Books by Maggie Shayne (16 page)

"I thought if I could only be hetter... just he hetter, he'd love me." ' The pain became an ember, and as she flipped more pages, relived other disappointments, other times when he'd made her feel worthless, the emher glowed hotter and brighter. And she found that she was capable of feeling anger toward a man for whom she'd never allowed herself to feel anything but love. More than love. Sheer adoration.

Idolatrous hero worship. She'd ached to win his affection. But he'd never once given it.

"Damn you," she whispered, when She flipped a page and found a photo of him, accepting some award. She stood up, tearing the cellophane away, peeling the photo from the hook, holding it at arm's length in a white-knuckled grip, and she said it again, louder this time.

"Damn you! How could you do that to a child who adored you? How?"

Rage welled higher, flooding her soul and spilling out of her. It had built there all her life, but it had been denied. No more. No more.

"It wasn't me, you selfish bastard! Do you hear me? It was never me.

It was you! You're the one who wasn't good enough. You didn't deserve the love I lavished on you: And you were wrong to throw it away! You were stupid to throw it away! And so is that idiot downstairs! "

Crumpling the photograph into a tiny wad, she drew a shuddering breath and she felt strong. She felt free of a terrible burden she'd carried too long. ~ "I am good enough," she told the wad in her hands.

"I always was. You were too filled with hatred to see it. And Torch ...Torch is too filled with guilt, and this damned quest for vengeance of his. I love him. I love him a hundred times more than I ever loved you!" She fell to her knees in front of the hearth, her chin falling to her chest, her eyes filling again, blurring the crushed photograph she still held.

"But he can't return that feeling any more than you could, can he, Father? No. No, of course he can't. And I'll tell you something,~ Father, I'm through.

I'm not go' rag to waste any more of my heart on men too stupid to know how much they're throwing away when they deeqde I'm not worthy of their love. I am worthy, dam reit And one of these days, I'll find someone who's worthy of me. "

She opened her clenched hands and tossed the photograph into the fire.

Red flames licked at it, devoured it, turned it into a charred ball of ash, which she thought resembled her father's black soul.

"I will," she whispered.

"I swear to God, I will."

She stiffened, not turning at the sound of Torch's hoarse voice coming from the hedroom doorway. How long had he been there? How much had he heard?

It didn't matter, did it? She'd made a decision. She thought may he she was beginning to know herself as she truly was for the Very first time.

She got to her feet, choosing to ignore the intrusion. Crossing the bedroom, she opened the closet and located a cardboard box in the back.

Bending to it, she flipped it over, emptying its contents onto the floor and tossing the box onto the bed. Then she crossed the room again, her steps fast and sure. Her hands closed on the photo album, and she slung it into the box.

Torch came inside. She felt him ~:oming to her, and then his hands rose, as if to close on her shoulders. But they paused in midair, hovering, uncertain. And finally he lowered them to his sides again as she returned to the night-stand.

It was the framed portrait of her father she snatched up this time.

She threw it at the box as if she were trying to pulverize it. The satisfying sound of breaking glass came to her with the impact.

 
"I know you're angry," he said.

"You have every right to She tipped her jewelry box upside down, shaking the contents onto the dresser, shoving the piles around. The class ring. He'd complained about the cost but finally shelled out the money for it in lieu of a birthday present. It felt hard and cold in her palm, and then it sailed through the air like a missile, the box its target.

"Will you stop? Will you just talk to me for a minute? Please?"

The painting. The damned painting on the wall just ou~o side her room.

A dull gray abstract thing she'd always de, tested. She lunged into the hall, yanking it from the wall so hard she cracked the frame.

"He said I'd like it if I were smart~r. He said I simply didn't understand complex geometric design,-that it was beyond the scope of my inl~lligence." She carried it. with her into the. bedroom and, holding it by its sides, she lifted it,~ then brought it crasliing down on a bedpost. The post tore through the canvas. She ripped it free and threw it into the box.

Torch grabbed her arm.

"Stop this. Alex, we have to She stood still, panting with her rage.

She couldn't look at him, she couldn't... His fingers touched her face, lifted her chin, and she met his eyes.

