Zach prepared for any possible reaction from Hannah. She might scream or clam up or run off to her downstairs room and lock herself in. No matter what she did, however, Julianne would know the truth. That much he’d decided.
He led the way up the tower stairs, Julianne behind him. He didn’t know what she knew about Hannah, how much was speculation and how much was fact. That she’d over heard a conversation between him and Hannah was obvious.
He knocked on the door. Julianne’s nerves were apparent in her ragged breathing. Tension seeped from her and wrapped around him.
Hannah opened the door, spotted Julianne on the step below him and started to slam the door. He blocked the move.
“I told you I didn’t want to meet her! Go away. Go away now.” She hurried off. He caught up with her before she could descend the spiral staircase into her bedroom on the level below.
“Please stay,” he said, although not giving her an opportunity to do otherwise. He was aware of Julianne coming into the room hesitantly. “Hannah, this is my wife, Julianne. Julianne, this is Hannah, my sister.”
Zach gave Julianne credit. Her reaction wouldn’t be obvious to anyone not looking for it. She hadn’t known Hannah was his sister. Had she thought he was keeping a lover in the tower?
“I’m very happy to meet you,” Julianne said, approaching but not getting too close. “I’ve seen your drawings. You’re a wonderful artist.”
Hannah crossed her arms. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Same as you,” Zach said, realizing how childlike Hannah was when compared to Julianne, at the same age.
“And you’re already married,” Hannah said with a sniff.
Julianne smiled. “So it seems.”
Zach almost laughed.
“I’ve never had a boyfriend. I’ve been…here.”
“I think you’ll find we have a lot in common,” Julianne said.
Zach appreciated that she remained calm, her voice reassuring. He saw Hannah respond to Julianne’s nonthreatening manner. Hannah was taller and more slender, her hair straight and slightly more blond than Julianne’s. On the surface they were different, but Julianne was right. They shared some similarities.
He let go of his sister, deciding she wouldn’t bolt. After a moment, she walked to Julianne and put out her hand.
“Welcome to the family, dysfunctional as it is.”
Julianne gave no obvious reaction to Hannah’s severe limp. She ignored the extended hand and hugged his sister instead. “Thank you. I’m glad to have a sister. And I doubt yours is any more dysfunctional than mine.”
Hannah’s discomfort at the hug didn’t seem to faze Julianne, who smiled widely as she released Hannah.
“Have you had breakfast?” Julianne asked.
“Hours ago.”
“Would you like to come down to the dining room and sit with me while I eat?”
Hannah’s back stiffened. “I have work to do.”
“Okay. Maybe another time.”
“Maybe.”
“May I come back to visit, Hannah?”
“I guess so. Make sure you knock.”
“I will. I’m so glad we met.”
Julianne left. Zach studied his sister, whose face flushed.
“Okay, so I like her okay,” she muttered. “Don’t think things are going to change because of it.”
“It’s always been your decision.”
“Okay. Just so we’re clear.”
He hugged her, something he hadn’t done in a long time. His throat burned. He could see a future for her now. Maybe not right away, but sooner than he would’ve imagined yesterday.
Jamey had sent him the best gift possible when he’d sent Julianne. He’d thought it would be temporary, but the aftereffects would be far -reaching.
Now instead of Zach having repaid Jamey by taking Julianne in, he was going to owe him again.
“I don’t understand why you couldn’t tell me about Hannah,” Julianne said to Zach in bed that night. “What was the big secret?”
They were lying on their sides, one small lamp giving the room a little bit of light. She was enjoying how he trailed his fingers down her arm, caressing and teasing.
“That was her choice, not mine. Except for Lil and the Moodys, you’re the only person on the island to meet her, although others know about her.”
“But why?”
“Hannah has a lot of emotional scars that run very deep. For a while after we moved here she would leave the castle to do her drawings. She met Lil by accident that way and they became friends. But Hannah became increasingly, I don’t know, angry? Belligerent? Hostile? More reclusive, too. She stopped coming out of her room. For a while Lil could visit Hannah in her room, but even that changed. I’m very worried about her.”
His hand settled on Julianne’s arm, no longer teasing.
“She usually takes care of the children we rescue. That night when we brought Jacob here, she’d taken medication because her hip was hurting, or so she said. She knew Jacob would be arriving, yet she’d taken a pill that would make it impossible for her to stay awake and care for him. She loves kids. I don’t know why she did it. And now she seems afraid of everything.”
“And you don’t have a clue why?”
“No. None. Maybe I’ve kept her too safe. Maybe I’ve prevented her from becoming an independent adult. I’ve sheltered her.”
“Why have you? What happened to her that you feel the need to do that?”
