by Ken Goddard
Larry Paxton eyed them all dangerously as he nodded his head.
"It's from Jennifer. You want to hear it?"
Mike Takahara looked down at the two extremely thick-bodied snakes still probing the thin glass walls of the terrarium, then back up at the Bravo Team supervisor.
"I don't think so," he guessed, "but you'd better go ahead anyway."
"'Dear guys,'" Paxton began reading. "'I meant to send this with the shipment, but we got distracted trying to get all those damned things loaded up and out the door before Halahan changed his mind. Hope this gets to you before you open up any of those crates.'"
Paxton looked up to see if his audience was paying attention, and grimly noted that all three of them had immediately moved several feet farther away from Takahara's jury-rigged contraption and the two very large black snakes.
"'If you've already started to unpack them, I hope you're all okay.'"
The three agents simultaneously closed in around their supervisor, backs to the door and facing the stack of crates and Takahara's snake-transfer device. In addition to Stoner's shotgun, both Woeshack and Takahara had their 10mm Smith amp; Wesson pistols out and ready.
"'Knowing you guys,'" Paxton went on, "'I'm sure you already figured out that the tarantulas go in the small terrariums, and the snakes go in the big ones. And by the way, it's probably a good idea to duct-tape all the lids down because the big snakes can pop them off pretty easily.' "
Paxton looked over at Woeshack.
"Hey, all those terrarium boxes looked the same to me," Thomas Woeshack defended himself as he disappeared behind the pile of boxes. Moments later, his head popped up.
"Good news, guys." The diminutive agent smiled brightly. "There's a whole bunch of bigger terrarium boxes back here, too."
Larry Paxton closed his eyes for a moment, nodded slowly, and continued reading the letter aloud.
"'The caiman crocs are a separate problem entirely. I personally don't think those swimming pools we sent you are deep enough. The herpetologists we hired assured us they'd be fine for a while, but the damned things kept getting out anyway. I'm sure you'll figure something out. But they're a lot faster than you'd think, and mean little shits to boot, so watch your fingers when you pick them up. Knowing Mike, I'll bet he's already come up with some really clever way to open those crates and dump the contents into the terrariums without anybody getting bit.'"
Mike Takahara smiled. "Good old Jennifer, I always liked her."
"Yeah, well wait until you hear this part," Larry Paxton growled. "'Something Mike might not have thought about, though. If you plan to rig the transfers so that the top or bottom part of the crate slides out of the way, remember that the tarantulas can easily squeeze through a three-quarter-inch gap. You'll really need to be ready when they do, because they're really fast little buggers.'"
"Jesus," Dwight Stoner whispered.
"'Finally, be very careful handling the crates with the screened air holes. We rigged those for the female snakes because a lot of them look like they're pregnant. That's not a problem with the egg-layers because you've got quite a bit of time before any eggs would hatch, even if they've laid them in the crates by now. But…" Paxton paused long enough to glower at his agent team meaningfully, "'you've really got to be careful with crates seven and twenty-three… "'
"Oh shit," Mike Takahara whispered.
"'… because,'" the Bravo Team leader continued with a discernible edge to his voice, "'there's a female Tiger Snake in crate seven and two female Common Blacksnakes in twenty-three. In addition to being damned poisonous, they're both ovoviviparous — which means they give birth to live babies instead of eggs — and the two blacksnakes look like they could pop any minute. None of us here know how big a newborn blacksnake is, but we suspect they probably wouldn't have any trouble getting through a three-quarter-inch-wide gap either. According to the literature, the average brood for Common Blacksnakes is twelve. My suggestion would be to do what we did and hire a couple of professional herpetologists, then go have a beer while they get everything unpacked and put away. But I guess you can't do that and maintain a covert operation in a little place like Loggerhead City, Oregon, huh? Well, good luck anyway. Jennifer.'"
