Lazlo’s Last Stand

Chapter 10

They drew apart and turned at the same time, not abruptly, but like a well-tuned couple executing the steps of a dance. Corbett went first, wading into the thermal pool with sure-footed grace, while Lucia watched through a mist of love the way the lantern light played over the muscles in his back and buttocks and thighs. To her he seemed perfect, a classical statue in gleaming bronze come magically to life. She wanted to go to him, join him in that enchanted light, but suddenly it seemed too much, too overwhelming, too unbelievable. She felt the way she did in dreams sometimes, when her brain was telling her body to move and it just wouldn’t obey.

Then he held out his hand. Hers went of its own accord to join with it, and at his firm, warm touch the dream fled. She was back in her own mind again, or a more primal form of it, empty of everything except her feminine response to his masculine call and a new and intense kind of joy, earthy and primitive as the ancients who had first taken shelter in these caves. He led her deeper into the pool, and she felt the steamy warmth envelope her like a sultry summer night.

In hip-deep water he drew her closer and, taking her head between his two hands, tilted her face to his and kissed her, a deep, lazy kiss that seemed to reach into her very soul, and she stood motionless, head back and eyes closed, and lost herself in it. Then, without breaking the kiss, he moved his hands slowly downward, over her shoulders, breasts and waist, and she followed his lead, both of them slicking the steam and sweat moisture over each other’s skin like oil.

When their hands reached the place where buttocks swelled below the water’s surface, he broke the kiss and his eyes looked into hers, a gaze like blue smoke. Smiling, eyes half-closed, she swayed toward him, sliding the soft places between her thighs over and around him in a playful, testing way. Though she felt his breathing cease and his hands tighten on her buttocks, he didn’t rush or guide her, but held himself perfectly still and let her pleasure herself and him the way she wanted to. Until she could stand it no longer, and the pleasure became torment to her as it must have been to him.

“How deep is this pool?” she asked, slurring the words as if intoxicated.

“Not deep enough for this,” he murmured. “But I think…”

Leading her by the hand and sliding his feet carefully on the slippery rock bottom, he moved them both a few steps closer to the edge of the pool. He eased himself down until he was lying in the water half-reclined, the way he’d been when she’d come upon him the day before, and when she followed him, her body seemed to slither over his and melt into perfect fit as if that was where it was always meant to be.

For all the chattering they’d done before, neither of them spoke a word now, save for the inarticulate moans and murmurs, the joyous little chuckles and sighs that were, perhaps, a language unto themselves. A language they each understood perfectly. She didn’t have to tell him to go slowly, gently with her. He already knew, better than she did. He might have told her he’d never known a woman so sweetly in tune with him, but since she seemed to anticipate his every move, he thought it likely she knew his mind before he did.

Wherever his mouth and hands and fingers roamed, no matter how boldly, she welcomed his touch with passionate cries and sensual little wiggles of pleasure, responses that would have been reward enough, even if her hands and mouth hadn’t wandered just as freely, and with an adventurousness that delighted him. She had no inhibitions with him, and so it was easy for him to let go of his own-except for those necessary limits he was reminded of now and then with a sharp stab of pain in his ribs, and those he grew accustomed to and could easily dismiss. He’d never felt so carefree. This woman-Lucia-she filled his senses and his mind as no woman ever had, so that for these blessed moments he could forget the worries and responsibilities that waited for him just beyond the cave.

A few blessed moments…

All too soon, there came the moment when he knew he’d waited as long as he could. And again he found that with her no words were necessary.

She sensed the new tension in his body and in his hands, in the fingers that had pleasured her with such cleverness and delicacy and that now gripped her thighs and urged them apart with urgency and purpose. She felt his body demanding entry into hers, and something-a primitive feminine instinct similar to fear-kicked beneath her ribs. She gasped, and even as she braced her hands on the rocky edge of the pool and gave herself up to his guidance, sought reassurance in his eyes.

His eyes shimmered back at her, bright with love and passion, as he whispered, “It’s all right, édesem…” My sweet. And she knew it was.

