Zach's Law

by Kay Hooper

  Zach was going back up to the house, she realized. In a blind, murderous rage, he was going after the man who had shot her. And there wouldn’t be any caution this time. He was a ticking time bomb, and the dear Lord only knew what would be destroyed by the explosion.

  Teddy gazed at him, at his still, white face and blank eyes, seeing his muscles bunch in preparation for action, and she rolled the dice one more time. If she had reached him, if he did care for her deeply enough …

  “Zach?” Her voice was calm and soft, nothing in it indicating that she was attempting to call a man back from hell.

  After an agonizingly long moment he looked at her, and the blind glaze slowly left his eyes. His muscles gradually relaxed, the tension seeped away. And he was there, he was sane. On a rough sigh he murmured, “Teddy.”

  She was enormously relieved and deeply shaken. She had hoped to coax a wild wolf to walk by her side, but she had never even dared to dream that the mere sound of her voice calling his name could keep him from tearing out the throat of a mortal enemy.

  And she wondered if the fool in the house would ever know just how close to death he had come.

  Gesturing to the arm he was still holding gently, she said, “I can hardly feel it.”

  After a moment Zach lowered her arm. He got up and went over to her luggage, moving gracefully again, and bent to rummage among her clothing. “You’ll have to dress warmly. There isn’t any heat where we’re going.”

  She watched him. ‘Where are we going?”

  “A little farther up the mountain. That stuff’s coming in tomorrow, and Ryan’s not about to let me or anyone else end his career without a hell of a fight; as soon as his men return, he’ll be coming here after us.”

  “You know him,” she said, surprised. “I mean, personally.”

  Zach returned to the bed with one of her flannel shirts and a thick sweater. He sat beside her and began getting her out of the torn and bloody shirt she was wearing. “I know him,” he admitted. “We tangled a few years ago when he tried his hand at a little industrial sabotage.”

  “Did you know he was here? I mean—”

  He shook his head. “No. But I know now what was eating at me before. I heard three voices, and only three have been recorded on the tapes. What bothered me was that none of the three sounded like the leader, and yet he seemed to be nearby. Ryan was there in the house all the time; one of his little habits is that he never speaks when he’s in a house or car and possibly under observation or electronic surveillance—when he’s on a job, that is. He’s careful. Very careful.”

  “So when you went to the house earlier—”

  “For once he hadn’t left with his men. And since I’ve been listening more than watching, I never knew there were four men in the house.” Zach slid her injured arm gently into the sleeve of the flannel shirt and began buttoning it. “Damn Hagen. That is what he so conveniently forgot to tell me: that Clay Ryan was the ringleader of the bunch. No wonder he was so insistent that I was the only one who could do this job.”

  “Why?” Her voice was briefly muffled as he pulled the sweater over her head, then emerged clearly. “Because you’d caught this Ryan before?”

  It seemed at first that Zach wasn’t going to answer. He eased her arms through the sleeves of the sweater and then settled the ribbed hem around her hips with a smoothing movement that was almost a caress. She was sitting up easily, apparently bothered little by weakness, but she was pale, and Zach knew that she was weakened by shock and the loss of blood.

  It hurt him to see her like that.

  He got up and went to efficiently gather together what they would need, stowing blankets and food in a duffel bag, rolling up the sleeping bag, and selecting ammunition for his handgun and rifle.

  “Zach?” she prompted.

  Packing away the tapes he’d made from conversations in the house, Zach finally answered in a conversational tone that attempted to lessen the effect of what he was saying.

  “Clay Ryan is at the top of the FBI’s list and has been for ten years. He’s done everything from robbery on a large scale through blackmail, sabotage, gunrunning, arson, terrorist activities, and murder. And he’s very good at each of them. Each job is different and handled differently; he considers his hired thugs disposable, and they never even know his name; his M.O. changes from job to job, and he never repeats himself.

  “He’s never seen the inside of a prison. In fact, he has never been arrested on any charge and has never even been held for questioning. There’s never been proof enough against him for any of that, and whenever probable cause could be found to pull him in, he’d always disappeared without a trace. Until the next job. And, to date, only one living witness can claim to have seen him actually perform a criminal act.”

  “You,” she said hollowly, knowing it was true.

  Zach was methodically reloading the clip of his automatic and didn’t look up. “Me,” he confirmed mildly. “That sabotage I mentioned. He destroyed six months’ work in a computer-design laboratory. And he got away. The company belonged to Josh. I managed to track him down just as he was setting explosives to torch an import company that also belonged to Josh. Ryan had been paid a fortune by a competitor to cause heavy losses to Long Enterprises.”

  “What happened?”

  “The import company didn’t blow.” Zach’s voice was calm. “But some of the explosives did, before I could get my hands on him. The blast put me in the hospital and should have killed him. Even though he vanished, the FBI didn’t believe he was dead any more than I did; they kept him on their list.”

  Teddy remembered the curving scar on his rib cage and thought she knew now how that had happened. “And you think Hagen knew all that? And knew Ryan was involved here when he sent you?”

