Return to Tomorrow by Marisa Carroll Page A

gone, too. Disappeared. Just like your little friend. And I’m sorry to say, I think you’ve got just about as much chance of finding her as I do of getting back to that wat without it.”
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    â€œY OU MUST LISTEN TO ME . It’s urgent that I contact him. Now. Today.”
    The voice sounded familiar, feminine, American, sweet and clear. Lonnie Smalley pushed aside the beaded curtain that separated the private rooms and offices of the Lemongrass from the main dining room off the bar.
    â€œSorry,” Ponchoo, the Thai maître d’ and occasional bartender, was saying. “There’s no one named Tiger Jackson here.”
    Lonnie lifted a shaking hand and parted the curtain. He needed a fix but Brett had made him promise not to leave the restaurant. He’d gotten some bad stuff last time he’d gone out on his own and it had nearly killed him. Or at least that’s what Billy said. He could only remember the dreams, horrible dreams of monsters and blood and then nothing at all. The nothingness hadn’t been so bad. At least not till he’d awakened in his bed with the worst hangover he’d ever had in his life.
    â€œPlease. It’s important.” The woman standing in the filtered sunlight near the bar windows was Rachel Phillips. He remembered Billy telling him she’d spent years in a Vietnamese prison camp and a hill village in Laos. He’d thought a lot about her since then, of the things that must have happened to her. Of the things she must have seen and couldn’t forget—like him. He wondered if she felt as out of place in the world as he did these days. He wondered how she’d been able to go home again. He never had. Or had she been able to go home again? Maybe not. Maybe that’s why she was back in Southeast Asia—because she didn’t belong anyplace anymore, just like him.
    He thought about going into the bar to ask her but he decided against it. Fire danced up and down his arms, just under the skin, and his head pounded like a kettle drum. He’d better tell Brett she was here. He wouldn’t like being interrupted, not while the two bigwigs he was palaverin’ with in the back room were there. But Lonnie thought Brett had better know the pretty woman with the sad smile and blue-gray eyes was kicking up a rumpus in the bar.
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    B RETT HADN’T REALLY BELIEVED it when Lonnie came sidling into his office to tell him Rachel Phillips was in the bar arguing with Ponchoo, but the younger man had been telling the truth. He stood a moment, behind the beaded curtain, watching her. She was wearing a flowered cotton jacket and skirt that was mostly pink and green, and a white blouse, open at the throat. She was thinner than he remembered and her hair had lost the glorious moonlight sheen that haunted his dreams. Her face, reflected in the mirror behind the bar, was tense and exhausted.
    Something was wrong, very wrong, for Rachel Phillips to have taken the risk of coming to him. A thousand times over the past months he’d wished to hell he’d never given in to the impulse to let her see and feel, and know of his attraction to her. He’d pushed a little too hard and she’d bolted. But now she was back and he had another chance. He looked back over his shoulder, consigned the two very important and influential gentlemen he’d left cooling their heels in his office to Hades, and walked into the bar.
    â€œI’m sorry I can’t help you,” Ponchoo was saying in the friendly, polite way all Thais carried on business, and even arguments.
    â€œI have to find Tiger Jackson.” Her tone was friendly and polite, also, but tired, with a thread of anxiety snaking along beneath the surface calm. “I was told I might find him here.”
    â€œSorry.” Ponchoo picked up a glass and started polishing it. “Do you want a drink?” he asked politely, changing the subject and ending the discussion