Cat in the Flock (Dreamslippers Book 1)

by Lisa Brunette

  He walked over to his laptop, a silver MacBook Air perched on the granite countertop. They sat on his barstools, and he played a video for her.

  "This is one of my missions," he said. "One that aborted. This is classified, so I'm going to show you, but if anyone asks, you never saw it." She looked to see if he was putting her on, but he was dead serious.

  It was grainy aerial footage of several Rangers sneaking into a compound from different entrances.

  "See those guys?" he asked, pointing to a group of hooded Iraqis on a high wall, unguarded. It was clear the approaching Rangers hadn't counted on them being there.

  "We get the call to withdraw," he continued. On-screen, the Rangers backtracked as quickly as they could.

  "Wait for it..." he said. For a couple of tense seconds, the Rangers cleared, and the Iraqis held position.

  "Now." Cat watched as an airstrike from above, seeming to come from the same aerial position from which the video was being shot, obliterated the entire compound.

  Cat was still holding her breath. She let it out slowly, watching the debris on the screen settle.

  "Those people I just saw," she murmured. "They're gone."

  "Yes," he said. "They were the enemy."

  She sat there, her desire for Lee mingling with anxiety and the sinking realization of just how much she'd taken on by agreeing to go with him tonight.

  "This is what I do with my life, Cat," he explained, his hands reaching for hers, which were poised on her knees as she sat on the barstool. He stood, letting go of her hands again.

  "What do you want?" she whispered.

  He smiled, his hand reaching up to caress her face. "Right now, I just want to do this," he replied. "Later, I will want to do more. And after that, Kitty Cat, I have no idea."

  It was his old nickname for her. Kitty Cat, please come back. He used to say that at the end of the summer, when she told him good-bye. For a moment she teetered on the edge of a decision, to go or stay. This was her Lee, the one she used to run around Seattle Center with, playing in the bowl fountain, each of them trying to time a run through the bowl so as not to get doused with water in the next spray. She remembered the feel of his hand in hers the summer she was sixteen, how they both knew he was joining the army in the fall and it would be their last summer together. It seemed he held her hand constantly, clutched it tightly, as if he didn't want to ever let go.

  He was still her Lee, no matter what life had thrown at him. She would stay.

  He opened a bottle of red wine, poured two glasses, turned on the gas fireplace, and motioned for her to sit—between his legs. He then proceeded to give her a deep massage. As if some kind of expert, he worked out a kink in her right shoulder that had been bothering her for weeks. The top of her cocktail dress was in his way, and he said, "Let's take this off." She let him unzip the top, but left her strapless bra on. He unclasped it, letting it fall to the floor. Cat felt the warmth of the fire on her breasts, his hands on her back, and then his hands delicately tracing her nipples.

  "So beautiful," he said, breathing heavily. She could feel him hard against her back. "You're stunning, Cat. You always were."

  Cat had always felt she'd been shortchanged in the bosom department. She grew to an A cup at sixteen and never grew any larger. But she'd learned in college that plenty of men liked small breasts. "A mouthful," said one. "Pert and perfect," claimed another.

  She was so turned on she felt woozy. His hands on her breasts grew more insistent, pinching her nipples till she cried out. "Let's go to the bedroom," Lee offered, and she answered, "Yes."

  His condo was two stories, his bedroom on the second floor. Her cocktail dress was still unzipped, but she held it around her. He took her hands and motioned for her to let go of the dress.

  "Leave this here," he said. "I want to watch you walk up." He smacked her butt lightly as she moved in front of him. She was wearing nothing but a black thong bikini now, and she walked up those stairs and right into that man's life.

  Chapter 5

  Cat was in a grocery store. She could smell the rotisserie chicken wafting over from the deli, and in front of her was a giant display of olives, with a sign hawking "two for one." But something was wrong. There was a gun in her hands, a military semi-automatic. Lee would probably carry a gun like that, she thought, and then she realized she was Lee. Those were his feet she was looking at, his size eleven combat boots. They were covered in dust.

