Judith McNaught (53 page)

"No letters, Julie! It's over when you leave here today.
We're
over." The words lashed her like whips even though there was no unkindness in his tone.

"Tomorrow morning, you are to pick up your old life where you left it. Pretend none of this ever happened, and you'll forget it within weeks."

"Maybe you'll be able to do that, but I won't," she said, hating the sound of pleading and tears in her voice. She shook her head as if to negate her words and turned toward the car, angrily brushing her shoulder against her wet eye. "I'm leaving before I make an even bigger fool of myself," she choked.

"Don't," he whispered harshly, catching her arm and stopping her from leaving. "Not like this." She looked up into his fathomless eyes, and for the first time, Julie wasn't so certain he was handling this morning's leave-taking as easily as she thought, Putting his hand against the side of her face, he smoothed

her hair back and said solemnly, "The only foolish thing you've done in the last week is caring too much

about me. Everything else you said and did was …

right. It was perfect."

Closing her eyes, fighting back tears, Julie turned her face into his hand and kissed his palm as he'd kissed hers once before and she whispered against it,

"I love you so much."

He jerked his hand away, and his voice turned condescendingly amused. "You don't love me, Julie.

You're naive and inexperienced, and you don't know the difference between good sex and real love.

Now be a good girl, go home where you belong, and forget about me. That's exactly what I want you to do."

She felt as if he'd slapped her, but her wounded pride forced her chin up. "You're right," she said with quiet dignity, getting into the car. "It's time to return to reality."

Zack watched her car disappear around the first curve and vanish from view between the towering snowdrifts. He remained there long after she was gone, until the freezing wind finally forced him to remember that he was standing outside in a light jacket. He'd hurt her because he
had
to do it, he reminded himself again as he turned to the house. He couldn't let her waste one extra moment of her precious life loving him or missing him or waiting for him. He'd done the right thing, the noble thing, by

ridiculing her love.

He went into the kitchen, listlessly picked up the coffee pot, and reached for a mug from the cabinet, then he saw the mug Julie had used that morning, sitting on the counter top. He reached out slowly and picked it up, then he pressed the rim to his cheek.

Two hours after she left the mountain house, Julie pulled the car off onto the shoulder of a deserted stretch of highway and reached for the thermos on the seat beside her. Her throat and eyes hurt from the tears she adamantly refused to shed, and her mind was dazed from her futile effort to block out the painful memory of his parting words:

"You don't love me, Julie. You're naive and inexperienced, and you don't know the difference between

good sex and real love. Now be a good girl, go home where you belong, and forget about me. That's exactly what I want you to do."

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Her hand shook with misery as she poured coffee into the top of the thermos. How pointlessly cruel of him to ridicule her that way, particularly when he knew she had to face the police and the press as soon as she got back. Why couldn't he have either ignored her words or lied and said he loved her, too, just so she'd have something to cling to during the ordeal ahead. It would have been so much easier for her to face that if he'd only said he loved her.

"You don't love me, Julie… Now be a good girl, go home where you belong, and forget about me…"

Julie tried to swallow the coffee, but it stuck in her constricted throat as another painful realization hit her,

leaving her more desolate and bewildered than before:

Despite his having mocked her feelings, Zack had to have known damned well she really did love him. In fact, he was so sure of it, that he'd assumed he could treat her that way, and she'd
still
go home and not betray him to the authorities. She knew he was right, too. As hurt as she was by his callousness, she could never attempt to strike back at him. She loved him too much to want to hurt him, and her belief in his innocence and her desire to protect him were, strangely enough, every bit as strong now as they'd been yesterday.

A pickup truck shot by her, spewing slush against the side of the car, and she remembered his warning to get as far away as possible without attracting notice. Wearily, she sat up and put the car into gear, looking over her shoulder to make certain it was safe to pull out, but she set the Blazer's cruise control at sixty-five miles an hour. Because he'd told her not to speed. And because getting stopped for a speeding violation fell under the category of "attracting attention."

* * *

distance in blizzard conditions. Following Zack's instructions, she pulled over at the first rest stop on the

Oklahoma side and made her phone call.

Her father answered on the first ring. "Dad," she said, "it's Julie, I'm free. I'm on my way home."

"Thank God!" he exploded. "Oh, thank God!"

In all these years, she'd never known her father to sound so upset, and she felt sick with remorse for what she'd put him through. Before either of them could speak again, however, an unfamiliar voice broke

in, "This is Agent Ingram of the FBI, Miss Mathison, where are you?"

"I'm in Oklahoma at a rest stop. I'm free. He—left me in the car, with the keys, blindfolded. But he's gone. I'm sure he's gone. I don't know where."

"Listen carefully," the voice said. "Get back into your car and lock the doors and leave there at once.

Do

not stay in the vicinity where you last saw him.

Drive to the nearest populated area and call us back from

there. We'll notify the local authorities and they'll come to you. Now get out of there, Miss Mathison!"

"I want to come home!" Julie warned with genuine desperation. "I want to see my family. I don't want to stay in Oklahoma and wait. I can't! I just wanted someone to know I'm on my way." She hung up the phone and headed for her car, and she did not call from the next populated area at all.

Two hours later, a helicopter that had obviously been searching for the distraught hostage who was on
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her way home somehow spotted her on the dark Texas interstate and hovered overhead. Minutes after she noticed it, patrol cars with revolving red and blue lights began racing onto the interstate from the entrance ramps, positioning themselves in front and behind her, forming a motorcade to escort her home.

Or more likely, Julie thought nervously, to prevent Zack Benedict's alleged accomplice from changing her

mind and trying to escape before she was

questioned.

