By the time they reached the museum and the lecture, she was in no mood to be entertained by the antics of the lecturer, a pudgy, long-haired, bearded academic from Melbourne. The essence of his talk, which was punctuated by bursts of static as he flamboyantly strode between lectern and overhead projector, kicking the microphone cord as he moved, was that the long-defunct Launceston City Park Zoo – with at least forty-six specimens – once had the largest collection of tigers ever in captivity.
Well, I know that. Everybody knows that!
The man’s arm-waving style seemed to Judith somewhat overdone. His audience of some forty souls was immune to his occasional attempts at humor, attending his every word with a reverence that was almost humorous in itself. But it was an interesting lecture overall, if primarily one designed to provide the speaker with possible assistance – in the form of government grant money – for his attempts to continue the research along his selected route.
The information sheet accompanying the lecture provided a wonderful illustration of how the tiger had been looked at during the history of the beast as a living entity in Tasmania – ranging from near werewolf status to legend in only a few years. The lecturer had provided a handout containing nine excerpts from scientific journals and popular newspapers of the day, asking his audience to determine which were the scientific and which the excesses of overzealous journalists.
Judith could feel Bevan’s gaze on her as she read through the astonishingly florid excerpts, all of which portrayed the animal as a bloodthirsty, vampire-like slayer in the most colorful language. She took savage, if minor, satisfaction when the lecturer revealed that only four of the nine – and these the least colorful – had come from journalists of the day. She enjoyed his allusions to the scholarly pretensions of the era, but found his insight into the politics of the times hardly surprising or unusual and little changed in the present.
Only at the end of the two-hour performance did she perk up her ears when he commented somewhat pretentiously that he thought it ridiculous to suggest the animal had escaped extinction, given the thousands of wallabies, possums, and wombats – logical prey for the tiger – that died on the state’s roads every year without a single tiger ever suffering a similar fate.
Would Bevan rise to this challenge, she wondered, then quite unexpectedly found herself thinking of how he might rise to her challenge, of the way he might feel beneath her fingers. She squirmed in her seat, hoped he wouldn’t notice, and was equally certain he did.
They stayed for coffee, and while she noticed that Bevan was obviously known to some of the audience, he didn’t seem disposed to spend much time exchanging more than simple greetings. Sooner, rather than later, they were inside the monster truck and en route back to Hobart in the dark of night, driving in a subdued silence that soon lulled Judith into a half-sleep populated by weird’n’wonderful visions.
7
The velvet interior of the vehicle had magically become a lush rainforest, silent but for the hollow rumblings of some distant thunder. And, as in her earlier dream, she was naked and fleeing ... something.
Only this time she wasn’t alone, and this time she wasn’t human, either. Beside her loped a solidly built male Thylacine, and she knew without having to think about it that she, too, had been miraculously transformed into a Tassie tiger.
Side by side they moved through the shadowed, damp forest, alert to the night sounds, aware of the distant thunder but not fearful of it, more alert to the sounds nearer to them – the thumping sounds of wallaby and ’roo dispersing through the dense underbrush but leaving behind distinctive scent and sound trails that revealed each individual’s fitness, age, and potential to become the Thylacines’ next meal!
Then, unaccountably, the big male beside her stopped dead in his tracks and turned to regard her with gleaming yellowish eyes that somehow answered their own question without it even being asked. She was nudged – at first gently, then not so gently – by paws at her shoulders, her hips. She writhed against the male’s touch ... or perhaps in response to it, was helpless to resist as the male reared up from behind to cover her, her own body responding.
But her response wasn’t that of a Thylacine. Instead, she felt an all-too-familiar fluttering in her tummy, felt the quiver of tender nerve endings, the blushing rush of sensation as it flowed from the core of her up through her body and down along her legs in blunt, harsh bursts of energy that quickened her breathing, forced her fingers into fists.
