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“Claire!”

Claire bolted upright, her eyes flying open as her apartment door flew open and Mrs. Grouse came running in. “What … What’s wrong?”

She looked around befuddled until she realized she’d fallen asleep on the couch waiting for Cam.

Mrs. Grouse reached for the TV remote. “You have to see this.”

“What time is it?”

“Six. Now watch.”

“The spokesman for the Zoo,” the TV reporter said, “said Zoo security personnel were at the back of the facility assisting the veterinarian with capturing several loose lemurs when the break-in occurred.” Before she could ask Mrs. Grouse why she found this so important, the scene changed to the security camera footage. Recognizing Cam despite the poor black-and-white image, she gasped, “Oh my God.”

“I told you—”

Claire flapped her hands. “Shhh!”

“Zoo officials are asking anyone who recognizes the perpetrator to notify the Dorchester police.”

“Oh my God.” She gaped at Mrs. Grouse. “But why? How?” Without waiting for an answer she turned her attention back to the TV and found the reporter interviewing a small, sniffling child. With tears streaming down her little cheeks, the toddler cried, “He took Santa’s reindeer. Now Santa won’t be able to find us.”

“Oh, Cam.” Where they’d found a child at this hour was anyone’s guess, but the move had been brilliant. The child’s pain was palpable, really tore at the heart strings. Practically guaranteed Cam would get twenty to life when they caught him.

Getting to her feet, she asked, “Have you seen him? Is he home?”

Mrs. Grouse nodded. “He came in about an hour ago.”

Claire stormed toward the door, and Mrs. Grouse blocked her path. “Step aside.”

“Now, dear, I know you’re upset but give the poor man the benefit of the doubt. After all, he did risk his life the night before last confronting those hoodlums.”

Claire stepped back. “What are you talking about?”

“The gang that’s been breaking your windows. Cam caught them outside the night before last. I saw the whole thing from my window. Terrifying to say the least,” she shuddered, “but I can assure you they won’t be bothering you again.”

“He confronted them? He could have been killed! Tell me precisely what happened.”

Mrs. Grouse’s recitation had barely begun when the phone rang and Claire held up a hand. “Don’t go anywhere. I want to hear the rest of this.” In the kitchen she picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Get me MacLeod. Now!”

“Mr. Brindle?”

“Yes. Is he there?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t gone downstairs yet.” Trying to buy time, knowing the answer, she asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Turn on the TV. Channel 5.”

Claire took a deep breath. Should she admit she’d seen the coverage or pretend not to have seen it and let Mr. Brindle do all the talking? She opted for the latter and walked into the living room, where she saw the station was running the security tape again. Still shocked, the mantra that had been running around in her brain for the last three minutes came out. “Oh my God.”

Into her ear, Brindle shouted, “I doubt even He could help MacLeod now! I have an appointment at ten that I can’t get out of, but I’ll get there as soon as I can. If you find MacLeod before I get there, do not—I repeat, DO NOT—let him out of your sight. Chain him to a radiator if you have to.”

With that, he hung up.

Oh shit! “Mrs. Grouse, I have to find Cam. Please stay by the phone. If anyone calls, you know nothing. Just take a message.”

A sharp blow to his left hip had Cam rolling to his feet, the blade he kept beneath his pallet in hand.

“Cameron MacLeod, you better start talking!”

Surprised to find his assailant was Claire, he blew through his teeth and palmed the blade before she could see it. As he raked the hair out of his eyes, he glanced out the windows. “God’s teeth, woman, the sun’s barely up. What in hell is wrong with ye?”

“You, that’s what’s wrong with me.” She started pacing in front of him, the cane she’d apparently hit him with slapping her right leg with each step. “Where were you last night?”

“Out.”

“Out where?”

Uh-oh, had she discovered the truck missing? ’Twas altogether possible, but he’d better be vague until he kenned what really had her in a snit. For all he kenned, it could be she’d discovered he’d eaten the last of the ice cream. Good stuff, that. “I had an errand.” When she just stared at him, waiting, he added truthfully, “Across town.”

“And you needed the truck to do it.”

Oops. “Aye.”

“Ah, and did this errand happen to have cloven hooves and antlers,” she flung out her arms, “this wide?”

Ack! How could she possibly ken this? He started to rise, being one who always thought faster on his feet. “Now Claire, dinna get yerself—”

The blade within the cane was suddenly pointed at his heart. “Do not ‘now Claire’ me. I want an explanation and I want it now. Your face is all over the damn television. I’m surprised the police haven’t already raided this place.”

