Nancy Herkness (22 page)

“Coffee,” he said. “Thanks.”

“Sit down, and I’ll bring it out.”

“Sounds good to me.”

When she returned, he was leaning back in the rocker with his legs stretched out in front of him, his eyes closed and his arms relaxed on the wooden armrests. He shifted upright as soon as she set the coffee tray down on the table.

“Any progress?” she asked, putting a mug in his hand.

“None whatsoever. I’m hoping you can shake something loose from these tapes.”

Again she felt that flush of gratification. Jack Lanett did not accept help easily. Yet here he was asking her for it. “Let’s look at them.”

He shook his head. “First, tell me what happened with Don McGraw.”

“That’s kind of long and involved. What it boils down to is he gave up all rights to custody.”

“Does the police car parked in the cul-de-sac have anything to do with this long and involved story?”

Charlie sighed. “You noticed.”

“Yeah, sugar, I noticed. Care to elaborate?”

She elaborated, telling him about everything except the confrontation at the bowling alley.

“You didn’t think I might want to know McGraw was trying to blackmail you?”

“It wasn’t your problem,” Charlie said. “I didn’t want to bother you with it. You have enough on your plate right now.”

“And is Sahara-Mars your problem?”

Charlie swallowed the rest of her wine in one gulp. “That’s different,” she muttered.

He exploded out of his chair. His blue eyes burned cold. “Different how? Different because I trust you and you don’t trust me?”

He stood very still for a long moment before he said, “You’re right not to trust me. You know why? Because I’m the son of a drunk and a wife-beater. My father beat my mother every time he had a few. And I’m likely to do the same to you. That’s what children of abusers do.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she protested. “I’ve never seen you drunk! And I’m certainly not afraid you’ll hit me. In fact, I’ve never seen you drink alcohol at all except for some champagne at the party for Sahara-Mars.”

“That was tonic water,” he said. “And you have no idea what I’m capable of.”

“As a matter of fact, I know a great many things you’re capable of, but I have no intention of pandering to your ego by telling you what they are.” She was trying to ease some of the tension that vibrated almost tangibly around him. She stood up. “Nor do I believe the children of alcoholics or wife-abusers are doomed to follow in their parents’ footsteps. You’re way beyond that.”

“That’s truer than you know.” And suddenly the cold, bleak depths of space were back in his voice. He stepped off the edge of the porch and turned his face to the sky as though looking for something.

Charlie followed him and his gaze but saw only the usual moon and stars. She looked back at him, longing to reach out, to prove his unexpected revelation changed nothing for her. Her hand was halfway across the space between them when she dropped it to her side. Something about his stance repelled contact; he wouldn’t be receptive to her touch. “I don’t care what crimes your father committed,” she said quietly. “I care about you.”

“What about the crimes I’ve committed? You might care about those.” He lowered his head to look at her.

She shook her head. “Whatever they were, they’re in your past. I trust the man you are now.”

“Evidently not enough.” He walked back onto the porch and retrieved his briefcase. “Where’s your VCR?”

Jack slammed the first videotape into the player with the resentment of a man acting against his will. Charlie tried to focus on the shifting scenes of the interior of the Museum of Natural History even as she racked her brain for the words that could make it across the suddenly vast gulf between them.

Mostly the tapes showed empty corridors and exhibit halls with the occasional guard strolling through them. A couple of cryptic phrases regarding codes and arming scrolled across the bottom of one screen.

“That’s when the thieves disarmed the system. They knew the code.” Jack spoke suddenly, making her jump.

As the second tape neared its end, a group of six men dressed in black from head to toe came around a corner into full view of the camera. They walked briskly but without haste; clearly they knew where they were going and weren’t concerned about anyone stopping them.

“The guard monitoring these screens was knocked out by nerve gas. They didn’t care about the camera, the bastards,” Jack commented.

The tape ended, and Jack stalked to the television set to feed in the third. It picked up the men as they entered the Rose Center and made their way toward the Hall of Planet Earth where the Mars rock hung suspended in its protective case. “Now they disarm the extra security system we put in place around Sahara-Mars. I hope whoever sold them that information made them pay through the nose.” Jack’s fury sizzled in his voice.

Charlie watched the figure at the head of the group lift a hidden panel in the wall, then tap a long sequence on the keypad. She was so focused on his actions she almost forgot to watch his companions.

But an odd movement caught her eye.

Four of the group stood scanning the huge exhibit space under the sphere of the planetarium. A fifth man positioned himself behind the typist, either coaching or checking up on him. Absorbed in his observations, he absently raised his left hand toward his ear. When his curved index finger encountered the fabric of his mask, he turned his head toward his raised hand as though surprised to see it. He made a self-conscious adjustment to his headgear, then shoved his hand into his trouser pocket.