He pushed against her barriers and her body relaxed its vigilance, let him in and invited him deeper with the small undulations and pulsations of welcome. Her legs straddled him, and the water gave them its buoyancy so that she was able to bring her legs completely around him, then rocked them gently while his hands held her still…held himself deeply seated in the place she’d made for him.

She looked into his eyes again, and the feelings inside her were so intense, tears sprang into hers. She closed them and wanted to explain, but no words would come and a sob rushed through her instead.

“I know,” she heard him whisper. “I know. Come to me, love, let me kiss you.”

She leaned down, her body quaking like a broken puppet’s, and felt his hands come to hold her head and bring her mouth home. His fingers combed through her damp hair as his breath and essence merged with hers, and his body began to move in a way that was both old and new, a way that rocked her most nerve-rich places against his, and the sensations that shot through her were so bright and sharp they were almost like pain. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, lost all track of her body and of time and space. Nothing existed for her but that terrible sensation and the pressure it was building inside her. She was sure she couldn’t bear it-and just as sure she would die if it stopped.

And then inside her, under her, all around her Corbett’s body seemed to grow bigger, stronger, more powerful, and she felt as if she were being lifted higher and higher, her body no longer hers to control. She tore her mouth from his and gave a single cry of panic as forces she’d never imagined seemed about to hurl her into oblivion. Except now it was that same body, Corbett’s body, that held her, that caught her and cradled her in safety and kept her from falling, and his voice that crooned and comforted with words she didn’t know but nevertheless understood. Words that meant love…only love. Always…love.

Slowly, her shaking stopped. And as all the parts of her came drifting back from the far corners of the cosmos and fitted themselves into their proper places, she began to be aware of other things, as well. Such as the fact that Corbett had turned them slightly to their sides, so she wasn’t, as was her immediate fear, lying against his injured ribs. And although he hadn’t withdrawn from her body completely, their legs were now entwined in a different and much more relaxed way. She felt entirely comfortable lying where she was. In fact, she never wanted to move from that place, with her ear resting right over the rapid but steady thumping of Corbett’s heart.

After a while, afraid she might actually doze off, Lucia found the energy to murmur sleepily, “La petite mort…”

“‘The little death’?” Corbett’s voice and chuckle were gravelly. “Why do you say that, my love?”

“I’ve heard it’s what the French call orgasm. Although I’ve never heard them say it myself.”

She felt his lips graze her temple, felt them form a smile. “Hmm…what interesting bits of flotsam you have floating around in this pretty head of yours.”

“It did seem something like that. Not that I know what dying is like…” She snuggled closer to him, loving the way his arm tightened around her, almost instinctively, it seemed. “But it was pretty overwhelming. Frightening, even. I’ve never felt anything like that before.”

His body tensed and his head lifted. “You don’t mean to tell me that was your first…”

“Well…no, not technically. I’m not quite a virgin.” She paused, but he didn’t say anything, so she went on. “I did some experimenting, when I first got to college. It was so nice not to be automatically labeled a nerd, I guess. It didn’t last long, once I discovered that although I liked the attention, I didn’t much care for the sex. I thought it highly overrated, if you want to know the truth.” Finally becoming uneasy with his silence, she tilted her head back to look at him. “Should I not be talking about this? You’re being awfully quiet.”

He laughed softly. “There’s nothing you can’t talk about with me, my love. It’s just that every time I begin to think I know you, you find some new way to astonish me.” He paused, then asked in a carefully neutral voice, “What about after college?”

“I met you,” she said.

“Come now-you can’t mean to tell me you’ve been celibate for ten years. You’ve been living in Paris. I know you’ve dated now and then. I know, because I considered having any man you went out with shot. Thought about it quite seriously, in fact.”

She giggled, then kissed the underside of his jaw. “That’s very sweet of you, dear. But quite unnecessary.” The water rippled with her shrug, and she added softly, “I just found it impossible to make love with one man when I was madly in love with another.”

He was silent for a long time, letting his hand glide slowly up and down her body. Then he stirred restlessly and muttered, “How could I have been such a bloody fool?”

