Zach's Law

by Kay Hooper

  “All right,” she said softly. “Let’s assume for the sake of argument that I’ll get over it. Maybe you’re right and I will.” Every word was a stab, but she bore the pain. “Still, neither of us can deny that we want each other. And there’s no risk of pregnancy.”

  “There’s always a risk,” he said, interrupting curtly.

  She looked at him then, and in her eyes was the pain of someone who loved children and knew only too well that she would be lucky indeed to have even one of her own. “No risk,” she repeated softly. “It took my parents ten years to get me, and Jenny was nothing less than a miracle—the doctor said so. Jenny’s miscarried twice, and my doctor tells me I’ll be lucky if I get even that far.”

  She squared her shoulders and met his unreadable eyes with a bedrock certainty in her own. “Everyone has their own beliefs and their own right to them, and I would never judge them by my own standards. But there is one thing you have to know, Zach, one thing you can be certain of. If, by some incredible bit of luck, I managed to conceive, there wouldn’t be an abortion. That’s something I could never do.”

  He looked away first, jerkily, something hot and a little wild flickering suddenly in his eyes. “All the more reason,” he said roughly.

  She drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Then you won’t make love to me?”

  “No.” It was a bitten-out sound.

  Teddy felt the surge of the storm and chewed her lip briefly. No pride. Dammit, it even stole pride. But that was only a fleeting realization, a distant pain.

  She had rolled the dice and lost. But she wasn’t finished. She would gamble everything she had, keep rolling the dice until there was nothing left.

  She looked at her watch, struggling to bring it into focus and absently realizing that she’d slept for several hours. “Those men are still gone?”

  For a moment Zach seemed startled, as if he’d braced himself for argument, for persuasion. “Yes,” he said finally, sending her an oblique glance.

  Teddy slid off the cot, straightening her clothes with automatic movements. She was aware of his eyes following her, and strove to keep her face calm. But behind the facade she was thinking with a clarity born of need.

  He wouldn’t believe her, wouldn’t let himself believe her. All right, then. So be it. If she couldn’t convince his stubborn mind, she’d work on other parts of him. Somehow. The big, tough body that she knew wanted hers. And the heart she was sure lay hidden deep within him, encased in the protective metallic armor of a warrior.

  She wondered if the Gypsy had fought for her Scot and thought that she probably had.

  Teddy wished she had seen just a bit more of that final image, wished she could be sure. But how often was certainty of the future given to mortals?

  Silent and at least outwardly calm, she began preparing an evening meal for them.

  FOUR

  SARAH LEWIS WAS a familiar sight in the building housing Long Enterprises, and she knew her way around quite well. Greetings followed her as she made her way up to the fifteenth floor, where she expected to find her husband despite the fact that his own suite of offices was two floors up. She hardly needed an identification badge to gain access to the security-conscious fifteenth, but she wore one nevertheless—and the security guard at the desk near the elevator didn’t even glance at it.

  “Morning, Mrs. Lewis.”

  “Hi, Phil.” Her voice was soft and a bit shy, and the guard looked with pleasure at her bright hair and serene eyes.

  While she signed the register he asked how Junior was doing on this fine morning, and the glow in her eyes seemed to intensify even as she laughed.

  “Fine, thanks.” She patted her rounded stomach, over which a gay yellow sign imprinted on her terrycloth shirt proclaimed the presence of a baby on board. “Rafferty’s here, isn’t he?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. In Mr. Kendrick’s office.”

  Sarah waved her thanks and went on down the hall. She could hear the steady humming of computers in the offices she passed, but didn’t pause until she reached a corner office. The door was open, and she went in, saying as a greeting, “We’re going to have to name him Junior; everybody expects it.”

  “Over my dead body,” her husband promised, looking up to smile at her.

  “It sounds original to me,” Lucas decided without looking up from the computer screen busily flashing data.

  “Nobody asked you,” Rafferty told him, then lifted a questioning brow at his lovely wife.

