Piper wanted to shout that this was not what that was, whether or not it started out that way that this was now real, that this was everything to her, and that leaving Zach would rip her in two, even more than being forced to leave her job, a thing that she never would have expected to be admitting at this point in time.
But how could she? What with Judge Underdown staring down his nose at her.
A commotion at the back of the courtroom made Piper turn. There, filing in, came Zach’s family—his younger sister, his mom, Grandma Vada, and then even his dad. Libby gave a fingers-only wave and mouthed Hi, Piper, worry in her eyes.
She turned to Zach. “They came.” Relief and love for these strangers-but-family flowed through her. Maybe now Judge Underdown would listen to her claim that she’d made a special bond with them, despite the short acquaintance.
“I knew they would,” Zach whispered. And Piper believed him.
“And so,” Judge Underdown continued, “rather than proceeding in the normal way, I’d like to begin with simple questions of my own for the defendant. I know this is irregular for the kind of law you practice regularly, Mr. Travis, ahem, counsel at Crockett, Bowie, and Houston,” he said the firm’s name like it was a curse. “However, this is an immigration violation hearing, and different regulations apply, so please don’t go objecting to procedure here, if you don’t mind.”
“No, Your Honor.” Beside her, Zach shifted in his chair. His uneasiness seeped over into Piper, who now had to exert all her effort to keep from running out of the room crying.
“So, Miss Quinn.” Ugh. He refused to use her married name. “You came to this country as a child.”
“I always believed I was born here.”
“A likely story. And irrelevant in today’s climate since you were not, in fact, born here, as that man over there has submitted evidence with this photo taken while he worked as a TSA agent and happened across your birth certificate.”
Mike? He’d seen her birth certificate and taken a picture? Zach mentioned that Mike claimed to have seen her parents as they left the U.S., but…taking a photo of her document? A document she’d never personally seen? That sickened her.
“Your honor, even if my wife did arrive illegally in the U.S., it happened when she was a child too young to recall. There must be an exception for people who have known no other home.”
“Haven’t you watched the news? Haven’t you paid any attention?” Agent Valentine snarled from the other table. “Things are different now. No excuses. Everything’s much more cut and dried. Your so-called wife has to go.” The venom dripped like grease from a sink trap.
Judge Underdown banged his gavel.
“I’ve seen the photo. I assume it was in no way altered by the TSA worker?”
Piper looked at the table. “Not that I know of, Your Honor.” What Mike purported about her was true. “But isn’t there a difference of leniency when someone sins in ignorance, so to speak?”
“I see here from these notes that you attended a university here in Texas, as well as culinary school, and have spent several years working at various jobs.” Judge Underdown chose to ignore her question. “And if you did not have citizenship, how exactly did you fill out school and job applications? Those require a valid ID, such as a government-issued Social Security number or a United States birth certificate.”
As the judge spoke, Piper’s throat squeezed shut. This was the very thing she never told Zach about—the fraudulent documentation her parents had provided for her to be able to study and work all these years. She gulped as hard as she could, but the lump lodged in her esophagus wouldn’t budge.
“Miss Quinn? You haven’t responded.”
Piper’s eyes flicked to Agent Valentine, who’d sat back in her chair and watched smugly as Judge Underdown completed her task of evisceration of Piper for her. Piper looked away quickly before she could see the triumph on Mike’s or Chad’s faces.
“Your Honor, I used a Social Security number I fully believed was legally issued to my parents. My mistake was made in ignorance, I swear.” How she got the words out through the vise of her throat, she had no idea. “Yes, I had them, but my father must have procured them some way. All my life I was under the impression they were valid, legal.”
“Birth certificate fraud is a felony.”
She turned to Zach, whose face read disappointment and dismay.
I should have told him. I should have told him days ago! All this shame could have been prevented if he’d known I was a fraud and a felon. He could have walked away from me and saved his reputation and his future if I’d only told him up front. Now I’ve endangered both, and he might never forgive me.
