A PERFECT RENDEZVOUS

A Tail...

By the time Harry pulled into his driveway, it was midnight, and he'd spent all seven of the hours since leaving Zayn's grandmother fighting a mental battle against the insidious doubt and confusion that had haunted him at that house. He'd won his battle and now that he was home, he felt much better. He opened the front door, turned on the living room lights, and looked at the cheerful, cozy room. Here, the idea that Zayn was insane seemed so ludicrous that he was angry with himself for ever entertaining the notion. In this very room, he remembered as he hung his coat in the front closet, Liam and Meredith Payne had spent a wonderful evening with him and bade him good luck and good-bye. Liam Payne, he realized, would have laughed in Mrs. Stanhope's face for suggesting Zayn was insane, and that was exactly what he himself should have done!

Shaking his head in self-disgust, he walked into his bedroom, sat down on the bed, and took Zayn's letter from the nightstand drawer. He reread every beautiful, loving word, and his shame for ever doubting Zayn was as great as his sudden need to scrub away the traces of his journey to Zayn's home. Putting Zayn's letter aside, he pulled off his sweater, stepped out of his pants, then he went into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

He washed his body and his hair as if they'd been contaminated by the malevolent atmosphere of that gloomy pile of rocks that Zayn had once called home. There was no warmth there, not in the house nor the people who lived in it, he thought as he blew his hair dry and brushed it. If anyone was suffering from vicious delusions, it was his grandmother! And her butler! And Zayn's brother, Alex!

Except, Harry's mind argued, that his grandmother had actually seemed more despondent than vicious, at least toward the very end. And the butler had looked a little forlorn but absolutely certain of what he said. Why would they both lie about Zayn's fight with Justin, Harry wondered. Shoving the question aside, Harry yanked the blow dryer's plug out of the wall, tightened the belt of his bathrobe, and walked into the living room. Maybe they only thought Justin and Zayn had quarreled, he decided as he turned on the television set and turned it to CNN so he could watch the latest news.

But there was one fact he couldn't avoid, justify, or dispute: Zayn had lied about the way Justin died.

Either he'd lied to Harry or he'd lied to the police, the newspapers, and the coroner.

His mind skated away from that unsolvable dilemma, and he looked around the living room for something that was out of place, something to physically straighten and put to rights, except there wasn't anything. His normally neat home was now antiseptically clean because he'd spent all his free time during the last five days making it ready to be examined by police and reporters when he vanished. The plant near his left had a yellow leaf on it, so he reached over and plucked it off, then he stopped, warmed by the sudden memory of Zayn in Colorado when he'd watched Harry doing something like this. "Is that a nervous habit you have—straightening things out when you feel uneasy?" Just thinking of that lazy smile of his and the way his eyes had gleamed with amusement made Harry feel all right somehow. He needed to concentrate on those memories, he realized, because they were real. Zayn was real. And he was waiting for Harry in Mexico.

He'd lied to everyone else about Justin's death, Harry decided at that moment, he had not lied to him. He couldn't have done that. Wouldn't have. Harry knew that in his heart. And when he saw Zayn in Mexico, he'd explain why he'd lied to the others. The television program was a special broadcast about China, and since Harry was too keyed up to sleep, he decided to work on the letter he was leaving for his family while he waited for a late-night news update to be certain there wasn't anything about Zayn on it. He'd told Harry to take care of everything within a week and be ready to leave on the eighth day. Five days had already elapsed.

Getting up, Harry went into his room to get his partially written letter, then he sat back down in the rocking chair and reached up to turn on the floor lamp beside him. With the television program droning on in the background about the economic future of China, he reread what he'd written: