Perfect, p.62
Perfect, page 62
part #2 of Second Opportunities Series
Who’d admitted to the world that she loved him.
Even though he’d kidnapped her.
And sent her away from Colorado after telling her she didn’t know the difference between sex and love.
Zack was so lost in his thoughts that it took a moment before he recognized what was happening on the television set, and his jaw tightened as he saw himself being shoved into the wall and handcuffed by the Federales. Everybody was screaming and shouting, and whoever was taking the film kept swinging the camera around, trying to follow the voice of a woman who was screaming about someone being hurt.
Then he leaned forward, watching in disbelief as Julie tried to get past the police, screaming, “Don’t hurt him!” He saw Richardson catch her arms, yanking her back, and he saw that she was crying, watching whatever they were doing to Zack.
The camera’s view switched back to Zack and Hadley, and after several seconds, Zack realized Hadley had just taken possession of the wedding ring he’d had in his pocket. The camera tracked Hadley, following him to Julie, who held her hand out in response to whatever Hadley said to her, and when she looked down at her hand, she started crying hysterically, clutching the ring to her chest.
Zack half-rose out of his chair at the sight of her tormented features, then he forced himself to sit back down and watch what he knew was coming next. It happened just as he remembered it . . . the Federales shoving him forward, then Hadley making them stop when he was almost beside Julie. Whoever took the film had grown bolder and moved in for a closer shot because even the sound was clearer. Not that Zack needed to hear it. What Hadley said next was permanently branded into Zack’s brain. “Miss Mathison, I have 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 remembered the cold shock that had roared through him, and he saw himself on film, looking at her in an agony of fury, before he jerked his arms, trying to force them to take him out of there . . .
And then all hell broke loose on the film, just as it had in that airport. Suddenly he was on his knees, being clubbed . . . Except there was another uproar going on—Zack saw it just to the right edge of the film, and he got up, walking closer to the television set to see it clearly: Julie had evidently gone wild when they started beating him, and she was attacking Hadley, sobbing and clawing at his face, beating on his chest, and when Richardson pulled her off, she landed two ferocious kicks in Hadley’s groin. She fainted then, and Richardson started shouting for a doctor while they dragged Zack out of the airport.
His heart beginning to hammer in deep, aching beats, Zack rewound the film, only this time he didn’t take his eyes off her face, and what he saw made his stomach clench. His hand shook as he took the letter from the envelope and unfolded it.
Dear Mom and Dad, and dear Carl and Ted,
By the time you read this letter, you’ll know that I’ve left to join Zack. I don’t expect you to condone what I’m doing or to forgive me, but I want to explain it to you so that maybe you’ll at least be able to understand someday.
I love him.
I want so much to give you more and better reasons than just that one, and I’ve tried to think of them, but there don’t seem to be any. Maybe it’s because that’s all that really matters . . . .
After I leave, all of you are going to hear more things about Zack, awful rumors and vicious conjecture from reporters and police and people who never even knew him. I wish so much you could have known him. Since that isn’t possible, I’m leaving something for you, something from him that will show you a glimpse of the man he really is. It’s a copy of a letter, a very personal letter, from him to me. A small part of the letter will be blocked out, not because there was something there that would have changed your opinion, but because it refers to someone else and a very special favor that person did for us both. When you read Zack’s letter, I think you’ll know that the man who wrote it will love and protect me in every way he can. We’ll be married as soon as we’re together . . . .
Zack leaned back and closed his eyes, caught between torment and tenderness over what he had seen and read. He saw her agonized face when he was being put into chains and he heard her soft voice during their only phone call: “I love you so much . . . . I can’t stop loving you . . . . Save your prayers for later, darling. You ’re going to wear your knees out when I get there as it is, . . . praying I let you get some sleep at night, praying I stop giving you babies . . .” He had figured out weeks ago that she’d lied about being pregnant, but he’d thought it was to force him into her trap.
Everything else had been the truth . . .