“Wait. Rewind that,” Charlie said urgently.

Jack looked at her questioningly and pointed the remote at the VCR. “Is this far enough?”

Charlie nodded and watched the men walk into the Rose Center and disarm the special security system again.

“Once more.”

As the man reached for his ear the third time around, Charlie said, “That tall man behind the guy disarming the system. I think that’s Dr. Hollinger, Vandermade’s expert.”

“Why?” Jack said, sitting forward.

“Back it up again. You see how he raises his hand toward his ear almost as though he intends to scratch it? Hollinger has this odd mannerism where he hooks his index finger in his ear and pulls down on it. He did it twice at the party. And that’s what the tall guy seems about to do.”

“I knew I’d seen that gesture before. I couldn’t come up with when or where.” Jack replayed the scene twice. “You’re right! Vandermade’s definitely involved. This won’t stand up in court, but it doesn’t have to,” he added.

“What does that mean?” Charlie asked, made uneasy by his tone of voice.

“Nothing you need to worry about.”

Clicking off the television, he rose and hit the VCR’s eject button. For a few moments, he stood idly turning the black plastic cartridge in his hands. Then he slapped it against his palm sharply as if to punctuate a decision.

“Jack…” Charlie began, pushing herself up off
the couch and hoping she would say the right thing. “I—”

“I have to get this back to New York.” He cut her off. “Thanks for your help.”

“Don’t walk out,” she said, stretching a hand out to him.

He stood like stone beyond her reach. “I’ve got things to do. This is my problem.”

Better not to remind him she had just given him the tool to solve it. “Jack,” she tried again. “I just—”

He was loading the tapes back into his briefcase. “Another time,” he said without looking at her. “By the way, that white bag out on the porch is for Sallyanne. I was going to give it to her in the morning, but you can do it for me.”

“Stay,” she said, as the wonderful, excruciating realization hit that he had planned to.

He looked at her for a long minute. “Give her a big hug for me.”

He pulled open the French doors and was gone.

Charlie slowly sank back down onto the sofa cushions, listening as the roar of the Land Rover’s engine receded into the night. He had finally told her something about himself because she had hurt him. He wasn’t grateful not to have another problem dumped in his lap, especially a problem with “baggage.”

He was hurt. How could that be?

She went out on the porch to retrieve the abandoned bag. The white plastic was emblazoned with the multicolored Toys “R” Us logo. It rustled loudly as she pulled out a large, light box. “Gone with the Wind Barbie” flowed across the clear plastic front in elegant script. Behind it stood a doll dressed in an exquisitely detailed antebellum ball gown, with tiny pearl jewelry at her ears, neck and wrists. Static electricity glued the receipt to the box. Charlie peeled it away and read the location and time of purchase. His own dream was in jeopardy, but Jack had stopped on the turnpike tonight on his way from New York City to buy the perfect doll for a little girl.

She hugged the box to her chest and sobbed.

Twenty-Three

1:23 A.M. Charlie kicked the covers off and hurled herself out of bed. She obviously wasn’t going to get any sleep so she might as well get some work done. She visited the kitchen and poured a glass of white wine before she stalked into her office and flipped on the computer. As she waited for it to boot up, she noticed the wine glowed weirdly blue in the light of the computer screen, reminding her uncannily of Jack’s eyes.

Shoving the keyboard aside, she put her elbows on the desk and stared at the icons marching up and down the monitor. What could she say to Jack to undo the damage she had done? Nothing. Nothing she could say would convince a man who didn’t want to be convinced.

She had to do something to prove she trusted him completely.

“I can’t throw myself off a cliff and hope he’ll catch me, Major,” she said as the big dog pushed his head onto her lap. “I’m a writer, I need to come up with a metaphor. What shows trust?” She sipped the wine thoughtfully.

“Vulnerability. What shows vulnerability to a man who thinks he’s capable of physical abuse?”

She took a swig of Chardonnay.

“Helplessness. I have to make myself deliberately vulnerable and helpless. Ugh.”

Putting down the wineglass, she stroked Major’s white fur absently as she considered the best way to demonstrate vulnerable and helpless. When something Jack said long ago triggered a wild idea, she groaned and shook her head. “I can’t do that. It’s about as vulnerable and helpless as a woman can be, but I can’t do it.” She cradled Major’s head in her hands and looked into his eyes. He licked her hand.

“I really love this man. So I have to do it.”

She rested her face against the dog’s warm head.

“This is going to be really humiliating if it doesn’t work.”

Sallyanne ate her breakfast kashi as usual. She wasn’t silent but she was subdued. True to her word, Charlie had removed the stuffed rabbit although she had not thrown it away. It was well-wrapped and stashed as far under the eaves as she could shove it; someday Sallyanne might want the only evidence she had of her biological father.

