WHERE TIGERS PROWL

by Karin Story

  "I'd love to tell you more," she took a step closer to him, then stabbed a finger into his chest as she spoke, enunciating each word, "but—you—threw—my—phone—away!" She shoved past him back into the house, leaving him standing in the doorway, cold rain blowing in around him.

  * * *

  Everything was a blur. It took several moments of blinking his eyes before the dim light and shapes focused.

  Dark antique furniture surrounded him, and it was all topped off with a coating of lace doilies on the table tops, and the backs and arms of the chairs. It was a grandmother's wet dream.

  His heart pounded in his chest…his head pounded, too. Almost in rhythm. Where was he?

  He started to sit up, but a gentle hand pressed him back down.

  "Shh, it's okay. Take it easy," a soft voice said next to him. Then a cool, gentle touch smoothed across his forehead.

  Maris.

  He squinted up at her, trying to place how he'd gotten here. Where was here? A wide, floral patterned couch. How'd he gotten onto a couch? He didn't remember going to sleep.

  Then he noted Maris's tired, red-rimmed eyes and her rumpled clothes.

  "Are you okay?" he whispered, his voice slightly hoarse. His tongue felt like cat fur. Damn, he was thirsty.

  She helped him raise up enough to drink from a glass of water she offered.

  "I'm fine. The question is, how are you feeling?"

  He took a couple of swallows, then dropped his head onto the lace pillow beneath him. He flexed his feet and hands…wincing at the pain in his left hand, but also feeling the restraint of the splint. "I'll live. What happened?"

  "You don't remember?"

  Like a whirlwind, the events of the previous night ripped through him like a storm. Making love with Maris in the firelight. The dark nightmare that had unfolded in his mind as he sat at the kitchen table with Genny. His and Maris's pictures on TV next to the words "suspects" and "murder". Her phone call from the redheaded giant. Then, Maris standing on the porch, rain dripping off her curls and into her eyes as she glared at him and informed him he had a wife. After that…nothing.

  "How long was I out?" he muttered. "What time is it?"

  She bit her lip and smoothed his hair back off his forehead.

  Her non-answer sent a flicker of fear through him. "How long?"

  "About eight hours."

  "What?" In spite of her protests and her hands on his shoulders trying to keep him in place, he lunged to a sitting position. "Christ, we have to get out of here! Before the police find us. How the hell was I out for eight hours?" He stared at her accusingly.

  "Calm down. The police don't know where we are or they'd have been here by now. My Jeep's in the garage hidden from view, and May and Genny left the house hours ago to go into the city to stay for a few days and appear 'normal.' Genny left the Range Rover for us to drive. No one will be looking for us in that. And as for how you were out for so long…" She shook her head. "Tom, you hadn't slept in almost twenty-four hours. You're barely starting to heal from your injuries, and you had more than your share of physical and emotional stress over the past day and night. You passed out."

  "Are you going to look me in the eye and tell me I stayed down for eight hours all on my own, or did Genny have a hand in helping me along?"

  She met his gaze head-on. "Genny didn't do anything wrong. She just took advantage of the fact that you were out anyway to get some medication in you and make sure you got some rest." She held up her hand to stop him when he started to speak. "And I'd be willing to bet that if you just sat there for a minute and thought about it, you'd realize you feel a lot better than you did earlier. Don't you?" One eyebrow rose as she dared him to contradict her.

  He sucked in a deep breath. Then another.

  Okay, so his head didn't hurt nearly as much as it had for the past few days. In fact, the pounding was fading as he spoke. And maybe it was a little easier to breath. Even his leg didn't seem to throb as much.

  "What kind of hocus-pocus did she use?" he grumbled. "Or do I even want to know? Let me guess…frog's eyebrows or bat wings?"

  A tired smile flitted across Maris's face. "You can look down your nose at her natural remedies all you want, but underneath that naturopath exterior of hers, Genny graduated head of her class from Cornell Medical School many long years ago. She knows how to wield a perfectly good syringe full of antibiotic or pain killer when she needs to."

