Judith leaped over a few old crates, landing softly in the interior of an old office. She paused, sniffing the air.
She was about to move on when she heard a noise. A footfall sounded through the thin wall to her left. A branch cracked beneath the tread. Someone was coming through the woods.
Another victim.
The window in the office was partially open. Judith White hopped lightly to the sill. Careful to not break the glass tubes in her pockets, she eased herself to the moist ground outside.
The figure she saw creeping through the woods surprised her. He was familiar. She'd watched him arrive from her rafter in the attic.
He was oblivious to her presence. Too easy. Slipping one of the vials from her pocket, she palmed it. On confident, gliding paws, she stole quickly up on the newest unsuspecting member of her superior species.
THE MASTER OF SINANJU HAD waited long enough for Remo to reach the rear of the building. He was stretching one hand to the door of the warehouse when he saw a flash of movement in the woods at the back of the neighboring building.
It was a fleeting glimpse. But it was enough. Whoever it was moved much faster than a normal human being. So quickly, in fact, Chiun's well-trained eyes almost didn't detect the motion.
The figure had darted out of sight in an instant. He paused, considering for a moment if he should not go back and collect Remo.
This whole affair had been a strain on his pupil. The attack by Judith White would not ordinarily have been enough in isolation to cause Remo concern. But Chiun knew that he had dredged up long buried memories of his last encounter with one of these tiger creatures. Remo's old fears could blind him to the current problem. A single distraction at the wrong moment could prove fatal.
And something else had apparently not occurred to Remo during this time of crisis. For years, Chiun had tried to convince Remo that he was the fulfillment of a prophesy that asserted that a Master of Sinanju would one day train the avatar of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction. This dead night tiger would be brought to fullness in Sinanju.
To Chiun, Remo was fulfillment of the legend. However, for most of their association, Remo-in his typical white, Western, lunkheaded way-had deemed the legend "a big, fat, smelly load of doohickey." Nonetheless, Chiun persisted. Certain factors in recent years had caused Remo to argue less strenuously against the prophesy. In a very small way, he had allowed the glimmer of a possibility that the legend might actually be true. It was a step in the right direction, as well as a step to fulfilling the legend.
But there was another aspect to the ancient story. As the dead night tiger trained in Sinanju, it was said that Shiva could only be sent to death again by his own kind.
"Shiva must walk with care when he passes the jungle where lurk the other night tigers," were the words Chiun had intoned to Remo years before when first they had encountered the tiger creatures. Hand in hand with the Shiva prophesy, it was one of the most ancient legends of the House of Sinanju.
Perhaps Remo had thought of this and hadn't mentioned it for fear of worrying Chiun. However, given Remo's monkeylike attention span, it was more likely he hadn't been paying attention when the Master of Sinanju was relating the tale. To someone who knew the truth of the legends, Chiun alone appreciated the danger his pupil now faced.
Poised to enter the dusty old warehouse, Chiun thought of all these things in a fraction of a millisecond.
The decision was made in an instant. Remo's life was too important to risk. The legend did not affect Chiun. And the Master of Sinanju didn't carry the same emotional baggage as his pupil. Chiun would deal with Judith White on his own.
Spinning abruptly, the old Asian left the front of the first warehouse. Kimono skirts billowing, he raced across the barren space to the next building.
REMO CREPT STEALTHILY through the thick underbrush at the rear of the first warehouse.
As he stepped carefully over the moss-slick stones that lined the trickling brook behind the building, he scanned the high wall, looking for the best route of entry.
There were high windows all along the back. A lot had been broken, but not as many as at the front. Vandals didn't have as easy a time getting back here and so left the rear largely untouched.
Graffiti artists had decorated the brick foundation, as well as the clapboards that encased what appeared to be the old office wing.
Remo wasn't surprised to find that the sprayed words were illegible. In a state where most teachers spent half the year filing phony grievances and the other half complaining about the latest basic-competency test they'd all just failed, simple things like teaching spelling and penmanship had a tendency to get lost in the classroom shuffle.
A few yards along the rear wall, Remo found an open door set into the foundation. It was coated with moss and propped against a jagged rock. As he approached the doorway, Remo's heart skipped a beat. Tracks in the mud. Hundreds of them.
They were identical to those he'd seen in the cornfield back in Concord. Judith White had apparently been using the rear warehouse door to come and go unseen. For months, if the dried prints at the edge of the muddy path were any indication.
The path she regularly took carried her out into the center of the stream. Judith was evidently trying to mask her scent in the water. A distinctly human act.
Remo glanced into the dark interior of the warehouse.
The ground angled down along the rear of the structure. This was the basement. Chiun would be entering on the first-floor level.
For a moment, Remo contemplated going back for Chiun. The Master of Sinanju expected to meet up with Remo on the ground floor, not the basement. And Remo had no great desire to stumble on Judith on his own.
And in that instant of hesitation, Remo was ashamed of his own apprehension.
No. To go back for Chiun now would be a surrender to fear. Not only that, but he would also be abandoning Judith White's probable escape route. Remo steeled himself.
"I am not cleaning out her litter box," he muttered under his breath.
Without a backward glance, he plunged into the darkness...
And the figure that had been trailing him stealthily along the rear of the building followed swiftly behind.
CHIUN DIDN'T SEE Judith White anywhere.
The woods near the small stream were overgrown, making visibility poor. In the distance, he heard the sound of lumbering hunters. Closer still was the sound of the roaring river into which the small tributary fed.
Surely his eyes had not deceived him. She was here. Somewhere.
The figure he had seen moved with the grace and speed of a big cat. It had slipped into the late-afternoon shadows somewhere nearby.
A filthy mattress lay on the ground in a small clearing near the brook. Around it, shattered beer bottles mixed with rotting leaves from years gone by. Chiun stepped past these, glancing first to woods then to building.
And in that sliver of time when his eyes were trained on the warehouse, a figure emerged from out of the thicket.
So soft were his footfalls, Chiun hadn't heard him moving in the woods. He wheeled on the sudden sound.
When he spied Trooper Dan MacGuire, the old man's alert features relaxed to annoyance.
"Why are you not at your carriage?" Chiun demanded.
"You said someone screamed," MacGuire replied, his voice a harsh whisper. He was slipping quietly and confidently away from the tree cover, gun clutched in his hand. "I can't let that psycho doctor escape, with or without backup."
"Put that noisemaker away," Chiun commanded, nodding to the trooper's gun.
"Sorry, Pops," MacGuire said, shaking his head. "You do what you want, but I'm not getting killed."
Chiun's brow creased. "The Magyars were grasping, but at least they had sense to guard their coaches from bands of roving drunkards."
"Hey, cruiser gets trashed, they give me another one." MacGuire smiled tightly.
Chiun had no time to deal with foolish taxi drivers. Frowning, the Master of Sinanju turned away from the trooper.