WHERE TIGERS PROWL

by Karin Story

  "You don't have to be. All you have to do is relax. Relax and let your mind go where it will."

  Her idea didn't sound too terribly bizarre, which meant the liquor was definitely kicking in full-force now. The kitchen seemed cozier, more friendly than it had before. And the woman in front of him appeared softer around the edges. "How do I know you won't try to brainwash me or something?"

  "Well, contrary to popular belief, that brainwashing thing usually only happens on TV. I'm not going to hypnotize you, meditation isn't like that. You'll be completely conscious, completely awake the whole time."

  His chest squeezed and he felt a wave of desperate emotion well up inside him. In a hoarse voice he asked, "Can you help me remember?"

  She stood and moved behind him. He felt her gentle touch on his shoulders, kneading in just the right places, and the strange warmth from her fingers flowing into him as it had in the car.

  "All I can do is open you up to relaxation, show you a portal to your inner mind, but I can't control where your mind will take you. It could be to the past, it could be the future, it could be your dreams."

  He sat still for a moment, trying to remember why he hadn't trusted this woman earlier. Trying to remember what his other options were. And finally accepted that right now, his options were pretty damn slim. Christ, maybe Maris's recklessness was rubbing off on him. He picked up the stoneware mug, drained it empty as the old-fashioned fire water sliced through his gullet, and hoped like hell he wasn't going to be sick later. "Okay. Let's do it."

  "Before we begin, there's one thing I want you to remember."

  "What's that?"

  "Trust your heart, love. It won't let you down."

  At his frown, she merely smiled. "Now, close your eyes if you're comfortable, or keep them open if you need visual. It matters not."

  Open would be fine, he told himself. But as she continued to rub his shoulders and neck, and his muscles relaxed, his eyelids fluttered closed of their own will.

  "I want you to envision that you're sitting on a cloud. The sky is brilliant blue above you. The sun is shining down on your face and you can feel the warmth of its rays on your skin…"

  Her voice was low and sing-songy. Comforting.

  "The cloud is yours and yours alone. It was made for you, made to fit your body. And as you lean back into it to watch the sky, it enfolds you in its embrace. Imagine it's like a warm, comforting blanket and when it surrounds you, nothing can harm you. It slides up over your feet, wrapping them in protection…then slowly, slowly it inches its way up your calves…then over your knees…and up your thighs. Feel its warmth on your skin. Feel how it wraps you in protection. Now it's moving up over your abdomen, just like a blanket that's being pulled up to tuck you in at night. As it reaches your chest, you feel your breathing slow and become regular. Think about your breathing. In…and out. Breathing is life.

  "Your cloud is now snugly tucked around you. Feel it against your skin, feel the softness. Feel your breathing. In…and out… As long as you're wrapped in your cloud, nothing can harm you. Nothing can touch you. You're completely safe. You're free to let your mind and heart wander. First think about something that makes you happy. Something that comforts you as nothing else could…"

  Strangely, it was an image of Maris, standing hands on her hips, her riotous hair escaping its pins, her eyes gleaming with vexation, that immediately came to mind. She was at her best, and in some ways her most beautiful, when she was riled.

  "Good," Genny soothed. "I see you smiling. Hold that thought. Imprint it in your mind. Draw a map to it. And when times get rough, when you're no longer safely enveloped in your cloud, find your way back to this image. It will comfort you in the dark times."

  Genny's voice sang on, but it was no longer like an outside entity he listened to. Instead it seemed to be coming from inside him. He heard the words, yet he didn't.

  "Breathe, my darling. Breathe and let the thoughts and ideas flow. Let them flit through you. None can harm you. They're only thoughts. You're safe…"

  Images of blue sky and snow covered mountains filled his mind. Then sweeping, windblown prairie. Snow fell, landing on his eyelashes, cold and wet. Then the sun came out, drying and warming him. He saw people laughing and talking around a Christmas tree. Their faces blurred, but his heart soared with happiness. He looked down to see himself running on sand, the ocean surf pounding next to him. Then felt sticky clinging dampness. Jungle vines surrounded him, snagging at his arms and legs. It became hard to breathe. Heavy air pressed in on him. More laughter, this time mocking. And the pain! Jesus…the pain…his back…

  "Breathe, love. Breathe. Nothing can harm you. They're only thoughts. You're completely safe." Genny's voice came out of a dark fog, offering solace, and he grasped wildly for it.

