Zach's Law

by Kay Hooper

“Then he has his reasons, and they’ll be personal and deeply felt—not abstract. He hates gunrunners because he’s seen what guns do in the wrong hands. He hates criminals because he’s seen what they do. He isn’t afraid of anything that breathes. And there’s nothing he won’t do for a friend.”

  She returned her gaze to the fire. “I love him,” she said suddenly, without thinking.

  “I thought so,” Josh said quietly.

  Josh met Zach outside when he heard the whistled signal that he knew was meant to draw him out. “Any luck?” he asked dryly.

  “No, and you damn well know it. Josh, you won’t leave?”

  “Sorry.” He didn’t sound it.

  Zach sighed, accepting what he couldn’t change. “Dammit, my job is supposed to be to protect you.”

  “You’re on vacation,” Josh reminded him politely.

  Acknowledging the hit with a grunt, Zach said, “All right, then. If you won’t leave, then you won’t. Look, I’m going to take Teddy to the Jeep at first light, and she’ll stay put there until we all move out.”

  “Will she?”

  “If I have to tie and gag her,” Zach said grimly, “she’ll stay there. She caught a graze from Ryan’s gun this morning, charging where she shouldn’t have in a misguided attempt to save my hide. I won’t let it happen again.”

  Josh studied his friend as well as he could in the darkness, remarking only, “You know best, I’m sure.”

  If there was any sarcasm intended, Zach didn’t hear it. “I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

  “Right.” Josh started away from the cavelet, then looked over his shoulder to say softly, “Zach? Justin happened to mention to me once that Teddy’s an expert marksman.” He didn’t wait to see the effect of his words but disappeared silently into the darkness.

  Entering the cavelet, Zach said accusingly, “You didn’t tell me you could handle guns.”

  “You didn’t ask.” She was sitting as he’d left her, but subdued now rather than stiff. And when she looked up at him with those huge doe eyes of hers, Zach had trouble remaining angry. He tried, though. “Why’d you call out the troops?”

  Returning her gaze to the fire, Teddy murmured, “Because you aren’t bulletproof, armor or no armor.”

  “What?”

  “I was worried about you, Zach. And I rather like your body without a lot of bullets in it.”

  “I could have handled it, Teddy.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “But I couldn’t.”

  After a moment, because there wasn’t anything else to say, Zach told her to turn in and get some sleep. Tomorrow would be busy. And Teddy crawled into the sleeping bag without a word, unsurprised when he remained by the fire, watchful and alert.

  Sometime later, unable to sleep, Teddy asked a quiet question.

  “Zach, what’s the law of the jungle?”

  He answered almost automatically, “Travel light, fast, and alone.” Then he looked at her, frowning a little. “Why?”

  “No reason.”

  Neither of them said anything more, but after he’d turned back to the fire, a verse from Kipling flitted through Teddy’s head. And she denied it silently, fiercely. Just because Zach had broken a part of that law … just because she was hung around his neck like a millstone and his friends were here …

  Damn Kipling.

  It wasn’t Zach’s fault that events had conspired to shake him off his normal balance. No matter how reckless he sometimes seemed, he was always cautious, shrewd, and methodical and was rarely caught off guard.

  But for Zach, the past days had been trying, to say the least. What should have remained simply a job of surveillance at least until the last minute had turned into a deadly game of cat and mouse. He should have had only his own hide to worry about, instead of first one other, and then several others. And during a situation when emotional distractions were hardly something he could afford, he never should have been forced to deal with Teddy’s emotions and his own.

  Still, Zach had a broad back, and he could carry these burdens. It was the final one that broke him. With everything else, he never should have had to crawl inside the twisted mind of a criminal and think as that other man thought, plan as that other man did.

  He never should have had to search that other mind for weaknesses, even as his own were being shrewdly pondered. But he had to. And he tried. And it wasn’t his fault that his mind was filled with too many diverse problems and couldn’t quite handle one more.

  So nobody blamed him for what happened. Except Zach.

  Zach blamed himself.

