Twice Burned

by Pamela Burford

  Her face was on fire. She’d never get one up on the man. Taking a deep breath, she said, “I want a key to this place.”

  “No.” He stood and faced her, as implacable as ever.

  She stalked up to him. “Come on, Logan. I’ve been cooped up in this—” she glanced at her dingy surroundings “—’safe house’ for twenty-four hours. I’m bouncing off the walls. I don’t have my work, which must be a mountain on my desk by now. I don’t have any books to read or—or even a newspaper.” Just her own inventive imagination—not the best companion for her peace of mind at the moment.

  “You want a magazine or something, I’ll pick it up when I go—”

  “I want out of here! O-u-t!” She pointed to the door.

  “Look, I know this isn’t the Plaza, I know you’re bored and frustrated, but I can’t have you traipsing all—”

  “Give me a little credit. What do you think I’m going to do, stand in the middle of Park Avenue wearing a bull’s-eye around my neck?”

  “It would be extremely dangerous for you to go anywhere alone.”

  “I’m not planning any excursions. I just can’t stand being locked in here like I’m some kind of prisoner. I’ll bet you have a second key to that dead bolt.”

  His gaze flicked to the lock in question for a moment as he pondered her request. Finally he shoved his hand in his jeans pocket and produced a key ring. Zara let out the breath she’d been holding. She held out her palm and he dropped a brass key in it.

  His voice was gruff. “In case the place goes up in flames while I’m gone. Don’t even think about stepping foot outside that door unless I’m with you.”

  “I appreciate this,” she said, knowing it wasn’t easy for him to relinquish total command over the situation and trust her even this much. Deciding to press her luck, she said, “Let me go with you when you check out the restaurant”

  “Out of the question. I’m not going there to pick up takeout, I’m trying to flush a dangerous criminal out of hiding. If he takes the bait and shows up.”

  He didn’t have to say it. She’d only be in the way. Might even be in danger. Zara hadn’t stamped her foot since she was about six, but she was sorely tempted now.

  She asked, “How do you know Mac isn’t lurking around my apartment or my office, looking for me, even as we speak? You can’t be in two places at once.”

  She recognized that obdurate expression. Incommunicado.

  “So you have associates,” she said. “People working for you. Or with you. Like your pal Lou. Funny. I had you figured for a loner. The type who doesn’t like to rely on anyone else.”

  That got to him, she could tell. Did he think he was the only perceptive one?

  She continued, “I have to be able to size people up in my business, too, Logan.” Or maybe a part of her simply recognized a kindred spirit.

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “If you’re so good at sizing up people, maybe you’ve made up your mind. Am I one of the good guys?”

  She pondered that seriously, thought about everything she’d learned about Logan Pierce in their brief time together. He was aloof, sure, and arrogant as hell. But something in the way he talked about Mac Byrne told her he was sincere. A cold obsession underlay his mission to bring Mac to justice. What had caused that obsession, she couldn’t guess, but she knew one thing: she wouldn’t want to be in Mac Byrne’s shoes.

  “Yes,” she said. “You’re one of the good guys.”

  “Do you believe I know what I’m doing?.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then don’t question me when I tell you how things have to be. This isn’t some game we’re playing, Zara. Your mother’s life is in danger, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  She sucked in a deep breath. “As if I could.” She knew what he was thinking. That she was shallow, selfish. It was the same message that had been drummed into her her whole life. Maybe it was true. Look at the tragedy her actions had reaped.

  Her eyes burned and she turned to stare out the window. She didn’t have her freedom or her peace of mind. At least she could try to hold on to her pride.

  He was silent a long while. Finally he said quietly, “Where would you like to go?”

  She spun to look at him, certain she must have misheard.

  “Mac won’t be looking for you anywhere but your usual haunts. I guess it wouldn’t hurt for you to get out and clear the cobwebs. As long as you’re with me. Don’t even think about going out on your own.”

