Cold Fire

Cold Fire was published in 1991 so it's a review of an older book but given it's similarity to Ashley Bell, I decided to review it too. Spoiler Warning.
Cold Fire has two main characters:

• James "Jim" Madison Ironheart. He is a 35 year old man with piercing blue eyes who saves peoples lives with the aid of a higher force.
• Holly Thorne. She is a 33 year old disenfranchised reporter in Portland.

As I stated above Jim saves people's lives. Holly witnesses him save a little boy, Billy Jenkins, in Portland. She gets his first and last name as well as where he is from before he disapears. From there is does so reseach and discovers Jim has saved 14 others, at least:

• May 15 1991: Sam 15 and Emily 5 in Georgia
• Jun 07 1991: Louis 28 in California
• Jun 21 1991: Thaddeus 12 in New York
  
• Jun 30 1991: Rachel 22 in California
  
• Jul 05 1991: Carmen 30 in Florida
• Jul 14 1991: Amanda 30 in Texas
• Jul 20 1991: Steven 57 in Alabama
• Aug 01 1991: Laura 28 in Washington
• Aug 12 1991: Doogie 11 in Illinois
• Aug 20 1991: Lisa 30 and Susie 10 in the Mojave
• Aug 23 1991: Nicholas 6 in Massachusetts