Then came the scream, but it wasn’t from her ... not was it from the thrusting male Thylacine of her dream. Judith woke to find herself thrashing against the confines of a car rug that had been tucked around her as she slept, the police siren still echoing in her ears as she looked around in confusion at the aura of blue police lights that pulsated in waves from behind them.
Bevan bit back a curse, although not quickly enough that she didn’t catch it, and she’d have smiled at his word choice had she been further awake. But even as he pulled the exotic F-150 over to the side of the highway, Judith’s mind was struggling to catch up.
She listened as Bevan exchanged words with the policeman, returned to the now of the situation in astonishment at how calm Bevan seemed. The two men didn’t seem to know each other, but there was no sense of tension or conflict, none of the hostility she’d have thought normal had the traffic stop happened in New York State.
It was, she thought, all extremely civilized.
The first time.
8
The best entertainment of the entire evening, Judith thought later, was having Bevan stopped three times – two of them for breathalyzer tests – by the police along the Midlands Highway. Nothing specific was said, of course, but it was obvious the flamboyance of the pickup truck was a major factor.
One policeman looked almost disappointed when Bevan blew 00.00. The cop then spent several minutes checking over the vividly painted pickup truck, looking at headlights, tailights, and tires with increasing frustration and skepticism.
Bevan took it all with good grace the first time, even laughing as they left the scene. But the second time they were stopped, this time by a policeman obviously doing random checks, Bevan’s temper was visibly being restrained. And the third time ...
“I’ve a damned good notion to change mechanics,” he growled, ignoring his earlier comments on the subject. “Bad enough she’s a bloody woman, but I’m beginning to wonder how anybody who’d drive a thing like this should even expect to have credibility.”
Judith wanted to laugh out loud at his chagrin and the contradictions in attitude, but thought better of it. Her amusement must have shown, however.
“Go ahead and laugh, if you’re prepared to get out and walk,” he snarled into the uncomfortable atmosphere inside the rumbling vehicle.
Judith’s amusement turned to anger at his overdone reaction. “I’ve done it before, for better reasons,” she retorted. Then, recklessly, added, “But if anybody should get out and walk, it’s you. I’m not the one who’s complaining.”
They were on the Tasman Highway now, between Cambridge and the city proper. Judith didn’t believe Bevan’s threat, but if he did insist, she knew it would be no great problem to get home, despite the fact it was long past midnight. Still, it wasn’t a prospect she relished. Nor did she have to. Bevan lapsed into a silence that he maintained until the truck was parked at her cousin Vanessa’s curb, and when he did speak, it was to offer an apology of sorts.
“I’m sorry. I get a bit cranky when I’m pushed,” he said gruffly. “Especially with a full moon like this. That idiot lecturer would probably say I had a bit of tiger blood or something.”
“You’re mixing your metaphors,” she replied without thinking. “Full moons go with werewolves.”
“Okay, werewolves.” And there was a curious new note to his voice that caught Judith by surprise. She turned to face him, to see in his shadowed face something that wasn’t the provocative chauvinistic sexism she’d expected.<
br />
A glimmer. For an instant. But then it was gone. For that fleeting instant, she thought – wished! – he would lean over to kiss her. But he didn’t, even though she was certain he noticed her wish, was more than aware of the way her mouth was set to receive that kiss. But her mouth instead opened to spill out the question that had been lurking there since her telephone discussion with her new boss. “Why are you getting involved with this insane tiger project anyway? What’s in it for you, Bevan, or aren’t I supposed to be asking that?”
“You can ask. It’s a fair enough question. Let’s just say I have a kind of vested interest. I know, for instance, what’s in it for your boyfriend Innes. And I know what’s in it for the other greenies. My side is just involved to try and keep the bastards honest, if you like. And,” he added in a slightly different tone of voice, “I think I know what’s in it for you.”