  “I used a bit of blackmail,” she said, sounding not in the least perturbed about it. “Emotional. Looked teary-eyed and anxious. He’s treating me like glass these days, so I thought I could probably get away with it. I think pregnant women make him nervous,” she added thoughtfully.

  Lucas turned from the computer to face them, grinning a little. “Then by all means let’s make him nervous.”

  Rafferty caught his wife’s hand and led her to one of the chairs in front of the desk, sitting on the arm of the second one himself. “So what did your esteemed boss cough up?” he asked.

  “Not much,” she admitted, an expression of frustration briefly crossing her delicate face. “He did confess that Zach is working for him, in Colorado of all places. He promised that—this time—he had been completely truthful about the assignment. Zach knows exactly what’s going on, according to Hagen, and is in possession of all relevant information.” She stopped, looking suddenly uneasy.

  Lucas sighed and ran a hand through his silvery hair, while Rafferty cursed quietly.

  “All relevant information,” the investigator repeated dismally. “Great. If Hagen were directing Grant’s army, his idea of relevant information would be to tell him to head south.”

  “I vote we go kill him,” Rafferty said in a dispassionate tone.

  “Zach will take care of that later,” Lucas decided. “If he lives through this. Hell.”

  “There has to be some way we can find out what’s going on,” Sarah told the men.

  Her husband rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, then looked across the desk at Lucas. “Wonder if Kelsey’s in this one.”

  “He seems to turn up every time we do,” Lucas agreed.

  Correctly reading the men’s faces, Sarah objected, “He’ll be low-profile, surely, even if not actually undercover; how will you find him?”

  Lucas lifted a brow at Rafferty. “Raven?”

  “She could probably find him, even now. And Josh wasn’t at all happy to find out that Zach’s ‘vacation’ is nothing of the kind. They’ll be flying in from Canada tonight.”

  Lucas shook his head. “You know, I sometimes wonder if Hagen really does plan to get all of us into his little games.”

  “Don’t even think about that,” Rafferty begged, horrified.

  After a moment Sarah said, “I can tell you one thing about Zach’s assignment. He surprised Hagen. A coded message came from Zach last night. I didn’t decode it, but it was on Hagen’s desk this morning, and he was muttering the last word of the message as if he couldn’t believe it.”

  “What was the message?” Rafferty asked.

  Sarah’s retentive memory enabled her to recite the message verbatim. “It said: ‘Essential you replace with new ’66 Impala destroyed in unavoidable circumstances. Have replacement car waiting at Logan Airport, Boston, Friday latest. Held in the name of T. Tyler, noncombatant.’ That was it.”

  Lucas, who had flown up to Boston the day before, winced slightly and said, “I’m glad I didn’t know about that when I talked to Jennifer Morton and told her that her sister was fine. Wonder how the car was destroyed? And, even granting that Hagen wouldn’t want to replace the car, why would that message surprise him so much?”

  They looked at one another uneasily, and Rafferty said, “Hagen kept repeating the word noncombatant?”

  “Over and over,” Sarah confirmed. “As if he simply couldn’t believe it.”

  All of them felt it should mean something, but since they weren’t privy
to Hagen’s thoughts, none of them knew just what that something was.

  Zach was proof against most things. Once determined on what was, in fact, a logical and reasonable decision, few had been known to change his mind. Argument rolled off his back like water off a tiled roof, and gentle persuasion failed to penetrate his tough hide and even tougher will. Strong men had been known to pale at the mere thought of attempting to alter his will, and women had exercised their wiles in vain. Even Josh Long, whom Zach respected and loved like a brother, knew better than to try to sway his friend from some personal decision.

  So Zach, though grimly aware of his own desire, had little doubt that he could keep things between him and Teddy platonic. But he braced himself for the storm of her persuasion, nonetheless, because he knew women well enough to have accurately read the determination in Teddy’s firm little chin.

