The first clue Lacy Broderick had that it wasn't going to be an ordinary day was when her car started skidding at sixty miles per hour on the icy roadway of Interstate 35 south of Minneapolis. Lacy was not an accomplished winter driver by any means, having grown up in Florida and attended college in Texas until very recently. She slammed on the brakes, which only made matters worse, and slid into the Dodge Caravan which was in the left lane beside her.

The crash was an explosive cartwheel of metal and flesh and fire.

The two vehicles ended up in the snowy median, canted at odd angles and burning with orange flames which seemed to swallow up the gently falling flakes.

Lacy was hanging upside down by her seatbelt in her overturned 1988 Chrysler Laser GT, watching the snow melt away from her windshield as the fire in her engine compartment crawled closer to her front seat. She couldn't move her right arm at all, and when she tried to reach her left hand across her body to press the seatbelt release, a stabbing pain shot through her chest, preventing her from escaping that way, either. She figured it was probably a broken rib. In any event, the point was rapidly becoming moot as the flames reached towards her. At age twenty-four, Lacy quickly and systematically ran through the five stages of death predicted by Kubler-Ross, ending with the acceptance that she was going to die here, alone, on this quiet, snowy patch of ground in southern Minnesota.

Then, suddenly, her door opened and the most handsome man she had ever seen was pulling her from the crumpled metal and carrying her easily away from the fire.

He was tall, blonde, muscular, with the tanned good looks that Lacy was used to but the hard, dark eyes which stared out from beneath his sculpted eyebrows had a look of intensity that she had never seen in any of the Florida beachboys she had known as a child. He was wearing only a T-shirt and blue jeans, both of which showed off his rippling muscles to their best advantage. To Lacy, her mind fogged with adrenaline and smoke, it was a dream.

This doesn't happen, she thought hazily, looking up at his chiseled face and windswept hair. Maybe it isn't happening, maybe this is all a dream and I'm still at home asleep... but God, he is cute.

The man, the hero--her hero, Lacy decided--moved up the hill like a locomotive to the snowbank at the side of the northbound lanes of the interstate and laid her gently onto a warm jacket which she decided was probably his, shed just for that eventuality. He knelt beside her and studied her face in a blank manner that Lacy arbitrarily decided to interpret as compassion.

"Are you alright?" he asked in a deep, harmonious voice that Lacy immediately fell in love with.

"Yes," she said breathlessly, staring into his eyes with an expression of wonder on her face.

"Great," he muttered, standing and pivoting on one foot. Without hesitation he strode back into the roaring flames of the wreckage. Within minutes the family of four that had been in the Caravan lay beside Lacy in the snowbank. Other motorists were stopping and tending their injuries, and a state trooper was spraying a fire extinguisher into the flames which now were tall enough to keep Lacy warm even at a distance. She strained her head to look for the man who had saved her, but suddenly he was there beside her, splinting her arm. The feel of his hands on her wrist made her heart race like it never had when she was encased in the burning car.

"Thank you," she said sincerely. "Thank you very much. You saved my life."

The blonde man grimaced. "Sure." He was remarkably spare with his words, Lacy noticed. She decided to press on.

"My name's Lacy Broderick."

"Well, Lacy, if it's any consolation, you have a simple fracture of the right radial, a few minor facial lacerations, and possibly one or two broken ribs. You'll need X-rays. Right now, don't try to move, just wait for the ambulance." He said it in a flat, bored manner that made the little speech seem memorized.

"What's your name?" Lacy asked, ignoring the delivery in her sudden emotions.

He sighed. "Michael. Michael Connors, and if you're thinking of suing, Minnesota has a Good Samaritan law, so you might as well forget it."

"What?" Lacy was confused.

The muscular man shook his head. "Never mind. Just don't move." Then he was up and moving among the other casualties, tending to their needs. Lacy heard sirens approaching in the distance and confidently thought, I'll have another chance at him.

Her other chance came at the hospital in Minneapolis. After the ER doctor finished lecturing her on the do's and don’ts of caring for an arm in a cast, Lacy tottered out into the hallway and began to look for her hero. It wasn't a difficult task. He was in the next room. He was talking with another doctor about the burns he had received on his arms from the fire.

"Listen, you know I don't have insurance, Gary. I always come up with the money, though, don't I? Besides, these are bad enough to give you an excuse to sell me the stuff. I'm running out!"