"I'm sorry, Alex. I don't know what else to say."

She wanted to fold herself into his arms, just melt against his strong chest, and let him rock her, hold her. She wanted that so much!

But she stood still, unblinking.

"Did you find what you wanted in the diary?"

He shook his head. Searched her face.

She was tired. Drained. Slowly her taut muscles unclenched, and she managed to stop grating her teeth and calm her breathing.

 
"Tell me, what other bombshells you found in that damned book," she said, the words falling from her lips without inflection or emotion.

Torch cleared his throat.

"He developed the formula deliberately, Alex. It wassail prearranged He made a deal with a terrorist to develop a chemical weapon capable of wiping out entire nations in short order, and that's exactly what he did. It's all in the diary."

"Chemical weapon?"

"A synthetic virus. He was paid a great deal of money for it."

Alex closed her eyes, nodding slowly.

"He always complained he was unappreciated. Worthless bastard wasn:t even capable of loyalty to his own country, was he? Or even to mankind."

"No."

Swallowing hard, she opened her eyes again, faced Torch's blue ones, wished she didn't see so much concern for her in their depths.

"What else?"

Torch cleared his throat.

"He collected half the money up front and was supposed to get the rest on delivery of the formula. But it seems he got cold feet."

"Oh?"

"He accidentally exposed himself, Alex. Once he realized he was dying, he seemed to find a modicum of conscience. Either that, or he wanted time to try to develop a cure. Whatever his reasons, he decided to back out on the deal. He knew the man he was involved with wouldn't take that lying down, so he decided to drop out of sight."

Torch searched her face.

"For what it's worth, he waited until the incubation period had ended to contact you. He knew he was no longer contagious by then."

"The man was a saint," she whispered.

"The man was a fool."

"So are you." She held his gaze for a long moment. He didn't argue.

In fact, he lowered his eyes as if in silent concession.

 
Forever Dad She swallowed hard, looked away from him.

"I'm a doctor. Why didn't I see symptoms of this virus befc/~e it killed him?"

"You couldn't have, Alex. The symptoms were subtle, and he only recognized th~a-a himself because of the research he'd been doing.

Foi'geffulness was one, which explains why we found that notebook page in his lab. The rest he could have hidden easily enough.

Fatigue. Night sweats. And sutlden death. "

True, Alex realized. All true.

"Did the diary say what he did with his notes?"

Torch shook his head.

She sighed long and low.

"That's it, then."

He looked up, met her eyes, brows raised in question. "You wasted your time coming up here and dragging me into this whole thing," she said, and she fought to keep her voice level, to sound rational and calm.

"And I really think it's time we ended it, don't you?"

"I can'tleave, Alex. You know that."

She shrugged.

"Then I will You can have the phc to yourself, Torch Tear up the floorboards looking for the formula. Knock yourself out.

I don't want. anything more to do with it. " She picked up the box she'd been filling, and started for the door.

"Alex, you can't just leave! Alex!"

He follovnxl her, but she did her best to pretend he wasn't there as she descended the stairs. She carried the box through the foyer and to the front door, then balanced one side of it on her hip while she got the door open. She didn't hesitate. She tepped outside into the frigid air, and snow reached past her shoes to chill her ankles.

Torch was right behind her~, yelling questions all the way," but she ignored him. This was between her and her father. The icy wind stinging her cheeks felt good. It cleared her head, numbed her heart a little to the hurt he'd inflicted so deeply for so long. She trudged through the snow, across the lawn, to the tiny rectangle that had been his garden. And there she tipped the box upside down, spilling its contents there on the snow.

"There you go, Father. You always preferred the company of this stupid patch of dirt to mine. You should have been buried right here.

It would have suited you, wouldn't it? No time for a daughter who loved you. No. But plenty oi time for all that puttering. Out here all the time, digging. Always digging: That was all you ever. "

Alexandra let the cardboard box fall from her hands, and she went still and silent, blinking down at the snow around her feet. And just like that, she knew. She simply, clearly knew.

Without lifting her head or turning to face Torch, she said, "Get me a shovel."