  There were other people in the store: moms and dads with kids sitting in carts, young single hipsters carrying grocery baskets, elderly women with their coupon books out in front of them. Cat felt a need to protect them all, to not let the evil in the world touch them. But it was as if they couldn't see her. They went about their shopping, oblivious to her mission.

  She knew the insurgents were there, hiding. She turned a corner cautiously, heading down the frozen food aisle. There was one of them, the enemy, behind a shopping cart where a little girl in a yellow sundress played cat's cradle with yarn between her hands. Her mother had gone to the next aisle to pick up something she'd forgotten.

  It's just like a hajji to use a kid for a shield, said a voice in Cat's head. It was Lee's. Hearing his voice jarred her. She thought of what Granny Grace said about meditating on the places where she and Lee were connected and trying to see space between them. She tried it, but all she could get was the feeling of being stuck inside Lee's body.

  Lee withdrew to another aisle. S/he caught a glimpse of herself/himself in the reflection on a glass door. There was his strong jaw, his slightly off-kilter nose. Peel away from that, she thought, trying to see herself as Cat, and he as Lee, to sort of "pop" herself out of him. It didn't work. She doubled back, and there was the man he called a hajji, lobbing a grenade at her. It exploded over her left shoulder. She could feel the debris hitting the side of her head in a million shards of pain. Her left ear felt wet from her own blood. And then the sound in her ear went dead, giving her head a lopsided feel. She blacked out, falling to the ground. Before she hit the floor, she woke up.

  Next to her was Lee, crying out and flailing. "No!" he yelled. "He's getting away!"

  She shook him till he woke. His eyes were full of fear, pain, and anger, as if he were still in the dream. Some dreams were so real, she knew, they were hard to leave behind.

  "Lee," she said. "It's okay. You're home. I'm here." She wrapped her arms around him and stroked his back, murmuring, "It's okay, it's okay." He moaned.

  He finally regained his composure and sat up with a start, reaching for his left ear. His hearing aid was on the nightstand beside him. He had surreptitiously taken it off before getting into bed with her last night. He pulled his hand away from his ear as if expecting to see blood. Then he rubbed his ear as if it ached. He took a deep breath, shook his head, and said, "I'm sorry about all that."

  "You don't have to apologize," she responded, sitting up and stroking his chest. "It's totally understandable."

  "What's understandable?" he asked, stilling her hand as if her touch were suddenly too much for him. "Having a nightmare?"

  "Uh... nothing," she mumbled, taking her hand away. This was certainly no time to reveal her dreamslipping talent, if there ever was a time. "Yeah, having a nightmare. Everyone gets them."

  "You mean everyone who's been to war," he shot back. "Look, it was just a silly dream. I thought I was on a roller coaster and fell off."

  "Uh-huh. Sure."

  "I don't believe in all that shellshock BS," he insisted. "That's for weak-minded guys who never should have signed up in the first place." He was angry and shaking a bit.

  "Okay, Lee," she said, reaching out to him. "Okay."

  A few hours later, she was back at Granny Grace's. Lee had held her hand the whole drive home, but they spoke little. When he dropped her off, he got out of the car to say a proper good-bye before she hiked up the set of steep steps to Granny Grace's front door. He took her in his arms for a warm hug and sweet kiss. Then he took her h
ands.

  "I'm going to Virginia for a training session," he said. "I'll be gone for a couple weeks." Cat felt her heart bottom out, which surprised her, since she would likewise be preoccupied for the next couple weeks for sure with her new case. He continued, "But I want to see you when I get back."

  "I'd like that, too," she agreed, squeezing his hands.

  She went directly to the Grand Green Griffin in walk-of-shame style, even though at twenty-two she was entirely too old to feel as if she needed to be ashamed of sleeping with someone. She knew Granny Grace would be tactful and respectful, as she always had been. Her grandmother was much more liberal about Cat's sex life than her own mother had been. When Cat lost her virginity at sixteen, her mother's knee-jerk response was, "Well, you give it away pretty easily." The comment had cut Cat to the core.

