A Tiger's Tale (A Call of the Wilde Mystery) (27 page)

Something in the tone of his voice made me ask, “Stefan, is there something wrong?”

“Oh, no. No!” he cried.

“What is it?”

“Somebody trashed my car.”

“Trashed?”

I had a feeling that he wasn’t talking about simple vandalism.

“Yeah, trashed. They ripped the seats out and tore open the cushions. They even ripped off the inside door panel. I can’t believe this! My mom is going to kill me.”

Not if someone else did it first. “Stefan,” I said, “I want you to listen to me. Wherever you are, find a big crowd of people and call the police. Stay in a group until they get there.”

“I’m not calling the damn po-po.”

“If you’re smart, you will.”

Stefan made a derisive sound.

“You know the people Brooke was so afraid of? They’re the ones who did that to your car and if they find you, you’ll look like one of your cushions.” There was a long pause.

Brooke’s face had gone utterly white as she listened to my end of the conversation. She’d fisted her hand in the fur of Moss’s ruff.

Finally, Stefan said, “Okay, I’ll call.”

I hung up and turned to Brooke.

“What happened? Is he okay?” she asked.

“Stefan’s fine. Someone tossed his car.”

“They must have been looking for the key,” Emma said.

“Why would they think it was in Stefan’s car?”

“You left home the night you took the video. Where did you go?”

“Nowhere. I wanted to clear my head and think. So I sat at the Krispy Kreme by my house for a while.”

“How did you get to Happy Asses the next day?”

“Stefan—” Her eyes went wide.

“They already searched your house,” Emma said. “Then they hit Stefan’s car. They’re retracing your steps.”

“Ozeal.” Brooke and I said the name in tandem.

Brooke leapt to her feet. “We have to warn her.”

I was already pulling up her number on my phone. I called, my trepidation growing with every unanswered ring. Ozeal’s voice mail clicked on and I left a message for her to return my call as soon as possible.

“Feeding time is over, right?” I asked Brooke, knowing Ozeal didn’t always answer her phone when she was tending to the meals and putting everyone up for the night.

“She should be finished by now,” Brooke said with a nod.

“Maybe she’s in the shower,” Emma said.

We all exchanged a look.

“Okay. Let’s not panic. Ozeal locks the gate at night, doesn’t she?”

“As soon as it gets dark,” Brooke said.

“So she should be all right.”

“Unless they forced their way in,” Emma said.

“We have to go make sure Ozeal’s okay.” Brooke looked from me to my sister.

“The only thing you have to do is stay here,” I told her as I stood. “I’ll go to Happy Asses.”

“Not going to happen,” Emma said. She got up and reached for the phone. “We call the police and have them check on Ozeal.”

“There isn’t time,” Brooke said. “It will take too long to explain. I have the security code. We can get in.”

“Okay, we can call Jake and Kai on the way,” Emma said. “Tell them to meet us there.”

“Emma—” She raised a finger to cut me off.

“I’m going with you. End of discussion.”

If anyone other than my big sister had pointed their finger at me and spoken to me like I was five, there would have been more than a discussion. But it was Emma, so I nodded, then turned to Brooke.

“What’s the code?”

“I’m coming with you,” Brooke said.

I shook my head.

She raised her chin. “I’m not giving you the code unless you take me.”

“I must be losing my mind,” I muttered. “Fine. Let’s go.”

We started toward the door but Brooke paused.

“Aren’t we taking Moss?”

I turned and looked at my dog.

“No. I can’t always control him. If somebody is threatening me, he’ll try to take them out.”

“Why is that a problem?”

“Usually, it isn’t. But these guys have guns. I won’t risk it.”

Emma and Brooke headed out the door. When Moss moved to follow, I knelt in front of him to block the way.

Go.

I shook my head.
No. You have to stay.

Go.

“Stay here and take care of your kitten.” I gave him a quick hug. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon.”

At least I hoped I would.

I cut Bluebell’s headlights as I turned into the drive leading to Happy Asses.

“Stop here,” Emma said. “And turn off the engine. They’ll hear us coming if you get any closer.”

“Hopefully
they
aren’t here,” I said as I shifted into park.

The sudden absence of Bluebell’s rumbling engine was unsettling in the quiet.

We all stared through the windshield. The nearly full moon washed the landscape in silver light. Everything looked normal. The office windows were dark and there was no discernible movement.

The gate was illuminated by an overhead light, and I could see it was closed. There was no sign that anyone was there but us.

“Try to call Ozeal again,” Brooke whispered from the backseat.

Again, no answer.

“Kai and Jake should be here soon,” I said.

I hadn’t explained the whole situation to Kai. Brooke had insisted I leave her and any specifics regarding the key out of it. Despite my vagueness, he promised to get in touch with Jake and ride to the rescue.

Another minute dragged by.

“Grace, can you get anything from the animals? See if something unusual is going on,” Emma suggested.

“You can do that?” Brooke asked.

“In theory.”

I sent out my mental feelers but only managed to pick up the faintest hum.

I shook my head. “Out of range.”