“But how?” He’d been most careful, had watched the guards, had executed the distraction perfectly—a brilliant move letting those leaping, ring-tailed beasties loose if he did say so himself—and had come and gone without a soul inside or out catching sight or scent of him. So how could this be?

Apparently reading his thoughts, she shouted, “Security cameras, Cam! They’re mounted all over the zoo property. They have pictures of you with the damn deer slung around your neck like a muffler.” She threw up her hands. “Where’s the deer? And please do not tell me you killed it.”

“Ack! How could ye even think such a thing? ’Tisna a game park, this zoo of yours. ’Tis a bloody menagerie. And not until I found their pen and the beasties came up and tried to eat from my hand did I realize it.”

And what kind of place was this anyway that they spied on each other? He heaved a sigh and waved toward the alley. “The truck is in yon alley.”

“You parked the—come on.”

Out the loading dock door they went, Claire muttering every step of the way. At the back of the truck, she said, “Open it.”

He did as she bid, opening one side carefully.

She stuck her head in and pulled it out so fast, she nearly toppled. Looking horrified, she yelped, “You stole two!”

He shrugged. “The buck wouldna stop bleating, so I grabbed another. For company. But they only had the one buck—”

“So you took the doe.”

“Aye. Are they worth as much?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Ack, woman, are ye dense?” He pushed the hay he’d also reived over the threshold and closed the door before a beastie could make an escape. “Ye use cards, bank notes, and bucks as barter. Is the doe of any value? Or would it be better if they go as a breeding pair?”

Claire stared at him blankly for a moment, then went down on her haunches, her head in her hands. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Suddenly worried, he squatted next to her. “ ’Tis the influenza again? Should ye go to the hospital?”

She looked up at him, tears streaming in twin burns down her cheeks. Something hot tightened about his chest, nearly squeezing the air out of him. “Please, lass, talk to me.”

She looked up at him, her misery as plain as her red nose. “A buck is our slang for a dollar. You’re going to prison if they catch you with these deer, and there won’t be a damn thing I or Mr. Brindle can do to help you. You have a record, Cam, and you have yet to go to trial on the assault charges.”

“Oh.”

She sniffled as she came to her feet and headed for the shop, her arms wrapped about her ribs, as if to shield herself. Over her shoulder she asked, “May I ask where the hell you were planning on keeping the deer until you could sell them?”

He followed, wondering why life was never simple. “In the storage room at the Purple Pussycat.” Thinking the deer were wild as they are in Scotland, he’d planned to butcher them and put the meat in the cold storage at the club, but that was before he discovered they were friggin’ tame.

She stopped and stared at him. “Why on earth would you put them there?”

Ack! His life was apparently determined to go to hell in a sporran. He might as well tell her the whole truth, bad as it was. And better that she hears it from him than Tracy. “I work there.”

She scowled, as well she should. “Doing what?”

Crusty buggers, this is a bitter mouthful to swallow. “I’m a bouncer.” Now she kenned the worst of it.

Owl-eyed, she looked at him. “You are not.”

Reluctant to admit it again, he simply nodded as he opened the door for her. “Ye can speak with Tracy. She got me the darg.”

“But if you already have a job, why did you steal the deer?”

“Humph!” Stealing was putting too fine a point on his acquisition, but arguing the subtler points of reiving would likely only get her in a worse snit.

Following her up the stairs to her apartment, he grumbled, “I only earn fifty dollars per day and they take a goodly amount of it back in bloody taxes. I owe ye thousands, Claire, and at the rate I’m earning I’ll be long dead and still owing.”

“But you don’t owe me—”

He took hold of her arm, making her stop and face him. “Nay! I do owe ye. I’ve never been a beggar and willna start now. I pay my way whatever the circumstances.”

“Okay, okay, I didn’t mean to call your manhood into question. I just thought you should know that Tavish left money—”

“This isna a discussion. I’m simply telling ye.”

“Oh, you are, are you?” Growling something under her breath about male craziness she continued her rapid climb up the stairs. “We need to get rid of the deer before Brindle or the police come.”

“But where? We canna just turn them loose.”

“Oh, yes we can.”

Mrs. Grouse greeted them as they rushed through the door. “No phone calls and nothing new on TV.” Giving Cam a worried look, she handed them each a cup of coffee. “Now what?”

Claire took a sip, then reached for her coat. “We’re off to hide a couple of reindeer in plain sight.”

