Lazlo’s Last Stand

Chapter 6

“He’s alive,” Corbett said. “For now.” He turned abruptly to leave the room, plainly expecting her to follow.

“For now?” She hurried after him, her voice bumpy with conflicting emotions. “What does that mean?”

He closed the door to the study and took two strides into the now-empty kitchen before spinning to face her, moving like an out-of-balance wheel. “He survived the surgery. Apparently the bullet he took in the belly clipped some vertebrae on the way out. Did some damage to the spinal cord.” His voice was quiet, but his eyes burned fierce and bright beneath a lock of hair that had fallen across his forehead. He raked it impatiently back with his fingers. “He’s paralyzed. No way to tell if it’s permanent until the swelling goes down.”

“Oh, God.” Lucia groped for support with one shaking hand and found the back of a chair. “Corbett, I’m so sorry. I never meant-”

“Oh, for the love of God, will you give off blaming yourself?” His words lashed out at her with a careless fury she’d never seen in him before, and she drew back, shocked. “The boy took a gun and went looking to kill someone with it and got himself shot, instead. Whose fault is that? His, I expect. And his mother’s, for putting the hate in his heart. Mine for sure, for putting the hate in hers. It sure as hell wasn’t yours. And somewhere in that frozen rock she calls a heart, the bi-the bloody woman knows it. It’s not you she wants to hurt, anyway, though she won’t hesitate to kill you if she thinks doing so will hurt me.”

And would it hurt you, Corbett?

Stupid thing to ask. Of course it would. He cared deeply about all his agents, she knew that.

She whispered, “Why does she hate you so much?”

For a long suspenseful moment she waited, feeling the burn of those eyes and wondering. But then…the fire in them slowly died, and instead of answering her question he said gently, smiling a little, “I thought you wanted to have a look around.”

She shook her head and gripped the chair back harder. “I deserve to know, Corbett. Since it appears your past has turned my life upside down.”

He gave a soft huff of laughter that held no amusement. “Yes, I suppose you do.”

But he realized as he said the words that even if it had not been so, he wanted very much to tell her…everything. He was a secretive man. By nature, he’d always thought. And this sudden desire to share with a woman the most intensely personal events of his past-and arguably those of which he was least proud-struck him as very odd. Certainly out of character.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said, “since it’s rather a long story, why don’t you go and put on your winter woolies, and I’ll bore you with it while we have a nice walk outdoors. I don’t know about you, but I could use a bit of fresh air.”

She gave him a long look before she turned and went into her room, and he knew from the set of her chin she wasn’t about to let him off the hook. Of course, she had no way of knowing he didn’t want to be let off. He’d kept his sins to himself for a long time. And he was looking forward to this moment of confession.

Lucia wasted no time getting into the ski jacket and boots Corbett had given her. Finding the cap in one of the coat’s pockets, she put that on, as well. When she returned to the kitchen, she found Corbett ready and waiting, bundled up in his sheepskin-lined coat and fur hat, rifle in hand.

Neither of them said anything as he opened the door and waited for her to go through ahead of him. As she had very little recollection of her arrival the night before, she was interested to find herself in a windowless but well-lit passageway. At the end of this another door opened into what appeared to be a cellar, from which a flight of wooden stairs led to a landing and yet another door. Corbett, leading the way, gave a polite knock, then opened the door into a kitchen very much like the one they had just left.

“Kati and Josef live here,” he said as he once again held the door for her. “Though I doubt they’ll be here at the moment. Probably in their workshop-it’s just across the yard.” At Lucia’s questioning look, he first closed the door to the cellar, then explained as he made his way through the quiet house ahead of her. “Josef used to work for the regional electric company, so he was able to do most of the electrical work on the cave house himself. Now that he’s retired, he and Kati make handcrafted furniture and knickknacks for the summer tourist trade. He makes and Kati paints.” He paused and waited for Lucia to catch up. “As you’ll see when we get outside, this house sits on top of the only entrance to the cave. The only way, in or out, is through here.”

“Except for the chimney,” Lucia reminded him. He looked at her thoughtfully, and she said, “What?” beset by the kind of obscure guilt law-abiding people often feel in the presence of police officers. “I’m not exactly planning on trying it.”