  Cat traded her bedraggled cocktail dress for yoga pants and a hoodie and lay down on her four-poster bed. She ran over the evening, savoring every detail. Lee had been... amazing. He was gentle when she needed him to be and take-charge when she needed that, too. Their sex had been suffused with passion, long moments staring into each other's eyes, and for her, more climaxes than she could count on one hand.

  Granny Grace appeared in her doorway inquiring about breakfast, but Cat told her she wasn't hungry. Lee had cooked for her, scrambled eggs and toast. And now she had the day off, and she looked forward to doing absolutely nothing.

  Granny Grace walked over to her dresser and set the unwanted tray of food on top of it.

  "I'm glad to hear that your doughboy made you breakfast," she remarked with a wry smile. "It's the least he could do."

  Cat snorted at the word "doughboy."

  "I'm not here to pry," Granny Grace said. "I had my own fun last night."

  "Mr. All-for-the-Birds?"

  "The same."

  "So how much fun did you have?"

  "Let's just say that the longliners have good equipment."

  Cat laughed at her grandmother's characteristic brazenness. "Granny Grace! He's not still here, is he?"

  "Oh, God, no," she replied. "Men are like strays. Invite them in and feed them, and they never leave."

  "You're terrible!" Cat joked, lobbing a pillow at her.

  "Pot calling the kettle black!" her grandmother retorted. "Or are you and Sergeant Swift planning nuptials?"

  Granny Grace bent down to pick up the pillow and noticed something else on the floor, saving Cat from a complicated reply about how she didn't see Lee as a one-night stand but couldn't think of herself as a military wife either.

  "What's this?" her grandmother asked. It was the doll that Cat had found in the condo. "Is this the doll you mentioned at the party last night?"

  Cat sat up. "Yeah. It must have fallen off the bed."

  Her grandmother had the doll in her hands, its dress flipped up over its head as a result of getting kicked around on the floor. "Oh!" she exclaimed, her face suddenly alarmed. She sat down on the edge of the bed and held out the doll to Cat. "Have you seen this?"

  Someone had taken a ballpoint pen and scribbled so hard between the doll's legs that the pen had actually ripped through the cotton.

  "No," she said. They both sat there looking at it for a minute.

  "That's not good," Cat said.

  "No, it's probably not," agreed Granny Grace. "But... we need more information."

  "And I'm going to get it," Cat affirmed. "I'm officially on the case. Did Dave and Simon tell you? They're my first clients."

  "Those devils!" Granny Grace replied. "They didn't even mention it." She grinned ear to ear. Then she turned serious. "We'll have to move more quickly on our plans than we thought. I'll have to formally reopen my practice. You'll have to be my employee."

  This was something they had talked about before Cat had taken the job as security guard. In Washington State, Cat needed three years of experience to get her license or pass a test that she wasn't quite ready for and for which there was no manual. Passing it required knowledge of city, state, and federal laws and codes, the study of which had put her to sleep on the airplane.

  "With the amount Simon and Dave gave you and your own savings, can you get bonded?"

  Cat had already thought all of this through and was ready with the answer. "I have just enough, Granny Grace. It'll wipe out my savings, but it's just enough."

  "You don't have to do this, Cat," she said. "We can wait. There's no rush."

  "I'm ready, Granny. I don't want to wait. This is what I saved the money for, and with the five thousand match from Dave and Simon, it's all coming together. I want to do this."

  Her grandmother smiled again ear to ear. "Now tell me everything that's happened in that condo building."

  Cat told her about the break-in, the noises she heard, the doll. She also recounted the strange gosling dream.

  "There's something going on there," observed her grandmother. "It's not tweakers. It's not just kids playing around. There's something going on."

  Her grandmother's reaction echoed her own gut instinct on the matter. But here she was with a day off, and for now she wanted to lie around and do nothing.

