Miami Days and Truscan (K)nights

by Gail Roughton

  “Don’t worry. I know where we are.”

  He made a whining sound deep in his throat, and I couldn’t resist.

  “Don’t whine, honey. I hate it when you whine.”

  Of course, he issued a half growl at that, and I laughed. Wolf really wasn’t that hard to understand if you knew the personality underneath it.

  “I’m sorry, I know it’s nothing to joke about. Well, welcome to my world. We’re in Cape Florida State Park. It’s on one of the islands off the coast of Miami, in the Biscayne Bay. I mean, really, welcome to my world. See that lighthouse?” I pointed. “That’s how I’m sure where we are, which is good, ’cause when it’s time to go back, I don’t want to be running around looking for the exact spot.”

  Dalph made another guttural noise.

  “Of course we’re going to get back. It sent us for a reason. Thank God the park closes at sunset and doesn’t have a campground. I’d hate to be dodging campers. Keep an eye open, I don’t know if they have security guards roaming around or not. Probably not, and hopefully only one or two if at all.”

  I started walking up toward the area rest rooms and pavilions, looking for a pay phone. Dalph followed me, more growling emerging from the back of his throat. Poor baby; I know he was frustrated as hell, but I really didn’t want to explain right now. I needed confirmation of my theory, and I needed it from a man Dalph probably wouldn’t be too happy meeting. Ex-boyfriends and lovers were all well and fine when they were a world and dimension away but I figured that might change once said ex-boyfriend and lover materialized in the flesh. However, I had no choice. I stopped and laid it on the line for him.

  “Look, I know why we’re here. I know more than that. Remember when you told me about the stones the first time? You said, ‘some even say they open the doors between the worlds.’ Well, they do. And they choose when they do and they choose whom they let through. Your mother came through because you have to be exactly who you are, right now, to be the king who’ll bring home the last Power Stone. Johnny came through because you have to be exactly who you are, right now. I came through because I’m the final reason you are who you are, right now. And also because I know what it sent us after and how to get it, what your visions actually show. And I’m real sorry about this,” I said as I wound down, feeling absurdly like Marty at the end of Back to the Future II, “but there’s only one man who can help us now.”

  Was he getting all of this? Any of this? Did the Tornans’ brains still function in fully human manner during the change? I thought it must, because this time there wasn’t any half growl about it; it was full-throated and would have been quite frightening had I not known I was talking, more or less, with my husband.

  “And you are not to eat him!” I ordered firmly and proceeded to the bank of phones.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  As I punched in the zero, I simultaneously thanked God that collect calls could be placed from pay phones and prayed that Carlos was actually at home and would actually pick up the phone. In terms of distance, especially as measured by car, we weren’t that far away from the Coral Gables beach house; in practical terms, I didn’t know how I’d get a wolf across the Rickenbacker Causeway without attracting attention, no matter how late at night it was. Not to mention it would be a long walk from the State Park up the Key to the Causeway, at least for me. I supposed it wouldn’t give Dalph much trouble.

  The call went through and I heard Carlos’ “hello.” I had seldom been as grateful to hear anything. The Operator’s mechanical tones kicked in.

  “I have a collect call from a Tess Ames to Carlos Ramos, will you accept the charges?”

  “Is this a joke? Because whoever you are, it’s not funny!”

  I’d been gone going on two months, of course the Coast Guard would have looked for the plane and of course they wouldn’t have found any wreckage and of course, Carlos thought I was dead.

  “Carlos!” I shouted quickly, over the operator. “It’s really me, please, please, take the call!”

  “Tess? What the hell…”

  “Sir, will you accept the charges?”

  “Yes yes yes!”

  The line smoothed out, and I talked quickly, trying to stem the questions I knew were about to bombard me.

  “Carlos, I’m in Cape Florida State Park, you know, the one with the lighthouse. I’ll be in front of the park gates, I don’t want to get picked up on any security cameras and if there’s a security guard, I don’t want to be seen. Can you come get me, please?”