“I do hope you mean that. You’d mostly likely kill yourself, which would rather defeat my purpose in bringing you here, wouldn’t it?” His expression was one she knew well: imperious…aloof.

She had a strong urge to slug him in the solar plexus, until she remembered he was already encumbered by fractured ribs. She said, instead, gesturing to the sofa in the room they were passing through, and the folded comforters piled on one end, “So this is where you slept last night, I presume?”

“Yes. Kati and Josef were kind enough to lend me their couch. And, no, you cannot sleep here instead,” he added, as she was opening her mouth to suggest just that.

She was about to cast him a resentful look when her eyes fell on the rifle he held cradled in his arms. “Of course not,” she murmured demurely. “I know that.”

“It’s called protective custody. You, my dear, are the protected. I am the-”

“I said, I know,” she snapped, glaring at him.

She has the heart of a lioness, Corbett thought, turning away to hide the admiration he felt for her. And the sympathy. How she must hate this!

He opened the cottage’s front door and heard a small gasp from behind him. “Yes, I imagine it is a bit of a shock after being indoors where it’s so warm, but once you get used to it, it’s really quite-”

“Oh, wow.”

He turned just as she moved out onto the porch steps, in time to see her face light up with wonder.

“It’s so…beautiful.”

He glanced back at the view he’d seen so many times, in so many different seasons, and still never tired of: The snow-covered hillside with dark splotches of rocky outcroppings and small stands of evergreens, dropping away to the valley floor, shrouded now in a soft, wispy blanket of fog. The woods off to the right with outlines of trees like pen-and-ink sketches on downy-white paper, and to the left, the stone-cobbled lane looping down to the village, where red-tiled and reed-thatched roofs alike wore four-inch blankets of snow, and smoke rose in puffs from tall, stone chimneys.

He looked at Lucia again, saw her smile and the way her eyes sparkled and her nose, cheeks and chin bloomed red with the cold, and something tightened in his chest, his throat aching in unfamiliar ways.

“Beautiful,” he said, “but a bit cold, I should imagine, for a girl raised in California.”

She gave him an odd look-almost resentful, he thought-as she made her way down the steps, boots squeaking on the snow where Kati’s and Josef’s footsteps hadn’t already crushed it.

“There’s some fairly nice skiing hereabouts,” he said in what he hoped was a winning way, because he felt an unaccustomed need to bring back the smile. “I know you don’t ski, but I can teach you, if you’d like.” Perhaps not as winning as he’d hoped. Rather stuffy, in fact. Like the teacher, as she’d forcibly reminded him recently, he no longer was.

It seemed she agreed, because the look she threw him was definitely not the one he’d hoped for.

“There are mountains in California,” she said in an uneven voice as she trudged off down the snowy pathway to the front gate. “The fact that I don’t ski isn’t because I never had the opportunity to learn.”

“Ah.” He lengthened his stride in order to go ahead of her and unlatch the gate. “So why didn’t you, if I might ask?”

On her way through the gate she paused almost in the wide half circle of his arms, and there was no mistaking the anger in the ice-blue eyes she raised to his. “You know almost everything there is to know about me, so I’m sure it didn’t escape you that sports isn’t exactly my thing. Remember? I’m the computer geek you hired right off the Berkeley campus. I don’t ski, I don’t ice skate, I don’t row, I don’t play tennis, I don’t play racketball. I don’t…do…sports.”

“Yet you mastered several martial arts disciplines,” he said evenly, “including some that are considered so lethal they’re outlawed except for the military and law enforcement applications. So if you don’t ‘do sports,’ it’s not for lack of ability.” She’d gone stalking off down the lane, arms waving like outriggers for balance, and he had to almost run to catch up with her.

“Look, you’re obviously annoyed. Might I at least know what I’ve said or done to tick you off?”

She halted, tucking her bare hands under her arms and hugging herself for warmth, although he could see that shivers still wracked her. “You want to know what’s bugging me? All right, I hate the fact that you know almost everything about me, and I don’t know squat about you. Okay?”