  He braced himself for a storm, mentally blocking the chinks in his willpower and fiercely leashing his own blustering beast. And he settled down to wait it out. But Zach had forgotten that sometimes a gentle rain can seep into places where a gusty downpour would merely batter and roll off in vain.

  She said little that second night together, not sulking or brooding, merely thoughtful and silent. She watched him when she thought he didn’t see, her great velvety eyes as deep and soft as a doe’s. She remained pale, and sometimes she winced, as if something inside her twinged in pain, but to his questions replied only that she was fine. And she said nothing else about wanting or loving him and made no objection when he rolled out a sleeping bag and got into it late that night when the denizens of the house slept.

  Nor did she try her hand at seduction. She changed for sleeping but wore a sweatshirt-type nightgown that fell to her knees and fit loosely. And she said good night in a quiet voice when the battery-powered lamp was turned off.

  It was some time later that Zach learned there were things more dangerous to chinks than downpours.

  There were tears.

  He had allowed his own breathing to deepen and become even but remained awake, staring up at the blackness of the raftered ceiling. He had gotten no sleep the night before and he was tired, but the power of his desire for her tormented him and made sleep impossible. The small room seemed to close in on him, reducing the few feet between his bed and Teddy’s until he felt as if he were standing over her and listening to the faint sounds of her breathing.

  And they were faint sounds; even in the silence of the cabin, average ears would have heard nothing. But Zach had trained his ears in jungles, and he heard.

  He heard the soft, steady breathing, and his mind tortured him with images of her breasts rising and falling. The images taunted him: creamy mounds that just filled his palms, tipped with coral and heavy with desire. He closed his eyes, fighting himself, remembering why he had to.

  Because once, he hadn’t. Because once, he had believed eyes looking at him in excited wonder, believed his own tangle of emotions. Desire, as heated and primitive as the jungles it was born in, had deceived him, just as it had deceived her. And deception had not cushioned those final blows. They might not have loved, but the stiffness in her, the fear in her eyes when she looked at him in her father’s elegant house, had hurt. And the knowledge that she—

  He didn’t want to think about that. Didn’t want to think about what it had done to him to find that out.

  That was why he had to fight himself. Because he couldn’t allow anything like that to happen again. What Teddy felt, she believed to be real, and he knew that. But he also knew far better than she could ever know how circumstances and surroundings could deceive the mind, color the emotions.

  And he knew he wouldn’t be able to bear its happening again. Not with Teddy. Even if there were no consequences of the act, if they became lovers and she afterward looked at him in fear, in the uneasy recognition that he didn’t belong in her world, in the real world, he thought it would probably tear him apart.

  Odd that he knew that. Odd that he felt so certain—

  Zach stiffened suddenly, and something deep inside him lurched with a painful movement. She was crying.

  There wasn’t a sound to betray her. No sobs or sniffles. Just a break in the even sound of her breathing, a catch that was almost silent. But he knew. As if he were indeed standing over her and watching a silver trail of tears, he knew.

  Zach had done many difficult things in his life, from the physically exhausting to the mentally and emotionally draining. But he had never done anything harder than lying there, muscles taut, body aching, listening without moving to the heart-wrenching sounds of Teddy’s quiet tears.

  She had fallen asleep around an hour later, but it was much longer before Zach followed suit. And he slept heavily, waking with a start just after dawn to find that she was already up and dressed—and he hadn’t heard.

  How had he not heard, or at least sensed, movements all around him? Did he trust to the point of feeling completely unthreatened in her presence? To the point of allowing the ever-vigilant senses born in the jungle to sleep when they had never before slept with someone nearby?

  It was a jarring shock to realize that he did trust her that much.

  With its windows covered and door tightly fitted, almost no light could find its way into the cabin. Teddy had turned on the battery lamp, and she dropped to one knee beside his sleeping bag before his eyes could no more than begin to open.