In researching she notices some patters to what Jim calls Life Lines. Of the 14 people, 6 were children 12 and under, 7 were 23-30, only 1 was an older man. 7 were women and 7 were men. 8 were saved from murder while 6 from accidents.
Holly finds one last article about Jim dated April 10th 1991 where it was reported he won $6 million in a lottery.
After having a horrible nightmare about a windmill she decides to stalk Jim. That sounds disconnected but it's not.
She flies to southern California to interview a women who knows Jim. She learns he was an English teacher for 10 years. During that time he was dedicated and had a fantastic relationship with students. In his last year teaching he had a student, Larry Kakonis 13, kill himself. Jim had worked really had with kid who was suffering from a violent home life and his death on May 15th 1990 hit Jim hard. From then he became very depressed and with drawn and started taking martial arts lessons. After that he won the lottery and quit teaching.
Jim gets a Life Line and hops on a plane with Holly following him like a legit stalker. He is there to save Christine and Casey. Holly pressures him to do more. She says if he knows the plane is going to crash and he lets people die it is tantamount to murder. That also hits Jim hard. Here is an important theme of the book, the heroes burden. Jim does his best to save more lives by talking to the pilot, he finds the higher force that tells & compels him to save lives also gives him the information to do so by essentially speaking through him. He ends up saving 200 lives while about 50 still perished in the crash.
Holly follows him back to his house and literally sets up in his back yard refusing to leave when he asks her on multiple occasions. Finally he gives in and lets her inside agreeing to answer her questions. MAN does she make her self at home too! She takes a shower and they cook dinner together in what is really a believable scenario...
He reveals he's had Life Lines in France, England, Germany, and twice in Japan.
She confronts him about the windmill dream, which is a nightmare he has also endured for years. The windmill actually exists on his grandparents property upstate. He says that his grandma died 5 years ago and his grandfather followed 8 months after her. Adding that his father, an accountant, and mother, an actress, had died when he was 10 in an auto accident.
After the conversation they have sex then share a nightmare again. Except this time when they wake up, the entity in the nightmare known as The Enemy follows them into the real world. So the decide to get to the bottom of things by going to the real windmill.
Jim and Holly drive up to Jim' childhood town and he gives her a brief tour of the small city. Showing her a corner store which is the only one in town, library where he spent most of his time, a park where a movie was shot, and a guy who in his youth was a relentless bully.
After the tour they go to the Ironheart Farm which had belong to Lena and Henry Ironheart, his paternal grandparents and now belongs to him. Holly finds it odd that despite the fact they died 5 years prior the house still has working electricity, is clean, and still has all their belongings. She considers it like a mausoleum. Jim has a reasonable explanation, after having just gone through his grandmother's death he felt it too hard to come back and box up everything. Given everything he's lost in his life that seems understandable. Yes, Holly doesn't understand it.
In the windmill they are quickly confronted by THE FRIEND, an entity of light that communicates with them by causing words to appear on paper. So it's non-corporeal. It tells them it's an alien that's been on Earth for 10,000 years though it lives in the past, present, and future at once. He claims to be there to help mankind by using Jim as a tool to save people who will be special or have important children.
The Friend also explains The Enemy is there with him.
Holly thinks the Friend and Enemy are one in the same and doesn't believe it's telling the truth.
She has two more upsetting nightmares. One involving an older woman coming upstairs to see a young Jim in the Windmill and the The Friend. The other is a man with a gun in a fast food restaurant, Dixie Duck, killing people then coming after her. She asks Jim about it but he claims to not know anything.
She goes back inside Jim's grandparents house and sees a photo of Jim's grandmother who is the woman from her first dream. She is confused as to why Jim said he didn't recognize the woman from her dream as his grandma when she describer her in vivid detail. It's then she realized the truth. Jim IS the Friend and the Enemy!
Realizing that he hasn't been lying to her but has repressed the truth from himself she decides to help him because she's in love with him. GIRL IT'S BEEN TWO DAYS!
She also realizes the tour he gave her when the came to town holds clues to the truth. So after an hilarious conversation where she straight up tells him she things he has "telepathic, telekinetic and tele-everything" powers as wells as a severely strange case of DID they go off to take the tour again but this time talk to people.
This kind of angered me. Ok so Jim subconsciously wants Holly to help his and was dropping clues to the truth that he has buried deep down. The Friend is sort of the mental band aid that helps him function and gives him purpose. The Enemy is the part of him the needs for the horrible memories he holds to stay buried and keeps him sane. Holly decides she can just cure DID. ok. sure. She's sure truth is the salvation. He is skeptic, as he should be.
The people they talk to in the small town have some big revelations about Jim's past.
They learn when he moved there when he was 10 and was nearly mute and extremely withdrawn.
They further discover a movie was filmed there that was based on a book. The book is a bout a little boy who walks to an alien known as The Friend who is there to "better mankind"... sounds familiar.
The biggest discovery comes when they learn Lena, Jim's grandma, died when he was 10 less than a year after he moved in with his grandparents... not 5 years ago. And his grandfather is alive in a nursing home he went to apx 5 years ago after suffering a stroke.
From Jim's grandfather Holly learns:
More about the mentalist act. Apparently Henry's wife Lena would sometimes just know things. Their son, Jamie, had the same gift but he was even more powerful. Jim inherited this from them and his skills were off the scales. At 4 he could know things by just touching an object, by 8 he could levitate objects.
As it turns out his father was an accountant and his mother was an actress until he was 4 ;then they started a Mentalist Act as a family unit which they did around the country from the time he was 4 until their deaths when he was 10. They died in the Dixie Duck, shot and killed by a madman with a gun along with 22 other people. Jim was the only survivor and was found in his dead fathers lap covered in his blood. HOLY &*%&.
Jim felt responsible given his abilities he believed he should have been able to stop the shooter. He suffers survivors guilt.
He moved in with his grandparents and Henry described him as behaving strangely. He said they tried. He became obsessed with books, the one about the alien especially. One night Lena went to the Windmill when she realized he snuck out over there to bring him back to the house when she saw the apparition that Jim conjured, frightened she fell down the stairs and died. Seeing the dead windmill rotating and a light on Henry went over later on that night to find his wife at the bottom of the stairs dead and in a moment of grief... he blamed 10 year old Jim. The really awful part is he went on blaming him for his wife's death until Jim left for college.
In his years away Jim never returned him until his grandfather, Henry, had the stroke. He came to see him and suffering Aphasia Henry botched the apology he meant to deliver. In trying to say he did not blame Henry he unintentionally called him a murder. Ya know, as one does.
That along with the suicide of one of his students really pushed Jim over an already unsteady edge.
Once this is all out in the open Jim has a slight break down. Can you blame him? Holly tells him she loves him and if he kills himself she will just have to kill herself to which stops him. He finally has a heart to heart with his grandfather then essentially passes out for like a full day.
Holly in concerned during this time that when Jim wakes up he won't be the same, that all the pain of the truth he hid away from himself coming to the surface will have destroyed him. She wonders if he will still have such extreme powers. Lastly, she wonders if he will still love her.
When he finally does wake up he tells her to pack up, they have a Life Line, 26 people on a bus need saving and thus starts their mission to make the world a better place for mankind.