Under Cover Page 9

  "Okay, stay still. I'll get them."

  Rather than risk stumbling around the cluttered apartment in the dark, Teale stretched over him to reach the table. Perhaps that was a mistake.

  She felt David's soft intake of breath as her breasts brushed his chest and her knee nudged his thigh. Searching for her balance, her hand pressed into his belt line and immediately jerked away; his hands caught her bare waist to steady her. She laughed awkwardly in the dark, feeling like a highschool kid whose parents might walk in at any moment, and he dropped his hands as she found the matches and straightened up again.

  "There," she said, as the candle wick caught and flared. "At least we can see what we're doing."

  He smiled. "I liked it better when we couldn't."

  Teale set the candle on the table before them. Its dim yellow glow illuminated an arc of about two feet from the center, leaving the rest of the room in soft shadows. Without the television and the air conditioner, the room was intensely silent, and she could hear the wind gently bending the trees outside. It's going to get stuffy in here before long, she thought, but she made no move to open the windows. She sat back on the sofa, her elbow resting on its back, her body turned toward David, and she looked at him.

  "You look pretty in the candlelight," he said.

  "Everyone looks pretty in candlelight," she answered.

  And then, without forethought or conscious volition, she reached forward and slowly removed his glasses. He said nothing, nor did he move. She sat back on her heels, studying him. "Who are you, David Carey?" she asked softly.

  In the uncertain candlelight there might have been a flicker of surprise in his eyes, a tightening of the facial muscles as though he were startled or unsure. But the expression, whatever it was, was gone in an instant, and his tone was casual and amused as he replied, "Who do you think I am?"

  "I'm not sure," she answered earnestly. Her eyes remained fixed on his face, trying to resolve the dozen or more conflicting images she had gathered. "But I think I want to know."

  He hesitated, but his expression was intent as his gaze moved over her face. "Is it really important to you?"

  She nodded slowly.

  A smile, vague and rather puzzled, gently traced the planes of his face. "All right," he agreed. "I'll tell you what I know.

  "I was born in a little town north of San Diego— one of those undiscovered fishing villages that tourists like to stop and take snapshots of when they stumble on to it, and use words like 'quaint' and 'picturesque' to describe it. To me it was just home, and I had a great time growing up there. My dad owned a charter boat, and we used to go trolling at sunrise, and sometimes he'd take Mom and me out all day with his charter passengers. Once, I hooked a shark that was twice my size—I swear it. It took us four hours to land him, and you never saw a prouder kid than I was having my picture taken with that monster and posting it at the marina...." The smile lines at the corners of his eyes deepened with fond remembrance. "God, we had fun."

  A shadow crossed his eyes, but his voice was deliberately casual as he went on. "Then Mom and Dad went out on the boat one day without me, a storm blew up, and they didn't come back. Of course I went through the usual trauma, but I think somewhere deep inside I always knew that was the way they would have wanted to go—on the sea, at the height of a storm, in a blaze of glory.

  "After that, my life changed. Uncle Raphe took me in—he wasn't really my uncle of course, but an old friend of the family." His brow drew together slightly, as though reliving an old puzzlement. "I never knew what favor it was my Dad did him that made him feel he had to repay it in such a big way, and I guess I really don't want to know. It doesn't matter, I suppose. Those kinds of ties are thick, and Raphe was good to me.

  "I lived in the compound outside of San Francisco with body guards, maids, three swimming pools— every conceivable luxury. Bon Jovi entertained at my sixteenth birthday party. I had my own Maserati before I was old enough to drive. I went to an exclusive private school and was accepted by both Yale and Harvard. But I had something more. I had a family. I had discipline and love and good common-sense values and a man who was never too busy for me... a man who took another man's son and made him his own."

  He looked at her steadily, almost challengingly. "This might sound naive, but it's the truth. I never knew what kind of business Raphael Clealand was in until he was indicted."

  Teale almost held her breath, yearning to understand, hoping for the right answer... not even knowing what the right answer should be. "And when you found out?"

  His gaze didn't waver. "It didn't make any difference," he said simply. "I still loved him. How he made his money didn't take away what he had done for me, it didn't change the kind of man I knew him to be inside."

  Then his lashes dropped, briefly obscuring his expression. "It made me angry," he admitted. "Not for the reasons you think, but because once I knew the truth I could see what it was costing him. The investigation, the pressures to hold it all together—it was killing him. Oh, I know the coroner's report said heart attack, but it was his business that killed him just as surely as if some rival kingpin's assassin had pulled the trigger. And that made me angry."

  Teale released a slow, unsteady breath. "And so," she ventured softly, "you went into the business to more or less avenge your foster father's death."

  For a moment he looked puzzled, as though he didn't know quite what she was talking about, then he smiled. "Yes, I suppose you could say that. In a small way. Not that what I do really has much effect on the overall scheme of things, but it makes me feel better to keep my hand in."

  Teale nodded. She didn't know whether she felt better or worse for hearing this, but at least she understood. At least some part of it made sense to her.

  She knew she should leave it alone, she knew that any effort she made would be futile, but she just couldn't help herself. She had to try, if for no other reason than to make it completely clear in her own mind. "And you really don't think you're doing anything wrong, do you?"

