Chapter Six
Zach laid his phone beside the laptop on the desk in his home office and glanced at the Rolex Oyster on his wrist. Still not 9:00 a.m., and he'd managed to accumulate a few hours' sleep, jog around the condo complex, shower and dress in casual clothes, consume a pot of black coffee, review the most up-to-date balance sheets from the casino cranked out by his financial office overnight just messengered to him, and hold an unusually early teleconference with Edie and his other top management staff both in Pine Valley and Las Vegas—necessitating the removal of some of the latter from their beds. However, the casinos' internal staff communication system had already spread the news about the missing jet and its connection to Zach to anyone who didn't turn on the news, so those sleepers were few.
Regardless of the time zone, almost everyone under Zach's command was already in place at his or her desk when Edie rounded them up. All handpicked and as loyal to him as they were unfailingly professional, Zach informed them he was counting on them to keep the Seasons East and West running like well-oiled machinery while the current situation might call for him to be temporarily scarce. He was confident as well that his team would be discreet with any member of the press or public who cared to make an issue of it. Among her other duties Edie was his public spokeswoman, and would always know where to reach him in the case of any real emergency.
At that moment Zach knew only he didn't plan to appear at the Seasons East that particular day. The situation was obviously fluid, so it was necessary to treat it as an indefinite one requiring adjustment on everyone's part as necessity arose, but he expected them to carry on as normal. The employees to whom he spoke so matter-of-factly, to the point they hesitated to even refer to the reason underlying his absence, would have been surprised to know how utterly out of control the boss really felt.
Having only ever experienced Zach's uncompromising surface, they instinctively accepted it as characterizing the entire man, because he never revealed any other aspect of himself.
His employees never knew that as Zach almost grimly ran his empire, there were moments he retired to his imposing office, opened the teak wall unit behind his teak desk, and took out and brooded over a small, amateurish painting, depicting an adobe dwelling such as he'd once shared with his lost love Maria in the desert. They never knew that hidden in the expensive attaché case accompanying him everywhere like a shield was a file folder containing photographs of himself and his brother Michael as boys, and clippings about Michael's murder, whose perusal brought unshed tears to his eyes.
It would never have occurred to the dedicated staff members who carried out his orders and catered to his customers that as Zach made his rounds at all hours through the various gaming, recreation, show, and food service areas of his gaming palaces, he often felt alien from the humanity surrounding him. Those nominally closest to him were entirely unaware that Zach's goals weren't necessarily material ones: The heavy demands of material success provided him with both a reason and an excuse to remain aloof from intimate personal relationships that he'd learned inevitably ended in disaster.
Too bad the hard-driving businessman's system had one tiny, fatal flaw: It was incompatible with the blazing humanity buried deep but undeniably within him. Buried so deep that only the faintest glow was visible to most casual observers. So undeniably that the deeper he buried it, the more violently it exacted its revenge when it inevitably erupted. If he'd been able to stay aloof the night he'd picked up Maureen (nee Maria) hitchhiking in the desert, aloof from the desire to confront the self-righteous accomplices to Michael's murder…aloof from the need to protect Ethan, the grown son who hated him just as much as he'd hated his father…he probably wouldn't still be trying to clear sufficient airspace to breathe beneath the emotional fallout he seemed unable to keep piling on himself.
After leaving Myrtle's last night, Zach seriously considered returning to Las Vegas. It wouldn't be the first time he'd considered it. Because of his connection to Michael, he would always be an outsider here. It was one thing to be an outsider by choice…definitely quite another to be ostracized, mostly by those who were certainly no better than he. Zach could recite from memory Bianca's letter damning him, banishing him from Miranda's life because he'd refused, for Ethan's own good, to claim him as his son. If Erica hadn't stopped Zach for what amounted to her own purposes, he'd have been gone by now. But could he have stayed gone?
No…perhaps it was too late for him and Ethan to establish any sort of relationship—Zach feared it was, regardless of Ethan's fate—but there was still Miranda, whose miraculous survival everyone had been unaware until recently. Her conception had been an ugly thing but she was Michael's daughter for all that, all that Zach had left of his brother. How could he be content to remain a distant, barely tolerated presence in her life? Who else would ever explain to Miranda that Michael hadn't always been a monster?
Who else could thwart Kendall's misguided attempts to paint Miranda's blameless uncle as the killer of her mother, grandmother, great-uncle, and cousin?
