A PERFECT RENDEZVOUS

Jury

The following morning, the jury retired to debate their verdict and Zayn Malik, who was free on $1 million bail, returned to his suite at the Crescent, where he alternately considered trying to make a run for South America and trying to murder Tony Austin instead. Tony seemed like the most logical suspect to him, yet neither Zayn's lawyers nor the private detectives they hired could turn up any damning evidence against him except that he still had an expensive drug habit—a habit that he would have been better able to indulge if Rachel had lived to marry him after divorcing Zayn. Furthermore, if Zayn hadn't decided at the last minute to change the script, Tony, not Rachel, would have been the one shot. Zayn tried to remember if he'd ever mentioned to Tony that he didn't like the ending as written and was thinking of changing it. Sometimes, he thought out loud and bounced ideas off others without remembering he'd done it. He'd written notes about changing the ending in his copy of the script, and he'd left the script lying around, but all of the witnesses denied having known anything about it.

Like a caged tiger, he prowled the length of his suite, cursing fate and Rachel and himself. Over and over again, he went through his own lawyer's closing statement, trying to make himself believe Arthur Handler had been able to sway the jury from convicting him. Handler's only real, only plausible defence had been that Zayn would have had to be a complete fool to commit so blatant and bizarre a crime when he knew every scrap of evidence was going to point directly at him. When it came out during the trial that Zayn owned a large gun collection and was fully familiar with various types of guns and shells, Handler had tried to point out that since that was true, Zayn would have also been able to switch the shells without leaving a clumsy fingerprint on the gun.

The idea of trying to make a run for South America and then vanish revolved around in Zayn Malik's mind, but it was a lousy idea, and he knew it. For one thing, if he ran, then the jury would decide he was guilty even if they'd been going to acquit him. Second, his face was so well known, particularly now with all the press coverage of the trial, that he'd be spotted within minutes wherever he went. The only good thing he could count on was that Tony Austin would never work in films again, now that all his vices and perversions had come out in the trial and made headlines.

* * *

By the next morning when there was a knock at the door, frustration and suspense had twisted every muscle of his body into knots. He yanked the door open and frowned at the only friend he had ever trusted implicitly. Zayn hadn't wanted Liam Payne at the trial, partly because he was humiliated and partly because he didn't want the taint Zayn now carried to rub off on the famous industrialist. Since Liam had been in Europe until yesterday negotiating for a company, he was buying, it had been easy for Zayn to sound optimistic when his friend phoned. Now, Zayn took one look at his friend's grim features and knew that he'd already discovered the dire truth and had obviously flown to Dallas because of it.

"Don't look so happy to see me," Liam said dryly, walking into the suite.

"I told you there was no reason to come here," Zayn countered, closing the door. "The jury's out right now. Everything is going to be fine."

"In which case," Liam replied, undeterred by his unenthusiastic greeting, "we can while away the hours playing some poker. O'Hara's putting the car away and arranging for our rooms," he added, referring to his chauffeur/bodyguard. He shrugged out of his suit coat, glanced at Zayn Malik's haggard features, and reached for the telephone. "You look like hell," he said as he ordered an enormous breakfast for three sent up to the room.

* * *

"This sure is my lucky day," Joe O'Hara said six hours later as he scooped a handful of winnings from the centre of the table. A huge man with a prize fighter's battered features and a wrestler's physique, he hid his private worry over Zayn Malik's future behind an attitude of boisterous optimism that fooled no one, but somehow made the tense atmosphere in the suite more bearable.

"Remind me to cut your salary," Liam said wryly, looking at the pile of money accumulating at his chauffeur's elbow. "I shouldn't be paying you enough to sit in on a game with these stakes."

"You always say that whenever I beat you and Zayn at cards," O'Hara replied cheerfully, shuffling. "This is like the good old days in Carmel when we used to do this a lot. Except it was always night time."

And Zayn's life wasn't hanging in the balance...

The unspoken thought swelled in the heavy silence, broken by the shrill ring of the telephone.

Zayn reached for it, listened, and stood up. "The jury's reached a verdict. I have to go."

"I'll go with you," Liam said.

"I'll bring the car around." O'Hara put in, already reaching for the car keys in his jacket pocket.

"It's not necessary," Zayn said, fighting down his panic. "My attorneys are picking me up." He waited until O'Hara had shaken his hand and left, then he looked at Liam and walked over to the desk. "I have a favour to ask of you." He took a formal document out of the drawer and handed it to his friend. "I had this prepared just in case something goes wrong. It's a power of attorney granting you the absolute right to act on my behalf on anything that pertains to my finances or assets."

Liam Payne looked down at it and his color drained at this proof that Zayn obviously thought there was at least a fifty–fifty chance he'd be convicted.

"It's just a formality, a contingency plan. I'm sure you'll never need to use it," Zayn lied.

"So am I," Liam said just as untruthfully.

The two men looked at each other, nearly identical in their height, build, and colouring and in their matching expressions of proud, false confidence. As Zayn reached for his suit coat, Liam cleared his throat and reluctantly said, "If ... if I were to need to use this, what do you want me to do?"

Looking in the mirror, Zayn knotted his tie and said with a shrug and a lame attempt at humor, "Just try not to bankrupt me, that's all."

An hour later, in the courtroom, standing beside his attorneys, Zayn watched the bailiff hand the judge the jury's verdict. As if the words were spoken in a faraway tunnel, he heard the judge say,

"—guilty of murder in the first degree..."

Then after a brief trial to assess punishment, Zayn heard another verdict more excruciating than the last: "Punishment is assessed at forty-five years to be served in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice at Amarillo... Bail pending appeal is denied on the basis of sentence exceeding fifteen years... Prisoner is remanded into custody..."

Zayn refused to wince; he refused to do anything that might reveal the truth: He was screaming inside.

He stood rigidly straight, even when someone grabbed his wrists, yanked them behind his back, and slapped handcuffs around them.