Under Cover Of Darkness

by Elizabeth White

“You can bet I will,” growled the Wolf. “Watch yourself, Warner.” He hung up.

  Warner rose, picked up the antique putter he kept in the corner and whacked a golf ball toward the far side of the office. It cracked against the wall and fell to the carpet with a thud.

  He wished it were Meg St. John’s sanctimonious little head.

  Meg woke up in the middle of the night and lay wide-eyed, trying to figure out if a dream had awakened her, or if she’d actually heard something. The old house had a tendency to creak and groan, particularly when Benny was gone overnight.

  Then she heard Gilligan growl. Swishing her feet under the sheet, Meg realized that the dog, who liked to nest between her ankles at night, was standing at the open door of her room. Moonlight filtered through the blinds, allowing her to see raised hackles and the snarl of white teeth.

  Meg sat up and swung her feet onto the braided bedside rug. “Gilligan, what’s the matter with you?”

  The dog snarled again.

  “Come here, Gill.”

  Gilligan ignored her. She got up and inched toward the door.

  Then she heard a faint metal-on-wood clatter from the kitchen. The dog began to bark.

  Gooseflesh broke out on her arms. Somebody was in the house, and Benny was in Austin, involved in a prison ministry weekend.

  Okay, Meg, think. Don’t make any noise, maybe they’ll think you’re still asleep.

  Rats, no way would anyone think that with the dog barking. Maybe whoever had been there had been scared off.

  Maybe she should peek in there first, to make sure it wasn’t some perfectly explainable noise. It would be embarrassing to tell a policeman she’d been scared by the odd noises of an old house. Or maybe Benny had come home early.

  But why would Gilligan bark at Benny?

  Some of the houses on the street were barricaded with burglar bars, but break-ins were rare. In fact, Meg couldn’t remember the last time a police car had been in the neighborhood for anything except a speed trap. On second thought, maybe that wasn’t a good thing.

  She picked up the phone to call 911. Would the police get here before something terrible happened?

  Okay, I’m not going to get caught in here like a squirrel in a cage. And I’m not charging into the kitchen like some idiot, either.

  She tiptoed toward the window and slipped the lock—or tried to. The window had been painted shut. She sat on the windowsill, panting shallowly and silently, fear roaring in her ears.

  This is ridiculous, she told herself. Some heroine you are.

  Then it dawned on her that Gilligan had stopped barking. He wasn’t even growling anymore. He’d found his tennis ball and was noisily gnawing it beside the bed. Whatever—or whoever—had been in the kitchen was gone now.

  Meg found the light switch and peeked into the hallway. Dead silence. Except for the hardwood floors creaking underfoot. Flipping on lights as she went, she padded toward the kitchen, Gilligan trotting behind her with the tennis ball.

  It finally occurred to her to look at a clock—2:00 a.m.

  She looked around for anything out of place. Harvest gold countertops wiped clean. Gilligan’s dog dish under the microwave table. Benny’s recipe box perched on the ancient refrigerator. Nothing that would have made that noise, except—

  Lying on the floor in front of the stove was an enormous butterfly-shaped magnet made out of a clothespin, a pipe cleaner, and a Ziploc bag full of torn construction paper. Her brother’s youngest son had made it a few weeks ago at Mom’s Day Out. The magnet had been on the ventilator hood, and apparently it had hit the stove on the way to the floor.

  She picked the magnet up, laid it on the counter and walked back to the bedroom.

  “Gilligan the Wonder Dog,” she told her pet in disgust. “Vanquished by a wooden butterfly.” She flopped onto her pillow. “Boy, I’m glad I didn’t call 911.”

  But she left the lights on.

  The next morning Meg woke to what sounded like Niagara Falls pouring through the wall between her room and the bathroom.

  The house’s ancient plumbing design made every shower and every flush of the toilet a symphony of hydro-acoustics. Benny loved to joke that little was sacred, and nothing private, in their little corner of the world.

  Remembering her fright from the night before, Meg gave thanks for the noise that meant her roommate was home.