  “What in hell are you doing there? And where in hell have you been? Do you know how big the search was? And why don’t you want to be seen, for God’s sake? Were you kidnapped or something? Shouldn’t I call the police?”

  “God, no! Whatever you do, don’t call anybody. I’ll explain when you get here. Can you just please, please, just do as I ask because it’s what I need you to do?!”

  “Holy hell, Tess, I thought you were dead!”

  “I know, I’m sorry. I’ll explain when you get here. And can you please not drive the Porsche or the Ferrari? Use the Escalade.” No way was I fitting Dalph into a two-seater sports car.

  “Anything else?” I heard the impatient exasperation in his voice as he tried to make sense of this. I knew it was driving him crazy.

  “Well, actually–” I hesitated, but the growl I heard decided me. It wasn’t Dalph, it was my stomach.

  “Actually?”

  “I’d freaking kill for a pizza!”

  Dead silence. And then in the calm, measured tones that he only used when he was holding onto his last thread, he said, “I will be in front of the park gates in about a half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes. Since I have to stop for pizza. And you had damn well better be there, and ready to talk.”

  The line went dead, and I almost sagged in relief, both because he’d been home and I had talked to him, and because I wasn’t talking to him anymore. Carlos wasn’t noted for restraint; I knew Dalph had heard both sides of the conversation.

  And it occurred to me that I’d really never been any good at analyzing men, and that it had taken Dalph to give me a bit of insight. I’d shaken Carlos up. Badly. And as I had been ready to dismiss Dalph as a barbarian and an idiot simply because he was a man, so had I also done Carlos considerable injustice, probably over the whole course of our association. Because all at once, I didn’t think he was the irresponsible playboy I’d always considered him.

  Furthermore, I had never told Dalph something he needed to hear. Trips through The Door were really good for self-analysis. I sat down on one of the picnic benches.

  “Dalph, before we head out to the gates, I want you to know this. Carlos is the only person who can help us, and he will. When I explain, about the door and Trusca and Pria—he’s going to eat it up with a spoon. He’s an adventurer at heart, his family goes back to Columbus’ second voyage, the Spanish Conquistadores and all that, he’d probably would have been a lot happier if he’d been the one building the family business instead of the one running it. He’s a good man, really, and he was really good to me over the past couple of years, business-wise and otherwise. So please, you can’t eat him, or even bite him, okay?”

  Dalph laid his head on my lap and made a sound I took as assent.

  “And it’s occurred to me that though I’ve certainly admitted this to other people, and even though I’m sure you know it, I’ve never actually told you. So I want to tell you now. I never in my wildest dreams thought it was possible that I’d ever be so in love with someone that I can’t even imagine living without them. It’s different, you know, loving somebody, and being in love with them. But you can be both. I think only the luckiest people are both. And I not only love you, I am so in love with you that I don’t know how I’d live if I lost you. I’m sorry I never said it before. So can you please trust me to get us what we need here, and get us back to Trusca?”

  He raised his head and nuzzled my face.

  “Okay. So let’s start walkin
g. We got a pick-up point to get to.”

  It wasn’t that far back up the boardwalk to the parking areas and the road back to the entrance gate; at least, I’d never thought so when I was driving, but tonight, after six—or was it seven?—days in the saddle and nights on the ground, I was pretty beat. I’m not really sure how long it took us to get back to the entrance gates. As I had expected, they were closed, but as they were merely the swing-type open and shut bars, we didn’t have any problem in passing through them.

  It must have taken us longer than I’d thought; either that, or Carlos had shot every red light and broken every speed limit in Miami on the way over, which was actually his customary driving style anyway. The Black Escalade was pulled over to the side of the road, parked about twenty yards in front of the gates. He was leaning back against the hood, arms crossed and foot impatiently tapping. When he saw me, he started toward me, arms open, the gesture so honest that I didn’t even think about it. I started running and ended up in a bear hug of gigantic proportions, which, like Dalph’s greeting the morning he rescued me from the Prian kidnapping attempt, almost left broken ribs.