"Okay, okay, okay! I'll write up the prescription, but this is it, Connors! No more morphine after this."

The two men noticed Lacy at the same time and the conversation switched abruptly to last Vikings game. Lacy waited until the doctor left before entering the cubicle. Connors was slipping his tattered and burnt T-shirt back on over his bulging muscles.

"Hi," Lacy said shyly.

Connors gave her a weary look.

"Listen, you must be tired. Go home and rest your arm."

He brushed past her and left. A lock of Lacy's dark blonde hair flipped down over her left eye as she looked over her shoulder at his disappearing shoulders. She blew it away from her eye contritely and crossed her arms. There were other ways, of course, and Lacy could be very tenacious when she wanted to. All her friends agreed that she would make a great reporter at her new job at the Minneapolis Star.

It was terribly easy to sneak a look at the admitting log in the nurse's station when she was filling out her paperwork and to note in her exceptional memory exactly what Michael Connor's current address was.

The Oakview Apartments were two lies in one. There were no oak trees anywhere in the ghetto, and the view was of the dilapidated building across the street. Lacy didn't feel comfortable on the streets in that neighborhood, but figured that not even the most hardened criminal would bother someone whose arm was in a cast.

She was right, and she was wrong.

The person who leaped out from the alley and pushed the gun in her face looked like he was missing out on school at the junior high that day.

"Gimme yo' money!" he ordered, the poorly enunciated English a sign of other school days he had missed.

Lacy had never been mugged before, but was determined to handle it with elan.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I can't open my purse. My arm is broken."

"Then gimme the whole purse!"

"Well, you see, this was actually a gift to me from my dear, sweet old mother and it's been in my family for several generations, and it's hand-worked leather, a keep-sake, really, and..."

"I don' care!" the kid said in exasperation. "Just gimme it!"

Suddenly, the young thief was airborne. Someone tall had grasped him by the collar and lifted him high into the air. He yelped in surprise.

"Screw, kid," came a familiar voice. A bronzed hand came around and relieved him of the gun, then propelled him with great alacrity into a nearby alley. The kid hit the ground running and didn't stop.

Mike Connors had a coat on this time, but he was just as large and handsome as Lacy remembered. He was also just as rude.

"What are you doing in this part of town?"

"I came to see you."

He grimaced. "Please, stop. This sort of thing never works out. Go home and go back to your life." He brushed by her again but this time Lacy was in no mood to stay behind. She turned and kept walking with him.

"Why don't you like me?"

"Because you're sheep. You're cattle. Nothing personal, I mean, but you're just like everyone else. A commoner."

"Oh? And you're royalty?"

"Listen, I don't have time for you. Really, I'm not trying to insult you, but there are girls like you on my doorstep every week. I get bored with it."

Lacy was confused.

"Listen, I'm just trying to say thank you. Is that such a crime? You don't even know me, so how can you say you don't like me?"

"Safe assumption."

"Well, that's just not very fair."

Mike seemed to sigh. "If life were fair we never would have met in the first place..."

They were interrupted by a scream. They looked up. Ahead of them, an apartment building was on fire. Smoke streamed from the upstairs’ windows, and a crowd of people were milling in the street below, residents watching their home burn. One of them, a woman with her hair in curlers, was screaming, "My baby, my baby! Someone, please help me! My baby's in there!"

Mike visibly wilted.

"Aww, shit," he said, stripping off his coat and handing it to Lacy. "Listen, I'll be back in a minute." And with that, he charged up the stairs into the burning building, Lacy staring after him with awe. This one doesn't get away, she swore to herself.

After saving three people from horrible deaths by fire, Mike sat on the back of a fire engine, inhaling oxygen from a green bottle provided by a couple of concerned paramedics. Lacy sat next to him, watching his every move.

"You should really go to the hospital," one of the medics said.

"Thanks, but I'm sort of enjoying the smoke inhalation buzz," Mike growled through the mask.

They let him go shortly thereafter and he walked off down the street, ignoring Lacy as she tagged along with him.

"Why are you like this?" she asked him.

"Why do you care?"

"Because I like you. Because you're a hero."

He stopped in the street and looked at her with an odd expression. Finally, he laughed, an appealing sound she hadn't heard from him before.

"If only you knew," he told her, and disappeared into the swirling snow, leaving Lacy with a perplexed look on her face and a racing train of thought.