Mike Takahara returned to his snake-transfer apparatus long enough to grab the pile of reference books, then beat a hasty retreat behind Stoner and his shotgun. Mumbling to himself, he rapidly thumbed through one titled Australian Snakes — A Natural History.
"Yep, here they are." The tech agent pointed to a photo. "Definitely Common Blacksnakes."
"That's all she said? 'Good luck'?" Dwight Stoner murmured incredulously.
Larry Paxton shook his head. "No, there's a PS." He handed the letter and the attached pages to Stoner.
"Hey, maybe it's not so bad, guys." Mike Takahara continued scanning the text. "It says here that the venom in the average bite of the most deadly snake in the
world — the Inland Taipan — has a 218,000 LD50, the Tiger Snake has 15,000, but the Common Blacksnake only has 700."
"What does that mean?" Thomas Woeshack asked.
"Beats me," the tech agent confessed. "I think the LD50 refers to the number of mice that the poison in one average snake bite would kill. But hey, we must have a bigger body mass than seven hundred mice, right?"
"Yeah, I guess," Woeshack agreed uneasily. "But what about fifteen thousand for that Tiger Snake?"
Takahara scrunched his face as he mentally converted mouse to human mass. "Yeah, that might be more of a problem."
Dwight Stoner looked up from the letter and stared at Larry Paxton.
"She's got to be kidding," he stated flatly.
"You got a better idea?"
"Uh-huh," Stoner volunteered immediately. "Burn the warehouse down and blame it on the gas heater."
Larry Paxton looked around the warehouse. "We don't have a gas heater," he observed.
"I'll install one."
"The problem is," the Bravo Team leader informed his reluctant crew and ignored Stoner's very serious offer, "if those things really are pregnant, and they… Hey!" A stricken look appeared on Larry Paxton's face. "Those snakes aren't moving anymore!"
"You know," Thomas Woeshack mused aloud as he and Stoner watched their two fellow agents cautiously approach the terrarium where the two thick-bodied blacksnakes now lay suspiciously still, "I wonder what Henry's doing right now."
Chapter Twenty-one
She became aware of their approach as she stood in the greenhouse examining the collection of exotic plants left by the previous occupant.
Two men. The one in the lead plodding, oblivious, doglike and familiar, and of only minor interest. The other fluid, casually aware, catlike, and much more intriguing.
Not to mention dangerous.
The Sage… and a stranger.
She deliberately placed herself in their path when she met them at the gate, annoyed because she'd told the old man she didn't want to see any more strangers for a while. Not after the last ones. The visit by Wintersole and his female — what? — companion had left her unsettled.
But not nearly as much as Wintersole's eyes. It took her a while to figure it out, but once she did it unnerved her completely. An unusual pale gray, just as the Sage had said. But more than that, a right eye paler than the left, so much so that the iris merged with the white sclera and the pupil stood out like an infinitely deep black hole. The difference between the two eyes made them appear to flicker and, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't establish eye contact with him. She always found herself looking at one eye or the other or, much worse, somewhere between the two.
To think that he and I…
In spite of the warmth of the sunlight, she shivered.
Sasha doesn't trust him either, she thought as she moved toward the two men. I wonder if this one will be different?
To a casual observer, she appeared relaxed and outwardly pleased to see her visitors. However, beneath the loose-fitting tunic, she held her
sinuous body tense, ready to strike at the first hint of aggression. After beaming a welcoming smile at the bearded old man, she focused all of her senses on the face and body language of the stranger.
"This is the one I told you about," the Sage declared by way of introduction, then stepped aside in his characteristic, clumsy manner, suddenly leaving her to confront the newcomer directly.
I know you.
The totally irrational awareness momentarily erased every other thought from her mind.
She instantly and instinctively averted her eyes and brought both hands up to control what she sensed was the stranger's dominant, striking hand reaching out toward her — clasping it in a moderately tight grip with her right hand and pressing her other hand firmly around his muscular wrist. In a single graceful motion, she pressed her upper torso against his to neutralize his brute male strength — and then brushed her lips across his cheek.