“Let’s walk closer,” Brooke said. “If we stick to the shadows we could make it almost to the gate. Will that be close enough?”

“It’s worth a try.”

We climbed out of Bluebell and tiptoed along the drive. All the while, I was stretching my mind as far as I could toward the donkey pen. I was hoping to connect with one donkey in particular. Eventually, I found what I was looking for. Jack-Jack began to come into focus.

A hand snagged my arm.

“Stop,” Emma said. “Any closer and you’ll be in the light.”

“I’m still too far away.”

We stood in the balmy night listening to the crickets for what seemed like an hour.

Where the hell was Kai?

“Maybe we should go in,” I said. “So far, we haven’t heard anything. We may have beat Frank and his guys here.”

“If they’re coming,” Emma whispered. “It looks like a pretty big place—they couldn’t hope to search it all.”

“Then why isn’t Ozeal answering her phone?” Brooke asked, pointedly.

“Who knows, she could’ve dropped it in a water trough or the battery could’ve died.”

We stood in silence. I strained my ears, listening for Kai’s truck or, even better, police sirens.

“We could ring the bell,” Brooke suggested.

I’d forgotten that there was a buzzer at the gate.

“Does it ring in Ozeal’s apartment?”

“In the office, in her place, and in the commissary, too.”

It was worth a try. I was sincerely hoping we’d ring the buzzer and a few minutes later an irritated Ozeal would appear, wearing a bathrobe, with her hair wrapped in a towel.

We all walked forward. Brooke stepped up to push the buzzer and froze. She reached out, but rather than ringing the bell, she gently pushed on the gate’s rail.

It eased open with a whisper.

I’d promised Kai I’d wait for him, but it was looking like I was going to have to break that promise.

A crash echoed through the night, followed by a muffled cry, and my decision was made.

We shoved our way through the gate and sprinted over the grassy field toward the cover of a large oak tree. Before we reached the shadow an explosion of raw fear and panic struck me hard enough to make me stumble. Emma grabbed my arm to steady me.

“Grace?” She hissed out my name on a breath.

I swayed for a moment, then yanked my mental shields into place.

Emma pulled me, still wobbling, into the darkness

“I’m okay. I was too open and—” I waved off the explanation. “Something’s happening in the barn. The donkeys are freaking out.”

The covered picnic tables partially obscured our view, but I could see a sliver of light outlining the door.

Another crash sounded. “They must be tossing the barn.”

“We might be able to get the drop on them,” Emma whispered.

“And do what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we can lock them in or something.” She looked at Brooke for confirmation of her plan.

“What about Ozeal?” Brooke asked. “We can’t lock her in there with them.”

“Good point.”

We huddled together, thinking. Though all I could think about was how loud our breathing sounded in the still night.

“Wait!” Brooke’s exclamation was more of a gasp. “The alarm!”

“There’s a burglar alarm?”

“No. It’s an escape alarm. For the big cats. If one escapes, we’re supposed to hit the alarm. It flashes a red light and announces there’s a code ninety-eight.”

I knew some zoos used radio codes. Hearing “We have a code ninety-eight,
Panthera pardus
”
over the radio didn’t usually incite panic like “The leopard has escaped.”

But I wasn’t sure an alarm spouting codes would do much good. “How is setting off the alarm going to help?”

“Maybe they’ll think they messed up and tripped it,” Brooke whispered. “It doesn’t notify the cops but they don’t know that.”

I looked at Emma.

“It could scare them off,” she said.

It was worth a shot.

“Where’s the closest alarm?”

“The office, but it’s probably locked. There’s the barn but . . .” She seemed to be going over the facility’s layout in her head. “The next closest would be by the cougars. Between their enclosure and Boris.”

I remembered the cougars’ pen. It was just before the tiger enclosure, on the same side of the path.

We might even be able to hit the alarm and, if we needed to, make a break for it through Brooke’s little rabbit hole in the fence.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. “Brooke, you know this place, you lead the way. Keep us in the shadows. I’ll follow next and stay tuned in to the animals closest to us as we go. If they sense something, we’ll hide. Em, you bring up the rear.”

Edging around the tree, we ran to the wood fence that ringed the commissary and Ozeal’s apartment above. The only light was on the corner of the building, flooding a section of the path leading toward the big cats. We’d have to pass under its beam, but if we were fast and lucky, we’d make it to the shadows on the other side in seconds.

An overgrown oleander draped over the fence near the path. We paused in its ragged shadow to listen—Emma and Brooke with their ears, and me with my mind.

I lowered my shield slowly, trying to partially block the donkeys’ fear and remain open to everyone else. It wasn’t easy. Boris was just outside my range; I could sense him but nothing more. The lion was closer and I picked up grumbling waves of agitation from him.

Hungry.

I moved over to the cougars, whose enclosure sat catty-corner to the lion’s. They were pacing as well, bellies rumbling.

“Crap.”

“What?” Emma breathed the word.

“I’m not getting a good read on the animals,” I whispered. “Dinner’s late and no one’s happy. Food is what’s on their minds and not much else.”

“Keep the channel open anyway,” Emma said.

