Everlasting

The door of the helicopter was opening and the plump man who had run interference for Zack at the theater the first night she'd seen him jumped to the ground. He was dressed in casual jeans and a yellow T-shirt, and was carrying a small cardboard box.

“Perry Bentley. Kira Rubinoff.” Zack introduced them absently as he took the box and handed it to Kira. “Your present.”

“How do you do,” Kira murmured as she opened the box. A camera. A state-of-the-art Nikon-with every conceivable lens and attachment. Her eyes lifted to Zack's. “You had him fly from Switzerland to bring me a camera?”

“You wanted it,” he said simply. “You said it was important to you and Marna.” His brow suddenly furrowed in a frown. “Don't you like it?”

She felt tears sting her eyes. What an extravagant and touching gesture! She felt a surge of feeling so intense it took her breath away. “I love it,” she finally whispered huskily. Her index finger caressed the camera. “It's the most wonderful present I've ever received. Thank you, Zack.”

“It's far more advanced than the first one he bought you,” Bentley said cheerfully. “They've made some amazing strides in technology in the last five years. There are some instructions in the box that will show you how to use the new-” He broke off with a frown as he caught her stunned expression. “Is something wrong?”

“That's what I'm wondering,” she said slowly. “But, yes, I'm beginning to think there may be something very wrong.” She turned to Zack. “You bought me the camera Marna gave me for my eighteenth birthday?”

Zack stiffened warily. “I was going to tell you about that. Somehow I just didn't get around to it.” His voice lowered. “I found myself otherwise distracted.”

Her heart jerked, and for a moment the shock and bewilderment ebbed as she remembered the “distraction.” Then she pulled her attention back to the subject at hand. She had an uneasy feeling this was even more important than it appeared on the surface.

She swiftly lifted her head to meet Bentley's eyes. “Zack was aware that I was outside the theater in Tucson, even though I was careful to keep in the background. Now how do you suppose he knew, Mr. Bentley?”

Bentley cast an uncomfortable glance at Zack. Then, when his employer slowly nodded permission, he said, “The security man who was tailing you called me on the car phone.”

“Tailing me? What security man?”

“The one who has been assigned to protect you for the last seven years,” Bentley said. He was definitely uneasy now and his words came out choppily “Jansen is one of Mr. Damon's best security men.”

Kira felt as if she were lost in a maze of mirrors where nothing appeared as it really was. “Seven years?”

“Actually, it was more like ten,” Zack said quietly. “I became very dissatisfied with Stefan's slipshod security and decided to protect you myself.” He motioned with a jerk of his thumb. “The encampment is through that grove of poplars, Perry. Please go wait for us there.”

“Right,” Bentley said in evident relief before he scurried toward the stand of trees.

“I think you owe me an explanation,” Kira said carefully.

He nodded. “Yes, I think I do too. I first heard about you the summer I was nineteen. Marna had come to the camp to nurse her mother and I was always off in the hills with Paulo so I didn't see much of her at first. Then I began to catch her staring at me.” He smiled crookedly. “Rather like a housewife considering the merits of a piece of meat for a stew. One day she took me aside and told me about the mondava. She also told me about a child called Kira, who was the other half of me. She said that one day, after the child had become a woman, she would send her to me.” He paused. “I didn't believe a word of it. I was accustomed to a certain amount of mysticism, but mysticism is difficult to accept when applied to one's own self. The whole thing sounded like a soap opera or one of those old bodice-ripper novels. A royal princess couldn't be the other half of a half-breed like Zack Damon. Not in real life. So I went back to Arizona and began to dismiss it from my mind.” He slowly shook his head. “I didn't take Marna's determination into account. The first letter came a month later.”

“Letter?”

“She wrote me every month or so. I was moving around a great deal then and I don't know how she managed to keep track of me, but somehow she did.” His eyes met hers. “They were always about you. What you'd said and what you'd done. Occasionally she'd send me a snapshot or a hair ribbon or a page of your homework on which you'd gotten a particularly good grade. I gradually got to know you. I looked forward to those letters as if you were my child. Then, as you grew older, that feeling began to change. You were still mine, but not enough mine. I began to think about the mondava and to believe in it.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I was growing very impatient by the time Marna sent you to me in Tucson. I don't think I could have waited much longer before I came to you. Perhaps Marna knew that.”

“She probably did.” Kira ran her fingers distractedly through her hair. “And she certainly wouldn't have wanted her precious mondava to be spoiled. There's more, isn't there? Marna's rescue was a little too smooth to have been effected on the spur of the moment. You already knew she was being held prisoner when I came to you.”

Zack nodded. “The bribe had been arranged over a month ago. I had a special operative, Steve Dubliss, waiting in Switzerland. We were planning to go in after her in the next few days.”

She shook her head in bewilderment. “You and Marna seem to have planned everything, down to the last detail.” She whirled away from him. “I've just thought of something. I don't believe you've told me the whole story. I have to talk to Marna.”

He fell into step with her as she hurried toward the encampment. “It's not as if we were trying to hurt you,” he said gently. “Why are you so upset, Kira?”

“I can't talk about it now,” she said jerkily. “I have to talk to Marna. I have to know everything.”

He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. He was silent the rest of the way.

Marna was standing on the edge of the little crowd surrounding Perry Bentley, but she broke away as she caught sight of Kira and Zack. She came toward them with a wide smile on her face. “A camera, Kira. How you will love-” She broke off as she caught sight of Kira's tense expression. “What is wrong?”

“She knows everything, Marna,” Zack said with a rueful shrug.

“Not quite everything,” Kira snapped. “But I'm beginning to suspect quite a lot.” She drew a deep breath. “Marna, when we crossed the border back into Tamrovia from Sedikhan and arrived at the Gypsy camp, how did Stefan's soldiers know we'd show up there?”

Marna gazed at her impassively for a long moment. “I told Paulo to send an anonymous message to Stefan telling him when we'd arrive.”

Zack let his breath out in a low whistle. “I didn't know that. Do you suppose Machiavelli had any Gypsy blood?”

Marna shrugged. “If he had been Gypsy, he would have had the sense not to become involved in all those intrigues and enjoyed his life instead. Intrigue should be used only infrequently to accomplish one's ends.”

“You deceived me,” Kira said in disbelief. “I was so frightened and worried about you, and it was you who deliberately arranged for your own capture. Why, Marna, why?”

“It was time for the mondava,” Marna said simply. “I had to find a way to send you to Zack and set it into motion.”

“She only did it for your happiness, Kira,” Zack said quietly.

“I know that.” Kira's voice was charged with tension. “She'd walk through fire to make sure I was happy.”

Marna nodded. “It was for the best.”

“You're both being so marvelously soothing and unconcerned about it all.” Kira's sapphire eyes were suddenly blazing in her pale face. “Don't you realize what you've done? You've manipulated me! All my life I've been just a chess piece for Stefan and my parents to move around the chessboard. I accepted that.” Her smile was bittersweet. “Perhaps not tamely, but I could accept it because they didn't really care about me. But you love me, Marna, and yet you've manipulated me too.” She turned to Zack. “And didn't it ever occur to you to come to me in all those years and not wait for Marna to pull the strings? You know, I don't think it did. I was just an empty-headed doll to you. Well, I'm not a chess piece or a puppet or a doll. I'm none of those things, and I'm not a child, either.”

Zack took an impulsive step toward her. “Kira-”

“No.” She backed away from him. “Don't touch me. I can't think when you touch me. And it's time I stopped