“Pardon, senorita!” a Mexican called, jostling past her, running for his flight with a boy in one hand and a suitcase in the other.
“Pardon!” another man said, shoving her rudely—he was very tall and dark, and his face was turned away. “Zack!” she whispered in terror, whirling around, watching in confusion as he ran toward a gate where passengers were swarming off their plane. Three Mexicans leaning against a post stared at her, then at the man, then at her, and she noticed them at the same time she saw the dark man’s face. Not Zack’s face.
The public address system seemed to blare in her ears: “Flight 620 from Los Angeles is now arriving at Gate A-64. Flight 1152 from Phoenix is arriving at Gate A-23. Flight 134 . . .”
Shaking harder, Julie reached a trembling hand up, shoved her hair off her forehead and began walking swiftly and blindly down the terminal, wanting it to happen without her seeing it now. Four more minutes. If she walked fast, she thought, if she didn’t look right or left, Zack would move out from behind a post or a pillar, materialize in a doorway, and they’d take him and it would be over.
Please, God, let it happen quickly, she prayed in a chant that matched her long, quick strides after she passed unchallenged through customs. Don’t let them hurt him. Let it happen quickly. Don’t let them hurt him. Let it happen quickly.
Walking swiftly, she shoved past the passengers emerging from the crowded security check gate, and without breaking stride, she glanced at the overhead sign with an arrow pointing to the terminal exit, turned in that direction, and kept right on going. Don’t let them hurt him . . . Don’t let them hurt him . . . Don’t let him be here, she chanted hysterically as she walked. Two more minutes. Ahead were the doors leading out to the brightly lit area where taxis and cars were waiting with their headlights on. Don’t let him be here. Don’t let him be here. Don’t let him be here. Don’t let him be—here.
He wasn’t here.
Julie stopped dead, oblivious to the fact that she was being shoved and jostled by streams of laughing, talking people trying to get around her to leave the terminal. Slowly she turned, her gaze drifting past Paul Richardson, who’d halted and seemed to be chatting with Ted . . . past the group of laughing Mexicans rushing toward her . . . past the tall, stooped, elderly man with graying hair, who was carrying a suitcase, his head bent . . . past the mother with— The old man! Julie’s gaze shot back to him just as he slowly lifted his head and raised his eyes to her . . . his warm, smiling, golden eyes.
Screaming a silent warning to him, Julie stepped forward once, twice, and started running, shoving through the crowd, trying to throw herself between him and danger at the same time a male voice boomed, “HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, BENEDICT!”
Zack froze, men grabbed him, throwing him against the wall, but his eyes stayed riveted on Julie, warning her fiercely to stay away. Pandemonium erupted with the shouts of passengers scrambling to get out of the way of Mexican Federales, who were running forward drawing guns, and Julie heard herself screaming at all of them, “Don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt him!”
Paul Richardson grabbed her, jerking her back.
“They’re hurting him!” she cried, struggling in his grip to see around the bodies of the men crowded around him. “They’re hurting him!”
“It’s all over!” Paul shouted in her ear, trying to restrain and calm her. “It’s all right! It’s over!”
The words finally registered and Julie froze. Unable to pull free or look away, she watched in paralyzed anguish as Zack was surrounded and searched under the supervision of a short, impeccably dressed man with thinning hair who suddenly seemed to be in charge. He was smiling as he watched Zack being frisked by the Mexican Federales, and she heard him say, “We’re going home, Benedict, and we’re going to be together for a long, long time—” He broke off as one of the Federales pulled something out of Zack’s pocket, and he held out his hand. “What’s that?” he snapped.
The Federale dropped the object into his palm and Julie felt her body go cold at the evil in his smile as he looked from the object in his hand to Zack’s expressionless profile. “How sweet!” he sneered, then he turned suddenly toward Julie, striding forward.
“I’m Warden Hadley,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’ll bet this was meant for you.”
Julie didn’t react, she couldn’t move, because Zack was looking at her now, and the expression in his eyes made her want to die. He was silently telling her he loved her. Telling her he was sorry. Telling her good-bye.
