Diaries of an Urban Panther Read online

  This was not my bed.

  I didn’t do plaid. And this was the manliest plaid I had ever had the misfortune of waking up on.

  I lay on my stomach in an orange-lit room that didn’t smell particularly clean. It had that musky male smell one can never quite get out of fabrics, no matter how much you Febreeze it.

  A small lamp on a crooked nightstand next to the headboard lit the room softly. What I could see without my glasses matched what I could smell. Miscellaneous stuff was strewn around the guest room: baseball bats, old shoes, coats waiting for a winter that might never come, a kidnapped girl. You know, the usual for spare rooms.

  When I pushed up off the mattress, my muscles felt like rippling lava down my back, a fire so hot it left white spots in my vision. My left side went numb and gave way beneath my weight, dropping me back to the springy mattress.

  But the fear beating wild and willful in my chest completely overcame the pain in my back. I rolled over to my right side, only to discover I didn’t have a shirt on. My hand flew to my waist and I was relieved to find underwear, if you could call these satin strings Jessa had given me from Victoria’s Secret underwear. Why she cared about panty lines, I’ll never know.

  What I remembered was like a bad ’80s movie montage. I remembered the club. I remembered Stalker boy and a linebacker. I remembered something dark in the alley. Then someone, or something, else there. Then there were spots and dreams of Bruce Campbell singing “Memories.”

  Using my right arm, the only thing willing to respond, I pushed up on the bed to sit and immediately knew I shouldn’t have. The movement reignited the muscles in my shoulder into magma and my left hand, limp on my lap, twinged with pins and needles. Either I had nerve damage or my carpal tunnel was seriously acting up again.

  My whole body tensed as I waited for the pain to ebb away and the starbursts behind my eyelids to fade. It took all my energy not to fall back to the bed in defeat.

  Slowly, I strained to look over my shoulder. White gauze and surgical tape wound all the way up the side of my neck. Wherever I was, whoever had brought me here, had gone to great lengths to try to heal me. But why?

  A commotion at the door drew my attention and I heard a chair pull away on a wooden floor. As a lock clicked and the antique handle turned, I pulled the plaid sheet over my bare chest just as the stranger walked in.

  “Good to see you up,” the man said as he stepped into the orange light of the lamp.

  “Why am I locked in here?” I questioned quickly, pulling the sheet around me tightly, and tucking an edge into the top so it covered everything. My modesty intact even in crisis.

  The man moved further into the room, his broad shoulders blocking most of a dancing light from a TV. It wasn’t until he was standing over my near-sighted self I recognized who exactly held me captive.

  “Stalker boy?” I asked and then wished I hadn’t. I clamped my hand over my mouth like I had just cussed in front of my grandmother. This man had kidnapped me in a dark alley and tucked me away in a guest room. Maybe I should be on my company behavior for a while.

  The man half-smiled as he sat down across from me on an old kitchen chair missing half the back spokes. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and I gulped as he came back into my field of vision. He was better looking this close, especially without my clothes on. That chiseled jaw was beyond soap star and straight to silver screen leading man.

  As he looked me up and down with his chocolate brown eyes, fear slipped into something darker that forced my hand down to my legs to make sure I was covered. My heart pounded loudly in my ears and my stomach turned over on itself with tension.

  “Guess I deserve that nickname.”

  I licked my suddenly very dry lips. I shook my head and squeezed the wad of plaid sheets wound tightly in my slightly quaking fist.

  “Were you the boots in the alley?” managing to form words with my cotton ball tongue.

  He nodded. “What do you remember?”

  The memories flashed back again quicker, the montage faster, and with it, the pain came back as well. I tried not to arch my back but it burned, like every time I thought about it, the wounds were fresh again. I bit my lower lip and gripped the edge of the mattress, riding the wave of pain that was also quicker than the first.

  I took in a slow breath and let it out when the pain faded. “I was in the alley behind my house and something attacked me.”

