Lazlo’s Last Stand

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