Love Vs. Illusion

by MJ Rodgers

  “What are you doing here?” A.J. asked. “There are no nightly foot patrols of this building.”

  He chuckled as he crossed his arms over his chest again and stared at her from an advantage of at least six inches both in height and breadth. Damn, but this guy was a hulk.

  “I catch you looking at private files in a private office, and you have the gall to ask me what I’m doing here?”

  “You work for Linbow,” she said.

  A combative smile found his lips. “You make that sound like an accusation. I don’t think you’re in any position to be making accusations.”

  A.J.’s hands were beginning to perspire. Now that the initial surprise of being confronted by Zane was retreating, other concerns were beginning to take form.

  And the form they were taking was far from pleasant. She had just been caught committing a criminal act. Her stomach turned over in a queasy roll.

  “What did you think you were going to find in Linbow’s files?” Zane asked.

  She may be caught, but she was determined he would not make her cower. She faced him squarely. “Something to clear my brother.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll let you know when I find it.”

  “Could it have possibly slipped your attention that all you’re likely to find in the immediate future is a jail cell?”

  A.J. swallowed hard and felt a burning sensation all the way down her throat. A jail cell presented a very unsavory image. Still, she was determined that Coltrane would not intimidate her.

  “Nothing is going to prevent me from getting at the truth. My brother is not going to be disbarred and kept behind bars.”

  “What makes you think that something you find here could help your brother?”

  “Adam refused to represent Linbow because he realized that Linbow was going to lie on the stand. I’m going to find out what he planned to lie about.”

  “Why didn’t your brother just tell you what it was when he told you about Linbow’s intention to lie on the stand?”

  “Adam didn’t tell me why he withdrew as Linbow’s counsel. He couldn’t. That would have violated attorney-client privilege.”

  “So how did you find out?”

  “I know my brother, and it’s the only explanation that makes any sense. Attorneys are forbidden to deceive a jury by presenting testimony they know to be false. State statutes, legal precedents, all the rules of conduct and ethical codes prohibit it. Any attorney who knowingly lets his client commit perjury can be disbarred.”

  “A.J., we’ve both been around the courtroom and lawyers long enough to know that attorneys allow their clients to lie on the stand all the time. All those statutes and codes of professional conduct you’re quoting are widely ignored. In any trial, a defendant’s right to defend himself, even when his defense is a lie, becomes the overwhelming consideration of his counsel.”

  “Not when my brother is the counsel. Adam would never suborn perjury for any reason. He would consider it an unforgivable betrayal of the law and of himself.”

  “Then why did he agree to represent Linbow? And why did he wait until the third day of the trial to withdraw as his counsel?”

  “Obviously because he didn’t know Linbow planned to lie until just recently. And after seeing and hearing what Linbow said about my brother in that televised interview, I very much doubt the man was ever honest with Adam about what he intended to do. Adam must have found out on his own. Whatever he found, I’m going to find. I’ll do whatever—”

  “Shh,” Zane interrupted. “I hear something.”

  A.J. paused to listen. “I don’t hear—” she began but then stopped because she did hear something. It was the jingle of a key being fitted into the lock of the door leading from the hallway into the reception room.

  “Someone’s coming,” Zane whispered, immediately switching off the desk lamp. In the ensuing blackness, A.J. felt a very large, strong hand circle her arm. “Come on. Over here.”

  Zane propelled her forward with one hand as his other hand switched on his flashlight to point the way.

  “We’re going to hide?” A.J. asked with all the surprise she was feeling.

  “Would you rather stand here and greet whoever is wielding those keys?” Zane asked in a hurried whisper.

  A.J. numbly shook her head as Zane pulled her toward the beige couch in the corner. She could hear voices in the outer office. A man’s and a woman’s voice.

  Zane switched off his flashlight and pulled A.J. down behind the couch with him. The couch was wide and long, but the space between it and the wall was skimpy. They had to lay on their sides, fitted against each other like two spoons.

