WHERE TIGERS PROWL

by Karin Story

  "And you think I do?"

  "Well you're the one who got all hot and bothered in the closet and stuck your tongue down my throat." She threw the box of raisins at him, aiming for his head. He caught those with ease, too, which only served to make her madder.

  Tom stalked over and stared down at her for a long moment. She was too proud to look away, so she glared up at him and dared him to yell at her, or something worse.

  Instead, he squatted in front of her with a wince, and dropped the food in her lap. "You know what I think?" he said in that low, hypnotic voice that set her nerve endings on edge. He caught a strand of her hair and twirled it around his finger. "I think you liked having my tongue stuck down your throat."

  And then he smiled. A sexy, taunting smile that caused her to think dirty little thoughts that would have made Grandma Sophie roll over in her grave.

  "I'm going to double-check the doors and see if I can find another way out of here. There may be some sort of emergency back-up, like a code we can punch in to get the door open." He rose to his feet and walked away, leaving her hot and bothered in a big way.

  By the time he returned a few minutes later, she'd managed to rein in her frisky thoughts and wall them up behind all that moral, upstanding responsibility Grandma Sophie had been so fond of.

  "No secret escape route?" she asked calmly.

  "We wouldn't be so lucky," he grumbled. "I don't suppose you happen to know an electronic security expert we could call? Or hell, even a good burglar would help about now."

  "Sorry, fresh out of them. We could always call 911, you know."

  He snorted. "Oh, yeah, that's just what we need. I can see the headline now: Two dumb sneak thieves call the cops on themselves."

  "We're not thieves. We didn't steal anything."

  He glared at her. "Like they're going to give a shit. Breaking and entering, babe. Breaking and entering. Enough to get us both a stint in the county lock-up. Especially since I can't even tell them my damn name."

  He slapped a hand against the brick wall, then sat down next to her with a huff, his thigh just brushing against hers, sending a small shock of earthquake through her. About, oh, a 7.5 on the Richter scale.

  When she offered him the granola bar again, he took it and tore off the wrapper with his teeth. He munched in silence for a few minutes, and she tried really hard to concentrate on reciting the Greek alphabet, and remembering the opening scene in Sophocles's Oedipus the King. Nothing like a little tragedy to cool your jets and ignore the fine male specimen sitting next to you.

  "So," he stretched out his legs, crossing one ankle over the other, "you speak seven languages, huh? That's pretty impressive."

  She started to ask him how he knew, then remembered he'd read the article—that damned article that was determined to haunt her. She shrugged. "Not considering the way I grew up. Besides, it comes in handy. Working as a translator pays the bills. I started doing it while I was taking care of my grandmother when she had cancer." For some reason a hollow pain formed in her chest at the thought of Grandma Sophie. Not the usual bitter hurt, but a more basic sense of loss.

  "How long since she died?"

  "A year ago."

  "Why didn't you go back to Colorado after she was gone? Why stay in Connecticut?"

  "Because I promised her I'd stay in school."

  He nodded and didn't say anything.

  She felt compelled to add, "My grandmother always wanted me to settle down, get a fancy graduate degree, go into what she considered the 'professional' world. She nagged me about it all my life. Basically, I think she wanted me to make up for my mother's failings."

  "I haven't heard you mention your mother before."

  "She died when I was five. She was a concert pianist and appeared with most of the major orchestras around the world."

  "And your grandmother thought she was a failure?" His voice indicated his disbelief.

  She swallowed the last of her Diet Coke and sighed. "Yeah. My mom had gotten a scholarship to attend Harvard, but she turned it down to go to the music conservatory instead. My grandmother never forgave her. And then, two years later when my mom and dad were married in London just a few weeks after they met, my grandmother all but disowned her." Pain burned in Maris's chest, because after living with her grandmother for two years, she could imagine how her mother must have felt at the rejection.