  Meg staggered into the kitchen for a glass of orange juice, and crammed a Pop-Tart into the toaster. She could have good nutrition on a day when she’d had a little more sleep.

  She’d just let Gilligan back in from his morning constitutional when Benny came out of the bathroom, wrapped in her terry robe.

  “Meggins, we’re going to have to talk about you leaving the door unlocked again,” Benny said, rubbing her long hair with a towel.

  Meg coughed on a crumb. “But the door was locked just now when I let Gilligan out!”

  “Well, yeah. I locked it when I came in about an hour ago.” With a disapproving look, Benny looped the towel around her neck. “What were you thinking?”

  Meg shook her head. “I locked it before I went to bed. At least I think I did.” She started to tell her roommate about her silly scare in the middle of the night, then decided Benny already thought she was goofy enough. “I promise I’ll be more careful. So how was the weekend?”

  Benny’s face lit. “Unbelievable! A hundred eighteen women professed Christ for the first time, Meg!”

  “Wow.” Meg pushed away her fatigue and lingering fear. “Wish I could’ve gone. Come on, sit down and tell me about it.”

  “It’s not my fault you’re hiring illegal aliens!”

  Leaning back against the time-clock cabinet, Jack adjusted the earpiece of the bug he’d installed in Warner’s office last week. When Meg had been called in to meet with her boss after work, he’d lingered to “see what he could see.”

  Meg’s outraged comment gave him a strong desire to do the Schwarzenegger thing. Surging through a wall and tearing Kenneth Warner limb from limb seemed like a good day’s work right now.

  “Did I say it was your fault?” Warner demanded. “I simply asked you if you knew why border patrol would call this morning. They had some pretty embarrassing questions.”

  “If you didn’t do anything wrong, you wouldn’t be embarrassed,” Meg said reasonably.

  Jack frowned. Meg hadn’t answered Warner’s question. Had she disobeyed his request not to report Tomás’s underage employment?

  “Ms. St. John.” There was a sudden, loud noise—Warner smacking the desk with his hand. “If border patrol starts breathing down our necks again, everything slows down. And your little project at Silver Hill will be the first thing to go.”

  There was a thick, humming silence. “Mr. Warner,” Meg said carefully, “did you just threaten me?”

  “No,” Warner snapped, “I’m trying to get you to be sensitive to the mountain of paperwork it takes in order to man all the jobs we have in queue this summer.”

  “I’ll tell you what I’m sensitive to.” Jack held his breath as Meg raised her voice. “I’m sensitive to the fact that I’ve got a fourteen-year-old boy on my crew who’d let his hand rot off before he’d go to the doctor!”

  Jack heard Warner’s chair squeak and roll across the floor. “Do you want me to fire him? Is that it?”

  Meg seemed to realize she’d just boxed herself into a corner. “Of course not,” she muttered.

  “All right then,” Warner said with satisfaction. “Obviously you have a certain amount of affection for the Herrera tribe. If you have their best interests at heart, we should keep this conversation between ourselves. And in the future, keep your opinions to yourself.” He paused. “Comprende?”

  Jack barely heard Meg’s “Yes, sir,” before the office door opened and closed sharply. The rapid tap of Meg’s boots sounded on the tile of the outer office as Jack slipped out of the closet. He watched her stomp to the front door.

  Jack followed. When he
reached around to open the door for her, she wheeled. “Leave me—” She took a sharp breath. “Oh, it’s you.”

  Her damp eyelashes tugged at his sympathy. “You don’t look so good, St. John. What’s the matter?”

  She shrugged. “The usual laundry list. Number twelve. Number fifteen.”

  Jack gave her a searching look. “You want I should go mess up his face?” he asked, only half joking. He’d seen the way Warner looked at Meg.

  She gave him a wobbly smile and shoved open the door. “No thanks, Torres. I appreciate your concern, but I’m going to go home and do something constructive, like sort my socks.”

  Jack rubbed the side of his nose. “Okay, but if you need somebody to sort things out with, you can always get me on my beeper. Anytime, you hear me?”

