Lazlo’s Last Stand

Chapter 4

I’ve known her for more than ten years, Corbett thought. I hired her, trained her, I’ve worked with her nearly every day of those ten years, and she’s right. I don’t really know her…do I?

It was an unsettling thought, in the way earthquakes are unsettling. This one rocked the very foundations of his own convictions, shook his confidence in his own beliefs, made him wonder how much he really knew about anything-or at least about the people in his life.

But it was only the latest in the series of tremors that had shaken him tonight, shaken him to his very core.

I have a son.

A son, moreover, who was bent on killing him.

The boy’s mother, the woman he’d once cared for, in his fashion, and long believed to be dead, was very much alive, and bent not only on killing him, but also on destroying everything in the world that mattered to him, including the woman he…loved.

Yes, God help me. Love. What other word could he use to express how much she meant to him?

And that woman, whom he had always considered to be someone in need of his protection, had saved his life tonight.

Under the circumstances, he thought he might be forgiven some slight discomposure.

What he really was, though he hated to admit it, was exhausted. Tonight he felt every one of his forty-eight years, and a few more besides. Awful thought: Was it possible that a man rounding the corner and homing in on the half-century mark might be getting too old for this business?

Rubbish. He’d be fine, he told himself, once he’d had a hot shower and a good night’s sleep.

Though he suspected it was going to be a good long while before he could enjoy either of those things.

First, he had to get Lucia to a place beyond Cassandra’s considerable reach. And there was only one place he knew of where he could be certain she would be safe. Besides himself, only Adam knew of its existence, and not even Adam knew exactly where it was located. Which meant the only way to get Lucia there was to take her himself.

Furthermore, after tonight’s events he was reasonably certain the only way to ensure she would remain there, short of chaining her to the wall, would be to stay and personally see that she did.

He’d been through these facts in his mind again and again, trying to find another way, but it always came up the same: For the foreseeable future, he was going to have to live in close-one could say intimate-proximity to the woman he’d been trying desperately for the past ten years to maintain as much distance from as possible.

Bloody hypocrite. The voice of his conscience, which most of the time he was able to ignore-on this subject, at least-chided from the back row of his mind. If you were really trying to avoid contact with the woman, you wouldn’t keep challenging her to martial arts duels. And you didn’t really have to take her with you to the embassy tonight…did you?

Truthfully? Probably not. And if I hadn’t done both of those things, I’d most likely be dead.

So. Nothing for it but to carry on, face the woman standing before him with her chin at a stubborn tilt and her cheeks flushed with anger. Face her and reply as he always did, with dignity and decorum, keeping the vivid memory of what her body felt like pinned beneath his, hot and moist with exertion, heart thumping, chest heaving against his, her woman’s scent like a fog in his brain…keep all that buried in the deepest and most private reaches of his soul. As he always did.

He’d faced armed killers with less trepidation.

“Perhaps not.” He answered her question in a voice carefully devoid of all expression, keeping his eyes veiled, as well. “Perhaps I don’t know you at all. However, I think I can safely assume you might like to, uh…freshen up after our evening’s adventures. While we wait for your belongings to arrive, I should imagine there’s time for a shower, if you wish.”

How stuffy he sounds-like a British schoolmaster. Sorely tempted to tell him so, Lucia instead merely inclined her head formally and murmured, “Thank you. That would be nice.”

After all the shocks that had rocked her this evening, the prospect of getting naked in Corbett Lazlo’s bathroom barely registered on the Richter scale.

A sense of unreality enveloped her as she followed him through the tastefully decorated but impersonal living room, down a hallway past several intriguingly closed doors and into a large bedroom-his, obviously. Like the living room, it was furnished in a typically masculine style, but here at least were a few personal touches: A photograph of his parents-a snapshot taken on a windy day with a lake in the background; a dark blue robe tossed carelessly across the foot of a king-sized bed; an open book lying facedown on a table beside a comfortable chair, a pair of reading glasses perched crookedly atop the spine.

