by Rachel Lee
Declan nodded, his blue eyes thoughtful. "We need an epidemiological map. Where every affected dog lives."
"Okay. I can put that together from my files."
He put up a hand. "First I'll finish my sandwich…and yours, if you don't want it. I haven't eaten since early this morning."
She looked at him, feeling a twinge of concern. "A lot of patients today?"
He laughed. "Actually, nary a one. I think they're afraid of getting infected. Steve Chase even cancelled. No, I was doing some work for CDC. Questioning people. Trying to track Cart's movements over the last couple of weeks."
"So they do think it's infectious."
He shrugged. "At this point, Markie, nobody knows a damn thing. But the dogs might be a clue."
* * *
Abel Roth scoured the spreadsheet on his computer with the eye of a falcon circling a field mouse. Hyoko Akagi would be calling in an hour, and Abel knew he would expect an answer. Renovating and shoring up Kansai International Airport—built on an artificial island in 1994 and already sinking—would be a very complex, very expensive project. Roth Financial had a solid record with venture capital, and this loan could reap vast rewards. But it carried equally vast risks. Abel Roth had no doubt he could put together the capital to fund the three-billion-dollar project, but the risk-benefit analysis was edgy.
He was in no frame of mind to deal with his prodigal son when Timothy sauntered through the door of his study and plopped himself in a chair across the desk without so much as a by-your-leave. He refused to spare the boy even a glance.
"What?" Tim said, as if reading his father's mind. "No fatted calf?"
"You've had your share of the fatted calf, and you've chosen to waste it."
Tim shrugged. "That's a matter of opinion. I built a successful business."
Their respective ideas of business success were so far apart that the chasm couldn't be measured. Abel was banker for the world. Timothy took tourists on fishing excursions. There was no comparison.
"I'm expecting a call from Tokyo," Abel said. The implication was clear: I have bigger fish to fry.
"No surprise," Tim answered. He knew he was being dismissed, but he didn't move. It gave him pleasure to defy his father. "Have you heard about the Shippeys? Carter and Marilyn?"
Abel moved impatiently. For a man who could be carved stone in a business discussion, he was a deliberate open book with his son. "I approved the quarantine." It was the word of a man who governed by more than mere popular vote. He waved his hand at Tim. "Your mother's in the living room."
Another dismissal. "I'll go see her in a minute."
Finally Abel looked him straight in the eye, the steely Roth glare that made men quake and women swoon. "What do you want? More money?"
His son shrugged off the look. "Actually, I don't need any money at all. I have quite enough."
"Well, that's revolutionary."
"No. I'm a successful businessman, whether you think so or not. And you know what, Dad?"
"What?"
Tim rose. "Soon I'm going to be richer than Croesus."
At that Abel laughed. "You? Not possible."
"You'll see."
The boy stalked out. Abel shook his head. So much potential. So little ambition. He wasn't merely a disappointment. He was a disgrace.
* * *
"My dear!" Lenore Roth said, rising from the sofa and opening her arms to her son. "I've missed you! Where have you been hiding?"
"Business." The word flowed easily off his tongue. In this house, that was always an acceptable excuse.
"How's Dawn? Why didn't you bring her along? I've missed her, too."
"She has some charity thing tonight."
The butler appeared, and Tim ordered a Scotch, neat. Lenore wanted another cup of tea.
She sat again and patted the couch beside her. "Tell me everything. How's the business going? What charity is Dawn involved with now? She's such a generous woman, that wife of yours."
"Yes, she is." So generous that Tim felt totally on the periphery of her life. Which was fine. Like his father, he had bigger fish to fry. "I think they're raising money for an addition to the public playground. Something about replacing the wood with a safer material."
"Oh, yes, I've heard something about that. I must make a donation. And you? How is your business?"
Funny how that was the first thing his family asked about on his infrequent visits, as if it were the beginning and end of existence. Not, How are you feeling? Not, Are you happy? Always, always How is your business?
"It's going well, Mom. My charters are all booked. I'm thinking of expanding."
