Golden Threads (6 page)

She felt bewildered, half angry, and both emotions were reflected in her voice. "We aren't in high school, Devon," she said, keeping the words low because they were still standing before her unopened apartment door. "And I won't accept the sole responsibility of saying no. But I don't have to, do I? You've already said it."

"Lara—"

She snatched her keys from his hand and pushed open her apartment door, stepping inside and half-turning to shut him out.

"Yarn-!"

Lara had heard such a note in her cat's voice only once before, and the memory of that night would haunt her for the rest of her life. She went motionless, one hand on the doorknob and the other holding her keys and gripping the jamb with whitened fingers. She didn't have to look for Ching; he'd be under the couch.

Devon's hand covered the one on the jamb. "Lara? What is it? What's wrong?"

"Someone's been here," she whispered.
"In the apartment."

Swiftly, he pushed the door farther open and stepped inside. In a low voice, he said, "Stay here, and don't close the door."

She didn't move, just leaned back against the jamb and watched as he went silently down the short hallway that led to the kitchen and bedroom. She knew she should go to the telephone and call the number she'd memorized. Anything suspicious, they'd told her, anything at all. They'd check it out, and if it proved to be a threat to her safety, she'd be protected.

Moved again.
Uprooted, vanishing from this life only to appear in another one. Like a penciled line disappearing under the stroke of an eraser, Lara Callahan would simply cease to be.

No... not again.

Ching muttered softly from under the couch, and Lara closed the door and came into the living room. There was no one here now, she knew. She dropped her keys on the coffee table and gazed around the room for a moment, then crossed to her drafting board and stared at it.

"Nothing," Devon said, emerging from the hallway. "What makes you think someone was here?"

"Ching told me," she murmured.

"Where is he?"

"Under the couch."

There was a moment of silence, and then Devon called the cat's name firmly.
Lara half-turned to watch her feline friend emerge from beneath the couch and leap lightly to the coffee table, where he sat with flattened ears and a lashing tail.

"Yah!" he said in an emphatic tone.

Devon studied the cat,
then
looked at Lara. "He's obviously upset, but he was when we left."

Lara reached to unpin a drawing from the board, holding up the two pieces so that Devon could see them; a dreamy watercolor of a castle had been cut from corner to corner. "Just something I was doing for myself," she said in the same even, detached tone. She put the ruined picture down and added, "The knife cut right into the board."

"Are you going to call the police?"

"No. Nothing's missing. There won't be any fingerprints."

Devon took a step toward her, and his voice was taut when he demanded, "Lara, what the hell is going on?"

She went over to the couch and sat down, suddenly aware of trembling legs. "What makes you think I know?"

"Don't give me that. I want an answer."

An answer, she thought. Well, she had her answer now. This wasn't a vague suspicion. This was fact. Someone had broken in to her apartment, had searched neatly and professionally through her belongings, touched her clothing. She felt violated.
And frightened.
And alone.

"Lara." His haunting voice was quiet now. "Let me help you."

She couldn't trust him. She couldn't trust anyone— and how stupid of her to have forgotten that. "You're confusing the play with reality, Devon." Her voice sounded calm, she thought. "In real life, the prince never comes storming to the rescue."

He moved around the end of the couch and sat down beside her, not quite touching. "Give me a chance."

She didn't look at him; she didn't dare, wary of losing her precarious control. "I don't want this," she said clearly, giving him an answer he had demanded earlier. "You said you couldn't stop it. You said I couldn't, even though you wanted me to. But I will. I'll stop it. I don't want you in my life, Devon."

"You're lying," he said flatly.

Lara could feel the tension growing inside her, quivering like glass about to shatter. With all the will she could command, she kept her voice even and detached. "No. But it doesn't matter, does it? You wanted me to say no, and that's what I'm saying. Now, please leave."

"Look at me, Lara." When she didn't move, he leaned over and grasped both her shoulders, turning her firmly.

She wanted to flinch away from his touch, his
gaze,
because she knew her will could never stand against his. Not when he looked at her. Not when he touched her.

"Stop it," she whispered, just as she had in the restaurant. She was caught again, tugged at in that profound, overpowering way, and she couldn't fight it.

"I won't leave," he said. "I won't walk out because you're determined to face this, whatever it is, alone. I want you, Lara. And you want me. Admit it."

She had no choice. Even now, with the shadows of fear closing in on her, she couldn't deny the effect he had on her. She wanted to throw herself into his arms, to be enclosed by him and revel in his warmth and strength.

"Yes," she admitted finally, defeated. "But you said—"

"Never mind what I said." A muscle tightened in his jaw. "Even if you'd told me you didn't want this, I probably—" He broke off, shaking his head. "Just never mind. We'll talk about all of it later."

Lara remained half-turned toward him as he released her and sat back. She knew what he wanted to talk about now, but she was still uncertain. Tell no one, they'd said. And she didn't know him, after all, no matter how he could make her feel. But he'd been with her; he couldn't be involved in it.

Could he? An accomplice could have done the dirty work while Devon charmed his way into her life... her bed.

"Don't look at me like that," he said in a sudden, low growling tone of voice.

She shifted her gaze to the hands clasped together in her lap, then looked back at him because she couldn't help herself.

He sighed roughly and half-lifted a hand as if to touch her. But the powerful hand fell back to his thigh and clenched briefly into a fist. "The truck last night," he said tersely.
"Now your apartment.
What's going on, Lara?"

