Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alien X-Ray

“And that’s why you’ve hated and hunted me and mine all these years?”

“No! It’s because you’re the only one I could have loved.”

Max stared into her bitter eyes sensing past images rising like a tide over the empty beaches of his mind. He hadn’t lied to her. Her beauty was extraordinary, but left him cold now. Or maybe left him with pity. Once he’d seen her with the eyes of love, and for that she’d never forgiven him.

“I think I did love you, Kathleen, as only an idealistic, randy boy can. And so I chose you over Sean that day. I didn’t lose the love. It was overpowered by guilt. By letting Sean stay behind in the pub to die, I couldn’t perpetuate what I then saw as my traitorous happiness. Maybe in time … but by then I’d heard what a … flirt you were. I came to believe you were toying with me and even that you knew Sean was doomed. And then, I sensed your pursuit and thought you wanted me dead too.”

“So it’s like all of my life, a big misunderstanding.” She stepped nearer, confrontational again. “No one in charge knew what went on, and they are very, very sorry. It’s been my job to make them sorrier. And you’re the sorriest of the lot. You’ve remembered you loved me, but the feeling is gone. So sad.”

“Wait. How do you know I remembered that?”

“A little birdie told me far above the atrium of the Goliath Hotel.”

Max knew one feeling he had wasn’t gone—a sense that something bad was in play.

He heard a bit of scuffling sound at the front door, remembering he’d never heard the intruder shut it in order to enter the house more silently.

Kathleen was armed only with her anger, but Max rose and moved to the side of the chair. He didn’t want to shoot her, but might need to tackle and confine her. Who the hell would be at his front door at five in the morning?

“The irony,” she said, interrupting his intense listening, “is that it was all for nothing. Your cousin Sean? He got lucky as well as you that day.”

“What do you mean?”

“A barmaid.”

So Sean had flirted with a barmaid at the pub after Max had left with Kathleen. Good for him. He was a good-natured guy, and hadn’t been feeling angry or jealous when he’d died.…

“I suppose that’s ironic,” Max said slowly, trying to guess her point.

The front door swung fully open; he recognized the slight groan in one hinge. The house controls were no longer at his fingertips and he couldn’t risk taking his eyes off Kathleen to look down and secure the door.

“What’s really ironic is that her shift was up and they were on their way out when the bomb went off.”

Max suddenly stood in a world without sound, or rather, with only the sound of Kathleen’s soft Irish singsong lilt. “She broke a leg and had multiple lacerations, but the last she saw of Sean Kelly, fine Irish name and lad, he was staggering away with a badly bleeding, almost blinding head wound.”

Thunder crashed somewhere down the hall and echoed in his head, words reverberating, not making sense. Badly bleeding, staggering away.

“Sean is alive?” Max saw himself mouthing from a distance, in one of those slow-moving dreams of utter shock.

“Max!” someone called.

“Kathleen, don’t!” someone else called.

And then he felt a swift lightning strike of pain in his right temple.

Temple?

And faded to black.

Chapter 50

Night Stalkers

Am I slicker when I am on a running streak than wet tar!

I race through the Goliath down to the entry, happy to see Mr. Matt’s very tailable blond head bypassing the main exit for the route to the big outside parking lots. After that, it is easy for me to ease unseen around the base of gaming tables and out into what is left of the night.

I am Louie-on-the-spot to eel inside the Jaguar by the last hairs on my second loftiest member and settle down for a smooth glide into my home plate, the Circle Ritz. My tootsies have done all the walking tonight, and they are aching for a time-out.

Mr. Matt Devine is obviously disturbed by his shock-and-awe moments with Miss Kitty the Cutter. I say, sock it to her! But being a kinder, gentler soul than the average thug, he is making penitential murmurs to a higher power.

I have never found making penitential murmurs to Bast too productive. To the contrary. Being a female goddess, she likes her subjects to scrap and scratch and bring her sacrificial prey in her honor.

Anyway, I have long been out of the Great Black Hunter game and am longing to sprint up the palm tree when we arrive home for some world-class snuggling and snoozing before dawn.

In not too long, the Jaguar pulls into its home lot. I crouch behind the driver’s seat to leap out at the first crack of the steel door, or whatever they are making cars out of these days, but the door remains shut. Come on! I need some shut-eye tonight.

I hear the automatic hiss of the driver’s side window going down and pounding footsteps heading our way.

I immediately assume flat-belly posture, ears down and eyelids at half-mast to better blend with the dark carpeting. (I certainly do not want my glittering greens to betray my presence.)

“Temple!” Mr. Matt says, sounding both relieved and perturbed.

She is breathless to see him herself. “Haven’t you checked your cell phone lately?” is her lovesick greeting.

Already it is down to the little things of life, even before the wedding. Tsk tsk.

“No,” Mr. Matt says, sounding guilty.

“There’s a weirdly urgent message from Max. It is like it was cut off,” Miss Temple says. “We have to get to his place right away.”

“I have never been there,” Mr. Matt says as I hear Miss Temple running around to the passenger side in what sounds like the flap of flats.

Things must be dire if she is going out in around-the-house shoes.

“I know the route. Get to Highway 95. And floor it.”

Ooof! My cheek and jowl are pinched by pain as my head and body are slung back against the backseat base and then into the back of the driver’s seat.

Belatedly, I curl my shivs into the luxury carpet and hang tough.

While Miss Temple backseat drives from the front seat, I rapidly sum up the Cat Pack situation.

Miss Midnight Louise will be on-site, since she elected to follow Mr. Max. Who took on Miss Kitty? Ma Barker. I told her that was a rough assignment for a senior citizen, but after she had slapped the starch out of my whiskers, she told me seniority meant she had the savvy and clout to slap the stuffing out of any sniveling psychopath on the planet.

I sure hope so, because I know of no way to notify the rest of the Cat Pack that something dark and dirty is going down on Mojave Way.

Chapter 51

Hit Me with Your Best Shot

Temple read the cryptic message aloud as Matt gunned the Jaguar away from the Circle Ritz and into the city’s residential areas.

“Hand me your phone,” she ordered Matt urgently.

He dug in his pants’ pocket and produced it.

“Here. Look,” she said. “No, don’t look. Drive. You got the same message from Max about twenty minutes ago. ‘My place right away. End game.’”

“And you’re sure it’s from Kinsella?” Matt sounded skeptical. “He’s not one to call for help.”

“I don’t think it’s help he wants. Maybe he’s found some amazing way to use the map to go right to the IRA hoard. Get that to the authorities, and maybe all the related crimes will clear right up.”