Chapter Four
Zach had been pacing. Though his body was dead tired, his brain was aswirl, aswirl with questions, denials, prayers, and curses, animating his limbs with a restless need to keep moving, lest he come to a stop to find himself facing a still image in his mind's eye too horrible to contemplate. With each step he dragged along every one of his uncounted personal demons, all of them and their friends too, it seemed, each one clutching gleefully at his legs with sharp claws, trying to force him to stop. None of Zach's agitation showed on his almost insolently handsome face. But when the phone rang he was on it before the first ring had even faded.
"Slater!" he barked.
"Mr. Slater, it's Derek Frye. I do have a small piece of news for you."
"Yes?"
"I just left Myrtle Fargate's boardinghouse. She's a friend of the Kane family—"
"I know Mrs. Fargate."
"Well, Mr. Slater, it seems Mrs. Fargate was babysitting your niece Miranda while Bianca was away. The baby is all tucked in and even a Mack truck couldn't go through Myrtle to get to that child."
Zach let out a breath he didn't even realized he'd been holding. "Thank you, Chief."
"My pleasure to deliver news people want to hear. I'm afraid I don't get to do it too often on this job."
"The job must be enormously demanding, Chief. Whenever you have a free evening, you and your guest will always have an open invitation to dinner and a show at the Seasons East."
Derek hesitated. "Thanks, Mr. Slater, but it'll just be me. I'm flying solo these days. I just might take you up on it, though. Is there someone I should check in with when I get there?"
"That would be Edie, my executive assistant. I'll tell her to be on the lookout for you. She'll see that you're taken care of."
The men exchanged perfunctory goodbyes and hung up, Zach to resume his pacing, with less intensity than before, now he was reassured of Miranda's whereabouts. The image of her beautiful, innocent face swam forward into his field of inner vision.
Abruptly, Zach's pacing came to a halt. Losing their grip on his legs, his demons were unceremoniously dumped in a snarling pileup on the floor. Before they could free themselves from each other and reattach themselves to him—and before Zach could indulge in the rare event of changing his mind—he had grabbed his overcoat and keys, and headed out the door.
Pine Valley was a deceptively small town. Its assets would have been the envy of a much larger community: The headquarter offices of several major multinational corporations, a major news magazine, a university, a research and teaching hospital, and an international airport. It was convenient to every large city on the east coast, especially New York. It even boasted the residence of international celebrity businesswoman Erica Kane. Yet Pine Valley's permanent population was surprisingly small. It was also surprisingly inbred; there was unusually little segregation along professional, social, cultural; or even age lines—which was not to say there was universal harmony among the inhabitants. There wasn't.
Most personal relationships in Pine Valley were both ephemeral and turbulent while they lasted. Marriages, business alliances, friendships…all were subject to frequent and, sometimes surprising to the world at large, reshuffling. But if there was one thing that could unite the citizenry of Pine Valley and make them temporarily overlook their reciprocal and some quite historic animosities, it was having a tragedy befall one of them. Or even a potential tragedy. That was the signal for the gathering of the old guard, and a temporary ceasefire.
Between the media announcements, Derek's visits to the most closely affected households, and many frantic phone calls, the word was spreading quickly that the Cambias company jet containing their own Erica, Bianca, Jack, and Ethan was missing. The latest news bulletin was not good: Southwest of Denver, the flight path had apparently encountered a late winter snowstorm. The storm had been predicted, and ordinarily should not have affected the flight itself, which could simply have flown above it. But the region was mountainous, and the pilot wasn't particularly known to be familiar with it.
All those things together spelled potential disaster. Hearing this, Pine Valleyites shivered and, echoing Myrtle, wanted to be together with their loved ones, safely on the ground.
The beacon of light and warmth that shone through any storm from Myrtle's boardinghouse drew them like floundering ships to safe harbor. Her large white clapboard colonial home had already sheltered many a wanderer who could find shelter nowhere else. But as it loomed out of the darkness at Zach, he hesitated. The twin agonies of fear and hope now warring within him were extracting payment from him for his other sins; tonight, Zach expected to pay one way or another for his cowardice with Myrtle.
Myrtle Fargate was one of the few people who never outright condemned him for either being the brother of Michael Cambias, or hiding his original identity when he first came to Pine Valley. Zach wasn't sure why. Ironically, Myrtle was probably the only soul in town whose condemnation of him he would have respected, because it would have been hypocrisy-free. And if anyone outside the immediate Kane/Montgomery family should have hated him, that person was Myrtle: Myrtle had adored Bianca Montgomery from the moment she was born, and Bianca had been living at Myrtle's when Michael raped her.