She showed up at his apartment again the next day, and once again met him down on the street. His face took on an exasperated look when he saw her this time.

"Haven't I gotten rid of you yet?"

"No. In fact, I'm more curious than ever. Can I ask you some questions?"

"God, you sound like a reporter," he groused, trying to walk away from her. She kept up with him anyway.

"I am. But that's not why I want to talk to you. If I may be blunt, I'm attracted to you, Mr. Connors. I want to get to know you."

"Listen, I don't like you. I didn't like you in the first place, and now that I know you're a reporter, I like you even less. I have a hard life, Miss Broderick, and you would just make it more complicated."

"How?"

"It's a long story."

"So you'd better start telling me soon."

"I don't want to tell you."

"Why? Are you afraid? Do I scare you?"

He gave a short, sarcastic laugh.

"No. Not hardly."

"Then talk to me. Get it off your chest There's something special about you, Connors. I saw it at the car wreck, and I saw it yesterday, and I want to know what it is."

Mike stopped walking, turned and gave her a skeptical look.

"Really?"

Lacy smiled enchantingly at him. "Yes. I want to hear about your life. Everything. You intrigue me. I want to hear it all."

So he told her.

"I was born in Reading, Pennsylvania. I had a very average childhood, for the most part. I mean, hell, what's more average than Reading? In fact, I didn't really notice anything... well, different about myself until the third grade. Then, everything changed.

"When I was ten, I pulled a family of six out of their burning home. It made all the papers, and I got some dorky reward from the city council. When I was eleven, I saved an elderly lady from drowning at the beach. The lifeguards gave me a medal. When I was twelve, I did CPR on a heart attack victim at a local restaurant. When I was thirteen, I put out a fire at my school, saved everyone. And so on and so forth. Eventually, I realized that it wasn't going to stop."

"So you had an exciting childhood."

"You could look at it that way," Mike told her. They were sitting in a little bistro, sipping capuccino and drying out. "But it wasn't just my childhood. It's my whole life. Everywhere I go, something goes wrong. And I have to jump in and fix it."

"So you think you have bad luck, and you don't want to drag me into it," Lacy observed.

Mike shook his head. "No, you're not getting it. It's something more than that. Not bad luck, just different luck. Or, if you prefer, destiny."

"Like 'Star Wars?'" Lacy asked impishly.

Mike sighed in exasperation.

"No, shit, why do I bother...."

"Everybody down!" yelled a man in a black mask from the bistro's doorway. He held a submachine gun in one hand and a hand grenade in the other. "Throw your wallets out into the center of the floor. Do it now!"

Mike groaned. "You'd better get down," he told Lacy, standing up wearily and reaching around behind his back. The shadowy figure at the door was joined by two more, both armed.

"What about you?" asked Lacy, frightened.

Mike gave her a tired glance. "I've got work to do." He strode towards the men at the door, pulling a pistol from the back of his waistband. The hooded figure with the grenade finally noticed Mike approaching.

"I said get down, motherfucker!" the man yelled, angling his machine gun at Mike. Connors raised his pistol and shot the man in the gun arm. The patrons' screaming covered the sound of gunfire as Mike adroitly killed the other two men. The leader, seeing his companions down, screamed out various offensive epithets, tossed the grenade at Mike and sprinted out the door. There was a second round of screaming as the grenade tumbled through the air. Mike caught it handily, flicked a glance at the window, and threw the grenade through it without hesitation. Through the shattered window, Lacy watched in amazement as the grenade landed in the backseat of the getaway car that the criminal was just pulling away from the curb in. As it accelerated away, the car exploded in a ball of flame. Mike shook his head in annoyance. To Lacy, it seemed as though he was sick and tired of something, but in her adrenaline haze she couldn't tell what. After the patrons of the restaurant were finished thanking him profusely and the police were through interviewing him, he sat back down with Lacy.

"You're a good shot," Lacy remarked. "Military training?"

"No. Three hours a day at the range for the past fifteen years."

"That's a lot of time."

"Not nearly as much as I spend at the dojo. Savate was much harder than shooting."

"Savate?"

"French martial arts. Karate and judo just weren't enough."

"Why all the bloodsports?" Lacy asked.

"Need it," Mike shrugged. "I keep trying to tell you, this stuff just happens to me. You'd be better off staying away."

"I'm sorry," she said playfully, "I can't resist your muscles."

