Лори Касс - Borrowed Crime

Then my brain clicked.

Reloading the magazine. The shooter was filling up the rifle’s magazine with new bullets. Which was bad, but there was a good side. Her—or his—attention would be on the work at hand, not on what might be approaching from the rear.

I edged forward, oh, so quietly, breathing slowly and evenly, my skin tingling with tension. Every cubic inch of me was wide awake and alert.

Closer . . .

Just a little closer . . .

There was a plastic-sounding click , and a tiny circle of light appeared. The beam from a tiny flashlight danced around, illuminating the ground, a small pile of bullets, the magazine, the rifle, and a hand gloved in black.

Show me your face, I thought fiercely. Show your face!

The flashlight dropped to the ground and the shooter muttered a low curse. Another black glove reached to pick up the flashlight, and, as it picked it up, the beam skidded across the shooter’s face.

I gasped, loudly enough to be heard.

The shooter picked up the rifle and pointed it in my direction. “Who’s there? Come out right now, or I’ll shoot!”

There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to go. No possible place to hide, and there was a gun pointing straight at me. How could I have been so stupid?

Possibilities flashed through my mind. It was dark. If I ran, there was a good chance the bullets would completely miss me. And there was a good chance there weren’t any bullets in the rifle anyway, with that magazine on the ground. Maybe there was one in the chamber, or maybe there were two magazines. I didn’t know enough about guns to know what was most likely, but I did know I wasn’t going to stand here and get ordered around by the person who killed Roger Slade.

“It’s Minnie, isn’t it?” Allison Korthase said.

I heard a sound behind me, from down low. Not a swish, exactly, but not a rustle, either. Something in between, or maybe a combination. A swistle? Could there be such a thing? And if not, why? More to the point, why was I having such inane thoughts when a gun was pointed at me?

“I know it’s you,” Allison said, her voice growing louder. “Where are you?”

Right. Like I was going to tell her. Do that, and I might as well mark my location with a flare while screaming “Shoot me!”

Allison’s small flashlight beamed into life. “I know you’re there, Minnie. It can only be you. I can still hear Denise down there, yapping away to nine-one-one. I’m so cold,” Allison whined in a Denise-like voice. “I’m so scared. I’m so worried about being killed.” Allison dropped the mimickry. “Like anyone cares.”

The flashlight danced closer to my feet. I edged backward. If I could get a little farther away, I’d make a run for it, bullets or no. In my opinion, which wasn’t exactly expert but was all I had, Allison was ready to kill again, and I needed to get clear of her murderous intentions.

“Come on,” she said impatiently. “I know you’re just a librarian, but there’s no reason for you to be such a scaredy-cat.”

Just a librarian? I opened my mouth to argue the point, but before I could say a word, my retreating heel found a rock and I fell to the ground hard, arms windmilling, the air rushing out of me in a painful “Oof!”

“There you are.” Allison chuckled, and her voice turned snide and sarcastic. “What were you trying to do, run backward? How stupid are you? You’d have thought that someone with a job like yours would be at least a little smart, but here you are, in the woods alone, up against someone like me, who is smart and has a gun. Stupid.” She practically spat the word. “Stupid!”

I’d been pushing myself back, trying to get out of her reach, moving away from where I’d fallen, doing my best not to be stupid, when the swistle noise ran past me and toward Allison, a low, rumbling growl moving along with it.

“Eddie!” I shouted, scrambling to my feet. “No! Get back!”

Allison screamed. “Get it off! Get it off!” The rifle clattered to the ground.

In the last vestiges of the day’s dim light, I could see her waving her arms, flailing at Eddie, who was growling, hissing, and climbing up her back, all at the same time.

I ran forward and scooped up the rifle, momentarily unsure whether to hang on to it or to fling it into the woods, where neither one of us would be able to find it until daylight.

“It’s a bobcat,” she yelled. “It’s a mountain lion. It’s going to kill me! Minnie, get it off!”

She was in a full-blown panic. Allison, I suddenly realized, was afraid of cats. She wasn’t allergic, as she’d claimed to Denise. She was scared.

I turned and placed the rifle behind a tree.

“Minnie!” Her shrieks were becoming tinged with desperation. “You have to do something!”

Oh, I’d do something all right.

“You’re a good boy,” I told Eddie. He was on the back of Allison’s neck, clutching onto the collar of her coat for all he was worth and howling into her ear. “If you can hang on a little bit longer, we’ll be good.”

“MRRR!!” he said, which I took for agreement.

I lifted up my coat, unbuckled my belt, pulled it off, and pushed the belt’s length though the buckle, creating a loop. I stepped forward and bumped into Allison, making her scream just a little louder.

Grabbing one of her arms, I looped the belt around her wrist and pulled it tight. She struggled, but I held hard and reached around for her other arm. “Now would be a good time,” I panted to Eddie, “for you to help out just a little more.”

He scrambled up off Allison’s back and onto her shoulder, where he gripped hard and yowled like the hounds of hell. Even I was a little startled by the volume of noise coming out of my thirteen-pound cat.

Allison sank to her knees, whimpering.

I took hold of her free arm, pulled it behind her back, and wrapped my belt tight around both wrists, looping and tying it firm.

“Get him off,” she whispered, tears in her words. “Please, just get him off.”

And after a minute, I did.

Chapter 19

“Minnie?” Denise’s shout came from far below. “Are you all right up there?”

Me and Eddie both, thanks. “We’re fine,” I called. “You can tell the dispatcher that I have the shooter disarmed and—” And what? Saying Allison was in custody wasn’t accurate. “Disarmed and incapacitated. Send the police up here, okay?”

“Incapacitated” still wasn’t quite right, but I’d come up with the right word eventually. Probably at three in the morning, as Eddie was deciding that the top of my head was the best place for him to sleep.

At this particular moment, however, the cat in questions was nestled in my arms and purring like a champ. I patted my furry little friend on the head.

“Mrr,” he said sleepily.

“Get that cat away from me,” Allison said. “This is all her fault, you know.”

I frowned. “Eddie is a boy.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she snapped.

Eddie gave a low growl and, in the dark, I felt Allison shrink away.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “What I mean is, it’s all Denise’s fault.”

“Really?” Though he’d seemed light enough a few minutes ago, Eddie was gaining weight rapidly. I felt around with my feet, found a good-sized rock, and sat down. I’d stand up with a wet rear end, but it would be nice to rest for a little. I rearranged Eddie on my lap. “What did Denise do?”

“It’s all so stupid.” Allison said.

She had a thing for that word. “What is?”

“I wasn’t trying to pass off someone else’s speech as my own,” she explained in the patient voice that grated on me like nothing else—far worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. “I just forgot to make an attribution that day I talked to the Friends of the Library. A simple mistake, that’s all. I can’t believe that Denise was trying to ruin my career over it!”