He didn’t answer for a long time. She waited, hoping, but prepared to have him change the subject.
“Hannah was kidnapped when she was ten.”
“Oh, no!” Julianne gripped his arm.
“So was I. I was seventeen. And our brother, Marshall. He was seven.”
“Zach.” Her heart opened to him, to the unmasked pain in his voice. “What happened?”
He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “Our parents died when Marsh was very young, almost two. We were sent to live with our grandparents, my father’s parents. They were—are—extremely wealthy. Family’s been in San Francisco since the gold rush. They were…uninvolved with us. Very distant. It wasn’t a warm household, but we had each other.”
“You were the big brother and dad and protector.”
He nodded.
“What happened?”
“We were being driven home from school, a private school, when our driver’s door was pulled open by a man wearing a ski mask. Another one climbed in back with us. The driver was dragged out, shot and left for dead. We were blindfolded and driven for hours to a cabin in the Sierras. It was winter, and the snow was ten feet deep. We were dragged into a basement and left there.”
“For how long?”
“Days. Food was tossed in. There was a bathroom attached, so we had water, although only cold water. We were guarded by only one man and he would barely speak to us.” Zach sat up, his gaze on the far wall. “Marsh was asthmatic, and he’d almost used up his inhaler, because he was so stressed he’d had to use it more often. I begged for another one and was told to deal with it. There was no way to deal with it. If we’d had hot water, it could’ve helped. Steam could’ve helped.”
She waited in silence for him to continue
He looked over his shoulder at her. “I figured out a way to escape through an incredibly small window, blocked by snow. I would have to dig my way up out of it, and I figured I only had about six hours—the time between our guard’s last visit at night and first one in the morning.
“I also knew I couldn’t take Marsh and Hannah along. I didn’t know where we were, how far away from civilization, how far of a walk to find help, which direction to go. None of us wore clothes suited to the weather. There was no way he could survive that kind of trip. And if I left him alone, I wasn’t sure he would survive. I knew he would panic if the guard showed up before I returned. And what if I couldn’t find my way back? I didn’t know whether to go or stay. I needed to protect them. I also needed to save them.”
Zach rubbed his face. Julianne wanted to hold him. The sadness that weighed him down, that registered in his face and voice and posture, brought tears to her eyes.
“But Hannah said I had to go, that it was our only chance. Marsh agreed.” He paused again, as if reliving it. “It took me four hours to dig out. The snow at the base was so hard I had to carve it out with a spoon, but I could also carve footholds in, too. Then as I got higher the snow was fresher and falling in on me from all sides.”
“You could’ve been buried alive.” The thought of him struggling to save his brother and sister, of digging and digging and digging, almost without hope, infuriated her.
“It was a risk. But I finally got above the snow and took off running. When I eventually came to a plowed road more than an hour later, I flagged down the first car. I wasn’t sure anyone would stop. I looked like a frozen wild man, I’m sure. But it was Jamey. And Jamey would never pass by someone who needed help.”
Julianne gasped. “What was he doing there?”
“Driving home from Lake Tahoe. He was a bounty hunter in those days. He had a gun. But he also knew it was too risky to go in there alone. We marked the place and went to the nearest house and called the police. Everything went wrong. Everything.” He seemed to get more rigid. “Our guard saw them coming. He used Marsh as a shield, and he couldn’t take the stress. He went into acute respiratory failure and he died.”
Tears slipped down Julianne’s cheeks. She put a hand on his back, gently, cautiously. He didn’t slough it off.
“The bastard shoved Hannah down a flight of stairs. Her leg and pelvis were shattered. The growth plate was broken. That’s why she limps now. Physically she recovered, except for the limp, but not mentally. We had a psychiatrist literally living at the house for months.”
“Wasn’t there ransom demanded for all of you?”
He snorted. “My grandparents decided to try to negotiate the ransom on their own, without calling the FBI. That’s what stalled the rescue attempt.”
“Why did they do that?”
“So there wouldn’t be a scandal.”
“Zach. How could you even look them in the eye?”
“I couldn’t. As far as I was concerned, they had killed Marsh. They had damaged Hannah.”
“And you.”
“I was old enough to deal with it.”
She didn’t believe that, not for a second. But if it helped him to cope with the guilt and pain, so be it.
“I left home on my eighteenth birthday. I was determined to become an FBI agent, thinking that my experience would make the difference. I would work my way into a position where I had authority, and kidnap rescues would be my specialty. No one else would die.”
“But you found yourself tied by rules that prevented you from succeeding.”
He said nothing for what seemed like forever. Deciding whether to confide more? She didn’t know. She simply waited.