  He woke Teddy at dawn, and she ate the soup he had prepared in silence. She didn’t object when he told her where he was taking her, and followed him silently through the woods without protest or noise of any kind. When they reached the Jeep, Zach put her inside and gave her the keys.

  Zach hesitated before closing the door, looking at her small, vital face and big, doelike eyes. Then, because he couldn’t help himself, he leaned into the vehicle and kissed her, deeply and thoroughly. A lover’s kiss. When he finally drew back, her eyes seemed brighter than before.

  “I’m sorry I called them, Zach,” she whispered.

  His fingers lingered on her cheek for a moment, and then Zach straightened and closed the door. “Stay put. I’ll be back.”

  “All right.”

  By the time Zach reached the house again, the sun was up. He made his way cautiously through the thick growth until he encountered Josh and Lucas, neither of whom looked much the worse for wear after a night without sleep. All three men were unshaven, wore rugged clothing, and held guns. They looked more like hunters one would expect to find in the area.

  “Anything?” Zach asked, crouching beside them.

  Josh shook his head. “Nothing. Lucas is circling the house every fifteen minutes or so. So far there’s been no movement. When’s the shipment expected?”

  “Anytime.”

  They waited in silence. A few minutes later Lucas melted away into the woods, leaving Josh and Zach alone.

  “Teddy’s at the Jeep?” Josh asked then.

  “Yes.”

  Josh sent him a glance before returning his attention to the house. After a moment he said quietly, “She did what she had to do, Zach.”

  “I know.”

  “She loves you.”

  Zach’s jaw tightened. “She thinks she does.”

  “Oh, is that how it is?” Since their friendship had never precluded honesty, sometimes voiced harshly, Josh made no attempt to soften his sardonic tone. “Just her imagination, I suppose? And what about you, Zach? Are you imagining whatever it is that’s ripping at your guts right now?”

  “Drop it, Josh.”

  “The hell I will. It wasn’t so long ago that you made me face up to some possibilities about Raven. It’s my turn now. Are you going to be fool enough to let that girl go? Can you possibly be that pigheaded?”

  “Josh—”

  He was interrupted curtly. “If you can’t see that Teddy’s vastly different from that spoiled debutante you brought out of the jungle, then you need your thick head examined. Badly.”

  What Zach might have replied—and explosively, too—was never voiced, because Lucas returned somewhat breathlessly to their side just then. “I think we’ve got trouble,” he told them grimly.

  “What kind?” Zach asked.

  “I crossed the tracks you made coming back from the Jeep, Zach. There was another set almost on top of them—heading for the house. Tracks of a large man, but too deep for the size. As if he were carrying something heavy.”

  “Carrying—” Zach realized in one awful, crashing second what had happened, and the tightness in his chest was squeezing the breath out of him. He had made one simple miscalculation, one tiny, dreadful mistake. He had forgotten that Ryan knew of Teddy’s presence, forgotten that an innocent victim was quite often the best tool, the most deadly weapon a vicious man could use.

  Ryan had crawled into his
head.

  Ryan meant to go on with his plan, all right. He intended to load up his shipment and send it out under Zach’s nose. And he had waited patiently in order to get himself some gilt-edged insurance just to make certain that Zach could only watch helplessly.

  “Zach?” Josh was gripping his arm, but Zach barely felt those powerful fingers. “Zach, dammit, don’t go off the deep end!”

  Utterly still and unnaturally calm, Zach looked at him. “I’m fine,” he said mildly.

  Josh didn’t let go; he knew his friend was a long way from being fine. He knew what the deadly pallor and blank eyes meant. And he wished hopelessly that Clay Ryan could also know, because then he would not use Teddy as hostage for Zach’s good behavior. Not even a madman would try using her.

  A voice called out suddenly from the house, vicious and ringing with triumph.

  “Steele? You out there, Steele?”

  Vaguely, Zach decided that it was good Ryan knew his name. A man should always know the name of his executioner.