  "Genny?"

  "Yeah, Genny." Maris stood up, then grabbed something off the floor and handed it to him. His boots. "If you're up for it, the sooner we get out of here the better. Sarah's expecting us."

  He took the boots from her, but grasped her arm and forced her to face him. "Excuse me. Sarah?"

  She bit her lip again as if she'd just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. "She's an old, uh, friend. She's agreed to help us."

  "You talked to someone else about this situation? You brought someone else into the loop without asking me?"

  "I couldn't ask you, you were asleep."

  The sudden urge to hit something solid—like a nice brick wall—surged through him. Which of course only caused his head to start pounding again. Great, just what they needed, another loony old bird like May to clutter the picture. "Who the hell is Sarah?"

  "I told you," Maris said, pulling her arm free from him, "she's sort of an old friend. She can help us figure out just who Trent Montgomery is and why someone's setting us up. Or did you not want that information?" Her eyes snapped with frustration.

  "Where is she?"

  "Washington, D.C."

  "We can't go gallivanting down to D.C. The cops and feds will be looking for us at every major intersection. Are you out of your mind?"

  Maris sighed and shook her head. "Do you ever get over this he-man attitude? Does it ever occur to you that maybe there are a few other people in the world who might be as intelligent as you are?" She grabbed a newspaper off the coffee table and threw it at him. It landed with a thwack on his lap. "While you were playing Sleeping Beauty, I did a little investigation on you and your so-called wife, Elise Montgomery."

  At the reminder he had a wife, a deep, cold numbness settled in his chest. It obviously affected Maris the same way, because her face had turned even paler than it had been, and she rubbed her eyes between her thumb and forefinger.

  He wanted to reach out and touch her, comfort her somehow, because maybe that would comfort him, too. But he didn't. Couldn't. As long as he didn't touch her, he thought…hoped…he could maintain his emotional distance from her. And under the circumstances, after what had happened over the past few hours, that was for the best.

  He slowly picked up the paper and stared at the headline article on the main page, which boldly stated: Murder and Mayhem in Small Town New York.

  Maris tapped a finger on a side-bar article next to the main piece. "This woman, Elise, your supposed wife, granted an interview to the paper. She claims you disappeared from home three weeks ago. Says you've been depressed lately, that you've been moody, been staying out late at night, yadda, yadda. She's oh-so-worried that you've wigged out. Then she goes on to say that she'd had no word from you whatsoever, had no idea of your whereabouts, until she'd discovered a 911 call had been made a few nights ago, and the man from the call fit your description."

  He skimmed over the article as she spoke, the knot in his stomach growing heavier with every word.

  "There's just one little problem." Maris placed the palm of her small, sturdy hand over the paper, covering the article so he couldn't see it and was forced to look up at her. Her eyes flickered with barely concealed exultation.

  "What's that?"

  "I made that 911 call, remember?"

  "So?" Irritation flared at her know-it-all tone.

  "So, I never described you to the 911 operator. I didn't say, 'I've got a blond man, about six foot two, with golden-brown eyes, and a tiger tattoo on his shoulder, lying on my floor.'" She snorted.

  "We
ll, maybe," he pushed her hand off the paper and stared back at the article, "that's not what she meant by 'describe.' Maybe she meant something else…like, I don't know…"

  "Yeah, you don't know…and neither did I. That's my whole point. But, lest you think I'm jumping to conclusions, I did a little further checking with the reporter who wrote this side-bar."

  "You what?" His fingers clenched around the newspaper inadvertently and he tossed it onto the sofa next to him.

  "Calm down. I'm not stupid. My life's on the line here, too, you know? I posed as a fellow reporter and called—" She gave him a brief glare before he could ream her, "from a pay phone and didn't talk long so it wasn't traced. Got a little chummy with her by offering her a fictional tidbit of info about a certain mayoral candidate and his under-the-table payments for immigrant help. After that she was more than happy to blab about Elise Montgomery. And you were right. She didn't mean she recognized the hair, height, build description of you. She told the reporter she recognized the description of your injuries."