She’d let him down. Her heart hammered with guilt. She’d let everyone down—Zach most of all, but also Mitzi and her parents, Zach’s parents and sister, who had to sit there and watch their brother and son’s disgrace in a court of law.
Worse, he’d skipped his interview this morning, forfeiting his chance to achieve his dream and help his dad, all because of Piper’s ignorance and stupidity.
“Ignorance of the law is no excuse,” Judge Underdown echoed her thoughts, throwing them back at her face like some kind of sour muck. “Since you have offered no valid argument to defend yourself, you leave me no choice but to exercise the full extent of the law on you.”
Piper’s ears exploded, deafening her. Full extent of the law!
Judge Underdown was still talking, and though she couldn’t hear she read his lips, which conveyed the words immediate deportation.
She felt the concussion of his gavel, and through a gray haze of confusion that swirled around her, she was bustled away from Zach, manhandled into cuffs and manacles by the bailiff and an assistant, herded toward a door on the far side of the courtroom.
“Wait!” she cried, but without avail. With desperation her only emotion, she glanced at Zach. He stood with his family flanking him, Libby’s eyes streaming tears, her mother clutching her, Zach’s dad stoically unhappy, and Zach looking like someone had just died.
Well, something had—all of Piper’s hope for happiness.
Her ears cleared as she was herded out the door. Over the din, Mike’s demented laughter rose, accompanied by Agent Valentine’s voice, a cackling of a crow. “Well, Travis. Serves her right, the felon. Don’t worry, it won’t be long until the heavy hammer of justice lands on you, too. Five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine suits you well, if you ask me.” Another cackle carried to Piper’s ears, like that of a demented cartoon witch.
Piper screamed. “I love you, Zach. I’m so sorry.”
But no reply came. Only the heavy clank of an iron door slamming shut between them.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Zach couldn’t breathe. It had all happened too quickly. The judge’s unconventional procedure in court had left all of them in the dust—except Piper. It had whisked her into the sky and across the ocean and out of his life. His feet grew roots into the floor of the ICE hearing room of the Ernesto P. Gallatin Federal Court Building.
“And you’re next!” he heard over the din, a screech of laughter accompanying it. Valentine was sneering at his pain. He let her ooze away like the bottom-dweller she was, and her two thug sidekicks, too. How had Piper ever stomached either Stone Faced Mike or Chad Floyd, Floyd the ’Roid? It boggled the mind. He’d never allow anyone to treat her cruelly again—if he ever got to be part of her life again.
The uncertainty of his future felt like he stood on the deck of a tipping ship in the icy mid-Atlantic.
“You want me to take care of them?” Grandma Vada’s scratchy smoker voice penetrated the air. “I know a few boys who could take down those three pretenders lickety split, and no one would ever have to know where the bodies were buried.” Her eyes were following Valentine, Chad, and Mike as they paraded out of the courtroom in exultation.
Grandma shouldn’t tempt him.
She pounded a peck of a kiss against his chin, slapped him on the
shoulder, and said, “Chin up. This will all come right. Believe me.” Then she clunked out of the courtroom in her motorcycle boots.
“Son? You okay?” Mom came up behind him, and he snapped back into the present.
Libby stood beside her, and tears had wet her cheeks. “Where did they take my sister?”
Her sister! Zach realized—that’s what Piper was, a sister to Libby, one Libby desperately needed, which made the situation all the worse.
Even Dad looked forlorn, although that wasn’t exactly new.
Zach’s phone vibrated in his pocket. Force of habit made him take it out. “Zach Travis, CBH.”
“Mr. Travis? It’s Cora.” Front desk secretary. “I, uh…”
Oh, he got it. She’d been tasked with delivering the bad news.
“You don’t have to say anything, Cora. I’m pretty sure I know what you’re going to say—that the partnership was awarded to someone else.”
“Mr. Travis—”
“Don’t worry. I know I failed to appear at the interview, ha ha.” Delivered drier than old beef jerky, it was a little legal joke, having to do with criminal law. Failure to appear was a term used for when someone didn’t show up for court and now forced the judge to issue a warrant for the accused person’s arrest.