Because he still thought she’d led them to him by accident.
“Take it!” Hadley snapped in an awful voice.
Jolted by his tone, Julie automatically reached out her hand.
The object he dropped into it was a slender diamond wedding band.
“Oh, no—” she moaned, squeezing it to her chest as tears raced down her cheeks. “No, no, no—”
Ignoring her, Hadley turned to the Mexican police. “Get him out of here,” he ordered, jerking his head toward the doors where dozens of squad cars with whirling lights had silently appeared. But as the Federales shoved Zack forward, Hadley seemed to think something was wrong. “Wait a minute,” he snapped, then he turned to Julie as Zack was yanked to a stop beside her, and he said with an oily, malicious smile. “Miss Mathison, I’ve been very rude. I haven’t thanked you yet for your cooperation. If you hadn’t helped us set this whole scheme up, Benedict might never have been caught.”
Zack’s head jerked up, his gaze raking Julie’s guilt-stricken face, and she watched in agony as his eyes registered first disbelief. And then hatred. A hatred so deep that all the muscles in his face tightened into a mask of rage. In a burst of fury, he twisted against his captors and lunged toward the door.
“Hold the sonofabitch!” Hadley shouted, and the alarm in his voice made the panicked Federales lash out with billy clubs.
Julie heard the crack of wood on bone and sinew, she saw Zack hit the floor on his knees, and she went wild when they raised their clubs to hit him again. Tearing free of Paul’s grip, she launched herself at Hadley. Whimpering with maddened pain for the man on the floor, she clawed the side of Hadley’s face and kicked at him in a mindless frenzy while Paul was trying to restrain her. Hadley doubled up his fist to strike her but halted at Paul’s enraged warning: “You sadistic bastard, touch her and I’ll tear your larynx out!” Lifting his head, he shouted to one of his men, “Get the goddamned doctor over here!” Then he jerked his head toward Hadley and added, “And get him out of here!”
But he needn’t have worried about breaking up another uneven fight . . . Julie was slowly sliding down in his arms in a dead faint.
62
DR. DELORK WALKED OUT OF Julie’s bedroom carrying his black bag and smiled reassuringly at Julie’s worried family and Katherine who were gathered in the living room, waiting for his prognosis. “She’s a sturdy thing. She’ll be fine physically in twenty-four hours,” he promised. “You can go in and tell her good night if you like. She’s sedated so she won’t know it’s actually morning, not night, and she may not respond or even remember you were here, but it may help her rest easier anyway. It’ll be a couple of days before she feels like going back to work.”
“I’ll call her principal and explain,” Mrs. Mathison said quickly, standing up, her anxious gaze on the open door to Julie’s room.
“You won’t have to explain much to him or anyone else,” Dr. Delorik said flatly. “In case you haven’t had a television set on yet, you may as well know that what happened in Mexico last night is all over every news program on the air this morning, complete with videotapes of the whole thing provided by vacationers who had minicams with them in the airport. The good news is that, despite the beating Benedict got from the Mexican police on those videotapes, the press is making Julie sound like a heroine who collaborated in a clever scheme to trap a murderer.”
Six faces looked at him without a trace of pleasure in his “good news,” so he continued as he shrugg
ed into his coat, “Someone should stay with her for the next twenty-four hours—just to keep an eye on her and to be sure someone is here when she wakes up.”
“We’ll stay,” James Mathison said, putting his arm around his wife.
“You’ll both go home and get some sleep if you want some free medical advice,” Dr. Delorik said firmly. “You look exhausted. Mary, I don’t want to have to admit you to the hospital with your heart kicking up over all this stress.”
“He’s right,” Ted said with absolute finality. “You two go home and get some rest. Carl, you and Sara go to work and come by tonight if you want to. I’m off for the next two days anyway, so I’ll stay here.”
“No way!” Carl argued. “You haven’t slept since the day before yesterday, and besides, you sleep like the dead. If you’re sleeping, you won’t hear Julie if she needs you.”
