Hush (44 page)

ACADIA HAD DONE EVERYTHING
but turn invisible to keep out of the way. But the helicopter wasn't very large real estate, and people were shooting at them, and the two men, dressed all in black, were firing some powerful-looking guns at the people on the ground.

The pilot was yelling that they had to get the fuck out of there ASAP, that they were getting hit hard. Yes. She'd noticed. The impact of things hitting the sides of the craft sounded like cannon fire from inside.

Below them, flames were erupting around the small clearing as trees caught fire. In other words, all hell was breaking loose and Zak and Gideon were in the middle of it.

Where were they?

“Down there” was mayhem. “Up here” was a pilot fighting to keep the helicopter steady so that he could beam the men on the ground back to the mother ship. And two men firing and loading some serious weapons. And one woman who was making the smallest footprint she could in order to stay out of their way.

“We have Spincher.”

The helicopter dipped and swayed.

Good. Not the man she wanted to hear about. But good. Acadia held her breath, waiting, praying.

“Here come Reith and Stark. Hold your fire!”

“Thank you, God.” She winced as a barrage of shots came from the ground. “Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.”

Spincher was hauled on board and immediately turned, weapon in hand, to cover the man climbing up the rope. Zak? Oh, God, please …

Reith was yanked onto the floor of the helicopter, lay there for a few seconds catching his breath, then picked up his weapon and braced himself against the open door, firing down into the whipping treetops. By now the fires were reaching into the canopy, and the smoke further obscured the view of the clearing below.

“Find his brother?” one of the men asked through the headset in Acadia's helmet.

Reith fired another round through the trees. “Didn't make it. Drop a second line.”

“We don't—”

Reith cut in tersely, “Drop the line! He wants to bring his brother home.”

Spincher leaned over through the open door as another rope was quickly lowered. “Ordnance coming in hot. Son of a bitch is gonna get us all killed. Hurry the fuck up, Stark!”

A hailstorm of bullets hit the side of the helicopter. Acadia needed to get out of the harness, but Reith grabbed her shoulder as she started to undo the snap. “Nothing you can do, ma'am. Stay put. Speed things up,
you two!” he yelled, gesturing at the men pulling what Acadia presumed was the rope tied to Gideon.

Beside her, Reith muttered “Shit” under his breath.
Oh, Zak.
Acadia's heart ached. To have come this close and lost his brother must be devastating.

“Here he comes!” Reith shouted, then answered fire, ducking against the inner wall. A bullet went all the way through one open door, and out the other. “Get ready to rock and ro—Oh, hell!”

“What? Acadia strained against the restraints. “Is Zak—
What's happening?”

“No!” Spincher screamed down to Zak. “Keep climbing, you asshole. Keep fucking climbing!” He turned back and addressed Reith, although they could all hear him over the headsets. “The brother's tether was shot and severed, body's back on the ground. Help me pull Stark up,
fast.
“The men scrambled, hauling in the line hand over hand.
“Pull. Pull. Pull!”

Between them, they pulled Zak onboard. He was furious.

The helicopter lifted higher in a dizzying climb that had Acadia's heart in her throat. She was strapped in, couldn't get to Zak, who stayed where he was, sprawled on the floor, as they climbed. The sound of the gunfire dropped away, leaving the echo in her ears and the heavy percussive sound of the blades spinning overhead.

“Everyone in one piece?” Reith asked over the headset.

Everyone answered in the affirmative. Except Zak, whose eyes were filled with such pain, Acadia felt it to
her soul. Her heart swelled too big for her chest as she felt the pain coming off him in waves.

She wanted to crawl over to him and press his head against her breast. Wanted to rock him, or kiss him, or stroke his back. She wanted to take some of that pain and share it with him to lighten his burden.

All she could do was sit there like a statue and watch him struggle to deal with the loss of his brother. Tears blurred her vision, and she had to swipe her face against her shoulder.

The helicopter jerked right, and everything slid until the pilot smoothed the ride. The move brought Zak from his daze and he rolled over, pushing himself upright. He sat there, hands hanging between his bent knees. His skin seemed pulled too tight over his features, and his eyes were dark, sunken pools as he stared at nothing.

After several minutes, his chest rose and fell as he dragged in a ragged breath. “Piñero?” he asked hoarsely.

“Dead,” Spincher replied evenly.

“Fly over the falls,” Zak instructed, voice thick.

The pilot looked back and gave a grim nod.

A few minutes later, the helicopter hovered over Angel Falls. Acadia had to admit, it was beautiful. The water dropped over the edge of flat-topped Auyantepui Mountain to plunge almost three thousand feet to the valley below. By the time the water reached the Kerep River, most of it would've evaporated. A cloud of fine mist sprayed the windows, and gathered in rivulets to run like tears down the Plexiglas.

Instead of spending her thirtieth birthday looking up at its majesty and power from the river below, she was looking at it from a dizzying height, hovering above it a lifetime later.

Please, God,
Acadia prayed, surreptitiously fumbling with the latch to her harness,
do not let Zak jump
. What she'd do if he tried, she had no idea. Wind buffeted the helicopter, and Zak held on to the open door, almost suspended over the spray, for several moments of heart-stopping fear for Acadia.

