by Kay Hooper
An office. No, a boardroom. And men with the hard, tough faces garnered in living in a corporate jungle. A dark and handsome man sat at the head of the table, and his rather cold blue eyes warmed when he looked back at the man in fatigues standing to indicate a set of blueprints on display.
Another place, screaming of danger. Men with guns, and a dark-haired woman and two teenage girls with terrified faces. A swift, hard battle, with the man in fatigues taking down a gunman in effortless silence.
A storm-tossed island and a flimsy vessel. A blond man and a man with copper hair and a woman with a beautiful face and sea-green eyes. And the man in fatigues carrying guns and explosives, and another man brought out of a cell. And a large vessel that became an even larger one, and champagne to celebrate—
A rotund little man with brilliant eyes in a cherub’s face, a man with a voice of authority who thought he was Charlemagne and Richard and Lincoln and Machiavelli.… And the man in fatigues gathering equipment and going to war again, because it was wrong not to, and this time he would fight alone.
The images whirled madly, confused, as if some capricious winds snatched at them. And then they steadied, focused, and she saw him again. And he was no longer set apart by the clothing of a warrior. He was no longer alone.
Teddy opened her eyes, the images gone as swiftly as they had come. She was sitting up, hugging her knees, the cards forgotten. She was shocked, as anyone would be when confronted by the inexplicable, but she was not frightened. She had, in a sense, been preparing for that dizzying journey all her life.
It happened only once, her mother had told her. And who knew if it came from a Scot with second sight or a Gypsy with an enigmatic gift. But it came once in a lifetime. An intense vision of past and present and future. A gift of understanding when that was most needed.
And Teddy looked at Zach, seeing that her silent journey had not disturbed him. She looked at him—and understood.
He had worn no uniform in the streets of New York. No uniform in boardrooms or in small houses where dangerous things happened. He had worn no uniform on a storm-battered island. Those parts of the images had been symbolic.
He was a warrior, a man of hard danger, born in the hazardous jungles of the world. A lone wolf who had friends but who stood apart from them by choice. “He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.” Kipling again. Wise Kipling.
She knew now why her memory of the cougar had risen in her mind. Because Zach was like that big cat. He didn’t blame the woman who had hurt him so badly. He blamed himself. It was his own stupid fault for getting into that mess. And now he’d be damned if he did it again. He wouldn’t let himself step into the jaws of a trap and watch it mangle a part of him.
Teddy drew a ragged breath, even her determined nature staggered by the odds against her. She guarded the small nugget of hope nestling inside her, the promise of the final image that had flashed before her, but she also knew how tough the battle would be.
She had to tame the wild heart of a jungle warrior, had to chip away at the suspicious, protective layers of iron he had wrapped himself in. She had to coax a lone wolf to walk willingly at her side.
She knew what her motive was now.
And she knew he’d never believe her.
“I have to go out for a while,” he told her.
Teddy was still sitting as before, but her forehead was resting against her raised knees. She didn’t dare look at him, struggling to master a tumult of emotions every bit as primitive as the physical sensations of the morning had been. Her understanding of him and of what he was to her had somehow severed the threads of her control, leaving her nakedly vulnerable.
“All right,” she responded.
“You won’t—?”
“I won’t try to leave.” She felt more than heard him step closer, and grappled against the urge to look at him.
“Are you all right, Teddy?” The stiffness was leaving his voice, replaced by concern.
She hugged her knees harder. “Yes.” How insane! I’ve never been less right in my life! Or more right. Oh, God, help me. She could feel his hesitation, the instant’s suspension. Then he was shrugging into his shoulder harness and gathering a few other things. She kept her eyes closed, but she could almost see what he was doing. The door closed quietly.
Teddy looked up—and froze. “That’s cheating,” she whispered.
He was standing at the door, staring at her. He had known she wouldn’t look up until she thought him gone, she realized. And now he was gazing at her, his brows drawing together in a frown, and she knew her face was white, her eyes wild.
Well, dammit, she thought half hysterically, a woman didn’t fall in love with a lone-wolf warrior every day. It was bound to be a shock to her system.
“Something is wrong,” he said, taking a step toward her.
She was quite literally gritting her teeth, fighting a powerful, wild, mad urge to grab him with both hands and hold on for dear life. Somewhere in her was a small astonishment that she could feel with such devastating strength, but another part of her was gloriously elated by it. It would require, she thought, a strength like that to catch and hold a wolf.
“Teddy?”
She felt herself smiling, and wondered what kind of smile it looked like. It felt dreadful. In a wonderfully conversational tone with only a trace of huskiness, she said, “If I were you, I’d leave. You see, I’m not quite safe at the moment.”
He looked bewildered—as well he might, she thought.
She drew a deep breath and held on to her knees tightly. “Zach, I don’t want to make you mad just now, and if I told you what I’m feeling, I’m afraid you’d get mad. You’ll get mad, anyway, of course, but I can’t handle it at the moment.”