  A.J.’s body jolted at the impact of finding herself suddenly drawn up against two hundred pounds of solid male muscle. A completely inappropriate but appreciative quiver vibrated down her spine.

  “Stop wiggling. Keep still,” he whispered, his breath dancing on the back of her neck as an arm as strong and hot as heated lead circled her waist and brought her even closer.

  A spear of feminine warmth shot from her belly to her breastbone at this intimate touch. It felt like she was being held in a gigantic steel vise, one that smelled of sandalwood and sage, an extremely pleasant and strangely familiar combination, although A.J. had no idea why it should be either. Feminine urges that had lain dormant for a very long time suddenly surged to the surface, demanding attention.

  She ignored their demands, resolutely pushing aside all her unexpected and unwanted reactions to the close feel and pleasant smell of him. She needed to concentrate on the question she knew should be claiming all her thoughts.

  Why was Zane hiding with her? Why didn’t he just turn her in?

  A new jingling of keys, and the door to Linbow’s office creaked open. The sudden blast of the overhead light momentarily blinded A.J.

  “This is it?” a woman’s voice said, with a decided lack of enthusiasm. “Lexy, sweetie, my apartment isn’t far and my husband’s out of town. Why did we have to come here?”

  “Because my office has something your apartment doesn’t, Bambi baby,” Linbow’s distinctive rusty-hinge voice replied.

  “That couch doesn’t look comfortable,” the woman complained.

  A.J. heard the opening of the desk drawers. “Kill the overhead light, Bambi baby. We don’t need it now.”

  Linbow’s companion complied, and the room darkened. A rectangle of hght was reflected off the ceiling.

  “What’s that?” the woman asked.

  “You’ll see. Here, put these on,” Linbow said.

  “Goggles, earphones and gloves?”

  “They’re aids to help you enter the world of virtual reality.”

  “Virtual reality? You mean that stuff you were talking about at the party?”

  “Yeah. Like I said, you have to experience it for yourself. It’s as close to hassle-free, mind-boggling reality as you’ll ever get at eighty million polygons per second.”

  “Lexy, sweetie, what are you talking about?”

  “Just put them on. You’re going to like this. I promise.”

  “All right, but you start bringing out any handcuffs or whips or stuff, and I’m outta here. Hey, I can’t see anything inside these goggles.”

  “Hold on. You will in a minute. I just have to plug it in. There, how’s that?”

  “Oh, cool. These colors are pretty, just like a thousand little rainbows. Look, it’s a bubble bath full of rainbows!”

  “Now we’re going to put you in it. Virtually, that is.”

  “Hey, I can see my arms. These bubbles feel kinda cool. They tingle on my hands. Wait a minute. I’m not wearing any clothes. And, boy, do I look good! What is this?”

  “I keep telling you it’s virtual reality, where anything is possible. Now come over here…that’s right. It feels like you’re moving around the bubble bath, but I’m really sitting you down on the couch. There.”

  The couch creaked, and A.J. got a whiff of strong perfume mixed with wha
t smelled like ninety-proof whiskey.

  “Oh, yeah,” Bambi baby said.

  “Now I’m going to put on my goggles and gloves and earphones and show you what two can do. I’m setting the earphones over your ears now. Of course, if we were on the island we’d have fiber optic beds that provide sensations for every part of the body and much better visual and auditory interfaces. But even the island doesn’t have my special program.”

  “What special program?” Bambi asked.

  “Call it customized. We can try lots of different variations. They’re going to feel just like the real thing. Now, first I’m going to put myself beside you and then I’m going to select a background.”

  “I see you! You’re not wearing any clothes, either. Wow, Lex. Is that really your body?”

  “Sure, baby, sure. Here, feel these biceps.”

  “Oooooh.”

  “Now for the setting.”

  “Hey, sweetie, where did all these people come from? Can they see us?”