  She cocked an eyebrow and watched him expectantly.

  The description of his injuries? So?

  Then a slow glimmer of understanding tickled at his mind and Maris nodded her head.

  "Uh huh. You see now, don't you?" Her smile wasn't as smarmy as before, but still bordered on "I told you so." "You're wondering how she would be able to recognize a description of your injuries if she hadn't even seen you in three weeks."

  "Maybe…" He thought feverishly, trying to find some logical explanation. "Maybe I already had the injuries before I left home." But it sounded lame even to him.

  Maris knelt in front of him. Her expression shifted rapidly from gloating to sympathetic. She rested her hands on his knees and studied him, her eyes overflowing with a tenderness that eroded the armor around his heart. "Tom, I did search and rescue work for a long time. I've seen a lot of cuts, bruises, broken bones. When I found you in my backyard, your injuries were fresh—no more than a few days old at most."

  Tom tore his gaze away from her and took a deep breath to focus. He had to think. He couldn't let her close proximity rattle him.

  "Okay. Did you find out where she—we live? How do I contact her?"

  Maris's hands began a slow, feather-light massage of his thighs. Her voice continued to stay low-pitched and gentle. "That was another anomaly. The phone number she gave the paper was a fake. There's no address, no phone. And they didn't seek her out, she came to them and offered to do the interview."

  "Why? Why would she come forward with an interview?"

  "Well that's the question of the hour, isn't it?"

  Maris's touch was about to drive him mad. He could feel the warmth of her hands through his jeans, and felt the responding tightening in his groin. How could he be sitting here calmly discussing his wife, or the woman who claimed to be his wife, yet burn for the touch of this woman in front of him?

  He couldn't do this. He had to get a grip on himself.

  He rose unsteadily to his feet, and Maris rocked back on her heels, off-balance from his sudden movement. She stared up at him, and he saw the glimmer of sorrow in those passionate green depths.

  She stood as well, and awkwardly stuck her hands in the front pockets of her jeans. "The news last night and the paper both say you're from New Jersey. But I called information and you're not listed in the directory. I also ran a search on the Internet from May's computer, but couldn't find anything there either."

  She stepped over to the wooden rocking chair near the sofa and picked up her backpack. "I can't find any other information. The police are being close-mouthed about the whole thing. They're not offering anything about Trent Montgomery. Even the paper and the TV news keep referring to you—him—whatever, as 'the mysterious Trent Montgomery.' It's like a giant brick wall that I haven't been able to get through." She sighed, and he was struck again by how fatigued she looked. "I just can't find anything else, Tom. That's why I called Sarah. She can sometimes access information that other people can't."

  "Who is she?"

  "Come on, please, we need to get on the road. I promise, I'll tell you as we drive. But right now we're burning time."

  "Who, Maris? I'm not going to drive off across the country until I know exactly where I'm going and who I'm seeing. You and Genny have manhandled and manipulated me and I've gone along with it. But that ends now. This is my goddamned life, my goddamned problem, and I will not sit back and let you dictate my course of action any longer. Is that clear?"

  She stood up straight, as if a metal rod had been rammed up her back. Her chin lifted a notch, and she blinked. The tenderness that had been in her eyes dimmed to a mere flicker. "I'm so sorry for trying to help."

  The sarcasm stung.

  Now it was his turn to sigh. The sight of her crushed spirit was almost more than he could take, and he knew his words had been responsible for it. Yet he meant everything he'd said. He couldn't afford to run pell-mell anymore, based on nothing but reckless instinct. It was time to start fitting the pieces of the puzzle into place. And the only way to do that was with rational organization.

  Against his better judgment, he wrapped his hand around her small, cold one. Even that simple skin-to-skin contact sent a jolt of awareness through him that shook him to the core. He dragged in a deep breath to control it.