“I was an agent for four years,” he said at last, “when we got a case involving a thirteen-year-old boy. Similar M.O. Son of wealthy parents, snatched on the way home from the same private school. Except this time, the parents called the FBI right away. We tracked them to a remote location. I wanted to surprise the bastard, make my way inside, just me. I thought if anyone else went along, he would see. I knew I could get in. But I was ordered to to stand down. We followed procedure and surrounded the cabin. Called to him on a loudspeaker. The bastard was a lunatic. He decided on murder-suicide instead of giving himself up. The boy died.” He paused. “His name was Christopher Moody.”
It was like a stab in the heart. She would never feel sorry for herself again. Compared to what Zach and Hannah and the Moodys had endured, she’d lived the life of a princess.
Suddenly her plans seemed frivolous. So she’d been denied the right to attend college, to live on her own, to be free to live independently. What did it matter?
“I failed to bring their son home. I knew I couldn’t let that happen again. By then I’d gathered a number of resources. I quit the FBI and put together a team of former agents and others who were willing to risk their lives for strangers. They’re spread all over the country. They report kidnappings to me from their sources, which is usually someone in law enforcement who knows we do things differently, faster, for one thing. Our rescue rate is higher than when everything is done by the book.”
“What’s your role?”
“My trust fund, and half of Marsh’s, came to me when I turned twenty-five. I can’t think of a better use for it than to finance this venture, plus I’m central operations. Without someone to oversee everything…”
She wondered if he was trying to justify his lack of physical involvement in the rescues. “Your job would be impossible to replace, Zach. Everyone knows you’re the one to contact, right? You’re the mastermind.”
“If not me, then someone else would step up.”
Okay, he didn’t want to be complimented. He was driven to do what he did. Praise wasn’t part of the deal. Only success was.
“I’ve seen your wall of photos. You’ve helped so many people.”
“You’ve seen the other wall, too. Every failure is one too many.”
“I’m so sorry for the Moodys.”
He shoved his fingers through his hair, as if tired of remembering. “They’d had Christopher very late in life, after having given up on ever conceiving. He was everything. They had no desire to return to their old life. When they heard what I was doing, they begged me to let them come here. I couldn’t save their son, but they wanted to help me save others.”
“And Lil and Misery and all the rest of the people on this island?”
“Most of them came as the result of contact with me and my team, whether a success or failure. They grieve here. Some move on. Many have stayed. But it’s their decision whether to talk about it.”
There was a caution in his voice and she responded to it. “I won’t bring it up, I promise.” She moved so that she could face him. “What can I do for you? How can I help?”
“I would appreciate anything you can do to bring Hannah back into the world. When I compared her to you, I realized how out of touch she is. She only sees life through television and books. She’s afraid of something, but I don’t know what. She’s forgotten how not to be afraid. Maybe she never knew. But for a while, I thought she was making a breakthrough.”
“So this is kind of the blind leading the blind,” Julianne said, teasing gently. “One sheltered girl to another.”
“You’re much more worldly.”
“I can see that. I’m not a psychiatrist, though, Zach.”
“No. You would be a friend. I think that’s what she needs. What she missed out on for thirteen years.”
“I’ll do my best.”
He slid a hand behind her neck and tugged her to him, kissing her hard, then dragging her against his chest, enveloping her in his arms. “I’ll bet you had no idea what you were in for when you arrived on the Prom.”
“You’d win that bet.” She listened to his heartbeat, strong and steady. “Is it okay if the Moodys know I know?”
“I think they’ll take one look at your sympathetic face and know that you know. I’ll tell them. They’ve come to like you a lot.”
“Goes both ways.” She settled against him and closed her eyes, suddenly fighting tears. She felt so sorry for him, for all of them. And so angry at the cruelty of other people.
He pressed a kiss to her head. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Something.”
“Just feeling sad for you.”
“You could make me feel better.”
“How?”
“Do you really have to ask, Julianne?”
She understood that he needed to stop thinking about the past. She sat up, placed her palms against his bare stomach and let them slide to the waistband of his boxer shorts. “Am I getting warm?”
He sucked in a breath. “Warm.”
She slipped a hand under the waistband.
“Warmer,” he said.
She wrapped her hand around him and felt his strong response, flattered that she could do that, and so quickly.
“Hot.”
“Yeah,” she whispered, angling her head for a kiss. “Scorching.”
“Are you sore?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t we find out?”
She was sore, but not enough to give up the chance to make love with him again. She didn’t know how much time they had. The time would come soon enough when she would have to…get to leave. She couldn’t stay there. She would go crazy.
But for now, he was hers and she was his. And that would have to do.