Ник Сайнт - Purrfectly Deadly

“We make a great team, you guys,” said Brutus. “A great team with a great leader.” He thumped his chest. “Yours truly. Bruce is back!”

“Oh, God,” muttered both Dooley and Max.

Odelia smiled. The four cats had accomplished the seemingly impossible: expose the Commissioner’s affair and exonerate Chase. And as she turned on the radio, a song of John Paul George came on.

“ I’m Your Bi-ba-boy ,” the singer crooned. “ Your bi-ba-bad bad boy .”

Soon, they were all singing along, four cats and one human giving John Paul George a run for his money. Pop music had never sounded so bi-ba-bad.

THE END

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Excerpt from Between a Ghost and a Spooky Place

Chapter One

“I didn’t think you’d show up,” the gruff voice announced.

Harry looked up from her perusal of the latest James Patterson. She quickly closed the book and shoved it into her backpack, then rose from her perch on the low wall of the underpass. She shrugged as she approached the hulking figure. “I’m always true to my word,” she told the man, doing her best not to look or sound intimidated.

He really was a giant of a man, though she’d been told he wasn’t as dangerous as he looked. He could have fooled her, though. He had no neck to speak of, his arms alone were probably as thick as her waist, and she could have fitted several times in the long black overcoat he was wearing, she herself being rather on the petite side.

She pushed her blond tresses from her brow and fixed her golden eyes on the stranger, rubbing her hands to keep warm. She’d removed her gloves and knitted cap and now thought perhaps she shouldn’t have. The cold drizzle that had started overnight had turned into a real downpour, and even though they were protected from the brunt of the autumn weather by the underpass, the wet cold still crept in Harry’s clothes and chilled her to the bone.

“Let’s do this,” the man grumbled. “I haven’t got all day.”

The watery sun that had tried to pierce the dark deck of clouds that afternoon had finally given up its struggle, giving free rein to the driving rain. But then this was London, a city that for some reason had collectively decided the sun had no business here, except on those very rare occasions.

She quickly unzipped the main compartment of her backpack and took out the package, then handed it to the client. Through the clear plastic protective cover it was easy to make out its contents, but the burly man insisted on taking the book out nonetheless.

“You’re going to get it all smudged,” Harry murmured, though she knew this was none of her business. Once the transaction was made, the book belonged to the client, to do with as they pleased, whether she liked it or not.

“Looking good,” the man muttered, flipping through the pages of the voluminous tome. “How do I know it’s the real deal?”

“You have Sir Buckley’s word,” she said with a light shrug.

The client scrutinized her carefully, shoving the book back into its plastic covering. Then he nodded once. “Good enough for me,” he announced. He handed her a small black briefcase. “One million. As agreed,” he told her.

She balanced the briefcase on her knee and clicked it open. Two thousand 500 pound notes should be there and as far as she could determine they were all present and accounted for. But then again, she didn’t think the client was going to cheat her. And even if he did, Buckley would handle it.

So she clasped the briefcase under her arm and looked up at the man, a little trepidatious. Buckley had always told her to conclude the meeting the moment the transfer was done, and only rarely did a client linger. This one still stood staring at her, however, as if their business wasn’t concluded yet. They were the only two people there, as the underpass was quite deserted.

This was Buckley’s favorite place to make a transfer, as this particular spot wasn’t covered by any of London’s half a million cameras. Which also meant that if a client decided to get any funny ideas, Harry had no recourse. It wasn’t as if she had a black belt in jujitsu or some other martial arts discipline. She’d recently watched a video on the Daily Mail website on how to protect yourself against an attack, but hadn’t the foggiest notion how to execute those nifty self-defense moves in real life.

The man gave her an unexpected grin, displaying two gold teeth. It was something you didn’t see that often these days, and she found herself staring at the shiny snappers before she could stop herself. Along with his bald dome, it gave him the aspect of an old-fashioned James Bond bad guy. But then his smile suddenly disappeared, and he gave her a curt nod. “I guess that concludes our business,” he grunted.

“Yeah, I guess it does,” she returned.

He abruptly flipped his hoodie over his head, then turned and walked away. Soon he was swallowed up by the shadows stretching long tendrils of darkness beneath the overpass. Moments later she heard a motorcycle kicking into gear, and then its roar as it raced away into the falling dusk.

She heaved a sigh of relief. These exchanges were going to be the death of her one day, she thought as she hurried out of the underpass, to where she’d fastened her bicycle to a streetlight. Fortunately, it was still where she’d left it. She tried to fit the entire suitcase into her backpack but failed, so she tipped its precious contents into her trusty Jack Wolfskin rucksack and dumped the suitcase in a nearby trashcan. And as she adjusted the straps, she noted a little giddily she’d never worn a million pounds on her back before. Then she pressed her pink knitted cap to her head, used her gloves to wipe that fabled London precipitation from her saddle, mounted the bike and was off.

Five minutes later she was pedaling down Newport Street, anxious to get back to the store. She’d only feel at ease once the money was safely transferred to Sir Geoffrey Buckley’s cash register. And as she waited for the traffic light to turn green, she idly wondered what she would do with so much money. She could quit her job, buy herself a great house and take that trip around the world she’d been dreaming of for ages. The lights changed, and traffic was off and so was she, stomping down on her silly daydreams. The money wasn’t hers and never would be. She was, after all, only a lowly wage slave in Sir Buckley’s employ. Why there was a Sir in front of his name, she didn’t know, even after working for the man for close to a year now.

Buckley Antiques, the store where she spent her days when her employer wasn’t sending her to dark and creepy places to exchange packages with obscure and dangerous-looking clients, was a smallish shop tucked away in the more dingy part of Notting Hill. It carried rare antiques and other items for the connoisseur, its owner and proprietor, the eponymous Sir Geoffrey, priding himself in his capacity to obtain items for his clients that no other antiquarian could find. There was a whiff of the illegal and the criminal attached to both the man and the shop, and oftentimes Harry wondered where he obtained these rare and exclusive items if not by illicit means.

She’d never asked, and Buckley had never told her, of course. She merely did as she was told, and delivered million pound books to men with no necks without asking pesky questions. Such as: why would anyone buy a book for such an incredible price? And why not transfer the items at the store? She didn’t ask because she was afraid she wouldn’t particularly like the answer.