  His thunderous expression reinforced the warning. He grabbed his lightweight windbreaker and shrugged into it, zipping the bottom few inches to keep his gun concealed. “But after this, I don’t want to hear any more whining. Got it?”

  She grabbed her purse, giddy with anticipation. “Got it.” She slipped into a pair of crimson pumps that matched her short linen sheath dress, and retrieved her heavy silk jewelry roll from her Pullman bag. “Just a sec.” She could no more venture into public unaccessorized than she could negotiate multimillion-dollar deals in her bathrobe.

  Logan watched her sort through her trinkets. “I thought you said you sold all your jewelry.”

  “I did. This stuffs all costume.” She found the earrings she’d been hunting for and waggled them at him. “Five bucks on the sidewalk in Chinatown. What do you think?” The silver earrings were adorned with ponderous, dangling red and black glass beads. The ear wires were extra long, eliminating the need for hooks or clasps. She slid them into her pierced ears. “I’m ready.”

  Logan frowned, studying her ears. He slowly approached her.

  She said, “You don’t like them?”

  He stopped scant inches in front of her and lifted his hand to the left earring. She heard the beads clink together, felt his fingertips graze her neck. His touch was so gentle, she felt dizzy.

  “They’re heavy,” he murmured, staring at the beads.

  She didn’t trust herself to speak.

  “Don’t they hurt?”

  “No,” she managed to whisper.

  He carefully pulled on the long wire, withdrawing it from her earlobe with excruciating slowness.

  The world fell away. Nothing existed but that one pinpoint of sensation where the silver filament slid through her flesh.

  When it was free he studied the glittering gewgaw, peering at it as if it could tell him something about its wearer. It looked incongruous nestled in his huge palm.

  At length he brought it to her ear again. When she realized he meant to replace it himself, she started, on the verge of objecting. But instead she stood paralyzed as he gently grasped her earlobe and touched the end of the wire to it.

  She swallowed hard. His eyes were riveted to his task, which he approached with absorption. She nearly flinched when she felt the wire penetrate. He pushed it through as slowly and meticulously as he’d removed it. When he was done, every nerve in her body hummed. He flicked the beads and watched them dance, and met her eyes at last.

  “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Four

  “I haven’t been here in years.” Zara stared up at the full-scale model of a blue whale that hung suspended over her head in a diving pose. This replica had fascinated her as a child. She couldn’t imagine any animal being that huge. Nearly the length of the enormous exhibit hall, it had small, glassy eyes and white spots on its flanks.

  “I come here a lot,” Logan said, gazing around the huge, dimly lit Ocean Life and Biology of Fishes hall, a popular exhibit at the Museum of Natural History.

  The room was two stories high. A walkway circled the upper level, which featured educational displays in glass cases, above, which hung life-size replicas of sharks, stingrays and swordfish in lighted niches. Zara and Logan were on the lower level, where dioramas of marine animals in their natural habitats were set along the perimeter. Each life-size display was behind glass, backlit and painstakingly detailed.

  Zara’s father had brought her and Emma to the museum once when they were seven. She remembered tha
t trip vividly. She’d returned a couple of times in the years she’d lived in New York, and each time she felt the same childlike wonder.

  During that visit with her father, Zara had been on her best behavior—or tried to be. As usual, he’d found abundant reasons to chastise her. Don’t touch the dinosaur skeleton, Zara. Slow down and wait for your sister, Zara. Keep your voice down, Zara.

  When she grew to adulthood and learned the term control freak, she began to gain a better perspective on John Sutcliffe. She wondered if she’d ever understand the man who had sired her and Emma. How could family members be so different? He was five years in his grave and still she heard his imperious voice cataloging her shortcomings, felt his sharp, condemning glare at the most inopportune moments.

  “We can leave,” Logan said.

  She snapped out of her reverie. “What?”

  “You don’t look exactly thrilled to be here.”

  “I am. Trust me. I was just thinking.” She faltered and he raised his eyebrows. “I was thinking about my father.”

  “Seals and walruses remind you of your father?”

