Cat Under Fire

1

The night was cool, and above the village hills the stars hurled down their ancient light-borne messages. High up on the open slopes where the grass blew tall and rank, a small hunter crouched hidden, his ears and whiskers flat to his sleek head, his yellow eyes burning. Slowly he edged forward, intent on the mouse which had crept shivering from its deep and earthen burrow.

He was a big cat, and powerful, his short gray coat sleek as velvet over his lean muscles; but he was not a pretty cat. The white, triangular marking down his nose made his eyes seem too close together, as if he viewed the world with a permanent frown. To observers he seemed always to be scowling.

Yet there also shone in his golden eyes a spark of wit, and a sly smile curved his mouth, a hint that perhaps his interests might embrace more of the world than simply the palpitating mouse which awaited his toothy caress- a clue that this big gray torn saw the world differently, perhaps, than another cat might see it.

Crouching low, he did his best to keep his white paws and white chest hidden, keep his white parts from shining out through the dark grassy jungle. He would have preferred to have been born solid gray in color-that would make hunting far easier-but one did not have a choice in these matters. And he did favor his neat white paws.

The mouse moved again, a quarter inch, watching warily for any presence within the blowing shadows.

Quivering, it stretched farther out from its shelter, its eyes gleaming black and quick as it strained to see any foreign movement. Its ears twitched, alert to any threatening sound upon the hushing wind, and constantly its body shivered with the habit of fear, every tiny muscle tensed for flight, ready to vanish again among the heavy roots.

The cat's eyes didn't leave his prey; they blazed with hunger and lust for the kill, bright as yellow coals. He drew back his lips over gleaming incisors as he tested the mouse's musty smell, his pink tongue just visible tasting that irresistible aroma. His shoulders rippled in anticipation, and he licked his nose as if he was already licking warm and succulent mouse flesh. The small rodent was damnably slow about leaving its cover. Joe remained still with great effort.

Below him down the grassy slopes the village of Molena Point slept snugly at this predawn hour, the cottages protected from the sea wind by the giant oaks among which they had been built, and by the surrounding hills into which the homes and shops were tucked like a tangle of kits snuggled against their mother. In the center of the village the courthouse tower rose tall against the dark sky, as pale and lonely as a tombstone. The Mediterranean building housed two courtrooms, various city offices, and, at the far end, the Molena Point Police Department. The ongoing murder trial which would resume this morning in the courtroom was, despite the tomcat's irritation about the matter, of great concern to him.

For weeks the quiet village had talked of nothing else but Janet Jeannot's murder and of the fire in which she had died. There was heavy speculation about the young man who had been indicted for her death. Prurient excitement about these events had transformed Molena Point's usual calm ambience into an emotional bedlam. Gossip and conjecture seethed through the village shops and cafes so that Joe, prowling the village streets catching snatches of conversation, was aware of little else. Though his own interest did not stem so much from village gossip as it did from a far more personal concern.

The mouse moved again, creeping farther from cover, half an inch, then an inch, bravely and foolishly leaving its grassy blind, drawing so close to Joe that Joe had to clamp his jaws to keep from chattering the age-old feline death murmur. He oozed lower, slipping silently toward it through the grass, disturbing no blade, every fiber of his being honed in on that sweet morsel.

The mouse froze.

Joe froze, his heart pounding with annoyance at his own clumsiness.

But no, it hadn't seen him. It had paused only to gather itself for a dash across the bare earth. It stared across, fixated, toward another stand of heavy grass, where a tiny path led away, a quarter-inch lane vanishing between the green stalks. Joe's muscles tightened, his lips drew back, his yellow eyes gleamed.

The mouse sped, streaking for its path, and Joe exploded across the little clearing. With one swipe of scimitar claws he raked the creature up into his waiting teeth, it fought and struggled as his fangs pierced the wriggling morsel.

The mouse knew a moment of apocalypse as it hung skewered and shrieking in the cage of teeth clamped through its body. Joe bit deeper into the warm, soft flesh, the sweet flesh. The mouse screamed and thrashed, and was still.

He crouched over it tearing away warm flesh, sucking up sweet, hot blood, crunching the mineral-rich bones, then the surprising little package of stomach contents. The stomach usually contained grass seed or vegetable matter, but this morning he was rewarded by a nice little hors d'oeuvre of cheese from the tiny mouse stomach. Camembert, he thought, as if the mouse had lunched on someone's picnic. Or maybe it had gotten into the kitchen of one of the houses that dotted the hills. He could taste a bit of anchovy, too, and there was a trace of caviar. Joe smiled. Its belly was full of party food.