"They didn't come easy."

"Oh?"

"No. When I was a kid, I was really scrawny. But I got tired of having so much trouble hauling people out of burning buildings, so I started lifting weights."

"How many people have you dragged out of burning buildings?"

Mike waved a hand dismissively. "More than I could count. They're pretty common. And robberies like this one here--" he gesture around the bistro "--I can count on at least two a month."

"Jesus. What do you do for a living?"

Mike stared at her incredulously. "What do you think I've been describing to you? This is my job, Lacy. It's what I do. You said it yourself. I'm a hero."

"Just go around, saving people's lives, being a hero?" she asked, unbelieving. "How do you support yourself?"

"Odd jobs," he said. "This month, I'm working at McDonald's. That'll last until we get robbed a few more times, or have a few more heart attack victims in the lobby, then I'll have to leave. Spread it around, ya' know? I get rewards a lot, but I have to give them back. It's sort of a code. Traditional."

Lacy looked at him with a loving expression of amused tolerance.

"You're an interesting guy, Connors. I really like you."

He expelled a short breath. "You don't believe a word of this, do you?"

Lacy shrugged. "Maybe not, but I like you anyway. Keep telling me about yourself."

"This is a waste of time," Mike told her. But he kept going, anyway.

"Eventually, I moved away from home. But other than the location, nothing was different. Same old story--save a few lives, put out a few fires, bust a few criminals. It got repetitive. Everywhere I went, people thought I was the one bringing the trouble. That was wrong, though. I just happened to be where it was happening. Crimes and fires never happened more often when I was in town. I just happened to be there when they were happening. Still, I've had to leave more places than I can remember. Eventually, I decided to go where I was needed.

"So I went south. I spent time in Lebanon, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cambodia, Laos. Northern Iraq, Yugoslavia. Most of Africa. Every hot spot the world had to offer. I've been shot and stabbed so many times I feel like a colander. But I never die. After a few years, I started to get suspicious. So I did a little research.

"I'm not the only one."

Lacy was captivated by her hero's romantic voice. She gazed into his dark eyes as he went on.

"I noticed that I kept running into the same people wherever I went. All different nationalities, religions, etcetera. But one thing they had in common was the fact that they were always where the action was. I mean, every time I went out with a patrol, it got hit bad. It was the same way with these guys. And they never died. So I started talking to them. They noticed it, too. And when we compared backgrounds, they weren't that different. Always a history of living in danger. So that's when I finally accepted my fate. I've been working it out, going through history books, wondering why no one had ever picked up on this. Then I realized that they had, only they hadn't known what they were looking at."

Mike paused for a moment, stared into his demitasse. In spite of herself, Lacy was beginning to believe his story, incredible as it was.

"So, what did you find?" she prompted.

Mike looked up at her, smiled. "In every generation, there are a few of us born. We have the right genes, the right destiny, the right knack for being in the right place at the right time. We are destined to be heroes. You see the archetypical hero on TV, and you think 'That's a great story, but it's not real.' Well, it is. People like that exist. They always have, and the movies are remarkably accurate. They tend to become cops, or firefighters, or soldiers, or mercenaries. They don't gravitate towards action--action gravitates towards them. Some of the greatest men of history were heroes, I suspect. Daniel Boone, Alexander the Great... certainly the Greek heroes. But most have been low-key, like me. I suppose we are a necessary safety measure. Without heroes, thousands of people would die each year. A very noble profession, I've been born into.

"Only problem is, I hate it."

"What?" cried Lacy. "How can you hate it?"

"It was never my choice. Hell, when I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be a dentist. I like to read, listen to classical music, play chess. But it doesn't fit the image. I can't live with myself. I hate shooting people, I hate getting dirty every time I go into a burning building. I don't like beer, or loose women. Whatever cosmic deity is responsible for delegating this role to human beings screwed up here. All the other guys are comfortable with what they do, they enjoy it. I'd rather be doing root canals. This just isn't me."

Lacy took his hand compassionately.

"You can be anything you want, if you work at it."

Mike shook his head. "No, you don't understand. I'd never get through med school. I can't study like this. You know how hard it is to memorize orthodontic nerves while library is going up in flames? No, I'm stuck with this."

"Isn't it a little dangerous? Don't you worry about dying?"

