An Imperfect Process

by Mary Jo Putney

Val felt as if ice water had been poured over her. "Are you a... a fugitive from justice?" The name Robert Smith sure sounded like a pseudonym.

  "Nothing criminal on my part, though for a couple of years I saw way too much of the justice system. I walked away from my old life because... because..." He stopped again. She hardly breathed, not wanting to spook him.

  When he spoke again, he took a different tack. "Do you recall hearing about an environmental terrorist who called himself the Avenging Angel?"

  "Jeffrey Gabriel, self-righteous destroyer of projects built on coastal wetlands," she said promptly. "Started with simple arson and moved into fire bombs. Four people died in his fires and a dozen more were injured, along with millions in property damages. He was torching developments for something like eight years before they caught up with him in Texas. I saw him on television. He had the coldest eyes I've ever seen."

  Rob pivoted sharply away from the fireplace. "It's time to quit before things get ugly. I'm sorry, Val. I should have kept my interest to myself."

  She was off the sofa in a shot. "You can't walk out in the middle of this! Were.. were you involved in setting those fires? A co-conspirator who wasn't caught?"

  "It would have been easier if I had been." He looked down at her, his pale eyes like ice. "I'm the Avenging Angel's brother."

  She gasped, riveted by Rob's eyes, which were so like those of the man she'd seen on television and in newspapers. Dear God, no wonder he was haunted.

  "You're Robert Smith Gabriel," she breathed. "The man who turned him in."

  Chapter 9

  Rob tensed at the sight of Val's shocked expression. He should have known she would be familiar with the whole sordid story. "Right—the cold-hearted computer tycoon who blew the whistle on his own brother. Cain slays Abel. There was quite a media feeding frenzy at the time." He turned the doorknob. "Good night, Val. Let's pretend I left right after packing my files and forget anything else happened."

  She caught his wrist in a light but tenacious grip. "You must carry a world of guilt about this, but you did the right thing. When the story broke, I was awed by the incredible courage it took to do what you did. I've wondered sometimes how much it cost you." She studied his face, then shook her head. "I saw pictures of you then, but I would never have recognized you under that beard."

  "Which was the point. To eradicate Robert Smith Gabriel. Easy enough to drop the Gabriel and become generic Robert Smith. It worked, until tonight."

  "Now that you've started, why not tell me the whole story?" Her voice was very gentle. "A nightmare shared is a nightmare tamed."

  He hesitated, torn between a desire to bolt back into the rabbit hole where he had been living since Jeff's arrest, and an equally powerful desire to talk with Val, who had no judgment in her eyes, only acceptance.

  "Come sit down," she said. "You can tell me as much or as little as you want."

  Her words tilted the balance toward talking. Val was the first person he'd met who made it possible to imagine a life beyond paralyzing guilt and betrayal, so maybe it was time to bare his soul. She already knew the essentials; he wondered how she would handle the grim details that had festered inside him for so long.

  When he gave a jerky nod, she tucked a hand in his elbow and guided him back to the sofa, taking the chair opposite herself. "You weren't kidding about the media feeding frenzy," she said. "They loved that you were a Silicon Valley honcho while your younger brother was burning down marinas and expensive condominium projects."

  He lifted a figurine of a Chinese dragon from the end table, rolling the silky, polished wood between his hands. "Jeff was always kind of an oddball—very bright, with a mind that worked differently from most people. He had lousy social skills, but he never hurt anyone. Mostly he just wanted to be left alone.

  "He used to talk about how he should have been born in the time of mountain men like Jim Bridger, so he could live in the wilderness and never have to see anyone. Looking back, I can see the signs of what he became, but at the time, he was just my smart, eccentric little brother." His little brother, now dead. "He... he looked up to me."

  "You and your family lived in Baltimore when you were young, didn't you? The local angle was always mentioned in the newspaper."

