“I’ve spent the last fifteen years of my life,” she sobbed brokenly, struggling harder against his grasp, “trying to be perfect. I’ve been so perfect!” she wept, and the sound of her pain transmitted itself to Zack even though he didn’t fully understand its source. “And it—it was all for nothing!”
As if she’d finally exhausted herself physically, she stopped struggling and her head fell forward, but her shoulders continued to jerk with sobs. “I tried so hard,” she choked. “I became a teacher so they’d be proud. I—I go to church and I teach Sunday school. They won’t let me teach any more after this—”
Suddenly Zack couldn’t bear the weight of her sorrow or his own culpability any more. “Stop it, please,” he whispered achingly, wrapping her in his arms, cupping his hand around her head and holding her face pressed to his chest. “I understand and I’m sorry. When this is all over, I’ll make them see the truth.”
“You understand!” she repeated with bitter scorn, lifting her tear-streaked, accusing face to his. “How can someone like you understand how I feel!” Someone like him. An animal like him. “Oh, I understand!” he bit out, holding her away, shaking her until she looked up at him. “I understand exactly what it feels like to be despised for something you didn’t do!”
Julie choked back her protest at his rough handling as she registered the fury on his face and the agony in his eyes. His fingers bit into her arms, and his voice was raw with emotion. “I didn’t kill anyone! Do you hear me? Lie to me and say you believe me! Just say it! I want to hear someone say it!”
Having just experienced herself a tiny part of what he would feel if he was truly innocent, Julie cringed inwardly at the thought of what he could be feeling. If he was truly innocent . . . She swallowed, her blurry eyes searching his haggard, handsome face, and she spoke her thought aloud: “I believe you!” she whispered, fresh tears starting to spill over her lashes and down her cheeks. “I do.”
Zack heard the sincerity in her tearful voice; in her blue eyes he saw the dawning of true compassion, and deep within him the wall of ice he’d kept around his heart for years began to thaw and crack. Lifting his hand, he laid it against her soft cheek, his thumb helplessly rubbing away her hot tears. “Don’t cry for me,” he murmured, his voice hoarse.
“I believe you!” she repeated, and the tender fierceness of her reply demolished what was left of his reserve. Zack’s throat constricted around an unfamiliar knot of emotion, and for a moment he stood there, immobilized by what he saw and heard and felt. Her tears were streaming down her cheeks, clinging to her sooty lashes, wetting his hand; her eyes looked like damp blue pansies, and she was biting down on her lower lip, trying to stop it from trembling.
“Please, don’t cry,” he whispered achingly as he lowered his mouth to hers to stop her lips from trembling. “Please, please don’t . . .” At the first touch of his mouth, she went rigidly still, her breath indrawn, though Zack hadn’t any idea if it was fear or surprise that paralyzed her. He didn’t know and didn’t care at that moment. His only desire was to hold her, to savor the sweet feelings swelling inside him— the first sweetness he’d felt in years—to share it all with her.
Telling himself to go slowly, to be content with whatever she was willing to permit, Zack slid his lips back and forth over the contours of hers, tasting the saltiness of her tears. He told himself not to push her, not to force her, and even while he did, he began to do both. “Kiss me back,” he urged, and the helpless tenderness he heard in his voice was as alien to him as the other feelings coursing through him. “Kiss me back,” he repeated, sliding his tongue over the seam of her lips. “Open your mouth,” he coaxed. When she obeyed and leaned into him, crushing her parted lips to his, Zack almost groaned aloud with the pleasure of it. Desire, primitive and potent, poured through his veins, and suddenly he was acting on pure instinct. His arm tightened, angling across her back, holding her hips pressed to his while his lips forced hers to part wider, and his tongue plunged into the wine-flavored softness of her mouth. He backed her against the wall, kissing her with all the persuasive force at his disposal, his mouth slanting over hers, his tongue teasing and provoking, his hands sliding down her spine and then up, under her sweater. Her soft, bare skin felt like liquid satin beneath his hands as he caressed her narrow waist, stroked her back, and spread his fingers over her midriff, and then he finally let himself seek her breasts. She pressed closer to him and moaned into his mouth when he touched her breasts, and the sweet sound was almost his undoing; it made his entire body throb while his fingers explored every inch of breast and nipple, his lips locked to hers, his tongue exploring with rampant hunger.