  Looking a bit taken aback, Meg nodded. “I will.”

  Jack hoped he wasn’t coming on too strong, but he didn’t like the way that conversation in Warner’s office had gone. He couldn’t come right out and question Meg without rousing her suspicions.

  He slid his sunglasses on and headed for his bike. He would also be interested in what she’d been thinking when she’d turned around and said “Oh, it’s you” in that odd tone.

  One of these days somebody was going to figure out how to decode a woman’s brain and retire as a millionaire.

  Girls don’t call boys.

  It wasn’t easy to bypass a dictum her mother had drilled into her since the age of ten, but Meg had been thinking about doing just that since she’d watched Jack roar off toward the interstate in her rearview mirror.

  What kicked her over the edge was reaching for the CD wallet she kept behind her driver’s seat—admittedly a risky undertaking when you were sitting at a red light at one of the busiest intersections in Fort Worth. She found the padded case under her briefcase on the rear passenger seat.

  The car behind her honked. Jerking the car into first gear, Meg tried to think whether she’d moved the wallet herself.

  She’d had the same CDs in the car for nearly a month, she was certain. Benny had only yesterday complained about excess bluegrass in her musical diet.

  Somebody had been in her car.

  The thought was somehow even more frightening than waking up to hear noises in her house. That, she’d been able to explain away.

  She pulled into a 7-Eleven and fished in her purse for her cell phone with shaking hands.

  Jack answered her page within five minutes, his deep voice startling her despite the fact that she’d been expecting the call. “What’s up, Spanky?”

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “Caller ID,” he said. There was a fractional pause. “St. John, are you in trouble?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Where are you?”

  Meg looked around. The convenience store parking lot was crowded and noisy, and a quarter acre of asphalt made the temperature about a billion degrees. “I’m a few blocks from the Water Gardens.”

  “I’ll meet you there in five minutes,” he said.

  Meg put her cell phone away and started the car. She hoped she hadn’t just made the biggest mistake of her life.

  Standing thirty-eight feet below street level, Jack stared across a spectacular tiered concrete pit at a thousand gallons of water cascading down a 710-foot wall. The motion of the water surrounded him with cool, swirling sound, softening the space-age starkness that had served as a backdrop for the movie Logan’s Run. It was a thing of staggering power and beauty, wholly unlike the sleepy Rio Grande.

  Yet he couldn’t take his eyes off Meg. Barefoot on a flat table in the center of the pool, she twirled like a music box dancer—eyes closed, head flung back and arms stretched wide.

  Wishing he had a camera, Jack descended the path down through the water and concrete. When he got close enough to be heard above the noise, he put a hand to his mouth.

  “Hey, St. John!” Meg turned suddenly, slipping a little, and he reached to catch her by the elbow. “You thinking about ending it all?”

  She made a face and pointed at the water bubbling around the slab they stood on. “That would be pretty hard to do in two feet of water.”

  “People drown in their bathtubs all the time.” As Meg regained her balance, Jack released her.

  “I happen to be a very good swimmer.” Looking flustered, she put her hands in her pockets. “You probably think I’m a nut, calling you like this, but—”

  “I told you to, remember?” Jack studied her face, noting the fine mist covering her hair, and the little curls loose at her temples. Her uniform was damp, too. “Does this have anything to do with that conversation with Warner this afternoon?”

  “No. At least, I don’t think so. Warner’s a wart, but he wouldn’t—” Meg’s eyes widened. “Forget I said that.”

  Jack grinned. “Did you say something?”

  “What I meant to say was, I’m hoping this is all just my imagination, and you’re going to tell me to quit watching scary movies.” She looked around as if to make sure they were alone, and blurted, “Torres, I’m scared.”

  “Scared of what?”

  “Something kind of funny happened at my house Friday night—Saturday morning, I mean.” Meg stopped and took a breath. “I think somebody broke in my house while I was asleep.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “No. Nothing was taken or even broken. I know I’d locked the door before I went to bed, but Benny came in and found it open.”

  “Had the lock been forced?”