"I'm pleased to meet you at last." Her soft throaty whisper sounded perfectly poised and confident, as if she'd known him forever. However, her own reaction, as well as his — or rather, his complete lack of one — undermined her self-assurance.
He simply stood there.
But then, he wouldn't feel threatened or mindlessly stimulated, she reminded herself, because he's not one of them.
This second instinctive rather than rational thought that simply appeared out of her subconscious told her that this man — whoever and whatever he was — represented a terrible danger.
But also an intriguing opportunity.
For reasons he couldn't explain, Henry Lightstone also found himself instinctively on the alert, something he, too, found extremely confusing and disorienting when combined with his awareness of how much this sleek, sensual, and strikingly beautiful woman attracted him.
When he noticed her staring down at her hands, he glanced down and discovered — much to his amazement, because he had no memory of doing so — that he'd automatically brought his own hand up to encase her firm but much smaller wrist in a move that was somehow… defensive.
Confused and uneasy, and vaguely aware that she seemed equally uncomfortable, he looked up… and discovered much too late that she had done the same. For the first time during this almost surrealistic interval, his eyes met hers.
The effect was instantaneous and, in a blood-pounding and stomach-wrenching manner, almost hypnotic. He instantly knew that he had never seen — or even imagined — such a woman in his entire life.
What did she say? His mind struggled to remember. I'm pleased to meet you at last? What does that mean?
Alarm bells began clanging madly in the back of Henry Lightstone's head.
Who the hell are you, lady?
"Karla. Karla Pardus," she answered his silent question, unfortunately with a split-second hesitation that immediately caught his attention.
"Henry," he countered, instinctively deciding not to put forth a pseudonym just yet. His intuition, honed by years of working covert investigations in which it often served as his primary source of protection, warned him to get away as quickly as he could.
But other more primitive senses — curiosity, opportunity, and erotic fascination — urged him to stay.
"You said 'at last'?" He responded with forced lightheartedness, finding it impossible to turn away from the deeply alluring, gold-flecked green eyes highlighting an intriguing face that was, in some indefinable manner, both outdoorsy tough and sensuously enticing. "Does that mean you've been expecting me?"
"Of course, for some time now." She turned to lead the two men into the screened-in porch, a move that struck Lightstone as leaving her exposed and vulnerable for some unfathomable reason, but it didn't appear to bother her. "After all, I am a witch."
They sat at the table, sipped hot tea or chocolate, and conversed about matters of little consequence for almost an hour, allowing the Sage to guide the conversation in and around his favorite topics. As they talked, Henry Lightstone found himself progressively intrigued by the young woman's mannerisms: the way she sat, relaxed yet visibly alert; the way she moved, easily with almost feline grace; the way she smiled, tomboyish yet seductive; and especially the way she maintained contact — with her eyes, and with a light brush of warm fingers against his hand.
It all seemed so casual, warm and open when she did it, and yet she maintained a distance that took it — and her — out of the realm of mere flirtation.
He sensed that she gently probed his past with her occasional questions and brief comments that wove around the old man's rambling discourse. Periodically, though, a vacuum would arise in these parallel conversations that Lightstone felt compelled to fill, sometimes answering her questions, sometimes not. But her questions never threatened him, and she never pressed. Soon he found himself weaving threads of his cover through the fabric of both conversations as the opportunities arose.
He decided that she was the most self-confident woman he had ever met, and yet easily one of the most vulnerable.
Neither that realization nor his awareness of it made any sense at all.
He also became vaguely aware that the old man's ramblings increasingly gave way to periods of quiet mumbling and contemplation of the rough porcelain mug that the woman kept refilling from the thermos of hot chocolate. But because these gaps allowed him and the woman to continue their own conversation with less effort and interruption, he barely noticed.
Finally, the Sage slumped in his chair with his chin resting on his chest.
