Cat in an Alien X_Ray

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  She shrugged. “Risk of the trade.”

  “So why have you stopped being an elusive evil genius and become a confrontational one?”

  “I wouldn’t have been elusive if you hadn’t been so hard to find for so long.”

  “My fault. I see. I’m told I knew you once.”

  “In the biblical sense.”

  “That’s too bad,” he said.

  “You didn’t think so at the time.”

  “I was young and stupid.”

  “And in love.”

  “Was I, now? A pity I don’t remember the details. First love and all. But your life and my life and how and when we met doesn’t need to be remembered. It’s a story now, in Ireland and here in Vegas. We are legend, Kathleen O’Connor, despite ourselves. What a hell of a thing to not remember.”

  “I can make you remember.”

  “No, you can’t. That’s one thing you can’t force.” Max thought a moment. “You’ve put yourself in my power. Why? And why now?”

  She didn’t answer, instead shifting her body on the chair. He took it for an automatically seductive move, then noticed her right arm was a bit askew on her lap. An injury?

  “Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “You couldn’t wait to swig beer in the pub in Belfast.”

  “I don’t want to get that close to you.”

  “How you’ve changed,” she whispered intensely.

  “That was years ago, Kathleen. Maybe you could do with a bout of amnesia yourself. Why hang on to that misbegotten part of that day, to that act, surely only one of a painful, vengeful parade of hundreds, thousands?”

  She shut her eyes. “You changed so fast. It had been me, me, me that day, and then it was Sean, Sean, Sean that night and ever after, for always.”

  “My cousin died in a bombing. He was a brother to me.”

  She hurled herself upright, on her feet. “Men! Men and your brotherhood! All the IRA men were the same. Vengeance for one of their own, and then the other side retaliates in kind, and the women are left on the sidelines as collateral damage and the cause for more retaliation, or just forgotten. I was not going to be left on the sidelines.”

  “That’s war.”

  “That was you. You just left me there in the park like a piece of trash when word came of the bombing. You hadn’t been like them, caught up in their games of anger and tit for tat. You were from somewhere without a history of the Troubles. You said I was the most beautiful girl in the world. We laughed. I forgot about the Troubles. You said you loved me.”

  “I was seventeen, Kathleen. A boy. I’d have been enamored, sure. I’d think I loved you.”

  She wasn’t listening. “Then you left me as they always did when they were through using me. Then you had to go and find the bombers and get yourself hunted by the IRA and then become the hunted. Leaving me behind was so easy. I had always been nothing, forever and ever, amen.”

  “And that’s why you’ve hated and hunted me and mine all these years?”

  “No! It’s because you’re the only one I could have loved.”

  Max stared into her bitter eyes sensing past images rising like a tide over the empty beaches of his mind. He hadn’t lied to her. Her beauty was extraordinary, but left him cold now. Or maybe left him with pity. Once he’d seen her with the eyes of love, and for that she’d never forgiven him.

  “I think I did love you, Kathleen, as only an idealistic, randy boy can. And so I chose you over Sean that day. I didn’t lose the love. It was overpowered by guilt. By letting Sean stay behind in the pub to die, I couldn’t perpetuate what I then saw as my traitorous happiness. Maybe in time … but by then I’d heard what a … flirt you were. I came to believe you were toying with me and even that you knew Sean was doomed. And then, I sensed your pursuit and thought you wanted me dead too.”

  “So it’s like all of my life, a big misunderstanding.” She stepped nearer, confrontational again. “No one in charge knew what went on, and they are very, very sorry. It’s been my job to make them sorrier. And you’re the sorriest of the lot. You’ve remembered you loved me, but the feeling is gone. So sad.”

  “Wait. How do you know I remembered that?”

  “A little birdie told me far above the atrium of the Goliath Hotel.”

  Max knew one feeling he had wasn’t gone—a sense that something bad was in play.

  He heard a bit of scuffling sound at the front door, remembering he’d never heard the intruder shut it in order to enter the house more silently.