Those burdened eyes. What would he do, she wondered dimly, if she offered him her own burden? Would his desire for her force him to share it? Or would her troubles quite effectively provide the no he had wanted her to utter?

"Dammit, Lara, tell me."

She felt a sigh escape her, but tried to warn him. "In real life, there are worse things than witches with spells... and prisons aren't always made of stone."

He looked at her for a moment,
then
asked quietly, "Are you imprisoned?"

"In a way."

"Tell me."

Was he involved? She didn't know, couldn't know. She gave him her trust blindly. And there was a certain relief in finally telling someone.

"A year ago I was living with my father in another state. He was working for an electronics company, where they designed state-of-the-art computers. The company held several government contracts, so everyone was upset, very upset, when it was discovered that some of their designs had been pirated."

"Industrial spies," Devon said. "It's been known to happen."

Lara remembered only then that he worked for an electronics company himself. "Yes. And if it had been only that, it would have been bad enough. But my father and others were working on several top secret projects, and when one of those designs came up missing, there was a general panic."

Devon waited for a moment when she fell silent, then prompted, "And so?"

She took a breath. "Security was tightened, and the government sent in investigators to try to find out who was responsible. My father was heading one of the research groups, so he worked closely with the investigators. They found nothing. The general belief was that someone on the inside had been selling the designs, but they couldn't discover who it was."

"Did your father agree with the general belief?"

"No. He didn't think someone on the inside had been seduced; he believed that one of his own people had been working for someone outside the company."

"Did he know who it was?"

"He suspected. Then, a few weeks later, he found something." Lara shook her head unconsciously. "I don't know how. I'm not even sure exactly what it was; the FBI talked about documents, but I never saw them. But Dad did tell me..."

"What?"

'That it was bigger than they'd suspected. That a... he called it a cartel of criminal businessmen had developed a system of planting spies into the most top secret high-tech government installations in the country."

"He was sure of that? He had proof?" Devon's face was intent, his eyes fixed on hers.

"He said so. He said he'd found the link, that he knew who the plant was inside his company, and that he'd learned the names of several people in other companies. I wanted to call the FBI right then, but he said he wanted to give them the whole package. That's the way he phrased it, 'the whole package.' I'd never seen him so upset, furious, and, I think, afraid."

After a moment, Devon asked, "What did he do?"

"He went out several times during the next week, and came back late. He spent hours locked in his study, working at his computer. He wouldn't tell me anything, just that he was tying all the loose ends together." She stopped, not sure she could tell Devon the rest of it.

He reached out and took one of her hands, holding it in a strong, warm grasp. "Tell me, honey."

The endearment startled her, and for the first time she understood why that word was an endearment. Like the substance it named, it was golden and unutterably sweet, with the cloaked wildness of something given by nature rather than man-made.

Her fingers twined unconsciously with his. "I don't think Dad suspected the cartel was on to him," she said unsteadily. "Otherwise, he would have sent me away. That night... I went out with some friends. When I came home, I didn't know there was anything wrong until I opened the front door. Ching howled, the way he did tonight."

"Yah," the cat murmured from his seat on the coffee table, apparently in response to his name.

Lara glanced at him blindly,
then
turned her unseeing gaze back to Devon. "Later, the FBI found out—I don't know how—that Dad had gotten some kind of warning.
A phone call
, maybe. They wouldn't tell me. But they were sure he'd had at least a few minutes to hide whatever evidence he had gotten together. They were sure of that."

Devon's fingers tightened gently around hers.

She hardly felt it. Her voice had become a monotone, each word dropped into place starkly. "I went across the hall and knocked on the study door. There wasn't an answer. The door wasn't locked. The room was a shambles, furniture overturned, books and papers scattered everywhere. Dad's safe was open— and empty.

"He was lying on the floor beside his desk. He was... they'd beaten him."

Devon muttered something under his breath and pulled her into his arms, holding her close against him. Lara, cold and aching, accepted his comforting and his warmth, realizing only then that no one had ever held her to let her grieve for her father. She'd had no other family, and the FBI had given her friends no chance to contact her. She didn't cry, because there were no tears left in her for the memory of that night, but she burrowed closer to Devon with a shudder that shook her entire body.

"It's all right," he said softly after a few moments. "It's all right, honey."

"No, it isn't." Her voice was thick, unsteady. "It'll never be all right again." She pushed back away from him, but didn't object when he kept one arm around her shoulders.

Devon was a little pale, but his mouth curved in a kind of wry self-mockery. "I'm sorry; I know platitudes don't ease the pain. No words could."

His burdened eyes told her he knew all about pain. Drawing a deep breath, she said, "I called the FBI. Dad was... there was nothing anyone could do for him. Agents came. And they just took over. They moved me to an apartment across town; they let me pack a bag and take Ching, but nothing else. Later, they talked to me, questioned me, for hours."

"They said that Dad had gotten a warning, and that since the whole house had been searched he must not have told those men where the evidence was hidden. They thought I knew. But I didn't know." She sighed raggedly. "They finally said that the cartel might believe I knew something, and that I was a target. So they put me in their protection program. Callahan isn't my real name; it's Mason. I get a new name, a new identity every time they move me in the protection program."

After a moment, Devon said quietly, "Imprisoned."

"I didn't realize at first," she murmured. "I was numb. I didn't care. It just hit me a few weeks ago. That I was cut off, rootless. And now..."