  Tom's big hand closed around hers, surprising her. His fingers wound through hers and gently caressed the back of her hand. "That's a pretty big burden for you to carry—responsibility for your life and someone else's."

  He said the words as if he spoke from experience, and she had a fleeting thought that maybe he remembered more than he let on. She hated these prickles of doubt she kept getting about him. Outwardly he was hard-edged male, but she'd seen several hints that there was a heart buried down inside him.

  Or maybe she was rationalizing because she wanted him to have a heart. Maybe it was the touch of his rough fingers on her knuckles that sent shivers of pleasure through her, making her want him to be larger than life.

  She shrugged. "And before you ask about the med school thing again, I turned down the scholarship because my grandmother finagled it. She knew people in the right places. She was always trying to do stuff like that, plan my life for me, but I refused to be manipulated."

  She wasn't sure why she'd told him, except maybe because she just needed to get it off her chest.

  "Would you have gone if she hadn't interfered?"

  "God no. I enjoyed being a paramedic, doing search and rescue work. Working in a hospital like Jerry does would be too sterile for me. I'd be bouncing off the walls."

  "I'd already pegged you as the adventurous type," he said with a half-smile. "So then the next obvious question is, what the hell are you doing getting a Ph.D. at some stuffy ivy league university when you could be out having adventures?"

  "I told you," she said through gritted teeth, "I promised my grandmother I'd do it."

  "You didn't let her manipulate you before, so why now? She's gone. She has no more control over you," he pressed. "And why something stodgy like Classics? Why aren't you getting your degree in something with a little more kick to it?"

  Bitter ire sped through her veins like an overheated pressure cooker. She rose to her feet.

  "Because I was tired of her telling me how hopeless I was. How I was wasting my life away and not living up to my potential. Do you know what's it's like to hear that day in and day out? You start to wonder if maybe it's true. If maybe you are screwed up somehow. So I copped out and entered the program that was easiest for me just so I could get it over with."

  His eyebrows rose. "Since when is Classics easy?"

  "It is for me, okay? Forgive me for having above-average intelligence and a gift for languages. Don't you think I'd give that up in a heartbeat if everyone would just leave me the hell alone and let me live my life my way?"

  She spun on her heel and huffed off down the hall, leaving him staring after her.

  * * *

  "Here, take these. It's Ibuprofen. It'll help take the edge off your aches and pains."

  Tom looked up from examining the ledger book where the dead bodies were logged. He shifted on the corner of the desk where he sat and a twinge of pain shot up his leg, causing him to grimace. Maris stood in front of him, her expression passive after her earlier outburst, holding out two white capsules in one hand, and a paper cup of water in the other.

  "Thanks." He popped the pills and washed them down.

  "See anything interesting there?"

  "No." He tossed the book aside. "Their record keeping is pretty antiquated. As far as I can tell, there's nothing on the computer. They do everything the old-fashioned way."

  She leaned against the desk on the opposite end from him, as far away from him as she could get, he noted, and crossed her ankles. He had no idea what sort of women he was normally attracted to, but there was something about her in her worn jeans and hikin
g boots, the way her T-shirt was tight enough to define her curves, but not so tight it looked like she was trying to draw attention to herself. And of course that hair… It had been down earlier, but after it had dried from being out in the rain, she'd pulled it up into a loose knot on her head. A few strands had already escaped, showing a rebellious streak that echoed the woman within.

  "So," she said, drawing his attention back to her face, "we've got a dead guy found out in the Sound who's been strangled, but also tortured the same way you have been. He scratched the letter T onto his arm as some sort of message, possibly as he was dying. The cops want to question you about the murder and they tracked you to my house based on my 911 call." Her eyebrows knitted together and he noticed she had a small scar on her forehead, just over her eyebrow. "So…what was it about my phone call that cued them in you were the person they were looking for? Were they already searching for you, or did they just pick up on the similarity between your injuries and his?"