“Oh, come on. You know-”

“I know your parents were born in Hungary, that they spied for Great Britain during the Cold War and fled in 1956, and that you and your brother were both born in London. I even know a bit about your dust-up with British Intelligence. I researched you before I took your job offer, of course-what did you expect? And it wasn’t that easy, either, since Google hadn’t been invented yet. But the truth is, I don’t know who you are-as a person, I mean. All this-” her arms jerked out wide, then folded back around her again “-comes as a complete surprise to me. And the fact that you have a son-”

“Yes, well, as you know, that one came as a complete surprise to me, too,” Corbett said dryly.

Her eyes widened in mock astonishment. “There, you see? I didn’t even know you had a sense of humor. Or at least not with me.”

“Oh, now wait-”

“And it’s not…dammit, it’s not just curiosity, either. Knowledge is power, right? Well, then, you have it all, don’t you? And I have none. Do you know how that makes me feel? It makes me feel…less.”

“Good God. Less than what?”

“Less than you. Less than a grown-up. Just…less. As in, inferior.”

“Inferior!” The word genuinely shocked him, and he could feel his own temper beginning to rise. “Oh, come now, let’s not get too melodramatic. You know perfectly well that you, of all people, could not possibly be considered inferior to anyone, least of all me. You know I’ve never-” He broke off, grinning suddenly, bemused to discover his anger had dissipated before it had even fully formed. Impulsively, he gripped her arm, pulled her hand from its hiding place, wrapped it snugly in his and placed them both in his coat pocket, instead.

“Anyway,” he said, as they set off at a comfortable clip down the snowy lane, “I do mean to begin to rectify the situation, immediately.” He paused, frowned and added, “That is, if I can think where to start.”

He glanced down and found her gazing at him in a way that did strange things to his pulse rate-something he might have enjoyed more if it hadn’t been for the strain it was putting on his already aching ribs. He also felt a need to take a deep breath, something he couldn’t have managed even if he’d had the courage to try, thanks to the layers of bandage still wrapped around his torso. Thinking of that brought back a memory of her warm and shower-fresh closeness that made him feel slightly light-headed, and he found that he was gripping her hand tightly inside his coat pocket. And that she was squeezing back.

He drew his hand and hers from his pocket with great reluctance, and for the sake of his sanity, let hers go. “I’ll tell you what,” he said in a garbled voice, “why don’t you get the ball rolling? Ask me a question. Ask me anything.” Except about Cassandra DuMont, he silently prayed. He’d need to work his way up to that one.

She hesitated, her blue eyes bright as she studied him. Then she turned and began walking again, more slowly this time, her hands tucked deep in the pockets of her-his-ski jacket. “All right, then, what about all this? The cottage, the cave, the castle, Kati and Josef-how did you come to have this place?”

“Ah-good one. Covers some family history, as well as a few of my own eccentricities. Well done.”

“Stop stalling,” she said darkly.

“I’m not, I swear.” He placed a gloved hand flat over his heart. “It’s just that I’m not used to this sort of thing. You can’t expect me to simply open up the spigot and have all my secrets come pouring out.”

“Oh, I can, and I do.”

“Beastly woman,” he muttered under his breath.

But there was a quirky tilt to the corner of his mouth and a glint in his eyes that made Lucia’s heart lift and quiver with a lovely new excitement.

“All right, then. You say you already know my parents were spies for the Western Allies during the Cold War.”

She nodded. He was holding one arm across his torso, and she slowed her step to a stroll to make it easier for him.

“They were living in Budapest at the time, newly married, both of them working for the government-good registered members of the Communist Party-but they knew people in the business of spying couldn’t count on any sort of future, and so when the opportunity came during the November uprising in 1956, they decided the time had come to leave. Kati’s family had worked for my father’s family for years. After the Russians ‘liberated’ Hungary in 1945, they fled north into these mountains and became craftsmen, as well as experts at lying low and staying off the government radar.

“I don’t suppose I need to tell you how my parents fared in their new home. They were considered heroes of a sort in Great Britain, enjoying a certain degree of celebrity, which my father parlayed into a job with the foreign ministry, and eventually a seat in the House of Commons. My mother-well, you’ve seen how she’s adapted. Anyway, they did keep their Magyar surname, but when my brother and I made our appearance they were bent on giving us good English names. Edward didn’t fare badly-at least he shares his name with a whole lot of kings, and there is a Hungarian version. In my case, I can only wonder what they were thinking.”