  “Only if you want them to. Baby, you’re so beautiful. Do you want them to see us?”

  “Oh, cool! I always fantasized about what it would be like to do it with a crowd around.”

  “Well, with me, you can live your every fantasy. Here, I’ll show you how to get their attention. See? Just throw some bubbles into their faces.”

  “Ha! Look at that guy. He’s ogling me now. Oh, did you hear what he said?”

  “Yeah, but you forget it. I’m not sharing you.”

  “Lexy, what are you doing?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Oh, you’re so bad and that feels so good!”

  “I think that’s our exit line,” Zane whispered to A.J.

  A.J. thought their exit line had come a lot earlier, but she didn’t comment. Zane slowly raised his upper body until he could see over the couch. After a cursory look around, he swiftly stood, leaned down to take her hand and pulled her to her feet.

  A.J. was cautious at first in following Zane’s bold walk into the room, but soon she saw there was no danger. The couple on the couch were entangled with each other and another world and totally oblivious to what was going on around them. They laughed and squealed and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves.

  A.J. got an immediate vision of where the couple on the couch had been mentally transported to. She could hardly miss it. Their images filled the four-by-five-foot computer screen embedded in the wall.

  Lexy sweetie and Bambi baby were naked and cavorting in a fanciful bubble bath shot with incredible color and sitting right in the middle of a busy intersection on a bright day in downtown Seattle. Cars sped around them. Pedestrians walked right past them. Bambi was blowing bubbles at the men, who were stopping to stare at her impossibly proportioned body and making comments A.J. couldn’t hear. Which, A.J. figured, was just as well.

  Linbow had lost his glasses and had acquired more muscle tone than a Hollywood stand-in for Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  A.J. shook her head as she followed Zane to the door. Well, everyone had a fantasy.

  They exited Linbow’s office unobserved by the absorbed couple, carefully closed the door behind them and passed through the reception area to the hallway outside. As soon as they were out of hearing distance, A.J. turned to Zane.

  “Why didn’t you turn me in to Linbow?”

  “Maybe because I didn’t want to embarrass him in front of his lady friend.”

  “You knew that was him at the door with a woman?”

  “An educated guess.”

  “How could you turning me in have embarrassed him?”

  “You heard. Bambi baby is married. And not to Lexy sweetie. Come on, we’ll use the stairs.”

  They didn’t speak on their way down the stairwell to the street. A.J. used the time to think about Zane’s explanation. And the more she thought about it, the lamer it got.

  As they exited the building out to the parking lot, Zane checked that the back door closed and locked behind them. Then he turned to A.J.

  “You have a car stashed somewhere around here?”

  “It’s on the next street,” A.J. admitted.

  “Then go get in it and get out of here.”

  A.J. stared at the jagged edges of Zane’s hard-hewn face, barely lit by the overhead light. All sorts of suspicions started to swim in her thoughts.

  “Why are you letting me go?” she asked.

  His voice sounded decidedly amused. “A.J., haven’t you ever heard that it’s not a good idea to look a gift horse in the mouth?”

  A.J. spread her hands on her hips and faced him squarely. “If you don’t look in its mouth, you’ll never know if it truly is a gift or a curse.”

  “Would you feel better if I turned you in? It can still be arranged.”

  “You’re doing this for a reason, Coltrane. I want to know what it is. And I’m not leaving here until I do.”

  Zane shook his head, that combative smile spreading his lips. “You want a reason? All right, A.J., I’ll give you a reason.”

  He wrapped an enormous arm around her waist and drew her to him until her breasts smashed against his chest. She made a small sound as the sudden warmth, closeness and size of him registered simultaneously on every nerve cell in her body. It was the only sound he gave her time for. In the next second his mouth came down on hers.

  A.J.’s body stiffened automatically. Her hands flew to his biceps to push him away.