  Then he thrust me back so he could look at me. “You look like hell! And you cut your hair!” Then he grabbed me forward again and resumed the pressure threatening my ribcage.

  What was it with men and long hair? I heard the rumble of Dalph’s low growl and figured we’d hugged enough. I pulled out just as Carlos caught sight and sound of Dalph.

  “Tess, what the—that’s a—be careful! Don’t just walk up to it!”

  I stood beside my husband, hand on his head. “This is Dalph. He’s with me. He won’t hurt you.”

  “It’s growling!”

  “He’s just protective. Can we go now?”

  “What about the damn – what is it? That’s not a dog, Tess, it’s a wolf!”

  “I know that, Carlos. Really, he’s with me. Okay?”

  “You have completely lost your mind!”

  “Totally. So can we go now?”

  He threw his hands up in exasperation and opened the back door of the Escalade.

  “Get it in.”

  “He. He’s not an it, he’s a he,” I corrected. “Dalph, please, no trouble, okay?”

  Dalph, bless him, complied, and Carlos shut the back door and opened the passenger front door, from which spilled forth the glorious smell of Pizza Hut’s Supreme Pizza, truly one of the most marvelous scents ever to grace man’s—and woman’s—nose.

  “Oh, my God!” I exclaimed, scrambling in and jerking box open. Dalph’s nose lifted as he came to point in appreciation of the spicy smell of hot deliciousness. I grabbed a piece and aimed in the general direction of his mouth while grabbing another piece with my other hand. We’d totally devoured those first pieces by the time Carlos got around to the driver’s door and got in. I grabbed second pieces for us both and fought for enough control to slow down enough for conversation to be a possibility. Carlos wasn’t noted for his patience. There were lots of questions coming.

  “You should have said something,” Carlos said, as he started the engine. “I could always have stopped by Kroger’s for dog food when I was picking up your pizza.”

  “Sarcasm does not become you,” I said, or at least that’s what I tried to say, over the mouthful of hot, marvelous taste, even though it certainly did and he’d always been a master at it.

  His tone changed. “Tess, where have you been that I’m not supposed to call anyone about you? And where’s Ken? There was no plane wreckage. The Coast Guard searched for two weeks. And I still have boats checking the islands.”

  “You what? You’ve had boats checking the islands for almost two months?”

  “Well, what the hell do you think? That I’m just leaving any of my people out there without making as sure as I can that they’re not hanging on to some unmapped reef of coral? Or that I’d give up on you when you might be hurt, dying of thirst, or starving? Which you obviously are, are you and the wolf going to eat the whole thing?”

  “Want some?” I asked lightly, to cover how shaken I was that he’d expended so much time, effort, and money searching for a needle in a haystack.

  “No, I want to know where you’ve been and where Ken is!”

  “Ken didn’t survive the crash but a few minutes, he’s dead,” I said, with no intention of ever elaborating any further on that point.

  “And where in the hell did you crash?!”

  Crunch time. Here went nothing.

  “I’ve been inside—or through—or out—the Bermuda Triangle. To the other side. And now back. For a while.”

  Dead silence.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know all the oddball theories of the Bermuda Triangle and how it might be a door to another dimension? Well, it’s not a myth. It is. We went through the door and we crashed. There are two major powers in that world. One’s called Trusca, one’s called Pria. We crashed over the Prian border and the Truscans rescued me with about five minutes to spare. Literally. You don’t want to be taken by the Prians. And that world, Carlos, it’s not like ours, it’s—it—” At a loss, I fell back on Johnny’s words.

  “It runs on magic and portents and omens. It’s more or less a medieval fairy tale world. Are you plotting the quickest route to the nearest mental hospital? Please don’t, this is me, Carlos, you’ve trusted me with multi-million dollar deals. I’m not making it up. I had to be somewhere, you know. I didn’t pick up a tame wolf in the Everglades, either.”

