Cat Breaking Free (26 page)

Juana said, “This snitch has never let us down. Without her, we wouldn't have a clue. If she's setting us up…”

She? She, who? Dulcie hadn't made those calls. Kit had made a couple of calls when she spotted Chichi spying. But did she have all this other information, that Luis planned to hit all the stores at once? As far as Joe knew, Kit hadn't been privy to any one specified time and date. Unless she hadn't told them—hadn't had time to tell them?

Had Kit learned this and called Harper while they were locked up? And in her panic to save them and to help the ferals escape, she hadn't thought to tell them?

 

It was earlier that morning, long before dawn, when Kit woke in the dark in the branches of the pine tree and thought about Luis chasing them and about his dead brother Hernando. She looked over at her three sleeping companions and shivered and was hungry again and lonely and didn't know whether to go home or to keep running with them, didn't know what she wanted. Didn't know if they would search for their clowder and their cold-hearted leader and return to that miserable life, or if they would go off on their own, as
she
wanted, just the four of them, and start their own clowder and be free of Stone Eye? Or defy him, battle him, run from him forever?

Was that what she wanted? This morning she wasn't sure, she didn't know. But a voice inside whispered, “Lucinda and Pedric love you. You will hurt them terribly if you don't go back.”

Crouching in the pine boughs shivering from exhaustion and cold and the effects of fear, Kit wanted to run on across the open hills forever and she wanted to return to Lucinda and Pedric, to her human friends, to human civilization with all its faults and goodness. To her own dear Dulcie and Joe, to Wilma and Clyde and Charlie and all her human family, to a life so layered in richness and the mysteries of humankind that she would never truly learn it all.

She wanted both. Wanted everything. Crouched miserably among the branches, she might never have known what she wanted if she hadn't grown thirsty and backed down the tall trunk to find a drink of water—and come face to face with Stone Eye.

She dropped the last six feet into the soft cover of pine needles smelling the scent of water on the wind
and there he stood on a fallen log. Watching her. Stone Eye. Broad of head and shoulder, heavy of muscle, ragged of ear. His eyes blazed with rage, his fangs were bared. He looked up into the pines where Willow and Coyote and Cotton slept, and he snarled with fury. As if they had purposely escaped him, had defied him and intentionally run away. And as he closed on Kit lifting his knifelike claws to strike, Kit ran.

W
hen Charlie looked up from her computer, she
was surprised to see that the predawn dark had brightened into morning. She glanced at her watch. Max had been gone for nearly an hour. He'd been quiet this morning, solemn and distracted as he often was when police business presented a knotty problem. Breakfast in the village with his officers was good for him, he hadn't done that in a long while; and it lent her some extra time, which she appreciated right now.

She had wondered, slipping out of bed at four a.m., if she was raving mad to be getting up at that hour. She'd eaten yogurt and fruit at the computer, and now she was ravenous. But she was so into the world of the book that it was hard to leave—hard to leave the kit, cold and shunned by the older cats, wandering the winter hills alone. The story was so real to her that sometimes she
was
the homeless tortoiseshell, feeling sharply the terror of the thin, frightened creature creeping through the night, hiding from the clowder leader among jungles of
dense, tall grass. Charlie's rough sketches for the book marched across the cork wall behind her, sketches for which Kit had been the model. At first Charlie had meant the story for young children, but it had grown of its own accord, enriching and complicating itself until it had become a far more involving novel.

Rising from her desk she headed for the kitchen, her thoughts partly on her empty stomach but mostly still on the book. While the cat in the story looked and acted like Kit, the real challenge was that this fictional cat
was
an ordinary feral, and she must show the cat's life from that aspect. No speaking, no uncatly notions. The fictional cat's vocabulary was limited to mewls and caterwauling, to growls and hisses and body language. She had no name, there was no human to give her a name. Charlie called her, simply, the cat. But the details of a feral cat's life were as real as she could make them—facts right from the cat's mouth, Charlie thought, smiling. Immersed in Kit's story, the words flowed out in a rush, all the joys and terrors of that feral cat's perilous existence.

She was standing at the kitchen table making a peanut-butter-on-whole-wheat sandwich when she heard rustling and scrabbling outside, beneath the bay window. Crossing to the window seat to kneel on the scattered cushions, she looked down into the bushes.

Within the tangle of geraniums and camellias and ferns, she could see nothing. Looking up across the yard, she saw nothing unusual around Ryan's truck where it stood beside Scotty's car in front of the barn. Rock was out in the pasture playing with their own two dogs. Turning away, she spun around again when a thud hit the window behind her.

A dark shape clung to the sill. The kit stared in at her, pressing so hard against the glass that her whiskers were flat; her round yellow eyes were huge with fear.