  Kathleen was armed only with her anger, but Max rose and moved to the side of the chair. He didn’t want to shoot her, but might need to tackle and confine her. Who the hell would be at his front door at five in the morning?

  “The irony,” she said, interrupting his intense listening, “is that it was all for nothing. Your cousin Sean? He got lucky as well as you that day.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A barmaid.”

  So Sean had flirted with a barmaid at the pub after Max had left with Kathleen. Good for him. He was a good-natured guy, and hadn’t been feeling angry or jealous when he’d died.…

  “I suppose that’s ironic,” Max said slowly, trying to guess her point.

  The front door swung fully open; he recognized the slight groan in one hinge. The house controls were no longer at his fingertips and he couldn’t risk taking his eyes off Kathleen to look down and secure the door.

  “What’s really ironic is that her shift was up and they were on their way out when the bomb went off.”

  Max suddenly stood in a world without sound, or rather, with only the sound of Kathleen’s soft Irish singsong lilt. “She broke a leg and had multiple lacerations, but the last she saw of Sean Kelly, fine Irish name and lad, he was staggering away with a badly bleeding, almost blinding head wound.”

  Thunder crashed somewhere down the hall and echoed in his head, words reverberating, not making sense. Badly bleeding, staggering away.

  “Sean is alive?” Max saw himself mouthing from a distance, in one of those slow-moving dreams of utter shock.

  “Max!” someone called.

  “Kathleen, don’t!” someone else called.

  And then he felt a swift lightning strike of pain in his right temple.

  Temple?

  And faded to black.

  Chapter 50

  Night Stalkers

  Am I slicker when I am on a running streak than wet tar!

  I race through the Goliath down to the entry, happy to see Mr. Matt’s very tailable blond head bypassing the main exit for the route to the big outside parking lots. After that, it is easy for me to ease unseen around the base of gaming tables and out into what is left of the night.

  I am Louie-on-the-spot to eel inside the Jaguar by the last hairs on my second loftiest member and settle down for a smooth glide into my home plate, the Circle Ritz. My tootsies have done all the walking tonight, and they are aching for a time-out.

  Mr. Matt Devine is obviously disturbed by his shock-and-awe moments with Miss Kitty the Cutter. I say, sock it to her! But being a kinder, gentler soul than the average thug, he is making penitential murmurs to a higher power.

  I have never found making penitential murmurs to Bast too productive. To the contrary. Being a female goddess, she likes her subjects to scrap and scratch and bring her sacrificial prey in her honor.

  Anyway, I have long been out of the Great Black Hunter game and am longing to sprint up the palm tree when we arrive home for some world-class snuggling and snoozing before dawn.

  In not too long, the Jaguar pulls into its home lot. I crouch behind the driver’s seat to leap out at the first crack of the steel door, or whatever they are making cars out of these days, but the door remains shut. Come on! I need some shut-eye tonight.

  I hear the automatic hiss of the driver’s side window going down and pounding footsteps heading our way.

  I immediately assume fl
at-belly posture, ears down and eyelids at half-mast to better blend with the dark carpeting. (I certainly do not want my glittering greens to betray my presence.)

  “Temple!” Mr. Matt says, sounding both relieved and perturbed.

  She is breathless to see him herself. “Haven’t you checked your cell phone lately?” is her lovesick greeting.

  Already it is down to the little things of life, even before the wedding. Tsk tsk.

  “No,” Mr. Matt says, sounding guilty.

  “There’s a weirdly urgent message from Max. It is like it was cut off,” Miss Temple says. “We have to get to his place right away.”

  “I have never been there,” Mr. Matt says as I hear Miss Temple running around to the passenger side in what sounds like the flap of flats.

  Things must be dire if she is going out in around-the-house shoes.

  “I know the route. Get to Highway 95. And floor it.”

  Ooof! My cheek and jowl are pinched by pain as my head and body are slung back against the backseat base and then into the back of the driver’s seat.

  Belatedly, I curl my shivs into the luxury carpet and hang tough.

  While Miss Temple backseat drives from the front seat, I rapidly sum up the Cat Pack situation.

