by Lee Damon
Portman now looked totally abject and a bit sick. "Oh, God, you just might. You don't know what she's planning. She's going to make an awful stink and give your girlfriend there as much trouble as she can."
Both O'Mara and Ez moved toward the sorry figure drooping in the chair. Kitt stepped back, looking apprehensively from one man to another, asking uncertainly, "But what can she do to me?"
"Portman?" O'Mara snapped.
"L-Laura knows somebody up here, and she found out you were... were old friends with these Tates and y-you were spending all your t-time with her." He pointed a trembling finger at Kitt and quickly looked back at the big, threatening figures looming over him. "So she called a cousin of ours who works for the government and spun him some kind of story, and he checked them out. Mostly her. Then she asked me to come up here and watch her and make notes of how many times you visited her and how long you stayed and if she saw any other guys and—"
"And just what would that prove?" O'Mara demanded. "Kitt and I are both adults, and free to see each other whenever we please. What did Laura think she could do with that kind of information?"
"Yeah, well... she... ah... wanted me to get proof that you stayed overnight here or, better yet, that she stayed over at your place with you. Then Laura was going to tell you that she'd call the papers and tell them that you were carrying on with her in front of your kid."
"Unless, of course, I paid up and kept paying up? There's just one thing I don't understand about this, Portman," O'Mara drawled sarcastically. "Where's the threat? Why should she think the press would be interested beyond the gossip value of my name?"
"Don't you know?" Portman's pale eyes widened in surprise. He pointed at Kitt and cried excitedly, "Her name's not Tate. It's Darcy, and she killed her husband!"
For endless seconds, everyone but Portman stood as if turned to stone. Kitt's mind completely blanked out in shock, and she swayed on the point of unconsciousness until Ez's bellow jolted her back to alertness. And then, for a few minutes, everything moved so fast that there was no time for thought.
Ez's roar of rage would have put a bull elephant's maddened trumpeting to shame. It rattled every dish and window in the building and deafened everyone in the room. It even checked O'Mara's instantaneous reflexes for the two seconds it took Ez to leap for Portman and snatch him from the chair. By the time O'Mara moved, Portman was dangling a foot off the floor, with both of Ez's huge hands wrapped around his neck. Ez was shaking him like a big rag doll and yelling a steady stream of curses in half a dozen languages. The initial horror of Portman's accusation was forgotten by O'Mara, Kitt and Midge, who now had only one joint thought—to keep the berserk Ez from choking Portman to death in his blind rage.
Kitt and O'Mara lunged at Ez from either side, grabbing his wrists and trying to break his hold. All of them were shouting at him, but even O'Mara's deep voice couldn't be heard over Ez's continued bellows. Portman's face was rapidly darkening. O'Mara stepped back a pace and brought the edge of his hand down in two fast, hard karate chops on Ez's forearm, numbing it from elbow to fingertips. His right hand dropped away from Portman's neck, but in a blind reflex he swung from his unimpaired shoulder and knocked O'Mara halfway across the room. As soon as Ez's right hand had dropped, Kitt grabbed his left thumb with both hands, working her fingers between the rigid thumb and Portman's neck. Bracing her feet and leaning back, she used a combination of her weight and her considerable strength to loosen Ez's grip enough so that Portman could draw in gasping breaths. Simultaneously, O'Mara clamped Ez's right arm in a tight hold and fought to shift him off-balance. It was like trying to move Crest Rock. Ez's great muscles bulged and heaved as he tried to shake off Kitt and O'Mara.
Knowing the full horror of the true story, Ez had literally gone berserk at the incredible accusation from Portman, and he was in those minutes utterly blind and deaf to anything around him. Unaware of Kitt and O'Mara, his only reality was Portman and the need to destroy this threat to his twin.
