hordes of refugees. But somehow he couldn't go. The distant gunfire drew him, the stubborn, desperate planes.

They went back, toward the hills of Bel Air. After all, there was plenty of time to run.

Things progressed as he had thought they would. Martial law was declared. An orderly evacuation of outlying towns was going forward. Fallon got through the police lines with a glib lie 

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