Outlaw Derek (6 page)

“Failures?”

“You said it was a supposedly scrapped design.”

“Oh.” She nodded nervously. “Yes, of course. Then you believe your friends may have heard of the design?”

“It’s a possibility worth checking into. Shannon, are you afraid of me?”

Startled, she looked up at him. “Afraid of you?” There was astonishment in her voice, and it occurred to her only then that he was a man many would be afraid of. Odd. She had felt no fear of him at all, not even in those first tense moments. She trusted him without even thinking about it. “No. I—I’m not afraid of you.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes.” She tried to lessen the importance of that instant response by adding defensively, “William does, after all.”

Derek nodded slightly. He was still standing in the middle of the room, hands in his pockets as he watched her intently. “I may have to ask you to trust me unconditionally. Will you be able to do that, Shannon?”

“What do you mean, unconditionally?”

“Just that. No reservations, no hesitations. If I tell you to do something, you have to do it—no matter what. Our lives could depend on it.”

Shannon was afraid now, but not of him. “I don’t understand.”

“We’ll be leaving here in a day or two; it won’t be safe to stay longer.” His voice was calm, steady. “They don’t know you’re with me, but if they know the right people to ask, they’ll find out I’m a possible threat. So we’ll have to keep moving. I know a few places, safe at least for a while. But the important thing is that you have to trust me. We may have to move very quickly, with no warning.”

“All right,” she said steadily.

He smiled. “No hesitation?”

“What choice do I have?”

“True.” He stopped smiling.

“I’m sorry.” Suddenly she wanted to cry. “I shouldn’t have said that. You took in a stranger, and you didn’t have to. You didn’t have to be so kind or decide to get involved in this mess—”

“Shannon?”

She put her cup down, wondering why she’d been holding it, then met his gaze. “What?”

“You’re beautiful.”

The two simple words had the same impact on her this time; she couldn’t breathe and her heart thumped heavily. “Stop saying that,” she managed to say.

“Unconditional trust, remember?”

The room was suddenly getting small, very small, until she thought she could reach out and touch the walls, stand up and bump her head on the ceiling. It was small, and full of him, and she couldn’t look away from those dark eyes. Her throat was tense, tight, and her shaking fingers twined together in her lap.

He just
stood
there, just stood there waiting, as if he was prepared to wait forever if that’s how long it took her to answer. Her hands were cold and there wasn’t any space at all between her and him, he filled it somehow, made it thick with emotions she didn’t understand.

“Stop it,” she whispered, not even sure what she was asking him to stop.

“No.” His voice remained calm, his face still,
and he made no move toward her. “This is important, Shannon. You carry a cracked mirror around with you long enough, and everything begins to show a distorted reflection. You have to see what’s there—beginning with your own true reflection.”

“I can’t—”

“I know you can’t. Not yet. That’s why you have to trust me to see for you until you learn how. Do you trust me to do that?”

She stared at him, somehow aware that this
was
important, and not because she needed to believe she was beautiful. It was important, she realized, because her trust in Derek did indeed have to be absolute. If she doubted him in any way, hesitated to believe anything he said, her own indecision could conceivably put them both in greater danger.

Her head understood that, but her heart … how could anyone trust that completely? And she had known him barely twelve hours, knew so little about him.

“Trust me, Shannon.” His voice was softer now, deeper, and curiously compelling. “Trust me to tell you the truth always, no matter what. You’re beautiful.”

“I limp.” It was an automatic response, her greatest doubt given voice.

“No, you don’t.”

What was the matter with him, was he blind? Of course she limped, she wouldn’t deny reality! No one could trust that much, no one at all!

“You don’t limp. Last night you did, because you were exhausted and you’d strained your hip. Today you’re walking with no sign of a limp. It isn’t something that’s always with you, Shannon, and no one sees it but you. A part of that distorted reflection.”

Was it possible? No, no, her mother would have told her. Her mother would have—and then she remembered her friend Janie, she of the red dress and gentle bullying.