"Wonderful!" She beamed at him.
It had been a mistake to come here. He'd been feeling so good, so full of himself, that he'd made the mistake of thinking he could tread safely here. He should have known. His father ignored him, and his mother cared only for his bottom line. They made him feel small. In fact, they made him feel downright angry.
He rose from the couch and looked down at her. "It's nice of you to enquire after my health and my emotional well-being."
Lenore looked confused. "You'd tell me if you were ill or if something was going wrong in your life. I just assumed…"
"No, Mother," he said harshly, "you'd probably be the last person on earth I'd tell."
With that he stalked out of the house, past a butler holding his whiskey on a salver, and climbed into his Jeep. As he sped down the coast road, dodging the detritus of last month's flooding, he cursed himself silently.
Idiot. Don't you ever learn?
He would show them. He and Annie would show them all.
* * *
Markie and Declan decided not to wait until morning. With two deaths, they couldn't delay. They drove up to Markie's clinic, where they found Alice Wheatley, one of the kennel's night attendants.
Alice was a fiftyish widow with hair the color of snow and one of the kindest faces Markie had ever seen. Alice loved animals, any and all animals, and supported herself by looking after the kennels three or four nights a week. Many nights she had to sleep here, on a cot, because one animal or another was seriously ill or injured. Other times she checked in every few hours to make sure the boarders were doing all right.
Tonight she appeared frazzled, and the instant she saw Markie, she opened her arms and said, "Boy, am I glad to see you, Doc!"
Markie dropped her purse on a chair. "What's wrong?"
"Damned if I know. We've got six boarders and they all went haywire, barking fit to be tied. That wound up the Laneys' dog, and it was all I could do to keep him from tearing his stitches."
Markie glanced at Dec. "He was hit by a car three days ago. We're keeping him under observation."
"He's going to need more than observation if he keeps this up," Alice said darkly.
"I'll check him out," Markie said soothingly. "The rest of them sound quiet now."
"Oh, sure, but take a look at them."
Markie looked oddly at Alice, then pushed her way through the green door that led into the kennel area. It was a huge cement building, filled with indoor-outdoor runs for the animals. Sometimes, especially around holidays, the place was overrun with pets. Tonight there were just seven lonesome dogs.
Not a one of them came to the kennel door to greet her. Not a one of them barked or wagged its tail. Instead, they sat huddled in corners, shaking.
"My God," Declan said. He was right behind her.
Markie lifted the latch on the first kennel and entered it, squatting down in front of Bonzo, a normally friendly golden retriever, a doggy-dog of the best kind.
"Bonzo? Here, buddy." She reached into her shorts pocket and took out one of the bite-size treats she was never without. Slowly, she held it out to the retriever. "Treat, Bonzo? How's my baby doing?"
He looked at her, shuddering, his tongue lolling.
Then he leapt at her.
7
Wendy Morgan rolled over and lit a cigarette. Beside her, Gar
y reached for a bottle of water, then whispered through parched lips, "Thanks, babe. That was…amazing."
For one of us, Wendy thought. She gave him a smile, confident he couldn't see through it in the near darkness. "Yes, it was."
The truth was, her husband was at best a mediocre lover and often not even that. His frenzied grunts and ragged breaths had been a huge turn-on when she was twenty-one and convinced that no man could find her attractive, back when it was enough to know that her body could actually elicit such a response. If she'd climaxed back then, and she wasn't sure she ever had, those climaxes had been born of validation, not stimulation. That was then.
Now she knew that her body could not only give pleasure but receive it. Exquisite pleasure, of the sort that made every nerve ending tingle, of the sort that left her gasping for air, floating away, anchored to this world only by the persistent flicking of her lover's tongue on her most sensitive nerve bundle, or the grind of his pelvic bone against hers, or the way his hands kneaded her breasts right at the edge of pleasure and pain. This, she had come to realize, was what sex was meant to be. Exquisite, explosive pleasure for her, as well.