It was horrifying to realize the true scope of the hunt that had evidently been under way for both of them, and Julie thoroughly resented her official escort—

until she pulled into Keaton and neared her parents'

house. Although it was two o'clock in the morning, reporters were swarming all over the yard and street, and camera lights blazed at her as she got out of the car. It took three Texas troopers and both her brothers to get her through the throngs of reporters shouting questions at her and onto the front porch.

Two FBI agents were waiting inside the house, but her parents rushed past them, enfolding her in the protective warmth of their arms and love. "Julie,"

her mother kept saying, hugging her and crying and smiling, "My Julie, my little Julie."

Her father wrapped her in a bear hug and said,

"Thank God, thank God," over and over, and Julie felt

tears blur her eyes because she'd never truly realized how much they loved her. Ted and Carl hugged her and tried to joke about her "adventure," but they both looked positively haggard, and the tears she'd fought for over twenty-four hours slid down her cheeks. In the last ten years, she hadn't shed more than a

few tears—and those were over sad movies—but in the last week she felt like she'd cried an ocean.

That, she decided fiercely, had to stop immediately and permanently. The family reunion was interrupted by the blond-haired FBI agent who stepped forward and said in a calm, authoritative voice, "I'm sorry to intrude, Miss Mathison, but time is of the essence right now, and we have questions that need answers.

I'm David Ingram, we spoke on the phone." He gestured toward the tall, dark-haired agent beside him

and said, "This is Agent Paul Richardson, who's in charge of the Benedict case."

Mrs. Mathison spoke up. "Let's go into the dining room—there's space for all of us at the table." She tossed in her old cure-all for any of Julie's childhood woes: "I'll get some milk and cookies and some coffee, too," she added.

"No, I'm sorry, Mrs. Mathison," Paul Richardson said firmly. "I think this interview is best conducted in

private. Your daughter can bring you up to date in the morning."

Julie had started into the dining room between Ted and Carl, but she stopped and turned at that.

Reminding herself that these men were not really enemies and were only trying to do their job, she said

with quiet firmness, "Mr. Richardson, I realize how anxious you are to ask your questions, but my family is just as eager to hear my answers, and they have even more right to do that than you do. I'd like them to be present tonight if you don't mind."

"And if I do mind?" His height and coloring reminded her poignantly of Zack, and after the grueling drive,

all her defenses were down. As a result, the weary smile she gave him was unintentionally personal.

"Please try not to mind. I'm exhausted and I truly don't want to argue with you."

"I suppose your family can be present," he relented, then he shot his frowning associate a peculiar, quelling look. Julie missed the exchange completely, but Ted saw it and so did Carl.

"Very well, Miss Mathison," Agent Ingram said abruptly, taking over as soon as they were seated.

"Let's

begin at the beginning." Julie felt a tiny tremor of fear when Richardson reached into his pocket, removed

a tape recorder, and put it on the table in front of her, but she reminded herself of what Zack had told her to expect.

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"Where do you want me to start?" she asked, smiling gratefully at her mother when she handed Julie a glass of milk.

"We already know you supposedly went to Amarillo to meet with the grandfather of one of your students," Richardson began.

Julie's head snapped around. "What do you mean
supposedly?"

"There's no need to feel defensive," Ingram quickly interposed in a soothing voice. "You tell us what happened. Let's start with when you first encountered Zachary Benedict."

Julie crossed her arms on the table and tried not to feel any emotion at all. "I'd stopped for coffee in a restaurant on the interstate. I don't remember the name of the place, but I'd recognize it if I saw it.

When

I came outside, it was snowing, and a tall, dark-haired man was crouched near my tire. It was flat.

He

volunteered to fix it…"

"Did you notice if he was armed at that point?"

"If I'd noticed he had a gun, I certainly wouldn't have offered him a ride."

"What was he wearing?" The questions came at her in rapid-fire succession after that, on and on, hour after hour…

"Miss Mathison, you must be able to remember something more about the location of the house he used

for a hideout!" That was Paul Richardson who'd been watching her as if she was an insect under his microscope and using an authoritative tone of voice on her that reminded her a little of Zack when he was

annoyed. In her exhausted state, she found that more endearing than annoying.

"I told you, I was blindfolded. And please, call me Julie—it's shorter and takes less time than Miss Mathison."

"At any time during your stay with Benedict, were you able to discover his destination?"

Julie shook her head. They'd already been over all this once already. "He told me that the less I knew the safer he would be."

"Did you ever
try
to discover his destination?"

She shook her head. That was a new question.

"Please answer aloud for the tape recorder."

"All right!" she said, abruptly deciding he wasn't like Zack at all—he was younger and smoother and actually better looking, but he didn't have Zack's warmth. "I did not ask him where he was going because

he'd already told me that the less I knew the safer he'd be."

"And you want him to be safe, don't you?" he said, pouncing on her answer. "You don't want to see him apprehended, do you?"

The moment of reckoning was here. Richardson waited, tapping the end of his ballpoint pen on the table,

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and Julie glanced out the dining room window at the reporters swarming in the yard and lining the Street while weariness crashed over her in waves. "I've already told you, he tried to save my life."

"I fail to see why that should negate the fact that he is a convicted murderer and he'd taken you hostage"

Leaning back in her chair, she gazed at him with a mixture of disdain and frustration. "I don't believe for

one minute that he killed anyone. Now, let me ask you something, Mr. Richardson." Ignoring Ted's warning squeeze on her knee at her combative tone, she said, "Put yourself in my place and assume for the sake of rhetoric that I took you as a hostage and you managed to escape from me. You hide from me, but I think you've fallen into a deep, icy creek.

From your hiding place, you watch me run down to the creek and dive into that frigid water. I dive again and again, calling your name, and when I can't find you, you watch me stagger out of the creek and collapse in the snow. But I don't get back on my snowmobile and go home. Instead of that, I give up.