WHERE TIGERS PROWL

by Karin Story

  Her mind no longer existed on a conscious plane. She was no longer a separate entity, but a part of the whole they made together.

  At last, her tightly wound body reached the critical point. With one more powerful thrust, she met him full-on, tightening around him, shaking uncontrollably as the blazing storm tore through her. He responded simultaneously by exploding with his own release.

  They didn't speak afterward, just hurriedly dressed. Fearful that they'd allowed themselves to become so far removed from this place and this danger, yet sated physically and emotionally, a calm peace settled in place around them.

  Companionably, they sat side by side near the edge of the shelter, both alert to their environment, yet still reeling from the experience they'd just shared.

  "Do you want to tell me about Elise?" Maris asked him gently.

  He rested one hand comfortably on the gun, and with the other, wrapped his fingers through hers and squeezed. "Elise…"

  He sighed. "Elise's real name was Elise McDermott, unless Trent really did marry her and I didn't know it. She was an elementary school teacher in California. We knew each other in college, but didn't have anything more than a platonic relationship until several years later when we ran into each other at a restaurant. After that, we were a couple for about a year."

  Shaking his head, he continued. "She wanted to settle down, wanted a commitment, wanted to raise a family. And I…I just wasn't ready for that. Before I started seeing her, I'd just come out of a very long-term relationship, so it wasn't the right time for me. And I knew Elise wasn't the one I was supposed to spend my life with. You know what I mean?"

  Maris nodded.

  "Yeah, well, she kind of pressured me, and I managed to put her off gracefully, but the day I introduced her to Trent, the pressuring ended and she fell head over heels for him."

  "How?" Maris couldn't help but ask. "He's revolting."

  Tom smiled as he ran a fingertip over her lips. "You've only seen him at his worst, and you're jaded by that. I agree with you completely, but that's because you and I both know what's under that polished exterior of his."

  "Yeah, he's a bastard."

  "Without a doubt. But when he has a mind to, he can be extremely charming. I worked with him for two years before I discovered his true nature. And that charm was all Elise saw. Needless to say, she and I called it quits, and I honestly wished her the best with Trent, because at the time I had no reason to think badly of him. He filled her head and her heart with all the promises I wouldn't make to her."

  He paused, so she reached up and began to knead the nape of his neck, letting her fingers linger in the soft strands of hair, but also trying to relax his tense muscles.

  "After I discovered what Trent was really up to, he used Elise, hanging her over my head, to keep me in line. I think he really believed I was in love with her and he'd stolen her away. He liked to parade that fact in front of me. Part of his natural, arrogant nature, I suppose. Even after he'd brought me down here to Mexico, he continued to go to California and see her, and I was helpless to do anything to warn her about what he was really like. And truthfully, I don't think she would have believed me even if I had figured out some way to contact her. She was too much under Trent's spell. Sometimes I thought maybe he really did love her in his own way, and others times I was convinced he'd just used her all along."

  "Made her fall in love with him to get to you, you mean?"

  "Yeah, something like that. I'd seen Trent work, seen how he manipulated and played off people's emotions to get his way."

  She nodded, bitterness eking through her. Didn't she know it?

  "I've watched him do some pretty horrible things to people in the business. But I'd never known him to hurt a civilian. Even though I was afraid for Elise, I honestly didn't think he'd physically hurt her." He pulled his hand out of hers, stood, and kicked a rock out of the way as he paced across the entrance to the shelter.

  Finally, he stopped near her. Looking out into the green depths of the jungle, he whispered, "Obviously I was very wrong."

  * * *

  Tom watched Maris sleeping, envying her for being able to find a little peace out here. In another couple of hours, he'd wake her up and she'd stand watch while he tried to sleep, but he knew it would be useless.

  Not with Trent alive and no doubt combing the jungle for them.

  He wondered for a moment about just how hopelessly in love with Maris he must be. Because in spite of the fact that she'd been held captive for almost five days, and had just spent the night trekking through a miserable muddy hole, been battered by the river and waterfall, then walked several miles through the jungle, she looked as exquisitely beautiful to him now as she had the first time he'd seen her.