  “Steele? I’ve got your redhead. You stay out of my way and I might give her back to you. But if you don’t back off right now, I’ll start sending out pieces of her, and you can listen to her scream. Got that, Steele? I hope you have. She’s a cute little thing. I’d hate to have to hurt her.”

  And then Teddy screamed.

  SEVEN

  TEDDY NEVER SAW it coming. She was daydreaming, remembering that last fleeting moment of tenderness in Zach’s eyes and hoping against hope that everything would be all right. Feeling safe, she had rolled the Jeep’s window down, and so had deprived herself of even the instant’s warning of an opening door. One moment she was breathing in the chill morning air, and the next a white cloth smelling sickly sweet was clamped over her nose and mouth.

  After that she was conscious only of blackness for a while. Gradually, though, she felt movement, and heard muted voices. The movement stopped and there was quiet. She was lying on something soft—a bed, perhaps. Her hands were tied behind her back. There was something familiar, she thought, in that.

  Ah, yes. The big man with the dangerous face and soft voice had tied her to a tree and then drowned her car. She remembered. He’d carried her over his shoulder; that was why her ribs ached. And any minute now he’d untie her wrists and find a salve for the bruises. Any minute now he’d pour her coffee and make the instinctive fear go away and … and kiss her, make love to her until she couldn’t think and—

  No. No, that had already happened. Why was it happening again?

  Teddy’s eyes snapped open to the strangeness of a room and an unfamiliar face watching her. She caught her breath on a gasp, coldness sweeping over her.

  “I’m glad you’re awake,” the man smiling down at her as if everything were normal said.

  He was a tall man, broad across the shoulders and powerful. His face was regular of feature, his eyes empty of color or expression, his smile filled with even, white teeth and impersonal ferocity. He was leaning negligently against a tall corner post of the bed she lay in, appearing unthreatening and almost lazy.

  Teddy had never been so afraid of a man in her life.

  In a conversational tone he told her, “It’s a pity you got involved in this. Your lover means to interfere in my work, and I can’t allow that. You understand, don’t you? It’s purely business. I must have those guns. Oh, he told you, didn’t he, about the guns? Certainly he did.”

  Clay Ryan studied her appraisingly. “You’re his Achilles’ heel. Lucky that I discovered that.”

  Keep him talking! Teddy thought. “How did you—”

  “How did I discover that? You forget, sweetheart. I was the one aiming the gun yesterday morning when you took the bullet meant for him. Odd, isn’t it, that you and I were the ones wounded, while he remains unscathed?”

  For the first time Teddy noticed the bulge of a bandage under his shirt. On his left arm. Just like her.

  Ryan was smiling his empty white smile, and his eyes roved over her body with an enjoyment that sickened her. “Pity we don’t have more time,” he murmured.

  Teddy stiffened when he bent down suddenly, but he only grasped her uninjured arm and pulled her up off the bed. Everything about him repelled her, particularly the heat of his body when he stood behind her at an open window.

  She barely listened as he shouted his message to Zach, trying desperately to think of some way out of this. It was then she became conscious of the heavy weight of her purse against her hip; she had slung the strap across her chest, bandolier fashion, before leaving the cave with Zach.

  The weight of it told her that Ryan hadn’t bothered to search the purse, and so hadn’t found her dart pistol. It was a piece of luck she hadn’t counted on.

  But with her hands tied behind her back, there wasn’t a chance she could get to the pistol and use it, even if he left her alone to try. The penknife … maybe if she could get to that … but with her hands tied—

  There was nothing she could do, and her only comfort was the knowledge that at least two other men waited outside the house with Zach. They’d keep him from being reckless, she thought. They would.

  Even with some knowledge of the kind of man Ryan was, Teddy wasn’t prepared for what happened then. She hadn’t realized that Ryan had crawled into Zach’s head quite so thoroughly and that he had a shrewd idea of just what was needed to paralyze his enemy at least temporarily. Not just the knowledge that Zach’s woman was being held as hostage but that Ryan would hurt that woman without compunction.