He ought to be excited, knowing be' was so. close But instead, as he aimed the fiashlight's beam inside the shed, looking for the shovel, he was thinking about Alex. Trying to understand every emotion that she'd experienced in the past few hours. As if getting inside her head--inside her heart--had suddenly become more important than finding the formula. More important than getting Scorpion. More important than anything.

Ridiculous. He knew that. But still his mind worked the puzzle of Alexandra almost to the exclusion of anything else. She'd gone from devastation to rage, to something else 'in a matter of minutes. He still hadn't identified the final emotion. The one she'd reached as she'd stormed out into the snow. Acceptance maybe. And a determination to leave all of this behind her. To start fresh somewhere, without the emotional baggage she'd been lugging around all her life. If only it were that easy.

Hell, when he'd heard her upstairs, ranting at her dead father, he'd had no choice but to go to her. He'd wanted to t help her, to comfort her somehow. The way she'd managed to comfort him. He blinked in shock at the thought but slowly realized it was true. She had comforted him.

She'd found a way, despiteshis determination not to let her. She'd reached right through his pain and she'd held his frozen heart in her gentle hands, warming it.

Thawing it. She'd even begun to heal some of the fractures he'd thought went far too deep to mend.

He'd never known anyone who felt things as deeply. as Alexandra did.

To cry so easily for a pain that wasn't even her own . the way she'd cried when he'd told her about his family. And he'd never known anyone with a more soothing way about her. Every time she touched him, even if it was only with her eyes--no, especially when it was with her eyes--it felt as if she were coating his deepest wounds in a magical balm made of nothing more than her own essence.

She deserved better than what her father had given her. And in spite of himself, Torch knew she deserved better than what he'd given her.

Upstairs, when she'd been rag' rag at her dead father, she'd blurted out that she loved him. H/re. Torch Palamaro, a man so broken and battered that there was nothing left but a shell. Or was there?

He was beginning to think 'there might be, because he didn't feel like a shell of a man anymore. He felt as if maybe there was some spark of life left inside him. Something that had been comatose for the past year. Not quite as dead as he'd thought. He felt as if it had taken Alexandra*s magic to stir it awake.

He located the tools, picked them up and pocketed the flashlight.

Closing the door behind him, he walked back from the shed, a pick and a shovel anchored over his shoulder. Hell of a time to be thinking this way, Palamaro. Hell of a time. Because if you dig up what you think you're going to, it's all over. Time to get her as far away from you as possible. Time to stash the formula somewhere safe and lay in wait for Scorpion. Time to exact the punishment he so richly deserves.

No. There aren't going to be any fairy-tale endings. Not here. Not now. Not for you, Palamaro. Never for you.

He dropped the pick and shovel onto the ground, half-hoping she was wrong about this, just to prolong his time with her. And he knew that was a foolish thought. But he also knew it was an honest one.

Mayb the fkst honest one he'd had in quite a while.

"Come inside," she said, and her low, husky voic was n~rly lost on the night wind.

"We n~l coats, and gloves. Some more lights..."

"Yeah." He didn't want to stand around knee-deep in snow, digging in the frozen ground He wanted to wrap her in his arms and carry her up those stairs and make her forget the pain she was feeling right now.

The pain her father had caused. The pain he himself had added to.

Buthe knew that was impossible. He had a job todo. He owed a debt to his sons. He couldn't let them down.

She huddled deeper in her down-filled parka, wondering how on earth Torch could stand to work with no coat at all. He'd started out with one, but had shrugged it off as his body heated with the effort of breaking the frigid ground. He wore a sweater, awool blend, pale brown like a deer's coat. One of her father's. He bent to his work, in the knee-deep hole he'd chipped from the frozen earth. Lumpy brown chunks of frosty ground lay scattered around him like cobblestones.

He'd put an ugly brown scar in the snow's flawless face.

And then he stopped, staring downward, not 'blinking. "I think I found something."

He turned slowly to face her, and the red-orange glow of the kerosene lamps painted his face, made its sweat sheen glimmer.