  But this was no assault. This was contact of a very different kind. He was caressing more than kissing her, his lips barely brushing hers, his tongue slowly outlining her mouth with a quiet, intriguing intensity that began to buckle her knees and melt her soles into her shoes.

  A.J. had no desire to push away from the feel of the warm arm around her waist or from his soft mouth and the sensations its touch were streaming throughout her body. She leaned fully against him as a thick sigh stole through her throat.

  She could feel his breath instantly quickening, its warmth scoring her cheek with every exhale. The muscles in his biceps tensed beneath her hands.

  His lips pressed against hers, firm and insistent as he deepened the kiss. Her whole body began to tremble. Her hands circled his waist, and her lips parted beneath his. The drawing heat of his hard flesh beneath her fingers radiated through her arms and down her back in exciting, delicious waves.

  Then, just as abruptly as his arms had brought her to him, he released her completely and stepped back.

  “Now you’ve looked inside the horse’s mouth,” he said, a hungry kind of humor in his deep voice. “So what do you see, gift or curse?”

  While A.J. fought to find a coherent thought in her head, Zane Coltrane turned and disappeared completely into the dark night.

  Chapter Five

  “I was hoping to find you in,” Vanack said as he entered Zane’s office. “So did you take care of A.J.?”

  Zane yawned as he laced his fingers behind his neck and leaned back in his chair.

  “She’s at the health club going through her usual routine. She’ll be there for another hour. I don’t know when she sleeps. I followed her home at two this morning, after her breaking-and-entering caper over at Fabulous Fantasies, and she was charging out of her condo at six for her five-mile jog to the health club to warm her up for her weight-lifting workout.”

  “I thought you were going to turn her in and get her out of our way.”

  Zane rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Yeah, so did I.”

  “So what stopped you?”

  “She found and got into Linbow’s computer last night, Vanack. Took her all of maybe fifteen minutes.”

  “But I could have sworn he didn’t have a computer in his Seattle office. A couple of our guys spent an hour in there with our latest in electronic detection and didn’t find a thing.”

  “You don’t have to remind me,” Zane said, coming forward in his chair. “Looks like Linbow had his computer screened against electronic surveillance.”

 
“Then how did A.J. find it?”

  “Like a homing pigeon. I’ve never seen an investigative instinct like hers. It’s so inborn, it’s almost like it’s unconscious. Remember that lance corporal in our recon outfit we called Blowout?”

  “How could I forget? Blowout got his nickname because he could find the site of an equipment malfunction faster than all our electronic sensors. It was like he had this instinctive divining rod built into his head.”

  “Well, A.J. has that same kind of instinctive divining rod. You should have seen her. It was just like watching Blowout walk right to the source of a short. You don’t turn in talent like that.”

  “But, Zane, we’ve worked on this case too long to have A.J. suddenly coming in like a loose cannon and screwing things up. And you know she could.”

  “I know.”

  “So what are you going to do about her?”

  “Same thing I did back in our military days when I saw talent in another command. Recruit her for our outfit and get her under our control that way.”

  “She’ll never go for it.”

  “Maybe it just has to be presented to her right.”

  “She’s not the kind of lady you can sweet talk.”

  Zane smiled as he remembered her immediate suspicion when he told her the night before that she was free to go.

  “No, she’s not the kind to respond to sweet talk,” he agreed.

  “So what can you possibly say that would sway her?”

  “I’ll think up something. By the way, what are you doing in here so early? According to the duty roster, you were on last night, too.”

  “Yeah. I haven’t even been to bed yet.”

  Zane leaned back in his chair again. “Oh?”

  Vanack grinned. “Maybe I’d best correct that statement. I haven’t even been to sleep yet.”

  “Your courthouse lady?”

  “No. Another very important, if limited, liaison. It was a productive night in several ways although the menu prices of the restaurant she insisted on going to cleaned me out of a week’s pay. Now, I have a couple of bad-news items and some good news. Which do you want first?”