Mike leaned back and crossed his arms. "Not really," he said. "Will Rogers once said, 'The main thing about being a hero is to know when to die.' I figure that when the time comes, I'll know about it. Until then, I have nothing to worry about. A hero never dies until the end of the story. I've still got a few pages left."

The talk had depressed Mike, so Lacy walked him home. On the way there he stopped three muggings and gave first aid at one automobile accident. Lacy began to wonder if there was something to his story after all, but wrote it off to the neighborhood they were in.

"You seem to know first aid pretty well," she remarked as he tied a tourniquet around the accident victim's severed leg.

"Yeah, well, I have to. I took an EMT course when I was seventeen, and I've had a lot of practical field experience."

Lacy shut her mouth, and Mike finished ministering his aid. She left him at his apartment, promising to return tomorrow.

"If you change your mind, I won't cry about it," he grumbled to her. But Lacy wasn't about to change her mind. The strange, dashing young man appealed to her. She didn't give up that easily.

When she showed up the next day, Mike was in the hall talking with a couple of police officers. Several robbers had broken into his apartment during the night and gotten the surprise of their lives.

"Let's get out of here," Mike grumped to her when he was finished with the cops. "This is a high-crime neighborhood." So they hit the road, Lacy driving her rented Honda Accord. She headed towards a cafe she knew of downtown. It was in a much nicer section of town than Connors' apartment. On the way there, they had to stop once so Mike could patch up a child that had been hit by a car. Lacy wondered again if she was possibly being too skeptical about his story.

"So what makes you think we wouldn't work out together?" she asked as they sat down in the bar.

"There's nothing wrong with you, if that's what you mean," Mike told her. "It would be the same way with any woman. Don't you go to the movies? Girls who go out with heroes invariably end up getting kidnapped, or poisoned, or whatever. It's not a healthy idea."

"This isn't the movies, though. It's real life."

"Sure," Mike chortled, as though it were a private joke. "Listen," he informed her, "it happened to every girl I went out with in high school. Eventually, I got the hint. Now, it's one-night stands or nothing."

"I want to be more than a one-night stand."

Mike shrugged. "Then you've got a problem. Excuse me." He got up and dashed out the door, chased down a runaway car which was careening toward a day-care center, leaped into the empty driver's seat and brought it to a screeching halt bare inches from the front window. He returned to his seat across from Lacy, wheezing slightly. She decided that this was more than coincidence. Mike pulled out a small aerosol inhaler, stuck it in his mouth, and took a deep breath.

"What's that for?" Lacy asked.

"Asthma."

"I'm sorry, I've never heard of a hero with asthma."

"Had it ever since I was a kid. I told you, someone made a mistake here! I don't want to be a hero. I shouldn't be one, I'm not qualified. None of this comes naturally to me. I've had to work at everything. I didn't pass my black belt test the first seven times I took it. I'm scared of heights and enclosed spaces. The sight of blood makes me nauseous. Guns frighten me. It took me five tries to solo for my pilot's license..."

"Pilot's license?" Lacy interrupted.

"Yeah." Mike looked at her blankly. "Every time I get on a plane, the pilot has a heart attack or something. It's okay, now, though. I can land a 747 without bouncing the wheels."

"You are something else, Connors. I apologize, but I'm going to have to marry you." Lacy gave him her irresistibly cute look, the one that always worked on guys. Connors just shook his head.

"Sorry. Heroes can't get married. Wives die tragic deaths. I couldn't do that to you."

"So you like me?" Lacy asked, sensing a weak point.

"Yeah, okay, so I like you," he admitted. "But don't think that's going to change my mind."

"Oh, don't worry. I'll change your mind later, after we move in together."

Connors sighed. Sometimes, being a hero just wasn't worth it.

Lacy did move in, and though the move was interrupted by a light plane crash a couple of blocks away, things went smoothly for a month, with only the regular assortment of fires, crimes, and medical emergencies. Mike was beginning to wonder if he had been wrong in his predictions of trouble and was just starting to let himself get attached to her when she was kidnapped by an international crime syndicate that Connors had broken up several years previously. He groaned as he read the note they had left behind. He should have known better. Of course, nothing would happen to her until he started to fall in love with her! That was how it worked. Mike put on his coat and went out to save her. It was his job.

It was child's play for him to track down the kidnappers. He took the note in to an acquaintance in the police forensics lab, ran the resulting set of fingerprints through the computer with the aid of another old buddy on the force, took the name from that and had a pal run it through the Department of Motor Vehicles computer for an address. Mike had a lot of friends in the police department.