But the feature that immediately caught and held her attention was the huge domed skylight above the bed. She halted and stared up at it, captivated by the pale glow from the cloudy Paris night through rain-washed glass.

Corbett had crossed the room without pausing and now, with his hand on an ornate doorknob, turned to give her an inquiring look.

She glanced at him briefly, then went back to gazing at the subtle dance of light in the ceiling. “It must be amazing when there’s something to see,” she said lightly, for some reason reluctant to give away her true feelings. Particularly the wave of homesickness that had come over her so unexpectedly, sweeping her back to childhood camping trips in the California high country, happy times spent with her parents far away from the heartaches and pressures of being an overachieving misfit, too smart to fit in with the popular kids and too pretty to find acceptance among the geek crowd. She could almost smell the sun-warmed pines and crushed meadow grass, and the particular scent of her father’s flannel shirt and lucky fishing vest. If she closed her eyes…

“Having come much too near to losing the privilege forever, I do like to be able to see the stars,” Corbett said. His tone was dry, and his head tilted now at an angle that seemed almost defensive.

Lucia gave him a sideways look from under her lashes as she went to join him. “I never would have guessed,” she said, mimicking his earlier remark to her.

He shot back, deadpan, “I guess you don’t know me as well as you thought.”

It was too close to her own musings, and she didn’t reply.

He gave the knob a turn, opening a door in the wood paneling into what turned out to be a dressing room and closet, though it was larger than the bedroom in Lucia’s tiny two-room apartment on the other side of the river. From a bank of shelves he took a folded bathrobe, snowy white, the thick, plush kind found in very expensive hotels. She wondered if he kept a supply handy for all his female guests. She wondered-but only briefly-if any of those guests ever shared the shower with their host. Or that view of the stars.

“The bathroom is through there. You will find clean towels in the linen cupboard next to the fireplace-” fireplace? “-and, uh…anything else you might need, shampoo and whatnot, are in the chest of drawers nearest the window.”

“Thank you,” Lucia murmured, carefully avoiding eye contact. She thought again, He sounds like a well-trained butler.

All at once she felt vulnerable. And even more incomprehensible, as she discovered when she was standing naked under the pounding deluge of deliciously hot shower spray, she felt a pressing need to cry.

It was a delayed reaction to having shot and almost killed someone and having herself been threatened with death, she tried to tell herself. Because that would at least be understandable. She might even reasonably allow herself to give in to it.

And she might have done so, except she knew that wasn’t what was making her feel like this. She knew, because she’d felt exactly like this once before, almost ten years ago, when her life had taken an irrevocable turn. And she’d known even then that there would be no going back. That nothing would ever be the same again…

He was the first thing she saw when she walked into the student center, a tall, slender, dark-haired man wearing a beautifully tailored dark suit. She noticed him even in the huge arena crowded with eager job-seeking students and the elaborate displays of prospective employers hoping to recruit the best of the best, noticed him because of his natural elegance, and because he didn’t seem to belong to any particular company, and because, even in that noisy and brightly lit place, something about him struck her as mysterious, enigmatic. Like a man accustomed to living in the shadows.

Maybe the CIA, she thought, intrigued. They would be recruiting here, as would the FBI. Or, maybe, one of the even more secretive agencies, the ones that aren’t supposed to exist.

“Who do you suppose that is?” she asked her companion, Ricky Choy, who, being five-feet-two, gay and completely obsessed at the time with artificial intelligence, was one of the few people she felt comfortable enough with to call friend.

Ricky had bobbed up onto his tiptoes and was craning his neck in a futile effort to see over the milling crowd. Bobbing back down again, he shrugged and said, “Why don’t you go ask him?” He was giving his backpack nervous hitches, clearly eager to be off. “I’m gonna go check out Dreamforce. Rumor is, they’ve got a new A.I. project that’s going to knock the competition out of the water. Man, if I could get-”

“Go,” she said, waving him off. Then she added with a sly look and a grin, “Gonna stop by and see what B.G. has to offer?”

Ricky gave an “As if!” eyeroll. Like most techies, he had a love/hate relationship with the giant Microsoft. A moment later he had disappeared into the crowd.

