“Well, he spoke to me in a very disgusted voice, and he accused me of having a peculiar obsession for short men.”
“Were you afraid of him at any time, Miss Mathison?”
“I was afraid of his gun during the first day,” she said carefully, “but when he didn’t shoot me after my attempt to pass a note to a clerk in a fast-food restaurant nor after my next two escape attempts, I realized that he wasn’t going to hurt me, no matter how much I provoked him.”
Again and again, Matt watched her deflect their questions and manage to begin swaying them from animosity to empathy toward her captor.
After about thirty minutes of relentless questions, the pace began to slow. A CNN reporter called out, “Miss Mathison, do you want to see Zachary Benedict captured?”
She turned her face in the direction of the reporter and said, “How could anyone possibly want to see a man who was unjustly imprisoned sent back to prison? I don’t know how a jury ever convicted him of murder, but I do know that he’s no more capable of that than I am. If he were capable of it, I would not be standing here now, because as I explained to all of you a few minutes ago, I repeatedly tried to jeopardize his escape. I’d also like you to remember that when he thought we’d been found by a helicopter, his first concern was for my safety, not his own. What I’d like to see happen is for this manhunt to be stopped while someone reviews his case.” In a firm, courteous tone, she concluded, “If you have no more questions, ladies and gentlemen, we can end this interview and you can all go back to your homes. As Mayor Addelson explained, the town of Keaton wants to return to normal, and so do I, therefore I will not give any further interviews or answer any other questions. Our town has been delighted to have your tourist’ money pouring into our cash registers, but if you choose to stay here, I have to warn you that you’ll be wasting your time—”
“I have one more question!” a reporter from the Los Angeles Times shouted imperiously. “Are you in love with Zachary Benedict?”
She looked at him, lifted her graceful brows, and disdainfully replied, “I’d expect a question like that from the National Enquirer, but not the Los Angeles Times.” Her attempt to sidestep that got her laughter, but no success this time, because a reporter from the Enquirer shouted, “Okay, Miss Mathison, we’ll ask the question: Are you in love with Zachary Benedict?”
It was the only time Matt saw her falter, and sympathy swelled in his heart as he watched her struggle to keep her smile in place, and her expression noncommittal, but her eyes betrayed her—those huge long-lashed sapphire eyes turned dark and solemn with an emotion that distinctly resembled tenderness. And just when Matt’s sympathy for her plight was at its peak, just when he realized the reporters had finally trapped her, she changed tactics and walked willingly into their trap in a way that made him draw in a sharp breath at her courage:
“At one time or another,” she said, “most of the female population of this country has probably imagined themselves in love with Zachary Benedict Now that I’ve known him,” she added with a tiny break in her voice, “I think they showed excellent judgment. He—” she hesitated, visibly searching for the right words, and then she said simply, “he is a very easy man for any woman to love.”
Without another word she turned away from the bank of microphones and was quickly surrounded by two men Matt presumed were probably FBI agents and several uniformed deputy sheriffs who ushered her safely off the stage.
He pressed the off button on the remote controller as the CNN reporter began to recap the interview, then he looked at his wife. “What do you think of that?”
“I think,” Meredith said quietly, “that she was incredible.”
“But did she change your opinion of Zack at all? I’m biased in his favor, but you never knew him, so you’d probably react to her interview pretty much like everyone else did.”
“I doubt that I’m as unbiased as you think. You’re a very tough judge of character, darling, and you’ve made it clear that you believe he’s innocent. If you believe that, then I’m inclined to believe it, too.”
“Thank you for the tribute to my judgment,” he said tenderly, pressing a kiss on her forehead.
“Now, I have a question for you,” she added, and Matt sensed instinctively what she was going to ask. “Julie Mathison said she was taken to an isolated house somewhere in the Colorado mountains. Was it our house?”
“I don’t know,” he said truthfully, grinning when she gave him a skeptical look. “But I imagine it was,” he added for the sake of honesty. “Zack has been there before, although he always flew in, and over the years, I’ve repeatedly offered him the use of the place. He would naturally fed free to use it now, so long as he didn’t directly involve me—”
“But you are involved!” Meredith burst out a little desperately. “You—”
“I am not involved with Zack in any way that could jeopardize you or me.” When she still looked unconvinced, he reiterated calmly, “When he went to prison, Zack gave me his power of attorney so that I could manage his investments and handle his finances, which I continue to do. That is not illegal nor is it a secret from the legal authorities. Until he escaped from prison, he was in regular communication with me.”
“But what about now that he’s escaped, Matt?” she asked, her eyes searching his face. “What if he tries to communicate with you now?”
“In that case,” he said with a casual shrug that worried her more, not less, “I will do what any law-abiding citizen must do and what Zack would expect me to do: 111 notify the authorities.”
“How quickly?”
He laughed at her perceptiveness and put his arm around her shoulders as he steered her toward the bedroom. “Quickly enough to stop the authorities from charging me with collusion,” he promised. And not one bit quicker than that, he added silently.
“What about his having used our house? Will you tell the authorities what you suspect?”