How fitting. The mouse had taken its final repast from the silver trays of a party table. Molena Point's cocktail crowd had supplied, for the little beast, an elegant last meal, a veritable wealth of pre-execution delicacies. Joe grinned, imagining the small rodent up in mouse heaven, gorging for eternity on its memories of anchovies, beluga, and Camembert.

He tried to eat slowly and enjoy every morsel, the rich taste of the tiny liver, the so recently pulsing heart, but the mouse was gone before he could slow himself.

When nothing was left but the tail, he licked a whisker and settled down to wash. He never ate the tail. His purr was deep and contented. This was living; this was what life was about. Forget the complications of that other life that had, some months ago, so rudely infringed upon his normal feline pleasures. It was quite enough at this moment to be no more than an ordinary cat. Insolently he cleaned his paws and whiskers, then gazed up at the star-strewn sky. Titillated by the vast night and by the spinning universe, warmed by the rich, nourishing mouse gracing the inside of his belly, he savored the perfect moment. To be alive and healthy, to roam the wild hills freely and take from the earth what he wanted, this was life's answer to cat heaven.

The dawn wind rose stronger, tweaking his fur, teasing and exciting him. And from above him in the vast sky came the far, high chshee chshee of a nighthawk wheeling against the stars, diving and circling as it sucked up insects invisible even to the tomcat's keen eyes. Joe stretched and yawned.

Only one thing could improve the night, only one presence could add to his pleasure.

Licking his whiskers, he rose on his hind legs to look down the hill. Perusing the lower slopes, studying the faintly lit gardens beneath the softly glowing streetlamps, he watched for any quick flash of a small, swift creature leaping up through the shadows, watched for one small cat racing up the dark hills beneath the sprawling oaks.

But the shadows lay unmoving. He looked and looked, and disappointment filled him. She wasn't coming. Maybe she'd overslept. She'd had some strange dreams lately, dreams that wakened her and made her prowl restlessly, destroying sleep.

He was about to turn away when he saw, far down between two cottage gardens, a large patch of darkness moving, and he stiffened, watching.

That was not his hunting companion; that shadow was too big. Now it was still again. Maybe it had been only dark bushes shaken by the wind. When he saw no sign of Dulcie he hunched down, feeling lost and lonely. She almost always joined him on such a perfect hunting night, with the wind not too fierce. And the sky, as she would say, as beautiful as black silk strewn with spilled diamonds. He reared again, searching disconsolately, studying the narrow village streets that wound and lost themselves and appeared again, climbing higher up the grassy hills. She could have spared a few moments to join him, even preoccupied as she was.

Though he did wish, if she came to hunt in the predawn dark, that she'd keep her mouth shut about the trial. I'm sick of hearing about the damned trial. These last weeks Dulcie had been interested in nothing else, she seemed able to think only of the fire in Janet Jeannot's studio and of Janet's terrible death-and of Rob Lake, who was being tried for the murder. Dulcie was so sure that Lake was innocent, and so damnably intent on proving she was right.

The day Janet died, they had come up the hills as soon as the fire was out, drawn by the activity of gathering police cars, by what appeared to be a full-blown investigation. Concealing themselves above the burn, where the ground wouldn't scorch their paws, watching the police working within the cordoned-off expanse of smoking, blackened rubble, Dulcie had been both repelled and fascinated. They had watched unmarked cars arrive, watched the forensics people examine Janet's body. But when forensics lifted Janet gently into a body bag, Dulcie had turned away shivering.

And then, when Rob Lake was arrested for Janet's murder, she had gone to watch him in his cell, seething with curiosity.

Observing Lake in his solitary confinement, slowly making friends with him as she crouched at the barred window above his cubicle, listening to him talk out his fears to her-baring his soul to a cat-she had become convinced of Lake's innocence. Soon she had completely bought Lake's story.

Lake has to be a strange dude, Joe thought. What kind of guy spills his deepest thoughts to a cat-not even his own cat? Sure Dulcie was charming, probably she'd given Lake that bright-eyed gaze that enchanted tourists and inspired shopkeepers to invite her right on in among their precious wares. So she charmed him. So big deal. But to let the accused charm her, to buy the idea that Lake was innocent was, in his opinion, stupid and dangerous. The grand jury wouldn't have indicted Lake if mere hadn't been sufficient evidence. Anyway, this trial was not cat business; it was police business.