  “Maybe that fellow.” She nodded toward a display of a polar bear, fangs bared. On the ice floe near it was a dead ribbon seal, with blood flowing from its mouth.

  Logan said, “He was strict?”

  “You could say that. Emma never had trouble living up to his expectations. But me…well, after a while I think it just kind of turned into this selffulfilling prophesy. I knew nothing I did would please him, so why bother trying? And, too, I found the more outrageous I was, the more I got to him. I think he was the reason I drove myself so hard to succeed careerwise. That was something he respected, I knew. Money. Success. But even that wasn’t enough.”

  “Is that why you and your sister ended up different? Your father’s warped ideas about child rearing?”

  “I guess so.” Why was she opening up to him like this? “What else could cause twins to develop such distinct personalities except the way they were raised? Nurture versus nature and all that.”

  After a moment Logan said, “Other factors have been known to come into play.” He was staring at the bear’s menacing fangs, the soft light from the diorama highlighting his strong features.

  “Like what?”

  He was silent so long, she thought he hadn’t heard her. Finally he said, “Chemical imbalances. Brain damage. That sort of thing.”

  “Oh. Sure, I guess so. That doesn’t apply to Emma and me, though. Thank God. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  His eyes had been focused on the bear. Now they found her reflection in the glass. “No.”

  He started walking again, and they slowly made the circuit past the giant octopus, the pearl divers, sea otters and dolphins, toward the stairs leading to the second level and the exit.

  He said, “It must’ve been rough for your father to raise two kids alone. After Candy left him.”

  “He left our day-to-day care in the hands of nannies. His involvement extended to lectures on behavior and character development. And as for Mom, you should hear her side of the story. I grew up thinking she’d abandoned us—that’s what Dad told us.”

  “That must’ve been rough.”

  “When he died five years ago, Emma and I tracked Mom down. By that time we both knew what an overbearing son of a bitch our father had been. When Mom told us how he’d ruthlessly wrested custody from her, we believed her. It was in character.”

  “Guy sounds like a gem. At least you had your sister.”

  She sighed. “Emma and I were never close. Even as children. I…I’m not proud of that. Dad was always comparing us, always pitting us against each other, and of course, I always fell short. But I can’t lay all the blame on him. I’m not an impressionable child anymore, I’m a grown woman. I could’ve tried harder to undo the damage, to…make up for lost time with Emma. To…I don’t know…” Her throat tightened. “To get to know her, I guess.” She met his eyes. “But I’ve always loved her, Logan.”

  “It works both ways. She could’ve made the effort, too.” They walked side by side up the steps.

  “Things are going to change between us. I’ll make sure of that. When this whole mess is over, I’m going to do whatever I have to, to make it right with her. If anything happens to Emma—” She choked on the words, her tears too close to the surface.

  Logan grabbed her elbow and pulled her to one side of the exit. He glanced into the distance a moment as if battling his impulses. “Do you remember scheduling an appointment with Gage Foster?”

  Her mind flipped over, trying to absorb the abrupt change in subject. “Gage Foster? The novelist? What about him?”

  “You were supposed to meet with him, but you got called away to Australia. Does any of this ring a bell?”

  “Well, sure. I’ve been after Foster for months. Me and every other agent in this city. Have you read Incision?” “Yep.”

  “What did you think?”

  “Damn good medical thriller.”

  Her excitement over the prospect of adding this New York Times bestselling author to her list momentarily eclipsed her worries for Emma and Candy. “I’ve been wild to bring Foster on board with my agency. Pleaded with him to come up from Arkansas to talk about it. Then this thing with Maxine Moore came up and I had my secretary, Tina, cancel the appointment. Now I’ll have to reschedule and hope he—”

  “Tina didn’t call him in time. Foster flew up for the meeting.”

  “What? But I wasn’t there!”

  “No, but Emma was.”

  “Emma?” Her head throbbed with the effort of following this convoluted discussion.

  “He showed up at your office as planned—”

  “Oh, God.”

