Double blind

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.