  "You sound like Nancy Drew. And I don't have any answers, remember?" He stood up and paced the room, trying to work the stiffness out of his leg. "I don't know what I expected to find here. I guess I was hoping I'd recognize the guy—for better or worse. Now I need to get the hell out of here and find out what the police know about this man. Like if they've identified him yet."

  "Yeah, well, we've been through this before. We've searched the whole basement. Aside from setting off the sprinkler system and getting the fire department over here, I can't think of a way out of here until someone else comes in."

  "And since it's Friday night, that might not happen until Monday morning, damn it. Do you want to hang out here all weekend?"

  "Look," her lips tightened, but she kept her voice even, "I'm sorry I stole the janitor's badge. If you want, sue me when we get out of here. But whining about it isn't doing any good."

  "Whining?" Irritation burned in his gut.

  She rolled her eyes and stomped away. "Forget it."

  He followed her out into the hallway, but bit his tongue from snapping back at her.

  The squeak of a metal door echoed up the hallway.

  He froze, and Maris whipped around to stare at him, her eyes wide.

  "Someone's coming." He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the stairwell at the far end of the hall.

  "Wait, my pack." Maris jerked away from him and sprinted back to snatch up her backpack off the hall floor where she'd left it earlier. She darted into the stairwell just as the door at the other end opened.

  "What are we doing down here? I thought you wanted to get out of this hell hole?" she whispered. "Shouldn't we be down there where the door's open?"

  "Shh. We don't even know who it is."

  A flashlight shone up and down the hall, and when the figure drew close to the morgue entrance, where the one dim hall light shone, he finally got a visual.

  Brown uniform, hat, bulging belt.

  A security guard.

  "Damn, we left all the lights on down there," Maris breathed.

  The guard disappeared into the morgue.

  He and Maris watched and waited. He could feel the steady thud, thud of her heart where her back rested lightly against his chest.

  After several minutes, his nerves had pretty much stretched to the breaking point.

  Another minute, then two, ticked by. He began to visualize the security guard on the phone to the police, telling them of a break-in. Except…wouldn't any decent security guard check the rest of the basement first, to make sure no one was still lurking about?

  "He's been in there too long. I want to see what he's doing." He set Maris from him and gave her a stern look. "You wait here."

  The evil glare she settled on him was enough to curdle his blood, and he knew what she was going to say before it ever came out of her mouth.

  "You don't give me orders," she ground out.

  "This isn't a game. We could be in real trouble here."

  "All the more reason why you need me."

  Swearing softly, he grabbed her arm. "Stay behind me."

  "Aye, aye, Captain Bligh."

  They crept from one door alcove to the next, and each time they stepped out into the open, Tom was sure the guard would pick that moment to emerge from the morgue. But each time it didn't happen, he grew more and more suspicious about what was going on. The guard had been in there at least ten minutes by now. Too long to just be doing a routine check. It wasn't that big of an area, just the main room and the small office.

  When they reached the double doors into the morgue, he put a finger to his lips and motioned Maris back until he could get a peek.

  His right hand instinctively reached across his body to a place just behind his left arm. He hadn't even realized he'd done it…until his hand grasped at air, not finding what it sought.

  He paused and frowned, feeling as if he were missing something important here. He closed his eyes briefly, and in his mind's eyes, he felt the comforting sensation of heavy metal in his hand. A gun.

  Shaken, he rubbed his eyes and glanced at Maris. She watched him closely, concern and suspicion at war in her gaze.

  He turned away from her and shut it all out. Holding his breath, he eased the metal door open a crack. When nothing happened, no security guard leaped out at him, he opened it a little farther, inch by inch, until he had a decent view of the main room.

  And there, bent over the same dead body he and Maris had looked at earlier, stood the security guard. He wore a pair of latex gloves, and was probing at the man's back, much as Maris had done earlier.

  Son of a bitch. This wasn't on the job description for any security guard. This guy must know something about who the dead body was. And possibly…who he was.

