by Anne Stuart
Once again the heat and humidity of the habitat hit her as they stepped through the open door. The air was so thick she could hardly breathe, and even though the sun was filtered through the thick canopy of trees way overhead, she could still feel the heat beating down on her. In her case they wouldn't have had to drug or restrain her—just an hour or two in this liquid air and she'd be unable to move.
John was lying on the gurney, motionless, in the same position he'd been in twelve hours before when she'd left him. Mick busied himself with the hand restraints, loosening them a marginal amount. "I don't dare do any more, miss," he said apologetically. "At least this won't cut off the circulation. We don't want him able to slip his hands through, now, do we?"
"Of course not," she said absently. "You can go back to your game, Mick. I'll be a while."
"I don't know as I ought to leave you…"
"I'll be fine. You can hear and see me, and as Alf put it so charmingly, all I have to do is scream and you'll come running with the tranquilizer gun. Right?"
"Right," he said, still looking doubtful.
"Go along, Mick," she said gently. "I'll be fine."
She waited until the door closed behind him, closing them in together. In the daylight it was impossible to see beyond the fine mesh screen, but she had little doubt that Alf would manage to watch them and beat Mick at cards at the same time.
"How are you doing today, John?" she asked in a quiet voice, not much above a whisper. "Did they tie your wrists too tight? I thought I'd warned Alf, but I guess he doesn't learn. Are you still feeling as drugged as you were before?"
He didn't move, his eyelids didn't even flicker in his still, closed face. For some reason she'd been keeping her distance, but at his utter stillness she moved closer, staring at him in fascination. "You must hate it here," she murmured. "I don't blame you. Stolen away from your life in the wild, drugged and beaten. I don't believe you really killed Dr. McDonough, though I wouldn't be surprised if you'd wanted to. I think I would, too."
John didn't move. She came closer, so that she could keep her voice lower. She could hear Alf and Mick laughing as they played cards, and she felt a faint sense of relief. At least they wouldn't be staring at her, watching her every move, listening to her every word.
"I know how you feel," she murmured. The words wouldn't make sense, but the sooner he got used to the sound of her voice the better. "I feel trapped sometimes, and there's nothing I can do about it. In my case I chose my own trap, though. And most of the time it's perfectly fine. I like my job, my apartment, the city. It's very intellectually stimulating. Though I don't suppose you'd understand much about that kind of thing. I can go to the theater, to concerts, eat any kind of food I want. I don't really like to shop, but if I did I'd be able to find anything I wanted. It's really a good life for a single woman."
She took a deep breath and put her hands on him again. She'd brought a tape measure this time, and she carefully measured the length of his arms, his legs, his cranium, all without trying to jar him too much. "It would be a different matter if my parents were still alive," she continued. "But they're not, and since I was an only child I don't really have any ties. School became my family, and I've really been perfectly happy. I mean, where else could I go? Just take off? No, I belong in the city, even if it does feel like a straitjacket sometimes.
"I used to wish I'd been a normal sort of daughter, instead of some weird, intellectual freak. Maybe I'd be married now, have children, live in the suburbs. Though something tells me I wouldn't like the suburbs. At least in the city you can get a sense of privacy. Nobody pays any attention to you there."
She looked down into his still, beautiful face. "All I've done is spend the last ten years of my life in college. Why does anyone need two Ph.D.s and a master's degree? There's a limit to how much pleasure you can get out of being smarter than people twice your age. As a matter of fact, I think my pleasure in that ran out when I was about twenty. I'm almost thirty now, and the fact of the matter is, I'm sick of my life. Sometimes I think there's nothing I'd like better than to have some wild-game hunters carry me off to live in a rain forest. Depending, of course, on what they looked like," she added with a soft laugh.
She tilted his head slightly to look at the rope burns wreathed around his neck. They must have been horrible in the beginning. Now, almost three months later, the bruising was still vivid, and he was still only able to make growling sounds.