  Then it was black. Cold. Wind whipped his face, rain slashed against him, stinging. His stomach lurched. A boat. His heart pounded like a cannon. Something cold, metallic in his hand. He gripped it tighter. A dark shape loomed in front of him. Freedom burned in his gut. Live or die. No options. With quiet stealth he snagged the dark form, the human form, from behind. His hand flicked in one smooth motion across a neck. The scent of blood filled his nostrils. The body fell to the ground at his feet.

  Run! His breathing came out in painful gasps. Escape. Darkness filled his mind. Black, swirling, terror. He felt himself flying through the air. Then sinking, sinking into cold wet darkness as water closed over his head. He couldn't breathe. Christ! He—couldn't—breathe!

  He lurched to his feet. The chair he'd been sitting in fell with a thunk to the tile floor. He pried his gritty eyes open and stared around, trying to bring his surroundings into focus.

  "It's okay, love. It's okay. You're safe." Genny's soothing voice came from in front of him and he fought to steady her in his gaze.

  "Son of a bitch." He swallowed hard, fighting the roiling nausea in his stomach. "Stay back. Stay away from me!" He took a step backward and bumped into the counter. Then swung around and lurched down the hall to the back door.

  Chapter 11

  * * *

  The sound of dry heaves carried through the hall and into the kitchen

  "My God. What do you think he saw, Genny?" Maris said from the doorway between the kitchen and living room. She'd come in a few minutes before, when Tom was deep into the meditation. She'd watched helplessly, not wanting to break his concentration, as every expression from joy, to terror, to desperation, to cold, unyielding anger crossed his face.

  Genny appeared shaken, which was definitely not normal for her. Her face was unnaturally pale, her dark eyes troubled. "I don't know, love. But whatever haunts him is black indeed." Then she drew in a deep breath and Maris saw her focus, center herself, and step back into nurturer mode.

  "Make some tea, will you, dear? The chamomile May keeps near the stove would be lovely."

  Maris dutifully moved to the tea jars by the stove, while Genny ran a cloth under cold water at the sink, then disappeared down the hall to Tom.

  Feeling a stab of jealousy, Maris watched her go. She wished she was the one going to comfort him. She needed to see him. To make sure with her own eyes that he was okay. But Tom had obviously opened up to Genny, had trusted her enough to let her talk him through meditation. And she knew Genny's calming personality might be best for him right now.

  At this point, she was just grateful he was still here.

  When she'd awakened upstairs alone, all she could think of was that he'd left, just as he'd said he would. It had taken all her willpower to get dressed and come downstairs to see what fate had tossed her.

  And it had been both blessed relief and aching sadness, to find him lost in the hell of his mind. He'd been deeply entrenched in a part of his life she knew nothing about, and she couldn't deny it scared her. She knew her grasp on him, the tender, emotional lover he'd been upstairs, was tenuous at best. And she didn't know how she was going to handle it when she was faced once again with the hard-edged m
an who dwelled in the dark corners of Tom's personality.

  She breathed deeply and tried to re-center as Genny had.

  Keeping her hands busy, she boiled water, dumped dried chamomile flowers into cups, and arranged biscuits, butter, and jam on a platter. She put the bottle of Jack Daniels back in the cupboard with the rest of May's liquor stash and sniffed at the two mugs on the table. Jeez, if Tom had been drinking this stuff on an empty stomach, no wonder he was heaving.

  But she knew whatever he'd seen in his mind was probably more responsible than alcohol. Genny wouldn't have let him get drunk. She always seemed to know a person's limit.

  Her ears stayed tuned to the back of the house. Yet all was quiet. Even the sound of retching had stopped.

  She sipped at her tea and chewed on a biscuit, but as the minutes ticked by, nausea churned her stomach. Had Tom left? Run from whatever he'd seen? And where was Genny?