To Julie, what he was doing to her was like being imprisoned in a cocoon of dangerous, terrifying sensuality where she had no control over anything. Particularly herself. Beneath the exploration of his long fingers her breasts were beginning to ache with need; against her will, her heated body was molding itself to the hardened contours of his; and her parted lips were welcoming the continued invasion of his tongue.
Zack felt her fingers sliding into the soft hairs at his nape, and he dragged his mouth across her cheek to her ear.
“God, you are sweet!” he whispered while he took her nipples between his fingers, forcing them to harden into tight, hard buds, wanting to lavish her with pleasure. “Little one,” he murmured hoarsely, “you are so damned beautiful . . .”
It might have been the endearment he’d used—one she was sure she remembered hearing him use in a movie—or perhaps it was his ridiculous use of the word beautiful that finally broke the sensual spell she was under, but Julie slowly realized that she’d watched him play this same kind of scene dozens of times with dozens of truly beautiful actresses in the movies. Only this time, it was her bare flesh that his hands were exploring with such practiced certainty. “Stop it!” she warned sharply, pulling free of his arms, shoving him away and yanking down her sweater. For a moment, Zack simply stood there, breathing deeply, arms at his sides, feeling completely disoriented. Her face was flushed with desire, and her glorious eyes were still glazed with it, but she looked as if she wanted to bolt for the door. Softly, as if speaking to a skittish colt, he said, “What’s wrong, little—?”
“Just stop it right now!” she burst out. I am not your ‘little one’—that was another woman in some other scene like this with you. I do not want to hear you call me that. I don’t want to hear that I am beautiful either.”
Zack gave his head a shake to clear it. Belatedly realizing that she was breathing in quick, shallow pants, watching him as if she half-expected him to pounce on her, tear off her clothes, and rape her, he said very quietly and very carefully, “Are you afraid of me, Julie?”
“Of course not,” Julie said shortly, but she realized as soon as she said it that it was a lie. When the kiss had begun, she’d understood instinctively that, somehow, kissing her had represented a kind of cleansing for him, and she’d wanted to give him that. But now that her heart had taken that kiss as an urgent demand to give him much, much more, she was terrified. Because she wanted to do exactly that. She wanted to feel his hands rushing over her naked skin and his body driving into hers. In the moments she’d been silent, he’d evidently replaced passion with anger, because his voice was no longer gentle or kind, it was cool, clipped, and hard. “If you aren’t afraid, then what’s bothering you? Or is it that you can give an escaped convict a little empty sympathy, but you don’t want him too close. Is that it?”
Julie nearly stamped her foot in frustration at his narrow logic and her own stupidity for letting things go this far. “It’s nothing like revulsion if that’s what you mean.”
His voice became a bored drawl. “Then what is it, or shouldn’t I ask?”
“You shouldn’t need to ask!” she said, raking her hair off her forehead as she looked around a little wildly for something to do, some way to restore order to a world that had suddenly become alarmingly out of her control. “I’m not an animal,
” she began. Her eyes fell on a picture on the wall beside her that was a fraction of an inch crooked and she turned around to fix it.
“And you think I am? An animal? Is that it?”
Trapped by his questions and his nearness, she glanced over her shoulder and spied a cushion on the floor. “I think,” she told him flatly as she walked over to the cushion, “that you’re a man who has been locked away from women for five long years.”
“That’s right, I am. So what?”
She placed the cushion at a vertical angle against the arm of the sofa and began to feel more in control, now that there was distance between them. “So,” she explained and actually managed an impersonal little smile at him across the width of the sofa, “I can understand that, to you, any woman would be like a . . .”
His dark brows snapped together over ominous eyes, and she trailed off uneasily, then she hastily bent and began rearranging the other throw pillows into a more artistic display, but she persevered with her explanation. “To you, after being in prison for so long, any woman would be like a—a banquet to a starving man. Any woman,” she emphasized. “I mean, I didn’t mind letting you kiss me if that made you feel, well, better.”