  “Of course he knew. Hagen likes to believe he knows everything. He doesn’t, but he often knows too damned much. He talked me into this because he knows I hate gunrunners; you can bet he was saving Ryan’s identity as an ace up his sleeve in case I needed a little extra incentive.”

  Teddy watched as he shrugged into his quilted flannel jacket, then said quietly, “You don’t like it when someone goes after something you feel responsible for, do you?” She was thinking of Zach’s reaction when a kidnapped lady was snatched from inside one of his security systems, and of his tracking down Ryan when one of Josh Long’s companies had been damaged.

  He looked at her. “No,” he said flatly. “I don’t.”

  She felt a chill and tried to keep the reaction from showing on her face. Were Zach’s feelings for her and his grim desire to protect her the product of a sense of responsibility? Only that? she wondered.

  No. No, it was more. She knew it was more. Because if it wasn’t more, how could she have called him back from that awful place his rage had sent him to? How could she have reached him there if he hadn’t opened up some part of himself to her?

  She held on tightly to that knowledge.

  With everything packed and ready, Zach coolly and efficiently disabled the computer by wiping the hard disk clean and cutting the connections to the batteries and phone lines. “We’ll have to leave your stuff,” he told her, gathering the rifle and bags. “It won’t be for long, though, and with any luck, Ryan won’t bother with it.”

  When he came back to her, Teddy realized what he was going to do. “Zach, I can walk! You’re carrying everything else.”

  Without a word he bent and lifted her easily into his arms.

  She looked at everything he was carrying over his shoulders or on his back, then sighed and put her uninjured arm around his neck. “We’re going to have to have a long discussion about these macho instincts of yours,” she told him, but not as if the instincts in question bothered her very much.

  “Right.”

  “Oh—and my purse.”

  Faint amusement lightened his expression. “Afraid you may have to leash a rabid Doberman?”

  “You never know,” she murmured, reaching to s
nag her purse from the table as they passed.

  He carried her out of the cabin.

  Teddy didn’t pay too much attention to where he was carrying her, although she knew he was heading away from the house and to higher ground. Instead, she gazed steadily at his strong face and asked the question that had been flitting in and out of her mind since the previous night.

  “Zach? What changed your mind?” When he glanced down at her quizzically, she elaborated, “You were so determined that we wouldn’t be lovers. What changed your mind?”

  Showing no strain because of his burdens, he walked on a few steps in silence before replying. Finally, somewhat remotely, he said, “My mind didn’t change. You’d tempt a saint beyond bearing, Teddy.”

  “Hey, pal, I’m no siren,” she managed to say lightly.

  He looked down at her for an instant, and something savage and utterly male flared hotly in his eyes. Then it was gone, and his voice remained almost imperceptibly distant. “Call it chemistry, then. Or biology. Hell, call it lust.”

  If Teddy had believed that he believed what he was saying, she would have been deeply hurt. But she didn’t believe him.

  He was back in his warrior’s armor again.

  And she didn’t try to crawl in there with him, not this time. If she had learned anything by now, she had learned that they were in a jungle with a predator at their backs and danger all around. His armor would protect him, and that was more important to her than an admission of caring that never could be forced out of him, anyway.

  She put her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.

  They were two hundred yards from the cabin, and a great deal higher, when Zach finally stopped. He stood gazing down the mountainside for a moment. The house was visible below, looking unthreatening, no cars in the drive, no movement. Ryan had clearly decided to wait for reinforcements before going after them.

  Zach couldn’t have said why he knew that Ryan intended to go on with his plans and ship the valuables, but he was certain that that was the case. He was also certain that when Ryan and his men found the cabin deserted, the leader would not hesitate to begin combing the mountain for them.

  In Ryan’s place, most men would assume that Zach had cleared out to get reinforcements of his own and would therefore hasten to clear out themselves. But Clay Ryan wasn’t most men, and Zach didn’t think he’d make that assumption.

  In a curious way, Zach believed there was some thread of similarity between him and the other man, that they somehow understood each other despite meeting face-to-face only twice and under violent circumstances—or maybe because of that. There was strong personal enmity between them: To Ryan, Zach was the man who had seen his face and cost him a lucrative commission; to Zach, Ryan was the dangling thread, the one that got away.

  This was between just the two of them.

  So Ryan, Zach thought, would not assume. He would go on with his plans, confident that he would be able to deal with the threat posed by Zach’s presence.

  Hardly feeling the weight in his arms but very aware of her warm body, Zach looked down at Teddy’s sleeping face. She looked so young. Was so young. Ten years separated them, and yet Zach felt immeasurably older.

  She had become important to him, and Zach hadn’t meant to let that happen. He accepted the feelings, but the guarded part of him refused to voice them aloud. Because he still believed that when this was over, when the danger was past, she would discover that her feelings had been temporary, or even unreal.

  And it would destroy him to see the lack of love in her eyes.

  It would, he realized hollowly, probably destroy him, anyway. When he sent her away, he’d be tearing his own heart out.

  “Zach?” Her voice was sleepy, her eyes blurred when she looked up at him questioningly.