She rolled onto her stomach, floating free, now, of his embrace. “Don’t say that. I mean, okay, I thought that, too, for quite a long time, before I knew about…But now I wonder…” She paused, suddenly aware of how hard it was going to be to put her new perspective into words, and how dumb it could sound if she didn’t get it right.

“Yes?” Corbett prompted, frowning, an edge of his old imperiousness creeping into his voice. “Wonder what?”

Knowing his impatience wasn’t with her, she smiled crookedly. “There’s a song called ‘Somewhere’-I think it’s from West Side Story-about ‘a time and place for us.’ Corbett, I think maybe this is it for us-the right time. Our time. I mean, before, there was Cassandra. The terrible way things ended between you, the way you felt about it-”

“You mean, the guilt,” he said dryly.

She nodded, searching his face, trying to find the Corbett who’d just made such unforgettable love to her. Finding him in the eyes that pleaded with her for understanding. “I don’t think you could have let yourself love me, then. You had to deal with her first.”

His mouth spasmed briefly, as if he’d felt a sharp pain. “I haven’t dealt with her yet, have I?”

“No, but the wound is open. It can heal, now. It’s begun already.”

He touched her shoulder lightly so that she floated closer to him, and he was completely her Corbett again. His smile made her ache. “If it has, you know, you’re the one responsible. And, though it’s sweet of you to acquit me, I still think I’ve been a bloody idiot.”

With one finger touching just under her chin, he floated her closer still and kissed her a long, lazy time…a kiss so light and delicate at first she held herself utterly still, as if it were something magical, something that would vanish if she so much as breathed…then slowly, slowly deepened, became a different sort of enchantment, like a drug she craved with every ounce of her being. By the time he let her go she already felt a clenching deep down low in her belly, and the parts of her still swollen and sensitized from his earlier attentions had begun to throb.

“Nem szabad, édesem,” he murmured, smiling tenderly. “As much as I would like to stay here with you awhile longer, we are both beginning to prune. If we don’t get ourselves out of this pond soon…”

“We may both discover what the other will look like when we’re very, very old,” Lucia said with a shiver. “And since I would very much like you to stick around that long…” She kissed him quickly and levered herself onto the edge of the pool.

She heard him say, “You may count on that,” as he followed in a somewhat more complicated and cautious manner. He came to join her at the rock bench where she was toweling herself dry and trying not to think about the future at all.

She turned to him, and he took the ends of the towel in his hands and used it like a net to bring her close without touching her. She lay a hand, lightly as a breath, over the bruises on his torso and looked into his eyes. A tiny smile flicked at the corners of his mouth, but he didn’t say anything, and she knew he was as reluctant as she was to burst the bubble. He released the towel and folded her into his arms, and with a grateful sigh she lay her head on his shoulder and let his musky heat warm her body as his whispered, “Édesem…” nourished her soul.

The world and all its uncertainties could wait just a little while longer.

Corbett left Lucia at the bedroom door and went on to the cottage to change into clean clothes. He was grateful not to encounter either of his old friends-it was choir practice night for Kati, and Josef would be working late in his shop, this close to Christmas. He couldn’t have said why, but he didn’t feel up to sharing the feelings he was certain he must be wearing, bald and naked on his face. Not yet. And Kati and Josef had eyes like hawks, particularly since they’d had matchmaking on their minds since the moment he and Lucia had arrived. And not all that subtly, either.

“Egy szép barna kislány…”

Little brown girl, indeed!

He was humming the tune under his breath when he walked back into the cave-house kitchen and found Lucia standing in the doorway of his study, waiting for him. One look at her face wiped every trace of music from his mind.

“Problems?” he said as he crossed the room to her, keeping his voice calm and his movements unhurried.

Her brow furrowed with a puzzled frown. “I’m not sure. I mean, it could be nothing, I suppose.”

He thought, Yes, and tomorrow the earth will turn out to be flat, after all. “Tell me,” he said softly.

“I can’t raise Adam.” She turned and made her way back to the bank of monitors. “It’s possible the server’s down, but the weird thing is, I can’t seem to raise anybody.”