“What’s wrong with Corbett? I like it-it means raven, doesn’t it? So it suits you.”

“Yes, and I suppose I did have this great wild shock of black hair when I was born. But there’s simply no name equivalent in Hungarian-”

“What about the translation of raven?”

“Holló?” His grin was wry. “I don’t know that it’s much of an improvement. I’ve never heard of anyone named that, anyway. You may have noticed Kati and Josef call me Lacsi, which is the familiar form of Lazlo.”

“Lot-zee,” Lucia said, trying it out and nodding her approval. “Okay, getting back to how you came to own a hideout in a cave and a castle ruin…”

“Yes, yes, I’m getting to that, believe it or not, in my fashion.”

And she could only catch her breath and hold it, wishing never to end this walk, loving the sound of his voice, the lightness of it…the easy way he smiled.

He cleared his throat portentously. “Meanwhile, back in the old country, communism fell and capitalism-which had never really gone away, you understand, merely underground-burst into full bloom. Tourism had been a thriving enterprise since the 1970s, when the Hungarian government declared amnesty for all those who’d fled in 1956. But now all those expatriots’ children were returning to seek their roots, bringing along their children. A good many of them have bought property here, or inherited it.

“I found out about this particular piece through Kati and Josef. That village you see down there, looking so quaint and old-timey, is a very popular tourist spot in the summertime. The locals dress in traditional costume and entertain the tourists by plying the traditional trades and putting on folkdance festivals and whatnot. You have a similar place in the States, in Virginia, I believe-”

“Colonial Williamsburg,” Lucia supplied.

“Yes, I believe that’s right. Anyway, the rest of the time the people who live here are as much a part of the global village as anyone. And as much in danger of losing their way of life to runaway development. So when the villagers found out some firm was looking to build a big modern hotel and spa right above their little piece of paradise, they were understandably upset. That’s when Kati and Josef contacted me about buying the place. Having just avoided prison by the skin of my teeth, a place to escape to seemed like rather a good idea to me.” He shrugged. “And here we are.”

“Yes,” Lucia said absently. For her, his mention of the prison sentence he’d narrowly escaped had taken all the joy out of the day, as if a cloud had come up from nowhere to blot out the sun. “The charges of treason-you said you think this woman, Cassandra, is the one who framed you?”

“I don’t think-I know,” Corbett said grimly. “Though, I’m sure she had help. Particularly, since recent developments have uncovered all sorts of moles and leaks in the SIS.”

She shivered suddenly, and, of course, he misunderstood.

“You’re cold. We should head back.”

“I’m fine.” She pulled away from the hand he placed on her elbow. “You promised you’d tell me about Cassandra, and the minute her name comes up-”

“I did and I will,” he said, and there was a certain tightness now around his mouth and a narrowing of his eyes. “But it’s a long story, and it’s colder than I expected. I’d rather neither of us froze to death while I’m telling it. Come on, let’s go back. I could use something hot to drink about now, myself.”

“What I’d love is a nice fire to warm my feet in front of,” Lucia muttered, grudgingly accepting the helping hand he offered. She gave him a look along her shoulder. “Was there some reason why you didn’t include one-and maybe a sitting room-in your hideaway?”

“I have a place to eat, a place to sleep, a place to work,” he said with a shrug. “What else does anyone need?”

“What about a place to play? To relax? You know, put your feet up, read a book, have a glass of wine, listen to music, talk with a friend…” Make out with someone you love…

He frowned as he watched his boots crush the snow underfoot. “I have a comfortable chair in my study-sometimes I even put my feet up. If I want to listen to music, I can tune in to just about any satellite station. Sometimes I read there, or in bed. If I want a glass of wine or a chat with a friend, I generally do it in the kitchen. And as for play-” a smile came and went briefly “-I guess that’s what I come outdoors for.”

Clueless, Lucia thought, shaking her head. If she’d had any wild thoughts about seducing Corbett Lazlo in his cosy hideaway, her chances were looking rather bleak.