Hurrying to open the door, Charlie was nearly bowled over as Kit flew into her arms. The little cat clung against her, shivering, her heart pounding so hard that Charlie feared for her. Holding Kit close, she returned to the window seat and sat down to cuddle her. Kit's coat was matted and wet from the early morning dew, and full of trash and leaves. Her paws were ice-cold. She stared, terrified, into Charlie's face, but she said no word.

“It's all right,” Charlie said softly. “We can talk, Ryan and Scotty are both on the roof, I can see them. No one else is here.” Tucking Kit warm among the pillows, she rose long enough to snatch up the milk bottle, pour some in a bowl, and nuke it for half a minute. Setting it down, watching Kit inhale it, she opened a can of chicken, which Kit gobbled.

Sitting down beside her again, Charlie rubbed her ears. “What happened? What happened? What chased you? Where have you been? We thought…”

Kit looked up at her tiredly, still shivering.

“Worn out,” Charlie said, hoping that was all. “You're exhausted. Oh, Kit, you mustn't be sick!” Picking Kit up and hugging her close, Charlie carried her to the table. She was reaching for the phone, to call Lucinda or the vet, when the phone rang. Charlie snatched it up with a shaking hand.

Lucinda's voice, agitated, cutting in and out. “Have you seen her? Have you seen Kit? Is she there with you? She hasn't come home at all.”

“She…”

Lucinda pressed on, giving her no chance to speak.
“I thought she might come there to you because you're closer to Hellhag Hill. We've walked all over the hills and down into Hellhag Cave…”

“You're in Hellhag Cave? Oh, Lucinda, come out of there. She's…”

“We're out now, you can't use a phone in there. But if the ferals didn't go down into the caves,” Lucinda blurted breathlessly, “then they've headed back where they came from to their clowder, and the kit…”

“Lucinda! She's here!”

“There? Oh, my dear…”

“Kit's here! Right here beside me. Safe in my arms. What in the world happened?”

“You didn't know? Is she all right?”

“She's fine! Hungry, but that's nothing new. Didn't know what?”

“Clyde found three ferals from Kit's clowder, locked cruelly in a cage. Kit led him there, and he freed them—but she ran off with them. We thought…Pedric and I thought…”

Kit had her face in the phone. “I'm here, Lucinda! I'm fine. I'm right here with Charlie and I'm fine!”

Lucinda sighed, then was silent. Charlie pushed Kit away. “I didn't know,” she said in a small voice, looking sternly at the kit.

“We thought she was just leading them away through the village and that she'd be back. When she didn't come home, we thought…No one told you? Wilma didn't call?”

Kit looked up at Charlie. Charlie looked at Kit. A little smile touched the kit's darkly mottled face, the first smile Charlie had seen. Pulling the wet, dirty cat warm against her, Charlie imagined Lucinda and
Pedric tramping up Hellhag Hill in the dark, imagined those two old people going down into Hellhag Cave, calling and calling the kit, and she shuddered.

“When she didn't come home,” Lucinda said, “we were terrified she'd gone forever.”

Kit scrambled back to Charlie's shoulder, nearly shouting into the phone. “I didn't…I didn't mean to worry you, Lucinda. I love you!”

“We'll be there,” Lucinda said. “Ten minutes, as soon as we can get down the hill, we'll be there to get you.”

When they'd hung up, Charlie gave Kit some more chicken, and finished making her own sandwich. “Those caves go on forever, Kit! They could have been lost down there!” Though it was hard to be mad at the kit. Charlie had never been able to find anything written, and had found no person who could tell her, where those black fissures ended; but the tales about Hellhag Cave were not pleasant. Carrying her sandwich and Kit back to her studio, she tucked the little cat into an easy chair, in a warm blanket, and sat down at her computer. Already Kit was nodding off.

But she couldn't work, she sat watching Kit sleep, watching the nervous twitch of Kit's paws, as if she was still running; and Charlie's heart twisted at Kit's occasional sharp mewls of fear.

 

As Charlie waited for Lucinda and Pedric to come for their lost kit, Joe Grey and Dulcie were preparing to search for Roman Slayter's gun, relying on Kit's information. They were flying blind, not at all sure what finding a gun would prove—unless it was the gun that killed Dufio. Or, if Chichi was looking for a gun, and
if Chichi had been so pushy trying to learn where Slayter was staying…Though that didn't add up to much, it was enough to put them on Slayter's case. Cop sense or cat sense, Joe had the gut feeling this was worth a shot.

If they did find a gun in Slayter's room, and could hide it where the cops could find it, they might fit together a couple more pieces of the puzzle—a puzzle that seemed as nebulous as smoke on the wind.

They knew that Lucinda and Pedric were searching for Kit, that the old couple had been out since before daylight, and Dulcie was frantic for the kit; she alternated between feeling bad that she and Joe weren't searching, and sensibly admitting that Joe was right, that this was Kit's call, Kit's responsibility. Though Joe had, Dulcie noticed, glanced up to the southerly hills several times with a listening and worried frown.