“A couple?” Mrs. Grouse tsked but with a twinkle—what one might even call admiration—in her eye as she waggled a finger at Cam. He shrugged, one corner of his mouth lifting in a rueful grin.

He’s going to be the death of me. Or I of him.

Claire reached for the truck keys which had magically reappeared on the end table. “If Brindle shows up, feed him some coffee cake and tell him—oh hell, I don’t know what to tell him. Make something up. We’ll be back in an hour.”

Mrs. Grouse nodded. “And if the police come?”

“You know nothing. Less than nothing. You just woke up.” To Cam she said, “Come on.”

With Cam in the passenger seat and her behind the wheel, both of them bundled and gloved, they headed downtown. They hadn’t gone two blocks when the wind kicked up, sending fat flakes swirling around them.

“Ugh, just what we don’t need right now.” A blind man would be able to follow their tracks across the Common. The police would be lifting the tire prints. Turning on the windshield wipers, she mumbled, “Why me, Lord?”

As if reading her mind, Cam said, “ ’Tis good. The snow will hide our tracks.”

“From your lips to God’s ears.” The way the wind was blowing, she seriously doubted it.

Fifteen silent minutes later as they traveled up Boylston, approaching the smaller of the two sections that made up the fifty-five-acre Boston Common, her stomach flipped and hands began to sweat. Only one more block and they’d be there. She could do this. She could. She just had to back the truck into the roadway the maintenance people used and then open the doors. The deer would bolt for the trees where they could root around until someone spotted them and called the zoo. It was a good plan. Reindeer were Laplanders. They liked snow. The blizzard wouldn’t do them any harm. And she’d still be functioning in the gray—no, call it charcoal—zone.

She crossed Charles, which bisected the Common and slowed as she came abreast of the larger of the two parks. Where was that drive? The heavy snow earlier in the week had already turned the Common into a beautiful but unfamiliar fairyland. The blizzard now raging beyond her windshield made it more so.

Focused on finding tracks or a break in the curb, some hint of the turnout that marked the maintenance drive through worsening visibility, she startled when Cam hissed, “Up ahead to ye left.”

A police cruiser, its motor running, was parked in the turnout she’d been looking for. Crap!

Claire eased off the gas. Now what?

Having no choice, she rolled past the cruiser, rounded the corner onto Park and came to a stop. She exhaled audibly, surprised to hear Cam do the same. “What a pair we make.”

“Aye. I had visions of us wearing naught but yellow and steel.”

“Me, too.” And yellow was not her best color. “What now?”

“The Purple Pussycat. We have nae choice.”

Picturing the deer running amok inside the club, alarms blaring, Claire shook her head. “No way.”

“Aye, way. There’s a storage building at the rear. We can put the deer in it for now and come back later tonight.”

Splendid, just what she wanted to do. Make a night raid on a strip club to retrieve two reindeer. Resigned, she muttered, “I guess we have no choice.”

When the Purple Pussycat came into view, Cam said, “Go past and then turn left. ’Twill lead to the back.”

Behind the club, Cam pointed to a decrepit building that hadn’t seen paint in a decade. “There.”

She backed up to it, and Cam jumped out. Before she could get to the rear of the truck, he had the shed door unlocked and open. How he’d come by the skill she didn’t want to know.

He took hold of the truck’s door handle. “Stand there betwixt the truck and the shed door. I’ll stand guard on this side where there’s greater space. We dinna want the beasties to hie off.”

“Right.” I so don’t believe I’m doing this.

He turned the handle. “Ready?”

“Yes.” Sort of.

She held her breath, her heart beating so hard she knew she’d break a rib, and Cam jerked the door open.

And nothing happened.

She looked at Cam and he looked at her. Apparently also fearing the worst—that the deer had asphyxiated—they both leaned over to look inside. At which point the deer bolted.

Claire, seeing nothing but huge furry antlers, screeched and ducked as the buck, sleigh bell collar jangling, sprang over her. The doe, apparently not to be outdone, followed suit, catching Claire on the rump with a hoof as she went.

“Son of a bitch!”

Claire, her arms crossed over her head, twisted to look under one arm to see what was happening and if it was safe to rise. Cam stood with his hands on his head staring after the reindeer hauling ass around the corner, their tails high, flashing them as they went. He cursed again before reaching out to help her to her feet. “Are ye all right?”

Hands shaking with an hour’s worth of fear-induced adrenalin, Claire shoved the hair out of her eyes and shouted, “Are you out of your ever-loving mind? I’ll never be right again!”