Ted opened his mouth to try to dispute that, then came up with a better solution. “Katherine,” he said, turning to her, “will you stay here with me? Otherwise, Carl and Sara will lose a half day of work arguing with me. Or do you have something else you have to do?”
“I want to stay,” Katherine said simply.
“That’s settled then,” Reverend Mathison said, and the family proceeded down the hall to Julie’s bedroom, while Katherine went into the kitchen to make Ted a light breakfast.
“Julie, honey, it’s me, Dad. Mother’s here with me.”
In her drugged dream, Julie felt something touch her forehead, and her father’s voice whispering from very, very far away, “We love you. Everything’s going to be just fine. Sleep tight.” Then her mother’s voice was there, tearful and soft. “You’re so brave, darling. You’ve always been so brave. Sleep well.” Something bristly brushed her cheek and made her wince and turn her head away, and Carl’s gruff laugh touched her ear. “That’s no way to treat your favorite brother, just because I haven’t shaved yet . . . Love you, honey.” Then there was Ted telling her in his teasing voice, “Carl’s full of it! I’m your favorite brother. Katherine and I are right here. If you wake up, just call us, and we’ll wait on you hand and foot.” Sara’s gentle voice whispered, “I love you, too, Julie. Sleep well.”
And then the voices receded, sinking into the darkness to mingle with all the other strange sounds and disturbing images of people running and shouting and shoving, guns and swirling lights and icy eyes like golden daggers stabbing her, and airplane engines roaring and roaring and roaring.
* * *
Katherine heard the front door close as she put toast, jam, and a glass of orange juice on a tray. As he’d promised to do yesterday, Ted had called her as soon as he got Julie home, this morning, but when Katherine arrived, the family had already gathered, so all she really knew about what had happened in Mexico City was the brief, undoubtedly diluted, version that Ted had provided to his worried parents.
Carrying the tray, she headed into the living room, then stopped at the sight of Ted, sitting on the sofa, hunched forward, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. It was a posture of such unparalleled despair that she realized instantly it came from much more than weariness.
“It was bad in Mexico City, wasn’t it?” she asked quietly.
“Worse than bad,” he said, rubbing his hands over his face as she put the tray on the coffee table and sat down at the opposite end of the sofa. Propping his arms on his legs, he turned his head to her and said harshly, “It was a nightmare. The only tiny blessing was that Julie was so hysterical, so overwrought, before it even began that I know she didn’t register half of what was going on. Also, Paul Richardson managed to keep her where part of her view was blocked by the chaos, so she couldn’t see well. I, however,” he said grimly, “had a ringside seat with a clear view, and I was not hysterical. Jesus, it was worse than anything I imagined . . .”
When he didn’t seem to know how to begin to explain, Katherine said, “Do you mean Benedict was violent? Did he try to get at her and hurt her?”
“Violent?” he repeated in an embittered voice. “Hurt her? I almost wish to God he’d tried! It would have been so much better, so much easier on her.”
“I don’t understand.”
With a harsh sigh, he slumped back against the sofa, staring up at the ceiling, and gave a grim laugh. “No, he didn’t get violent. The instant he knew what was going down, he froze, he didn’t try to move or duck or run, he just stood there without struggling and stared at Julie and shook his head, warning her to stay away and hide. He didn’t flinch or say a word, not even when they slapped the cuffs on him and threw him against the wall to frisk him. The Federales —the Mexican police—don’t have any compunction about using what we call ‘undue force,’ and they roughed him up but good under the pretext of frisking him. One of them clubbed him in the kidneys, another one nailed him behind the knees, and he never ever struggled or fought them or made a sound. God, I’ve never seen a man act like that when he was busted in my life, not when things get violent. It was as if he was so desperate to keep things calm that he didn’t care what they did to him. Julie couldn’t even see most of what they were doing to him, and she was still screaming at them not to hurt him.”