  “Get a good look at it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Were you attacked before or after you lost your shoe?”

  The embarrassment flushed in my cheeks as I vividly remembered my failed attempt at protecting myself. Humiliation drove the fear away for a brief moment.

  “Why do I feel like I’m being grilled, Mr. . . .” I searched for his name through my dense haze of a memory. I couldn’t think of Jessa ever telling me his real name, if she even knew herself. That sounded like Jessa.

  “Garrett, Charles Garrett,” he said, watching me with a small furrow between his brow.

  The gauze and tape began to itch like wool and I wanted to rake my nails across it. The irritation sharpened my senses and my tongue, even focused my eyes so the room was clearer.

  “Well Mr. Garrett, is this an interrogation? Because if it is, I’d like my one phone call and at least a sweater.”

  Garrett looked down at his clasped hands then back up at me. “You’re funny, Miss Jordan,” he said with the twinkle in his eye.

  “You’ve seen me in my birthday suit; I think you can call me Violet.”

  He smiled and I could feel the burning all over again. It was the injuries. Or the panic of being locked in with a man I only knew through stories and sideways glances. But he had rescued me or at least bandaged me up. He’d given me a decent name, not H-bomb or Axe. And he wasn’t sporting a machete or a mask. So I pushed my luck.

  “How long have I been here?” I asked as I tentatively stretched my back, testing the muscles, the skin, and my own strength. The pain was fierce but it felt like I needed to rub up against the corner of a brick wall. It itched like something healing.

  “Two days.”

  “Two days! And you didn’t take me to a hospital?” I shrieked, only to bring the pounding in my head to a roaring blur. I held my temples. If this was a two-day-old hangover, I was giving up on vodka entirely.

  He seemed to wait until the rumble in my head subsided. “I didn’t want to explain anything to them.”

  “Explain what? I got attacked by a dog or something.”

  He clenched his jaw and watched me through his long dark lashes.

  I waited until the pain ebbed and watched that furrowed brow carefully. There was something different about him and I hoped I didn’t know what it was.

  “You don’t think it was a dog, do you?” I finally asked, leading myself down the path I didn’t want to follow.

  “You’re quick, Miss Jordan.”

  As the puzzle pieces fell into place, I shook my head. This wasn’t happening. I wasn’t going to let it happen. I wasn’t going to be the victim of some crazy who watched too much bad cable TV. Bad cable TV that I wrote, and this was not in the dailies.

  “No, Mr. Garrett. This is not one of my stupid scripts.”

  Outraged, I stood. The wounds covering my back screamed back to life. A claw of pain encircled my abdomen and squeezed, putting spots in my vision and weakening my knees. It drove the breath out of me and drove more fear in as I fell.

  Garrett’s strong arm curled around my waist in the blink of an eye. He rested my unresponsive body back on the bed and covered my shoulders with a thin blanket. He sat softly on the side of my bed and looked down at my paralyzed figure. My body twitched like electrified putty and all I could do was look up at him.

  “As much as you might protest, Miss Jordan,” he said with a hard edge to his smooth voice, “I’m going to keep you here until we know for sure.”

  He jumped up, jostling me roughly, and left, putting the c
hair back in its place.

  I just tried to breathe, forcing air in and out, breathe through the burning at my back, the vice still around my chest. As the tear slid down my cheek, I knew he was wrong. I wasn’t the buxom blonde who gets attacked in the woods by the beast the movie was named after. I was the sidekick, the one who survived. I was a Velma, the one who proved smart girls were cool, too.

  It just wasn’t fair. I had everything finally on track. My jobs were finally paying off. Jessa and I had carved out a few good friends and a decent social life. I’d found that cute little townhouse for a steal.

  Six months down the drain because little Violet Jordan thought she could play tough guy and teach someone a lesson.

  Maybe I cried myself to sleep. Maybe my brain wore itself out thinking of every horrible thing he could be doing on the other side of that old door. But sleep came, dreamless and fitful.