“I think,” he decided after a moment’s consideration, “that’s an excellent idea! They’ll see that as further proof of my innocence and a gesture of extreme good faith on my part”
“A gesture,” his wife provided wryly, “that can’t possibly harm your friend because, according to Julie Mathison, he left Colorado several days ago.”
“Very clever of you, darling,” he agreed with a grin. “Now, why don’t you climb into bed for our little ‘nap’ and wait for me while I telephone the local office of the FBI.”
She nodded but put her hand on his sleeve. “If I asked you not to have anything more to do with anything that concerns Zachary Benedict—” she began, but he shook his head to silence her.
“I’d do anything in the world for you, and you know it,” he said in a voice that was gruff with emotion. “But please don’t ask this of me, Meredith. I have to live with myself, and I’d find it very difficult to do if I did that to Zack.”
Meredith hesitated, astonished again by the loyalty Matt felt for that one man. Generally regarded as a brilliant, but tough businessman, Matt had hundreds of acquaintances, but he neither trusted them nor gave them his friendship. In fact, to the best of her knowledge, Zachary Benedict was the only one he’d ever truly regarded as a close, trusted friend. “He must be a remarkable man for you to be this loyal to him.”
“You’d like him,” he promised, chucking her under the chin.
“What makes you so certain?” she teased, trying to match his lighthearted attitude.
“I’m certain,” he said with a deliberately smug look, “because you happen to be crazy about me.”
“You can’t mean the two of you are alike?”
“A lot of people probably thought so and not necessarily in a flattering way. However,” he added, sobering, “the fact is that I’m all Zack has. I’m the only one he trusts. When he was arrested, the sycophants and competitors who’d fawned all over him for years dropped him like he had the bubonic plague and reveled in his downfall. There were other people who stayed loyal
to him even after he went to prison, but he cut them off and refused even to answer their letters.”
“He was probably ashamed.”
“I’m sure he was.”
“You’re wrong about one thing,” she said softly. “He has one other ally besides you.”
“Who?”
“Julie Mathison. She’s in love with him. Do you think he saw her or heard what she said tonight?”
Matt shook his head. “I doubt it. Wherever he is, it’s somewhere very remote and it’s not in this country. He’d be a fool to stay in the U.S., and Zack is no fool.”
“I wish he could have heard her,” Meredith said, her heart going out to him despite her fear for her husband’s safety. “Maybe he got lucky and he knows what she’s trying to do.”
“Zack has never been lucky in his personal life.”
“Do you think he fell in love with Julie Mathison while they were together?”
“No,” he said with absolute finality. “Besides the fact that he’d have had much more pressing things on his mind at the time, Zack is . . . almost immune to women. He enjoys them sexually, but he doesn’t have much respect for them, which isn’t surprising given the sort of women he’s known. When his acting career was going strong, they stuck to him like flypaper, but when he became a director—with juicy movie roles to dispense to lucky actresses—they swarmed around him like beautiful, sleek piranhas. He was completely inured to them. In fact, the only real tenderness I’ve ever seen him show is to children, which is the main reason he married Rachel. She promised him children, and she obviously reneged on that as well as her vows.” Shaking his head for emphasis, he finished, “Zack wouldn’t fall in love with a pretty young schoolteacher from a small town—not in a few days, not even in a few months.”
50
SILHOUETTED AGAINST THE SETTING SUN, the tall man waited down the dusty road that led from the village to the busy docks, a newspaper and several magazines in his hand. As he headed down the pier, he spoke to none of the fishermen who were unloading the day’s catch or mending their nets, and none of them spoke to him, but several pairs of curious eyes followed the stranger toward his boat, a forty-one-foot Hatteras with the name Julie stenciled on the stern in fresh blue paint. Other than the boat’s name, which was required by marine law to be displayed on the stern, there was nothing to note about the craft. From a distance, it looked much like the thousands of boats that glided through the waters off the coast of South America, some of them chartered out to sports fishermen, most of them used strictly as fishing boats, all of them returning each night to unload their catch, then leaving each morning when the stars were still twinkling in the predawn sky.
Like the boat, there was little that stood out about its owner as he strode down the dock. Instead of the shorts and knit shirts preferred by the charter captains, he wore plain fisherman’s garb—a white, loose-sleeved shirt of rough cotton, khaki pants, soft-soled shoes, and a dark cap pulled low over his brow. His face was tanned beneath a four-day growth of dark beard, though if anyone had looked closely, they’d have noticed that his skin was not nearly as weathered as the other fishermen’s and his boat was actually better equipped for cruising than fishing. But this was a busy, competitive island port, and the Julie was merely one of thousands of boats that put in here—boats that often carried cargo that wasn’t edible or legal.
Across the pier, two fishermen aboard the Diablo looked up as the Julie’s owner went aboard. Moments later, the boat’s generator purred to life and the cabin lights went on below. “He wastes fuel running that generator half the night,” one fisherman observed. “What does he do that he needs that engine?”
“Sometimes I see his shadow at a table through the curtains. I think he sits and reads.”
