LITMIR.BIZ

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with the other. Blood seeped through his fingers and into the material of his jacket.

      Maria blinked, coming fully awake. “What happened to you?”

      He grunted, shaking water droplets from his hair. “I fell.”

      She eased her body upward, wincing as her back protested. “Why were you out in a rainstorm at night?”

      “Business,” he said, making his way past her.

      The giant man followed Cy into the kitchen and handed him a packet of gauze. Then he returned to the sitting room and extracted a bundle of green from his bulging jacket pocket. “Here.”

      He held the stuff out to Maria but she was too confused to take it. Why was he giving her parsley? With a sigh he knelt at Hank’s cage and put in the handful of leaves. Hank went to work at once, devouring the greenery, stems and all, flopping his ears in ecstasy. Stew removed a plastic bag from his other pocket and added a pile of alfalfa hay to the cage floor. Then he closed the lid and left, without another word.

      Maria made it to her feet. “Does he…ever use complete sentences?”

      “Rarely. He must like you otherwise he wouldn’t have spoken at all.”

      “All he said was ‘here.’”

      “For Stew, that was a regular diatribe. He’s one of eight children so that might explain his economy of words.”

      Maria watched Hank suck down the last strand of green. Then he went to work scraping the hay into a pile, stopping once in a while to nibble a stalk. Soon he hunkered down, eyes closed. She could almost see him sigh with happiness. “It was nice of Stew to take care of my rabbit.”

      “He’d take care of Hitler’s hamsters rather than see any animal go hungry. He prefers them to most people. Majority of the time, I agree with him.” Cy stripped off his jacket and sat in the worn rocker, rolling up the torn sleeve. His arm was a solid mass of muscle, lean and white in the lamplight. A dark spot showed a nasty scrape. He held a towel to the cut, pressing down to stop the flow of blood before he applied rubbing alcohol.

      Maria settled uneasily in the chair next to him. It was hard not to stare at his strong profile. He didn’t look like someone who went around poisoning people. “Um, do you need help?”

      He ripped open the gauze package with his teeth and applied it to his wound. “Thank you, no. I’m used to taking care of myself.”

      The wind blew so hard it shook the walls of the small cottage and made the flames in the fireplace dance higher. “You never explained what you were doing out there in the storm.”

      “No, I guess I didn’t. I was trying to protect my creek, that’s all.” He taped up the wound and disappeared down the hall, returning in a dry shirt and jeans, holding a handful of sheets and blankets. He gestured for her to follow him into the miniscule room with the cot and trunk. For the first time she noticed a glass aquarium on top of a crate illuminated by the tiny lamp hanging from the low ceiling.

      She felt a twinge of unease as he unfurled the bedding. “Don’t go to any trouble for me. I’ll only be here tonight. I can sleep in a chair. No problem.”

      Cy didn’t look at her. “You’re not going to sleep in a chair.” He made up the cot, tucking the sheets into sharply folded corners with machinelike precision. When he finished, he opened the trunk and examined the contents.

      She thought she saw the same odd look steal across his face as he pulled out another faded pink sweatshirt and soft cotton pants.

      He laid them on the bed. “You can borrow these.” A faint flush crept over his cheeks. “We’ll leave your shoes and socks to dry by the fire. Here’s a blanket. March evenings are cold in this part of Oregon.”

      “That’s okay. I’ll be fine. Really.”

      He put a flashlight on the pillow. “Sometimes we lose power during a storm. The bathroom is at the end of the hall. Only one, I’m afraid. I’ll be over in Stew’s cottage if you need anything.” He handed her a scrap of paper with his cell number on it.

      “You don’t need to leave because of me,” Maria said.

      “Wouldn’t be proper for me to sleep here.” He looked into the aquarium at the frog huddled under a hollowed-out hunk of wood. “She won’t make much noise to keep you awake.”

      She followed his gaze. “I won’t mind having her as a roommate.”

      He didn’t smile. The look he turned on her was the usual impassive expression, but she saw a gleam in his eyes that she took for sadness. “She’ll be a quiet one anyway.” He laid a hand lightly on the glass lid and peered at the frog. “I’m afraid she’ll be dead before too much longer.”

      “Oh.” Maria searched for something to say. She felt a pang for the tiny creature and for the man who peered at it so tenderly. “That’s too bad.”

      He turned to go.

      “Um, thank you. For the blankets and everything.” She watched his broad back vanish down the corridor. In a few moments, she heard the sound of the front door close.

      Maria crawled into the narrow cot, wishing desperately she had thought to bring her laptop along on the disastrous trip. No, she couldn’t have managed it anyway. She’d have been hard-pressed to carry Hank’s crate and the laptop, too. She thought about plugging in the cell phone but she didn’t think another menacing call from Marty Shell would soothe her bedtime nerves.

      There were no magazines, no books. No sign really that anyone ever inhabited the room. With the exception of a broken calculator, the bedside table was empty. There wasn’t even a dust bunny under the bed.

      A noise made her heart leap until she decided it was the snap of a branch against the window. She hugged herself, her ears straining for sounds of movement. The stream of rain coursing down the gutters mimicked the tread of running footsteps. “You’re making yourself crazy, Maria.”

      The chest called to her. “Open me,” it seemed to say. She listened for the sound of movement in the house, any tiny noise that might announce Cy’s return. Nothing. She eased the lid of the trunk open one millimeter at a time. The hinges squeaked, but made only a small groan of protest. Finally it was completely open and she could get a good look at the contents.

      Inside were a few more sweatpants and shirts. One denim skirt, size ten and a pair of reading glasses. Underneath was an almost-used-up tube of lipstick, Petal Pink. At the very bottom was a tattered roll of wallpaper border in a busy floral print.

      She almost missed the photo of a young man. It had been folded and the crease dissected the face just below the nose. The man was in his teens, she guessed, eyes dark, a half smile on his lips. Was it a relative of Cy’s? No, she thought. The man didn’t have the strong chin and wide shoulders she’d seen in her host.

      Maria sat back on her heels. Who did this odd collection of bits and pieces belong to? Cy’s wife perhaps? Daughter maybe? She discarded that idea. Cy didn’t look old enough to have a daughter who wore a Misses size ten. It might be a wife, but there was certainly no sign of her outside of this room. Whoever she was, Cy wasn’t inclined to explain. The topic of cyanide bubbled up in her brain but she pushed it away.

      The wood floor was cool under her bare feet. She padded over to the glass case and squatted down. It took several minutes to spot the small brown ball that wasn’t more than two inches long. The frog’s skin was satiny and spangled with black freckles. As she moved to get a side view, the frog startled forward. It bent its long, almost translucent legs to hop, but fell over instead, landing on its side on the mossy floor of the cage.

      She could see the gold eyes watching her. Maria’s throat constricted. How helpless it must feel, exposed, terrified, unable even to make it to the sheltering corner a few inches away. “How did you get hurt, little frog? What will happen to you?”

      She knelt next to the cage until a chill made her legs stiffen.

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