A PERFECT RENDEZVOUS

Its not the End...

Pulling on a robe that Katherine had lent him, Harry walked quietly downstairs and found Katherine in the library, watching the 10 P.M. news.

"I didn't expect to see you down here until morning," Katherine said with a surprised smile as she stood up. "I made up a dinner tray for you though, just in case. I'll get it."

"Was there anything important on the news?" Harry asked, unable to keep the apprehension from his voice.

"Nothing about Zayn Malik," Katherine assured him. "You were a main topic of the state and national news, however—your return home from captivity, apparently safe and unharmed, I mean."

When Harry dismissed that with a shrug, Katherine put her hands on her hips and teased, "Do you have any idea how famous you've become?"

"Notorious, you mean," Harry joked, falling into their habitual friendly banter and feeling vastly better than he had in the last two days.

Nodding toward a stack of newspapers and magazines on the lamp table beside Harry's chair, Katherine said, "I saved those for you in case you wanted them for a scrapbook or something. Look through them while I get your tray, or have you seen them already?"

"I haven't seen a newspaper or a magazine in a week," Harry said, reaching for the magazine on top and turning it over to the cover. "Oh good God!" he exploded, torn between anger and laughter as he gazed at his own face on the cover of Newsweek magazine beneath a lurid headline that read, "Harry Mathison—Partner or Pawn?" He tossed that aside and flipped through the rest of the stack, astonished to see pictures of himself plastered across the front pages of dozens of national magazines and newspapers.

Katherine came back in carrying a tray and put it on the table in front of him.

"The whole town has rallied around you," Katherine said with a brief glance at the Newsweek cover. "Mayor Addelson wrote an editorial for the Keaton Crier reminding everyone that no matter what the big-city press says about you, we know you here, and we know you'd never 'take up with' a criminal like Zayn Malik. I think those were his exact words."

Harry's smile wobbled a little and he laid the paper aside. "But you know better. As you heard me tell Carl and Ted, I did 'take up' with him."

"At the time, Addelson was rebutting that truck driver's statement that you seemed to be collaborating willingly in Malik's escape—frolicking in the snow and all that. Harry," she said hesitantly, "do you want to talk to me about it—about him?"

Looking at his friend, Harry remembered the confidences they'd exchanged over the years. They were the same age and had become fast friends almost from the moment Ted introduced them to each other. When Ted and Katherine's marriage fell apart, Katherine had gone back to college and then moved to Dallas. Until now, she'd adamantly refused to return to Keaton, but Harry had visited her often in Dallas at Katherine's insistence. The special friendship that had sprung up instantaneously had somehow survived time and separation, and it was as vital and natural as it had always been. "I think I need to talk about him," Harry admitted after a pause. "Maybe then I'll get him out of my system and be able to start thinking of the future again." Having said that much, he lifted his hands palm up and said helplessly, "I don't even know how to begin."

Katherine curled up on the sofa as if she had all the time in the world and suggested a starting point: "What's Zayn Malik like in real life?"

"What's he like?" Harry mused, drawing a knitted afghan over his lap. For a moment he stared past Katherine's shoulder, trying to think of how to describe Zayn, then he said, "He's hard, Katherine. Very hard. But he's gentle, too. Sometimes, I actually ached inside from the sweetness of the things he did and said." Harry trailed off and then tried again, with examples. "During the first two days I actually thought he might kill me if I defied him. On the third day, I managed to escape from him on a snowmobile I found in the garage..."