  Miss Midnight Louise will be on-site, since she elected to follow Mr. Max. Who took on Miss Kitty? Ma Barker. I told her that was a rough assignment for a senior citizen, but after she had slapped the starch out of my whiskers, she told me seniority meant she had the savvy and clout to slap the stuffing out of any sniveling psychopath on the planet.

  I sure hope so, because I know of no way to notify the rest of the Cat Pack that something dark and dirty is going down on Mojave Way.

  Chapter 51

  Hit Me with Your Best Shot

  Temple read the cryptic message aloud as Matt gunned the Jaguar away from the Circle Ritz and into the city’s residential areas.

  “Hand me your phone,” she ordered Matt urgently.

  He dug in his pants’ pocket and produced it.

  “Here. Look,” she said. “No, don’t look. Drive. You got the same message from Max about twenty minutes ago. ‘My place right away. End game.’”

  “And you’re sure it’s from Kinsella?” Matt sounded skeptical. “He’s not one to call for help.”

  “I don’t think it’s help he wants. Maybe he’s found some amazing way to use the map to go right to the IRA hoard. Get that to the authorities, and maybe all the related crimes will clear right up.”

  “Why didn’t he call Molina?”

  “Not without checking with us Round Table members.” Temple frowned at the message on the screen.

  “Maybe he just wanted to interfere with our sleep.”

  “Poor baby.” She put a hand on Matt’s arm and he jumped. “You’ve been losing too much sleep over those post-show sessions with Leticia Brown. Her Ambrosia brand will still thrive without you as a follow-up. Are you breaking in someone to replace you? A secret candidate?”

  “No.” Matt risked a glance away from threading through the curving residential streets. “That’s over, Temple. No more late nights out. I’m pulling the plug.”

  “Really! We can get back to normal. I’m thrilled!”

  Matt spared her a quirky smile. “As a professional counselor, I can’t promise anyone can get back to normal.”

  She grinned. “Just think. If Max has cracked the mystery, maybe we can put Kitty the Cutter in the hands of the police for whatever crime she’s been doing and we’ll all be safe and happy and able to go our own ways.”

  “You are way too bouncy for five in the morning. This the street?”

  “Yes, eighth house on the right, with the shutters.”

  “Nice.”

  “They’re metal and close over the windows.”

  “Hmm. Fort Knox. I’m going to approach with caution.” Matt slowed the Jaguar to a silent idle. “Let’s just leave the car doors ajar, instead of slamming them. This is where Molina was attacked.”

  “That’s silly,” Temple whispered, doing as he said. “Max is in residence there now. Mr. International Agent.”

  Nevertheless, they both walked along the grass, not on the walkway.

  Near the front door, a black cat waited.

  “A stray. Five A.M. is when feral cats hunt. Way too small to be Louie,” Temple whispered to Matt.

  “More the type of the Crystal Phoenix mascot,” he agreed.

  “Midnight Louise. Face it, Matt, every black cat looks alike in the dark. Except Louie with his white whiskers.”

  By then, the cat was twining in and out of their ankles so persistently that they almost tripped over it. As they moved to step past, the cat arched its back, flared its fluffy fur into a dark spiky halo.

  Then it stared intently behind them and darted away.

  Matt was staring ahead. “The door’s ajar. I don’t like that.”

  “Max is expecting us.”

  “He’s a security freak. He’d never do that.”

  “No, he wouldn’t,” Temple said. “What do we do?”

  “Backtrack and call the police.”

  “Not Molina?”

  “Regular police,” Matt said. “Report a robbery. We don’t want to get Max in deeper with Molina.”

  “Good plan.”

  That hadn’t been Temple speaking, but a woman from inside the house. She had a faint Irish accent. She also held a gun that caught a bit of streetlight gleam.

  She came out, as sleek as Louie in a black spandex catsuit, and walked around them more than once, like a human version of the curious cat on the doorstep.

  “Go in. I’ll follow.”

  Matt stepped directly between Temple and Kathleen O’Connor and her gun. They walked in like convicts, in a single row.