Julie in Colorado, tripping him in the snow . . . lying in his arms at night, giving herself to him with an unselfish ardor that had driven him crazy with desire and the need to please her as she pleased him . . . Julie with her glowing eyes, musical laughter, her prim vocabulary, and jaunty smile.
He could still feel her lying in his arms that last night, her fingers spreading over his heart when she told him she loved him . . . still see her eyes darken with sympathy when he told her that stupid story about a teacher refusing to dance with him . . . “I would never have turned you down, Zack.” . . . He remembered the way her entire face had lit up when she talked about watching grown women learn to read . . . “Oh, Zack . . . It’s like holding a miracle in your hand!”
If she hadn’t conceived that insane idea of visiting his treacherous grandmother, Zack realized she probably wouldn’t have broken under the pressure of Tony Austin’s death. Richardson had said she’d handled the first blow without losing her resolve. She’d broken under the second one.
She had been real. And she had been his. She had loved him when he had nothing to offer her except a life in hiding with a fugitive. She had clutched that wedding ring to her chest and wept as if her heart was breaking . . .
She had done and been all those things. It hit him suddenly that Richardson had not said Julie was still in love with him, but only that she was guilt-stricken now over Mexico City. Other things began to occur to him, too: Richardson had apparently spent enough time with her in the past three months to fall in love with her. She had only known Zack for a week, and he, on the other hand, had turned her life into a living hell. Paralyzed with a mixture of urgency and fear, Zack slowly stood up.
75
MATT AND MEREDITH EXCHANGED SMILES of profound pleasure as Zack strode into the living room carrying a suitcase. Leaning back against the sofa, Matt stretched his legs out and studied the blue suit Zack was wearing with a knowing grin. “No one wears a suit to a California party, Zack. It just isn’t done.”
“I forgot about the damned party,” he said, glowering out the window at his own guests. “Stand in for me, will you? Tell them something urgent came up. Can I borrow your pilot?” he added, absently putting his suitcase down and tying his tie.
“Just my pilot?” Matt said, glancing up at Meredith, who’d perched on the arm of the sofa and laid her hand on his shoulder. “Not my plane?”
Zack turned aside as his housekeeper rushed in to give him two briefcases she’d packed at his instructions. “Your plane and your pilot,” he said impatiently.
“That depends on where you plan to go.”
Satisfied that he had everything he needed for the next few days, Zack finally turned his full attention on his friend. “Where the hell do you think I’m going?”
“How should I know. If it’s Keaton, Texas, don’t you think you should call Julie first?”
“No, I don’t know how she’ll react. I don’t want her taking off somewhere to avoid me. If I fly commercial, it will take me hours longer to get there.”
“What’s the rush? You’ve let her wait for six weeks already while Richardson’s been there holding her hand, no doubt, giving her his broad shoulder to cry on. Furthermore, private planes are expensive toys—”
“I don’t have time for this b—” Zack cut off the curse word on Meredith’s behalf, started forward to kiss her good-bye, then he stopped as Joe O’Hara said from the doorway behind him. “I’ve got the car out in front, ready to go, Matt. And I talked to Steve on the car phone. He says the plane’s fueled and ready to fly. Zack, when are you going to be ready to leave?”
“I think,” Matt joked dryly, “he’s ready now.”
Giving Matt a disgusted look, Zack pulled Meredith into his arms. “Thank you,” he said with quiet sincerity.
“You’re welcome,” she replied, beaming at him. “Give Julie my love.”
“Give her my sincerest apology,” Matt said, standing up and sobering as he held out his hand to shake Zack’s. “Good luck.”
They watched him stride swiftly out the door, then Meredith looked up at Matt and her smile wobbled as she said, “That man loves her so much that he doesn’t care that many people will think he’s a fool for wanting her after what she did to him in Mexico City. All that matters to him is that she loves him.”
“I know,” Matt replied somberly, gazing into her misty eyes. “I recognize the feeling.”
