Draw One In The Dark(68)

So . . . this avenue to find Tom hadn't worked. And he needed to get back to New York as soon as possible. He'd best find a place where he could call his secretary again and get her to call around and ask more questions, find someone who might know where Tom was.



It was eight a.m. in New York and the woman would probably be in the office.



He considered going into the coffee shop, but they'd seen the girl run away from him. At the very least he'd get pitying stares. At worst, they would think he was some sort of pervert and had said something to her that was over the line.



Shaking his head—he still couldn't understand why she had run—he walked past the coffee shop. And came to a sort of little park in the middle of the sidewalk. He sat down on the park bench set in the four feet of lawn amid three dispirited trees.

* * *



Tom walked in the shadow as much as he could. Partly because he was thirsty and partly because he realized a guy like him, in black leather, carrying a kid's backpack had to look incongruous. He was holding it by the strap, dangling it from his hand, instead of carrying it on his back.



He hoped anyone seeing him would think he was carrying it for a son or little brother and give it no thought. But you never knew. And he didn't want people to remember his coming through here. He didn't want the triad to be able to find him.



Just before he got to town—he couldn't see it, but he could smell it, a tinge of food and car exhaust in his nostrils—he saw a couple of cars abandoned. Something about the cars tickled his memory, but he couldn't quite say what. Well, at least one of them looked awfully familiar. But it was just a Kia something or other, one of those economy cars that tried to look like SUVs and rarely managed more than looking like a toy patterned on an SUV.



It wasn't Kyrie's car. That was white too, but much smaller. Besides, this one had a driver's side window, Tom thought, and felt very guilty he hadn't sent her the money to have that repaired.



He'd been so furious last night, so furious because she'd failed to live up to his high standards. His high standards at that. It took some nerve. Now, he felt mostly tired and vaguely upset at himself, as if he had let himself down.



Fine. He'd eat something, he thought, as he saw, in the distance, the outskirts of town—represented by what looked like an abandoned gas station. He'd eat something, he'd sleep, and then he'd think this whole thing over. If by then he still thought he had done Kyrie an injustice or somehow failed to live up to what should—yes, indeed, by damn—be his high standards, he would take as much of the money as he dared and mail it back to Kyrie before he vanished from her life.



He couldn't even tell why he wanted to deal straight with her. It wasn't because she was a shifter. He wasn't feeling particularly charitable toward Mr. Golden Eye Lion police officer. And it wasn't because they'd worked together all this time—because though he'd enjoyed work at the Athens, Kyrie had always looked at him as if he were slightly below subhuman. And it wasn't his attraction for her, because he'd already decided that he had not a snowball's chance in hell.



And then he realized it was how she'd treated him, when she had found him standing over that body. He'd been deranged. He'd been in dragon form. But she hadn't even hesitated. And she didn't even like him. He knew that. But she'd grabbed him, and helped him hide the evidence of his involvement in anything back there.



She'd been there when he needed her the most. Whether she'd disappointed him by keeping funny sugar around or not, she didn't deserve for him to leave her with a huge bill in car repairs. Okay—so that was that. He'd send her some money this evening, send her more when he settled some place and found a job.



The decision put a spring in his step, and he almost walking normally when he reached the gas station. Which was too bad. Had he been dragging along the road and looking all around in despondency and depression, he might have noticed something about the shadows, something about movement.



As it was, he walked by the squat brick building without a second glance. And didn't know anything was wrong until he felt the impact of something hard on the back of his head. And then he had no time to think about it, as darkness closed around him.





* * *




Kyrie was rattled. She didn't know if she had dreamed the beetles, out of being so tired, out of Rafiel's report on there being insect matter in and around the corpse last night.



Normally, Kyrie was very sure of her perceptions. She'd had to trust in them and them alone, as often those who were supposed to look after her or be in charge of her hadn't been very trustworthy at all.



But now? Now she wasn't sure of anything. The last two days had been a carnival of weirdness, a whirling of the very strange. Driving her car along familiar streets and around the castle just before her neighborhood, she thought she wouldn't be at all surprised to wake up in her bed, suddenly, and find that all this, from the moment she'd seen Tom as a dragon, had been a crazy dream. Although if that were true, then her subconscious harbored some very weird thoughts about Tom.