A Tiger's Tale (A Call of the Wilde Mystery) Read online

  Kai accepted a mug from Ozeal but waited for her to lower herself into a chair before taking a seat himself.

  His manner tended to be disarming, his gaze and tenacity intense. The combo had affected more than just my libido. Kai had been the first person in years I’d told about my psychic ability. The admission had not been easy, but he’d promised to keep my secret.

  I was banking on that promise now.

  “I know I probably shouldn’t have,” I said, “but I told Ozeal about the other missing persons cases.”

  Ozeal locked her steady gaze onto Kai. “Grace said the police are looking into disappearances of girls who look like Brooke.”

  Kai shot me a look.

  “Sorry.” I was apologizing for dragging him into a lie but Kai went with it.

  “It’s not really something I can discuss.” He quickly moved past the fabled disappearances and began asking questions about Brooke. He covered several questions I’d already asked, then moved on to the ones I hadn’t even considered. Which is probably one of the many differences between someone with a degree in criminology and, well, me.

  “Have you talked to her parents?” Kai asked.

  Before Ozeal could answer, Hugh reappeared in the doorway.

  “I’ve got to head out. One of our rhinos has gone into labor and I’m on the first watch.”

  “Before you go,” Kai said, shifting his attention to Hugh, “do you know Brooke?”

  “Not well. I’ve only met her a few times. She seems like a nice kid. I hope you find her.”

  “Hugh,” I said before he could turn away. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks. And thanks for coming to my rescue . . . especially in that dress.”

  Kai watched him go then glanced at me. I wasn’t sure how to categorize his expression, but it wasn’t happy.

  Now was not the time to explain Hugh’s teasing so I chose to bring the conversation back to the topic.

  “You said you talked to Brooke’s parents?”

  Ozeal nodded. “I called them when she didn’t come in yesterday. They weren’t surprised. Honestly, it sounded like they had been expecting me to call. Brooke has had issues with dealing with her problems.”

  “Rather than facing them, she runs away?” Kai asked.

  “According to her stepfather, yes.” There was a long pause. Ozeal seemed to be choosing her next words carefully.

  “Brooke is part of the rehabilitation program,” she finally said.

  “Rehabilitation?”

  “For young people. They volunteer and get the chance to work with some of the animals. It teaches them responsibility and it keeps them off the streets and out of trouble.”

  “You’re saying Brooke is a—what?” I asked, truly shocked. “A troubled teen?”

  “I don’t believe in labels. The kids in the program are promised a clean slate here. They come to me as volunteers. Ready to work and learn—not as junkies or thieves.”

  “And Brooke had access to Boris?” I didn’t bother to hide my disbelief. The idea that a troubled teenager would have access, or possibly even keys, to a rescue facility that housed some of the world’s largest predators completely boggled my mind.

  Ozeal met my eyes with a steady gaze. “I’m not a fool, Grace. Brooke’s contact with the animals was always supervised. I have rules. They apply to everyone. No lying. No stealing.”

  “You use the honor system?” Kai sounded as stunned as I was.

  “I believe in giving these kids a fair shot. But I’m not completely naïve. This ain’t my first rodeo.” She motioned to the clump of keys clipped to her belt. “Every one of these goes to a lock on this property.”

  “So you keep certain things locked up.”

  “We have twelve cats in this rescue facility. A tiger, a lion, two panthers, six bobcats, and two caracals. So yes, I keep a good deal locked up.”

  “I meant—”

  “I know what you meant, Mr. Duncan, but before you jump to conclusions, or make judgments on my policies, maybe you should ask how many times in the last three years I’ve had an incident of any kind involving one of my volunteers.”

  “I’m guessing zero.”

  “Not once since I started the program have I had more than a few minor issues. Kids that drop out, mostly.”

  It was an impressive claim.

  “Do you think Brooke is one of the dropouts?” Kai asked.