  He nodded. "That's why I came back after Jeff died. It was the one place where we had been happy. After our father left and my mother married a guy called Joe Harley, we moved to Florida and life went to hell. Harley was a vicious drunk and couldn't hold a job, so we moved around a lot. I had terrible fights with him. It's a wonder we didn't kill each other. As soon as I finished high school, I enlisted in the Marines. I told myself everything would be better if I wasn't home to piss Harley off, but the real reason I enlisted was to escape. The first and worst betrayal of my brother."

  "It's not a crime for a young man to grow up and move away."

  He set the figurine down. "I was older. I should have stuck around and stood up for Jeff. It never came out at the trial because Texas doesn't much care about mitigating circumstances, but Jeff's lawyer learned that after I left, Harley started beating on Jeff. He was a skinny kid and couldn't defend himself except by running away. That went on until Harley died in a fire."

  She caught her breath, understanding instantly. "Did your brother do that?"

  "In hindsight, it seems likely. The fire was caused by a smoldering cigarette in Harley's favorite armchair. He smoked and drank himself into a coma every night, so his death was ruled an accident. But... I don't think so."

  "If Jeffrey could arrange that kind of fatal accident in cold blood, he was probably well beyond any help you could have offered." Her face was pale, but she didn't look away. As he'd seen in the SuperMax, she was tough. "He may have been mentally ill from the time he was very young."

  "I think he was, but his behavior was normal enough that he was never diagnosed. Moving through different school systems meant he wasn't in one place long enough to attract much attention." Rob had spent endless hours digging through his memories, thinking of times when he'd covered up for his brother. If he hadn't, maybe Jeff could have been helped.

  "I used to take him on camping trips along the coast or in the Everglades. He loved that. He'd talk about the two of us living in the woods when we grew up, but I never took that seriously. I went from the Marines to college to being a hotshot computer wizard and didn't see my family more than once every year or two.

  "In the process, I failed Jeff. While I was having a fine time working twenty-hour days and having people say how smart I was, he was getting sicker and sicker until he began torching coastal developments. If I had stayed in closer touch, had seen how things were going, I could have prevented the worst of his excesses. I'm sure of it."

  "Maybe you could have, but maybe not," she said quietly. "If he was incapable of empathy, it might have been impossible to fix."

  "He wasn't completely callous. He cared about wildlife and nature, and about me. That's why I'm the only one who might have made a difference." And Rob cared for Jeff. Despite his younger brother's cool, warped intelligence, he hadn't been a monster, at least not when they were kids. That had come later.

  "He might have looked up to you, but he still stole that security device you were developing. You might have been arrested for your brother's crimes."

  The damned security detection device had led to Jeff's downfall. "I hardly ever heard from Jeff, just an occasional e-mail, so I was tickled when he showed up out of the blue at my office in Menlo Park. It was great to see him, but I was about to leave for Japan so there wasn't time for much more than a tour of the company and a lunch. He asked about the different products I was working on, but didn't show any special interest in the security device. I didn't notice that he stole one of the prototypes.

  "Eventually, that's what tipped me off. I read an article about how the Avenging Angel had destroyed that upscale resort near Galveston just before it was due to open. It mentioned that the arsonist had used a sophisticated device to de
tect and neutralize security. I thought, "That sounds like what I've been working on.' Alarm bells went off when I remembered Jeff's visit and things he'd said over the years. I knew he hated the development that's destroying our coasts, and calling himself an angel from the family name fit, but I couldn't really believe that Jeff had turned terrorist.

  "Still, I was spooked enough to do a web search and construct a timeline of the attacks. Jeff lived in Florida, and most of the arson attacks were on the Gulf Coast between Florida and Texas. The only two in California were right after he visited me—and they were the first attacks where the security device was used."

  "Did you call your brother and confront him?"

  "I tried, but all I had was an e-mail address and P.O. box number in a tiny place on the Florida panhandle, and he wasn't answering messages on either. I was getting more and more worried, because the fires were getting more frequent."