  The warbling ring of a phone startled her, causing her to slosh tea out of her cup and onto her hand. "Ow! Damn." She rubbed at it with a dish towel and reached for the phone on the counter.

  But as she picked it up, the ring came again and she realized it wasn't May's telephone. Then it clicked in her mind. Her cell phone. It was in her backpack on the floor by the garage door.

  She scrambled over and rummaged through her pack as the phone rang again. Finally finding it, she whipped up the antennae with her teeth and flipped it open. Who in God's name would be calling her at this hour of the night?

  "Hello?"

  "Rhodes?" Jerry Spengler's rumble came through the line.

  "What's the matter? Where are you?"

  "I'm at work, on my break. I tried your regular phone but didn't get an answer. Are you near a TV?" His voice sounded urgent, hoarse. She could hear the sound of a television in the background from his location.

  "Um, well, yeah, I can get to one." As she darted through the kitchen and into the living room, her heart tripped inside her chest at his foreboding voice. "What's going on?"

  "Just turn on the TV. The New York all-news station. There's something you'd better see."

  She found the remote stashed in an antique ashtray next to the Victorian sofa and clicked it on, then surfed through the channels until the news station appeared.

  "Okay, it's— Oh, crud." Her breath caught in her throat at the picture on the screen.

  The phone was suddenly yanked out of her hand and slammed shut.

  "Are you out of your mind? Someone could trace that call and find us!"

  She turned her startled gaze to meet Tom's golden glare. He was white as a ghost, and his eyes were hollow, haunted. But he more than made up for it with sheer fury.

  "Shh! Look." She pointed at the TV. A picture of the morgue where she and Tom had been earlier in the evening, filled the screen.

  The camera zoomed in on a young, blond reporter standing outside in the drizzle. "Again, let me repeat, a security guard has been found brutally murdered tonight in Warstanton Beach. The latest murder victim, who has been identified as Edward Goldoni, is survived by a wife and two small children. Authorities are searching for two possible suspects in the crime."

  The screen then switched to show a picture of Tom. At least it looked like Tom. It was a little blurry and had been taken from a distance, but it was definitely a tall, blond man with his features. "The first suspect is a man known as Trent Montgomery, a former security expert from New Jersey."

  Then a picture flashed next to Tom's, and Maris's heart stopped beating.

  It was her old college graduation picture from CU.

  Holy hell.

  "The second suspect," the reporter continued, "is a graduate student at Yale University. Maris Rhodes. Authorities aren't sure what the connection is between Montgomery and Rhodes."

  "Son of a bitch," Tom said softly.

  "That security guard was alive when we left there," Maris said, trying to breathe through the rapid palpitations of her heart.

  "No shit."

  "What's going on?"

  "I'm being set-up." His voice was so low she barely heard it. His good hand clenched into a fist.

  "Looks to me like we're both being set up," she snapped, unable to pull her gaze away from the terrifying sight of her own face staring back at her from the TV. "That guard was not dead when we left there. No way."

  "This is the second murder this week in Warstanton Beach," the reporter was saying as the TV switched back to her again. "Two shocking murders in a small, sleepy village on Long Island Sound. Authorities have not confirmed that the two deaths are related, but we do know that the original murder victim's body, which is, as yet, unidentified, was in the morgue tonight when the killing happened.

  If you have any information about the two suspects, please contact the authorities. This is Laura Jablonski, live, for New York All-Night News."

  Maris clicked off the TV and let the remote drop from her fingers onto the couch. Slowly she turned to Tom, her stomach so knotted she was afraid it was going to be her turn to heave.

  "What's going on? Who's doing this?" She heard the tremor in her voice and swallowed hard to make it go away. "Are you really Trent Montgomery?"

  All tenderness from earlier in the night gone, he met her gaze with a steely-eyed stare. His jaw was so tight, pinched lines radiated out around his mouth.

  Before he could answer, her cell phone rang again, its bleep, bleep shattering the silence and causing her to jump.