The other fisherman looked meaningfully at the five antennas that spiked high above the Julie’s upper helm. “He has every kind of equipment, including radar, aboard that boat,” he observed meaningfully, “yet he never fishes and he seeks no charter customers. I saw him anchored out near Calvary Island yesterday, and he didn’t even have his lines in the water.”
The first fisherman snorted in disgust. “Because he is no fisherman and no charter captain either.”
“He is another drug runner then?”
“What else?” his companion agreed with a disinterested shrug.
Unaware that his presence was causing any comment along the busy docks, Zack studied the maps he’d spread out on the table, carefully charting various courses he could take next week. It was 3 a.m. when he finally rolled the maps up, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep even though he was exhausted. Sleep was something that had eluded him almost completely for the last seven days, even though his escape from the United States had gone off without a hitch—thanks to Enrico Sandini’s connections and a half million dollars of Zack’s money. In Colorado, the small chartered helicopter had appeared, as expected, to pick him up in a clearing 200 yards away from the house, a clearing that existed for precisely that purpose, except that it had been intended for use by the house’s owners and their invited guests. Carrying skis and dressed like a skier, complete with large, tinted goggles that covered most of his face, Zack had climbed aboard and been flown to a small ski lodge an hour away. The pilot had asked no questions nor shown any surprise at what was, Zack knew, a fairly ordinary means of transportation used by wealthy skiers who preferred to own their own mountains and ski on someone else’s.
A rented car had been waiting for him in the parking lot of the ski lodge, and from there he had driven south to a small landing strip where a private plane was waiting, as scheduled, on a cleared landing strip. Unlike the helicopter pilot, who’d been perfectly innocent and legitimate, the pilot of the four-engine propeller plane was not The flight plan he filed each time they landed to refuel was not the one they followed as the little plane headed on a course south by southeast.
Soon after they left U.S. air space, Zack had fallen asleep, waking only when they landed to refuel along the way, but from the time they landed until now, he’d only been able to doze for a couple of hours at a time.
Standing up, he went down to the galley and poured brandy into a glass, hoping it would help him sleep, knowing it wouldn’t, then he carried it up to the small salon that served as living room and dining room in his sea-going “home.” He turned off the cabin’s main lights, but he left the small brass lamp lit on the table beside the sofa because it illuminated the picture of Julie that he’d torn from the front page of a week-old newspaper and put into a small frame taken from the wall of a forward berth. Originally, he’d assumed it was probably her college graduation picture, but tonight as he studied it and sipped his brandy, he decided the picture had more likely been taken when she was dressed for a party or perhaps a wedding. She was wearing pearls at her throat and a peach-colored dress with a modest neckline, but what he most liked about the picture was that she was wearing her hair much as she’d worn it the night they’d dressed up for their “date.”
Knowing he was torturing himself and yet unable to stop, he readied out and picked up the picture frame, then he propped his ankle on the opposite knee and laid the picture against his leg. Slowly, he ran his thumb over her smiling lips, wondering if she was smiling again now that she was back home. He hoped to God she was smiling, but as he gazed at her picture, what he saw was the last image he had of her—the wrenching look on her face when he’d ridiculed her for saying she loved him. The memory of that haunted him. It tore at him along with other worries about her, like whether or not she was pregnant. He tortured himself constantly wondering if she’d have to endure an abortion or endure the shame of unwed motherhood in a small town.
There were so many things he wanted to tell her, so many things he needed desperately to say to her. He swallowed the rest of his brandy, fighting the urge to write her another letter. Every day, he wrote her letters even though he knew damned well he couldn’t send them. He had to stop writing those letters, Zack
warned himself.
He had to put her out of his mind before he went insane . . .
He had to get some sleep . . .
And even while he was thinking that, he was reaching for a pen and tablet.
Sometimes he told her where he was and what he was doing, sometimes he described in great detail things he thought would interest her, like the islands on the horizon or the habits of the local fishermen, but tonight he was in a much different mood. Tonight exhaustion and brandy sent his rampaging regrets and worries soaring to new heights. According to the outdated American newspaper he’d bought in the village this morning, Julie was definitely suspected of aiding and abetting his escape. It suddenly occurred to him that she was going to need to hire a lawyer to keep the police and FBI from badgering her or, worse, from charging her with collusion just to terrify her into admitting things that weren’t true. If that happened, she’d need a top-notch attorney, not some country bumpkin. She’d need money to hire an attorney like that. A new sense of urgency banished the defeated despair that had clouded his thinking since she left him and his mind began to work furiously, coming up with new problems and sudden solutions.
It was dawn when he leaned back in his chair, incredibly weary and completely beaten. Beaten, because he knew he was going to send her this letter. He had to send it to her, partly because of the solutions he’d come up with, but also because he desperately wanted her to know the truth about how he felt. He was now certain that the truth couldn’t hurt her nearly as much as he’d hurt her with a lie. This would be their last communication, but at least it would correct the ugly ending to the most exquisitely beautiful days and nights of his life.
Sunlight was peeping through the curtains in the salon and he glanced at his watch. Mail on this island was only picked up once a week, early in the morning on Mondays, which meant he couldn’t take the time to rewrite his rambling, incoherent letter, not when he still had to write a letter to Matt and explain what he wanted done.