But Dulcie didn't see it that way.

And you can't tell her anything; she's going to go right on prying like some hotshot detective until she gets herself in trouble.

He hissed at the empty night and scratched a flea. She was only a cat, one small cat, but she thought she knew more than a court full of attorneys. Thought she was smarter than twelve court-selected jurors and a state judge. One small, defiant tabby whose arrogance was enough to make any sensible cat laugh.

He did not consider, in his assessment, that they had, together, already investigated one murder this summer and had helped police nail the killer. That case had been different.

Down the hills, wind scudded the grass in long waves, rolling as the sea. Above him, riding the wind, the nighthawk dived suddenly, skimming straight at him swift as a crashing aircraft. He didn't duck from the bird, though another breed of hawk would have sent him scooting for cover. At the last instant it banked away, sucking up insects-the poor bird could eat nothing but bugs. Joe smiled. God had, in his wisdom, designed some mighty strange creatures.

As he turned, looking down the hill again, he started, then smiled. There she is. She came streaking up across a patch of lawn, a swift shadow so lithe and free she made his heart leap. He avidly watched her every move as she fled up across a narrow street and disappeared into the tall grass above, watched the grass ripple upward, stirred by her invisible flight.

She burst out of the grass high up the hill, racing up across a last flower bed, then an empty street, and into a tangle of weeds, steeply up, a dark bullet of speed. Halfway up the hill she stopped. Reared up. Stood looking up the hill searching for him. His heart trembled.

She saw him. She stood a minute on her hind legs, her front paws curved softly against her belly, then she sped up again, racing and leaping. When again she vanished, the grass tops heaved and swayed, as if shaken by a whirlwind.

She exploded out of the grass inches from his nose. She leaned into him warm and purring, tense from running, her heart pounding against him, her green eyes caressing him. She was all fire, switching her tail, licking his face. For weeks she'd been like this, a bundle of passion, her tempest generated not by love, though he knew she loved him, but by her fevered involvement with the murder, by the compulsion of purpose that blazed in her green eyes, and in her unexpected bouts of quick temper.

He liked her all keyed up, bright and vibrant, but she worried him. She visited the jail too regularly, listened too intently to Rob Lake, had become totally obsessed. Life had just begun to settle down after he and Dulcie solved Samuel Beckwhite's murder, and now Janet's death had thrown her into high gear all over again. The passion of her involvements tumbled and shook him like a dog shaking a rabbit. He was beginning to wonder if life with Dulcie would ever be anything but chaotic. He did not consider-did not choose to remember-his own intensity, once his own curiosity was aroused.

And Dulcie was possessed not only with the murder itself, but with trying to discover, as well, what made humans kill so wantonly.

Premeditated murder was quite beyond the normal feline experience. A coldly planned killing was totally different from the way a cat killed. Such destruction had nothing to do with hunger or survival or with practice training, or even with instinct. From a cat's view, Janet's death had been pointless. Insane. And Dulcie kept trying to understand, in one huge gulp, such human folly. Searching for answers scholars have been seeking for centuries.

Who could tell her that this was a task, for one small cat, as impossible as a gnat swallowing the sun?

But he couldn't stay angry with her, she was his love, his gamin, green-eyed charmer. Now, as she snuggled close, her gaze melting him, he licked the soft peach-tinted fur on her darkly striped face, licked her ears. She lifted a pale silken paw and smiled at him, then flopped down to roll in the grass, flirting.

But the next minute she leaped away again, feinting a run. As he raced after her, she paused to look back, wild-eyed, then ran again, light and swift as a bird in the wind. He chased her up the hill, careening up through the blowing grass, then crashing through a forest of Scotch broom, up toward the crest of the hills, climbing until at last they collapsed, panting, so high they could see nothing above them, and lay stretched close together, Dulcie limp and warm and silken.

"Needed to run," she said. "To get the kinks out. I got so cramped yesterday, crouched on that ledge above the courtroom, I thought I'd pitch a fit."

So don't stay there all day, he thought, but didn't say it.

"And then I kept going to sleep during the boring parts-in spite of those pigeons cooing and blathering all around me. And those attorneys aren't much better, dull as the drone of bees. That prosecuting attorney can put you right to sleep."