  “I don’t think so. We don’t have anything worth that much. Why would anybody do that? Just to scare me?”

  Jack shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe.” He looked down at Meg’s wet, bare feet. “Is there some reason we’re having this conversation in the shower, or can we find a bench somewhere to sit down?”

  Meg’s toes curled under his scrutiny. “This is where I come to pray sometimes.” She turned to lead the way back up to street level. “I’ve been doing it since I got my driver’s license when I was sixteen.”

  “You’ve been a Christian that long?”

  Meg smiled at him over her shoulder. “I’ve known Jesus all my life.”

  Jack was silent. He’d never spiritually catch up to her if he tried.

  He watched her stoop to pick up her boots and socks, which she’d left on the lip of the pool, and followed her to a bench. She chose one end, and he sat at the other, turning to stretch his arm along the back. He could have touched her shoulder, but contented himself by letting his gaze follow the curve of her ear, the sway of her earring.

  “You want me to come check your house, make sure it’s safe?”

  “Maybe. There’s something else, though.” Meg pressed her lips together and slanted a look at him. “I think that break-in wasn’t an isolated thing. Somebody’s watching me at work.”

  The hair stood up on the back of Jack’s neck. “St. John, you’re the only woman on the crew, and you’re relatively easy on the eyes. Of course you’re being watched.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  “All right. What makes you think it’s anything dangerous?”

  “It’s nothing anybody else would notice.” She squirmed. “All last week, when I’d get in my car to go home, I’d find my stuff moved around. I know I don’t seem real organized, but I’m pretty particular about my possessions.”

  Jack nodded. “What stuff exactly?”

  Taken seriously, she leaned toward him. “My cell phone. The junk in my glove box.”

  Jack pushed his hand through his hair, holding it at the back of his skull. “Have you mentioned this to anybody else?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Your father or Sam, for starters.”

  “My dad’s already paranoid about the neighborhood I live in. He wants me to move home—which I’m not going to do,” she added when he opened his mouth to comment. “Besides, what if it is just my imaginat
ion?” She met his eyes. “I just want somebody to stick close for a couple of days. Somebody I trust.”

  “You’re looking for a bodyguard?”

  “I figure you’re the biggest and meanest-looking person I know.”

  Jack laughed. “Well, I guess that lets Dr. Lurch out of the picture, huh? Large, but not scary enough.”

  Meg scowled. “Don’t call Elliot ‘Lurch.’”

  “How do you know I’m not your stalker?” he interrupted.

  “If you were, I’d never know it. No matter what you want everybody to think, you are not simple.”

  Jack blinked. IQ notwithstanding, he felt like a man who’d just flung himself off an emotional cliff. No wonder they called it falling in love. On the way down he fumbled for a foothold. “So I’m big and mean and, uh, not simple.”

  “That’s what you want people to think.” She held his gaze, and he couldn’t make himself look away.

  Drowning, he said, “St. John, I want to know what I’m doing here. Tell me what the rules are so I’ll know how to play. How close do you want me to stay?”

  The words hung between them as tangible as smoke. Jack felt like a seventh-grader who had just laid a note on his beloved’s book bag: I like you. Do you like me? Check yes or no.

  Meg gave him an uncertain look. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I mean, one of these days you’re gonna trust the wrong person.” Very deliberately he dropped his gaze to her mouth. He’d been wanting to kiss her ever since he’d laid eyes on her. He told himself he was going to satisfy his curiosity and teach her a lesson at the same time.

  He should have known she wouldn’t respond like a normal person. Meg grinned at him. “See, that’s exactly what I mean.”

  His libido came to a screeching halt. “Huh?”

  “I was kind of scared of you, at first. You remind me of somebody I used to…” she blushed and looked away. “But this afternoon, the Holy Spirit prompted me to call you, and now I see why. If you were really dangerous, you wouldn’t warn me away.”

  “Is that right?” he said grimly. Jack laid his palm against the tender curve of her jaw, resting his thumb beside her mouth. “I think you’ve read too many romance novels.”