Cora didn’t laugh. She paused, then said, “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Travis. Terribly.”
“Thanks.” Zach got ready to hang up. He was sorry, too, about everything he could possibly be sorry about. However, Cora wedged in a word.
“Wait. Mr. Crockett will be out of town all next week, checking out his new place in Chile, but he would like to meet with you the following Monday. Something about the corporate jet?”
Zach’s stomach turned over, as if he’d eaten lunch at a food truck with a broken refrigerator. He nearly dropped his phone.
In a fog, he apologized to his family for the interruption.
“Son?” His dad reached out and placed a hand on Zach’s forearm. “It’s killing us to lose Piper. It can only be a thousand times worse for you.”
Numbness spread from Zach’s scalp to his toes, like a veil being dropped over him.
“I, uh,” Dad continued, speaking more of his own volition to Zach in this minute than he had in the last several years. “I’ve been working on things. Out at the Double Bar T.” He shoved his hands in the front pockets of his Levis 501 jeans. “Would you like to come out and stay for a couple of days, get away from all this?” His eyes swept the courtroom.
“That’s a nice offer, Dad.”
“We’d love to have you,” Mom said, her eyes pleading.
“And Teacup,” said Libby. “Bring Teacup, too.”
A dryness in Zach’s throat to rival the Sahara prevented his answering, so he just nodded. Piper was gone. Going to the Double Bar T would feel strange without her, hollow again.
A light glowed in Dad’s eyes, faint but unmistakable. “I’m feeling a lot better, son. In fact, I’d even headed out to the shed to see what was what with the ’78 Firebird, but some consarned varmint came in and stole it.”
He didn’t use the words consarned or varmint. Zach didn’t have the heart to tell Dad he’d been the thief. Grand theft auto and grand theft corporate jet, all brought to the light of day in a single afternoon.
What would his compounded prison time end up being after he caught the brunt of Valentine’s charges in addition to his stealing felonies? It could reach into the double digits of years.
Well, now he at least could empathize with Piper. Just a couple of felons, the two of them. What kind of an example were they setting for Teacup? Would Teacup have any chance of staying on the right side of the law at this rate?
“I’ll bring Teacup out to visit you soon, I promise.” He gave Libby the big-brother side-hug. “She misses you.”
“She does? I knew it!” Then Libby’s face fell. “I bet she’ll miss Piper a whole lot more.”
“Dad, I need to make a bunch of calls to see if I can do anything to help Piper, but I’ll come out soon. I promise that, too.” Zach’s whole being was filling with a grim, smoky haze as reality set in. He might never get Piper back. It would take a blooming miracle. He did have one consolation to offer his dad, though. “But give me a day, and I’m sure I’ll have a lead on the Firebird.”
“Really? You’re a good son.” Dad gave him a full-on hug. None of these chintzy, love-withholding side-hugs from him. “I can never thank you enough for bringing that wife of yours out to see us. It was a turning point, you know? I really hope we all get to see her again.”
Zach hoped it more than anyone. Piper Quinn Travis was the light of his morning, and now everything around him had gone dark.
∞∞∞
The pillow that the airline staff gave Piper for the flight smelled like it had been sat on and last used by someone with a bladder problem. She couldn’t even rest her head for the full flight from San Antonio to Los Angeles to Portland to Honolulu to Auckland. And they’d kept her handcuffed to her seat, all except for when the sky marshal had accompanied her to the lavatory where someone indeed had tampered with the smoke detector and used the tiny pod of a room to get their nicotine fix. The smoke still swirled in there, and they hadn’t even gone the first leg to L.A. yet.
Misery’s definition took on a whole new depth during this interminable flight, and it definitely wasn’t dominated by physical discomfort. Knowing that she’d failed—Zach and Mitzi and Mitzi’s parents and Du Jour and the American citizenry by her parents’ misuse of the system—racked her soul.
The look of disappointment on Zach’s face when he’d been told by Judge Underdown the extent of her crimes kept popping back into her mind every time she let her eyes shut, so she would have propped them open with toothpicks had the flight attendant allowed her.