Myrtle's house was where Michael had raped Bianca.
Like everyone else he felt the pull of Myrtle's and Zach had driven past her place many times—always grief-stricken that the younger brother he'd loved had grown so monstrous and caused so much pain before eventually being shot dead by his victim, always guilt-stricken by his desertion of Michael years before, always too ashamed of both to knock on Myrtle's door. She'd always been fair to him, if blunt, when they met elsewhere, so it wasn't because he expected her to slam the door in his face if she found him on the other side of it.
No, he'd avoided meeting Myrtle on her own turf because Myrtle would welcome him. And because of his initial deception, he didn't deserve to be welcomed by her, to be treated as a guest in her home, haunted by so many ghosts he'd had a hand in constructing. He had no such qualms about deceiving one of his own equals, or worse, if the situation called for it. But Myrtle was one of his betters. True, and in the pure cold night air, Zach foully cursed and reminded himself that inside Myrtle's honest boardinghouse was his niece, the niece forbidden him by Kendall Hart.
Kendall's car wasn't yet parked anywhere in the vicinity. Good, Zach thought with satisfaction. That meant if he was fast enough he could gain entrance, hold Miranda to his heart again and let her know she was still surrounded by his love in the language he'd so sweetly discovered that he and she shared, and be gone before Kendall or anyone else interfered.
He should have known Myrtle would make it easy for him, greeting him with a simple, "Do come in, Mr. Slater. It's about time," before he opened his mouth. And then he was in the same space where Michael had violently fathered Miranda…and then it wasn't so easy, but Myrtle knew what to say again.
"I'm praying to the good lord above that Ethan comes home safe and sound. I also prayed you'd finally see fit to break the ice and come here tonight, Mr. Slater, once Kendall told you I had Miranda. Miranda needs everyone in her family right now. Would you like to go up and see her? She's gotten a little restless but you're just the man to rock her back to sleep."
"Please lead the way, Mrs. Fargate. I wish you would call me Zach." Zach decided he would not waste valuable seconds now explaining that his information about Miranda came from Derek and that if Kendall had her way, he'd already be on death row.
"Zach. And you must call me Myrtle."
Upstairs, Miranda was wide-awake and fussing in a small room colorfully papered and cozily furnished with her crib, changing table, rocking chair, and countless stuffed animals and toys. "She's teething," Myrtle whispered when they entered the bedroom. But Miranda's irritable cries began to change to soft coos when she saw Zach, and she stared at him in fascination through the crib railing as he neared the crib.
As always when he was in the same room as Miranda, Zach felt his heart turn over in his chest and his eyes moisten. In appearance, she was entirely her mother's daughter, with Bianca's beautiful dark hair and eyes, porcelain skin, and winsome features, with nothing to show from her father's side of the family at all. Still, Zach felt the strongest connection to her that he'd felt to anyone since he'd faked his death left home at the age of seventeen, leaving fourteen-year-old Michael behind to bear the brunt of their father's brutality alone.
He didn't wait for Myrtle's permission to lift Miranda in his arms. The baby raised up her own little arms to him with a happy gurgle, and he almost went into a trance, hardly even aware of how she went from the crib to Zach's broad chest. She pressed herself against him with a content little sigh, while he carefully held her, marveling at the perfection of this moment and the peace with which it had the power to fill him. You won't remember this, little one. I will never forget it.
Miranda looked up at him with a winning smile, for all the world as if she were privy to Zach's innermost thoughts and was assuring him that she, too, would never forget. Beneath her relaxed form cuddling against his chest, his heart flip-flopped in the other direction, and his hold on her tightened.
Ethan was once this small and helpless and innocent. Would things have been different between us if I'd held him this way then? Because it's too late now, he realized sadly. It was too late before tonight. If he survives, and gods help me but I want him to, it will still be too late for us.
From the doorway, Myrtle gave a little chuckle. "She only does that with you. She's like a little duckling, imprinting on you."
Zach grinned at Myrtle and lightly stroked Miranda's cheek. "Hey, little ducking. I hear you're growing some teeth. I didn't know ducklings had teeth."
"They don't. But I do. And if you don't put Miranda down and get the hell out of here right now, you're going to feel every one of them!" Kendall cried from behind Myrtle.