“Dammit, Teddy—”
As the lesser of two evils, she told him part of what she was feeling. “I want you,” she said baldly. “Rather badly. So would you go away for a while, please?”
A hot flare of response lit his eyes almost instantly, but then he swore softly and quickly turned away. And this time he really did leave the cabin.
Teddy just sat there trembling for a long time, trying to find some way of controlling these incredible feelings. She was finally able to get up and went into the bathroom on shaking legs to splash cold water on her face. It didn’t really help. She hadn’t really expected it to.
Good Lord, she thought bemusedly, how could a body that didn’t fully know what it was all about want it so badly? And what about these other feelings, the tangle of love and tenderness and pain and longing? How did people survive this? She was aching, trembling, hot inside with a need that seemed to be tearing her apart.
She wanted Zach. It sounded so simple, but everything she felt told her it wasn’t. She wanted to sob, to laugh, to cry out wildly in order to release whatever was tearing at her to get out. She wanted to hold on tightly to Zach because he would anchor her in the chaos of a world gone mad.
If a bargain with the devil would have assured her of his love, she would have fought her way to hell and demanded it.
Teddy paced. She walked the confined space of the cabin, jerkily at first, then methodically, groping for control, for exhaustion, for anything that would ease the torment. She ate three apples and half a bunch of bananas, instinctively trying to assuage an aching hunger that no amount of food would satisfy.
And finally it was exhaustion that she found. She curled up on the bed, hugging a pillow that was too soft and not nearly large enough, her eyes stinging hotly and her body throbbing with the dull soreness of something battered. Her world had narrowed to this, and no one had warned her that it hurt so much.
It was stillness that woke her. Stillness inside of her. The emotions that had scratched and clawed to escape were quiet now, waiting for … something. She could still feel them, but what had battered before stroked gently now. As if a storm had passed, leaving quiet and peace in its wake.
No, she thought, not quite peace. She was
just in the eye of the hurricane, that was all.
She sat up slowly, pushing the pillow away, realizing that she had held it so fiercely in sleep that her arms and shoulders ached. She stretched stiffly, feeling tired, looking at Zach where he sat at the table and watched her silently.
She glanced at the equipment, murmuring, “You aren’t listening anymore.”
“The tapes are voice-activated,” he said. “I won’t miss anything.” And then he frowned, staring at her curiously pale face and wondering what it was about her casual questions that pulled things from him with such effortless ease. It was a fleeting concern, however; he was worried about her.
Teddy misread the frown. “Oh, I don’t care what you’re doing up here, Zach,” she said wearily. “I probably know, anyway. Not why, maybe, but certainly what. There’s a house through the woods, near where my car died, and you’ve got it bugged. I heard an engine in the distance just before you went out. You knew they were gone and you went out there to check on something. Okay? If somebody pulls out my fingernails, that’s all I could tell them.”
“It’s serious, Teddy,” he said, a little harshly. “And damned dangerous.”
“Right,” she murmured, pulling the rubber band from her hair to free the ponytail. “Stolen gems and art treasures, I’d guess. I don’t know why they’d be way up here. Because it’s unlikely, I suppose. Because that house out there is a conduit, maybe, passing the stuff through to somewhere else.”
Zach gazed at her for a long moment, bothered by this new, vulnerable mood of hers. Bothered by the way she had slept, hugging the pillow with a kind of desperation. And he was also disturbed because she didn’t seem to grasp the danger of this, and that could get her killed. He didn’t like what he felt at the thought of her being in real danger.
“You’ve got part of it,” he admitted suddenly. “Gems and artwork stolen recently are finding their way to that house. But if that were the only thing, the police could move in now.”
“And you suspect there’s a good deal more to it.” She leaned back against the wall, watching him and very aware of the dull ache of need inside her. The storm …
“Yes. The valuables in the house have been carefully acquired and are intended to be used in barter.”
“For what?”
“Guns.”
Teddy frowned. “You mean that the people in the house gather up a bunch of priceless art and jewelry and then trade them to somebody for weapons?”
“That’s what I mean.”
“But why? How?”
“Those are the questions I’m up here to answer. The best guess for ‘why’ is that they’re going to turn around and sell the guns to needy armies in Third World countries—or terrorists. Or maybe that’s what they are themselves. We don’t have any guess at all for ‘how,’ but since it’s not all that easy to get large shipments of weapons out of this country, it’s a safe bet that somebody official is being well paid to turn a blind eye.”
She stared at him wonderingly. “But who would be able to get a shipment that big into the country in the first place?”
Zach wondered fleetingly how long it had been since he himself might have asked that innocent question. Years. A lifetime. He sighed a little. “Anybody with enough money and the right connections. In this case, we think there are two men, both very wealthy and as pure as the driven snow. Each is a collector of rare artwork and gems, with private vaults built expressly for everything not acquired legitimately. They covet art and don’t give a sweet damn how they get it.”
After a moment she said slowly, “So you’re up here to trace the—route? Where the artwork goes from here, who gets it, and how the guns get out of the country?”