  Dead silence again, which I strove to fill.

  “If you can just let me stay the night in my room, I can explain better in the morning. I’m tired and dirty and I probably smell, and I’m hungry—” I glanced down at the empty pizza box. “Well, okay, I’m not hungry anymore. Can you just wait till morning? You’ll understand a lot better, I promise.”

  At least that got him to break his dead silence.

  “I’ve thought you were dead for two months, you call me to come rescue you, and you want to stay in your room tonight?”

  I cringed. I’d always been very conscious of mixing business and pleasure. Carlos and Ramos International entertained a lot; ergo, I’d always maintained a room at his house that I used when business/house parties were going on so that I could easily serve as a combination hostess and trouble-shooter, and Carlos was forbidden access. My room was for business, his was for pleasure. I’d called him out of the blue, issued orders down to and including the vehicle he drove and a pizza order, and it had never occurred to him to turn me down. And of course he’d expect me to be in his room.

  “Carlos, I’m tired, I’m dirty, I’m trying to figure out the best way to explain all this, and I just can’t explain any better than I already have. At least not tonight. You’ve been way past wonderful, and I know I’m asking a lot for you to take this on faith, and I’ll owe you forever for coming to get me tonight, but please, please, please, don’t call anybody, not the Coast Guard, not the police, not a psychiatrist. I’ll answer any questions you have tomorrow if you can just give me tonight.”

  I tried to make my voice sound as pitiful as I felt. I glanced out the window as I felt the SUV slow; I hadn’t realized we were so close to his house. He turned into the front gates and ran down the driveway to the back garages.

  “You’re going to kill me yet, Tess. I swear you are,” he said as he opened the car door and headed to the back entrance. “Don’t wait for an invitation; you know where your room is.”

  Yes, I did, and the bathroom and shower drew me like a magnet. Endless hot water. I almost salivated at the thought.

  First, though—I turned and flipped the lock. It wasn’t that Carlos was rude or thoughtless or would habitually just charge into a guest’s room without knocking, but I wasn’t exactly an ordinary guest; he was an early riser by habit, and I had him so on edge at the moment that he might not even sleep tonight at all. I looked at Dalph, who’d been uncharacteristically quiet on the ride here, which was probably a good thing.
He was pacing now, though, restlessly moving around the room. I went over to my chest-of-drawers and grabbed a fresh sleep shirt, noting that Carlos had left everything in this room exactly as I had left it, and had further apparently brought some things here from my own apartment, which meant he’d probably handled closing it down. What was that I’d realized earlier tonight? I didn’t know men very well at all and I had so misjudged Carlos on so many things.

  “Dalph, I’m sorry. I know it hurts, but you absolutely can’t just run free in Coral Gables. Please try and settle down while I take a shower. And then we’re going to sleep, I’ve never wanted to sleep more, I don’t think.”

  He raised a quizzical expression toward me. Of course. “A shower’s sort of an American bath. I’ll show you in the morning, you’ll love it. Now, please settle down.”

  I stood under the hot water for a long time, soaking it in, and washed my hair three times and when I’d finished, I came out to find Dalph still pacing, but there wasn’t much I could do about that.

  I got in the bed and patted the covers. “You have to stop pacing, you’re driving me crazy!”

  He jumped up and whined.

  “Dalph, I have talked tonight till I’m blue in the face, first to you and then to Carlos and now back to you, and I absolutely can’t talk anymore tonight. Go to sleep.” I reached over and kissed his muzzle, fell back on the pillow, and knew no more till the first tinges of light began to faintly glow through the window glass. I felt Dalph’s arms around me. I stirred and they tightened; he was lying on the covers. I rose up and glanced over. So that’s what happened; clothes magically morphed into fur along with the flesh, and then came back. I’d wondered about that. I’d have to check the stock of clothes we kept for the guests; he couldn’t walk around like that in Miami. For one thing, he’d die of heat exhaustion.