Now the two cats lay comfortably on a warm, tarred rooftop across the street from the Gardenview Inn, scanning the windows and balconies hoping to spot Slayter. Kit had not heard which room. They knew better than to call and ask for a guest's room number; no respectable hotel would divulge that information. The building was a creamy stucco of Mediterranean style, three stories high, topped by a low, red clay roof and a dozen chimneys, implying that each large room boasted a fireplace. In the center of the long building three steps led up to an entry that opened directly into a small, bright lobby—they could see through it to glass doors at the back, opening out again to a garden and terrace between beds of roses. “You want to do the diversion?” Joe said. “Or shall I?”

Dulcie sighed. “You do it. I'll slip up on the desk, see if I can find the room number.”

“Dulcie, if you don't quit worrying about the kit, I swear…”

“She
could
be in trouble.”

“And if she is? How do you propose we find her out on a thousand acres of open land?”

“Lucinda and Pedric have gone looking.”

“Lucinda and Pedric have a car.”

“We could…”

Joe sat back down on the warming black rooftop, looking hard at her. “She's a big cat now. She is not a kitten anymore.”

“But that Stone Eye…If she…I'm sorry, Joe. I just can't get it out of my mind that she needs us.”

“That's the mothering instinct. If you want to go look for her, fine. Maybe you can find Lucinda and Pedric, join up with them. I'm going to find that gun or whatever Chichi's looking for.”

Dulcie sighed again, and followed Joe as he dropped down onto a copper awning, then to a raised planter, and to the street and across on the heels of a half dozen tourists.

Earlier this morning, coming from home, she had detoured by the Greenlaws' second-floor terrace, had stood pressed against the glass door, looking in. The old couple's apartment had been dark and empty. Wilma had
said
they were out searching. And Wilma would be, too, Dulcie thought, except that she was the only reference librarian on duty this morning. Trotting with Joe across the street, she paused beneath a little bench. She watched him strut into the lobby and on through, bold as brass, and out the back to the patio. In a moment, his tomcat yells and blood-curdling screams filled the hotel, the street, the block.

Joe himself couldn't be seen among the roses; but with creative mimicking and plenty of pizzazz, he produced a fight between two tomcats that was so real, it was all she could do not to run before the two beasts found her. Gathering her wits, she watched the clerk and two more women hurry out into the patio with rolled-up newspapers, and one with a plastic wastebasket, which she filled with water at an outdoor tap.

The minute the lobby was empty she raced in and leaped to the desk, landing practically on top the guest register. She was pawing through, wondering how long ago Slayter had registered, how far back she'd have to turn the pages—and was keeping an eye on Joe in case those three women grabbed him—when Slayter himself appeared in the doorway, coming in from the street. Swallowing a hiss, Dulcie dropped behind the desk, then wondered why she'd done that. She was a cat, a dumb and simple cat!

In a moment she hopped casually up onto a file cabinet among untidy stacks of papers and books. Crouching where she could see through the window to the back garden, she pretended to pay no attention to Slayter. How could someone so handsome make her so uneasy?

He was dressed in pale slacks, sleek dark loafers, a dark shirt and a tan suede blazer. Pausing in the small lobby, looking out the window, he watched with amusement the scene in the garden. The three women had chased Joe up out of their reach onto a high wall. There the tomcat crouched among a tangle of ivy, licking angrily at his drenched coat. Slayter's grin had turned sly and, she thought, cruel—his amusement made Dulcie's fur crawl.

She hadn't yet found his room number; as Slayter moved on toward the hall, she came out from behind the desk and sat down where she could see the elevator. She watched him enter, then watched the dial; when its swinging arm stopped on three, she fled for the stairs that peeked out from behind the elevator's confining walls.

Racing up the two carpeted flights, she heard the elevator stop above her, heard the door open and close. As she hit the last step panting, she heard a door slam down the hall to her left. Peering around the corner, she scanned the hall in both directions.

Empty to her left, a maid's cart far down to her right. No maid in sight, but near it the door to one room stood open. Turning away toward the sound of Slayter's slamming door, she scented along the thick carpet, her nose and taste filled with the freshly laid smell of good leather and expensive, musky aftershave, the same aroma that had accompanied Slayter through the lobby. The trail ended at 307. On down the hall a narrow, carved table supported a potted plant beneath a large mirror with an old, hand-carved frame such as she had seen in the expensive antiques shops. Padding into the shadow beneath the table, she sat down, considering Slayter's closed door.

The room was on the west, so would overlook the garden. She wondered if Slayter had been sufficiently entertained by the tomcat's plight to be standing at the window now, looking down with that unpleasant smile. She hoped, if that was the case, that Joe got the hell out of there. How long would Slayter be in his room? If she waited until he left, and she was quick, could she slip in behind his heels?

If she failed at that, surely she could get in when the maid came to do up the room—but who knew how soon that would be?