Free Zach's Law by Kay Hooper Page A

those fingers close over her leg just above the knee and saw the oval nails dig into denim.
    “Zach?”
    His eyes opened immediately. Unsurprised, she said softly, “One of the tape recorders came on a little while ago. I thought you should know.”
    He gazed up at her, for a moment forgetting the job he had to do. Only a faintly swollen look around her eyes, a certain tenderness, remained as evidence of tears shed in darkness. Zach clamped his teeth together and nodded, reaching for the zipper of the sleeping bag. “Thanks.”
    She got up and moved away, toward the stove and the preparations begun for breakfast.
    He had slept only in jeans and now shrugged into his shirt as he stood. Leaving it unbuttoned, he went to the equipment shelf,donning the earphones out of habit rather than necessity now that she knew what was going on. The tape had stopped; he rewound it and listened to the conversation that had taken place minutes ago inside the house.
    When it was finished, he set up the tape again and removed the earphones, frowning a little. When he turned, he found her looking at him, a hesitant question in her eyes but not voiced aloud.
    “They’re expecting the final goods to arrive on Friday morning,” he told her. “Then the whole shipment is scheduled to leave for the new owners on Saturday.”
    Teddy still looked a little quizzical, obviously taking note of his frown. But Zach didn’t explain until he stood shaving in the bathroom, glancing out through the open door at her because he couldn’t seem to stop looking at her. And even though he wasn’t a man given to voicing puzzles aloud, he found that he wanted to talk. He wanted to talk to her.
    “It doesn’t feel right,” he said abruptly.
    She paused while setting the table, watching the economical motions of a man who had performed this same task nearly every morning for twenty years. There was something oddly intimate in watching him shave, and Teddy liked it. “What doesn’t feel right?” she asked, hoping he would talk to her, confide in her—anything but continue the guarded silence of yesterday.
    “Sending the valuables out in a single shipment, which is apparently their plan. I’d expect them to split it up now, to lessen the chances of losing all of it. We’re sure there’s more than one buyer, probably two, and they don’t live in the same city. Not even the same state. If the stuff’s going by truck or van, and that seems likely, it’d be more logical to split it up now rather than on the road somewhere.”
    A part of Teddy’s mind listened to and appreciated the points he was making. But another part had gone cold at the first mention of Saturday. If the goods were to be shipped out on Saturday, then so was she. And today was Wednesday.
    Fighting off the awful despair, she spoke off the top of her head with no thought. “Maybe the buyers haven’t seen the goods yet and plan to meet the truck somewhere to make certain the stuff’s authentic before they tell where the guns are waiting. Or has that meeting already taken place?”
    Zach was looking at her. “No. No, we think not.” He turned his head to gaze into the mirror and cursed softly.
    “What?”
    He moved to lean against the doorjamb, using a small towel to wipe away the remaining lather. As if to himself, he muttered, “I should have let Josh strangle him last year. It would have saved us all a lot of trouble.”
    Teddy was bewildered. “Strangle who?”
    He sighed. “The federal maestro I’ve been stupid enough to take orders from,” he explained with a certain amount of bitterness.
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Let’s just say that if I had a brain worthy of the name, I would have learned long ago to distrustthe maestro’s solemn assurances that he gives his operatives the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
    “He kept something from you?” she ventured, still puzzled.
    “It’s beginning to look that way.”
    “What? I mean, how do you know?”
    Zach