In normal circumstances, O'Mara was just about an even match for Ez. Now, however, the conditions were definitely abnormal, and it took all of O'Mara's 200 pounds and well-developed muscle power just to hold onto Ez's right arm and keep himself on his feet. He didn't want to use any of the disabling blows that he knew, since in Ez's maddened state he would have to use so much force that broken bones and/or damaged nerves would be a distinct possibility. He couldn't believe that Ez could hold out much longer—he was already holding Portman's 150-odd pounds at arm's length with one hand, with most of Kitt's 135 pounds suspended from the same arm, while O'Mara was letting his other arm take most of his 200 pounds. How long it might have taken Kitt and O'Mara to wear Ez down they would never know, because at that point Midge finally managed to include herself in the action and, in her unique style, brought Ez back to his senses.
Although it seemed like an hour, it had been less than two minutes since Ez erupted. Midge had been darting around the struggling tangle of tall bodies, trying to find a way to help but knowing she was too small and light to make any impact. When he threw O'Mara off, she tried to grab Ez's flailing arm, but backed off when O'Mara yelled, "No, Midge!" Suddenly realizing how useless she was, she stopped, took a good look at the situation and made a quick decision.
Kicking off her sandals, she dodged around O'Mara's braced feet to come up behind Ez. She jumped, grabbed a fistful of shirt for leverage, and scaled his back until she was sitting on his shoulders with both thighs clamped tightly around his head. Shifting to get her balance, she simultaneously clapped one hand over his mouth, pinched his nose shut with the other hand and started drumming her bare heels vigorously against his chest.
Not even Ez in all his rage was immune to suffocation. For a few more seconds, muffled roars echoed from behind Midge's hand, but finally he opened his left hand to let Portman drop in a heap to the floor. As soon as they felt the tension leave his body, Kitt and O'Mara let go of his arms and dropped down onto the rug, panting and rubbing aching muscles.
Once his arms were free, Ez grabbed Midge's wrists and pulled her hands away from his face. He took a couple of deep breaths, tilted his head back against her stomach so he could look up into her face, and asked in a perfectly normal voice, "What do you think you're doing, wench? You almost smothered me."
"I was saving your children's lives," she said in a tone of sweet reasonableness. "If you had strangled that son of a sick flounder, you'd have spent the next ten years in prison, and how the hell do you think we'd have managed to have kids under those circumstances? By mail?"
Ez grinned at her, said "Stupid" fondly, then lifted and flipped her and set her on her feet in front of him. His eyes went over her head to rest on Portman, still crumpled in a heap on the floor and gasping for air. Midge's alarm bells started ringing at the look on Ez's face and, planting both small fists in his diaphragm, she pushed him slowly backward, step by step, until he was sitting on the breakfast bar. Scowling determinedly, she stepped between his outstretched legs, turned around to plaster her back against his chest and stomach, pulled his arms around her and said grimly, "There now, you'll damn well stay put or you'll have to knock me over. You just let O'Mara straighten him out."
O'Mara rose lithely to his feet and reached out a hand to Kitt to pull her up. As her eyes met his, Portman's last words boomed and echoed in her mind, slamming and battering at the impregnable wall sealing off that last unbearable memory. Wrenching pain jolted through her head as, cracking and crumbling, faster and faster, the wall came down and her mind filled with the spinning horror of Leon's death.
With a wordless, anguished, guttural sob, she lunged into O'Mara's arms, burying her face in his shoulder and wrapping her arms around him in a rib-cracking stranglehold. Terror consumed her as she felt her mind sliding from sanity into an airless limbo, and she clung with desperate arms to her only remaining reality while the unspeakable nightmare memory crashed through her.
Reacting instinctively to her panic and rising h
ysteria, O'Mara clamped strong arms around her in a tight hold, trying to absorb the shocks as deep, hard, dry sobs jolted through her body. Frantically, she turned her face against his shoulder, seeking the security of warm, living skin, and he felt her panting breath against his throat as she finally pushed his collar aside and pressed her face against his neck. He brought up a hand to brush her hair back and rubbed his cheek against hers, murmuring loving reassurances and encouragement. All of his mental forces were concentrated in trying to break through her surging terror and make an emotional-mental connection with her. He slid his hand under her hair and kneaded the knotted muscles at her nape, while the soothing murmur of his voice continued in her ear.