He went to the house at the address given and shook down the thug he found there. Mike used the tried and true method of shoving the man's head halfway into the burning fireplace until he talked.

"I don't know where they took her, man," the thug pleaded, perspiration beading his forehead. "Johnny knows, man, Johnny's the one who took her!"

After getting Johnny's address from the criminal Mike knocked the man out, tied him up, and locked him in the closet. He sighed. This girl was simply not worth the trouble she was causing. But Mike didn't have any choice now. Heroes did a lot of things, but quitting wasn't on the list.

Johnny's place was a typical criminal rathole of the type that Mike had seen around the world. Johnny was in, with two very attractive and very undressed young ladies, when Connors dropped by.

"Where'd they take the girl?" Connors grunted, dangling Johnny out the window by one foot while the girls screamed theatrically in the background.

"I ain't tellin' you, you fuckin' He-Man motherfucker!"

Mike smiled grimly and relaxed his grip. "I don't believe you!" he called as Johnny's pocket change clattered to the cement below.

"Jesus Christ! Okay, okay, all right! They're holding her in the warehouse at Seventh and Arlin. But if you show up, they're gonna fuck you up good!"

"Sure they are," Mike said, connecting Johnny's ankle to the window frame with a pair of handcuffs he had borrowed from one of the girls, who had fled by this time. He left the punk hanging and ransacked the man's apartment. He came up with a mean looking automatic shotgun, several grenades, and a submachine gun. Mike shook his head. He would never understand why two-bit criminals always seemed to have this stuff around when he, the hero, was the only one who seemed to know how to use any of it properly.

Connors didn't bother to sneak quietly into the warehouse and check things out before the confrontation began. It was expected that he would walk right in through the wide open front doors, sunlight silhouetting him perfectly for a careful shot by one of the thugs that were no doubt hiding behind every stack of boxes in sight. Mike wasn't worried about it. That wasn't quite how things worked in his world.

Sure enough, as soon as he reached the center of the concrete floor, the leader of the syndicate stepped from the shadows. Lacy was with him, bound and gagged, more fear in her eyes than Mike had ever expected to see there. Finally realizing what you got yourself into, aren't you, kid? he thought to himself. You should have listened to me earlier. The man wore an elegantly cut suit and a soft grey fedora, and had a thin, carefully groomed moustache. Mike couldn't remember his name right off hand. He was vaguely embarrassed.

"Ah, Mr. Connors, we meet again," the man said. His voice was definitely foreign, but the accent was absolutely unplacable. He sounded almost regal.

Mike was tired of voices like that.

"Listen, let's just cut the crap, alright?" he said, bored already. "Gimme the girl and turn yourself in to the cops and I won't have to tear this place apart piece by piece. This is your last chance." It was a little blunt, but Mike was in no mood to fool around. He would have just as soon done away with this entire scene, but it was traditional.

The man laughed, slightly nervously. Usually, the conversation was a bit more protracted. "I think that you will find that you are in no position to make demands of me, Mr. Connors." The man gestured to someone behind him and Connors sighed. As a large group of heavily armed criminals began to emerge from behind stacks of crates, the chief honcho withdrew with Lacy, and Mike went to work.

The roaring of the shotgun hurt Mike's ears and he realized that he had forgotten to bring his earplugs. Deaf for a week, at least, he thought grimly as he scattered sideways to stay out of the line of fire the goons were beginning to return.

Mike paused behind a crate to reload and toss a few grenades. He hated the damn little things and always tried to get rid of most of them as soon as he could. They scared him.

As the explosions began he was moving again, working his way stealthily through the smoke, firing at shadows here and there, maneuvering towards the rear of the building where Lacy and the head honcho had gone. A goon jumped out in front of him. In no mood for a fistfight, Connors leveled him with the shotgun. Another one jumped out and Mike found that he was out of ammo for the shotgun. He went a couple of rounds with the thug, remembered that he still had his pistol, drew it and shot the hapless criminal.

More thugs were appearing from the woodwork, and Mike thought that it might be a good time to use the submachine gun, so he did. When the dust cleared they were all dead. Tears streamed down Connors' cheeks.

"Godammit," he muttered, shaking his head painfully and popping out his contact lenses to scrape the grit off of them. "Fucking contacts."