  A soft laugh escaped him, and the mirth seemed completely inappropriate to the situation. "Do you mean do I ever question the rightness of my decision? Oh, yes, every day." And a note of soberness touched his tone as he met her eyes. "Even more, lately."

  A small absurd hope flared within Teale, and he must have seen it in her eyes because he gave her no chance to pursue the subject.

  "Now you know my history from birth to young adulthood," he said lightly, "and your police records will fill in the rest. If you want to know who I am, it's all there." He looked at her very intently, as though trying to telegraph some unspoken message she couldn't understand. "If you're willing to look hard enough."

  And then he smiled, dismissing the moment. "Of course, that's true of everyone, I suppose. You, for instance. Now that I've bared my soul, I don't suppose you'd be willing to give me a hint or two about what makes Teale Saunders tick?"

  She shrugged, in the same motion drawing her legs up to encircle them with her arms. David's eyes followed the motion; she hoped it didn't look defensive. "What you see is what you get. I have no secrets."

  "What made you go into law enforcement?"

  "Family tradition, I suppose. My father was a judge."

  She didn't know what came over her then. Maybe it was the sense of anonymity the shadowed room afforded or the security of being safe inside while the wind rushed against the windows and whispered around the eaves. Perhaps it was the intimacy that had grown between them as David spoke or the way he waited in patient silence, as though understanding she had more to say. Perhaps it was simply knowing that with David Carey she could be honest because he, of all people, would never sit in judgment. Because he would understand.

  She rested her chin on her knees. Without looking at David she began to speak, softly, almost as though to herself. "From the time I can remember, I idolized him. My mother died when I was six, and from that time he was the beginning and end of my world. In school, when we had to
write a paper on our hero, other kids would write about Batman or Neil Armstrong—I'd write about my father. All day he'd sit on his throne dispensing justice with Solomonlike wisdom, but he never missed a school play or a soccer game, and I never would have gotten through high school if he hadn't spent three hours a night helping me with my algebra. We were close," she said, and her throat tightened up a little. "Really close."

  She cleared her throat and went on. "There was never any choice about my going into law. It was all I heard about from the day I was old enough to understand—the symmetry of it, the grandness of it and, yes, even the fallibility of it. The magnificence of an institution designed to govern such a large body of people for generations and generations to come. I was hooked at a very young age. My father always expected me to become a lawyer, and I guess I did, too, for a while. But at some point I guess I realized I didn't really want to compete with my father in his own arena, or maybe I was afraid I wouldn't be able to live up to his standards—or my own. Anyway, I wasn't cut out for a cerebral life. I liked the action of police work, the excitement, and—" her lips turned down a little, wryly, as she remembered David's previous words "—the danger, I suppose."

  Her smile faded as the memories came back. If David had interrupted her then with a question or a comment, she wouldn't have gone on. She hadn’t expected it to be this hard. She had never told anyone this before, and she didn't know why she was speaking of it now. She wished she had never begun the story.

  But David simply sat there, listening and waiting, and she had no choice but to go on. She suddenly realized that she wanted to continue. She needed to say this, to repeat the words and relive the tragedy, to face it at last. And David Carey had given her the opportunity to do so.

  "Four years ago," she began steadily, "there was a scandal. My father was accused of taking bribes. He denied it, of course, but it looked like an airtight case. I was so—horrified and humiliated. All those years, worshiping him, believing he was the incarnation of Justice itself, believing all those things he said about honesty and fairness and our duty to the integrity of the democratic system. I had built my whole life on him and his values only to find out that he had been lying all along and that the one thing—the one person in my life—I had never had cause to doubt was as corrupt and as flawed as the streets of the city I was trying to clean up. Here I was, a police officer with an impeccable record, up for promotion, and my father was the object of a grand-jury investigation and one of the biggest scandals to hit the city in years. Looking back," she said bitterly, "I don't know whether I was more upset about the scandal or my own embarrassment."

  Even as she spoke the anger came back, the choking sense of hurt and betrayal—the guilt. There was no stopping it now. The words came rushing out, memory on top of memory, pain redoubled with the telling. "I wanted to believe him. But I was an officer of the law. I knew about facts and evidence and what was written in black and white. There was a part of me that knew my father could never be guilty of such a thing, but I had sworn to uphold the law, I was trained to look at nothing more than the evidence and.. .1 guess I hadn't learned yet that sometimes an officer's most important tool is her own instinct."

  She felt wetness on her cheeks, hot and salty, and her throat was thick. But she couldn't stop. "And even though... I tried to believe him, I guess he must have seen in my eyes that I didn't... Because I will never forget the way he looked before he went out that day..." Her voice caught and choked, and then became very calm.

  "No one else would do it," she said, "so he set out to prove his own innocence. And he was killed by the men who had tried to set him up. It all came out later. He was innocent, but he had to die to prove it. No one would believe him. Not even his own daughter."

  The tears fell, scalding, silent and bitter. She didn't fight them. And when David gently drew her into his arms, she let him; she wound her fingers into the fabric of his T-shirt and let the tears fall while he held her, and it felt good. The guilt was still there, the anger and the helplessness, but the shame was not so great anymore. She had told someone. She had told David.