  Maris was one of those rare people who thrived on adventure, he decided. While some people were at their best dressed in formal clothes, decked out with diamonds and making small talk with a group of friends, she was at her best when there was a challenge to be met. And it seemed the bigger the challenge, the more focused and competent she became.

  How he envied her for that, too. For her free spirit.

  It hadn't hit her yet, but eventually what she'd done to Chen would catch up with her. She simply wasn't a taker of lives—it went against everything she was. She'd acted in self defense, yes, but her heart and conscience would make her pay the price. Yeah, it would hit her eventually. Or maybe it had while he was gone last night, while she waited in that dark, stinking pit. He knew, he knew how afraid of the dark she was, yet he'd left her there anyway.

  She sighed in her sleep, shifting her legs into another position, and his heart filled with unspoken love and fear.

  Maris didn't like to be protected, but everything inside him screamed to protect anyway. And after Elise, how could he do otherwise? Maris was in this mess because of him. She'd been through hell, broken the law, nearly been killed more than once, and had had to kill someone else. He was responsible for that. Just as he was responsible for Elise's death, and the man in the morgue's, and no doubt Sarah's. People had been murdered by Trent in order to get to him.

  It made the nauseous cramp in his stomach flare up again. All those innocent people.

  And he and Mare weren't out of the jungle yet.

  It was a miracle they'd gotten out of Trent's stronghold at all. Once they were good and lost in the muck of that dark tunnel last night, he'd realized there was no way suave and tidy Trent would go for an escape route like that. But it was too late for them to turn back. He didn't know if he could have found his way back anyway.

  No, Trent would have a perfectly planned, perfectly organized evacuation route out of his lair. No slogging through mud, or swimming involved. Obviously there was another way out of that tunnel. He just hoped the point where he and Mare had emerged, and the way Trent got out were far apart geographically.

  He wiped away the trickle of sweat that slid down his neck. Jungle conditions. They could be almost anywhere in southern Mexico. Or maybe not even in Mexico at all. Belize? Guatemala?

  No, probably still Mexico. Trent wouldn't want to be too far away from the crops that lined his pockets.

  Tom thought about the landscape. Probably not the Yucatan. He remembered reading somewhere that there weren't any surface rivers and streams on the peninsula. Only subterranean water. Of course that had been an impressive underground river he and Mare had come through. He sighed. Hard to say. They could be anywhere.

  His plan was to stick by the river and come to a village, or at worst, eventually come out at the ocean. Not much of a plan, but considering he didn't know where in the hell they were, it was the best he could do at the moment.

  The only problem was that Trent would try to second-guess him. He could only hope that Trent would decide the river was too obvious, and therefore think they'd head in another direction. A cat and mouse game. That's what it was. A game to see who could outguess the other.

  That's what it always was with Trent.

>   A game.

  * * *

  At nightfall, they struck out again. They'd had no problems during the long, muggy day. Tom had heard a helicopter fly over once while he was on watch, but it hadn't lingered. Maris said she hadn't heard anything during her vigil.

  Much to Tom's surprise, he'd closed his eyes and actually slept for a couple of hours. His deep-seated faith in Maris's protective abilities was even greater than he'd thought. He'd been amazed when she'd kissed him softly on the ear and whispered that it was time to go. With a groan, he'd pulled his tired, aching body off the ground to begin the next leg of their trek. God willing, they'd come to some civilized place tonight.

  "So let me get this straight," Maris said, as they walked side by side through the dripping vegetation. It had come a drenching downpour a few minutes after they'd started out, but it had ended as suddenly as it began, leaving everything, including them, sopping wet and sticky. "You were here in Mexico for all those months after you discovered what Trent was up to, but I found you in Connecticut because you'd escaped from Cardoza's yacht?"