“What do you mean, you can’t raise anybody?” He was frowning, now, too. What she was saying to him didn’t make sense. The Lazlo Group’s communications system was a complex network involving literally hundreds of servers and thousands of connections worldwide. And nobody knew the system better than Lucia. After all, she was the one who’d set it up. “Explain.”

“Corbett, I can’t explain it. I’ve tried every way I can think of to establish a connection. Every single time I get the same message: ‘Client Not Available.’ I don’t understand it. I keep thinking it must be something simple, so simple I’m overlooking it.” Her eyes were bright with frustration.

She reminded him of a child with a toy that wouldn’t work the way it was supposed to. And if the implications hadn’t been so unthinkable, he might have found it amusing to see his beloved computer wizard in such an unheard-of state. Almost.

“Let’s wait a bit, then have another go at it,” he said. “It probably is something simple. Who knows, maybe it’s a malfunction here, on our end.”

“I don’t-”

He kissed her lightly, enough to stop her denial, not quite enough to distract either of them too much. “I could do with a cup of coffee. How about you? Are you hungry?”

She shook her head. “Coffee sounds good, though.” But she stole a look back at the monitors as she followed him into the kitchen, and the expression on her face left Corbett with a cold, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Neither of them spoke while he was making the coffee, setting out cups, spoons, cream and sugar, but he could almost hear Lucia’s mind ticking away as she sat staring at nothing. Every now and then he saw her give her head a little shake of vexation. He knew she was working on the problem like a dog with a particularly challenging bit of bone.

When he had filled their cups and returned the coffeepot to the stove, he pulled out a chair and sat down, deliberately choosing a spot across the table from her, far enough away so he wouldn’t be able to touch her. Wrapping his hands around the steaming mug instead, he said gently, “Lu…love. Can you come back to me now?”

She gave a small start and her face took on a guilty look that made him smile. “Oh-yes, of course. I’m sorry, I was…”

“I know. But the problem’s not going anywhere, unless it manages to figure out how to fix itself while we’re on coffee break, in which case it’s no longer a problem. Meanwhile, I need to ask you some questions. First, for the sake of discussion, let’s assume our system is down. How could such a thing happen? Are we talking about hackers? Sabotage? What are we dealing with here?”

Lucia lifted her cup, set it back down and cleared her throat. “If by sabotage you mean physical damage to the equipment, I don’t see how that would be possible-the system is spread out all over the world. I designed it to withstand almost anything short of the annihilation of the planet,” she said, her cheeks showing heat. “There must be a thousand backup-”

“I know, my darling, I know. I guess by sabotage I mean more along the lines of viruses or hackers.” His jaw clenched until he could feel his teeth grinding. “In other words, if the Lazlo Group system has been compromised, could Cassandra have done it?”

She looked at him with anguish in her eyes. He could see her throat working, knew how badly she didn’t want to say the words. But he had to hear it from her. He had to. He didn’t prod her or repeat the question. He simply waited. And after a long, tension-filled moment, she shook her head and said quietly, “No. Not without help. Security has been tight since Dani and Mitch caught Chloe selling us out. I saw it myself.”

“From someone on the inside.” He sat back, letting out a long hissing breath. It was confirmation of what he’d already known. His eyes burned as he stared at Lucia. “How many people have the knowledge?”

“Corbett-”

“How many?”

“Adam,” she said dully. “Me, of course. Your brother, Edward…”

He rubbed a hand over his eyes…wished he could rub out the thoughts behind them. “Anybody else?” Please, tell me there’s somebody else.

“I-I don’t know, I don’t think so. Unless Adam or Edward told someone.” She broke off to throw him a stricken look. “I meant-”

“Someone else in the agency-I know. Where are the access codes kept? Could anyone have got to them? From the outside?”

“No! Absolutely not. They’re kept in the vault at headquarters. The security for that room is multiple biometrics, as you know. The only ones programmed for entry are you, me-”

“Adam and Edward. Yes…I know.” He sat back in his chair, shifting his shoulders in a determined effort to ease the strain. “Then we will just have to hope for a simple explanation, won’t we?”

