She didn’t think Eddie Sears would go after Max, not alone. Eddie was a coward, and this wasn’t Eddie’s battle. He’d be crazy to shoot at a cop. But still she stood scanning the night, watching for a dark figure slipping back toward the riders. She was thinking maybe she was stupid to think Max would be caught off guard, when Max said, behind her, “Thanks, Charlie.”
His hand brushed hers as he shone a light on Cage; he knelt with his gun on Cage, checking his breathing and searching him for a weapon. Then, standing again, he switched on his radio. “Need a medic for Jones. Eddie Sears ran.” He looked at Charlie. “Is he armed?”
“He didn’t fire at me, but…I don’t know.”
He relayed that information, and then he held her close, warm, so warm. He smelled of male sweat and horse and gunpowder. She lay her head against him and only now knew how weak she felt, how scared.
“It’s all right,” he said, stroking her hair and shining his torch into the night, searching-and watching Cage.
And then McFarland and Brennan were there; they took charge of Cage. Other lights moved through the night, throwing looming shadows as officers searched for Eddie Sears. She heard the horses behind her and then Bucky loomed over her, and beside him her own Redwing-and then out of the darkness Rock leaped at her, the silver hound all over her, wagging and whining, jerking the long lead rope that Ryan held.
Ryan sat Redwing, looking down at Charlie, holding Rock’s rope, and holding Bucky’s reins. In the glancing reflection of the headlights, Ryan had that long-suffering look on her face as Rock made a fool of himself.
“He tracked you,” Ryan said.
Charlie looked at her. “You’ve never trained him.”
Ryan shrugged. “He tracked you.”
Max said, “Where’s Wilma?”
“She’s all right, she went…” She nodded toward where the patrol cars were parked. Lights were flashing now, men running, dark shadows dodging among the ruins as if someone had spotted Eddie Sears.
Max was on the radio. “Wilma down there?”
“I’m here,” Wilma said.
Max handed Charlie the radio. She nearly dropped it. “You all right? Where are you?”
“In a nice comfortable squad car drinking someone’s leftover coffee and starving to death. Are you all right? What was the firing?”
“I…I shot Cage Jones. He…Could we talk about it later? I’m beginning to feel…” Charlie swallowed. “I think I need to…”
“Later,” Wilma said, and the radio went silent. Charlie listened to the sounds of running feet and rocks being dislodged and the faint, harsh mumble of the radios as officers searched for Sears; she prayed that no one else would be hurt. Max looked down at her and, with the back of his hand, wiped the tears from her face. She wondered why she was crying. Max put his arms around her, and it was all right, everything was all right.
28
F rom atop a crumbling wall, the five cats watched dark-clad cops scour the ruins, shining their lights into caves and crevices, talking to one another in those low, machine voices. They saw, farther up the hill, Max Harper kiss Charlie, and then Charlie mounted the big buckskin-the horses were nervous from the shooting, sidestepping, and fussing. Charlie rode away into the woods with the other woman to calm the frightened mounts, the cats thought. Willow and Cotton and Coyote understood that; they needed comforting, too. The three sat close together, gently grooming one another.
They had done things tonight that were not natural to them, had participated in frightening events foreign to their world, and now they needed one another. But they were warm with satisfaction, too. Cage Jones had gotten what he deserved, and that made them purr. But beside the three ferals, Dulcie and Kit were tense with excitement, watching the action as if eager to leap into the fray, convinced that, with cops all over, Eddie Sears would soon be caught, too.
“Like a mouse in a tin can,” Kit said. And Willow and Cotton smiled. In the ferals’ wild and threatened lives, retribution was highly valued-and suddenly Eddie Sears appeared from out of nowhere running straight at them, racing for their wall, dodging, searching for a place to hide, and the cops were nearly on him. The three ferals slunk down, ready to vanish. But Dulcie and Kit crouched, with blazing eyes, their ears back, their tails lashing as Eddie veered along the wall looking for a way through-and the two cats flew at him: twin trajectories hitting him hard, raking him harder. Emboldened, the other three followed. Eddie Sears, covered with enraged and clawing cats, ran screaming, batting futilely at the slashing beasts.
“Don’t shoot,” Wilma shouted, swinging out of the squad car and running up the road. Maybe no one heard her; there were officers all over, converging on Sears. “Don’t shoot,” she cried, “he’s not alone!”
“What is that?” McFarland hissed, throwing his light on something wild and screaming that rode Sears’s shoulder, raking his face. McFarland dove at Sears’s legs, hit him low and hard and dropped him. As Sears went down, the beast that covered him seemed to break into separate parts and vanish, exploding away in the dark.
McFarland knelt, cuffing Sears’s hands behind him. What the hell was that? He shone his light into Sears’s face. It was clawed and bloodied. McFarland shivered and felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, stiff.
He was securing Sears’s legs when he glanced up and saw Wilma standing over them. She looked at him, looked at Sears. She said nothing, just turned and headed away, back toward the squad car. McFarland knelt atop Sears, watching her, amused by the shadow of a grin that she couldn’t hide. Then Brennan joined him, and they got Sears to his feet. “What was that?” Brennan said. Around them in the night, officers were gathering, their lights coming down out of the ruins. “What the hell was that?”
No one knew, or maybe didn’t want to say what they thought they had seen. Until rookie Eleanor Sand arrived. “I think,” she said, “it was cats.”
“Cats?” the men looked at her, and laughed. “Cats, Sandy? What kind of cats? Sandy, girl, you’ve lost it.”
“I think there are feral cats up here,” she said. “I’ve been up here, seen them. Domestic cats gone wild.”
“Sandy, no cat would do what we just saw.”
“What kind of cats would…?”
“They’d have to be rabid to do that.”
Eleanor laughed. “No. Those cats act all right, usually. But they stay away from people. Maybe tonight, with all the confusion, they felt threatened.”
It was then that Charlie rode up on the buckskin. “I think Eleanor’s right,” she said softly. “Maybe tonight, with all the excitement, everyone running, the lights…” She looked around at the circle of unbelieving cops. “If those feral females were protecting kittens, as wild as they are, they’d attack anything.”
The men stared at her and shook their heads.
“Wild cats with kittens…I’ve read that cats in wild colonies birth their kittens all at one time. And that they will band together to protect them.” Charlie shrugged. “Maybe Sears, running like that, got too near their lair.” Turning Bucky, she headed back up toward the woods, her joy in retribution equally as fierce as that of the five little cats.
Her only disappointment was that, entering the woods where Ryan sat astride Redwing, she could tell her nothing of what had really happened, she could share none of the wonder with Ryan. Nor could she, she thought sadly, share this with Max.
Dulcie and Kit listened to the ambulance come screaming, they watched as the rescue vehicle slowed and made its way through the estate, watched the medics get to work on Cage Jones.
Ought to let him die, Dulcie thought as she fled for the squad car and Wilma. She glanced behind her once, to the broken wall where Kit sat with the three ferals, all of them smiling. Then heading down the road, Dulcie leaped in through the passenger-side window, into Wilma’s arms, snuggling with her and purring so loudly that Wilma smiled.