  “—and so did Emma.”

  “Wearing my clothes. For the meeting with Mac, when she had to pretend to be me. I asked her to go to my office to pick up the ray gun. Don’t tell me. Gage Foster thought she was me.”

  “It’s a long story. Maybe you’ll read about it in his next book. The point is, if it weren’t for Foster, Emma wouldn’t be alive.”

  “He—he saved her life?”

  Logan held up a hand, forestalling the volley of questions poised to leap off her tongue. “I just thought you’d want to know she wasn’t alone, that she had an ally. Has an ally.”

  “Has?”

  Logan smiled, a slow, revealing grin.

  “They hit it off? Gage and Emma? I don’t believe it.” Shy, unprepossessing Emma and a wealthy, semireclusive, hunky surgeon-turned-novelist? The man Zara thought of as the Golden Cowboy?

  “Believe it. She’ll have a hell of a tale to tell when you see her next.”

  She shook her head in wonder. “Why are you being so forthcoming all of a sudden? Why are you telling me all this?”

  He scowled. “I shouldn’t. The less you know—”

  “Don’t say it. Just one more question. Is Gage still in New York? Is he staying with Emma at her place in Queens?” One look at his face told her she’d gotten as much out of him as she could. For the moment. She paused, collecting her thoughts. “Thanks, Logan. It makes it easier, knowing she didn’t have to face…whatever she faced…alone.”

  He sighed. Regretting his revelations? No matter. She knew more now than she did five minutes ago. Not only about Emma’s situation, but about Logan, as well. Despite the well-honed aura of surly inflexibility, he was human after all.

  She couldn’t help wondering what had made him the way he was. What had his childhood been like? Why had he joined the FBI? And the question foremost in her mind: why was he so fixated on apprehending Mac Byrne? It wasn’t what he said so much as the look in his eye. He was close to this case—too close? Was his judgment affected? Could his zeal put her in danger?

  Wordlessly he placed his palm on the small of her back and steered her through the exit into the Invertebrates hall. From there they passed through the main lobby and into the North American Mammals exhibit.

&nb
sp; Here, too, the models were set against ultrarealistic backdrops, complete with foliage and other natural elements. It was easy to imagine these deer, bison and caribou as live animals in the wild.

  They made their way through the hall and down a side corridor past coyotes and skunks. Zara stopped dead at the next display. Here two wolves sprinted across a snow-covered landscape. They were posed in midleap, frozen in a lethal lunge toward the glass—toward her.

  The exhibit was eerily dim, a twilight scene that held her spellbound. She couldn’t make out the animals’ eye color in the gloom, or the teeth. Nevertheless, it was all too easy to imagine herself some hapless woodland creature transfixed by two pairs of pale, predatory eyes, by the sight of bared fangs going for her jugular.

  She sensed a third pair of wolf eyes on her.

  “We have to be getting back,” he murmured, his breath fluttering her hair. “I need to get to Vincenza’s well before eight.”

  She dragged her gaze from the exhibit, breaking the spell. “Do you think he’ll show?”

  “I sure as hell hope so. And if you want to get your life back anytime soon, you’d better hope so, too.”

  HE DIDN’T SHOW.

  Logan had selected Vincenza’s because, together, he and Lou could effectively, and discreetly, surveil the restaurant and its immediate environs.

  Perhaps Mac had suspected a trap. Perhaps he, too, had been out there somewhere, watching the front door, waiting for Zara to arrive.

  Logan stayed a couple of hours, till it was clear his quarry had eluded him. Just as he’d waited in vain yesterday after leaving his parents’ home, certain they’d expected Mac for lunch. A sense of unreality had suffused him as he found an unobtrusive spot down the block to observe the house. Was he really doing this? Staking out his childhood home?

  What kind of man have I raised? his mother wanted to know. The kind of man who spied on his own flesh and blood, on the people who gave him life and raised him, he could have answered, sickened that their misguided sense of duty had driven him to it.