LITMIR.BIZ

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her head. Light lifted the edges of gray from the gallery and she could see out into her yard, down to the bayou veiled in rain. She sighed, exhausted and wrung out.

      Looking back at the sleek animal in front of her, she frowned. “So, I’m a sucker for helpless critters, cat, but you’re the most unhelpless beast I’ve ever seen. And, like I said, you’re not a dog. Besides, cats are always looking down hallways as if they see something, and, puss, I don’t need you seeing things that go bump in the night, you know? I’m having enough problems figuring out which bumps are real and which ones aren’t. I don’t need you spooking the heck out of me.” Her voice dropped to a shaky whisper.

      Not breaking her skin, the cat curled his claws tighter. That arrogance she’d noted earlier gleamed back at her from his gold eyes.

      “You have some nerve, cat. Anybody ever tell you that? Yes, I know I like cats. Ordinarily.”

      The cat arched his back, his claws still hooked in the screen around her fingers. Damp heat from his large body came to her in the chilly, rain-dark dawn.

      Molly hesitated. “Listen, if I let you in, you can’t stay, hear? I mean, this isn’t your home away from home. You can come in for a while. Just until…” She stopped. She knew what she was doing. She knew she didn’t want to deal with the knife still in her kitchen. Twisting her fingers caught in his grasp, Molly continued, “Just until, okay?”

      The cat blinked and sat back on his haunches, releasing her.

      “Stinker. Bully.” She unlocked the screen door. “I guess you wouldn’t turn down a meal, huh?”

      Padding in, his tail lifted, the cat moved across her gray floor like a dark cloud over shadowy water. Passing her refrigerator, he circled the kitchen until he came to the spot on the floor where she’d woken up.

      For a long moment he stayed there.

      He stopped next to the knife and looked back at her. His ears angled to the hall off the kitchen, listening. Listening to something beyond her hearing.

      Molly watched the ripples move across his skin and felt an answering shiver move across her own. “Hey, c’mon, cat. Don’t do this to me. Really.” She rubbed her arms.

      Smelling the handle of the knife, the beast parted his mouth in a feral baring of teeth. A low growl curled around the kitchen. His canines were long, white and very sharp.

      “Stop it. This isn’t funny. I mean it,” Molly added, nerves twanging as he looked back at her with those wild gold eyes. He blinked again and moved closer to her, loose-jointed and muscular, stopping at her feet.

      “All right. That’s fair,” she said, bending to pick him up. His fur was warm against her cold skin. “Unlike some guys, at least you listen. But you’d better mind your p’s and q’s, okay?” she babbled into the silky fur at his ear. “Or you’re out of here. And don’t count on gourmet food, either. Got it?”

      Silently, he rested his front paws on her forearm, claiming her.

      Molly held the heavy cat tightly to her as she walked through the rooms of her house, checking every window from top to bottom, every latch. All closed. Bolted. As they always were. She’d changed the locks, too, after the second incident. Even her brother Reid didn’t have a key to the new locks.

      Molly didn’t realize how tightly her fingers were wound into the cat’s fur until he reached up and batted her face with the pad of his wide paw, drawing her attention. “Sorry about that,” she said, stroking the fur down his back and over his tail. He stretched up onto her shoulder. “Listen, cat,” she said, looking at him eye-to-eye and still feeling tremors way down in the cold spot inside her, “I’m at my wit’s end, and I can’t figure out what to do next. I’m too scared to fall asleep, and I’m so tired I don’t know what’s real anymore. I’m talking to a cat, and you don’t even purr.”

      She sank into a chair in the living room and propped her feet on the matching footstool. Clutching the cat’s warm, sinewy body to her, she remembered the feel of the cold floor, the gleam of the knife. The look in her own reflected eye. Molly shuddered. “Hey, fella, I’m in over my head in really bad stuff,” she whispered, “and I’m sinking fast.” She buried her cold face in his fur.

      Arranging himself in her lap to his satisfaction, the cat fixed her with that unwavering gaze as she muttered to him. He was so still and calm that some of her own tension seeped from her as she stroked him endlessly from ear to tail tip, the smooth, sleek fur and firm muscles solid and real against her fingers.

      And all the while she stroked him, the cat was silent.

      Moving closer, he watched her lean back in the chair, pale brown hair clinging to the chair fabric, her hands tangled in the black silk of the cat’s fur. Saw, too, the lines around her drawn, silvery gray eyes, the smudges of exhaustion underneath. He sensed the immense effort she was making as her small hands moved in an endless, hypnotic rhythm.

      She might drowse now. Possibly. Or not.

      He could wait.

      But he knew she wouldn’t sleep.

      Not tonight.

      The piercing shrill of the doorbell jerked Molly to her feet. While she’d drifted off somewhere in her mind, the cat had disappeared, leaving long strands of black fur clinging to her fingers. Anxiously she brushed her hands down her pajamas, wincing at the ache in her hand.

      She had no idea what time it was.

      Peering through the privacy hole on the door, she saw that rain still dripped down the eaves and spattered the gallery. Her stomach curled in nauseating twists as she looked at the detective’s shield held eye level by the man standing in an easy, legs-apart stance at her front door.

      Unlocking the door but keeping the chain on, Molly leaned her head against the doorjamb.

      Choice had been taken from her.

      “Yes?” Her voice was thready. To herself as she heard the edgy notes, she sounded guilty of unnamed horrors.

      “Police.” Anonymous behind the silver-rimmed, round dark lenses of his sunglasses, he could have been anyone.

      “Yes. I see.” Dread was moving through her in long rollers, gaining force, growing large and overpowering like enormous waves far out at sea.

      She saw, too, the second man sitting in the passenger side of the black car parked in her driveway. She’d never heard it drive up. She must have dozed off.

      Trying to sort out this new set of events, Molly rubbed her forehead fretfully against the edge of the door.

      “We need to talk with you, ma’am.” Florida sand in his voice, a native, like her. She didn’t recognize his tough, sharp-planed face, though.

      Molly cleared her throat. “What about?”

      “I’ll explain. May I come in?” Against the stark black of his shirt and jacket and the sleek black of his hair, the man’s face was pale.

      Yielding to the authority in his voice, in the bracing of his hand against one lean hip, Molly almost removed the chain. But caution and the ever-present fear stopped her. Sunglasses on a rain-dark morning? “Look, can you give me a name? A badge number?” She was having trouble swallowing.

      There was a long silence. She saw him look toward the man in the low-slung car, shrug and turn back to her.

      “Sure. John Harlan.” He held the shield closer to the door, his gesture somehow mocking. “Badge number 8973. You can call—”

      “I’ll look it up,” she said through the crack, and she shut the door very carefully with shaking hands.

      Racing upstairs, knees turning to syrup with fear, Molly looked up the phone number for the local police, rolling the edge of her pajama top between her fingers as she waited for an answer, trembling at each suddenly loud sound of her house, each creak and sigh of a branch against a window.

      According

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