Double Blind (42 page)

"Let's give him another day or so," he finally said. "If he hasn't checked in by close of business Monday, we notify his boss that we can't find him."

"Okay, fair enough."

Halahan could sense the uncharacteristic hesitation in his deputy's voice.

"You think we're leaving Charlie Team a little open, cutting off their liaison with the regional agent like that?"

Freddy Moore chuckled.

"No, not really. I guess that's part of the second problem."

"You think Bravo Team's disobeying your directive to stay away from Charlie Team?" Halahan guessed.

"I don't think they'll make contact. And from what Takahara said — and didn't say — in his e-mail message, I get the impression that they've got their hands full with that warehouse situation. But I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they put somebody out on the perimeter to keep an eye on things."

"You mean someone like Lightstone?"

"Uh-huh."

"Why so?"

"You know Henry," Freddy Moore replied. "How likely is it that he's so concerned about maintaining contact with some demented old fart who rides a motorbike while pretending to be blind, and an innkeeper slash post-office employee who thinks she's a fortune-telling witch, that he goes out and buys a motorcycle an hour after he abandons his truck — and before he checks in with the rest of his team?"

"As opposed to him wanting some immediate and fast transportation, such as a motorcycle, because he didn't take well to being tagged like that?"

"That's right."

"You want to pull them out?"

Freddy Moore snorted with amusement.

"Which team?"

"Either one, or both," Halahan replied. "You call it."

"Gut feel tells me to pull Charlie Team, and leave Bravo in place. Logic says leave them both in place and see what happens. I'd like to go with logic, but I'm not sure that my gut's going to leave me alone for the next couple of days."

"What, no bureaucratic intuition?" Halahan teased gently, wanting to get the measure of his deputy's sense of uneasiness. He had chosen Freddy Moore as his deputy because the ex-military officer and experienced wildlife agent was a skilled survivor as well as a top-notch field supervisor.

"If I had any bureaucratic sense at all, I'd pull everybody back to DC and put in for Boggs's job myself," Freddy Moore replied, laughing.

"Okay," Halahan said, "let's leave them out there for a while. And in the meantime, let's see what you and I can do about trying to find Boggs."

Chapter Forty

At almost nine-thirty that Saturday evening, Henry Lightstone walked into the dining room of the Dogsfire Inn with a brown paper grocery bag in one arm, and went directly to an empty table.

His alert and cautious eyes located her immediately, setting bowls of hot berry cobbler and ice cream in front of the only two diners in the restaurant. She turned, saw him, turned back to her youthful customers, said something apparently amusing to the young woman, and patted the young man on the shoulder.

Then she walked casually over to Lightstone's table with one of the hand-printed menus in her hand.

"Nice to see repeat customers," she greeted him in a neutral voice as she placed the folded menu in front of him. "Can I start you out with something to drink?"

"Actually, I was thinking of starting you out with something, my treat," Lightstone replied, staring up into her gold-flecked green eyes.

The woman hesitated, maintaining a careful distance — mentally and physically — and looked at him suspiciously.

I'll bet you'd be real good at verbal judo, lady. Probably a natural
, Lightstone thought to himself, sighing inwardly as he continued to leave himself wide open in an attempt to penetrate the protective barrier she'd erected around herself.

"Somehow I didn't think flowers would work on you." He shifted his gaze to the grocery bag sitting on the adjoining chair.

Her eyes followed his . . . and considered the bag for a moment.

"So just what, exactly, did you think might work?" she finally asked.

"Actually, it was a pretty tough decision. I finally decided to try a couple bottles of homegrown Oregon wine, some homemade tofu from a little place in Ashland, five pounds of top sirloin for any serious carnivores in the house, and a sack of fresh shrimp supposedly flown straight in from the Gulf. I thought maybe I could talk Danny into making some of that fantastic jambalaya you told me about . . . especially if we're willing to share it with him."

"You really think that'll work?"

Lightstone allowed himself to glance into those gold-flecked green eyes long enough to ascertain that they no longer seemed quite so aloof.

"I seem to recall you saying something about double-Xs being easily distracted by picnic baskets."