76
“HEY, HERMAN, CAN YOU PICK up some guy who’s landin’ at the airstrip in twenty minutes?” The squawk of the walkie-talkie was scarcely noticed in the noisy high school gymnasium where 17S Keaton citizens were gathered for the dress rehearsal of the bicentennial celebration pageant that was to take place tomorrow after the parade. Shoving the saber that hung from the waist of his general’s uniform aside, Herman Henkleman groped for the walkie-talkie beneath it and held it to his mouth. “Sure thing, Billy. Julie Mathison just said I’ve already got my part down great.”
Feeling very grand in his uniform, Herman looked around for Julie, who was in charge of the entire pageant, and spotted her standing off to the sidelines beside her brother and sister-in-law, watching the rehearsal taking place on stage. “Howdy, Ted—Katherine,” he said as he wended his way through the crowd to her side. “ ’Scuse me, Julie,” he added, and when she looked up and smiled at him, he explained, “Billy Bradson has started lettin’ me drive the taxi on weekends to earn some extra money. I gotta go make a pickup for him at the airstrip. Some guy’s landin’ in a plane out there in a few minutes.”
“Go right ahead,” Julie said, oblivious to the swift, questioning look that Katherine gave Ted. “We’re almost finished here, and besides, you don’t need any more rehearsal.”
“I know,” he said proudly. “I got that part about ‘Charge, here come’s the enemy’ down great.’ ”
She laughed. “Yes, you certainly do!”
He hesitated, glancing across the room at Flossie Eldridge, then he leaned lower. “If Flossie asks where I am, you could probably tell her I had something real important to do.”
Julie had deliberately given him a part in the pageant that required him to be close to the elderly twin, who still blushed like a schoolgirl whenever he spoke to her. “Why don’t you tell her yourself,” she whispered. “She’s looking right at you.”
Herman gathered up his courage, and as he headed for the auditorium doors, he stopped in front of Flossie and Ada Eldridge, who were dressed in matching ball gowns, their hair styled into identical masses of ringlets. “I gotta make a run to the airstrip for Billy Bradson,” he told Flossie. “I’m helpin’ him out on weekends, now, besides doing my electrical work.”
“Be careful, Herman,” she said shyly.
“Don’t blow up his car,” Ada said scornfully.
Herman felt his collar turn hot. He stepped away, then stepped back, glowering. “Ada,” he said, confronting the woman for the first time in decades. “You are a mean-hearted, spiteful, bloodless woman, and you always have been! I told you that years ago, and it’s still true.”
“And you,” she retorted, turning red, “are a useless good-for-nothing.”
He slapped his general’s hat on his head and put his hands on his hips, his expression ominous. “That’s not what you used to think when you were a girl, chasin’ after me, tryin’ to turn my head from Flossie!” He walked out, leaving Flossie gaping at her angry twin with a look of hurt and dawning understanding.
Katherine waited until Julie walked up onto the stage to round up the children for their own rehearsal, then she squeezed Ted’s hand tightly, her face a mask of hope and tension. “Ted, do you think it’s Benedict landing at the airstrip?”
He shook his head. “Not a chance. They said on the news last night that he’s giving a weekend party at his house, remember?”
Her face fell and he patted her hand. “It’s probably Larraby coming in from Dallas to make his monthly inspection of that factory he’s building over in Lynchville.”
* * *
“Buckle up, hold on, and say your prayers,” the pilot joked over the intercom as the Lear began its swift descent through the encroaching dusk, diving toward the concrete ribbon below. “If this airstrip was six inches shorter, we couldn’t set her down here, and if it was any darker, we’d have to land at DFW. Evidently, they don’t light this sidewalk up at night. By the way, your taxi’s waiting down there.”
Without taking his gaze from the videotapes of Julie he’d brought with him to watch on the plane, Zack buckled his seat belt. A few minutes later, however, he looked up with a startled frown as the pilot slammed on the brakes at the moment of touchdown and the sleek plane bucked down the runway, brakes screaming, finally coming to a teeth-jarring stop only a few feet from the end of it.