“I was never in love with her,” Corbett said. “I say that not with pride, but with sadness. If I could have loved her, I believe some people-good people-would still be alive.”

They were sitting at the kitchen table, kitty-corner from one another, hands curled around identical mugs of steaming hot coffee, carefully avoiding each other’s eyes. When Corbett paused and raised his, Lucia lowered her lashes and lifted her mug to her lips. She would make no comment, ask no question that might interrupt the story he had to tell.

“I tell myself we were young-and we were, both of us. And typically heedless. Rash. We lied to each other, each for different reasons, and believed it wouldn’t matter. But the fact is, it all began with that affair, and as a result of that affair, many people have been hurt. Not the least of whom is that poor boy. My son.” He drank from his mug as though to wash a bitter taste from his mouth.

After a moment he went on, staring straight ahead at nothing. Or at his memories.

“As I guess you’ve already heard, Cassandra was sent by her father, Maximilian DuMont, to set me up for a hit. She engineered a chance meeting between us, which I gladly went along with. She was a real knockout, and I was, well, as willing as any young man.” He shifted irritably in his chair. “I’m not going to go into the intimate details, if you don’t mind. Suffice to say, it got very hot very quickly. As I said, we were both young and rash. I’m not sure, really, why she didn’t arrange the hit right away. It would have been easy to do, since we didn’t ID her as Max’s daughter until after. Although I did have my suspicions. I wasn’t quite so egotistical as to think it a natural everyday occurrence to have drop-dead gorgeous redheads falling over themselves to share my bed.”

Lucia made a strangled sound and quickly drank more coffee.

Corbett glanced at her, then frowned and lifted his own mug before going on.

“Based on what I later learned, I think she’d convinced Max to let her string me along for a while, to see if she could get any valuable information about SIS operations out of me before bumping me off. It didn’t work out that way, as you already know.”

Lucia cleared her throat. “She fell in love with you.”

He nodded. “She did. I knew it but didn’t think a thing about it. What did I know about a woman’s love? What the hell, I was enjoying myself-and her. She was unlike any woman I’d ever known-exciting…a bit dangerous, you know?

“Anyway, we’d been at it about six weeks when Daddy decided he’d waited long enough and ordered her to lead me into the ambush he’d set up. Instead, she warned me.” He paused to scrub a hand over his eyes. “My God, when I think what it must have cost her to do that-to go against her own father, knowing what he was capable of…But at the time I didn’t care. I was following my own agenda. And I saw a chance to set a trap of my own to take down DuMont’s organization. I used her.”

He lifted his head to glare at Lucia, and his eyes looked as though they’d been burned into their sockets. “We had this big emotional scene. I pretended to be devastated that she’d lied to me. Outraged. Angry. Then I forgave her. We made up, and I gave her a ring. Supposedly my fraternity ring. Except it had been especially made for the occasion by the magicians at SIS, a very nice little bug. Quite clever, really. She couldn’t wear it openly, of course, so I gave it to her on a chain, which she could wear concealed under her clothes-close to her heart, as it were. Then I sent her back to her father.” He drank some coffee, then grimaced.

“I truly don’t know what I expected to happen. I suppose I knew there was a possibility he’d kill her, even if she was his daughter. As it turned out, he did worse.”

“Adam said he disowned her,” Lucia said, and her voice was only a scratchy whisper.

“Oh, yes. He did that. But before he gave her the boot, he put together a hit squad to take me out. Her brother was the one in charge of the team, and Cass was forced to go along so she could watch me die. But because of the bug, we were ready and waiting for them. So instead of watching me die, Cassandra DuMont watched me kill her brother.”

He pushed away his empty coffee cup and, after a moment, covered his face with both hands. His voice came muffled and hollow. “I’ll never forget the look on her face when she realized what I’d done. She knew I had to have gotten the information about the hit through her, somehow. She was a smart girl, and she put it together in a heartbeat. She knew I’d used her…betrayed her. I’m certain now that she also knew at the time she was pregnant with my child. She was only nineteen, Lu. Nineteen. She was just a girl, crazy in love with me. And I destroyed her.”