This time, a slight smile appeared at the corner of her lips.

"I don't know." She played with her pen and order pad. "Danny can be a little overly protective at times."

"I've heard good cooks can be like that . . ." Lightstone paused long enough to give special meaning to his next words, ". . . about their special recipes."

"Certainly seems that way." She smiled almost wistfully.

"Well, that's okay." Lightstone shrugged. "Like I said, I'm willing to share."

"Can you see them from there?" Larry Paxton whispered softly into his headset microphone more than an hour later.

"Uh-huh," Mike Takahara replied.

"Well, what the hell are they doing?"

"Eating dinner."

"That's all?"

"No, they're drinking, too. Some kind of white wine — looks very expensive. Probably spent our entire per diem on that bottle."

"Not mine, he didn't," Dwight Stoner warned over the scrambled short-range communications system.

"I don't give a shit what they're drinking," the Bravo Team leader retorted. "Who's that with them?"

"Looks like the cook." The tech agent shifted his spotting scope and refocused. "Holy shit, look at that thing," he whispered.

"Where?" Stoner and Woeshack's voices echoed in the headsets.

"Down and to the left, next to Henry's chair."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Larry Paxton demanded. "I can't see anything with these damned binoculars."

"Jesus," Stoner whispered.

"That must be the panther Henry told us about. Wow, isn't she something." Thomas Woeshack's awe-filled voice sounded childlike over the scrambled communications system. "Hey, what's it doing now?"

"Looks to me like it's nuzzling Henry's crotch."

"What? Gimme one of them scopes!" Larry Paxton demanded.

"No, wait a minute, I guess that was just to distract him. Looks like she really wanted his shrimp. Hell of a move for a supposedly dumb animal," Dwight Stoner chuckled.

"Who said cats were dumb?" Woeshack asked.

"Probably not anyone with a full-grown panther sitting in his lap," Mike Takahara guessed.

The four agents all focused their spotting scopes and binoculars on the slightly blurred image of the huge black cat bracing her front paws on Henry Lightstone's lap as she licked his plate clean.

"Uh, oh, looks like the lady's pissed," the tech agent observed.

"Yeah, and there goes the cook with the panther in tow," the young Eskimo agent/pilot spoke excitedly into his mike. "Man, this is really neat! I wonder what's going to happen next."

The four of them waited silently.

"Looks like the lady's about to make a move on Henry's shrimp, too," Dwight Stoner commented.

"Yeah, but she's too late," Thomas Woeshack reminded him. "The panther already licked his plate clean."

"Doesn't look like that's going to stop her any," Mike Takahara observed dryly.

"Henry either," Dwight Stoner added. "Think maybe he's going after her plate now?"

"No, probably not. It just hit the floor, along with her silverware . . . and the expensive wine," Bravo Team's tech agent noted.

"Hey," chirped Woeshack, "I don't think they're after each other's shrimp at all!"

Larry Paxton lowered his binoculars, closed his eyes, and slowly shook his head.

"You ask me, you're running a pretty loose ship around here, Paxton," Dwight Stoner commented into his headset mike. "I think us peon agents could make a pretty good case for discriminatory treatment on the part of our field supervisor. Like, for example, how come we get to deal with all the poisonous snakes, the giant spiders, and the baby crocodiles — and then have to hang around out in the cold all night as the standby rescue team — while Henry gets to play on the table with a very sexy lady."

"Who may or may not be a witch," Mike Takahara added.

"Hey, yeah, wow! That's right!" Thomas Woeshack exclaimed.

"Still looks like a very sexy lady to me," Stoner commented as he refocused his spotting scope.

"But Henry does tend to get bitten, scratched, beaten up, and shot at a whole lot more than we do, which probably does sort of even things out," the team's tech agent reminded them. "Speaking of which, I think she just bit him."

"Yeah." Stoner sighed sadly.

Another interval passed during which the four men continued to monitor their colleague.

"I don't know about you, Larry, but I'm starting to feel like a Peeping Tom," Mike Takahara finally announced. "Think it's about time to get Thomas out of here and go back to keeping an eye on Charlie Team?"