Zach called up another file on his laptop. He wanted to refresh his memory as to the particulars of Ms. Kendall Hart's history, in case anything had slipped his memory during the months since he'd last read it. That history had been part of a larger investigation incidental to her mother Erica's dropping into his lap, or rather into his casino, in Las Vegas the prior year, so that he would have some idea of what and whom he was dealing with.
The report on Kendall opened on the screen. Zach scanned it quickly, glad he'd taken the precaution to have it drawn up then so that it was readily available now, but unable to find anything useful as a quid pro quo. Living in the limelight's glare surrounding her mother, Kendall's long reign of terror in Pine Valley had been thoroughly publicly documented. Everything already appeared to be out on the table; at any rate, no convenient bargaining chips lurked within the version of Kendall's past he had access to.
The report did remind Zach of one thing—as fragile as she appeared, Kendall was a tenacious fighter. It was a quality he could have admired, if only she wasn't always so insistent on opposing him. How did a tigress like you ever get so involved with my vain, shallow, grasping son, Zach caught himself musing. Based on the report, Kendall was a magnet for such men, including his brother. He supposed she was, on the surface, quite a prize—brilliantly connected, incredibly lovely, highly intelligent if not actually smart—and most significantly, not at all discriminating.
Is that a weakness I could exploit? But Zach dismissed the thought in the same instant it occurred to him. No. That would be too obvious. Besides, his hands were tied by another consideration. Kendall was Miranda's aunt. Somehow he had to neutralize her while leaving her whole.
Beside him, the phone rang, the Caller ID identifying Edie's private line at the casino. "Boss? Thought you should know, if you didn't already, you were right not to come in. The press is surrounding the place. I gave them your statement, that you were praying for everyone's safe return and had no other comment at this time, but they're asking if you were planning to fly out to Colorado to join the search."
"Add to my statement that searching is best left to the experts and my place is here, holding the fort down, waiting and praying together with the other family members."
"Got it." Edie paused. "Do you really want me to say that, boss?"
Zach gave a short laugh. "Yes. Anything else for me, Edie?"
"No…that's it for now."
"Good. Keep me posted. I hear someone at my door now. I'll let you know if it's anything."
The condominium community in which Zach lived had a gated entrance, so he wasn't concerned about being besieged by reporters on his own doorstep. On the other hand, that limited the options for unannounced visitors to fellow residents or the law, and he doubted this visitor was Kendall. With some well-masked trepidation, Zach went to the door and found Derek Frye waiting for him.
Derek's shake of the head immediately indicated he had received no additional word, but he added, "For what it's worth, I'm just checking in. Man, I almost didn't make it through—I'm afraid they're circling like sharks out there."
"The news media? So I've heard."
"You might want to stay holed up here for awhile," Derek advised, "or wait until Kendall comes home and distracts them—"
"Kendall?" Zach repeated sharply, mentally berating himself for failing to have made it his business already to discover her current whereabouts, probably shooting her mouth off wherever that was. "Do you know where she is?"
"She spent the night at Myrtle's." Derek let out a low whistle. "She figured out who told you who had Miranda, called me up first thing this morning, and tried to rip me a new one."
"But didn't succeed?"
"Nah. I wouldn't say her bark is worse than her bite, but remember, I've had plenty experience building up immunity. You handled her pretty well last night yourself, but let me caution you, Zach, she's still on the rampage. According to her you're Public Enemy Number Uno."
Zach shrugged with an unconcern he didn't feel. "That was the number assigned to me by all the good citizens of Pine Valley."
"A suggestion, if I may: Things are already bad enough, and if you don't want this to turn into an even bigger media circus, you may want to do what I mentioned last night and seriously threaten Kendall with a slander suit if she doesn't cease and desist with the accusations."
"And you think that would be effective, Derek?"
"Well…no," the police chief admitted.
"I didn't think so."
"I'll revise my advice then, Zach—maybe you should take the plunge and get out there and head her off before Kendall meets up with that pack of reporters waiting to pounce and starts giving statements."
A thoughtful look came over Zach's face. "That's what I hire security people for."
"Even you can't countermand the First Amendment, Zach," Derek warned. "Unfortunately, those sharks—and they make my life miserable, too—have a right to be out there."
Zach's eyebrows raised." It's not the press' freedom of speech that particularly interests me. It's Kendall's."
Stepping back, Derek shook his head. "I didn't hear that, nope, didn't hear it." Suddenly, his pager beeped, and he checked the number. "Another duty calls. As always, Zach, I'll be in touch."