Finally, after long minutes, the healing tears started, pouring down her face and his neck, soaking his shirt collar and trickling down his chest. She took deep, shuddering breaths and felt the first easing of terrifying pressure in her mind. Life, pulsing, loving, warm life was moving through her. She could feel his skin against her face, his hand on her neck, the warmth and strength of his body against hers, and she could hear the words of love and reassurance he was speaking. And then, suddenly, as if circuit switches had been flipped, her linkage with him was there. Love, with all its soothing, calming, supporting strength, was flowing into her, crowding out the mind-bending terror, releasing the last bonds of nightmare memory, vanquishing once and for all the lingering effects of the past.
Midge watched the two tall figures locked together so tightly that they seemed to be one. She could feel Ez, tense and distraught, half-rising and then settling back. After a few minutes, he let out a relieved sigh and relaxed, and she twisted around to look up at him.
"She's all right, now," he whispered. "O'Mara can give her something I can't, and he knows how to cope with her."
"Do you mind, Ez?"
"No." He smiled down at her in a way guaranteed to uncurl her hair. "It was inevitable that sooner or later we'd each find our own mates. It's a double bonus that we like each other's choices so much."
"Isn't it," Midge agreed faintly, looking like she'd just seen her first Christmas tree.
"Stay put, Portman!" O'Mara's sharp command brought everyone's wandering attention back to the unfinished business of the evening. Portman dropped back into his chair and huddled there miserably, obviously wondering what further disasters the evening would bring.
Kitt, still in the circle of O'Mara's arms, wiped the last tears away and looked up at him. There was sympathy and understanding in his eyes, together with an odd waiting quality in the intensity of his gaze as he said quietly, "I'm going to tell him the true story. Do you want to stay, or wait in your room until we're through?"
Her first impulse was to run for her room, and she started to draw back, feeling his arms loosening from around her. Then she stilled, hesitating as her eyes remained locked on his and she realized the significance of that waiting look. This was something she had to face to complete the healing process. Before all the shadows could be completely banished, she would have to recall in detail that last encounter and endeavor to put it into perspective; to accept that it was the irrational act of a madman rather than any kind of normal retaliation of an angry man; and to know, in the deepest recesses of her mind, that such a thing could never happen with O'Mara, no matter how aggravated he might become with her.
"I'll stay," she sighed, and saw the warm approval in his eyes before she moved back into his arms, resting her forehead on his shoulder and linking her arms around his waist.
O'Mara looked steadily at Portman over Kitt's shoulder and started talking in a flat voice, much as though he were reading a report. "I don't know or care whether Laura lied or someone misread a file, but not only did Kitt not kill her ex-husband, he died while he was trying to kill her. Some four months after Kitt divorced Darcy for physical cruelty, he..."
Kitt squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her teeth as the sound and fury of vivid memory drowned out O'Mara's voice and she lived again, in her mind, those final, fatal minutes with Leon.
She was finishing washing up her lunch dishes, listening to the laughter and talk from the Saturday afternoon crowd around the swimming pool. It was a sizable apartment complex, and there must have been close to a hundred people scattered around the big courtyard with its Olympic-size pool. She glanced out the window and decided to wait a while to go swimming. With luck, the crowd would thin out later, and she'd have more room to do laps. She turned back toward the sink to reach for a towel to dry her hands and paused at the sound of shouts and screams coming from the central hallway. Picking up the towel and wiping her hands, she started for the archway into the living room, and then froze at the shocking sound of Leon's voice yelling obscenities and ordering her to open the door. She leaned against the archway as her knees went weak with the fear chilling through her. How had he found her? This was the other end of the state!
Immobile with shock, she saw the door shake under the force of Leon's hammering, and then heard a wordless, enraged roar and a crash as his foot splintered the door beside the lock. Panicked, she unfroze and spun around, searching frantically for a way out. The kitchen was a trap. She turned and started to run for the outside balcony door across the living room just as Leon smashed the hall door off its hinges and charged into the room.
