Tallient promised there'd be an airline ticket and a check waiting at O'Hare. He was as good as his word.
In the meantime, I looked him up on the Internet and remembered why his name was familiar. He wasn't Bill Gates, but he was close.
Tallient had invented a widget for computer modems and become a gazillionaire. At least he could afford me.
After an accident several years ago had turned him into a recluse, he'd become fascinated with cryptozoology. Interestingly enough, details on his accident were nonexistent, leaving me to wonder if Tallient had used his tech skills to ensure a little privacy. I couldn't blame him.
Heat slapped me in the face as soon as I walked out of Louis Armstrong International Airport Mid-October and the temperature had to be in the midnineties. No wonder the wolves had long ago fled New Orleans.
Along with the plane ticket and the check, Frank, as he'd insisted I call him, had provided a rental car, a hotel room on Bourbon Street, and the name and address of a swamp guide.
"I could get used to this," I said as the agent handed me the keys to a Lexus.
Shortly thereafter I checked into the hotel and tossed my bag on the bed. I'd have the luxury of running water and sheets only until I found a base of operations. I couldn't look for a cryptid from town. I needed to be right where the action was at all hours of the day or night. Once I found such a place, I'd have my camping equipment shipped south.
I wandered to a set of French doors, which led to a patio. Under the heated sheen of the sun, the rot showed - sidewalks cracking, buildings crumbling, homeless people begging coins from the tourists.
One of the bizarre things about Bourbon Street, and there were a lot of them, was how a very nice hotel, like this one, could have a view straight into a strip joint on the opposite side of the street.
Two women danced on top of the bar. When they began to do more than dance, and the milling crowd began to cheer, I turned away from the spectacle. I wasn't a prude, but I preferred my sex in private and in the dark.
Or I had back when I'd had sex. Since Simon, there'd been no one, and I hadn't cared, had barely noticed. But : alone in a hotel room on a street that advertised sex twenty-four hours a day, I felt both deprived and depraved. Hiring myself a swamp guide seemed like a good distraction.
I did an Internet search on the address provided by Frank, then drove out of the French Quarter to the interstate, over Lake Pontchartrain, and into Slidell - an interesting combination of commuter suburb and Victorian brick houses. I didn't have time to enjoy the contrast. I wanted the guide issue settled so I could get to work.
I headed past every fast-food joint and franchise restaurant I knew and some I didn't. Just beyond a strip mall, I took a left, trolling by new houses complete with Big Wheels in the driveways and swimming pools in the backyards.
These gave way to older and older residences, then mobile homes, and finally shacks. One more turn and bam - there was the swamp. No wonder I'd heard reports of alligators in people's yards. What did they expect, putting a backyard near an alligator?
I shut off the motor, and silence pressed down on me. The weight of a cell phone in my pocket was reassuring. I could always call... someone.
Climbing out of the Lexus, I thanked Frank in absentia. Whenever I was forced into any vehicle smaller than a midsize four-door, I felt as if I were driving a clown car.
My mother, also quite tall, was an annoyingly slim woman with ice in her veins and hair as dark as her soul. Though she'd had no patience for fairy tales, she'd insisted I was a changeling. Where I'd gotten light green eyes, bright red hair, and an intense desire to play softball no one seemed to know. My appearance had marked me as an out- sider, even before my behavior had branded me the same.
Damp heat brushed my face along with the scent of rotting vegetation and brackish water. My eyes searched the gloom for something. Anything. Though my watch insisted I had a good hour of daylight left, the thick cover of ancient oaks shrouded me in chilly shadow.
I saw nothing but a dock and a tributary that disappeared around a bend. Across the water, hundreds of cypress trees dripped Spanish moss into the swamp grass.
"Hello?" I reached into my pocket and pulled out the note. "Adam Ruelle?"
The only answer was a thick splash, which halted my stride down the dock. How fast could an alligator travel on land?
Not as fast as I could. But what if that hadn't been an alligator?
Wolves are quick, as are big cats, and when dealing with new or undiscovered animals, anything could happen.
I took a deep breath. I might have been raised soft, but before Simon and I started spending so much time in the field we'd taken self-defense classes. You couldn't sleep under the stars in a dozen different states and not run into trouble sooner or later.
However, knowing how to disable a man who outweighed me by fifty pounds wasn't going to do me much good with a wild animal. What had I been thinking to come here alone, without a gun?
I snorted. I didn't own a gun.
Slowly I backed toward land, keeping my eyes on the flowing water. The muted splashing came closer and closer. I should make a run for it, but I hated to turn my back on whatever lurked in the depths of the lily pad-strewn tributary.
I heard a rustle that wasn't a fish, wasn't even water. More like the whisper of weeds, the snap of a twig. Slowly I lifted my gaze to the far shore.
A single flower perched atop a waving stalk, the shade of a flame against the dewy blue-green backdrop, and the tall grass swished closed behind a body.
Could have been anything, or anyone.
"Except for the tail," I murmured.
Bushy. Black. I tilted my head. Canine? Or feline?
I walked to the edge of the dock to get a better look at what had already disappeared. When water splashed across my shoes, I started, then slipped.
I was falling, my arms pinwheeling, my gaze focused, horrified, on the eight-foot alligator, jaws wide and waiting. Someone grabbed me and hauled backward. My heels banged loudly against the wooden slats of the dock, and the alligator let out an annoyed hiss.
I expected to be released once my feet touched dirt; instead, my savior, my captor, held on tight.
"Who're you?" His voice rasped, as if he rarely spoke, and carried both the cadence of the South and a touch of France. I'd never heard another like it
"D-d-diana," I managed, despite a significant lack of breath and a near-painful increase in my heart rate. "Diana Malone."
There. I sounded cool, calm, in control, even though I wasn't.
"I need a swamp guide," I continued.
"No guide here."
"I was told there was."
"You were told wrong. Take an airboat tour down de way."