"You didn't have to waste all day there." He could never keep his mouth shut.

She lifted her head, her eyes widening. "I left an hour before they recessed. Don't you want to know what's happening?" She gave him a steady, green-eyed gaze, then rubbed her face against him. "Lake didn't kill her, Joe. I swear he didn't. We can't let them convict Rob Lake."

"You have no reason to be so sure. You're not…"

"There's not one shred of hard evidence. I told you this is how it would be-all circumstantial. That Detective Marritt didn't do a solid investigation, and he really isn't making a good case."

She flicked an ear. "But what can you expect? Captain Harper never wanted to hire Marritt. Marritt's nothing but a political appointee. I bet Harper didn't want to put him on this case; I bet the mayor had something to do with that. Marritt's so officious in court."

She saw she wasn't getting through. "Anyway, why are court trials so damnably slow? Every little legal glitch, and a million rules."

"They're slow, and have rules, because they're thorough." He looked irritably past her down the hill. "They're slow because they go by facts and logical procedures, and not by intuition."

She hissed at him and lashed her tail. "You might just try to keep an open mind."

He did not reply.

But at last she relaxed, yawning in his face, putting aside their differences-for the moment. Lying close together, warm upon the breast of the hill, they watched the village begin to waken. A few cottage lights had flicked on, and now, all over the village, as if a hundred alarms had gone off at once, little patches of lights began to blaze out. Above them, the sky grew pale, and soon the lifting wind carried the scent of coffee, then of frying sausages. They heard a child's distant laugh, and a dog barked.

And as dawn lightened the hills, a tangle of dark clouds began to sweep in from the sea, racing toward the north, probably carrying rain. Maybe it would blow on past, drench San Francisco instead of the village. Dulcie said, "Rob will be waking now, his breakfast tray will be shoved in under the bars."

Joe sighed.

"He needs me," she said stubbornly. "He talks to me like he doesn't have another friend in the world." She licked the tip of her tail. "And maybe it's easier for him to talk to a mute animal…" She smiled slyly. "Well, he thinks I'm mute. And why would he lie to a cat? As far as Rob Lake knows, he could tell me anything, and I wouldn't understand, couldn't repeat it."

Joe said nothing. Dulcie had an answer for everything. There was no diverting her. She was into the case of Janet Jeannot's murder with all four paws. Earlier this summer, when they'd searched for clues to Samuel Beckwhite's killer, they couldn't help being involved; their own lives were threatened. They'd both seen Beckwhite struck down, had heard the thud of the wrench against his head, had seen Beckwhite fall. They had seen the assailant clearly. And the killer, somehow, had known they could inform the police. From the moment the man saw them, he knew they could finger him, and if he could have caught them, he would have snuffed them both.

They had set out to solve the Beckwhite case because their own lives were at stake, but Janet Jeannot's murder was different.

Dulcie stared at him deeply, her dark pupils slowly constricting to reveal emerald green as the dawn light increased. "Don't you want to see the real killer caught? You liked Janet; Clyde used to date Janet. You can't want her murderer to go free, gloating all the rest of his life while she lies dead."

She nuzzled his face, licked his ear. "The first witness this morning is Janet's neighbor, that Elisa Trest. I really do want to hear what she'll say. Come on, Joe. Come on to the courthouse with me."

He just looked at her.

She sighed and started down the hill, pushing through the tall grass.

No point in trying to talk sense to her, she was going to do as she pleased. Grumbling, he trotted down beside her keeping pace, half-angry, half-amused.

But halfway down the first slope, she said, "There's a strange dog down there; I forgot. I don't see it now, but it followed me earlier, a huge dog."

"I didn't see any dog when I came up. Except the boxer and the golden, those two cream puffs." Those dogs were no threat-they'd chase a cat for sport but were terrified of claws. If no other cats taught the village dogs proper manners, he and Dulcie did. They'd had some interesting chases over these hills. Though a smart cat never let snapping teeth get too close. Even a playful dog, when excited, could turn innocent play into a killing bite. One mouthful of cat, and a harmless canine could become a killer, tearing and rending before he knew what happened.

"It was a big brown mutt," she said. "It stayed away from me, behind the bushes, but it watched and followed me. Well, it's probably harmless. After Mrs. Trest testifies I'm going up to Janet's burned studio again, and this time I mean to get inside even if it is boarded up."

"You can't be serious."

