The man in the suit chuckled. “No, I’m an anthropology professor. My name is Brennan, Lee Brennan. Here’s my card.” He plucked a pale rectangle from his briefcase and held it out to her. Sure enough, the card said he was Lee Brennan, PhD, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin.
“Why does an anthropology professor need a bodyguard?” she asked him.
Carly tried to hand the card back to Brennan, but he shook his head. “Keep it. My number and e-mail are there, along with the website for my project. Walker isn’t my bodyguard. He’s my friend, or at least, a former student. He keeps an eye out for good case studies for me and called me today after you left the hospital.”
Carly sank to the edge of a chair, still holding the card and the remote. “And you thought I’d be a good case study?”
“Not you. The man they had to chain to the hospital bed. What was his name?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been calling him Tiger, because I guess he’s a tiger.”
“And that is very unusual. The Feline types of Shifter tend more to lion, leopard, even jaguar. Tiger is rare. I don’t think we’ve even seen a tiger in the Texas Shiftertowns.”
“So you want me to make friends with him and then tell you all about him?” Carly asked. “That still seems pretty underhanded.”
“Be as honest with him as you want. The Shifters have heard of me and know about my project. I am interested in this tiger, and would love to view him and Shiftertown through a fresh pair of eyes. You’d be helping me out and earning a little money at the same time.”
“How much money, exactly?”
Brennan chuckled again. “That depends on my funding, and I’m always underfunded. But I do have money budgeted for a research assistant. If I use you as an outside consultant, you won’t have to enroll in the university, though there will be paperwork to sign before I can get you paid. There’s always paperwork. Everyone talks about the paperless society, but there’s no way a giant bureaucracy will ever achieve it. There’s always some form that has to be hand-signed, electronic signatures not accepted.”
Carly turned his card around in her fingers. “Can I think about it?”
Brennan creeped her out a little bit, no matter that he seemed friendly and legit. Maybe because he’d showed up out of the blue, at her house, knowing exactly where she lived, when she’d never met him before. Why hadn’t he called her, e-mailed her, approached her at the hospital? And who was this Walker guy, really?
“Take your time, Ms. Randal,” Brennan said. “My study is ongoing, and Shifters live far longer than we do.”
“Tell me something.” Carly fixed Walker with a steely look. “If I take this job, will Mr. Walker follow me around, armed to the teeth? Did you think an art gallery assistant was so dangerous that you had to bring a Glock or whatever that is into my house?”
“Walker’s my first name,” Walker said. He was the only one of the three of them who hadn’t sat down. “Captain Walker Danielson. Carrying a gun is part of my job.”
“What, like Walker, Texas Ranger?”
His hard-faced mask slipped, and he looked a little embarrassed, as though people tried to make that joke all the time. “Not quite.”
Carly assessed him again. He was kind of cute, in the I’m-a-hard-bitten-soldier kind of way, but she couldn’t forget how ready he’d been to shoot Tiger.
“Are you CIA, FBI, whatever alphabet agency?”
“Department of the Interior. Shifter Bureau.”
“Oh.” Carly had never heard of the Shifter Bureau, but she knew that Shifters were regulated. At least, articles and TV reports reassured the public of this all the time. Again, she realized how far Shifters had been off her radar—she’d given no thought to how they were regulated, or why, or who did it.
“And your job is what?” Carly asked Walker. “Intimidation?”
“I’m an officer in the Special Forces attachment to the Shifter Bureau South,” Walker answered, the red at his cheekbones vanishing. “I and my men are called in when there’s a problem, such as a Shifter going crazy in a hospital.”
“Walker thought I’d be interested in having a look at this Shifter,” Dr. Brennan said. “He seems to be a little different from the others, and a tiger, which is odd, as I’ve said. I need someone to help me get close to him.”
“Can’t you just call the Shifters and set up an appointment?” Carly thought about Liam, who’d put the nurses in Tiger’s room at their ease with one look. “I’m sure they’d give you the information or let you interview him.”
Brennan looked pained. “I have talked to them—to Liam Morrissey and his father. A while ago. They made it clear that I wasn’t welcome to return.”
“So you want me to sneak information about them to you behind their backs?” Carly said, annoyed. “You know, I’m getting pretty tired of men who want to sneak around today.”
Brennan looked puzzled, but he couldn’t know what Carly was talking about. “The Morrisseys made it clear that I wasn’t welcome in Shiftertown,” Brennan said. “Not that they object to me carrying on my research from afar. But I want to respect their wishes. An assistant would be helpful, especially a female one. Women seem to get along better with Shifters than men.”
From what Connor had said, the Shifters seemed to regard all males as threats. Not surprising that they hadn’t liked Brennan, then.
“I’ll have to think about it.” Carly stood up, wanting Brennan to get the idea that the interview was over.
Brennan didn’t. He sat leafing through his briefcase. “I can’t fit you out with fancy equipment—digital recorders, laptops, and the like. No budget. A steno pad and pen will have to be the way to go, unless you have your own laptop. If I hire you on, you can write that off as a business expense.”
“I said I’d have to think about it, Dr. Brennan.”
Walker, having never sat down, glanced through the blinds to Carly’s front drive. “Who’s that?”
Carly went to the window to look, even though she had to lean over Brennan on the sofa to do it. She’d expected to see Connor trying to ride away on his motorcycle, but instead she saw Armand climbing out of his BMW, Yvette exiting the other side. Both were talking, loudly, in French, carrying on whatever animated conversation they’d begun inside the car.
“My boss,” Carly said turning away. Armand looked angry, and Yvette was yelling at him—Carly could hear them as she made her way through the tiled foyer to open the front door. She didn’t know enough French to understand what they were yelling about, but she had a pretty good idea.
“Carly!” Armand said in his earsplitting roar as soon as Carly pulled open the door. “Ma petite.” The big bear of a man threw his arms around Carly and dragged her against his soft body. “You are all right. I heard of a shooting at Ethan’s house, and you were nowhere to be found. I was so worried . . .”
Carly had held up all the way to the hospital, throughout her concern about Tiger, having Connor stick to her, even Brennan’s weird request, but now, embraced by the fatherly Armand, she wanted to let go, hang on to him, and sob. Armand had been more of a father to her than her own ever had been.
“Carly, you poor thing.” Yvette patted her cheek as she stepped into the house, her rings cool on Carly’s hot face. “We heard about the shooting at Ethan’s house on the news, and Armand said you’d been going back there, and we had to come and make sure you were all right. But others have come too. Who are these people?”
Yvette had halted in the archway to the living room, staring at Brennan and Walker. Yvette was tall and willowy, a brunette with short and sleek hair, her pencil-slim dress hugging her figure and emphasizing her long legs. At fifty, she still looked like the runway model she’d been at twenty.