Simple?

The bleak and unpleasant truth was that nothing in his life had been simple for a very long time. Thanks to the efforts over the past six months of some of his best agents, all too often at grave risk to their own lives, he’d become aware that there had to be a mole operating within the Lazlo Group. That had been hard enough to deal with when the list of possible suspects included every person in the agency, each and every one of whom he’d handpicked and trusted with his own life. But to have the field narrowed down to these three…

My brother, my best friend and the woman I love. Am I to believe one of them capable of betraying me to my worst enemy? My God.

He stared into his coffee cup, his heart tapping deep in his belly in a way he knew all too well. Dread…fear…the feeling went by any number of names, and he’d become familiar with it at other times when his life and future had hung in the balance. When the outcome had depended on people and events beyond his control. During one of the worst of those times, it had been Adam Sinclair who’d come through for him, at the cost of his own career. And there were all those times during his wild and misspent youth when he was certain the only thing standing between Corbett Lazlo and reform school had been his big brother, Edward-the good son. Which left…

Lucia.

He stole a look at her as he lifted his cup to his lips and sipped what had begun to taste as awful as battery acid to him. She was staring fixedly at her cup, her cheeks washed with pink-looking, quite frankly, guilty as hell. Which, in itself, meant nothing, of course; most innocent people did feel guilty when they knew they were being suspected of wrongdoing. A woman with her intelligence would quite likely know precisely what he was thinking. And he knew all too well what it was like to be the one all the evidence seemed to point to.

No. Not Lucia.

He could not-would not-believe this woman, this same woman he’d held in his arms such a short time ago, made love to until she’d sobbed and trembled in complete and total surrender, could betray him. He could not have been such a bloody awful fool. Could he?

Of course, there had been all those years when she’d been madly in love with him and he’d ignored her, dismissed her, flaunted other women in front of her. He cringed to think of all the times he’d stopped by her office on his way to or from a date, determined to prove something, he supposed-to her, to himself, who knows?-but an exercise in monumental stupidity however he sliced it.

And he did have a history of involving himself with women with a thirst for revenge…

Lucia?

Could she have been so angry at him at some point during those years as to let herself be persuaded-

No.

But that could be why she’s feeling guilty about it now, and afraid to-

No, dammit. Not Lucia.

And what a complete jackass he was to let her sit there in guilty silence, thinking he was entertaining all sorts of doubts about her…

I’ve got to say something to him, Lucia thought. She’d held it in too long as it was. I know he’s thinking about it. She could feel it pulsing like a living thing, as if another person were there in the room with them, standing between them.

“Corbett,” she began, just as he said, “Lucia-”

They broke off together and then he was staring at her, frozen, his eyes like silver daggers.

“Go on,” he said softly.

“No-that’s all right, you-”

“Lucia.”

Oh, God. She’d heard that tone of voice before. And she could see his jaw stiffening, see his body tensing, knew he was throwing up all his old barricades. This was going to be even harder than she’d imagined.

She drew a shuddering breath. “Corbett, there’s something we have to talk about. I’m sorry, I know you don’t-”

“Lucia, for God’s sake!” His voice was like tearing cloth.

She held up a hand as if to deflect a blow, then snatched it back. “I know this is hard for you. Painful. And maybe you feel it isn’t really my business, but-” She halted when he flinched back, as if she’d lobbed something at him instead.

“Not-your business?” And now, oddly, he seemed more confused than anything.

“Yes. I mean-” She closed her eyes and took another breath. Well, what could she do but blunder on? “This has all happened so suddenly. I think…I’m really not exactly sure what my status is-with you. But I do think this is important, to you and to both of us. So I have to ask. Corbett, you must have thought about it. What are you going to do about them? Cassandra. And…um…your son. What is his name? I’m not even sure…” She stumbled to a halt.

With all the responses she’d imagined, all the scenarios she’d played over in her mind, she hadn’t expected this. Corbett had one hand over his eyes and was shaking with silent laughter.