Alex swallowed the lump in her throat. It wasn't fear of what she'd learn about her father this time. She'd already been dealt that blow. And it had staggered her and hurt her and taken her breath away.

But she'd survived it. Her heart was sinking now. for a far different reason.

They both knew that once the formula was found, their time together would end. It hadn't been spoken, but it was there, real and black and devastating. To her, at least.

She lifted her chin deliberately. "let's see what it is.," He held her gaze for a long moment, and there was something there in the sapphire depths of his eyes, some fire in them that went beyond the lamplight they reflected. Then he dropped to his knees in the frozen dirt. Holding the shovel at the junction of metal and wood, using it like a whisk broom, he scraped the rest of the dirt away. When he tossed the shovel aside, he worked with his bare hands, digging down along the square outline's edges with his fingers. Alex picked up the flaShlight they'd discarded in favor of the lamps, and aimed its beam down into the hole.

Torch grated his l~eth as he worked the box free. Yes, it was a box .

made of metal, she saw as he finally pulled it up.

He stared at the box while she stared at him.

"This is it," he said, his words so soft they were all but lost in the slight breeze that ruffled his sable hair.

"It has to be. What else would he bury out here?"

Her throat burned.

"There's a padlock," Torch nodded.

"That's easy to fix."

"You're not going to blow it up, are you?"

It should have been funny. He should have laughed and then she should have joined him. But instead he only looked into her eyes as his lips twisted in a sad little smile. She wanted to cry.

He set the box down on battered brown earth, reaching for the shovel again. Then he jammed the shovel's head down on the padlock. once, twice, again. And when he stopped, the lock had sprung free.

And again, he surprised her by seeming more eager to see what was going on in her eyes than what was inside that box.

 
He paused, searched her face.

"You want to go inside for this?"

Inside? Yes, she wanted to go inside. And she wanted to throw herself into his arms and beg him not to open that Pandora's box. Not yet, at least. She wasn't ready to say goodbye.

"No," she heard herself tell him, and oddly enough, her voice gave no indication of her turmoil.

"Let's do it right here."

Torch nodded. He worked the misshapen padlock's hasp until it came free. He opened the box. And he pulled out a simple spiral notebook.

The kind you could pick up at any drugstore for ninety-nine cents.

The kind kids used to take notes'in science class. It didn't look as if it were capable of destroying the world.

Torch dropped the box and stepped out of the hole onto the level, snowy ground nearer the lamps. He flipped open the cover. Without conscious volition, Alex moved closer to him. Her fiashlight's beam illuminated the white pages, and her eyes scanned line after line of numbers and symbols. Some of which she understood, and others she'd never seen before.

She knew enough, though, to realize that this was a chemical formula.

Any scientist worth his salt could create the virus that had killed her father, with no more than this notebook, the proper ingredients and a lab in which to work. A recipe for death, right there, in Torch's callused hands. Somewhere deep inside her, the newfound anger toward her father blazed to life all over again. To think she'd spent her life feeling unworthy of him! To think of the times she'd tried to please him, and of his constant disapproval! Damn him for his oversize ego and his unending criticism. Damn him!

"Well. Seems I've arrived just in time for the festivities."

She gasped, whirling at the familiar, whiny voice. Her surprise at seeing the monster standing there in the snow paralyzed her for an instant. It didn't dampen her anger. It only made her forget about it for the moment.

Scorpion stood not two feet away from them, a gun leveled on Torch.

"I'll take that journal, Palamaro."

"The hell you will." Torch's low, level tone did nothing to disguise the fury beneath it.

Scorpion shook his head, smiling, chilling her with the evil that seemed to glow from his pink eyes whenever he looked at her.

"You have two choices. I shoot you, and take the journal. Or you give me the journal" -- his grin broadened "--and then I shoot you."

Alex must have moved, though she wasn't aware of it, becau Scorpion's alien eyes jerked toward her all of a sudden.

"As for you, pretty lady, you just stand perfectly still. You.surprised me last time, but I won't mak that mistake again. You're obviously not quite as brainless as your father thought."

