The Green And The Gray

4

He slid his legs out from under the comforter, a sudden fury burning inside him. So Melantha wasn't even going to wait until morning before pulling her vanishing trick again.

Like hell.

It took only a few seconds to retrieve his workout sweats from the laundry hamper and pull them on.

Easing the bedroom door open, he slipped out.

His bare feet seemed to shrink as they hit the cold hardwood of the hallway. But he didn't care. She was not, repeat not, going to get away with this two nights running. He rounded the corner into the living room—

And came to a sudden stop. The curtains here weren't the same heavy-duty ones as in the bedroom, and enough light was pressing its way through to clearly show Melantha still wrapped in her blankets on the couch.

There was more than enough to show the silhouette of someone on the balcony.

Call 911! was his first reflexive impulse. But an instant later he realized that would be a useless gesture. By the time the cops arrived, the intruder would be long gone. Or would have broken in and murdered all three of them.

And Roger had nothing to defend them with except a few carving knives and a stupid little toy gun.

A toy gun which nevertheless looked very real.

The shadow shifted as the intruder moved stealthily across the balcony. Easing his way back into the kitchen, Roger went to the junk drawer and dug beneath Caroline's latch-hook stuff.

The gun was gone.

For a long moment his fingers scrabbled frantically among the collected odds and ends. It couldn't be gone. He'd put it right here only yesterday.

In the living room, Melantha stirred beneath her blankets, and he grimaced. Of course—the girl had taken it. She'd searched through the drawers after he and Caroline had gone to bed and retrieved it.

He stepped back out of the kitchen. The shadow had disappeared, but he could hear a faint scratching sound. Was the intruder trying to find a way through the doors?

Most of the kitchen knives were down the hall in the bedroom, where he'd taken them while Caroline was hunting up a spare toothbrush. But the one he'd left on the knickknack shelf last night when the cops arrived was still there. Sliding it out from behind the plate, he wrapped it in a firm grip and started across the living room.

The twenty-foot walk seemed to take forever. Reaching the curtains, he crouched down and silently rolled the broomstick up out of the track onto the carpet. Then, straightening up again, he stepped to the other end of the door and slid his hand around the edge of the curtain. Taking a deep breath, he popped the latch, shoved the door to the side, and leaped out onto the balcony, knife at the ready.

There was no one there.

He looked back and forth twice. There was nobody skulking in a corner; no ropes hanging down from above; no grappling hooks on the balcony wall leading up from below. Nothing but Caroline's stupid dwarf orange trees.

But someone had been there. He hadn't dreamed the sound or the moving shadow. He shifted his attention to his left, wondering if someone could have leaped across from the next balcony.

And there, sixty feet away at the far corner of the building, was the silhouetted figure of a man.

Hanging onto the outside wall like a human fly.

Roger stared, a creeping sensation twisting through his stomach. The man wasn't standing on a ladder, his eyes and brain noted mechanically: he was on a section of the wall between balconies, with no place for a ladder to be braced. He wasn't hanging from a rope or trapeze: the roof overhang would have left him dangling a couple of feet out from the wall, and he was instead snugged right up against the stone facing.

And then, as Roger watched, he began to climb. Not like people climbed walls in movies, where there was always just that little bit of something wrong in balance or flow or movement that betrayed the presence of the hidden wires. The man's hands reached up one at a time, pressing against the wall and pulling as the alternate foot lifted and pushed. He moved as casually as if he were walking down the street; but at the same time, Roger could sense the genuine exertion of muscles working at their task. It looked real.

It was real.

The figure angled across the wall between two floors and disappeared around the corner to the other side of the building. Roger stared after him, part of him hoping the man would come back, most of him fervently hoping he wouldn't.

"Roger?" Caroline whispered.

He jumped, the sound of her voice jarring him back to reality. She was standing in the balcony doorway, her robe clutched tightly around her. "What is it?" she hissed.

Roger threw a last glance at the corner and took a deep breath....

And then, behind Caroline, he saw Melantha sitting up on the couch, her eyes wide, her face taut.

"Nothing," he told Caroline, trying to keep his voice casual. "I thought I heard something, that's all.

Must have been dreaming."

"Oh," Caroline said, and he wished he had enough light to read her expression. "Well, you'd better come in before you freeze to death."

"Yeah," he said, shivering as he followed her inside.

He made sure he locked the balcony door solidly behind him.

He waited until they were back in bed, with the lights off and the door closed between them and Melantha, and then told her the whole story. "You're sure you weren't dreaming?" she asked when he had finished.

"I don't end up on the balcony in bare feet when I dream," Roger pointed out, annoyed in spite of himself. Yes, it sounded impossible. But she was his wife, damn it. She was supposed to believe him when he told her something.

"I'm not saying you were," Caroline hastened to assure him. "I'm just trying to cover all the possibilities."

"I've already covered them," Roger muttered, his annoyance fading into guilt at his outburst. "Sorry.

I'm just..."

She squeezed his hand under the blankets. "I know," she said quietly. "I was just thinking out loud."

"Well, don't stop now," he said. "I'm at a dead end myself."

"All right," she said hesitantly. "Well. He wasn't on a ladder—you'd have seen that—and he wasn't on a rope, because of the roof overhang. Suction cups?"

Roger shook his head. "He seemed short, but reasonably bulky. Any suction cups strong enough to hold him up ought to have been visible."