  Teddy wasn’t braced for the blow, and when Ryan’s big fist struck her wounded arm and sent pain knifing all the way to the top of her skull, her scream was pure reflex.

  When the drawn-out cry of agony reached the three men outside, it wasn’t at all clear to Josh and Lucas that they could hold back their friend. Only Josh’s quick, urgent reminder to Zach of the danger to Teddy of storming the house kept the big man still. And even then, the muscles of his powerful frame bunched and rippled in a blind response to his rage and his fear for her.

  “We have an edge,” Josh was saying firmly. “He thinks you’re out here alone, and one man can attack from only one direction. We’ll get her out, Zach.”

  They were all distracted then—even Zach—by the rumbling of a big truck pulling into the drive from the main road.

  To Lucas, Josh said, “Call Rafferty. Have him get airborne and follow the truck when it leaves here. Cautiously.”

  “Right.” Lucas melted into the trees, heading for the vehicle he’d hidden off the road.

  Josh returned his attention to Zach, speaking in the most even voice he could manage and concentrating all his powerful will on the determined effort to hold his friend just this side of sanity as long as possible.

  He didn’t think he could manage it for long with Teddy in danger.

  “Ryan would have disabled your Jeep and my car, too—which, if we’re lucky, he’ll believe is Teddy’s. Lucas has a van, so we’ve a way out of here once we get Teddy. He’s holding her as a threat to keep you from interfering, but he isn’t likely to take her with him. He’ll want the truck to get a head start, and he can’t mean to be far behind himself. Think, Zach. Is there anything in that house he could use to keep us here and make it impossible for us to get to Teddy even after he leaves?”

  Zach was staring toward the house, watching as three men busily moved between the house and truck carrying bundles and boxes. After a moment he spoke in a flat, mild tone. “Explosives. And he knows how to use them.”

  “So do we,” Josh reminded him matter-of-factly. “You’ve defused more than one bomb, and so have I. And you did enough background on Ryan to have found a pattern if there is one. Is there? I know he uses a different method with every job, but how about with explosives? He’s used them before, more than once. Does he favor any one type?”

  It didn’t appear as though Zach were listening, but he responded to the question in the same level, docile tone. “Plastic explosives. E
nough to bring the house down. Timed-fuse or remote-control detonator.”

  Josh looked at him worriedly. “All right, then we know what we’ll have to deal with. We can handle it, Zach. We’ll get her out safely.”

  “Yes,” Zach said.

  The pain in her arm had settled to a dully throbbing ache, but Teddy was unable to think clearly again until she found herself tied securely to the bed. She heard voices from downstairs, the rumble of a truck pulling up at the front door, and looked up at Ryan as he tied her wrists tightly to the headboard. She wondered vaguely when he had untied them behind her back and then retied them, disgusted with herself for a missed opportunity even though she probably couldn’t have taken advantage of it.

  Ryan was strong.

  “You don’t know what you’ve done,” she whispered, only half aware of speaking at all.

  He laughed curtly. “I’ve quite effectively hamstrung your lover, sweetheart. He won’t dare rush the house or interfere in any way with my plans. His Jeep is disabled and so is your car, and the communications equipment he has is useless to him.” Ryan gagged her securely with a strip of white cloth, then patted her cheek consolingly.

  “But don’t worry. Steele will hike to the nearest phone and call an army up here, so you won’t have to wait too long all by your lonesome. You’ll certainly be his first priority, and I’ll be getting my stuff out of here while he worries about you. Bye, sweetheart.”

  Teddy stared at the door as it closed behind him. The gag prevented her from making a sound, but her thoughts were clear.

  Fool. He is an army.

  It took half an hour for the big semi to be loaded, and the watchers counted all three of Ryan’s men and the driver in the truck when it pulled out again.

  The house looked deserted, only the single car Ryan and his henchmen had used remaining in the drive.

  Without a word Zach had left to go back up to the cavelet, and Josh made no effort to stop him. Lucas, who had just returned from making a cautious circuit around the house, got back in time to see the big man disappear into the woods.

  “Where’s he going?”