  Adrenaline and anger surged through him. He fought the urge to lunge in there, grab the man by the throat, and demand answers to all his questions.

  Maris's gentle hand on his back brought him back to reality like a voice of reason. He had to think of her, too. If he rushed in there, it probably wouldn't serve any purpose except getting them both caught. He needed a plan.

  But in that split second before he could make any decisions, the guard suddenly slid the body drawer back into place and pulled off his gloves.

  Tom turned to Maris and shoved her back down the hall. For once, she didn't argue, and dutifully sprinted on light feet toward the back stairwell. He turned to follow her, but in his intense need to find out what was going on in the morgue, he'd forgotten about his leg.

  Christ! Sharp pains shot through this thigh, radiating all the way down to his toes and up to his hip. The best he could manage was a medium-speed limp-run.

  He knew he wasn't going to make it all the way to the end, so he lunged into one of the shallow door alcoves about fifteen feet from Maris. He caught one last glance at her face before she ducked behind the wall out of sight.

  And her expression told him they were in trouble.

  "Who's there?" the deep voice of the security guard boomed.

  Shit. Tom willed himself to take slow, shallow breaths and not move.

  Soft footfalls grew closer, almost imperceptible except for the occasional faint squeak of rubber on tile.

  He found himself once again reaching for a gun that wasn't there, and a sick knot formed in his gut. He patted the pockets of the jacket he wore. Nothing. He had no means of defense except his wits and a body sadly lacking in both energy and strength at the moment.

  "I know you're there," came the guard's voice, only a few feet away now. "Get out here and show your face. And I'm armed, so don't try anything stupid."

  His options were limited. Wait here until the guard came closer, and possibly try to jump him. Wait here until the guard found him. Or haul his ass out there to confront the guy.

  But if the guard was telling the truth—and he didn't see any reason he would be lying—he was currently holding a gun. Which meant that if he jumped the guy, he was damn likely to get some other part of himself shot…and maybe this ti
me he wouldn't be so lucky and the bullet would lodge in his heart, or his lungs, or his head.

  Maris.

  A vision of her face filled his mind. He couldn't afford to get himself shot and leave her at this guy's mercy. Because after seeing what he just had in the morgue, he would bet the shirt off his back that this guy wasn't a real security guard.

  No way could he take any chances with Maris's safety. Damn her for being here in the first place.

  "Get out here," the guard said, and Tom knew he'd stopped and was probably pointing his weapon at the alcove right now.

  He took a deep breath and saw Maris's face in his mind again. He didn't have any choice.

  "I'm unarmed," he called. Slowly, holding his hands out from his sides, he stepped out of the alcove.

  Sure enough, he stood only ten feet away from the man in brown, with the barrel of a 9mm pistol pointed directly at his chest.

  "Well, well. Imagine finding you here," the guard said with a smirk.

  The lighting was so dim it was almost dark at this end of the hallway, and Tom couldn't see the man's face well. But the tone of voice said it all. The guard knew him.

  "Yeah, imagine that." He squinted, trying to get a better view of his opponent. The man was at least six feet tall, a hundred seventy pounds, lean, athletic build.

  "Did you come to check up on your handiwork?" the guard said. "Make sure you didn't leave any clues that could implicate you?"

  "Something like that."

  "Get over against the wall. Slow and easy now." He motioned with the gun.

  Tom wanted to glance toward Maris, make sure she was okay. But he wouldn't give her away. It was possible that even if he was taken, she could get out of here and go home with no one the wiser. He moved toward the opposite wall, sidestepping, not turning his back on the guard. "So, how'd you guess I'd be here?"

  "Oh, I've been following you for some time. Keep your hands out. Face the wall."

  Like hell he would. Face the wall and take a chance on getting shot executioner-style? Not in this lifetime. Instead he backed against the wall, but kept his hands out in plain view. His only defense was to keep talking until he saw an opening to disarm the guy. "Well, it seems you've found me. Lucky you."