For a moment, it looked as though the old man had fallen asleep. But then, as if suddenly revitalized by a burst of energy, he sat upright, grabbed for his white walking stick, announced that he was late, and got up and hobbled toward the door.
"Guess I don't need to worry about our soothsayer trying to wrestle the check out of my hand." Lightstone laughed wryly as they watched the old man stagger to the pathway, secure his walking stick to the frame of his ancient motorbike, carefully place his dark glasses in his shirt pocket, strap on the large protective helmet, kick some life into the small motor, and putter down the road, trailing a billowing cloud of smoke.
The woman smiled. "If he ever does, you'd be wise to keep a very close eye on your wallet."
"A pickpocket as well as a con man?" Lightstone smiled, too. "Interesting fellow."
"But not exactly your type," the woman observed candidly. "How did the two of you meet?"
"Through one of my buddies." Lightstone recited a few of the well-rehearsed details related to his fictitious past with Bobby and Susan LaGrange without mentioning their names. "They bought a cattle ranch here a few months ago. Said if I was ever between jobs, I should visit." He smiled again. "I am, so I did."
"You met the Sage on a cattle ranch?" A curious expression swept across the woman's face.
"I didn't, my buddy did. It's kind of a strange deal," Lightstone admitted. "He's under the impression that he's got one of those mythical Bigfoot creatures living on his property."
"And you think the Sage has something to do with that impression?"
"It wouldn't surprise me a bit."
"And you don't believe in mythical beasts, do you?" The woman grinned mischievously.
Henry Lightstone hesitated, trying to decide if she was attempting to bait him.
"I try to keep an open mind about things I don't understand," he explained seriously. "But I also believe in human nature… especially the nature of humans like the Sage, who I suspect enjoy taking advantage of people who are more trusting than analytical."
"So you're more analytical?" She observed him with just a little more curiosity than he felt the situation warranted.
Lightstone shook his head. "Not really. I just remind myself that I'll fare a lot better if I cut the cards and count my change. And if somebody like the Sage offers to sell me a genuine good-luck charm made from a genuine mythical beast, I probably wouldn't pay top dollar."
"Yet you claim to maintain an open mind about things you don't understand?"
&nb
sp; "I try."
The woman hesitated for a moment. "Do you need to leave now, too?"
The question caught Lightstone off guard, but he recovered immediately.
He smiled easily. "Like I said, I'm between jobs. My friends expect me home for dinner. Beyond that…" He shrugged.
The woman stood, the top of her sun-streaked hair rising to the level of his chin as she motioned toward the interior door. "Then come with me."
They walked into the restaurant portion of the house, the woman leading and Lightstone cautiously trailing slightly behind, sensing a certain tension in her walk and trying to ignore the curved and yet slender outlines of her body as her lush, firm thighs, hips, breasts, and shoulders alternately strained against the soft, thin cloth of her tunic… a moving vision that embodied, from Henry Lightstone's point of view, the definitive model of sleek and sensual grace.
After following a long narrow corridor lined with smooth logs, they went through a swinging door, turned right, then though another door — this one bolted and bearing a large PRIVATE DO NOT ENTER sign — and then, almost immediately, a second, double-bolted door.
Suddenly, Henry Lightstone found himself in a darkened room that would have been large and cavernous except for the presence of an enormous, ancient black oak growing up through the floor.
As they approached the huge tree, Lightstone realized that the trunk measured at least eight feet in diameter at the base, and its thick branches, beginning just above his head, extended outward and upward in all directions. The only illumination in the room came from a small shaded lamp that directed a small circle of light on a low table surrounded by three cushions, all arranged beneath one of the mammoth lower branches. Looking up, Lightstone realized that he couldn't see the ceiling — it simply disappeared into the tangle of branches extending some fifteen feet above his head.
For some inexplicable reason, that darkness overhead, like the woman, made him distinctly uneasy.
"Sit down." She motioned toward one of the cushions.