She said a word she'd never uttered in her life as a blinding, white-hot rage exploded in her brain. And her foot slammed down hard on the shovel, sending its handle upward, right between Scorpion's legs. The impact was fast and brutal and he fell to the ground howling.

Only it wasn't just an agonized howl. He was howling . a name, a command, even as Torch slammed the notebook into Alex's chest and leapt on Scorpion.

Lights blazed in the distance as some tank-size four-by-four bounced toward them. Its path vaguely followed that of the dirt road, crushing the snow that covered it. Its spotlight swung left and right, finally stopping when its beam illuminated the tangle on the ground where the two men struggled for the gun.

Alex acted without forethought, making a mad dash for the snowmobile they'd left parked near the front steps. And if she had given it any forethought, she might not have done it, because the second she stepped away from their boss, the men in the mutant pickup began shooting at her. Puffs of snow appeared in front of her feet where the bullets hit.

She He paused, searched her face.

"You want to go inside for this?"

Inside? Yes, she wanted to go inside. And she wanted to throw herself into his arms and beg him not to open that Pandora's box. Not yet, at least. She wasn't ready to say goodbye.

"No," she heard herself tell him, and oddly enough, her voice gave no indication of her turmoil.

"Let's do it right here."

Torch nodded. He worked the misshapen padlock's hasp until it came free. He opened the box. And he pulled out a simple spiral notebook.

The kind you could pick up at any drugstore for ninety-nine cents.

The kind kids used to take notes in science class. It didn't look as if it were capable of destroying the world.

Torch dropped the box and stepped out of the hole onto the level, snowy ground nearer the lamps. He flipped open the cover. Without conscious volition, Alex moved closer to him. Her fiashlight's beam illuminated the white pages, and her eyes scanned line after line of numbers and symbols. Some of which she understood, and others she'd never seen before.

She knew enough, though, to realize that this was a chemical formula.

Any scientist worth his salt could create the virus that had killed her father, with no more than this notebook, the proper ingredients and a lab in which to work. A recipe for death, right there, in Toreh's callused hands. Somewhere deep inside her, the newfound anger toward her father blazed to life all over again. To think she'd spent her life feeling unworthy of him! To think of the times she'd tried to please him, and of his constant disapproval! Damn him for his oversize ego and his unending criticism. Damn him!

"Well. Seems I've arrived just in time for the festivities."

She gasped, whirling at the familiar, whiny voice. Her surprise at seeing the monster standing there in the snow paralyzed her for an instant. It didn't dampen her anger. It only made her forget about it for the moment.

Scorpion stood not two feet away from them, a gun leveled on Torch.

"I'll take that journal, Palamaro."

"The hell you will." Torch's low, level tone did nothing to disguise the fury beneath 'it.

Scorpion shook his head, smiling, chilling her with the evil that seemed to glow from his pink eyes whenever he looked at her.

"You have two choices. I shoot you, and take the journal. Or you give me the journal" -- his grin broadened "--and then I shoot you."

Alex must have moved, though she wasn't aware of it, because Scorpion's alien eyes jerked toward her all of a sudden.

"As for you, pretty lady, you just stand perfectly still. You.snrprised me last time, but I won't make that mi.~-take again. You're obviously not quite as brainless as your father thought."

She said a word she'd never uttered in her life as a blinding, white-hot rage exploded in her brain. And her foot slammed down hard on the shovel, sending its handle upward, right between Scorpion's legs. The impact was fast and brutal and he fell to the ground howling.

Only it wasn't just an agonized howl. He was howling. a name, a command, even as Torch slammed the notebook into Alex's chest and leapt on Scorpion.

Lights blazed in the distance as some tank-size four-by-four bounced toward them. Its path vaguely followed that of the dirt road, crushing the snow that covered it. Its spotlight swung left and right, finally stopping when its beam illuminated the tangle on the ground where the two men struggled for the gun.

Alex acted without forethought, making a mad dash for the snowmobile they'd left parked near the front steps. And if she had given it any forethought, she might not have done it, because the second she stepped away from their boss, the men in the mutant pickup began shooting at her. Puffs of snow appeared in front of her feet where the bullets hit.