  Through his lashes he saw only part of her. He saw her hand, braced on her thigh. He saw it lift, reach toward his shoulder, then hesitate, withdraw as a tremor shook the slender fingers. He saw those fingers close over her leg just above the knee and saw the oval nails dig into denim.

  “Zach?”

  His eyes opened immediately. Unsurprised, she said softly, “One of the tape recorders came on a little while ago. I thought you should know.”

  He gazed up at her, for a moment forgetting the job he had to do. Only a faintly swollen look around her eyes, a certain tenderness, remained as evidence of tears shed in darkness. Zach clamped his teeth together and nodded, reaching for the zipper of the sleeping bag. “Thanks.”

  She got up and moved away, toward the stove and the preparations begun for breakfast.

  He had slept only in jeans and now shrugged into his shirt as he stood. Leaving it unbuttoned, he went to the equipment shelf, donning the earphones out of habit rather than necessity now that she knew what was going on. The tape had stopped; he rewound it and listened to the conversation that had taken place minutes ago inside the house.

  When it was finished, he set up the tape again and removed the earphones, frowning a little. When he turned, he found her looking at him, a hesitant question in her eyes but not voiced aloud.

  “They’re expecting the final goods to arrive on Friday morning,” he told her. “Then the whole shipment is scheduled to leave for the new owners on Saturday.”

  Teddy still looked a little quizzical, obviously taking note of his frown. But Zach didn’t explain until he stood shaving in the bathroom, glancing out through the open door at her because he couldn’t seem to stop looking at her. And even though he wasn’t a man given to voicing puzzles aloud, he found that he wanted to talk. He wanted to talk to her.

  “It doesn’t feel right,” he said abruptly.

  She paused while setting the table, watching the economical motions of a man who had performed this same task nearly every morning for twenty years. There was something oddly intimate in watching him shave, and Teddy liked it. “What doesn’t feel right?” she asked, hoping he would talk to her, confide in her—anything but continue the guarded silence of yesterday.

  “Sending the valuables out in a single shipment, which is apparently their plan. I’d expect them to split it up now, to lessen the chances of losing all of it. We’re sure there’s more than one buyer, probably two, and they don’t live in the same city. Not even the same state. If the stuff’s going by truck or van, and that seems likely, it’d be more logical to split it up now r
ather than on the road somewhere.”

  A part of Teddy’s mind listened to and appreciated the points he was making. But another part had gone cold at the first mention of Saturday. If the goods were to be shipped out on Saturday, then so was she. And today was Wednesday.

  Fighting off the awful despair, she spoke off the top of her head with no thought. “Maybe the buyers haven’t seen the goods yet and plan to meet the truck somewhere to make certain the stuff’s authentic before they tell where the guns are waiting. Or has that meeting already taken place?”

  Zach was looking at her. “No. No, we think not.” He turned his head to gaze into the mirror and cursed softly.

  “What?”

  He moved to lean against the doorjamb, using a small towel to wipe away the remaining lather. As if to himself, he muttered, “I should have let Josh strangle him last year. It would have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

  Teddy was bewildered. “Strangle who?”

  He sighed. “The federal maestro I’ve been stupid enough to take orders from,” he explained with a certain amount of bitterness.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Let’s just say that if I had a brain worthy of the name, I would have learned long ago to distrust the maestro’s solemn assurances that he gives his operatives the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

  “He kept something from you?” she ventured, still puzzled.

  “It’s beginning to look that way.”

  “What? I mean, how do you know?”

  Zach didn’t answer for a moment, slowly buttoning his shirt as he came into the room. Teddy went ahead and put breakfast on the table, then sat down when he did, and waited. Zach sipped the coffee he had made before going to shave, his expression abstracted.

  Teddy started eating and waited until he followed suit before asking again, “What?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing I can explain. It should be straightforward from here, everything according to plan. But—it smells. There’s something off-center, out of focus. And I don’t know what it is.”