  "Mare, I'm sorry. I don't want to hurt your feelings. I know you, and Genny, have bent over backward to help me, and I appreciate it more than you'll ever know. All I'm saying is that from here on out you can't treat me like an invalid. I have to know exactly what's going on and I have to make the decisions."

  She wouldn't meet his gaze, and he didn't dare test his limits by touching her face and trying to get to her to turn toward him.

  "Sarah is a computer hacker," she said, staring at the wall. "At least she used to be. She was in a skiing accident several years ago when I was working in Colorado. An avalanche. Sarah and two other skiers were lost. The others didn't make it, but I found her. I thought she was going to die, too, but she didn't, and when she got out of the hospital, she turned over a new leaf and went respectable. She knows the ins and outs of most of the major government computer systems, and she thinks she might be able to get you some information about Trent Montgomery, about who he is, where he's from, what his background is. Which in turn might help you figure out why someone would want to set him—you—and me up for these murders." Slowly she turned to face him, her expression carefully blank.

  But it ripped his heart to see the tremble in her lower lip. It took every ounce of his self control not to pull her into his arms, swallow her fears in a kiss, and make a heap of foolish promises to her about how everything was going to be okay.

  Christ, if only life were that simple.

  "Okay." He bent over with a barely suppressed groan and slipped his feet into his boots. "Let's go see Sarah."

  PART II

  Go forth to meet the shadowy Future…

  —Longfellow, Hyperion

  Chapter 12

  * * *

  Tom wasn't sure what he'd expected, but Sarah Magnussen was a small, compact bundle of fire. The skiing accident had left her in a wheelchair, but her spirit didn't appear to have been dampened.

  They arrived in the Washington, D.C. suburb of College Park, Maryland in the evening. Sarah met them at the door of her pleasant, bungalow-style town home.

  "Maris!"

  Maris took Sarah's dainty hands, and leaned down to hug the petite, dark-headed woman. "You look great, Sarah."

  "I look alive, thanks to you." Her smiling face turned sober. "Come on in, you two, and I'll get to work. You must be Tom." She held out a hand to him. As he shook it, she probed him with piercing blue eyes, then smiled at him. He had the distinct impression he'd just been inspected and had passed.

  Sarah ushered them into a spacious, comfortable den, leading the way across the dark flagstone floor in her electric wheelchair. She gestured toward a red plaid loveseat and turned to
face them when they sat down.

  She proceeded to quiz them thoroughly about Trent and Elise Montgomery. Anything and everything they might possibly know.

  Tom spoke cautiously when Sarah addressed him directly, and wasn't entirely comfortable as Maris rattled out the story about how she'd found him in her yard, and everything that had happened since. How did they know they could trust this woman? Yet Maris appeared calm and uninhibited, and he reminded himself that she prided herself on her good instincts.

  He shifted restlessly on the loveseat, wanting to be doing something more active. Anything more active. Yet what he needed right now was information. And if Sarah could provide that, then he had to give her time to work.

  But he growled inwardly at the sense of helplessness that pervaded his entire being.

  "Nothing personal, but you two look like you've been through the wringer," Sarah stated matter-of-factly. "My kids are with my parents for the weekend. I didn't know if you'd be staying for a while or moving on tonight, but I had the housekeeper put clean towels in the bathroom down the hall, and clean sheets on my oldest girl's bed. Why don't you take advantage of them."

  She directed her comments to Maris in particular, and Tom realized Maris's fatigue of earlier in the day had blossomed into full-fledged exhaustion. The drawn look under her eyes and around her mouth were a dead giveaway. While he'd slept all morning, no doubt under the influence of Genny's drugs, Maris had been on the go.

  Damn. He'd done this to her.

  When Maris hesitated, Sarah added, "It's going to take me a while. This is liable to be a slow process. Go on." She motioned with a small hand, her gold bracelets tinkling together gently. Then she turned her chair toward the expansive desk that held an impressive array of computer equipment.

  Maris glanced at him, her eyes troubled. "What do you think?"

  "You heard Sarah. Go ahead. You're exhausted."

  She nodded, but didn't move.