  "And more dangerous," she observed. "All of the fatalities came at the end, when he started using those military- type explosives."

  He nodded wearily. "I dropped everything and flew to Florida to try and find him, but again, no luck. He hadn't been in town to pick up his mail in weeks. When three firefighters were injured in another Texas fire, I realized I couldn't wait any longer. I had my lawyer call the FBI and say that a client of his might have a line on the identity of the Avenging Angel, but wouldn't talk to them unless they swore not to go for the death penalty if he was prosecuted. After some arguing, they said they wouldn't." He smiled bitterly. "You know how well that worked."

  "The feds might have kept their word, but Texas got him first and tried him for crimes committed there." She sighed. "It was over so quickly. Since he refused all attempts to appeal his sentence, the State of Texas was able to oblige his death wish pretty quickly."

  "People gathered outside the prison in Huntsville to cheer when he died." No longer able to sit still, Rob rose and began pacing again. "I understood why he didn't want the sentence appealed. For someone who loved the outdoors, being caged in a concrete box for the next half century was a hell beyond imagination."

  "Did Jeff understand why you blew the whistle on him?"

  Rob smiled bitterly. "I don't know. He certainly didn't forgive. He refused to speak to me after he was arrested, just like he refused to cooperate with the expensive lawyers I hired to defend him. If he had given them anything to work with, maybe he would have received a life sentence instead of the death penalty."

  "Even if your lawyers could have gotten him acquitted on the grounds of insanity, which is highly unlikely, it would only have meant imprisonment of another sort."

  "But as long as he was alive, there was hope. Maybe someday they would have developed medications to control his kind of mental kinks." It had been a slim hope, but Rob had clung to it as long as possible.

  "You never saw him again after he visited you in Menlo Park?"

  His mouth was so dry he could barely speak. "I saw him. I sat in court every day of his trial and sentencing. He would never look at me. When he requested that I be present at the execution, I hoped that meant he wanted to see me—maybe say good-bye. Instead... he just wanted me to see him die."

  "Dear God," she whispered. "How unspeakably cruel."

  Even frantic pacing couldn't relieve his crawling skin as he remembered the execution. "The worst of it was that at the end, I think he was afraid. I don't know if anyone else saw it, but I could. Having rejected everyone who approached him, even the prison chaplain, he was completely alone. No one should die so alone."

  He stalked the length of the room, feeling like a bird beating his wings against a cage. "Sometimes I have nightmares that I'm Jeff, screaming inside as they strap me to the gurney and stab in the needles."

  She shuddered. "After he died, you felt you had to get away from your old life?"

  "What really sent me packing was receiving the million- dollar reward that had been established for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the Avenging Angel."

  He had been horrified when he received that news, and Val now looked equally horrified. She asked, "What did you do with the money?"

  "Gave it to the victims and survivors of Jeff's crimes." Even now, thinking of that blood money turned his stomach. "Before he died, Jeff publicly accused me of turning him in for the reward."

  "Horrible. Horrible." Val drew her legs up and wrapped her arms around her knees, shivering. "What about your mother—did she understand why you had to act?"

  "When Jeff was arrested, she called me screaming, asking how I could do such a thing. Where was my loyalty?"

  "Duty and loyalty often clash, but you couldn't stand by when your brother's actions were threatening other people's lives. No reasonable person could. I hope your mother realized that eventually. Where was she during the years Jeff was growing up?"

  "Tending bar. She loved a smoky, down-home bar better than anything, and since her job supported us, she had a perfect excuse not to be around." He rolled his shoulders, trying to unknot the muscles. "When Jeff was arrested, she was already suffering from lung cancer after smoking three packs a day for decades. She died between his trial and execution. If she ever understood why I acted, she never mentioned it."

  Val was so white that the ghosts of childhood freckles were a golden haze over her cheekbones. "Do you have any other family?"

  "No one close enough to count. My real father might be alive somewhere, but he sure as hell didn't come forward to claim his sons during all the publicity. He's probably dead, too—he was another one who smoked like a fiend. I barely remember him."