"Short but bulky," Caroline repeated thoughtfully. "Like the man who gave Melantha to us last night?"

"I wondered that, too," Roger said. "But this one seemed smaller, and not nearly so bulky."

"And the gun's gone."

"The gun's gone," Roger confirmed. "I assume Melantha took it."

"Why?"

"How should I know?" he growled. "Maybe it's a real gun that just needs a special trick to work."

"I don't think it's a real gun," Caroline said slowly. "You saw how she was sitting up on the couch, wide awake, scared to death. If she'd had a weapon, I think she'd have had it ready."

"So where did it go?" Roger objected. "It didn't just evaporate."

"I don't know," Caroline said. "Do you want to go look for it now?"

Roger sighed. "No, we can do it in the morning. Let's try to get some sleep."

"All right," Caroline said, squeezing his hand again. "Good night."

"Again," Roger reminded her dryly. "Let's hope it takes this time."

"Yes." She paused. "That was very brave of you, you know. Going out there all alone."

"That was very stupid of me, you mean," Roger corrected. "Still, my life insurance is paid up."

He felt her stiffen beside him. Wrong thing to say, apparently. "Sleep well," she murmured.

"You too," he said. Rolling onto his side, he punched his pillow into shape and tried to settle in.

But before he did so, he reached to the floor and made sure the kitchen knives were within easy reach. Just in case.

Caroline lay quietly in the darkness, listening as Roger's breathing settled down into the slow, even rhythm of sleep. Usually, she was the one who could drop off at a moment's notice; but tonight, the pattern seemed to have been reversed. Now she was the one lying fully awake, staring at the light seeping around the edges of the curtains, ears straining for the slightest unusual sound. But their mysterious visitor had apparently moved on.

Roger's flippant comment about his life insurance hadn't helped, either.

She spent half an hour listening to the soft noises of the traffic below before finally giving up.

Sliding carefully out of bed, she snagged her robe and slipped out of the bedroom.

Melantha was still on the couch, a half-twisted figure wrapped in her blankets. For a moment Caroline wondered if she might be more willing to talk if Roger wasn't present. But the girl needed her sleep, too. Turning back to the kitchen, she flipped on the microwave's nightlight setting and opened the junk drawer.

Roger had told her he'd put the gun under her latch-hook equipment. Lifting up that last half-finished project, she pulled it out and set it aside.

The gun was gone, all right. She probed with her fingers, wondering if it could have worked its way underneath something else. Roger could call this junk if he wanted to; but to her, everything in here had a history, something that reminded her of a time or event in their life together. There was the black Phillips-head screw that had gotten lost from the old bentwood rocking chair they'd given to Caroline's sister when her baby was born. There were the two partially used rolls of plastic tape left over from last Christmas, Roger having started the second when he missed seeing there was one already in use. In the months since then, they hadn't managed to work either of them down to where it could be thrown away.

Her searching fingers paused. There in the center of the drawer, beside the box of rubber bands and twist-ties, was a large brooch.

She picked it up and angled it toward the light. It was a beautiful thing, a dozen silver leaves woven into two concentric circles, with a violet stone in the center, all tied together by a delicate silver filigree mesh. It was about three inches across and heavier than it looked, with the kind of weight that could easily tear a blouse if it wasn't fastened properly.

She'd never seen it before in her life.

She hefted it in her hand. Too heavy to be silver, she decided. White gold or platinum? She peered at the back, but aside from a rather elaborate and antique-looking pin arrangement there was nothing there.

But at the same time, there was something about it that tweaked at her memory. Something that seemed oddly familiar.

The connection didn't come. Giving up, she set it aside on the counter and slid the junk drawer back in. Then, from the drawer under the telephone, she pulled out the Manhattan phone book and carried it to the table.

Gre, Melantha had started to say the previous night when asked her last name. Green, Caroline had guessed, and Melantha had reluctantly confirmed it. She didn't want to send the girl back to whatever it was she'd run away from, and in fact had more or less promised herself that she wouldn't. But it was becoming increasingly clear that there would be no way of resolving this without talking to someone on the other end of the situation.

Of course, even if she found Melantha's family, what then? Take their word for what was going on?

Insist on counseling, or that Family Services be brought in before she and Roger would return Melantha?

Roger wouldn't want to do that, of course. Roger hated confrontations, and would go to incredible lengths to avoid them. That was one of the things that had first attracted her to him, in fact. He'd been a welcome relief from the overgrown teenagers and macho types who went around with permanent chips stapled to their shoulders.

But there was a world of difference between being meek and gentle and simply playing doormat for rude and uncaring idiots. Sometimes she wondered if Roger really understood that difference.

With a sigh, she put that particular group of frustrations out of her mind and opened to the G's. There were more Greens than she'd expected, covering three full pages and half of a fourth. Snagging a notepad and pen, she started making a list of all those living within walking distance of the alley where they'd found her.

She was finished with the first page when she noticed something strange. She was midway down the third when the second oddity struck her. By the time she made it to the end, she was almost ready to wake up Roger and show him.

But sleep was finally starting to tug at her eyelids. Anyway, there was nothing they could do about it in the middle of the night. Tucking her notes into the phone book, she replaced it in its drawer and turned off the light.

Roger had taken over the middle of the bed in her absence. Easing her way in beside him, she pressed gently against his side until he grunted in his sleep and rolled over.

Three minutes later, with the sounds of passing cars beating softly against her ears, she fell asleep.