  His arms tightened around her, and Zach glanced behind him at the hollowed-out area of the hillside that was not quite a cave. The Jeep was a mile away and well hidden; he had no intention of going anywhere near it until they were ready to leave this place for good.

  So, for now, this was home.

  He bent to place her carefully on a bed of moss. “We’ll stay here, honey,” he murmured, and wondered how much longer he would be able to hear the magic of her voice saying his name.

  SIX

  TEDDY SLEPT FOR most of the day, and Zach knew it was the best thing for her after being wounded. He had unrolled the sleeping bag inside their hollowed-out resting place and tucked her within it before doing anything else. Her eyes opened drowsily from time to time, but once she saw him near, she would relax into sleep again.

  Zach kept busy. He stowed all their supplies near the sleeping bag and then used sticks and brush to narrow the opening of their cavelet; they were downwind of the house, and he had hopes of being able to build a fire later if he could hide the light of it from the house.

  He watched the house throughout the afternoon. When Ryan’s men returned and quickly found the cabin, Zach felt somewhat apprehensive. He had been right, though, because the men made no effort to comb the surrounding area and promptly returned to the main house.

  Teddy was deeply asleep, so Zach left the cavelet late in the afternoon to rig a few early-warning devices around the perimeter. He wasn’t overly concerned that Ryan and his men would come looking, but even though Zach had never been a Boy Scout, he fully appreciated the virtue of always being prepared for the unexpected.

  If he had been another kind of man, Zach would have taken Teddy and left the area, summoning help or at least a relief to take over his job. But it was against his very nature to leave a job unfinished, particularly when in doing so, he would be asking another man to face a danger he himself chose to avoid. He couldn’t do that. He had deliberately lied to his friends in order to make certain they wouldn’t get involved in another of Hagen’s infamous assignments, and he wasn’t about to ask anyone else to do so. And there was still a chance he could pull this off. Hagen had promised—whatever that was worth—that he could have a squad of federal marshals up here within an hour to arrest the gang once Zach obtained proof that the stolen artwork was at the house. He had that proof, in the form of photos and recordings, but nothing specifically linked Ryan to the thefts and resales.

  Zach wondered if Hagen had realized he would eventually discover Ryan’s presence and be forced to alter the initial plan. Of course he had known, and probably planned to tell Zach when he called to summon the marshals. It had to be Ryan the federal man was really after, and far better to catch the criminal in the act of trading stolen artwork for illegal guns than merely in possession of the art.

  And there was the rest of the mess. In order to arrest the men who would receive the artwork in exchange for guns, it would be necessary to allow the shipment to leave as planned, and to trace it to its delivery point. They knew where the guns were being stored and where they’d come from, but it had been impossible to find out who had bought them; the actual trade was necessary to establish that connection.

  If Ryan accompanied the shipment, presumably and logically to oversee the trade and examine the guns, he could be caught then—but would he? Would he take the chance of being caught in transit with stolen artwork—especially now that he knew Zach was nearby and likely trying to catch him in just such a position? And would the men who had purchased the guns allow themselves to risk the possibility of being caught near the stolen goods and the illegally purchased guns?

  Or would everybody involved send middlemen for that?

  It seemed to Zach, brooding over the whole thing as he set a few trip wires and snares, that entirely too much would be taken on trust unless all parties did meet face-to-face before or during the trade. And in Zach’s experience, very few on either side of the law were that trusting. Unless each saw his goods before the trade, how were they to know they were receiving what had been promised?

  The guns, under surveillance now by at least one other agent, had been stored at an old disused munitions dump in the mountains w
est of Pueblo. Not the easiest place, certainly, from which to ship guns out of the country without a great deal of risk. And since the men they believed responsible for purchasing the guns lived in the East, there was also the problem of getting the artwork safely back there without incident.

  Mentally, Zach constructed a rough plan to deal with as much as he could given his limited knowledge. When the goods left here, he could alert Hagen; whether or not Ryan left with the shipment, he might or might not take his men along, so they could be picked up by the marshals if he disbanded the group. Then Zach could follow the shipment along its route either to where the guns waited or else to some transfer point midway.

  And then … and then what? His next actions, Zach realized, would depend on what happened then. Or what didn’t happen.

  It was a hell of a rotten plan, he realized in disgust, with far too many things left to chance, and far, far too much he didn’t know.

  Just Hagen’s style.

  “I caught you off guard. Hardly professional of you, my boy.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” His tone was irritated and hardly respectful, and Kelsey was scowling somewhat ferociously as he holstered his automatic and glared at the decidedly unwelcome post-midnight visitor.

  Hagen came around a stack of wooden crates, his corpulent form moving with unexpected grace and silence as he reached the circle of faint light in which his agent stood. He was, as usual, dressed in a business suit that was straining at the seams, his bum’s hat perched on his head. Not a fleck of dust marred the shine of his shoes.

  Ignoring Kelsey’s demand, he asked casually, “What have you done with the guards?” His tone implied that he confidently expected Kelsey to tell him that twenty desperadoes were bound and gagged in a dark corner somewhere.