Zak whispered something, then drew his hand back and flung his brother's watch out into the mist.

He slammed the door shut with a final-sounding thud. “Let's go.” Clearly not interested in conversation, he took off his headset, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes.

Two hours later, thanks to the mysterious Marc Savin, Acadia sat alone on a Learjet, winging her way home to Junction City.

TWENTY

Cambridge, Massachusetts
Three months later

Z
ak missed Acadia with an intense longing that had only grown stronger in the months since he'd seen her. During the wild time they'd spent together, she'd inextricably become part of his very soul. Her departure had torn Zak's tenuous tether to her and made him realize just what an asset she was. As he'd stood on the tarmac watching until the plane was a speck in the sky, something had unraveled inside him.

He was done waking in the night, reaching for her, only to find himself alone.

He'd gone to Venezuela seeking excitement.

He'd found her.

He'd found love.

He'd come to Boston to retrieve her.

Zak had sold ZAG Search, despite the crappy economy. But it had taken months to unravel the clusterfuck of events leading to his brother's and Buck's deaths.

He'd earmarked the majority of the money from the sale of ZAG to fund adventure camps all over the country for underprivileged kids in Gideon's name. The first would be breaking ground in Seattle soon. And he was in talks to construct a BASE-jumping camp near Angel Falls, also in Gid's name.

Angel Falls and Gideon would forever be indelibly linked in his mind. No one would ever know Gid the way he had, but the camps would keep his brother's adventurous spirit alive for hundreds of kids for a very long time. Gid would've loved what he'd done. But it could never be enough.

God he missed him. The loss was a gnawing ache in Zak's gut. He wasn't sure he'd ever get past the guilt that if not for his fucked-up marriage, and Jennifer's hatred of him, Gid would still be alive. Great, a new guilt to replace the old. He was trying to think of a better, more productive way to deal with it this time around.

It was almost as though he could hear Gideon's voice as the weeks stretched into months:
Find her. Bring her home. Yeah,
Zak thought, with a mental salute to his brother.
I'm on it.

Cambridge hadn't changed. Everything looked the same as it had when he, Gideon, and Buck had attended MIT here. Jesus, they'd been young and idealistic, full of wild ideas and big dreams. An unstoppable trio, they'd buoyed each other along the way as they achieved everything they'd set out to do. And more. They'd parlayed a crazy idea into a groundbreaking company and made
millions, not only by building the biggest, most powerful search engine on the Internet, but by keeping cool heads and making shrewd deals. They'd lived their lives to the fullest, and regretted nothing they'd given up to build the company.

The ridiculous amounts of money they'd made had merely been an entertaining way to keep score. But none of it meant anything now, not without Gideon and Buck.

He'd needed time to adjust to the loss of the two men who had meant the most to him. But once he made the decision to live again, he'd moved with determined purpose to achieve his goal. He'd utilized every second of the last ninety days in his haste to tie up all the loose ends before coming to see Acadia. It wasn't that he was done grieving; the hole in his heart would never completely close. He just assured himself that he was accepting that life would be different from now on. A new normal.

A new challenge. One with blond hair and gray eyes, who was the equivalent, in terms of both difficulty and accessibility, of scaling Mt. Everest. Only a hell of a lot more thrilling.

Zak pulled the rental car to the curb in front of Acadia's modern high-rise and touched the place beneath his shirt where her St. Christopher medallion rested. She'd slipped it into his pocket, he suspected, when he'd left Savin's safe house. At first, seeing the familiar scrolling numbers superimposed on the sky as her plane lifted over Caracas, his heart had leaped, and his first thought had been
Gideon.
But Gideon was well and truly dead. And then he knew—

Acadia.

Her medallion was his link to her. As long as he held it, Zak had known exactly where she was from the moment she'd made it safely home to Junction City. He'd “seen” her traveling cross-country by car, and he'd known to the exact coordinates when she'd arrived here in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He'd traveled across the country to find her. The GPS location coordinates had been scrolling through his mind for weeks. Now the numbers glowed “hot,” indicating she was right there, minutes away. He blew out a hard breath, letting go of his death grip on the steering wheel. The sun shone down from an ice blue sky, no warmth in it. He hadn't felt warm since they'd parted.

Carrying a large cardboard box, Zak strode confidently up the path, stepped through the glass doors, crossed the lobby, then hesitated like a lovesick schoolboy as the elevator doors slid open. He needed another minute—

No, he didn't. Months had already been wasted. He got in and slapped the button for the eleventh floor and concentrated on breathing in and out to slow his racing heartbeat. Which was ridiculous. He'd done more dangerous stunts in his quest for adventure than a Hollywood stuntman. He'd scaled the highest pinnacles, dived to the deepest depths, leaped from heights that had made even his equally adventurous brother quail. Yet here he was, sweaty-palmed at the mere thought of seeing the woman he loved.

The elevator ride was over before he could think of anything intelligent to say. Although he'd considered
dozens of opening lines in the last few months, none of them now seemed right. Fuckit. Possibly the most important negotiation of his life, and he was tongue-tied. Gid would have laughed his ass off.

Zak got out and strode down a quiet, carpeted hallway. Staring at Acadia's front door, he waited through several heavy heartbeats before he was able to ring the bell.
Chicken.