"Why not? Who knows what I'll find."

"Come on, Dulcie. You watched the police sort and sift and photograph. We've been up there enough, across that burn. That's the last place I want to spend the day." The burned hills were hell on the paws, and the rank fumes stung their noses and eyes. And of course there was no game up there among the ashes; the creatures that didn't die in the fire, that had escaped, would not return to that barren waste.

The fire had cut a half-mile swath through the lush green hillside, and had burned seven homes to the ground, leaving only two houses untouched. Dead, black trees stood bare against the sky, and the stink of burning was everywhere. The thought of padding through a half mile of cinders, broken glass, and sharp, twisted metal, did not appeal.

But the thought of Dulcie's going up there alone was less acceptable. He glanced at her sideways. "Come by the house for me. But you'd better hope we find something to make it worth the trip."

She gave him a sweet smile, and they moved on down through the tangled gardens, between comfortable little cottages, down across winding, residential streets. They crossed the narrow park that ran above Highway One where the road burrowed through its eight-block tunnel, then turned south two blocks to the wide green strip that divided Ocean Avenue. The parklike median marked the center of the village, running tree-shaded and cool along between the village shops toward the beach. Trotting down the springy, soft turf, they rustled through fallen leaves, scattering them with quick paws.

The shops weren't open yet, but Joe and Dulcie could smell raw meat from the butcher's, could smell fresh bread and cinnamon buns from the bakery. They basked in the aroma of fresh fish, where a truck was unloading cardboard boxes of halibut and salmon. The workmen saw them looking and hissed at them to chase them away. The cats hissed back and turned their tails. They didn't pause until they reached Joe's street.

There they touched noses, and Dulcie rubbed her face against his. "I'll come by later," she said, her green eyes catching the light. He watched her trot away toward the jail and courthouse, moving lightly as a little dancer, her tail waving, her curving stripes flashing dark and rich against the pale walls of the galleries and shops.

Glancing across at the bookstore, he could see the clock in its window. Seven-thirty. She'd go to the jail first, climb the big oak tree to the third-floor windowsill, and lie looking in at Rob Lake, maybe share his breakfast-he liked to feed her little bits of sausage and egg through the wide-mesh barrier. She'd hang around listening to him play on her sympathy until court convened at nine.

Turning away to his left, toward home, he raced across the grassy median to the northbound lane, gauged the slow-moving cars, and leaped across between them.

At least if Dulcie had to solve puzzles, the murder of Janet Jeannot was better than agonizing over the mystery of their own pasts. They'd done enough of that this summer. Their sudden onslaught of uncatlike thoughts, and their ability to speak human words had been a shocker. When Joe had first experienced his new and alarming talent, he had tried to remain cool and laidback. Scared as he was, he'd attempted to handle the matter with some restraint. But not Dulcie. She had exploded into her new life with wild eagerness, embracing her sudden new talents with hot feline passion. Wanting to learn everything about the world all at once, trying to make sense of the entire universe, she'd just about driven him crazy. Even watching TV had become a challenge as she soaked up information

Ever since she had been a kitten, Dulcie had watched TV with her elderly housemate. Curled cozily on Wilma Getz's lap, she had basked in the music and motion of the programs, and in the incomprehensible but fascinating voices. Then suddenly this summer, when she had begun to understand human words, she'd fixed her attention on the programs, eagerly lapping up the smallest detail. Sitting rigid on Wilma's lap, like a little furry scholar, she had soaked up the daunting new experiences and ideas as if, her entire life, she had been waiting for this moment to learn and discover.

Good thing Wilma has some taste in what she watches. Though even Dulcie had better sense than to shape her total view of the world from TV.

Leaving Ocean behind him, Joe sped down the sidewalk the three blocks to his own front yard, to the small white Cape Cod that he shared with his own human housemate. Joe and Clyde's cottage, snuggled comfortably beneath the sheltering oaks, was a somewhat decrepit structure, mossy around the foundation, and with a green-tinged, mossy roof, the shingles loose where a reaching branch had been at them. Clyde grumbled hugely about having to replace a few shingles, though he wouldn't dream of trimming the trees. Nor did he do much else to pretty up the property, except mow the ragged grass. But the worn old place was home, cozy and safe.