She took another drag of her cigarette. Gary was already sliding off into sleep, his head heavy on her shoulder. Part of her wanted to scream in frustration, roll him over and say I'm glad you had fun, but now it's my turn! Part of her knew that would be pointless. He was who he was, not much different from the grad student he'd been twenty years ago. Still bookish. Still wearing glasses to try to distract attention from ears that were too large and a chin that was too narrow. Still buying her presents that were too expensive. Still doting on her like a wide-eyed, floppy-eared, wagging-tailed puppy. In many ways, he was still a child.
She had been his first love and he hers. She was his one and only. But, blessed be, he was not hers.
She chuckled silently, stubbing out her cigarette. Her husband was a child. But her lover…now he was a man. He had a man's rough hands, a man's sun-weathered skin, a man's penetrating eyes, a man's casual arrogance. He didn't hint, plead or even ask when it came to his sexual needs. He took her, as a conquistador must have planted a proud foot on this island almost five hundred years ago and proclaimed it the property of Charles I, the Kingdom of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. And a man, a real man, did not take that which was worthless, no more than that conquistador would have claimed a useless spit of land. No, when a man claimed something that way, he did so because he valued it, even treasured it.
Her lover treasured her. Not in the simpering, pleadingly devoted way of a child, but in the proud and proprietary way of a man. The mere thought of him pinning her wrists to the bed, devouring her with his kisses, teasing her to the point that she begged, plunging himself into her as if planting a flag…it made her loins twitch and moisten.
Perhaps he was free tonight.
Gary's breathing had fallen into the easy, measured pace of sleep. In a few moments, when she quietly made as if to stretch her arm, he would roll over like the docile puppy he was. And she would slip out of bed. She would pad silently into the closet and shrug on some clothes, then out to the living room for a quick, whispered phone call. Then out to the car and over to her lover, her owner, captor of her heart and soul. He would ravish her until her body was limp and glistening with sweat.
And she would feel like a woman.
* * *
Gary felt the bed shift as she eased out, heard the clacking of plastic hangers as she chose her clothes, the soft fup fup of her footsteps on the tile floor of the hallway. He heard her breathy whisper, and while he could not make out the words, he didn't have to. A few moments later, the muted shushump of the front door being closed, and the quiet purr of the car as she drove away.
His heart squeezed.
The stale tang of her cigarette still hung in the air, mixed with the musk of her belated arousal, the only remnants of her presence. As if she had been here even then. He knew he wasn't enough for her. It wasn't her fault. It was his.
He wasn't a stud. He wasn't the man women fantasized about. He wasn't the mysterious stranger riding into town, or the dashing officer dancing with the ladies, resplendent in his uniform, before he set out to do battle with the forces of darkness. He wasn't the savvy business shark, or the rakish riverboat gambler, or the graceful athlete. He never had been and never would be.
He was a historian. A bookworm for whom the present held interest only as it reflected and fulfilled the past. He knew he could never hold a candle to the great men whose lives and exploits he presented to a classroom full of sleepy, distracted students. He wasn't one of those great men. He studied them. He taught them.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
In his younger years, when Wendy's love had buoyed his heart and given wing to his dreams, he'd resented that old aphorism. It wasn't true, he'd thought. Teaching was an ancient and honorable profession. After all, Socrates had been a teacher. As had Christ. Wendy taught psychology at the university, when she wasn't busy doing research in parapsychology. Teaching was doing. And he had seen himself as continuing that line, helping to assemble and even contribute to the wisdom of the ages, then pass that on to the next generation. A noble calling.
Somewhere along the way, assembling and contributing to the wisdom of the ages had given way to simply living in the past. What had been noble was now merely nerdish. The dreams had crashed into the mountainside of Wendy's late night assignations. Who had he been kidding? He wasn't an heir to the legacy of Socrates and Christ. He was simply one of those who couldn't do. So he taught. And, judging by the glassy eyes he saw in his classroom, he didn't even do that very well.