She'd never make it. He was too close. Swerving away from him, she caught a quick glimpse of his huge figure swaying on his widespread feet, his head swinging from side to side as he searched for her. His face, twisted with rage, teeth bared in a snarl, eyes reddened and bulging with madness, was imprinted on her mind. She heard a woman screaming and knew it was herself. He saw her just as she lunged for the door and leaped after her, catching her arm and flinging her back across the room. Staggering, trying to stay on her feet, falling over a chair and rolling, rolling, seeing him coming after her, people crowding around the doorway screaming and yelling.
Her hand hit the leg of a dinette chair, and she grabbed it, lurching up on one knee to fling it at his legs. He stumbled over it, half-falling, and she came upright and picked up the other chair just as two brawny young men pushed through the doorway and grabbed Leon.
Relieved to know it was over, she set the chair down and leaned back against the wall, overcome with the release of tension. It took too many seconds for the scene in front of her to penetrate her numbed mind. Both young men were crumpled moaning on the floor and Leon was almost on her before her sluggish reflexes leaped to life. Grabbing the back of the chair with both hands, she rammed it at his chest and raced for the balcony door, the only clear exit from the trap of her apartment. She could hear him behind her, his enraged bellows deafening her, and she spun and spun again, snatching up lamps, ashtrays, end tables, another chair, anything movable, and flinging them at him in a frantic effort to slow him down. One more step. Ohgodohgod, the catch! Wet with the sweat of terror, her fingers slid off the catch to the sliding screen door. Panting, sobbing, she tugged at the door. "Now, bitch!" She flung a look over her shoulder. Pure rage charging the last steps, hands reaching for her. She dove to the side, and his maddened charge carried him right through the screen, ripping it entirely out of the frame.
She jumped to her feet and hesitated just an instant in the doorway. His momentum had carried him, stumbling and falling to one knee, all the way across the wide balcony which ran the full length of the second floor. In seconds, he'd be on his feet. Run! Run! She leaped through the doorway and raced for the stairs at the end of the balcony. People, all kinds of muscled young men by the pool, enough to stop him... yells and screams behind her and more down below... people running across the courtyard... obscene roars and the deck shaking with his thudding, racing strides... he was close... too close... sirens... thank God!... run!... almost there... no, don't look back... where are those cops?... NO OH GOD NO—
He cannoned into her, knocking her flat, his hands reaching for her throat. Panic. No breath, numb, dazed from the weight of him smashing her down, that madman's face
wavering, melting into grotesqueness through a red haze, can't move, can't breathe, hands, huge strong hands to break my neck, kill me, HE'S GOING TO KILL ME! NO! MOVE! ROLL! FIGHT YOU FOOL FIGHT FIGHT now now run run... men grabbing... they've got him... no... run run run... he's coming... they can't stop him... ugh, no let go let go... kicking, punching, tearing, blood on his face, hands, arms, don't let him get a lock around you he'll crush your ribs, knee him knee him... runrun... oh god won't anything stop him no not over the railing smash his nose adam's apple something anything... get away away... railing... police whistles... hang on... tired, so tired can't stop fighting hurry nononoNONONON—
"... and the railing, already weakened from Darcy and Kitt ramming into it, broke away, and they both fell just as half a dozen cops ran into the courtyard. They saw the end of it and said that it looked as if Darcy pushed Kitt away and tried to grab the edge of the balcony but missed. Kitt did catch an upright with one hand, but the weight and momentum of her falling body tore it lose. However, it was enough to swing her at an angle, and she landed on the canvas awning over a first-floor patio. It broke most of the force of her fall before it collapsed, and she lucked out with only a broken arm, cracked ribs and a mild concussion. Darcy fell straight down onto a concrete walkway and broke his neck. He was dead before anyone could reach him."
"Jesus," Portman breathed.
O'Mara, emotionally drained for the moment, rested his cheek against Kitt's soft hair, loosened the tight hold of his arms and started kneading the tense muscles in her back. She kept her head down on his shoulder, forcing her breathing to steady, regaining control bit by bit under the soothing movement of his hands, and finally relaxing the aching clamp of her fingers, which she'd dug into him those last few moments. Her chest hurt, and she realized that she'd been holding her breath through that last terrifying replay of the chase down the balcony and its end.