Then he chuckled, and it was a sound that held memories of Jeremiah’s similar cold chuckle over the telephone. “I even know what’s in it for the tigers, presuming we find any,” he continued. “And that, my dear Ms. Bryan, is what really bothers me!”
Judith, caught between her own curiosity and her desire to speak out, to deny the reference to her relationship with Derek Innes, had no chance to speak.
“The big problem in this whole thing,” Bevan went on, his voice lazy now, but oozing a strange sort of menace, “is that it’s only the tigers who have any credibility at all. If they exist, that is. The rest of us all have some axe or other to grind.”
“I certainly don’t think I do,” Judith responded, keeping her voice calm, uncertain whether or not he was having a go at her. His voice said no, but his words were open to almost any interpretation.
“Never let the facts distort a good story,” he said. “Especially now that you’re a fair-dinkum journalist again.”
“That’s to be expected, I suppose, knowing your opinion of journalists in general,” she said. “But it’s also unfair. You don’t know anything about me.”
His laugh boomed through the carpeted cab of the truck. It was mocking, almost cruel laughter, and it carried with it the message Judith had forgotten – Jeremiah’s “chapter-and-verse” discussion about her, admitted by the publisher himself and now confirmed by Bevan Keene.
“I know all I need to know,” the man himself replied coldly as he leaned across to flip open her door for her. It was a quite unsubtle way of making his statement. He wasn’t even going to be a gentleman and get out to hand her down from the high-slung vehicle.
Judith, fuming but unable to find the words for her feelings, took the hint. She turned away and slid down to land precariously on the footpath, stumbling as she did so. Then she righted herself and leaned forward to peer at him through the still-open door. “Thank you for a lovely evening,” she said in as sarcastic a voice as she could muster. She started to slam the vehicle’s door, then thought better of it.
“But I don’t know why you dislike this truck so much. I think it suits you,” she said. And walked away without a backward glance, deliberately swinging her hips as she did so. It was all an act and did little to make her feel better once the burble of the truck’s exhaust had faded and she was left standing on her cousin’s veranda in the small hours of the morning with no more chance of sleeping than of flying to the moon.
Inside her own room, the sleeplessness became intolerable, and Judith found herself in Charles’s office, staring at nonsense computer images as she scanned the Internet in search of information she didn’t really need and wasn’t totally sure what to do with.
Until she found what she needed. Then it was just a matter of writing down the details and firing off a lengthy, detailed e-mail to an old friend in New York who dealt with such matters. It took her friend a few hours, but by dawn, Judith had her plan together and the results dubbed onto a CD.
9
“What on earth is this all about?” Vanessa’s belly entered the kitchen before she did, and the woman herself had her hands over her ears as the sound of Gretchen Wilson singing “Redneck Woman” reverberated and Judith, groggy from her lack of sleep, rocked along with it.
“This is one of the better ones,” Judith replied. “I’ve got a whole CD of this stuff.” She stopped the music long enough to pick a different selection – the first on the CD – and Alan Jackson’s voice growled out his version of “It’s Alright to Be a Redneck.”
Vanessa remained unimpressed. “Are you trying to force me into labor?” she asked.
“Now there’s a thought.” Judith paused to make a third selection, and her cousin was treated to Jeff Walker’s “Redneck Mother.” “There you go – just for you,” Judith said with a giddy, overtired laugh. “Although I didn’t have this collection put together for your benefit, dear cousin.”
“Well, that’s nice to know.” Vanessa moved to turn down the volume. “I guess your trip with Bevan didn’t work out so well?”
“I don’t even know what happened,” Judith mumbled across the breakfast table. “Talk about striking sparks! It just seemed like no matter what either of us said, there was instant lightning.”
“Be careful. Charles and I started off that way, and now look at me.” Vanessa patted her enormous tummy, her face radiant.
“It’s hard not to look at you. Are you sure you haven’t got your dates all mixed up, Nessie? It would be just like you, and I’ve never seen anybody quite as thoroughly pregnant. If the dates are right, then it must be triplets, not twins.”