Zack was humiliated and furious at the discovery she regarded him as some animal to whom she’d been tossing a crumb of human feeling, a sex-starved beggar to whom she was reluctantly willing to give a little kiss. “How noble you are, Miss Mathison,” he jeered, ignoring the way the color drained out of her cheeks as he continued with deliberate brutality. “You’ve sacrificed your precious self twice to me. But contrary to your opinion, even an animal like myself is capable of some sort of restraint and discrimination. In short, Julie, you may think you’re a ‘banquet,’ but you’re completely resistible to this particular man, sex-starved though I may be.”
His volatile anger was tangible, terrifying, and completely incomprehensible to Julie in her agitated state. She stepped back, wrapping her arms around herself as if to fend off the hurt he was deliberately inflicting on her raw emotions.
Zack read her every reaction in her expressive eyes, and satisfied that he’d done the utmost possible damage, he turned on his heel and walked over to the cabinet beside the television, where he began looking over the various titles of the videotaped movies on the shelves.
Julie knew she’d just been discarded like a used piece of tissue and summarily dismissed, but her ravaged pride rebelled at the thought of creeping into her bedroom like a wounded rabbit. Adamantly refusing to shed even one tear or show any fluster, she walked over to the table and began straightening the magazines on it. His frigid command made her lurch upright. “Go to bed! What are you anyway, some sort of compulsive housewife?”
The magazines slid out of her hand and she glared at him, but she did as he told her.
From the corner of his eye, Zack watched her retreat, noticing the haughty lift of her chin and the proud grace of her walk, and with the skill he’d perfected when he was eighteen, he turned away and coldly dismissed Julie Mathison completely from his mind. He concentrated, instead, on the Tom Brokaw newscast that Julie had interrupted with her angry outburst. He could have sworn that while he was trying to comfort her, Brokaw had said something about Dominic Sandini. Sitting down on the sofa, he frowned at the television set. He wished to God he could have heard exactly what it was. In two hours or so, there should be a late-night news update or at least a recap before the station went off the air. Propping his feet on the coffee table, Zack leaned back, prepared to wait for that. Sandini’s face with its daredevil grin took shape in his mind, and a faint smile touched his lips as he thought of the wiry, irrepressible Italian. In all these years, there were only two men who he had come to regard as true friends: One of them was Matt Farrell and the other was Dominic Sandini. Zack’s smile deepened as he considered the total dissimilarities between the two men he regarded as a “friend.” Matt Farrell was a world-class tycoon; Zack and he had forged their friendship out of dozens of common interests and a deep mutual respect.
Dominic Sandini was a world-class petty thief; he didn’t have one single thing in common with Zack, and Zack had done absolutely nothing to earn Sandini’s respect or his loyalty. Yet, Sandini had given him both, freely and without reservation. He had broken through Zack’s isolation with dumb jokes and funny stories about his large, unconventional family. Then, without Zack realizing it, Sandini had intentionally drawn him into that family. They came to the prison and they behaved as if the prison yard was a perfectly normal place for festive family reunions. They thrust their babies into his inexpert arms to hold, and they treated him with the same confusing, boisterous combination of warm affection and stern familial concern that they showed to Dom. Looking back, Zack realized how much their letters and cookies—and even Mama Sandini’s garlic salami— had really meant to him. He was going to miss them all much more than he’d have imagined. Leaning his head back against the sofa, he closed his eyes, his mood considerably lightened by his memories of them. He would find a way to send Gina a wedding present, he decided. A silver tea service. And he’d send a gift to Dom, too. Something special. But what could he possibly buy for Dominic Sandini that Dom would need and like? The most logical gift that came to mind made Zack chuckle at his own absurdity: a used car sales lot!