  "Yeah. Cardoza has several legitimate business ventures on the east coast, which isn't unusual. A lot of the drug lords keep their energy and money spread around with a good portion of it sunk into above-board deals. That way if the authorities begin to snoop around, they have legal income, and it makes it harder to tie them to the drugs and the drug money."

  "What a racket."

  "Yeah, but a racket that's been around for centuries. Cardoza was checking into some of his New York investments, and he and Trent needed to meet about something. Trent took me along only because that morning I'd broken Chen's arm and given him a concussion. Little maggot. I wish I'd killed him then," Tom growled. "That was the day he tied me down, stood two feet away from me, and shot me in the back of the leg."

  "My God," Maris breathed. "I guess I just assumed you'd been shot trying to escape."

  He chuckled humorlessly. "The escape attempt came afterward. No, he shot me because our friend Trent has a gunshot scar on his leg, and of course, I had to match exactly. Needless to say I went ballistic. So Montgomery didn't dare let me out of his sight when his right-hand-man was debilitated. It was the first time in almost a year that I'd been out of Mexico."

  "But you managed to escape while you were on the yacht?"

  "Cardoza had a party going on, so while they were otherwise occupied, I, uh…got past the guard at my door." A quick dark vision of what he'd seen during Genny's meditation flickered through his mind. He'd slit the guard's throat in order to escape. "Then I jumped overboard and hoped I'd be able to stay conscious so I wouldn't drown. I found a piece of rotting wood to hang onto. I have a vague memory of draping myself over it, and that was the last I remembered until I came ashore near your house. I remember now that the lights from your windows were the only ones in sight during the storm."

  "Wait a minute…" Maris said thoughtfully. "If the bad guys are Trent and Cardoza, then who's Bob Hope?"

  "He's not Cardoza's man for sure."

  She glanced at him, an eyebrow raised. "How do you know?"

  "I just know." He took a deep breath, not sure how much to tell her about his dealings with Cardoza. "Juan Cardoza isn't exactly what you think he is. He's…well, he's no friend of Trent's. So my guess is that this Bob Hope has to be Trent's man."

  "Who killed the security guard then? Bob Hope?"

  "Yeah, or Trent. While we were down in the morgue that night with your pal Bob, we thought all the ruckus above us was the police arriving. But that had to have been Trent and more of his men, because remember after we'd gotten out the building and someone came out the backdoor while we were hiding in the trees?"

  She nodded.

  "That was Trent. Either he or Hope killed the real guard to tie up any loose ends. Then it just happened to be convenient to set us up for the murder. Probably so we'd come forward to clear ourselves and Trent could capture me."

  "God." She shuddered. "Then what about the guy in the morgue. Do you know who he is? Was?"

  He dragged in a deep breath. "Yeah, I knew him." Yet another casualty he could add to the list of deaths under the heading "Tom's Personal Guilt."

  "Okay…" she said slowly. Her eyes questioned, wanting more information, but she didn't push.

  He paused for a moment to get a drink from the water bottle he carried at his side. Then he offered it to her.

  She swallowed a few times, recapped the bottle and handed it back. But she paused with the bottle in mid-air between them. "Do you hear something?" she asked softly.

  Tom immediately stilled and let his survival instincts take over. He heard the low whisper of the light breeze in the treetops above them, a couple of birds—two different kinds—warbling in the distance, his breathing, Maris's breathing. And…

  A very low, deep rumble.

  Helicopter? No. A chopper's noise would grow louder or fainter as the machine moved. This sound remained at the same intensity and pitch.

  "You hear it?" she whispered.

  "Yeah."

  "What is it?"

  "I don't know, but I think it's in the direction we're headed." He took the bottle from her and shoved it back into place on his belt, then slowly drew his gun.

  Maris pulled the Kalashnikov into position.

  "Let's go find out." He motioned her next to him.

  They crept through the foliage, pushing wet, dripping vines and branches out of the way, and trying to maintain a straight path through the undergrowth. The sound grew steadily louder, its deep, rumbling throb filling the air as if they were in the midst of an earthquake. Except the earth wasn't shaking.