  He said nothing, and she was grateful for that. He didn't offer meaningless platitudes or expressions of sympathy; he made no attempt to conjure up expiation. What he gave her was quiet understanding and acceptance. And that was all she needed.

  At length the tears expended themselves, and she lay against him, exhausted by emotion yet strangely purged, peaceful for the first time in many years. She could hear the slow strong beating of his heart, feel the dampness of his shirt beneath her fevered face, and she thought distantly, there is something right about this. Something so...good. And she felt as though she could stay that way forever.

  "I never told anyone that before," she said softly.

  She felt something brush against her hair—his fingertips, perhaps, or his lips. "I'm glad you told me."

  She took a breath, trying to strengthen herself for the moment when she must inevitably move away, and released it shakily. "When I came here, I felt so ashamed and guilty. I didn't even tell anyone who my father was. The story was in all the papers, and I didn't want anyone to know. I kept thinking if I had done my job better, if I had worked harder to find the real criminals—if I had believed him..."

  Unexpectedly, the tears welled up again, but this time she scrubbed them away angrily. "Damn," she whispered, and made herself move away from David and the comfort he offered. She sat up straight, made one last swipe at her face and drew another deep breath. In a moment, she was in control.

  "So." She looked at him, apologizing for neither the confession nor the tears. "Now you know who I am," she said simply, "and why I'm the way I am. Why what I do is more than just a job and why I have to be so absolutely certain I always do it right. I guess—" And she hesitated there, uncertain, hovering on the edge of a discovery she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to make. "We're both atoning for something in a way, aren't we?"

  He looked at her soberly. "Yes. I think we are."

  But that was too much. Too many feelings, too many recognitions, too many changes; perhaps too many truths. In these past few minutes she had been closer to David Carey than she had been to any other person in her life, and nothing between them could possibly ever be the same again. And how was she supposed to deal with that?

  At the moment she couldn't deal with it at all. She stood abruptly. "It's warm in here, isn't it?"

  She crossed the room to the patio door that opened out onto a wide courtyard. She slid it open and stepped outside.

  There was a crisp, electric feeling to the air. The wind bent the tops of trees overhead but only occasionally did a cool gust dip down to touch Teale's skin. The buildings surrounding her were dark, and the sky overhead was layered in pillows of gray-black that were occasionally backlit by a silent flash of lightning. The night was charged and static, poised on the edge of excitement.

  Teale stood there, breathing deeply, tasting the night and letting the rush of the wind cleanse her mind. She had learned to love coastal storms since she had been here, even the distant, unfulfilled ones like this. Her nervous system responded on an instinctive level to the changes in the air, making her feel invigorated and renewed. Eager.

  The flashes of heat lightning, the buffeting currents of wind, the swelling cloud cover were potent and alive; they reflected the changes that were taking place within her. There was the taste of danger in the air, just as there was an edge of danger to her changing relationship with David, but she didn't feel threatened. She let herself be carried along on the tides of change; she almost welcomed it. She heard his footsteps behind her, but he didn't speak for a time. They stood together, watching the distant storm, and in their silence they were as close as two people could be.

  He said softly, after a time, "It's magnificent, isn't it?"

  "Yes." She rubbed her fingers over the gooseflesh on her arms, and, noticing, he slipped his arm around her, warming her.

  "No rain," she commented
unnecessarily.

  "We won't get any out of this one," he responded with the sagacity of a longtime sea dweller. "Just a lot of wind and thunder."

  "I like it better this way. Before the rain. It's— powerful, somehow."

  "Expectation always is."

  She glanced at him, her heart speeding a little. His face was quiet and sternly etched in the darkness, absorbed in the beauty of the storm. Where their bodies touched—from shoulder to hip—and where his arm lightly encircled her, she was warm; the remainder of her body was cool in comparison. Expectation was what she felt as she stood with him in the dark and the wind; it soared through her veins like a potion and tightened the muscles of her stomach.

  He looked down at her gently, referring to their previous conversation as though there had never been an interruption. "Is that all you are, Teale? An officer of the law, a woman with a job to do?"

  She had to move her eyes away. The rhythm of her heart was a slow uneven pumping, and her throat was dry. "I'm good at my job."

  "So am I. But lately... I've come to realize that's not enough. There has to be more to life, I think."

  She could feel a tightening in her chest, spreading upward to her throat. The muscles in her arms and legs strained, and every nerve in her body pulsed with awareness. She wanted to be held by him; she wanted to hold him, fiercely, with all the strength of her body. She made herself stand still.

  "Do you mean—like significant others?" She tried to keep her voice light.

  "Yes," he admitted slowly. "But until tonight, I don't think I ever realized how important that was."

  Her heart skipped then resumed its beat. No, she thought firmly. I'm not going to let this happen. It was only the aftermath of traumatic memories, the expenditure of emotion, the wild, provocative character of the night. She was vulnerable, she was confused. She wasn't going to let this happen.

  She said steadily, "I prefer to concentrate on my job. It's not easy for me to share myself with other people."