  Ozeal shook her head. “I’ll say this—I have a lot of hope for Brooke. She’s smart, and she’s got a good heart. Most of our animals come from less-than-ideal situations. Someone buys one of these cats as a cub without any real understanding of the kind of care and environment they need. That ignorance usually leads to severe health and behavioral problems. Brooke had taken it on herself to do some research. She wanted to figure out a way to make things better for them.”

  “Enrichment projects?” I asked.

  Ozeal nodded.

  “Brooke thought it was only right. If she was getting a chance to turn things around, they should, too.”

  “What does your gut tell you is going on with her?”

  The big woman was quiet for a long time. She looked down at her empty mug and then raised her gaze to meet my eyes.

  “I don’t know. People do things for reasons you can’t understand. I’ve been wrong plenty of times, but if you’d asked me two days ago, I wouldn’t even have considered the idea that she would up and leave.”

  We all sat there in silence as the rain thrummed against the roof.

  Finally, Kai said, “Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, Ozeal. If I have any more questions, I’ll call.”

  “Don’t you want to look around?” I asked.

  “It’s pitch-dark and pouring,” Kai said, as if I was just tuning in to the program.

  I met his eyes and held his gaze for a long, uncomfortable moment, then I turned to Ozeal.

  “Do you have an extra jacket?”

  “Should be one on the peg by the front door.”

  “Excuse me.” I stood more abruptly than I intended, and my chair skidded backward and bumped into the cabinet. I gave Ozeal a quick nod, turned, and walked out the door.

  Outside, I shoved my arms into the raincoat and flipped up the hood. Kai caught up to me at my Suburban, where I was pulling a flashlight from the door’s side pocket.

  “Grace, what are you doing?”

  “Going to look around,” I said, turning to march toward Boris’s enclosure.

  “Brooke has been gone since Wednesday,” Kai said, walking beside me. “It’s been raining almost nonstop since then. If there was any evidence, the chance of finding it in the dark is slim.”

  “If?”

  “Yes, if.”

  “You don’t think she was kidnapped.”

  “I didn’t say that. But you have to look at the facts.”

  “Okay, let’s start with this one: Boris said Brooke was taken. He didn’t say she’d run away. Taken.”

  I tried to stay calm and keep my argument as logical as possible, reminding myself that Kai was a scientist, and even though he accepted my ability, it had been a while since we talked about it, at least as it applied to his world. No matter how much my temper was riding me, I had to remember that as a crime scene investigator, Kai was used to working with facts and evidence.

  “Could Boris have misunderstood?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “Grace.” As we trudged past a small pavilion dotted with picnic tables, he snagged my arm and pulled me out of the rain. “Just stop for a second and listen. Brooke is a teenager with issues. Her own parents think she ran away.”

  I could barely see his face in the glow of the distant security light. But I could tell he was irritated. Water ran down the lines of his furrowed brow and dripped from the tips of his hair.

  I knew it was hard to understand that a tiger’s worry trumped Brooke’s own parents. But that’s what I needed—to be understood. Having Kai question me hurt.

&n
bsp; A calming chill swept over me. My self-defense instinct has always been to freeze people out. But in my heart I knew something was different with Kai.

  Once you let someone in . . .

  The thought brought my hackles up. “Look, if you don’t believe me—”

  “I never said I didn’t believe you. But you’ve told me that you feel an animal’s emotions. It affects you.”

  “Not really,” I lied.

  “So that night you came over to watch a movie and fell asleep in the first five minutes wasn’t because of Dusty?”

  I flushed. It had been one of our first dates. Kai’s cat, Dusty, had curled up in my lap—content and comfy—and his mellowness had washed over me like a warm bath. I’d conked out almost instantly.

  “That wasn’t my fault. I’d had a really long day. You remember the deal with the water buffalo and the lady with the chickens?”

  “Not easy to forget that story.”

  “Well, I was tired and I didn’t have my guard up.”

  “Exactly. You can be influenced, which makes you less objective.”