"Yeah, I suppose so." The Bravo Team leader sighed sadly, too.

"Fine with me," Dwight Stoner commented. "I don't think Henry would be real appreciative if we tried to rescue him now anyway."

Two hours later, as the members of Bravo Team moved onto the second shift of their all-night surveillance, and as the huge panther stretched her sleek body then snuggled in closer to the limp, naked form of Henry Lightstone, the woman who called herself Karla sat up in bed and stared down at the two figures who — much to her dismay — now shared her heart as well as her bed.

It wasn't supposed to work out this way.

Chapter Forty-one

Henry Lightstone woke up at seven-thirty that Sunday morning with a throbbing head, an equally tender forearm, long bristly whiskers in his face, and the claw-studded paw of a gently snoring hundred-pound panther draped across his chest.

What?

Indistinct images flickered through the covert agent's momentarily disoriented mind. Bizarre, sweaty, muscular, clawing, and undeniably erotic post-dining room images that he immediately — and prayerfully — hoped had nothing whatsoever to do with the huge predatory cat beside him.

But then the images sorted themselves out, and Lightstone recalled how the panther had yowled and raked at the door of her cage with her razor-sharp claws until the temporarily sated Karla finally groaned in surrender and staggered to the adjoining room to release her.

"We need to get one thing absolutely clear here," Lightstone had pronounced emphatically when the naked woman gracefully tumbled back into bed with the enthusiastically bounding feline close behind. "I like cats. I really do. But I don't care what you say — or what either of you do, for that matter — I am not going to get romantically involved with a completely different species."

"You explain the biology to her, I'm tired," Lightstone remembered Karla mumbling before cuddling up next to him, pulling the sheet and blankets over them, and immediately falling into a deep sleep.

He also vaguely remembered the panther's diesel-like purring, her claws rhythmically digging into his skin as she happily kneaded his other shoulder, and her bewhiskered head rubbing his for what seemed like a very long time, until finally — after thinking how odd it was that the idea of lying in bed next to a predatory creature who was perfectly capable of tearing him apart with either her teeth or her claws no longer frightened, or even seriously unnerved him —he, too, fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.

This entire situation is getting out of hand
, Henry Lightstone told himself as he carefully extracted himself from the sheet, the blanket, and the paw, ignored the bright yellow eyes that blinked open momentarily and slowly closed again, staggered into the bathroom, then considered the haggard face that stared back at him in the mirror.

Gotta get a grip.

Not to mention some sleep.

And . . . wait a minute, what time is it?

He fumbled in the pocket of his jeans for his watch.

Shit. Gotta get dressed.

Ten minutes later, shaved, showered, and dressed, Lightstone hurried down the hallway toward the post office and dining room, hesitated at the small intersecting corridor, looked around, tried the post office door, smiled when he once again discovered it unlocked, and quickly entered.

The first thing he did was check the contents of box fifteen.

Two letters. He immediately recognized the one on top as being the envelope he'd asked Mike Takahara to deliver the previous afternoon.

Good job, Michael, my man. How does that old saying go? Neither rain nor sleet, nor warehouse full of loose snakes and giant tarantulas . . .?

Lightstone smiled, wondering for a brief moment how Larry Paxton was dealing with the latest emergency, whatever that might be.

He was about to reach into the box, to examine the other letter, noticing as he did so that the box thirteen — the one that had been full of mail the other day, and the one he'd slipped Wintersole's letter into — was now empty, when he heard a key rattling in a lock. Then he saw a hand reach into box fifteen and remove its contents.

For a brief moment, Henry Lightstone simply stood there, stunned.

Then, realizing fate had just presented him with a wonderful opportunity to track back on the militant sergeant's drop-box system, he hurried back out of the office, and pulled the door shut behind him . . . only to find himself staring into the cold pale gray eyes of First Sergeant Aran Wintersole.

Completely unaware of the sudden, unexpected, and potentially violent confrontation that had just occurred within a few feet of his back, congressional aide Keith Bennington walked out of the small post office and over to the staff car with the latest batch of messages in his hand.