The head gangster, of course, had disappeared out the back entrance with Lacy in tow. Mike was right behind them. He sprinted to catch up with the limo they were pulling away in, jumped at the last instant and got a decent grip on the antenna on the trunk. If car manufacturer's ever stopped putting those triangular antenna's on limousine trunks, Mike thought, he and his like would be screwed. As the car skidded down the road at forty miles an hour, Mike slithered across the roof and onto the windshield. The driver flicked on the windshield wipers.

"I hate it when they do that!" Mike yelled, punching through the glass and grabbing the driver by his collar. The car careened out of control into a ditch, knocking Connors briefly senseless. When he came to, he was engaged in a brisk fist fight with the driver and another thug passenger. The leader was dragging Lacy off through the snow, headed down the street away from the accident. Mike was mortified to catch a glimpse of a tall, unfinished skyscraper in that direction, its upper girders bare and glistening slickly.

"Mike!" she screamed. "Help! Help me!"

"Hang on," he grunted irritably, body slamming the driver and planting a foot in the other thug's groin. He stood and blinked away the wiper fluid which had run into his eyes. "Bastard," he hissed vehemently, kicking the unconscious driver again.

"HELP!" Lacy was screaming in the distance. "Mike! Save me!"

"Jesus Christ, I'm comin' already," he sighed, taking a hit from his aspirator and jogging toward the screams.

The bad guy had a good lead on him, though, and, as Mike had suspected, was already climbing the lower sections of the unfinished skyscraper. Mike sagged against a bare girder as Lacy screamed for help.

"Why do they always have to go up?" he moaned. Then he started up himself. A hail of gunfire met him at the first corner and Mike shot back more to make noise than anything. He didn't really want to hit Lacy, not that the idea didn't have some merit. The exchange of gunfire occurred every five corners or so, until they finally reached the top floor, which was all iced over girders and gaping holes.

"One step closer and the girl gets it!" snarled the bad guy as Mike cautiously wormed his way towards where the other two were perched on the edge of the building. Mike was a professional, though, and knew how to get around that problem.

"Come on," he said. "You don't want her, you want me. Let the girl go."

"Sure, I'll let her go," hissed the thug. He pushed Lacy towards the open end of the slick beam they stood on. She slipped and screamed, grasping at whatever purchase she could find. Mike was too busy to help.

He selected the best martial arts variation for the conditions and inched over to beat the snot out of the criminal. He ducked a poorly thrown left punch, landed a solid kick on the other's knee cap, then found himself spinning through the air as the gangster tackled him. Lacy screamed some more.

"Why are they always screamers?" Mike wondered aloud as he got the pulp beat out of him. Finally, he had had enough.

Connors lanced a kick towards the crook's left hand, where a knife had just appeared. The knife spun away and suddenly Mike was on his feet and beating the other man backwards against the magnificent white backdrop of the city, and it almost seemed to him that he could hear the stirring theme music playing in the background as they fought.

The bandit was driven out onto the edge of the building. He was begging, now.

"Please, I got a wife and kids. I'll make it worth your while to let me go! Come on, fella, I got the right to a trial by jury, right?"

"Up here," Mike informed him, "I'm the jury." He slammed a hard right into the man's face, then began to pull him back in. Heroes didn't kill in cold blood. But the criminal pushed his luck and took another swing at Mike. Mike lost his grip with the impact and the gangster began a long spin to the pavement twenty stories below.

"I told you this would happen," Mike growled as he hoisted Lacy to safety.

She was flushed with fear and excitement. Mike thought it was mostly fear until she started talking.

"Wow! That was incredible! That chase, the fistfight... My god, that's the most fun I've had since I was a kid!"

"Oh, for Christ's sake," Mike groaned.

"You saved my life," Lacy said gratefully. "I love you, Connors."

"You mean even this isn't going to get rid of you? This won't be the last time this happens, you know."

"I hope not!" Lacy gushed. "That was terrific. Oh, Mike, we're going to be so happy together!"

"Jesus Christ," Mike repeated. In the distance, police sirens wailed closer and closer. Wind whipped Lacy's blond hair across her pretty face and loving expression. Mike shook his head and turned to face the open city beneath him so that she couldn't see his face.

Lacy knew that this was the man for her. He stood silently perched on the edge of forever, his chiseled face into the wind, cutting a handsome picture. Lacy sighed.

"My hero...."