  “This is different.”

  “How?”

  “It just is.”

  I started pacing to release some of the frustration that had started to boil through me. After a few seconds, I realized it was a very tigerlike thing to do and stopped.

  “Why can’t you just take me at my word?” I asked.

  “I’m not doubting your word. I’m questioning the circumstances of the situation.”

  “Fine. You have questions—ask.”

  “It’s never that easy with you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you don’t like to answer.”

  “That’s not—”

  He held up a hand and cut me off. “I’ll rephrase. You don’t like to explain your answers.”

  I shook my head, at a loss. Where had all this come from? I felt like I was back at square one with him, trying to substantiate something too nebulous to be proven.

  “There’s nothing to explain,” I told him as rain pounded around us. “Brooke was kidnapped. No explanation needed.”

  “What do you want me to do, Grace? I can’t call in a kidnapping based on what a tiger told you.”

  I knew that, logically. The trouble was, I wasn’t feeling very logical.

  “We have to do something, Kai.”

  “Okay, how’s this—wait till tomorrow morning. I’ll meet you here first thing and we can look around then.”

  I started to say no but I knew he was right. Wandering around in the dark would be futile. Thinking like a cat didn’t mean I could see like one.

  I agreed with a grim nod. Thunder rumbled overhead as we stepped from the pavilion into the downpour. In the distance, I heard the muted, lonely roar of a tiger.

  • • •

  I dragged myself into my sister’s condo just after nine o’clock. Wet, grumpy, and worried, I was so distracted by thoughts of a missing sixteen-year-old and hurt by Kai’s obvious lack of faith in my ability, I almost didn’t notice my dog, Moss, enter the foyer to greet me.

  Being that Moss is a wolf hybrid who outweighs me, he’s pretty hard to miss. As tall as his timber wolf relatives, his head comes to my waist. This meant I never had to bend over to pet him and he could peruse the kitchen counters freely—much to my sister’s dismay.

  I’d been house hunting, but so far hadn’t found a place with a moat and twenty-foot wall.

  “Hey, big guy.”

  Sensing my mood, Moss let out a low, questioning grumble.

  Okay?

  I’m fine.

  Before I could place my hand on his head for an appreciative pat, Moss caught the scent of tiger and other exotic wonders wafting in the air around me. He was used to me coming home coated with animal smells, but always got especially excited by the scent of a big cat. I assumed this had something to do with the fact that as a pup, he’d been BFF with a jaguar cub.

  Whatever motivated his zeal, I knew his nose would be twitching over me as long as I smelled of Panthera tigris.

  I was heading toward my bedroom to take a quick shower and change when the front door opened.

  My sister, Emma, decked out in all-black vampire chic, strolled in carrying a purse in the shape of a tiny coffin. She took one look at me and shook her head.

  “Dare I ask?”

  “I didn’t make it to the gala.”

  “That’s a relief. I’d hate to think you showed up in those boots.”

  I glanced down at my feet, then at my sister. “At least I’m not sporting fangs. What’s with the outfit?”

  “Theme wedding. October tends to inspire the Goth crowd.”

  Emma was a premier party planner in Jacksonville, and she always attended the events she planned, which meant dressing the part. From Wild West to rockabilly, Emma had a closet full of costumes.

  “I had planned to come home and change before meeting up with you at the soirée,” she said as she set the mini-coffin on the island separating the kitchen and open living room. “Clearly that’s not going to happen.”

  Moss had continued to sniff me from toe to waist and back again, finally nudging at my fingers where I’d touched Boris. His brain was in high-excitement mode—which was wearing on me.

  Moss, enough!

  I bent and yanked off my boots.

  “Here—see if I stepped in anything interesting.” I tossed the boots aside and stepped away.

  “Eew.” Emma made a face.

  I waved her off. “I’m too tired to block him out and talk to you at the same time.”