  A hazy mist twined its damp fingers around them, adding to the already stifling oppressiveness of the dark night. Tom could still see through it, but it was like looking through frosted glass. Maris stayed close at his side, but he could no longer hear his own breathing or hers. The booming sound took over everything.

  They came to a clearing, and he stopped behind a stand of large, overhanging trees. The mist had grown thicker and he couldn't see the river any longer, even though they'd been traveling only fifty yards to one side of it.

  Maris leaned closer to him and spoke in his ear. "I know this sound."

  He looked her as she shut her eyes momentarily, deep in thought. A few seconds later they flew open, and so did her mouth.

  "Oh, crud…this is what it sounds like at Niagara Falls. It's another friggin' waterfall."

  "Shit."

  In silent concurrence, they moved into the clearing to face their latest nemesis. There had to be a way around it, but it would certainly slow them down. So much for finding civilization tonight.

  The closer they got, the more obvious the sound became. Silently, he berated himself for not identifying it sooner.

  They reached a pile of large rock, and climbed the ten feet to the top of it.

  Even in the dark of night, there was no mistaking it. The thunder of water drowned out everything else, and its damp spray saturated their already wet clothes. This thing made the waterfall they'd gone over last night look like child's play.

  Clambering down the rocks, they jogged far enough away so they could hear themselves speak.

  "Do we try to find a way around it?" Maris asked him.

  "We don't have much choice. It looks like sheer rock cliffs as far as I can see. I think we're on some kind of a plateau."

  "We could backtrack and find a place to cross the river, then head out in the other direction. It might be less treacherous that way."

  He sighed. Damn it, which was the lesser of two evils? Backtracking and trying to ford the raging river in the dark, or scrambling across the top of wet cliffs, where one false step could kill them?

  "In the interest of time, why don't we split up?" Maris suggested. "One of us follows the river line back to see if there's a clear crossing somewhere, and the other follows the cliff line to see if there's an easy way down."

  "No. No way. We s
tay together."

  "Tom, we could waste half the night doing one, only to have it turn out to be fruitless. Then we'd still have to try the other. We can cover twice the distance in half the time if we split up."

  "No." He didn't want to let her out of his sight. Never again.

  She sighed loudly, then stood on tiptoe and kissed him quickly on the lips. "I know what you're thinking. But you can't protect me every second. We're in this together, remember?"

  "That's right, we're in this together. And we're staying together, even if it does take us all night. That's okay. Time's not that important."

  "Don't be like this. Time is very important and it's not okay if it takes all night. Have you forgotten that Trent probably isn't very happy with us right now for messing up his plans? He's looking for us. We can't fiddle around out here all night because you've got some damn, stubborn, male ego protector hang up."

  A tight, painful grip seized his heart and squeezed. He didn't have a male ego protector hang up. Did he? He just didn't want to lose her, damn it. He'd come too close to that too many times before. He wasn't risking it again. No way.

  "Do you love me?" She peered at him with a raised eyebrow.

  "Jesus, Maris, what the hell kind of question is that right now? You know I do."

  "Well, if you love me, you can't hold onto me with a death grip. That's not what love is all about. I know you have a serious need to always be the protector, it's written in your eyes, in the way you carry yourself, in the way you deal with people. But no one can protect all of the people all of the time. It's too big a job to carry on your shoulders." She sighed. "You have to accept the fact that we each walk our own path in this life, Tom. We can share a path, yeah, but we can't do the walking for the other person."

  She softened her voice and put a gentle hand on his arm. "I know you love me. And I know how much guilt you're feeling over the things that have happened since we've met. And about what happened to Elise."

  "And the security guard. And Sarah," he muttered.

  "And the guard and Sarah. But you have to realize that all of us had choices to make. Choices that you couldn't have made for us. I made the choice to follow you when the going got tough. Sarah knew the risks and made the choice to help you. Elise made the choice to fall in love with Trent. And you, yourself, told me that even if you'd found a way to warn her about him, she probably wouldn't have believed you."