Though for all she knew, he'd never made any other kind of sound. "Your neck looks awful," she said under her breath. "Maybe I'm just as happy in my city apartment after all. I wouldn't want to be half strangled."
He had new bruises on his arm, and it was easy enough to guess what caused it. An overly enthusiastic jab of a hypodermic needle. If Alf had agreed to cut back in quantity, he'd obviously had to make up for it in delivery.
"He's a pig," she said softly. "I don't know how I'll get him to stop hurting you, but I promise I will. I need you to come out of that fog, to try to communicate with me. I know you don't want to trust me, but I'm the only one who can help you."
He didn't twitch, didn't blink, didn't move a muscle. Her soft words had fallen on deaf ears, and she started to pull back, defeated.
Not fast enough. His hand closed around her like a python's death grip, so hard that she felt her bones grind together. She stifled her moan of pain, but clearly not enough.
"What's going on in there?" Alf's voice came across the intercom.
It took all her effort to fight through the pain and sound calm. "Nothing, Mr. Droggan. I'm just talking to the subject."
"I told you, he can't understand you," Alf said. "Why don't you come on out here, grab and beer and join us in a friendly game of cards. I'll beat the pants off you."
"You wish," Libby said in a tight voice. She stared down at the man lying on the gurney. His hand was wrapped around her wrist, so tightly that her hand was white beneath his grip. Apart from that he looked the same, his eyes closed, his breathing even.
"Let go of me," she whispered. "You're hurting me.
He didn't seem to have even heard her. She wondered whether he even knew what he was doing, or whether it was simply a reflex, but she wasn't sure she cared. It hurt unbearably, enough so that she was shaking, and she didn't know how to stop him.
"Please," she whispered in a trembling voice. "You're going to break my wrist. I don't mean you any harm, but if the men find out they'll come in here and hurt you. I don't want that to happen. Please, let go of me."
He didn't respond, and the grip on her wrist was like fire. Her hand was going numb, but not a nice, pain-free numb. A burning, agonizing numbness.
It would be useless to try to pry his long fingers off her wrist, and she didn't even bother to try. Instead she put her other hand over his manacle-like grip, trying to soothe him with long, gentle strokes. "Please," she whispered again, and her voice broke. "It hurts."
She was beyond thinking, she was just trying to concentrate on controlling the pain, when he released her, so suddenly that she fell backward, onto the ground, faint with pain.
"What's up in there?" Alf's voice thundered over the speaker.
"Tripped," she said breathlessly, cradling her arm against her stomach. "Tripped over my own clumsy feet," she said in a stronger voice, scrambling to stand up again. She felt light-headed, dizzy from the pain. She looked down, and the red marks around her wrist were a suitable match to the marks around John's neck. She flexed her hand cautiously, wiggling her fingers, but everything moved easily.
She glanced up at him, but he lay there like a monolith. Maybe he hadn't even known what he was doing with that fierce, painful grip. Except that if he hadn't known, he could have easily broken her wrist, she knew that now. His strength was phenomenal, even with it blunted by tranquilizers, and he could have snapped her wrist with no effort at all.
He hadn't. And he'd released her. She didn't dare get too close to him, but it seemed as if his breathing was mar
ginally faster. His face was immobile, and there was no way she could tell if he had even the faintest trace of consciousness. She wasn't going to get close enough to find out.
"Don't do that again," she whispered. "I told you I'd help you, and I will. But you have to promise not to hurt me."
Who was she kidding? He didn't understand a word she was saying, much less concepts like promise or even hurt. And how could she help him if he continued to present a danger?
And for that matter, when and why had she decided to help him? It was the damned weakness of hers, humanizing the data. But this data was human, a living, breathing man kept captive by a billionaire and a sweet fool and a sadist. And she was the only one who could help him.
She just wasn't sure why she should try.
"You all right, miss?" Mick looked up from his card game as she reentered the observation room.