  My eyes flew open when Garrett skulked into the room with a plate of food and a pile of clothing. “I thought you’d be hungry, with the healing and everything.”

  I sniffed but didn’t bother to move, lying diagonally across the bed exactly where he had put me hours before. Face down on the flattened pillow, I didn’t care if I looked like a pouting five year old, with sniffling nose and red eyes. Almost didn’t care what he did to me. Figured this was par for the course for the life of Violet Jordan.

  “Can I take a look at your back?” he asked softly, hovering over me.

  “Have a blast,” I muttered staring at his knees then up to the food in his hand.

  His shoulders slumped a fraction of an inch, something most people would have missed but when you’ve watched from the sidelines your whole life, you catch the little things. I had hurt his feelings. And for an evil predator, or whatever he was, I couldn’t imagine why. It caught my curiosity, which pushed my fears aside for a moment.

  Setting the plate down on the nightstand and put the clothes on the broken chair, he moved slowly to the bed. I wanted to flinch, to pull away, but what was I going to do? Run three feet and fall down again? Run the risk of exposing everything he may have been gentlemen enough not to peek at already?

  “You’re extra timid.”

  “Figure I’d let you heal me before I made my escape.”

  Garrett chuckled as he touched my bare shoulder. The skin burned where his skin brushed mine and I couldn’t figure out if it was the injury or if his hands were that hot.

  He carefully peeled away the cloth tape and bandages and put them on the bed between us. The gauze was saturated with rusty brown, barely any white fibers. There was a lot of blood, my blood, absorbed into the bandages.

  “Well those are . . . healing nicely.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your . . . injuries are looking good,” he repeated with a forced optimism.

  “And what does that mean?” I said leaning up, moving without as much pain as before.

  So he laid it out straight for me. He took a deep breath and said, “For being mortally wounded, you’re doing fine. Stay there. I’m gonna get some new bandages.”

  He left the door open, and I could have escaped. A perfectly unprotected window hid just behind the headboard, but my curiosity got the better of me. Instead of going for the escape route now I had more than just a stitch of clothing, I reached back with my hand and felt around for injuries that floored me a day earlier.

  I ran my fingers over something that felt like a scab but was hotter than a match head. Changing positions, I reached over my left shoulder where the bandages had come up higher. I could feel more there, like elephant skin, only searing. Three days and it was already scabbed over. That terrified me. Waking up in the strange bed of a strange man—I thought I was handling that fine. But finally feeling the healed marks on my back, having proof that something had actually happened terrified me all over again.

  He strode into the room but stopped mid way as he saw my watery eyes.

  “You’re fine,” he repeated.

  “I got attacked,” I said through gritted teeth as I curled my arms underneath the pillow. “Now I’m trapped in a stranger’s house. Nothing about this is fine.”

  He sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed again. “At this rate, you’ll be healed in about a day, maybe with no scars. And then I’ll let you go home.”

  Putting the large plastic first aid kit on his lap, he picked out bottles and packages of gauze. I watched him open bandages and spread a white cream on a cotton ball. I gasped as he began to wipe the skin down with the cold cream.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “A kidnapper saying ‘I’m sorry.’ That’s gotta be a first,” I grumbled.

  “I’m not kidnapping you. I’m making sure that you are . . . safe.”

  “Safe from what?” I asked as I looked over at his knee.

  He kept cleaning, kept dabbing on the cold cream with the soft cotton ball. It soothed the burning sensation but it did nothing for the aching muscles underneath and the scared girl underneath all that. “What exactly was in that alley?”

  With pursed lips, he placed a large bandage across the clean wounds and ripped four strips of tape.

  Giving up on getting any answers out of him, I buried my head in my pillow and let him finish taping the large bandage across my left shoulder.

  He stood and collected the supplies, putting them meticulously back in their places in the large plastic first aid kit as if he had done it a million times before.