“That’s it, roughly. The valuables are stolen by a well-organized ring of thieves; Interpol has them pegged but is waiting for us to get this end of the mess nailed down. A professional courtesy. We know how the stuff gets this far. Another—someone else is working on the matter of how so many arms are being sold to private citizens.”
“Another agent,” she murmured.
Zach hesitated, then said firmly, “I’m temporary. Paying back a favor, you might say.”
“I see. No badge.”
“Not officially, no.”
Teddy nodded. “So, you’re going to follow the artwork when it’s shipped out?”
“That’s the plan. I’ve had the place bugged hoping to hear something interesting about how the trade will be made, but so far there’s been nothing. They’re waiting for a few more things to arrive before the stuff is moved.”
“Do you know where the shipment of arms is?”
“We know. And somebody will be watching carefully to see how it’s taken out of the country. Needless to say, the guns will never reach their destination.”
After a moment he said, “Sheer luck that we found a trail to follow. People who steal artwork don’t usually involve themselves with arms—and vice versa. But we know this is one organization: the thieves and the men who trade the valuables for arms. We also know they’ve completed trades successfully in the past.”
Teddy looked at him, conscious of the stillness that remained. It encased her, as protective as a blanket of peace. But she could feel the storm. Waiting. Swirling all around her. The threat of it was the promise of that terrible need. That aching anguish that she could feel now only dully.
“Why tell me this now?” she asked finally, quietly.
His mouth firmed, and a muscle tightened in his jaw. “I said we knew they’d been successful before. They’ve also killed. Coldly and with utter businesslike professionalism. They don’t leave loose ends dangling, Teddy. They’re killers, pure and simple. I wanted you to know that, to believe that. Every hour they remain in the house increases the chance that somebody’ll find one of the bugs. And if they do, they’ll start looking. For us.”
She thought about that. They were close enough, she knew, to be easily found. She wasn’t frightened by that, though, because Zach was here; with danger threatening, he was an immensely comforting man, and she knew without even thinking about it that he would take care of her, protect her.
Oddly enough, her only reaction to Zach’s disclosure of his lawful, if unofficial, reason for being here was a mental Well, of course. Some inner part of her had never believed he was here for a nefarious purpose.
Teddy listened to the distant thunder of her inner storm and wondered how long she could hold it at bay. Not long. Not long at all. And her mind methodically considered the sequence of events that measured the time left to her.
“I see. So when the artwork is shipped out, you’ll follow?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you didn’t have a car up here.”
“I don’t. I have a Jeep.”
She considered berating him for splitting hairs earlier but dismissed it as unimportant. “Oh. And you’ll drop me off somewhere along the way?”
His mouth firmed again. “I’ll put you on a plane to your sister. And I’ll see to it that there’s a replacement for your car waiting for you.”
Teddy looked at him, feeling tired, feeling too many other things. “Remember the Alamo,” she murmured.
“What?”
She was really too tired to fight him, to fight his mistaken belief—and it had to be that—that she was being overwhelmed by the unusual circumstances surrounding them. That she was being seduced by those circumstances, rather than by him. Too tired. But she didn’t have a choice.
“I’m a sucker for lost causes,” she said, clarifying nothing except to herself.
“Teddy, what are you talking about?” he asked with vast patience.
She held the storm at bay. “Some women are stupid,” she said. “That doesn’t mean we all are. Some women can be deceived by their own emotions but that doesn’t mean we all can be.”
He knew what she was talking about now, and his face closed down into remoteness. In a flat, decisive tone he said, “You haven’t been listening to m
e. This is a dangerous situation, and you will be out of it just as soon as possible.”
And out of my life.
Teddy rolled the dice and watched to see how they landed. “I love you, Zach.”
His head moved faintly, an uncontrolled and unconscious gesture of negation. “No. This time yesterday you didn’t even know me.”
She laughed softly, almost without being aware of it. “Yes. But things always happen fast in my life. I should have expected love to be no different.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” he told her flatly.
It would not be a good time to prove that she did indeed know a great deal about him; it would be too difficult to explain just now. Instead, she shrugged. “That doesn’t seem to matter.”
“It should matter. It would—if we were somewhere else.”
Teddy shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I know what I feel.”
His eyes narrowed, and his entire body looked taut. In a voice that was harsh he said, “Then know you’ll get over it. Know it won’t last the time it’ll take to get down off this mountain. Know that, Teddy.”
It was my own stupid fault, and I won’t let it happen again.
She fought a rising despair, wondering how she could convince him. And then she knew that only time would convince him—if she were granted that time and the ability to use it—and the storm pushed inward to remind her of the anguish of uncertainty and waiting. She could literally feel herself pale, and she saw his hard eyes flicker.
“What if I don’t get over it?” she asked.
“You will.” He swore suddenly, harshly. “Don’t look at me like that!”
Teddy dropped her gaze to focus on her knees. Instinct told her that no amount of arguing with Zach would help. Not here, at least, and not now. And the only avenue left open to her was the disturbing, painful one leading to the storm she felt … and which he felt at least partially. She wanted him; he wanted her. That was all she had.