She took a deep breath, shifted her own backpack onto one shoulder and was about to move off in the other direction when something…an odd compulsion…made her turn and look once more at the man in the dark suit. And for some reason-an odd coincidence?-found him looking straight back at her. For a moment, before they moved on, his eyes locked with hers, and in that moment she felt a shiver run down her spine.

Why not?

She threaded her way through the shifting crowd toward the dark-haired man. Shadow man, she thought.

His gaze followed her progress until she stood directly in front of him. His eyes were anything but shadowed. Instead, they were a light but curiously intense shade of blue, the color of polished steel.

“Are you recruiting?” she daringly asked him, in the half defensive, half belligerent way she was accustomed to addressing attractive strangers.

“Maybe,” he replied. His gaze made her intensely self-conscious, though not in the usual way. “What’s your field?”

“Computer science.”

He nodded, and his gaze didn’t waver. “Are you job-hunting?”

“Maybe.” She looked at him sideways. “I haven’t decided. I might go to grad school instead. So…what company are you with?”

Instead of answering, he produced a business card. She took it, glanced at it, then looked up at him, still wary, but feeling the deep-down buzz of interest. “The Lazlo Group. I’ve never heard of it.”

He smiled, very slightly. “I should be quite surprised if you had.” He had a pronounced British accent, which only added to the air of mystery that seemed to hang about him like a signature scent.

“And you would be-” frowning up at him, she tapped the card with a fingertip “-Corbett Lazlo?”

His head made an elegant dip. “I am.”

“There’s no phone number or e-mail address on this card. Where would I send my résumé? I mean, if I do decide to apply for a job with you?”

His eyes were veiled now, the little smile more self-confident than arrogant. “I already know what I need to know about you…Lucia Cordez. As for your job qualifications, if you succeed in finding me, that’s all the résumé you need.”

He inclined his head briefly and turned away, leaving her momentarily speechless. She recovered enough wit to call after him, “Yes, but…wait. How do you know I even want-”-to work for you!

But he had already vanished into the crowd.

“Interesting approach,” Ricky remarked from somewhere near her elbow. “As gorgeous as he is, I bet he’s a bitch to work for.”

“What makes you think I’d want to?” she snapped back, taking her anger out on him because she was infuriated by the chorus of voices inside her head singing, “Oh, but I do, I do!”

Two days later, she stared at a terse e-mail message on her computer screen:

Well done, Lucia. You found me in less than 48 hours. Are you ready to take the next step?

Hands poised above the keyboard, poised to tell Corbett Lazlo what he could do with his job, she felt strange shivers inside, a peculiar lurch in her midsection, the rapid beating of her pulse, fully aware that a single word would send her life hurtling off in a new and exciting-perhaps frightening-direction.

Her hands trembled a little as she typed the only word necessary:

Yes.

It hadn’t been that simple, of course. That had been only the beginning of Corbett Lazlo’s courtship of her-there really was no better word for it. And once he’d won her commitment to work for him, he’d begun to transform her from shy duckling to confident swan. From awkward college student to sophisticated world traveler, equally comfortable conversing with kings or camel drivers. From computer geek to resident techno-genius for the most elite private-security agency in the world.

She’d become a sophisticate, a technowiz, true…one with the skills, training and nerve to kill.

Lucia turned off the hot water with an impatient jerk and stood for a moment with her eyes closed, breathing evenly through her nostrils, angry with herself. And ashamed.

She’d chosen the Lazlo Group as much as it-or he-had chosen her. And tonight she’d saved Corbett’s life.

She couldn’t even let herself think about what her life would be like without him. She owed Corbett Lazlo everything. He’d taught her to believe in herself, to value herself as a whole woman, rather than hate what she’d always seen as an awkward bunch of mismatched parts. He’d taught her how to protect herself in a dangerous world, and shown her parts of that world she’d never known existed. It wasn’t his fault she’d fallen in love with him almost from the first moment she’d laid eyes on him.

