And then all the lights go out.
Luckily, I am blessed with phenomenal night vision.
So it is a bit of a surprise when I hear thumps and whispers ahead in the dark, and find myself forced to screech to a stop.
That is a only a figure of speech. Were I truly to “screech to a stop,” the entire set of hunkered-down humans in this building would be clapping their hands over their ears. I have quite an effective screech in my repertoire.
No, this is a metaphorical screech. It means that were I a motor vehicle stopping so quickly, my brakes would scream bloody murder.
As it is, I stop on a dime without a sound, a master of the feline change of direction in midair. I am only sorry that all the lights are out and no one is here to see it. Especially Miss Midnight Louise.
I land silently, but not without great effort. There is a lot of me to land silently.
Although the most immediate humans in the area are right in front of me, I must do a sniff test to make sure of their suspected identities.
This I manage with my usual undercover delicacy. My supersensitive vibrissae (whiskers to you crude human types) twitch near the presumed face of my lovely little roommate.
It is Miss Temple indeed, flat on her back and utterly safe from flying bullets, even in the dark.
My delicate vibrissae reach out again … to confirm the near proximity of Mr. Matt Devine, who has rushed to my Miss Temple’s rescue with my own admirable speed and dedication.
In fact, he has covered her body with his to protect her from flying bullets.
This I too would do, save he is much bigger and better suited to the task.
All is well, so I retreat into the dark that disguises my watchful presence.
I am sure that they do not need me.
In fact, I am urgently needed elsewhere: at the scene of the crime.
Somewhere out there. In the dark Las Vegas night. Under the bright desert stars intermittently lit by the bright Las Vegas neon.
Assured of my Miss Temple’s safety, I am free to be fully feline and embrace the dark night; to track down the perpetrators of this uncalled-for assault on Miss Louise’s and my midnight snacking buffet.
You might call it a snack attack, as far as I am concerned. And that is motive enough for swift and merciless pursuit.
Chapter 11
Dark Victory
The utter darkness that ended the shooting spree seemed to end the world also.
Stunning silence stalked the shattered mock rooms inside Maylords. Nothing moved. Now no one spoke, whimpered, even seemed to breathe.
A spiderweb brushed Temple’s cheek, followed by a felt penpoint, cold and wet. She must be hallucinating sensations in the absence of her prime sense, sight.
She was not alone in the dark. At all. Temple started to struggle free of the living, breathing weight atop her.
It lifted, somewhat, but again something tangled in her hair. Then an ice-cold palm cradled her cheek.
“Temple?” Matt whispered in the dark.
“I think so. How did you-?”
“What were you doing moving around in this madness?”
“You too!”
Matt’s rapid breathing echoed her own startled-rabbit pulses. Maybe it was her imagination-it was pitch-dark-but it seemed the whole universe had held its breath and everybody else was pretty damn quiet too.
She tuned in the reviving sound of shifting bodies and furniture, of muffled curses and sobs. An elbow dug into the carpet a bit too close to her ribs and then the weight lifted away and she was able to breathe all on her own, alone. Too bad.
“God, what were you thinking of?” he asked.
“I remembered where the light panel was.”
“So did somebody else, somebody probably a lot closer. Are you hurt?”
“I can’t tell yet.”
His hands helped her struggle to sit up from what she could only regard as a compromising position.
Her breath still came like hiccoughs, in ragged jerks. Action, moving had made her feel better, more alive. Sitting here in the dark absorbing the terror of the attack made her into a puddle.
Matt put an arm around her shoulders, which obligingly shuddered. She hated that! His hand, warmer now, slid along her cheek to her neck.
He was taking her damn pulse! As if his wasn’t in overdrive too.
She shook herself loose. “I’m okay. Did you hear the punching of eight million cell phone buttons?” “Yeah.”
“I suppose anything I might do here is redundant.”
“Nothing you could do would be redundant.” His thumb brushed the corner of her mouth, an obvious accident in the dark or … omigod, maybe he was going to kiss her, and, well, everything would change forever faster than a shot in the dark… .
“Okay, people!” Danny Dove’s voice, mellow and commanding, could make eighty chorines twitch their ostrich feathers in perfect sync. It could also command mass hysteria to shut up and take a debutante bow.
Temple laughed softly, relieved to hear it, and leaned into Matt, who gave her shoulders a comradely squeeze.
So dissipates the fragile aphrodisiac of mutual danger.
“We are in control of the darkness and the light,” Danny’svoice announced, carrying as only a theatrical history could make it. “We are in control of the vertical and the horizontaclass="underline" ’ he went on, paraphrasing the old ’60s science-fiction TV show, The Outer Limits. “Actually, we’re all pretty horizontal, which is the best place to be, folks, until the police arrive.
“Now behave, you all. I don’t want a population explosion going on here, folks. I can’t stand bastardized furniture.” Nervous chuckles replaced the pervasive sound of heavy breathing. Sobs turned into shaky laughter.
Temple turned her head into Matt’s shoulder, a darker dark. His hand covered the exposed side of her face.
“Just wait quietly,” Danny said more softly, “until the pros come to tell us it’s safe to awake and sing. Keep the rhythm
slow and just shuffle, folks. It’s not up to us to do anything but mark time.”
A distant whine yodeled closer. Lots of them.
Temple didn’t move anymore. Nor did Matt.
They sat clutching each other like Hansel and Gretel in the forest, waiting for the Wicked Witch.
But Beth Blanchard was nowhere to be seen. Even after several squad cars roared into the Maylords lot and grew silent, nothing much happened inside.
A bullhorn soon admonished them much more roughly than Danny had: Stay down.
“Guess we didn’t do that,” Matt said in her ear.
It made Temple wish that they had. No! This was very had thinking. Intense situations made for intensely regretted impulses.
“Everyone inside,” came the magnified male voice. “We’ve secured the perimeter. Don’t move. Stay right where you are. We’re coming in. Any movement will be regarded with suspicion. Stay absolutely still, please, no matter your condition. If there are any perpetrators still among you we need to isolate them. Ambulances are coming for the injured. We’ll get you all out as soon as we can.”
The lights didn’t come on again.
Instead, flashlights came lancing out of the darkness, held by shadowy figures bristling with Kevlar vests and belts full of sinister equipment.
It reminded Temple of the opening scene from ET, when security forces were hunting an alien lost on earth.
The lights played over her and Matt’s faces, knowing more about them than they knew about themselves at the moment.
Temple resented her instinct to blink her eyes shut.
The dark, spacewalkerlike figures moved on, men and women insulated with the weapons and defenses of their jobs.
Finally, about twenty minutes later, the general lights came on, except for those that had been shot out. “Ladies and gentlemen. Stay where you are until we get you sorted out.”
Temple shifted; her left leg had gone to sleep under her.
Matt was sitting in the knees-akimbo, ankles-crossed position of Eastern meditation. Temple wished she’d thought of that; it prevented the pins and needles of too much pressure on one limb.