“I will.” I paused then said, “Okay—we make a run for the alarm on the count of three. If something happens, split up. One. Two. Three!”

We sprinted out of the dark, through the bright beam of the floodlight and down the pine-straw-covered path. Zipping past the cougars, who watched us with startled jerks of their heads, we hopped, one after the other, over the short wooden fence that separated the path from the enclosures.

Brooke reached the power pole, lifted the plastic cover on a little box, and pressed the button.

She looked up. I followed her gaze to the large, dark square jutting out above us. I assumed it would blink or flash. It didn’t.

Brooke pressed the button again.

Nothing.

“What the hell?” She slammed her finger against the button.

“It’s broken,” Emma said.

“It can’t be.”

“It is,” I said, remembering Ozeal mentioning an electrical issue caused by lightning. And, like a lightning strike, I remembered something else.

“Crap.”

“What?”

“I left my Glock in Bluebell.”

“Too late now,” Emma whispered.

She was right, of course. But I still lamented the absence of the one thing that might save our skin.

Kai had encouraged me to get a concealed-carry permit for my gun, saying, “Better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.”

Boy, wasn’t that the truth.

Smart—real smart.

A sudden surge of excitement and joy rolled through me, cutting through the frustration I felt at my oversight. Boris had seen Brooke. He bounded to the fence and blew out a friendly chuff.

“Hi, Boris,” she whispered and took a step toward the big cat, but there wasn’t time for a reunion.

“Come on,” I said. “We have to try another alarm. Is there one close by?”

Brooke turned away from Boris with some reluctance and nodded.

“Just past the commissary across from the bobcats.”

“Lead the way.”

I followed Brooke and Emma back toward the path. They scaled the small fence, but just as I’d made it to the other side, a bobcat whistled, quick and excited.

The sound made me pause. It took a few seconds to zero in on the cat. I felt a flutter of happiness, similar to what Boris had expressed at seeing Brooke, but this emotion was clearly aimed at someone else.

Ozeal.

Hungry!

The cat’s jubilation was cut short, replaced by confusion and a dash of fear.

The bobcat had seen Ozeal, but she wasn’t alone. She was with someone . . .

Someone who frightened the small cat.

I ran forward and started to call out a warning to Emma, but it was too late. She and Brooke had jogged ahead and had almost reached the corner of the commissary when Logan materialized out of the shadows, holding Ozeal at gunpoint.

Her hands were bound with duct tape and a piece had been pressed over her mouth. Logan had pushed the oversized roll of tape onto his wrist, like a giant bracelet.

Emma grabbed Brooke’s arm and yanked her to a stop. They pivoted and bolted back toward me.

They’d only sprinted a few yards before skidding to a stop.

“Run!” Emma shouted.

It took me a moment to realize she was talking to me.

I looked over my shoulder. Two figures stepped into the floodlight.

Mancini and Ferretto.

Too late, I realized we were trapped, penned in on either side by enclosures—the lion’s to our right, Boris’s to our left.

There was nowhere for me to go but to join my sister and Brooke. I moved to where they stood. Emma and I instinctively positioned our backs to one another, shoving Brooke between us, like elephants protecting a calf from hungry hyenas.

Mancini held a gun pointed casually in our direction. Though Ferretto’s hands were empty, I assumed he was armed as well.

“The police are on their way,” I said. “Leave now and you might have time to get out of here before they show up.”

“So sweet.” Mancini stepped forward, his dark eyes bright as they focused on me. “Worrying about us?”

I felt my sister tense behind me. If Mancini got close enough, she’d be on him like a spider monkey. But I wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

Brooke might be tough, but bullets cut through more than street cred. As much confidence as I had in my sister, I knew she couldn’t take on three armed men.

We only had one chance: stall.

I looked past Mancini to Ferretto.

“You’re not going to get what you came for without our help, so call off the psycho.”

“Oh? And what is it I want?” Ferretto asked in a cool tone.

“The key,” I said.

His gaze shifted to Brooke.

“So, you did know I wanted the key.”

“I guessed,” Brooke said from over my shoulder.

“Why?” I took a step forward. “What’s in the box?”

“The one thing that will give me the power I need to finally take control of this organization. A book. A detailed account of everyone who owes Charles and why.”

“A little blackmail book?”

“That’s funny, Miss Wilde. Yes. A little blackmail book. Though I’m told it’s not little at all.”

“But you can’t open the box,” I said. “Your name isn’t on the account.”

“True. But Anne’s is. And I’ve made sure she’s . . . malleable.”

Suddenly, I realized why what Sensei had said about having a strong mind kept popping into my head. Anne Ligner had been pushed around physically but her mind was the greatest threat.

“You had Ligner drug her.”

“That was Bob’s doing, actually. He’d been replacing her antidepressants with narcotics for a while. It made her easier to handle, I suppose.”

“Charming.”

Ferretto shrugged at my remark. “Whatever works. He called me one evening with a proposition. He’d heard I was interested in a certain key and he felt he could get it for me.”

“Ligner worked for you?”

“Not at first. I couldn’t trust him not to say something that might get back to Charles. But once he started gambling . . .”