"Just fine," she said, keeping her bruised wrist out of sight. "I'm going back to my room to read over some of Professor McDonough's notes. I'll be back later."
"Not too much later, Doc," Alf said. "I kept the place open for you last night as a special favor, but from now on it's lights out for Tarzan by 6:00 p.m. Mick and I need a life, too."
She didn't bother arguing with him. If they abandoned the observation room early then it would give her more of a chance to see John without an audience. To see whether he was really as unconscious as he appeared to be. To see whether she could find some way to communicate with him without Alf watching and listening.
To see if she could find any answers to the thousand-and-one questions that plagued her. Who was he? What was he doing on a remote island off Australia?
And why had she decided to help him?
Chapter Five
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The first thing Libby did when she got back to her room was empty out a tray of ice cubes onto a hand towel and wrap it around her wrist. The marks of his long, strong fingers stood out, dark against her pale flesh, troubling. Had it been a reflex on his part? Had he wanted to hurt her as he'd hurt Alf? For what reason?
There she went again, identifying with the data. Richard would be totally disgusted with her. Which, in fact, was a good thing, since she was totally disgusted with Richard and with the fact that she'd ever considered him attractive. Well, he had been attractive, she admitted to herself, in a bland, civilized way.
She froze in horror. Why was she suddenly considering "civilized" to be a detriment? One day in the presence of a wild man and she was starting to alter her idea of what was attractive? In a week she might even start thinking that she wasn't made for city life, when she knew perfectly well she was. She loved the city, the noise, the bustle, the excitement. She could never live anywhere else, certainly not in the wilderness—
"Stop it," she said out loud, the sound of her voice startling in the stillness. "It's jet lag."
Jet lag. And the still figure of a man, a savage, trapped like a beautiful wild animal, caged and drugged and destroyed.
She kicked off her shoes and lay back on the bed. It was actually a better mattress than the one she owned in Chicago—she'd been meaning to replace hers. Obviously Edward J. Hunnicutt wanted the best for his minions.
Minions. Was she a minion as well? She certainly never thought that was her goal in life. And yet here she was, at the back end of beyond where she wasn't even sure what country they were in, at the beck and call of a billionaire, doing something she wasn't even sure she wanted to be doing. For the sake of grant money and career. For some reason, she wasn't sure if it was a price she was willing to pay.
She needed to see John without anyone around, watching. To see whether he could communicate with her. It would be safe enough—she'd just be certain not to get within reach. Even trussed up and drugged he'd managed to do a certain amount of damage to her wrist. But if she kept her distance, watched out for those strong hands of his, she'd be fine.
She needed him to open his eyes. It was that simple. If she could look into his eyes she'd be able to tell whether he'd be able to communicate. Whether he was a man or an animal.
She ought to set the alarm clock. She didn't want another night to go by without finding out what lay behind the dark, impassive face of the creature tied to the gurney. But she was too tired to move. Just a moment's rest, she thought, and then she'd get up, find something to eat, set the alarm. Just a few minutes more…
She woke up in a pool of water. The ice had melted, soaking her clothes, dripping on the bed beneath her. The climate of the room was controlled so perfectly she hadn't even realized she'd been soaking wet, and she moaned as she climbed out of bed.
The lights went from dim to bright, and she glanced at the clock. Five-thirty. It had to be morning, not afternoon—she couldn't have slept the clock around. She wouldn't be so wet if twenty-four hours had passed.
She stripped off the damp clothes and dumped them on the bathroom floor. She pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, shoved her feet in sandals and opened the door into the hallway.
The observation room was dark. The door opened automatically for her, a relief when she'd half expected it to be locked. The lights came up to half-wattage, probably on some sort of timer, and she walked to the screen, staring intently into the habitat.
She couldn't see anything in the darkness. She couldn't tell whether the sun had risen yet or not, but if it had it hadn't managed to penetrate the thick growth that surrounded the area. She couldn't see anything, and she had no idea how to control the lights other than walk in there and trigger the automatic sensor.