“You only limp when you’re thinking about it,
Shannon, or when you’re tired. Half that limp’s in your mind—and in your mother’s.”

“Mother says I limp,” she whispered, remembering. Remembering her last visit, when her mother had scolded her gently for not walking slowly enough.

“Then her mirror is cracked too,” Derek told her softly. “You were hurt once, and she can’t forget it. That doesn’t mean she’s right, Shannon. I’m right. Trust me.”

Shannon stared into those quiet dark eyes, those infinitely wise eyes, and the room was small again, so small she could barely breathe. And despite that closeness, or because of it, she suddenly felt as if something heavy had been lifted away from her.

“All right.” It was said on a sigh.

“You’re beautiful, Shannon.” He was smiling.

She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, and this time she said it not because it was the thing to say, but because she meant it.

“Thank you.”

T
HEY REMAINED IN
his apartment the rest of the afternoon and evening, and if some hurdle had been cleared by his insistence on absolute trust and her conscious surrender to that, something else had happened as well. Shannon couldn’t really put her finger on it except to realize that she was more aware of him now, more alert to his every movement, his glances, his smile. As if, by declaring her trust, she had thrust aside the wary veil that people inevitably hid behind in the presence of a stranger.

The odd thing was that she felt Derek had not thrust his veil aside simply because he never hung one between himself and other people. She was seeing him clearly, but she knew instinctively that he had seen her that way from the first. Maybe it was his eyes, she thought, those tolerant, ancient eyes. Maybe his old soul had outgrown the need for disguises and veils.

“You look bemused.” He sat down beside her on the couch, his expression quizzical.

Dinner, efficiently prepared by him, was over and the apartment was quiet except for the soft semiclassical music coming from his stereo. Shannon felt … peculiar. Her throat was tight and her heart thudded unevenly, and she had a mad impulse to reach out and touch his gleaming blond hair. She looked fixedly down at her hands, folded together in her lap, wondering what was wrong with her.

“Shannon?”

If it were possible to bottle his voice, she thought distractedly, somebody could make a
million bucks selling the stuff to airlines and hospitals; it would instantly reassure passengers and patients that nothing bad could ever happen. Ever. “I was just thinking that you—have an old soul.”
Oh, great, Shannon, now the man’s going to think you’re a flake!

“Sometimes it feels that way.”

She looked at him hesitantly, discovering that he was watching her with no sign of amusement on his hard, handsome face. “I meant—”

“I know what you meant.” He smiled. “Maybe it’s true. I’ve always liked to believe we’re given the chance to correct the mistakes we make.”

“And be rewarded for the things we do right?”

He shrugged. “I suppose. The mistakes are more important, though.”

Which, she thought, said a lot about this man. He was less interested in being rewarded than in correcting his mistakes. She didn’t think he’d make many mistakes.

“You have an old soul too,” he said abruptly.

Shannon was startled by the comment, and her
laugh held no humor. “Then I must have made somebody important in my last life very angry,” she managed lightly.

“That cracked mirror,” he murmured.

She looked away, disturbed. She trusted that he had told her the truth when he said she was beautiful, but that was only his opinion, after all. Everyone was entitled to his own opinion, no matter how bizarre. And there was her flaw, something she never forgot. No matter what he said about that, she knew the limp existed.

“Shannon—”

The phone rang, cutting off whatever he’d been about to say, and she could only be relieved by that. She felt unsettled, confused. She half listened to his end of the conversation, concentrating on stifling the unusual tangle of emotions she was feeling. And it
was
unusual for her, because she had long ago found a relatively stable position, an even keel for her emotions. If she never allowed her emotions to overwhelm her, she had reasoned, then nothing could hurt too much.

But the past twenty-four hours had held too many emotions for her defenses to stand against. Though she felt physically safe with Derek, there was, on the periphery of awareness, the frightening, numbing sensation of being hunted, like an animal. There was the sense of loss after the destruction of what had been her home. There was the terrifying realization that this virtual stranger beside her was her only lifeline in a treacherous storm. And there was the confusion she felt because he said her mirror was cracked, the reflection she had looked at for so long a distorted one.

Shannon wanted, needed, a moment in which to sit back and catch her breath. A quiet moment in a safe corner somewhere. A moment free of handsome men with ancient eyes, and faceless men who wanted her dead, and a corporation that seemed to be doing something illegal. She needed the safe haven of her drab apartment, as comfortable as a worn shoe and as unthreatening. She needed the secure routine of her ordered
life, uninteresting though it was. She needed to get another African violet, because the one in her apartment was dead now.…

“Shannon?”

Stupid, she thought, to feel like crying for an African violet. “Was that one of your technician friends?” She looked steadily at her laced fingers.

“Yes. Shannon, what’s wrong?”

She could feel him lean closer, and stiffened without even thinking about it. Too close. He was too close. The room was getting small again, closing itself up, filling itself with him, and she could barely breathe. Her throat hurt. “Nothing. What did your friend say?”

Derek moved again, but he was leaning back away from her this time. And his voice was calm and impersonal when he answered her unsteady question. “He said there was some talk a while back about Civatech’s ‘billion-dollar bust.’ They’d apparently gotten military funding for
the project, and then reportedly couldn’t make the design work.”

“What kind of design?” She continued to gaze steadily at her fingers.

“Some kind of sophisticated robotics gadget. Word has it the design was supposed to be practically indestructible, and completely lethal. There was even a rumor circulating at one point that a technician had been killed because the thing ran amok. It seems they couldn’t control it, so the design was scrapped. Supposedly.”

“And the military just wrote off the loss?” The question was an automatic one, just words to fill a silence.

“Probably. It wouldn’t be the first time. But we have to assume that thing is still in one piece, and that somebody’s planning either to use it or sell it.” He reflected for a moment, frowning. “Probably sell it; it makes more sense. And any fanatical group or army in the world would just love a weapon like that. For a great deterrent, if nothing else. It’s a little unsettling to go into
battle if you know the other fellow’s got a bigger gun.”

Derek studied her averted face for a moment, aware that she was tense, guarded.
“Like watching a flower close up.”
He had reached her, briefly, and that tenuous thread of trust, he was convinced, remained intact. But it was such a fragile thing, that bond, as fragile as she was herself. Even his leaning toward her in an undemanding physical closeness had tautened it, made her warily conscious of a threatened intrusion.

He kept his voice dispassionate, calm. “We’ll have to find out exactly what this design is, and who’s planning to use it or sell it. Jeff said they called it Cyrano—” He broke off abruptly, because Shannon looked at him then.

“No,” she said in a surprised voice, her eyes widening. “Not Cyrano. C.y.R.A.n.O.W. Camouflage Robotics Armory Offensive Weapon.”

After a moment, Derek asked her quietly, “How do you know that, Shannon?”

“I saw it.” She shook her head slightly. “I never thought—but that was what was written on it. When I came back from my supervisor’s office yesterday, I saw it moving down a hallway. I stopped and watched it. There are all kinds of electronic devices in the building, and I never thought it might be somebody’s restricted project. It was in the unrestricted part of the building. But this one was almost funny. Like the gadgets in those science-fiction movies. It was about as high as my shoulder, and had armlike extensions, and it rolled on concealed wheels or something.”

“What happened then? Did it just go past you?”

“No. No, a man came hurrying down the hall before it quite reached me. He had a little box in his hand, a remote control, I guess, and he looked angry and—and almost frightened. Shaken. He gave me a hard look, and I turned away and went back to my office.”

“And never gave it another thought.” Derek
sighed heavily. “That was it, I’ll bet. If you had just noticed a few oddities and discrepancies, in correspondence, they could have explained it away somehow. But you
saw
their ‘scrapped’ design alive and well. And they couldn’t explain that.”

“You mean, just because I saw—”

“It has to be that, Shannon. It was bothering me that they moved so fast and ruthlessly to get you out of the way with apparently so little reason. But if you accidentally saw their gadget on top of everything else, they couldn’t take any chances. They couldn’t afford to wait, to see if you managed to connect everything.”