Quit fussing, she scolded herself. So she had to go to a safe house? Half the agents in the Group were hiding out in safe houses at the moment. The entire agency was in crisis, fighting for its very life. Time for her to step up, put her skills to work and do everything in her power to help save it.

But now the thought nagged at her: If only I’d been able to track the source of those e-mails! If I’d been able to find out who was sending them, all this might not have happened.

And a young man, Corbett’s son, might not be fighting for his life in a Paris hospital.

Resolved, grounded and considerably refreshed, she stepped from the shower onto a thick plush rug that was warm from the gas log fire in the Italian-tile fireplace nearby. Picking up an equally toasty towel, she dried her hair, then her body, wincing a bit when the soft Egyptian cotton grazed over the skinned places on her legs and elbows. She slipped into the snowy white robe, then leaned close to the mirror to inspect her normally even, café-au-lait complexion, though her cheeks were more dusky rose now from the heat of the shower, and her nose and forehead glistened with a fine sheen of moisture. Odd, she thought, how such incredible things can happen, things that change everything, even who we are, and yet nothing shows.

My face is the same…exactly the same. And yet, I feel as though I’m looking at the face of a stranger.

Shaking off a small residual chill, she combed her fingers through the damp tangle of her curls, gave the robe’s belt tie a final tug and opened the bathroom door.

And felt all her newly built buttresses crumbling like gingerbread in the rain.

“I’m sorry,” Corbett said, his voice diffident to the point of gruffness. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask for your help.”

He was standing in the dressing-room doorway, dressed only in a pair of black cargo pants, his body outlined in the rich red-gold textures of the bedroom behind him. One hand was braced on the doorframe; the other he held tightly across his ribs, as if, at that moment, it was the only thing keeping his torso from breaking apart. At his feet lay a pile of elastic bandage, half of it still neatly rolled. The other end originated somewhere in the coils that had fallen loosely about his waist.

“I can see that.” The words were from her own throat but came so calmly, so easily they seemed to have been spoken by someone else. As she moved toward him she was enveloped in the heady blend of scents peculiar to a fastidious, well-groomed man: leather and lamb’s wool, Bay Rum and cedar, a trace of expensive pipe tobacco. She hadn’t noticed it before, but now it seemed exotic and at the same time oddly familiar. Almost dizzy with it, she bent to gather up the pile of unwound bandage from the floor.

“Dropped the damn thing.” Corbett’s voice rumbled above her, muted and angry. “Can’t seem to bend over. These ribs…”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have dashed out of the hospital before they had a chance to patch you up.” She straightened, aware of the heat in her cheeks and glad to have a legitimate reason for it. “Your ribs are probably broken-cracked, at least.”

“We were in a bit of a hurry,” he snapped back at her. “As I recall. And there’s not much they could have done in any case. Nothing I can’t do myself just as well. Here, give me that.”

She held the roll of bandage away from him as he reached for it. “Oh, yeah, I can see you’re doing a bang-up job.” She kept her eyes on her hands, watched them rapidly roll up the unwound pile of bandage. When she’d run out of slack and the taut bandage was a short tether between them, she lifted her eyes and forced them to meet his. And found them sharp as frost crystals. Her heartbeat was hard and fast. She took a breath. “Hold out your arms.”

This is intolerable, Corbett thought, as he reluctantly obeyed. He knew from personal experience that there were worse tortures, but at the moment couldn’t seem to think of one. His heart was thumping against his injured ribs, and even that small assault was painful.

He knew she was right. She could do the job better and, what was more important right now, faster than he could. But how in bloody hell could he stand having her so near, for as long as it would take her to bind up his ribs, when she was warm from the shower and smelled so sweet, and he could almost taste the dew on her skin.

“All right, but do it tightly,” he said, holding himself ramrod straight and grinding the words between his teeth. “It’s got to be tight enough to keep my chest from expanding when I breathe.”

She gave him a withering glance. “That’s totally wrong, you know. You have to be able to breathe, even if it hurts. And when you breathe, your chest expands-even I know that much.”

