Jade Tiger Read Online Free

wounding. And the blood. Greeb is almost eloquent considering the circumstances."
    The elevator arrived, and they collapsed against the far wall. Shan hit the button for the garage and took another look at Ian. Yup, the shadows were still there, even in the omnipresent fluorescent lighting of the elevator. He tilted his head and looked down at her. A little smile appeared across his thin, almost aristocratic lips, and the shadows softened once again.
    "Thanks again for that whole life-saving bit," he said. "I feel like hell, but I'm not actually in hell. I'm going to call that an upside."
    "You're welcome," Shan said, "especially if you can get me that crane."
    She regretted saying it almost immediately, and then chided herself for the regret. It was the truth. She wanted, needed that crane, and it was probably a good idea to remind Ian of that every chance she got.
    Since he passed out as soon as she got him into her rental car, the other opportunities would have to wait.
    Shan managed to wake him up long enough to get his address, and then for some directions when she got lost on the dark, curvy, snow-lined streets near the campus. Eventually, Shan shut off the headlights and coasted into the driveway of a cute two-story Tudor. She didn't want the neighbors remembering any late-night arrivals in case the cops started asking questions.
    Shan maneuvered Ian down the lane carved out of the snow and to the front door. Ian was falling in and out of consciousness, sometimes in mid-sentence. She asked him for the keys, and he answered something about a pot shard. Shan propped him up in the alcove by the door and searched his pockets. The frayed seams of his ancient khakis tickled her hand and she wriggled in deeper. Shan was amazed at the warmth emanating from his leg. He seemed too skinny to be such a furnace.
    No keys. He must have left them in some other room of the building they'd been in. She should have thought to grab them before they left. If the police found them, their time at Ian's would be short lived.
    Shan checked his pockets again, just to be sure.
    In the end, she had to climb a tree and hop onto the roof near an open window on the second floor. Shan felt the tear in her leg reopen, and the warmth of fresh blood soak into her jeans. Irritating, but not dangerous.
    The first window she checked was locked. Just as well, as it looked like Ian's bedroom. True to his earlier statement about his relationships, the bed was empty and mussed. A bachelor's bed. Shan shimmied on to the next window.
    Bingo. The window sat halfway open, and not even a screen barred her entrance. Shan wiggled her way in, afraid to risk the noise of opening it further, and tumbled to the floor. She tucked her head in and rolled into a low crouch.
    A big desk squatted in the middle of the room atop a thread-bare rug. Dark shelves lined the walls, covered in books and knickknacks of every shape and size. Her father would have been in heaven. His study in China had looked just like this, but with only a handful of books. It had been hard for him to find the editions he wanted under the Communist regime. And, after they moved to the United States, all their money had gone back to China, to the search for Shan's mother. The three of them had lived together for all those years: Shan, her father, and her mother's ghost.
    A pair of cool orange eyes regarded Shan from the desk. The eyes were attached to a remarkably fluffy cat, gray in the darkness of the room. Shan smiled. So Ian was a cat person? Interesting. She walked toward the desk, her palm extended.
    "Hello, little prince." Shan stopped in her tracks and looked around the room again. Familiar. Everything was suddenly familiar.
    She pulled out the Archaeology Today magazine clipping from her back pocket and unfolded it carefully. A man she didn't recognize sat behind a desk, but the caption named him as Dr. Daniel Buckley of Risley University. The article itself talked about the man's recent field