She could only stare at him, wonder whether to be miffed and wait for an explanation. Which never really came, because after a moment he rubbed the hand over his face and said in a muffled voice, “Troy. I believe that’s his name. My son…” Another spasm of inexplicable laughter rippled through him. He shook his head, then looked at her, eyes glistening with something that might have been grief or mirth, mixed with what looked bewilderingly like relief. As if the question she’d asked hadn’t been nearly as hard for him as the one he’d been expecting.

He didn’t give her a chance to mull that over, though, as he pushed back abruptly, rose and began to pace, raking his hair back with his fingers.

“You’re quite right, you know. It is difficult for me to talk about. I don’t know how to feel about it, for one thing. Guilt-a whole lot of that. Rage, sometimes. Sure, I’m angry. Mad as hell. More often, though-most of the time-I think what I feel is just…sad.” He paced a step or two without speaking, then threw Lucia a crooked smile. “What’s weird, though, is that I have these moments where I actually feel this fierce kind of joy-purely instinctive, I suspect. Crikey, as Adam would say, I’m a dad! Am I crazy, or what? The kid wants to kill me. But, hey, he’s my son.”

His lips twisted with a bitter little smile as he paused to grasp the back of a chair and lean his weight on it. “As for what I’m to do with him, given the fact that he is currently in police custody, I doubt I’ll have much to say in the matter. If we’d been able to whisk him away before the authorities arrived, as we’d planned…But, as it is-”

“What about the fact that he is your son? Couldn’t you say it was all a family quarrel gone wrong, some sort of misunderstanding, and given that the only real harm done was to the perpetrator, get the charges dismissed, or reduced, say, to something with probation or a suspended sentence?”

“You’re forgetting,” Corbett said dryly, “he’s tried this a few times before.”

“Yes, but the police don’t know that. Do they? If you can keep him out of jail, maybe you could get him released into your custody…”

“He’s nineteen years old, Lu. In criminal matters that’s considered an adult in most countries. I do have a few connections, it’s true…one or two favors I could probably call in. But there’s the fact that we don’t know who this boy is. We don’t know how much damage his mother’s managed to inflict on him. Considering he’s got her genetic material and almost twenty years of her influence, for all we know the lad could be an unmitigated monster who absolutely belongs in jail.”

“Yes, but he’s got your genetic material, too. And you told me his mother wasn’t always evil. And speaking of Cassandra, why haven’t the police arrested her? Adam said she’s been right there at her son’s bedside ever since the shooting.”

“And what would they charge her with? Just being a lousy mother isn’t enough, I’m afraid.”

“But Adam said she’s the head of S.N.A.K.E. She must have been responsible for dozens of murders, drugs and weapons trafficking. What about that conflict-diamond business Witt uncovered last summer? Surely that-”

“And absolutely nothing can be traced back to her. She’s covered her tracks well, as you know. Even you weren’t able to nail her as the source of those bloody e-mails that entertained us so nicely all summer and fall.” He broke off, straightened and rubbed his hand over his eyes once more. “You know what the real irony is? This is precisely the sort of job the Lazlo Group would ordinarily take on. If I’d only caught on sooner to the possibility it was Cassandra behind it all, I believe we could have found the proof necessary to put the organization out of business and Cassandra behind bars for good. But as it is, I’m afraid she’s got the drop on us, love. With the Group in complete disarray and no way to communicate-”

“Don’t say that,” Lucia said fiercely. “I’ve been running some diagnostics. Let me try again to reach Adam.” Or anyone else in the system, she thought, as she pushed her chair back from the table. Maybe even anyone but Adam…just in case.

Ten minutes later she looked up from the bank of monitors and turned to face Corbett. Her heart felt like a chunk of hot lead in her chest, and she knew from the bleakness in his eyes that what she had to tell him was already written in hers.

“That’s it, I’m sorry. The entire communications system is nonfunctional. It’s been shut down, from headquarters to the most remote outpost. Everything. There’s not a peep anywhere.” She paused, then added in a voice that trembled, “It’s as if the Lazlo Group has ceased to exist.”