He would never leave Wendy, of course. It wasn't her fault. It was his. In the thousands of times during his childhood when he'd chosen to read a book rather than join the other kids outside, in the thousands of moments when he'd privately lauded himself for his intelligence and derided others for their silly ambitions and petty talents, he'd doomed himself to this fate. He'd made of himself what he was: a tired—and tiring—historian and teacher. He would never leave Wendy, because he deserved his life, to pour out his love on the woman whose merest smile could still make his heart glow, only to listen in the darkness as she slipped away into the arms of another.
He climbed from the bed, looking at the damp spot on the sheets with self-disgust. He walked into the bathroom and grabbed a washcloth, then scrubbed his member clean. Deciding that wasn't enough, he climbed into the shower, the water turned to an icy blast, and used a loofah to work his skin almost raw, until the soap stung. This had become a habit. Every time he made love to her, he scrubbed another layer of himself away. Sooner or later, his love for her would erase him entirely.
And that, too, was what he deserved.
In the meantime, there was work to do. He wrapped a thin cotton robe around himself and strode to his study. A quick check of his research log, and he reached for the next box of cassette tapes. An oral history of Santz Martina, as told in the local Creole dialect, by the descendents of those who had seen it all happen. He penciled Volume Six, Tape One on the log, plugged in the cassette, hit the Play button and closed his eyes. Wendy was going to be surprised by something, at least.
Annie wadda be gran bad wam.
Annie was a very bad woman.
* * *
"You're going to her," Dawn Roth said, her voice almost too soft to be heard.
"That's right," Tim replied, reaching for the car keys. "I'll be late."
"You do that," she said.
With that, he was gone. Again. He'd come home that evening, still fuming over the brush-off he'd received from his father. As Dawn saw it, he'd gotten about what he had coming to him. She hadn't offered much in the way of comfort or sympathy. Let him find his comfort and sympathy with Wendy Morgan, the lovestruck dreamer who still believed that someday Tim would leave Dawn and be hers.
As if.
Dawn had long since resigned herself to the affairs. Tim
's ever fragile ego needed his conquests. Wendy hadn't been the first and wouldn't be the last. He hadn't been welcome in Dawn's bed in years, and, truth be told, she didn't miss that. He was too aggressive a lover, adept but empty, in her opinion. No, she didn't miss that.
What she missed were the long evenings on the boat, watching the sun paint brilliant metallic red and orange and gold across the sky while they sipped wine and talked about the life they wanted to build. A life without the heavy thumb of business, where their true spirits could soar. Where he made a living doing what he loved and she made a difference doing what she loved.
Perhaps the worst thing that had ever happened to them was that dream coming true.
His fishing business had finally taken hold. He no longer had to trade on his family name. And she had her dogs, and the community theater, and her charities. And they'd lost each other.
Tim had it in him to be a good man—if only he would stop trying to be a better man than his father. The simple fact was that he and Abel were too different, and yet too alike, to ever appreciate each other. Lacking that, Tim was always looking for a way to put himself over the top. And the good man that he could have been gave way to the hard man that he was.
Caught in the middle, loving both of them, Dawn had buried herself even more in trying to make a difference. Let the men chase their inner demons. Lost dogs she could rescue. Lost men she could not.
"Isn't that right, Brindle?" she whispered to the massive beast beside her. The mastiff looked up at her with deep brown eyes that almost brimmed tears. "Oh, I'll be okay, sweetheart. And so will you. Not much longer now, and you'll be a momma."
The dog's tail swept from side to side, then stilled. Her ears perked, then flattened. She sniffed, let out a great, shuddering huff, and tasted the air again.
"What is it, honey?" Dawn asked.
Brindle gave a single bark, sniffed again, and settled back onto her bed, still alert, as if the puppies in her belly left her too little energy to do more than fret.
She'd been fretting a lot, Dawn realized. Maybe it was just the pregnancy. Dawn had never seen a bitch so unsettled before, but every dog, every pregnancy, was different. Yes, maybe it was just the puppies.