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“Yes.”
“All right,” she said wearily. “You were right, I was wrong. You did what you had to do, and I’m grateful. I’d like to break your neck, but I’m grateful. Will that do?”
“It’s a start.”
“What the hell do you want from me? Do you want me to grovel at your feet?”
“No. I’d like it not to be so hard for you to be wrong once in a while. That’s all. Nobody’s perfect, Maggie May. Not even Superwoman.” His voice was surprisingly gentle, and she felt her anger slip away.
She wanted to reach out and touch him. She wanted to reach over and turn off the car and climb into his arms and hide there. She wanted to cry against the warmth of his chest. No man had seen her cry in twelve years, and she’d promised herself no man ever would again. But now she wanted to cry to Mack.
But the flames still lit the sky behind them, and the sound of gunfire carried through the dense underbrush, and they couldn’t afford to wait. “I’ll try and remember that,” she said, deliberately making her voice light and wry. “You got any idea where we’re headed?”
“Back to Danli. We’ll take a commuter plane out to La Ceiba, and then see what sort of connections we can make for Zurich. Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
“I haven’t changed my mind. Van Zandt’s been stringing us along, and the only way we’re going to put a stop to it is to find him. I told you, you can stay—”
“Don’t bother telling me again, Maggie. Whither thou goest …” he said. “We’ve got a long night ahead of us. You want to tell me about him?”
“Who? Van Zandt?” She was stalling.
“You know damned well who. Raymond, Ralph, whatever his name was.”
“Randall,” she said, facing the inevitable. “You want to tell me about your love life, Mack? If it’s going to be such a long night, I’m sure you’ve got a hell of a lot more to tell.”
“Somehow I get the impression it wouldn’t be half as interesting as you and Randall.”
“How about we save it for some other long night?” Maggie suggested a little desperately.
“That bad, is it? You can’t even talk about it. I guess Willis was right when he said they didn’t think you’d get over it. Apparently you haven’t. Who are ‘they,’ by the way?”
“Can’t you take no for an answer?”
“Not tonight. I’ve been pushed to the edge, Maggie, and I need some distraction. Tell me about Randall. And ‘they.’ ”
Maggie sat as still as she could in the bouncing backseat. And then with a sigh she capitulated, climbing over into the front seat and almost kicking Mack in the face. “ ‘They,’ I imagine, were Willis and the other people I worked with at the CIA. And Randall, most likely.”
“Randall was CIA too?”
“No. Randall was a private citizen with a low threshold for boredom. He was head of a huge import/export conglomerate, and he was more than happy to help out the government on any little matter, as long as it was dangerous.”
“How’d you meet him?”
“Randall was good at getting people out of tight situations. An agent was trapped in Eastern Europe, and Randall went to help him. I was assigned to the case.” Her words were clipped and emotionless.
“And what happened?”
“I got involved with Randall. Not realizing that he wasn’t involved with me. When the situation exploded Randall disappeared, I quit the company, and we all lived happily ever after.” She turned to stare at Mack’s averted profile. “It was no big deal. Everyone gets a broken heart somewhere along the way—Randall was mine. It happened a long time ago, and I got over it.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.” Her answer was flat, unequivocal, and completely certain.
“When?”
“You can’t let anything alone, can you?” she shot back. “Don’t you believe me?”
“Yes, I believe you. I just want to know how long it took.”