Sleepless, exhausted, and miserable.
Her only consolation was that she’d never let the physical part of their relationship progress. Without a consummation of the marriage, Zach could obtain an annulment without any hassle whatsoever. She’d sign an affidavit that she’d been left untouched, and he could present that to any judge in Texas, and he’d be a free man tomorrow.
Free from all the drama that lately swirled around Piper Quinn.
He’d be so happy.
And she’d be wallowing in the misery that was life without Zach Travis, who she loved with all her heart.
∞∞∞
Exiting the courthouse, Zach didn’t know where to go. Without Piper, he was adrift. He walked to her old apartment building and knocked on the door labeled with Birdie’s name. There, he collected Teacup in his arms and delivered the devastating news.
“Can I pour you a cup of something to soothe you?” she offered. He plunked down on her sofa for an hour, while she played Neil Diamond songs on her LP record player. “I already have a kettle going, if you want coffee or hot cocoa.”
A few minutes later he accepted a mug, which he couldn’t even taste. All his senses had dulled.
“I really love her,” he said, after Birdie had sat with him a while and he’d drained his cup.
“How could you help it?” Birdie asked. “She’s one in a million. No, one in ten million. An exceptional person. Meanwhile, you’re singing a Song Sung Blue.”
Zach recognized the Neil Diamond reference, but he couldn’t even crack a smile. Teacup was pawing the fabric on the sofa. He should leave.
“I don’t know how I’ll live without her.” Zach’s voice broke. He blinked hard to suppress the hot tears filling the wells of his eyes, but only managed to lose one. It stung its way down his face. Zach hadn’t cried in so long he couldn’t remember, but he hadn’t had a reason.
Birdie scooted over beside him on the sofa, put a grandmotherly arm around his shoulders and handed him a tissue. Finally, she said, “Oh, I don’t think you’ll have to. Not for long.”
Zach lifted his head and looked at Birdie for the first time in the full time he’d been there. “Oh?”
<
br /> “I’ve seen you at work, young man. I hardly think you’ll let something like this keep you down. You’ll find a way.”
For the first time since the verdict, Zach saw a glimmer of light. It was tiny, and based on probably nothing, but he could go toward it.
“Love is a strong thing, young man. Some say it’s nigh unto unstoppable.”
Zach hoped so. At this point, it was all he had to hang onto.
Before he left, he had one more question for Birdie. “Do you know how to get in touch with Piper’s friend Mitzi?” It was only fair to deliver the crushing blow to her in person.
∞∞∞
One hundred million zillion trillion hours later, the fourth plane of this trip, and the fifth plane Piper had sat on over the past forty-eight hours, touched down at Auckland. Still in chains, she was escorted from the flight and sent to the customs desk, where she recognized her purse in a large clear plastic bag labeled with her name on a blue tag.
“Ar ar eer blongins, Miss Pypah.” A customs worker pulled the purse from the bag and held it out to her. She couldn’t grab it, because the U.S. immigration agent—probably a close, personal friend of Agent Valentine’s, from the way she treated Piper—was unlocking the handcuffs.
Piper massaged her wrists and suppressed the urge to examine whether welts had formed.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the purse now. At least they hadn’t stolen all her effects when they deported her. There was that. Maybe this day was looking up—until she realized, she had nowhere to go.
From her purse she snagged her phone. She might as well call her parents.
Aw, fizzer. It had charged down.
Without their number memorized, she had no way to contact them.
“What, no jacket and wellies?” an airport worker said as she started wandering away from the area. They’d just released her, no paperwork, nothing. Just a drop off in a foreign land. Thanks, ICE. “You’ll frahz out theer t’dye.”
No kidding. Add to everything else, it was winter here, and she was still wearing her Neil Diamond concert t-shirt and some old jeans and not at all prepared for the June temperatures in the southern hemisphere. Cold blasts of air came shooting through the hallways of the relatively small airport every time a door to the outside opened anywhere in the place.
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