“Anytime you want to talk about your father, I’m here to listen.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Want to help me wrap the birthday present for Christina?” Charlie asked.

“No, thank you, ma’am. I’d like to take Major outside for awhile.”

Sallyanne had been invited to a classmate’s sleepover party later that day. Rhonda had recommended that she go, saying that pizza and friends would distract the child from her troubles. Charlie watched through the kitchen window as Sallyanne played tag with Major. Taking a deep breath, she dialed Miguel’s number.

“Charlie, mi amor, you are a genius. We all knew there was something we were missing on that videotape.”

“The man annoyed me so I guess I was watching him,” Charlie said. “I have a favor to ask you.”

“I am entirely at your service.”

“Jack is a little upset with me. I didn’t keep him informed about a situation here…with the best of intentions, but it was the wrong thing to do. I need to get into his apartment to talk with him privately tonight. Could you help me arrange that?”

“I wondered why the mention of your name made him go ice-eyed.”

“So you’ve noticed he does that too?”

“I’ve known him a very long time. But Charlie, he is not a man who listens well when his mind is already made up. I’m not sure that talking to him will solve this ‘upset.’”

“Well, I may do a bit more than just talk,” Charlie admitted. “So I need privacy.”

Miguel chuckled. “You are an intelligent woman. But we’re going to see Dr. Hollinger this afternoon. Jack may not be in the best of moods when he gets home. Maybe you could delay your ‘talk’ a few days.”

“I can’t. I only have tonight free.” And I might lose my nerve if I don’t do this now.

“All right, tonight it is. I will make sure Jack comes back to his apartment alone.”

Charlie wrote down all the codes and instructions for entering the mini-fortress that was Jack’s apartment.

After she read them back, Miguel said, “You are a good thing for Jack. Buena suerte.”

“Thank you for saying that. I need all the encouragement I can get.”

“The man is seriously paranoid,” Charlie muttered as she entered yet another string of numbers on yet another keypad. The door to Jack’s apartment swung open without any sirens blaring, and she heaved a sigh of relief.

She couldn’t resist walking over to the pallasite Jack had shown her at their second meeting and kicking on the display light. The embedded crystals threw their otherworldly glow over her fingertips as she traced their irregular shapes. Jack’s long fingers had followed the same path. Her breathing quickened as she remembered him threading his hand through her hair and teasing her with his private collection of meteorites.

Stop avoiding the task at hand, Charlie told herself, even as she was grateful for the memories that made her plan seem slightly less insane. She turned off the light and squared her shoulders. Hefting the bag of silk neckties she had bought on her way to Jack’s apartment, she ordered herself, “To the bedroom.”

She walked down the long corridor, peering into the rooms opening off it, as she searched for Jack’s sleeping quarters. Two bedrooms clearly had not been used recently. A third had a stack of towels neatly folded on the bed, ready for a guest. They were all furnished in the style of the living room, with chrome and steel chairs, black-lacquered chests and bedside tables. And low platform beds. Damn.

“Why couldn’t the landlord be an antiques dealer with a specialty in Colonial furnishings?” she muttered, as she headed for the last door. “A four-poster bed would make me very happy right now.”

“Whoa, this is even better!” she amended, as she walked into the master suite.

While the rest of the room sported the usual chrome and glass, the bed was straight out of the Arabian nights. The heavily carved headboard and footboard were inlaid with mother-of-pearl and semi-precious stones and draped with thickly tasseled silk cords. Jewel-toned silk pillows embroidered in intricate gold patterns glowed against the dark wood. A silk bedspread with the brilliance of stained glass spilled across the wide mattress.

Charlie flipped up the hem of the bedspread to discover that the elaborate bed had been installed right over the built-in platform.

“So, Jack, this is your personal fantasy,” she said, surveying the opulence with her hands on her hips. She laughed. “Now I’m going to take it just a little bit further.”

She dropped the bag of ties on the bed and randomly pulled out a navy blue paisley. Threading it through a cutout in the footboard, she debated whether she needed to attach a second tie for length and decided that one would do. She tied the wider end to the wood and laid the narrower portion out diagonally toward the center of the mattress. After repeating the process three times, she took a deep breath and stood looking down at the empty center of the bed. Picking up the end of the bright blue tie extending from the right side of the headboard, she made several loops and laid it back down. The rest she left alone.

She checked her watch, squinting at the dial as she calculated how long it might take Jack and Miguel to confront the dishonest Dr. Hollinger.

“Now. I’ve got to do this now,” she said loudly.

Dropping onto the edge of the bed, she yanked off her sandals, jerked her T-shirt over her head, unhooked her bra and dropped it on the growing pile of clothes on the floor.