  “Well, it worked,” Emma said, watching as Moss zeroed in on a spot on the bottom of one boot. “But I don’t want to know.”

  “Neither do I. Come on.”

  We fled to her room and shut the door. I let out a sigh of relief. Fatigue always made it harder to shield my mind, especially from Moss.

  Emma turned her back to me and motioned to the laces of her boned corset. As I went to work freeing her from what I considered a torture device, we talked about the events of the night.

  “Then,” I said, pulling the corset over her head, “Kai went all CSI on me. He’s not convinced Brooke was taken, because he thinks my emotions are too tangled up with Boris’s.”

  “It’s a valid point.”

  “For the record, as my sister, you have to agree with me.”

  “I didn’t say I disagreed with you. Just that it’s a good point. And,” Emma went on as she shimmied into a red dress that worked perfectly with her dramatic eye makeup and ruby lips, “I think there’s something else to consider. Your emotions might have been influenced by the tiger’s but what about Kai’s? He may not have been as upset if you’d run off to save someone else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “From what you’ve said, Dr. Murray is a bit of a flirt. I’ve seen his picture—he’s a hottie. Is he still asking you out all the time?”

  “I told you, that’s just Hugh being Hugh.” I’d recently come to understand that all the flirting and silliness that used to irritate me were simply Hugh’s way of letting me know he cared about me. “He likes to tease me. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “You might know that, but Kai doesn’t.”

  “What does that have to do with him believing me?”

  “Maybe nothing. But let’s look at the situation in another way. You ditched Kai for Hugh.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I didn’t ditch anyone. Hugh was being stalked by a tiger—”

  Emma held up a finger and continued. “Then, you call Kai, expecting him to rush to your side and when he does, you’re still unhappy because he doesn’t want to go charging into a thunderstorm—in a tux, mind you—to search for a girl who might not even be missing.”

  “She’s missing, Emma.”

  “Understood. I’m just trying to illustrate how a person’s perspective can change things.”

  “You really think Kai would be petty enough to let jealou
sy cloud his judgment?” I asked, standing behind Emma as she checked her appearance in the full-length mirror in her room.

  “It’s not petty, it’s human nature. Everyone is influenced by their emotions. And you,” she said, glancing at my reflection before turning around to face me, “you get the bonus plan. You have to deal with your own emotions in addition to the influence of whatever animal you’re doing the Vulcan mind-meld on.”

  “Em, this isn’t about Boris’s emotions,” I said, frustrated.

  “I never said it was. I think there’s another reason you’re so convinced something happened to Brooke.” Emma walked into her closet and emerged a moment later with a black satin clutch. “You identify with her.”

  “You’re right,” I said with a dramatic sigh. “Those years I spent on the street were really hard.”

  Emma cast me a sharp look and clarified. “I mean you’re on the same page—mentally.”

  “I’m on the same mental page as a sixteen-year-old habitual runaway with a criminal record? Really, Em—you keep saying stuff like that and I’ll have to revoke your sister card.”

  “You can’t revoke my sister card.”

  “Yes I can.”

  She shook her head. “Nope.”

  “Then I’ll suspend your sister card.”

  “So I’ll be on sister probation? You don’t have the authority.”

  “Says who?”

  “Mom.” Emma’s smile widened. “Let’s call her and ask.”

  There was an unspoken rule between us—the first one to threaten to call our mother during a disagreement always won. You only called Mom if you knew you were right.

  Of course, from time to time bluffs were made, but for the most part the “Let’s call Mom” declaration settled any dispute.

  Knowing this, in addition to the fact that our parents were RVing out of cell range somewhere in Yellowstone, Emma pressed on with her point. “Brooke has found friendship with at least one animal at the rescue place. You should consider the idea you might be projecting, because you understand where she’s coming from.”

  “No, I don’t. All I know is she’s some poor kid whose parents are deadbeats that don’t care about their daughter.”

  “Do you know that for a fact?”

  “Come on, Em . . .”