Sage had said nothing. Only silence.

"Does being safe mean more to you than our freedom?" she'd snapped. There was a thump on the floor as she'd leaped out of the basket and come racing through the door-but Charlie had moved faster, catching her up and holding her close, Kit's heart pounding against her, a fast little trip-hammer.

"You can't run away, Kit. Just listen to him. Listen to his side, you owe him that."

Kit had turned her face away-but then in a moment she looked up at Charlie, and shame showed in her wide yellow eyes. As Charlie carried her back into the examining room, Sage had tried to rise, stumbling against the side of the basket, crouching as if to leap out. Charlie hurried to stop him, setting Kit down in the basket beside him, where the two hissed at each other. But then Sage had looked ashamedly down at his paws.

"I'm sorry," the pale cat had mumbled. "No one can force you to leave here, no one can force you to love me."

"I'm sorry," Kit had said contritely. "I guess…Maybe, sometimes, one doesn't have a choice in how one feels."

"I guess maybe sometimes," Sage had said, "one takes the easy way." He looked at Kit a long time, then lay down again. Tentatively Kit curled down beside him. Sage purred a little, and nuzzled Kit's whiskers-and Charlie turned and left them, slipping out of the room.

Two stubborn little individuals, she'd thought, feeling tears start. So at cross purposes. She'd hurt deeply for them, had headed home filled with concern for Sage and for the fiery young tortoiseshell.

39

NOW, AS CHARLIE dropped into a tired sleep again snuggled against Max, down in the village, at Molena Point PD, Lindsey Wolf finished giving Detective Garza her formal statement, clarifying every detail she could recall from the moment she'd first parked across from Gibbs's condo and then followed his car. From those terrible moments in the airport when she saw her sister murdered, to the moment when, in the gift shop at Fisherman's Wharf, Gibbs himself was shot and taken into custody.

In Dallas's office, against the faint sound of the dispatcher's voice from up the hall and the voices of various officers moving in and out through the building, she told Dallas everything she could remember. The long ride in the cab watching Gibbs's car moving in and out of traffic. Thinking her driver would have a cell phone, and he hadn't. Not wanting to relay her message through his dispatcher, not sure what the dispatcher would tell her superior and other drivers. Following Gibbs to the hotel, paying her cab fare, and slipping into the restaurant to use their phone, having to explain that it was an emergency. By the time they finished the interview, she felt wrung out.

"Come on," Dallas said. "Mike's waiting. You'll feel better with a drink and some dinner." And they headed for Mike's apartment, leaving the center of the village, its streets and shops bright and awash with moonlight, and heading up among the darker streets where the moon was hidden above pine and oak and cypress trees.

"Have you thought about what you'll do now?" Dallas said. "After all that's happened, will you find it too painful to stay here in the village?"

Lindsey looked at him for a long time. "You think I'll run away from ugliness again."

He glanced at her. "I don't know."

"That's not very flattering."

"I'm a cop. I don't specialize in flattery."

She smiled. "You don't use flattery in your work?"

He laughed, then was silent. Ahead, at the top of the hill, the over-the-garage duplex was dark on one side, but Mike's lights were bright and welcoming. She looked at Dallas as he pulled up the drive. "I don't think I'll run, this time."

From the living room above, Mike watched them pull in. He'd been standing at the windows nursing a drink, looking down across the moonlit village to the sea beyond.

He had stopped to pick up salad things and steaks, had put the potatoes in the oven to bake, washed and put together the salad. Turning to check the oven, he considered his new digs with satisfaction, the big, airy studio with its high, white-stained rafters, its tall windows looking down over the village. Ryan's roomy desk before the windows, offering a comfortable place to work-near the kitchen and coffeepot, he thought, amused.

At the back of the long room was a simple daybed, soft with throw pillows in the daytime, and two canvas camp chairs. With the dressing room and bath, he had the perfect bachelor pad.

Perfect, for now.

It would be pretty crowded for a couple.

But that was way down the line. He didn't know if Lindsey was ready for a real commitment. How tied was she, still, to what she'd had? What she'd thought she had with Chappell?

Turning as if to speak to Rock, he realized the big dog wasn't with him, that Rock was back with his mistress. I don't suppose, he thought, watching the Blazer pull in and stepping into the kitchen to mix Lindsey's drink, don't suppose I'd ever find another dog like Rock.

He thought about this morning, which seemed days ago, about Rock's exhibition of unerring tracking, and wondered what the real story was. Maybe Ryan would tell him, sometime. And maybe she wouldn't. And for a moment, again, he missed the youngster she had been, a handful of fire and stubbornness, as hardheaded as a young mule. Then he smiled. Was she so different now?

He put aside his fatherly sentiment as Lindsey and Dallas came up the stairs. Opening the door for them, he felt a stab of warmth at the sight of Lindsey-and, again, a sharp jolt of relief that she was safe. That she wasn't dead in that car, in place of her sister.

IT WAS NEARLY six the next morning when the Greenlaws woke and Lucinda reached down the bed feeling around her feet for Kit-then remembered that Kit was at the clinic with Sage, that Charlie had called from the clinic last night to tell her about the coyotes. Rising and pulling on her robe, thinking of Kit nearly killed by coyotes, Lucinda said a prayer of thanks that their beloved tortoiseshell was safe. And she prayed for Sage, too. What had possessed him to run off like that, into the wild, still encumbered by that awkward cast?

Love, she thought. Love and hurt and anger. She didn't want to think past that point, couldn't bear to think that Kit might love him in return, love him enough to leave them, to leave her home.

And how selfish was that!

Starting the coffee, pouring a cup before it finished brewing, she sat down at the dining table with the faded, handwritten letters taken from Olivia Pamillon's diary.

Though she and Pedric had read them at once, when Wilma brought them up last night, she wanted another look. The letters were addressed to only three people: two cousins, Annette Pamillon and Jeannine Pamillon Brink. And Jeannine's husband, Tom. That was the couple who had brought back the first speaking cats, secretly intending to breed and sell them. The messages were oblique in their wording. These seemed to be first drafts, with words crossed out or changed to make them less decipherable to the uninitiated. Surely Olivia had penned new copies from these, mailed them, and kept the originals; but why had she kept them? The replies were equally obscure.

Two implied that Olivia would take legal action to destroy Jeannine's title to her shares of the estate if she and Tom didn't abandon their commercialization of the cats and swear themselves to secrecy. A threat couched in obscurity but clear to someone who knew the truth.

But even Olivia's comments about the cats themselves, to Annette, whom she must have trusted, were oblique, phrases such as, I love watching the wild animals around the estate. So many come to visit me, and seem to grow bolder each day. And then there would be some innocuous and unrelated comment regarding clothes, or a recipe, and then-as if this was the pattern they'd worked out-the urgent part of the message: John's houseguests are incredibly nosy, asking questions that are none of their affair. Or, I have asked Jeannine several times if I might stop by when I'm in the village. Every time they are busy, or are going out of town. My own cousin. And then a few weeks later, again to Annette, I think it's time we visited Jeannine together, a kind of surprise. What do you think?