“They’re twins, and the date is exactly right. The ultrasound does not lie.”
“Then what has it told you about the sex of these jolly little pumpkin seeds?” Judith persisted, unable to resist teasing her cousin as a sop to her own foul mood. “Come on, dear cousin. What’s it to be? Boys, girls, or one of each?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you must know. That’s what ultrasound is for.”
“Its main purpose is to determine the health of the fetus. Yes, I could have been told about the sex of my babies, although some experts say you can only tell if it’s a boy, and only if it’s in exactly the right position, but I chose not to know.”
Judith paused to put a curb on her tongue. This, she realized, was no time for teasing. When she did speak, it was in a quite different tone of voice and attitude.
“I can understand that, I think,” she said soberly. “That element of surprise is something that probably shouldn’t be taken away from a pregnancy. I think you made a sound choice, if you’ll pardon the pun.”
“Well, I just hope you make good choices when it comes to surprises in your own immediate future,” was the reply. And no pardon with it; clearly Vanessa wasn’t in the mood for such frivolity. “Because I warn you, Judith Theresa, don’t go judging Bevan Keene by any standard you’ve used for that greenie bloke, or any other man, for that matter, because if you do, you’ll be in for a helluva shock, let me tell you.”
“Judge him? I haven’t been judging him, for goodness’ sake. I’ve barely been communicating with him, much less judging. And really, Nessie, I’m old enough to know the danger of making idle comparisons between men.”
But Vanessa, who’d endured Judith’s soul-baring in the aftermath of her firing, was not to be so easily put off.
“You’ve never even met a man like Bevan, my girl,” she said, shaking a forefinger in a gesture of admonition. “I know you, and I know how stubborn and downright contrary you can be. You get to warring with him – as you’re already on the way to doing! – and there’ll be a lot more than sparks flying.”
“I don’t intend to go to war with him,” Judith insisted. “It would be silly anyway. How could I do the job I’m supposed to do if I’m at odds with both the key men in the project.”
“Which is an admission you’re expecting problems with Derek Innes, in case you missed hearing your own words. And I’ll bet anything you won’t find Bevan Keene any easier to deal with. I think he rather fancies you, which is
just guaranteed to complicate things.”
“Fancies me? He thinks journalists are the scum of the earth. You wouldn’t say that if you’d been with us last night.” Then Judith collapsed into a mixture of tears and laughter as she related the hapless adventures of Bevan Keene and his borrowed pickup truck.
“And in the end I stomped off in a mighty snit, which accomplished nothing, and then spent half the night organizing this CD on the basis that if he wanted to act like a redneck I’d at least acknowledge it. Or rub salt in the wounds.” Judith shook her head and moved to silence the music. “I won’t be able to give it to him, of course, unless I catch him driving his mechanic’s truck again, and I somehow doubt that will happen.”
“And you forgot to even ask about accessing his library,” said Vanessa.
“But of course. And if I did it now, I can imagine what his reply would be. He’d probably—”
Judith was cut off by the ringing of the telephone, which Vanessa answered, then handed to Judith with a positively wicked grin.
“You forgot to ask about my library.” Bevan’s distinctive voice rumbled in response to her hello.
Spooky. Too spooky, like you’re reading my mind.
Judith didn’t – couldn’t – answer immediately. He didn’t sound even remotely concerned about the events of the night before. If anything, his deep, powerful voice held overtones of some curious laughter, as if he was deeply pleased at having this excuse to mess with her mind.
“You’re awfully sure of yourself,” Judith finally managed to reply. “What makes you so certain I was going to ask about it? No, don’t tell me. You’re a mind reader.”
Which was so ridiculous, but somehow believable. She didn’t really want to know the answer. Not really.
Now his laughter was open, unconfined. It rumbled through the telephone with the same burbling sound his borrowed truck had made last night – alive, almost infectious.
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