Joe staggered up and jumped at the door, clawing uselessly at the knob. He fell back to the floor, staring up where the inner knob of the lock should be. They were locked in, they were trapped. They pushed close together, fear gripping them, and Kit began to pant.
At first they heard no sound from without, but then, pressing against the door, they could hear him breathing-as if he was standing just outside. Already the air felt close and hot, already the walls were pressing in. They thought about cats trapped in the holds of airplanes, about kittens falling into some hidey-hole where they couldn’t get out, about cats locked in abandoned houses. They stared at the heavy door, wanting to claw through it and knowing cat claws couldn’t penetrate an inch of solid wood.
The fact that they’d meant to imprison the burglar as they were now confined, made them feel all the more helpless, made their plight all the more horrifying. Theirs had been an honorable plan. They hadn’t meant to leave him here to die, they’d intended that he be rescued.
But what did he intend? Was he smiling, hoping no one found them until it was too late?
HE STOOD STARING at the locked closet door, feeling smug that he’d trapped them but shaken by their attack. He leaned against the wall, fishing in his pocket for the inhaler, and found he’d left it in the RV. Where had those cats come from? It couldn’t be the same three as in the Longley house, but they looked the same. And how would they get into either house? Cats didn’t go through locked doors, he thought, shivering.
Earlier, as he’d hurried to load up the books and paperweights, could they have smelled his stress and fear? Could that have made them follow him? He’d always believed that the smell of fear would make a cat come after a person. He was still so sick from their attack that even after he returned to the RV, when he couldn’t find the inhaler, he could only sit miserably behind the wheel gulping air, trying to get his breath. When at last he could breathe again he searched under the seats then moved into the back, searched frantically among the boxes and packages that he’d loaded, searched every inch of the floor that he could reach. He wanted to go back in the house, to look in all the rooms, but there wasn’t time.
He remembered when he’d watched that couple from above the empty ranch, he’d had the inhaler then, he remembered using it, the comforting feel of knowing it would help him. And he’d had it when he buried her, had used it then. Before he hauled her down the ladder he’d taken it out of his pocket, didn’t want it falling out as he bent and dug and heaved dirt. He remembered laying it on the worktable. He couldn’t remember his hand on it again, couldn’t remember putting it back in his pocket.
It wasn’t only that it was a prescription inhaler, that he couldn’t stop in a drugstore and pick one off the counter. It was that his fingerprints would be on it. He looked again through the glove compartment and the console, but it wasn’t there. He’d have to go back to the remodel, go in the garage again where he’d buried her, see if it was on the worktable. Yes, he was sure of it, when he grabbed and threw the hammer, he’d been so upset he’d forgotten it.
These last two houses would take only minutes and he’d be done and could go get the inhaler. In these houses, all he wanted was the small stuff, and in both cases the collections were all in one place. The jewelry wouldn’t take any time to gather up, and Theresa’s miniature paintings would fit in a couple of boxes. He didn’t want to leave those, there were some name painters in there who would bring a good price. Get the stuff quick and he’d be done. Swing by and get the inhaler, then hit the road.
Starting the engine, he activated the garage door and backed out, shutting the door behind him. With the successful completion of the major part of his plan, with her put safely to rest, and when the sound of those cats clawing the door could no longer reach him, his confidence returned. Couple of hours from now he’d be up the road, tucked comfortably into a motel under another name, a drink in his hand and his stash safely locked in the RV, ready, in the morning, to trade for cash and a new start.
He had no notion, thinking about his plans, that when he returned to the empty house he would again be watched. If he’d known, he might not have gone back, he might have left the inhaler and prayed that no one would pay attention to it, that it would be tossed out with the rest of the trash.
26
“I’M GETTING REALLY paranoid when Joe isn’t in for the night,” Ryan said.
“Shank of the evening,” Clyde said as he turned out the living room lights and they headed upstairs accompanied by Rock and Snowball. “You have to learn to live with it.”
“You don’t worry?”
“I worry all the time. I put it on the back burner, like a dull toothache.”
“That is really very encouraging,” she said, moving up the stairs beside him.
In the master bedroom Clyde lit a fire and pushed the sliding doors open between the two rooms so they could enjoy the cheerful blaze from the study. His desk was littered with the car ads he’d placed in various newspapers and magazines, with the “car collectors” columns from various newspapers, and with faxes and notations of phone calls to answer.
Ryan had set up a folding table next to the couch to serve as a temporary work space. This was stacked with real estate fliers and notes on the dozen pieces of property they were considering. The two of them were so jammed into the small study that neither one could move their chair without disturbing the other. Sitting down to sort through their prospective purchases, she looked up at the newly installed door that led into the new construction, eager to be finished and move into her spacious new studio. The big space was dried in, the roof on, but there was the tile floor still to lay and the rest of the interior to finish; she could hardly wait, she wanted her work space, wanted to get on with the bids on two new jobs plus whatever project she and Clyde decided on. As she considered the real estate material, Rock came to nose at her hand, restless and needy.
The big dog had paced the house since supper, and it was obvious he was looking for Joe, returning again and again to the downstairs cat door to sniff hopefully for any new scent. Now he looked pointedly at Ryan then directed his gaze to the rafters above, to the high and unreachable cat door that led out into Joe’s tower.
“Why’s he fussing?” Clyde said. “Joe’s out at night a lot, Rock never paces like this. Or does he only want a run?”
“He’s been with Dad and Lindsey all day, walking. They must have done ten miles, up in the forest.”
“I thought Lindsey didn’t like hiking in the rough outdoors.”
“She likes to hike with Dad,” Ryan said, smiling complacently. She was very much in favor of her widowed father’s romance. “What she doesn’t like is overnight camping-all the bugs and cooking on the bare ground and no shower.”
“But with an RV-”
“An RV isn’t camping. I mean real camping, that’s what Dad likes, but that isn’t for Lindsey.” She shrugged. “He doesn’t care, they do everything else together.”
Lindsey Wolf had only recently come back into Mike Flannery’s life after a long absence. He’d been working a cold case for the department, the ten-year-old murder of Lindsey’s fiancé. That case soon involved a second murder-it was the cats who’d discovered the body. Without their nosiness, Ryan thought, and without their stubborn efforts to bring that hidden grave to the attention of the law, that victim might never have been found, might have moldered among the Pamillon ruins until the world ended.