He rolled his eyes, then glared at her. “Must you argue about this? It’s only for the trip-it’s likely to jostle a bit, and I’d just as soon not have to deal with the humiliating possibility that I might pass out from the pain. Do you mind?”

“Oh, all right,” she grumbled, glaring back at him. “You know, it would really help if you could relax. Here, hold this.”

He took the end of the bandage from her and clamped it snugly against his left pectoral, just above his wildly thumping heart, like someone pledging undying fealty. He set his jaw and stared fixedly over her tangle of fragrant curls with his face frozen in what he hoped was an expression of heroic stoicism.

Ignoring his efforts, Lucia drew the bandage in a diagonal line across his chest, ducked under his extended arm and moved behind him. And only then did he allow his eyes to close.

Some dark angel inside him couldn’t resist needling her. “That’s not going to be tight enough.”

She snarled back at him. “I’m just getting it started-do you mind? Just…stop trying to boss me, okay? You’re not my teacher anymore.”

The silence which followed that declaration-startled, on his part, and judging from the set of her mouth and chin when she glared at him around his shoulder, wounded on hers-stretched between them until it became excruciating. And all that time her words careened and ricocheted wildly inside his head, setting off little explosions of enlightenment wherever they struck.

I’m not her teacher.

She’s a grown woman.

I’ve been treating her like a child.

No wonder she’s angry.

I owe her my life.

What did she mean by that?

Dear God, how angry is she?

His stomach did a curious little flip-flop he hated to acknowledge was fear.

“What on earth possessed you?” She was squarely in front of him again, her gaze fixed on the center of his chest, each cheek sporting a bright spot of pink. “To let him get so close? What if he’d shot you in the neck, or your face?” Her eyes lifted and flashed at him, diamond bright with fury. “Did you even think about that?”

Forgetting he couldn’t, Corbett tried to draw a deep breath. He hissed shallowly, then pressed his lips together and waited until he had control of the pain again. Because he knew she was right, he tried his best to explain what was inexplicable. But how could he explain what had made him hesitate when he didn’t know himself?

“I didn’t want to spook him, I suppose,” he said tightly. “Afraid he might blow the attempt again…try to run for it. I wanted to take him alive.”

And he could have kicked himself for the last sentence when she looked up at him and he saw the bleakness, the stark fear in her eyes. His tired mind cast about for words that wouldn’t make her feel worse than she already did, but he rejected them all as platitudes. Meaningless clichés. The one thing he thought of doing that might conceivably ease her heart and mind, he also rejected. Because he hadn’t the right. She was dead on about his not being her teacher anymore, but he wasn’t her lover, either. He wasn’t even her friend, not really, even though he cared for her. A lot. But he had no right to take her in his arms. No right to hold her against his heart, stroke her hair, kiss her tear-damp eyelids, whisper reassurances against her lips before he kissed them, too.

No, he had no right.

But, oh, how I want to.

“And…you had no idea he was your son?” she asked it in a hesitant whisper.

Overwhelmed by his thoughts, he could only shake his head.

“Corbett, I’m so sorry-I didn’t mean to shoot him. If I could have hit him harder-disabled him-maybe he wouldn’t have been able to go for the gun…”

He couldn’t stand it. He clutched her by the arms, and the remaining roll of bandage fell once more to the floor. Her anguished eyes stared up at him as words grated harshly from between his tightly clenched teeth.

“Stop it. Just…stop it right now. You did what you were trained to do. What I trained you to do. You did what you had to do to save another agent’s life. My life…as it happens.” His attempt at a smile was a miserable failure.

Her gaze didn’t waver. “The fact remains,” she said softly, “I shot your son. I may have killed him. He could still die, Corbett. And I will be the one who killed him. How could you ever forgive me for that?”

He couldn’t answer her. Shaken to his very core, Corbett finally did the thing he’d told himself he could not do. Must not do. He touched her lips with his finger to silence her, then with great care and gentleness, folded her into his arms.

Carefully…gently…not because of the pain of his fractured ribs-he no longer felt that-but because his need to hold her was so fierce, so intense, so terrible it frightened him.

And that was something he couldn’t let her, or anyone, know.