13

The Tandem Bike

We stumbled down Apollonos street weaving through the crowds of shoppers and not daring to look behind us.

Shane pulled me to a stop at the corner of Apollonos and Adrianou. He nodded toward a tandem bicycle leaning against the white stucco wall across the street. Oh, my goodness! Couldn’t this guy ever make things easy and explain what he meant?

“Yep, a bicycle. Let’s go.” I crossed the street onto Adrianou.

Shane stopped by the bike. I pulled on his cuffed hand, but he didn’t even sway toward me. He grabbed the handle bars and righted the bike. “We’d go faster.”

“What? On a bike! We’re handcuffed, and what if we crashed or you rode too fast and dumped me into a nut stand or something?”

He didn’t look convinced.

I pulled out my ace in the hole. “Besides, it would be stealing.” Ha, he couldn’t argue with that. Although, that dark, cynical part of me that kept piping up at the most inopportune moments noted that the illegal nature of riding this particular bike was not the reason I was so strongly opposed.

“What if we brought it back and left a huge tip strapped to the seat?”

I shook my head. I was not getting on that bike with him or any other guy. A tandem bike required relinquishing control to the rider in front. Only an absolute fool would let someone else steer during a mad flight from cat-nappers. I liked to hold my fate in my own hands, thank you very much.

A tandem bicycle was the worst idea in the long string of bad ideas Shane had proposed.

Something clattered on the narrow street behind us.

Shane dropped the bike and we took off down Adrianou.

If I’d had any breath available, I would have used it for a sigh of relief. No bicycle, thank goodness. What if Shane had been a terrible cyclist? Or worse, a good cyclist who liked to ride fast?

Adrianou was a narrow little thoroughfare, but it had a few charms. The street was a light, sunny lane full of broad-leafed trees, narrow clusters of tables and chairs, and a few mopeds zipping here and there among the tourists.

Although I longed to sit at one of the small tables with a coffee in hand, we sped past, feet aching, breaths snagging in our chests.

Shane took a quick turn, doubled back, and then tugged me down a different narrow lane.

A black, cast iron fence surrounded a scattering of ancient ruins directly ahead. The Roman Agora.

My feet were numb. My lungs burned with such a fierce ache that I was certain something deep inside my chest was melting with exertion.

We rushed past the cool shade of a few scattered trees and came upon the Tower of the Winds.

I hauled back on the cuff and dragged Shane to a stop against the cast iron fence. “I can’t…need to stop.” I pointed at the tower. Where was the gate? If we could get into the Roman Agora, perhaps we could lose them behind a pillar.

Shane solved my quandary. He put his hands on my waist and simply boosted me over the fence.

Although I couldn’t properly breath after all of our desperate running, my breath caught in a completely different way as his hands went around me. The man was strong and had turned out to be handy in an emergency. I would give him that much. Still, these positive traits did not account for the electric thrill that zipped along my skin where he’d touched me.

He pulled me into a run again, and I had no time to consider the feel of his arms around me or concern myself with the fact that I’d even noticed.

I stumbled toward the octagonal monument. It was one of the loveliest shrines in Athens depicting the eight Greek winds. Each wind was represented by a different character, and in ancient times, it was also a weather vane and water clock. A beautiful place to stop and see if my melted lungs could ever fully recover.

“They were right behind us, Jack. We’re too exposed here.”

I tugged him to the other side of the monument and plopped down leaning back against the side with Boreas, or was it Lips, or Apeliotes? Anyway, it was some wind guy, and regardless of his identity, I could go no further.

I sucked in great gulps of air and listened to my heart pound in my ears. I hadn’t half caught my breath when a grunt from Shane turned my head.

The man in the suit was back.

One of his thugs must have sneaked up behind Shane, because he had my stalwart taxidermist in a headlock.

The suit held out one hand. “The cat, Miss Gianakos.” I noticed that his fingers were long and delicate and that pale bands on three of them meant that he normally wore rings. He was handsome with smooth, dark hair and an air of authority.

My mind flitted back to the police station, and I suddenly knew who he was. The businessman with the sketch and all those rings. The man who had told the police that I was responsible for stealing his feline.

I could not give him the cat. My very last chance to achieve the most important items on my life chart, or prayer chart, rather, depended on that cat.

Shane made a soft choking sound behind me…

I handed over Chrysanthemum.

The man in the suit squinted down at Chrysanthemum’s poor, beat up nose. “See that tiny splotch of black. You fools should have looked for it the first time as I told you.”

I looked at Chrysanthemum again.

The tall man was right.

A small, black freckle marred the cat’s otherwise uniform face. It wasn’t Chrysanthemum. Could this dead feline simply be some other white, Persian cat? No, she looked exactly like my Ya-Yá’s terrible cat right down to the arrogant tilt of her ears. The cat was simply too close a match. Wait a minute. Was this Chrysanthemum and Petunia’s sister? Had I stolen the British professor’s frozen cat?

As the horror of my crime washed over me, the man in the suit set down his own cardboard box and turned to address the man who held Shane.

If this was Chrysanthemum’s sister, who was this guy? I’d seen the professor once. He’d picked up his kitten the same day Ya-Yá took home Chrysanthemum. The man in the gray suit was too tall, and his nose was too small. The box on the ground beside him had a name emblazoned across the side. The name of the same frozen storage place my aunt had used. Another frozen cat?

The suit’s associate dropped Shane and turned to face his boss.

I picked up the box, grabbed Shane’s hand, and shoved him into the Roman Agora.

We stumbled into a jerky run, but Shane wasn’t moving very fast, and the box was heavy. This new cat wasn’t even partially stuffed.

I’d lost my source of income and only had a little over one day to get this cat preserved and sitting on the mantel.

My taxidermist was beat up and groggy and real live thugs were on our heels.

Hey, my happy ending was still possible…right?