Клер Донелли - The Big Kitty

Sunny could read it in his eyes. He’d decided to cut his losses.

And that included her.

“Get up!” Shays said, his voice hard. “Get over here!”

Is this what happened to Ada? Sunny thought. Did she find him in here searching for the ticket? Did he try to get the location out of her?

As Sunny slowly rose to her feet, a bloodcurdling moaning noise came up from the basement.

“What the hell is that?” Shays snapped.

Sunny had no idea. Ada’s ghost?

The noise came closer, modulating into a deep, guttural growl.

“Shut up!” Shays’s eyes were wild now, and he waved the gun at the door.

It flew open with a wild screech, and a lean gray shape came rocketing into the room—seemingly aimed straight for Shays’s nose.

The man tried to twist aside, then screamed as Shadow caught him. Claws raked across Shays’s face, his hand jerked, and his gun went off.

Somehow Shays managed to shake the cat loose. Shadow landed on one of the pantry shelves, sending a row of cans cascading down, and bounced back at the killer.

That was what Shays looked like now—a killer. His lips were twisted back in a frozen snarl, baring his discolored teeth. Blood dribbled down from a set of deep gouges just over his left eye.

The claws on Shadow’s other paw must have caught Shays’s left ear. The lobe was torn, and blood poured down the side of his neck, soaking into his expensive coat.

Hissing and growling, Shadow was all over the dealer, clawing at clothing and whatever flesh he could reach.

Sunny snatched up the frying pan and tried to join the fight, but Shays saw her and snapped off a shot with his pistol.

The bullet must have hit the skillet, because it was torn from her grasp, leaving her hand numb. Sunny dived to the floor as more shots rang out. Something crashed behind her, but she didn’t bother trying to look.

The problem was, she had no place to go. Shays still stood in front of the only door out of this place.

Using both hands, Shays finally managed to push Shadow away, screaming again as the cat’s claws pulled out of whatever they’d dug into.

The dealer continued screaming, his lips writhing, as he tried to shoot Shadow. But the cat seemed to fly around the cramped quarters of the pantry, crossing back and forth between shelves, trying to get at Shays again.

For a second, he hung on to Shays’s back, his claws embedded into the side of the man’s neck on the unbloodied side. Of course, it wasn’t unbloodied after Shadow was done.

Shays twisted around, trying to aim his pistol over his left shoulder and between Shadow’s eyes.

Sunny grabbed the nearest pot—good, old-fashioned, heavy stainless steel—and flung it at the dealer’s head.

It hit with a satisfying clong! and knocked Shays off balance, his gun hand twitching. An instant later, the pistol went off. Shays staggered and spun, giving out his loudest scream yet. He stared at Sunny slack jawed for a moment. “Made me shoot myself!” he shrieked, barely audible over the ringing in Sunny’s ears.

Then she heard something else. Approaching sirens.

Ron Shays must have heard them, too. His face became a bloody, torn devil mask of pure malevolence as he raised his gun.

Sunny flung herself toward the dining room in a hopeless leap.

And Shadow made an incredible bank shot, springing up from the floor, rebounding off one of the shelves, and fastening claws and teeth onto Shays’s gun hand.

The weight of the cat pulled his hand down, and the pistol fired into the floor. The gun flew loose, going one way, the cat flying in the other. Shadow landed in a heap—Sunny did, too, half in, half out of the kitchen.

The pistol clattered on the linoleum floor.

Sunny saw her only chance. If she could get the pistol …

Ron Shays stood above her, his bleeding face contorted in pain, moaning and cursing. He’d clapped his left hand over the shredded flesh of the hand that had held the gun. But that must have aggravated the self-inflicted wound in his shoulder. He rocked back and forth, his face pale.

She scrambled across the floor, trying to get the weapon. But her movement brought Shays out of his stupor. He swooped down, snatching the gun almost from under Sunny’s nose. Shays straightened, reeling on his feet, needing both hands to aim the pistol.

It wobbled a little, but at this range it couldn’t miss Sunny’s head.

“Outta lives,” he gasped. “Both you and that damn cat …” His hand steadied—

And the door behind him almost tore off its hinges as it shrieked open, slamming into Shays’s back.

It crashed against him—right onto his wounded shoulder. That sudden pain was just too much for the dealer to deal with. His eyes rolled up, and he collapsed to the floor.

Will Price stood over him in the doorway, a snub-nosed revolver in his hand. His face was pale, with crusting blood smeared down one side. His eyes were wide and full of fear.

“Sunny!” he yelled. “Are you okay?”

She levered herself up. “Yeah!” she shouted back, her ears still ringing. “I thought he’d killed you!”

*

Shadow paid noattention as Will came in and hugged Sunny. All his attention was focused on the male on the floor. He wore a musky, spicy scent that should have been pleasant to smell. But under that, he was still marked with the poisonous stench, a hundred times worse than the Stinky One. This was the Other One, the one who had killed the old woman who had lived here, sheltering and feeding Shadow.

Until this one came and sent her down the stairs.

This was a Bad Place, a place of dread.

But now it could be a place of revenge.

With his battle song still rising from his gut, Shadow advanced on the form lying on the floor. His claws had done well, tearing one ear until the blood flowed—though even that stank with the Other One’s taint.

But the killer had another ear. And Shadow knew he could make it bleed as freely.

*

A low moansnapped Sunny and Will apart. They looked down to find Shadow single-mindedly savaging Ron Shays’s undamaged ear. The pain must have brought the drug lord around. Will moved quickly, kicking the pistol out of Shays’s reach.

He had a much harder time shooing the cat away from Shays. The cat wanted another piece of him … a bigger piece.

Ben Semple burst in, gun drawn, followed by several other Kittery Harbor constables.

“We got a report of shots fired—jeez!” He broke off, staring around at the carnage spread out before him. “What were you trying to do, reenact the gunfight at the OK Corral?”

“The man on the floor is a drug dealer, Ron Shays,” Sunny said, lurching to her feet and pointing. She needed the other hand to hold on to the countertop. “He’s the one who shot those two guys that turned up dead yesterday.”

Semple let his colleagues in blue have the job of stopping Shays’s bleeding while also getting him into handcuffs. “And what happened to you?” he asked Will.

“Shays clocked me while coming in to try and kill Sunny,” Will replied. “I came to, heard shots, dug out my backup gun, and tried to get in here ASAP.”

“You missed a real Wile E. Coyote moment,” Sunny told him. “Between Shadow and me, we managed to get Shays to shoot himself.”

“But not before he shot the hell out of the place,” Semple said. “He even killed the telephone.” The constable shook his head.

Sunny looked over her shoulder. One of Shays’s wild shots had indeed killed the old, 1960s-era phone hanging on Ada’s wall. Only the backboard remained in place, with a big hole in it. The receiver lay on the floor, its coiled cord stretching up to the shattered body of the phone lying on the countertop.