The door to the habitat wasn't locked, either. Obviously Alf was much too trusting. Not that he'd have any right to forbid her—after all, she was here to observe the subject, and scientific observation should come first.
But she somehow suspected that Alf wasn't going to see it that way.
She stepped into the darkness, and the door slid shut behind her. Unfortunately the lights didn't come on, and she had to make do with the dim glow from beyond the one-way screen and the faint light of dawn filtering down through the towering trees overhead.
She headed in the direction of the gurney, moving carefully, trusting her instincts. She didn't want to make the mistake of bumping into it, giving him a chance to grab her again with that manacle-like grip. She'd managed to get him to release her before, but there was no guarantee she could do so again. Besides, if he grabbed her already-bruised wrist she'd probably scream loud enough to wake Alf and Mick, and that was the last thing she wanted.
She took a cautious step forward, her eyes slowly growing accustomed to the dimness. She could make out the shape of the gurney in the shadows, and she moved toward it, then stopped in shock.
The gurney was empty.
She looked up, out over the vast expanse and into the barely glimmering darkness, and her skin prickled. Something, someone was watching her.
She tried to calm herself. It wasn't necessarily John, she reminded herself. Alf and Mick might put him somewhere else for the night, and the top of the habitat was open to the sky. Birds could swoop in and nest, and probably other creatures could climb whatever fenced the place in, or burrow under the electric wire. It was probably something utterly harmless, staring at her out of the darkness. Like a raccoon, or the Australian equivalent of a raccoon. She had absolutely nothing to worry about. She just had to get her butt out of there as quickly as she could.
The one thing she wasn't going to do was run. Years ago, when she'd been a child, she'd been visiting her grandmother's farm in Vermont, and she'd gone for a walk in an adjoining field, only to come face-to-face with about twenty baby cows. The heifers had stared at her curiously, and she'd stared back. And then she'd started to back up, away from them.
To her horror they'd moved forward, curious. She walked a little faster, the fence in the distance. They speeded up as well. Suddenly she'd panicked, turning and running to the gate and vaulting over it as the herd of cows stampeded after her, their hooves thundering on t
he ground.
She'd been sitting in the dirt, crying, when her grandmother had come out. She'd taken one look at Libby with her grazed knees and dirty, tear-streaked face, walked over to the fence where the heifers were crowded, and said in a loud, commanding voice, "Shoo!"
And they'd scattered, running off in fear for their life.
They never stopped teasing Libby about her terror of the harmless heifers. Probably one reason why she cherished the city. At least there all the wild animals were on two legs.
And so was the wild animal she'd come in search of, she reminded herself grimly. And her still-sore wrist was proof that he was a great deal more dangerous than a herd of curious heifers.
She took a step backward, then another, unable to shake the memory of the cows. It had been when she'd turned her back and run that they'd broken free, charging after her. As long as she stayed calm, in control, then she'd be safe. Show fear, and she was toast.
The ground was rough beneath her feet, but she didn't waste her time glancing down. It would be too dark to see, and she didn't want to distract herself. She let her feet slide lightly across the dirt, so that she wouldn't accidentally trip on something, trying to be calm. She hadn't made the mistake of saying anything—he might not even know she was trapped in there with him, defenseless, unprotected.
She was almost at the door. A faint glow filtered through the screen, and the sky overhead was growing paler in the morning light. Just a few more feet, she thought. Surely she could turn and run now. He wouldn't be able to catch her in that short distance. If he was even inside the habitat, if he was even aware that she'd been incredibly stupid enough to have stepped inside it without making sure he was strapped down.
Another foot, and she could turn and run. Just one more, and she'd be safe. One more.
She spun around, ready to sprint to the door, and slammed up against him.
She let out a muffled shriek of terror, one she tried to stifle, though she wasn't sure why. He seemed absolutely huge, looming over her in the darkness, and she'd never felt so small and fragile in her entire life.