  She reached for it where Tom had set it on the end table.

  But he stepped in front of her. "Don't answer it."

  "Get out of my way." She knew it was probably Jerry on the line again and in a world gone to hell, her best friend was one small solid grip on reality.

  "You can't answer it. Someone could trace the call to your cell phone and they'll find us."

  Bleep, bleep. The phone rang again.

  She bodily shoved Tom out of the way, catching him off guard so he staggered.

  "It's my damn life, too, you know? My picture was right up there next to yours. But I am taking this call. It's Jerry and he might know something else."

  Bleep, bleep.

  He grabbed for the phone at the same time she did, but she was faster. She snatched it up and flipped it open.

  "Keep it short then," he growled. "I mean really short."

  She glared at him again, then turned her back on him. "Hello?"

  "Jesus Christ, Rhodes. What'd you hang up for? What the fuck's going on?" Jerry sounded breathless…and livid.

  "I'm fine."

  "Like hell you are. Did you see the news? Your picture and that son of a bitch you coddled two nights ago are spread all over the place. I told you he was dangerous. Now, I want to know how you got tied into some murder investigation over in Warstanton. Please tell me you're safely at home and you know nothing about this."

  He didn't give her a chance to answer. "Rhodes…you are at home. Right?"

  "Speng—"

  "Fuck. He hasn't hurt you, has he? I'll kill him."

  "Shut up, Spengler. I'm okay."

  "No, you are definitely not okay. Your lost puppy dog is obviously a murderer and you harbored him in your house for two days. And now he's gotten you involved in a murder investigation. You are in deep, deep shit—"

  "Jerry, shut up!" She took a deep breath and did her damnedest to quell the panic that flapped around in her chest like a trapped bird. "This whole thing is a set up. I was there with him at the morgue. That security guard was not dead when we left there, he was absolutely alive."

  "Get off the phone," Tom growled behind her. "Now. Get off now."

  "Why are you protecting him, Rhodes? Oh…Jesus Christ! I knew it! You slept with him, didn't you?"

  "What?" she yelped.

  "This is bad. Really bad."

  "I'm hanging up now. I don't need this."

  "Listen to me, do you have any idea what you're up against here?" Jerry bellowed. "You're being an idiot. You've not only gotten yourself
involved with a murderer, he's a married murderer. You are aware that your loverboy is married, aren't you?"

  Maris felt her mouth fall open, but no words came out.

  "Now!" Tom said, grabbing her shoulder and pulling her around to face him. "You have to hang up now before they trace the call."

  "Yeah," Jerry continued. "It was on the newscast. Didn't you see that part? His wife, Elise, claims he's been missing for three weeks. She issued a statement to the press saying she doesn't know what's come over her poor dear husband."

  "What?" she finally whispered, her heart wrenching so tightly she couldn't breathe.

  "Enough," Tom said succinctly. He grabbed the phone out of her numb hand and yanked the battery off it.

  "Wait!" she yelled, as he stalked down the hallway toward the backdoor. "You asshole, that's my phone! Give it back to me!"

  He totally ignored her, even though she ran after him and pounded on his back.

  Calmly, he opened the back door and threw the phone and battery out into the dark of the night, like a John Elway game-winning pass.

  Maris lurched past him, onto the porch. Rain, which had just started again, pounded down on her head as she stood staring into the yard.

  Then she turned slowly, her breathing coming out in shallow, agonizing pants. "Do you have any idea what you just did?" she asked the unyielding man who filled the doorway.

  "Saved our asses."

  "Jerry was in the middle of telling me something that might be of interest to you, Mr. Montgomery."

  "Get inside before you freeze, Maris."

  "No." She glared at him, already frozen inside as icicles formed on her heart. "You threw my frigging phone away, and I want you to know what your he-man action did. Jerry was in the middle of telling me about your wife."

  Tom grew as still as a pillar of granite.

  "Yeah, you heard me right," she shouted over a sudden clap of thunder. "Your wife. Her name's Elise. Or maybe you already knew that."

  Still he said nothing. Just stared at her. Or maybe stared through her, she wasn't sure.