  "Where did you learn to be such a good carpenter?"

  He guessed she wanted to change the subject to something less grim. Hard to do when it came to his past. "From Harley. He was a carpenter and not a bad guy when he was sober. In other words, before noon." He paused by the bookcase, where a much larger dragon tossed its head, the gilded hide embedded with mirror fragments. He wondered what dragons meant to Val. Symbols of invincibility, maybe.

  "During the computer years, I lived in my head all the time. After Jeff died, I needed to get away and do work that was real and physical in a place where no one knew who I was. I'd always liked working with wood and doing household repairs, so I came back to Baltimore and bought a beat-up row house and fixed it up to sell."

  "You also learned how to restore things of beauty like the church, and help fix up the homes of some of Baltimore's poor, elderly citizens. Small acts of redemption."

  "Too small. A lifetime of Sheetrock and plumbing repairs will not make up for the lives of Jeff and his victims."

  "Saving an innocent man from execution would help balance the scales," she said quietly.

  "If it can be done." He was startled at how quickly and easily she made the connection. In retrospect, it was obvious: a life for a life. He wanted to save Daniel Monroe as he had been unable to save his brother. Guilt or innocence were secondary. What he yearned for was the preservation of life.

  She uncurled from the sofa and crossed the room to where he had finally halted his pacing. "Together, we have a chance to save Daniel," she said, her amber eyes steady. "If we fail, it won't be for lack of trying."

  She slid her hands into his hair and drew his head down for another kiss. Their previous kisses had been heated. This one seared to the bone. He responded fervently, desperate to bury himself in her. Though the emotional bond between them was new and tentative, the physical connection flooded his senses.

  "Shall we go upstairs?" she said huskily.

  He tried to think, not easy when desire was dissolving all reason. "I can't believe this is any better an idea now than it was half an hour ago."

  "On the contrary. The whole playing field has changed. I said then that I didn't know enough about you. Now I do." She exhaled warmly in his ear.

  He gasped, resolve crumbling. "A starving man doesn't refuse a banquet, but... I really, really don't want you to be sorry later for giving in to a c
haritable impulse tonight. I don't need someone new despising me. Especially not you."

  "This isn't pity, Rob." She rubbed her cheek against his chest like a cat. "I've been interested in you since we first met, and unless my radar is broken, you reciprocate. We're both adults, unencumbered by spouses. At least, I am, and I assume you are, too."

  He nodded when she gave him a slanting glance. "I was always too busy for that kind of serious relationship."

  "See how much we have in common," she said wryly. "Now, about going upstairs..."

  With sudden exhilaration, he caught her around the waist and swept her off the floor. She laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his hips. It was sexy as hell. Of course, everything she did was sexy as hell. Securing his grip on her, he said, "Just tell me where to go."

  She wriggled against him so provocatively that he was tempted to drop her onto the couch and start tearing her clothes off right there. "Much as I admire intelligence," she said, "there's also much to be said for being swept off my feet by an alpha male. Up the stairs and to the right."

  He laughed with her. "An alpha male. I've just achieved a goal I didn't know I had."

  She leaned forward and ticked his throat as they ascended the stairs, cats trailing behind. The past was disaster and the future unknown, but for this precious moment, he remembered what it was to be happy.

  Chapter 10

  The light switch in Val's bedroom turned on a single Tiffany lamp in the corner, illuminating the room with a gentle glow. Enough light to see and admire, not so much as to be unromantic. The room was like her, warm and unusual and welcoming, with a bed of elegant curving cherry and a comforter in sumptuous tones of gold, russet, and amber. Chosen to go with her hair and eyes, no doubt. She looked equally sumptuous when he yanked back the covers and laid her on the tawny sheets, her hair a flame and her eyes a golden lure.

  Val pulled him down on top of her, laughing exuberantly as she molded her body against his. "How fast can we get each other's clothes off?"