Connor was napping in the back office after having complained some more about last night’s lack of sleep. Spike and his tatts had earned the interest of an artist who’d come to see Armand, and the artist was looking Spike over, having him stand in sunlight and so forth.

“Gallery d’Armand,” Carly said in her best quiet but friendly tones. “How may I help you this afternoon?”

“I need you to get away from Connor and Spike,” Tiger’s voice was almost a whisper. “And meet me.” He gave directions to a spot in the warehouse area south of Ben White, near the freeway.

Get away from Connor and Spike? Carly didn’t dare glance behind her at Spike, who might read in her body language that she was suddenly nervous. “I’m not sure I can,” she said.

“Talk to me like I am a shopper. Don’t change your voice.”

A shopper. He meant a gallery patron. Carly drew a breath. “Well, I’m certain we could accommodate you, sir,” she said briskly, “though it might be a little bit of a challenge.”

“Don’t take Dylan’s truck. The Bureau men know what it looks like.” A hesitation. “So do the Shifters.”

He wanted to evade Shifters too? Shifters like Liam? What the hell had happened?

Carly couldn’t ask with Spike behind her, even though he was all the way across the gallery. She’d learned by now that Shifters had great hearing.

Tiger’s voice was quiet, but she read the agitation in him. He was asking her to make a choice.

Liam had been adamant that Tiger not leave Shiftertown, and Carly had seen the rage between Liam, Tiger, and Dylan. Tiger wasn’t the most normal of guys, even for a Shifter—she’d seen that in the way others treated him and in the way the others lived their lives. Liam, Sean, Spike, Ronan—they had children, families, friends, a defined place in the Shifter world. In the same way, Carly had a loving mother and three great sisters, friends, and a job with Armand and Yvette, a childless couple who treated her like a daughter.

Tiger had no one. In the warmth of the Shifter community, the Shifters either feared him or watched him, ready to stop him when he went over the top. Tiger was alone in a crowd.

What Carly had observed in the three days she’d known him was that every time Tiger went berserk, it was to defend himself or someone else. Couldn’t they see how gentle he was with the kids, how much the kids liked him? No child trusted a person they’d seen hurt others.

Carly’s father had been a bad person. Difficult for a twelve-year-old girl to understand when her father leaves without a word. An adolescent takes it personally, and Carly did. She’d spent a long time wondering what had been wrong with her before realizing that she hadn’t done anything wrong at all.

Thinking back over what life had been like with her father—his alcoholic tempers and compulsive gambling, his daylong harangues at her mother—Carly had come to the adult conclusion that he’d had a lot of problems he hadn’t bothered to acknowledge, problems that had made Carly’s home life hell for twelve years.

Tiger was absolutely nothing like him.

All this went through Carly’s head in the few seconds Tiger waited for her answer.

Carly could turn around and call out for Spike, telling him that Tiger was running from Shiftertown for whatever reason. Or she could believe that Tiger had a very good reason for wanting her to meet him and to keep Spike and Connor from finding out and following.

She chose.

“I’ll take care of it,” Carly said, speaking in her helpful-assistant tones. “Don’t you worry.” She heard Tiger’s breath of relief, and she decided to risk a question. “And how did you find the number for our gallery? Were you referred?”

Tiger sounded puzzled as he answered. “Phone book.” And he hung up.

Carly bit her lip as she reached into the desk drawer where she kept her purse and pretended to look for something. Connor was in the office, where a back door led to the small parking area on the alley. She knew she’d never get past him without waking him up. If she went out the front, past Spike, even with the excuse of going out for gelato or whatever, Spike would follow her.

She felt Spike’s gaze on her. Carly pulled a lipstick from her purse, frowned at it, and said, “Yvette, I’m just going to the ladies’.”

Yvette, who’d been in low-voiced conversation on the other side of the gallery with Armand, nodded. Carly’s palms sweated as she dipped her hand into Yvette’s purse resting next to hers and took out Yvette’s car keys. Carly slid them noiselessly into her own purse, then took up the purse and put it over her shoulder.

She walked as casually as she could through the alcove that held two very nice but small restrooms and one broom closet. Neither bathroom had windows, so the movie staple of the woman or man climbing out the bathroom window to escape everything from a bad date to death by assassins was out. Beyond the broom closet, however, was the emergency exit.

Armand, fortunately, didn’t have a fire alarm rigged up to the door. But if Carly opened it, the glare of the sun outside might shine back down the hall.

She had to risk it. Carly waited until several loud vehicles passed in front of the shop. Spike turned to glance at them. At the same time, Carly opened the back door a little, slid through, and closed the door as quietly as she could.

Yvette’s car was five feet away. Now to hope that Connor hadn’t woken up and was looking out the office window.

Carly got into the car, closing the door so it only clicked. She set her purse on the passenger seat, put on her seat belt, and started the engine.

No one came flying out through the office door or the emergency exit. Carly backed the car out of its parking spot as slowly as she dared, then drove down the alley.

She passed the backs of four more shops before she turned onto a small driveway that led out to the main street. From here she turned right, even though she needed to go left to get back to Austin. She didn’t want to risk driving past the gallery and its wide plate-glass windows.

Carly had to drive around a few blocks, once down a street that was still dirt, before she emerged onto the main road again. Then she drove as fast as she dared. At any moment, Spike would figure out that she was taking way too long in the ladies’ room, or Yvette would go in and find her not there. Spike and Connor would leap into Dylan’s truck, and they’d be on her ass in minutes.