“Drink this, before you tell me more,” Katherine said, handing him a glass of orange juice. He straightened and took it with a brief, grateful smile, as if he’d wanted it all along, but didn’t have the strength to reach for it. “Was that the end of it?” she asked when he’d finished most of the orange juice.
He shook his head and resumed his former posture, arms on his knees, shoulders hunched forward, and rolled the glass between his hands, staring into it. “No,” he said caustically, “that was just the good part.”
“What was the bad part?” Katherine asked, her voice filled with dread.
“That came a few minutes later when they were dragging Benedict out. Hadley, the warden from Amarillo State Penitentiary, who also happens to be a sadistic son of a bitch, stopped to congratulate Julie right in front of Benedict.”
“Why does that make him sadistic?’’
“You had to see the smile on his face to understand. With Benedict standing there, Hadley deliberately made it sound like Julie had conceived the entire plot to join him in Mexico just so she could trap him and turn him in.”
Katherine’s hand went to her throat and Ted nodded agreement at her unconsciously defensive gesture. “You’ve got the picture, and Benedict got it, too. Jesus, you should have seen the look on his face. He looked . . . murderous, that’s the only word I can think of, and that doesn’t even describe it. He tried to get at her or maybe to turn away, I’m not sure, but either way, the Federales used it as an excuse to start beating the shit out of him right in front of her. That’s when Julie went crazy and attacked Hadley. Then she fainted, thank God.”
“Why didn’t Paul Richardson do something to stop all that from happening in the first place?”
Ted frowned into his glass, then he put it down. “Paul’s hands were tied. So long as we were on the other side of the Mexican border, he had to work within their system. The only reason the FBI was involved in the first place was because they had a federal warrant out against Benedict for kidnapping. The Mexican government honored that warrant and agreed to cooperate with surprising speed in the deal at the airport, but the Federales have complete jurisdiction over Benedict until they hand him over at the American border.”
“How long will that take?”
“No time at all in this case. Instead of driving him to the border, which is what they’d normally do, Paul talked them into flying him to our border in a small private plane. His plane took off about the same time ours did. Before we left the airport, the Federales developed a belated social conscience,” he added sarcastically. “They went around, confiscating all the film they could get their hands on from whomever had cameras. Paul got ahold of a couple videotapes they overlooked, not because he cared about the Federales, but because he was trying to protect Julie from being seen
here in the films. I saw one of the tapes they obviously missed on a newscast in the airport, but the camera was on Benedict nearly the entire time. That’s one small blessing, at least.”
“For some reason, I assumed Paul would come back here with her.”
Shaking his head, Ted said, “He had to be at the Texas border to take Benedict into custody from the Federales, then he’ll hand him over to Hadley.”
Katherine studied his face for a moment. “Is that everything that happened?”
“Not quite,” he said tautly, “there was one more detail, one more death blow to her that I left out.”
“What was it?”
“This,” Ted said, reaching into his shirt pocket. “Benedict had this on him, and Hadley presented it to her with great enjoyment.” Opening his fist, he dropped the ring unceremoniously into an unsuspecting Katherine’s outstretched hand, watching her eyes widen with shock and then fill with tears.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, staring at the diamond circlet sparkling in her palm, “he obviously wanted her to have something very special. This is exquisite.”
“Don’t go all sentimental,” Ted warned, but his own voice was gruff. “The man’s a maniac, a murderer.”
She swallowed audibly and nodded. “I know.”
He glanced from the ring in her right palm to the enormous rock on her left finger. “It’s tiny compared to that boulder you’re wearing.”
She laughed chokingly. “Size isn’t everything, and besides, he couldn’t have let her wear a ring like this, because it would have drawn attention to them wherever they went. So he got her one like this instead,” she speculated softly.
“It’s just an ordinary diamond wedding band.”
Katherine shook her head in denial. “There’s nothing ordinary about this ring. The band is platinum, not gold, and the diamonds go all the way around it.”
“So what, they aren’t very big,” Ted said bluntly, but he was as relieved as she obviously was to digress for a moment from their former subject.