“Mr. Farrell’s going to need new brakes after two landings on this strip,” the pilot said, sounding a little shaken and very relieved. “What’s the plan for tonight, Mr. Benedict? Should I check into a motel for the night or head back to the West Coast?”
Zack reached over to the intercom button on the console between the two sofas, then he hesitated and faced what he had tried to ignore all the way here: He did not have the slightest idea whether Julie now hated him more than she’d loved him. He didn’t know what sort of reception he was going to get from her or how much time it was going to take to convince her to come back to California with him or if he could ever convince her to do that. Pressing the button, he said belatedly, “Check into a motel for the night, Steve. I’ll send the cab back here for you.”
The pilot was still shutting down the engines when Zack walked swiftly down the steps. The taxi driver was standing at attention beside the open door of his cab wearing the most ludicrously unauthentic Civil War uniform Zack had ever seen, assuming that’s what it was supposed to be. “Do you know where Julie Mathison lives?” he asked him as he slid into the back seat and put his briefcase down. “If not, I need to find a phone book. I forgot to bring her address.”
“Of course I know where she lives,” the driver said, his eyes narrowing on Zack’s face, his expression turning ferocious as he recognized it. He got into the front seat and slammed the door with unnecessary force. “Your name Benedict?” he demanded several minutes later as they drove past the elementary school and into a quaint downtown district set around a courthouse, with shops and restaurants surrounding the square.
Zack was busy looking around at the town where Julie had grown up. “Yes.”
A half mile from the downtown district, the cab pulled to a stop in front of a neat one-story house with an immaculate lawn and big shade trees, and Zack felt his heart began to beat in nervous anticipation as he dug in his pocket for money. “How much do I owe you?”
“Fifty bucks.”
“You’re kidding.”
“For anyone else, the ride costs five bucks. For a skunk like you, it costs fifty bucks. Now, if you want me to take you to where Julie really is, instead of leaving you here, where she ain’t, it’ll cost you seventy-five.”
Torn between anger, surprise, and tension, Zack ignored the aspersion cast on his character and sat back. “Where is she?”
“At the high school where she’s handlin’ the rehearsal for the pageant.”
Zack remembered passing the high school with its crowded parking lot. He hesitated, desperate to see her, to set things straight, to hold her in his arms if she’d let him. His voice tinged with sarcasm, he said, “Do you also happen to know how long she’ll be there?”
“It could go on all night,” Herman lied out of sheer spite.
“In that case, take me there.”
The driver jerked his head in a nod and pulled away from the curb. “I don’t see why you’re in such a hurry to see her, now,” he said, glaring at Zack in the rearview mirror. “You left her here all this time to face the reporters and the cops all by herself after you snatched her and took her to Colorado. When you got out of prison, you didn’t come to see her either. You’ve been too busy with your fancy women and your parties to bother with a sweet girl like Julie, who’s never hurt anybody in her whole life! You’ve shamed her in front of the whole world, in front of this whole town! People outside of Keaton hate her because she did the right thing in Mexico, only it turned out to be the wrong thing. I hope,” he finished vengefully as they pulled up in front of the doors to the high school, “she pokes you in the eye when she sees you! If I were her daddy, I’d get out my shotgun and come lookin’ for you, soon as I heard you’re in town! I hope he does.”
“You’ll probably get both your wishes,” Zack said quietly, pulling a hundred-dollar bill out of his pocket and handing it to him. “Go back to the airport and get my pilot. He’s not a skunk, so another twenty-five dollars should cover your trip.”
Something in his voice made Herman hesitate and turn around in his seat. “Are you plannin’ to finally make it up with her? Is that why you’re here?”
“I’m going to try.”
The hostility on his face died. “Your pilot’s gonna have to wait a few minutes. This, I want to see. Besides, you may need a friend in that crowd.”