  “Go right in, and go right,” Kathleen said.

  Temple led them into the main room, where Max was crumpled on the floor in front of one of two massive leather theater-style chairs. Kathleen perched her hip on the other chair’s arm, swinging her free leg.

  Her foot nudged Max’s hip. “Had a sudden urge to nap and forgot to bring his gun along.”

  Temple eyed the blood streaks running down the side of Max’s face.

  “May be out cold,” Kathleen told her. “Maybe has a concussion, poor lad. Maybe a blow to the head will revive his absent memory. Maybe it has killed him. I haven’t time or inclination to look.”

  Temple supposed Kathleen had lured them there via Max’s cell phone. But why?

  “Here we are,” Kathleen said. “Four sides of a romantic quadrangle.” She used the gun as a pointer. “I was with Max. Then he was with Temple, then she was with Matt. Then Matt was with me.”

  Temple stared wildly at Matt.

  “It was a platonic relationship,” Matt said calmly. “That was a healthy change for her, and, of course, I was coerced into it.”

  “How?” Temple asked.

  “The usual threats against a significant other. That’s been her modus operandi from the first.”

  “Don’t!” Kathleen yelled, spitting out each of the next words separately. “Don’t speak about me as if I wasn’t here.” She pointed the gun at all three in turn: Max, Temple, Matt.

  “You’ve always been here with us,” Matt said gently. “Nobody’s thought more about you, learned more about you, cared more about you, in a way, than anybody.”

  Kathleen paused, suspicious, but caught by the idea, a new way of looking at the lethal dance she’d involved them all in.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she sensed something moving. It was the black cat from outside, padding silently into the room. It walked over to a waist-high bookcase and lofted elegantly atop it, behind Kathleen.

  “Do you care about me?” Kathleen gibed, jerking the gun toward Temple.

  Temple considered, trying not to watch the second black cat silently entering and circling around behind Kathleen O’Connor to jump atop a desk. She adopted Matt’s steady, reasonable ton
e.

  “Max did, for a few days long ago. He remembered that only days ago. He loved you long ago in Northern Ireland. I don’t know if you’ve knocked that out of his memory again, if he isn’t dead. Matt has to love you, not personally, but because of his idiotically forgiving religious beliefs. Love the sinner, hate the sin. Me? Not so much.”

  Kathleen’s short breathy laugh almost made Temple jump more than the gun had. “Women don’t forgive. That’s our advantage. Men think they control everything, including us, so they can afford to condescend.”

  The third black cat moved in the same stately, silent manner into the room and circled all the way around to Kathleen’s left side.

  Temple risked a glance at Matt. He was trying not to stare at Kathleen’s gun-bearing arm. The weapon was pretty unnerving. In all her risky adventures, Temple had never been held at gunpoint like this. Fear had twisted her guts into a Celtic knot of anxiety.

  The subtle purposeful entrance of the cats had been calming. If Kitty the Cutter had been the second Darth Vader at Neon Nightmare, she’d know how much damage a coordinated pack of angry cats could do.

  But who were these cats, beyond the two she knew, Midnight Louise, the first in, and Midnight Louie, not present and accounted for? She recalled the eerie way she’d suddenly find Louie sitting beside her on the sofa, and notice him gone later, never suspecting he’d come or gone until he was just there. Or not.

  Matt tried to deflect Kathleen’s attention from Temple. “You haven’t found another razor,” he noted.

  Kathleen stared daggers at him, and the gun trembled in her tighter, angry grip.

  “Better you use a gun,” Matt said. “You can’t cut yourself with it, hurt yourself again.”

  That triggered some hesitancy. She licked her lips. Lifted her other palm to expose a dark slash, a long scab.

  The fourth black cat was shambling down the hall, limping but silent. Temple glimpsed ragged fur. It circled the chair directly behind Kathleen and leaped atop the opposite arm to stare balefully at the woman. Temple held her breath.

  She kept her eyes firmly away, but had an impression of a “cat from alley cat hell” expression. This was the nerviest cat present, and it was not Midnight Louie. Yet.