“This is a metaphor. Nothing but a metaphor,” she chanted as she unbuttoned and unzipped her shorts and pushed them and her panties down around her ankles in one swift motion. Stepping out of the last of her clothing, she bent down and scooped up the bundle, stuffing it in the canvas bag with the unused neckties.

Finally, she pulled the tortoise shell clip out of her ponytail and shook her hair down around her shoulders, partially covering her nudity. Lady Godiva had the right idea, she thought wryly.

Scooting into the center of the bed, Charlie put the sole of one bare foot beside the navy paisley necktie, and took another deep breath.

“Just tie the knot the way they showed you at Wilderness Survival,” she encouraged herself. “Loop it around, down and through. Now loop it back up and through. Then pull here.”

The silk tie tightened around her ankle.

She moved her right foot to the red paisley tie attached to the other side of the footboard and swiftly completed the same motions.

She sat a moment with her knees bent inward and her ankles splayed apart.

Ever so slowly she slid backward across the smooth silk of the bedspread, gasping slightly as she hit a rougher patch of heavy embroidery, but continuing so that gradually her knees were drawn down and apart and her legs were spread.

Charlie lay back and placed her left hand on the yellow and blue striped tie extending from the left side of the headboard. She easily finished the knot and pulled it tight.

Did she really want to do this?

She put her right hand in the still-loose loops of blue silk. Once she pulled the end of the tie, she was here until Jack decided to turn her loose. Or not.

All the possible variations of how Jack might react pin-wheeled in her brain. She wanted to provoke a strong response, and as she glanced briefly down at her bare thighs stretched across Jack’s gorgeously colored bed, she was surer than ever that this would do it.

The real question was: Did she love Jack enough to risk total humiliation?

She closed her eyes and yanked on the tie.

Twenty minutes passed. Charlie tried to relax into the soft slither of silk on her bare backside, but her breasts and stomach and the hollow between her legs felt all the more exposed by contrast. She attempted to move her knees closer together, but the ties were too short to allow more than a fraction of an inch of increased modesty. She tested the loops on her right wrist, and succeeded only in pulling them even tighter against the bones and tendons.

The folks at Wilderness Survival would be proud, she thought, then choked on a giggle. And a couple of the in-structors would definitely enjoy seeing her in this position.

She tried to distract herself by examining the collection of exotic swords and daggers arrayed on the wall beside her. The grips were highly decorated and the scabbards gleamed with silver, gold and gemstones. She was admiring the jeweled snake coiling around one particularly ornate hilt when the alarm system emitted a soft beep, signaling that the correct code had been entered. Footsteps sounded loudly, then were muffled as someone walked across bare wood and soft carpet. No voices. Charlie silently blessed Miguel for that.

She squirmed against her bonds as she heard the footsteps echoing down the hall, suddenly wishing she hadn’t been in such a hurry to pull that last knot tight. There was a moment of silence, and then the footsteps moved away.

Damn. She couldn’t stand much more of this torture. Should she call out to him?

She heard the refrigerator whoosh closed, and the footsteps came swiftly down the hall again.

The door she had so carefully left ajar at just the same angle she had found it flew open, and Jack strode in. He was dressed in a black blazer, black shirt and black slacks. Putting a bottle of water down on the dresser, he shrugged out of his jacket and began to unstrap the shoulder holster concealed underneath. The sight of the gun made Charlie gasp.

Jack whipped around, his right hand reaching for the pistol as he bent his knees into a dangerous crouch.

For a long moment, he froze. Then his hand dropped, and he straightened.

“Well, well, well. What have we here?”

He sauntered over to the foot of the bed and let his eyes roam up and down Charlie’s spread-eagled body.

“Hello, Jack.”

He laughed.

“Hello, sugar.”

As he came closer, Charlie could see the blaze of restrained exultation in his eyes, like a general who’s just won one battle but faces another, more difficult one the next day.

“That’s an interesting knot,” he said, his long fingers toying with the loose end of the tie around her left ankle. “It seems securely tied.”

Charlie cleared her throat. “Very. The average adventurer knows her knots.”

He dropped the tie and trailed his fingertips up the inside of her calf to her knee as he took a step forward.

Charlie swallowed hard as he continued to move his touch upward along the exposed skin of her inner thigh. She shifted her gaze upward to his face and lost her ability to breathe. The blaze in his eyes had multiplied tenfold, and he was staring down at her body with a hunger that made her long to free her hands to cover herself.

She closed her eyes to block out the vision of naked desire, then wished she hadn’t. All she was aware of now was the slow, inexorable progress of his hand toward the warm, dark throbbing between her legs.

As his fingers danced across the join between thigh and hip, she moaned softly.

Then his fingers were sliding down along the folds of her center, against the most exquisitely sensitive place on her body, and deep inside her.