  “You’d better eat and I’m sorry if the clothes don’t fit.”

  Turning my head, I watched him go. He closed the door and put back the chair. My stomach growled with hunger and the burger next to me looked wonderful. Screw the diet. I needed to survive here.

  After the caffeine and the clothes, I had enough energy to sit up in the bed and look around at my prison. As my mind raced through the clues in his room, I could only come up with three things that even remotely made sense.

  1. He was a vampire hunter and I had been caught in the crossfire of his war against the dark arts. He was holding me here to make sure I hadn’t been infected by whatever beastie he had been tracking. I had written it in a script that had been rejected but it had always been a favorite of mine.

  2. He was plain psycho and since he couldn’t have Jessa, he decided to take her friend to be his sex slave or his collateral when he bargained for Jessa’s affection. Which wasn’t going to work. He should have taken her Fendi purse instead.

  3. In his TV-rotted mind, he had rescued me from an actual dog attack and was trying to do the right thing in very misguided sort of way. Which might explain why I was not as afraid of him as I should be.

  When the fear crept away and I was sure I could stand, I tried the window, just for good measure. If something did happen and I ended up on the evening news, I didn’t want some neighbor going, “Why didn’t she just crawl out the window?”

  It was unlocked. What kind of evil kidnapper doesn’t secure a window? His loss, I thought as I quietly opened the window and peered out.

  Huh. One story house with the neighbors only a few feet away. No alarms went off; there weren’t bars on the windows. Just a short drop to the ground below. Something wasn’t right about this.

  I slid a leg out the window and stretched my leg down until my toes touched the cool grass. God bless a 34-inch inseam.

  Careful of my left shoulder, I slid out the window with a little umph.

  Take that, Stalker boy.

  Running for the streetlights, my heart began to pound. Freedom. Where to go from here? I couldn’t see downtown. Hell, I couldn’t see three feet in front of my face. It was pitch black with no moon in the sky. Not that I could navigate home by it.

  A hand clamped down on my injured shoulder and pain shot down through my torso. A boot nudged my knees out from under me and I fell hard. The jolt made me bite the end of my tongue and tears welled up in my eyes as I tasted blood.

  “Really think it was going to be that easy
?”

  “Kinda.”

  He walked in front of me and looked down with a queer smile on his face. In one swift movement, he swept up my right hand, pulled me to my feet, and threw me over his shoulder.

  Defeat didn’t prevent me from struggling as much as I could. I kicked and pounded and screamed, but it didn’t faze him, or the neighbors, as he walked us through the front door and locked it behind us.

  He dropped me on the couch and my shoulder reared to life again. I clutched it tightly and glared up at him.

  Garrett’s head cocked and his hands rested on his hips. “How about you try a shower? Should make your shoulder feel better.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re getting a little ripe.”

  My cheeks flared with anger. “How about you let me go home and I’ll take a shower there?”

  He laughed. “Not yet, Miss Jordan.”

  I stood, holding my shoulder. It felt dislocated and my fingers now tingled.

  As he guided me through the house, I looked around at the obvious bachelor pad with various stacks of things everywhere with accompanying smells. The french fry smell permeated the front of the house. The kitchen was spotless but the back hallway smelled of standing water. It didn’t give me faith in the bathroom he was now pointing to.

  I nodded and watched him close the door. It wasn’t the cleanest place in the world but I didn’t know if I had the option to be picky right now. As I turned to the shower, I saw a stack of clean towels on the toilet. I was pretty sure that serial killers didn’t leave fresh towels.

  “The window is nailed shut,” he said through the door.

  “Thanks for the heads up,” I called back.

  I really wasn’t looking for an escape. Plus, I really didn’t want him to catch me hanging half way out of the tiny window I was too chubby to fit through. I turned on the water full blast, as hot as I could stand it, and watched the bathroom steam up. I wiped the mirror and looked at my shadowed eyes, pale skin. I pulled off the maroon shirt and turned around.