Just before midnight, as he’d hoped, they reran the Brokaw story along with a brief video that Zack had already seen earlier in the day. The video showed Dom, with his hands behind his head, being frisked, handcuffed, and shoved into the back of an Amarillo sheriff’s car an hour after Zack’s escape, but it was the newscaster’s words that made Zack frown: “The second escaped convict, Dominic Sandini, aged thirty, was recaptured and taken into custody after a brief skirmish with authorities. He has been transferred for questioning to Amarillo State Penitentiary where he had shared a cell with Benedict, who is still at large. Warden Wayne Hadley described Sandini as extremely dangerous.” Leaning forward, Zack stared hard at the television and was relieved to see that Dom didn’t look as if he’d been roughed up by the Amarillo cops. And yet, the things that were being said about him didn’t make sense. The media and Hadley should have been treating Dom as a hero—a reformed convict trustee who’d sounded the alarm on a fellow inmate who’d made a break for it. Yesterday, when the newscasters kept describing Dom as “the second escaped convict,” Zack had assumed they simply hadn’t had time to interview Hadley yet and get the facts straight. Now they’d had plenty of time, and they’d obviously interviewed the warden. Hadley, however, was describing Sandini as dangerous. Why the hell would he do that, Zack wondered, when he should be taking public bows for the fact that at least one of his trustees was such an honest, upstanding citizen.
The answer that came immediately to Zack’s mind was unthinkable, unbearable: Hadley hadn’t bought Dom’s story. No, that couldn’t be true, Zack decided, because he’d made certain Dom’s alibi was airtight. Which left only one other possibility: Hadley had bought Dom’s alibi, but he was too infuriated by Zack’s escape to hold Dom blameless. Zack hadn’t counted on that; he’d assumed Hadley’s gigantic ego would prompt him to praise Dom, particularly with so much media attention focused on the incident. He’d never imagined Hadley’s viciousness might override either his ego or his common sense, but if it had, then the methods Hadley might use to avenge himself on Dom were chillingly brutal. The prison was rampant with lurid stories of the beatings, some of them fatal, that had taken place in Hadley’s infamous conference room, with the assistance of several of Hadley’s favorite prison guards. Hadley’s routine excuse for the battered bodies that later arrived in the prison infirmary or the prison morgue was always “injuries resulting from convict being subdued during attempted escape.”
Zack’s alarm escalated to panic at the end of the newscast when the local Colorado newscaster added, “We have a late-breaking development in the Benedict-Sandini prison break. According to a statement issued by the Warden’s Office at Amarillo State Prison an ho
ur ago, Dominic Sandini attempted a second prison break while being questioned about his duplicity in Benedict’s escape. Three guards were assaulted before Sandini was finally recaptured and subdued. He has been taken to the prison infirmary, where he is listed in critical condition. No additional details as to the nature and extent of his injuries are available as yet.”
Zack’s whole body turned cold with shock and rage, his stomach heaved, and he leaned his head back, fighting down the urge to vomit. He stared at the ceiling high above, swallowing convulsively as memories of Dominic’s grinning, optimistic face and foolish jokes paraded across his mind.
The newscaster’s words continued, but they scarcely registered:
“Rumors of a convict uprising at the Amarillo State Penitentiary have been confirmed, and Texas Governor Ann Richards is reportedly considering sending in National Guard troops if necessary. Prisoners at Amarillo, apparently taking advantage of the media coverage of the Zachary Benedict–Dominic Sandini escape, are protesting what they call unjustified cruelty on the part of certain prison officials and employees, overcrowded living conditions, and bad food.”
Long after the television station had gone off the air, Zack remained where he was, so filled with torment and despair that he couldn’t summon the energy to get up. The determination to escape and survive that had kept him sane for the last five years was slowly draining away. It seemed as if death had been at his side or stalking him from behind forever, and he was suddenly tired of running from it. First his parents had died, then his brother, his grandfather, and then his wife. If Sandini died, there was no way to blame anyone except himself for it. Sitting there, Zack actually felt as if there were some sort of macabre curse attached to him that sent anyone he cared about to an early death. Even through his despair, Zack realized thoughts like that were dangerous, unbalanced, insane. But then he felt as if his hold on sanity was becoming very, very fragile.