Clyde Damen was thirty-eight, once married, before Joe's time. He was stocky and dark-haired. He liked professional boxing, liked all competitive sports. He worked out with weights regularly, an activity which he performed with much grunting in the spare bedroom, lying sandwiched between his battered desk and the guest bed. He loved his beer and his women; though he had grown far more selective, these last couple of years, in choosing the latter. Joe never could figure what women saw in Clyde, but they were always there, laughing, drinking beer with him, cooking his suppers.

Clyde had rescued Joe from the gutter as a half-grown kitten, where he lay fevered from a broken, infected tail. That was in San Francisco, and not in the best section of the city. One might say that Joe had been born on the wrong side of Market Street. Clyde had been driving up Mission when he saw Joe lying in the gutter. He said later Joe had looked like a bit of trash, and then like maybe a dead rat, but something had made him stop short, squealing his brakes.

Getting out, he had crouched over Joe, had touched him tentatively, then carefully examined him for broken bones.

When he found only the tail broken, he had gathered Joe up and taken him to the vet, then home to his small Sutter Street apartment. There Clyde had cared for him like a baby, had doctored him, spoon-fed him, and given him pills, talking baby talk to him. They had not been parted since.

They had moved from San Francisco to Molena Point a year later, and it was in the village, back in the summer, that Joe's strange metamorphosis occurred. Clyde had been surprisingly stoic about the matter.

Trotting across the ragged grass that Clyde euphemistically called a lawn, Joe leaped up the concrete steps and slid in through his cat door, wincing, as he always did, when the plastic flap dropped against his back If humans can go to the moon, can't they invent a more comfortable cat door? What's with human priorities?

He crossed the living room, passing the dining room that Clyde seldom used. The instant he pawed open the kitchen door, the menagerie hit him like a kamikaze attack, the two big dogs pranced around, stepping on his toes, slobbering in his face, the three cats preening and pushing at him, inanely waving their tails.

The scent of fresh coffee filled the kitchen, and he could hear Clyde in the shower. Fending off the friendly, stupid dogs, he leaped up to the kitchen table. The old Lab and the elderly golden stood on their hind legs, staring at him, then at last resumed their pacing, waiting for Clyde to come out and fix their breakfasts. The three cats wound around the table legs, mewling as if Joe himself might open their cat food. The cats had treated him with great deference since the change in his life.

He gave them a patronizing stare and turned his back. They knew they weren't allowed on the table. And, while they didn't often mind Clyde, they minded him. The poor things never had figured out why, suddenly, he was so alarmingly different, but they respected that difference. Well hell, I hardly know, myself, what's happened to me and Dulcie.

All he and Dulcie knew was that their species seemed to go very far back into history, into Egypt and into the medieval Celtic villages. Clyde and Wilma had done enough research to turn up some spectacular and unsettling implications. In the Molena Point Library, they had found references to Irish burial mounds with doors opening down into them, doors carved with pictures of cats. Had found, in Egyptian and Celtic and Italian history, tales of people vanishing and cats suddenly appearing instead, tales that made Joe's whiskers bristle with unease.

He liked his new talents fine; he didn't need to go into some elusive background. He was what he was. A talking cat. Brighter than many humans, clever and talented. He didn't need all the hyperbole.

But Dulcie seemed fascinated that somewhere there were others like themselves, and she was intrigued by the further talents that they might yet discover in themselves-matters on which he would rather not speculate.

Now, atop the kitchen table, he sat down on the morning paper, reading quickly. The whole front page was given over to Rob Lake's trial. There might be famine, flood, and war in the rest of the world, millions dying, but you'd never see it in the Molena Point Gazette, not until this trial was resolved and Rob Lake was either convicted or released.

DAY THREE. AMES CALLS FOR DELAY. EVIDENCE SHAKY.

So the evidence was shaky. So, big deal. Couldn't the local reporters find anything else to write about?

But, he thought uneasily, what if Dulcie's right? What if Lake didn't kill Janet? Could be, if Dulcie keeps poking around looking for the real killer, she's going to get herself hurt.

Despite Dulcie's human perceptions, she was still a cat, small and delicate, heartbreakingly vulnerable. If she made too many waves, if she exhibited her strange talents too openly, she could end up in deep trouble.

Already one man in Molena Point had realized they weren't normal cats and had tried to kill them. And maybe other people knew.

Worrying about Dulcie, wishing she'd come to her senses, he sighed and stretched full-length across the newspaper. So who can reason with her? She's going to keep on pressing until someone hurts her-or until she solves the damned murder.