  "I'm glad you're already in your yoga clothes," Granny Grace said suddenly, brightening. "It's time for class."

  "Noooooo," Cat groaned. "Can't I just hang out today?"

  "You tell me, Cat. How was it over at Lee's? Did you dream with him? How'd that go?"

  "I couldn't separate my mind from his," she confessed.

  "Well, that might have something to do with not being able to separate yourself from his body, but maybe it's time to still the monkey chatter, eh?"

  Cat could hardly argue.

  Her grandmother was a star student and insisted on setting up in the front of the studio, a tall-ceilinged room painted orange, with skylights. "The energy is more powerful here," she said. "Plus, I have an unobstructed view of my drishti." She liked to stare at the center of a mural with a spiral in the middle and symbols for each of the world's major religions on the periphery—a cross for Christianity, a crescent for Islam, a Star of David for Judaism, a wheel for Buddhism, a yin-yang for Taoism, and the Hindu word for om.

  This teacher was less woo-woo than some of the others, sparing them the talk about universal oneness that made Cat want to roll her eyes. But instead of getting right into the yoga, she started the class with meditation, and Cat had to fight the urge to leave. "Think of a time when you were a child and you felt completely at peace," the instructor intoned. Cat immediately thought of the pool in the apartment complex where her family lived when she was only four. She had a Styrofoam floatie that her mother would strap to her back, and she'd paddle around the pool all day long.

  She took deep ujjayi breaths, as she'd been taught, and she felt much more at peace than she had in previous classes. She forgot about her back and hips, the discomfort of sitting cross-legged. She experienced the details of the pool with such clarity that it startled her: the smell of chlorine, the hum of the pool filter, a long-handled pool net, rusty around the rim. She felt her little girl's body, tiny and sharp under the water. She looked at her tanned hands, the little white half circles in her nails. Her fingers were pruned.

  She lay back in the pool and let her spirit float up, out of her own body, toward the sun... And then she felt fear. She was falling. Her eyes jerked open. Her breathing quickened. She was sweating.

  "Are you okay?" It was the teacher, crouched down beside her mat, whispering.

  Cat nodded, going back to her breath. A long, slow breath in, her tongue relaxed, a reedy sound in the back of her throat. And then a long, slow breath out, through her nose.

  She focused on the religious harmony mural in front of her. Because of the angle of the sun coming through the skylight above, the gold paint on the cross glinted in the light. Cat thought in that moment something that surprised her.

  She missed going to church.

  She had attended church with her family all her life. She'd gone to a Catholic university
in the city where she grew up, and she'd often gone to mass with the students there; there was a very popular midnight mass on Sundays for students returning to campus for the week. She didn't consider herself anywhere near as devout as her mother, who could be found at the cathedral several days each week, involved in one activity or another, but Cat had found comfort there. She thought she could give it up, at least for the time being, since Granny Grace found little solace in Western religion, but maybe she couldn't. Maybe Cat needed it.

  After class, they were having tea and rice-flour muffins at a little shop Granny Grace liked to frequent.

  "So how was that?" her grandmother asked her. "I heard you get a little emotional."

  She told her about the pool memory and of floating up and then falling.

  "Ah, yes," said her grandmother. "Your ego finally surrendered."

  "I think something's missing in my practice," Cat countered.

  "Oh?" said Granny Grace. "Well, I was hoping to try tai chi next week."

  "No. That's not what I need." Cat realized that sounded too harsh. "What I mean is, yeah, I'm happy to try tai chi, but I think we're missing the obvious."

  Granny Grace looked at her quizzically.

  "I'm Catholic, Granny Grace," Cat said. "In case you hadn't noticed."

  "Well, but that's just your mother's doing. Now that you're an adult, you can follow your own path—"

  Cat interrupted her. "Exactly. Now that I'm an adult, I can follow my own path. Not my mother's. But not yours, either."

  Her grandmother looked taken aback. There was a long silence in which she regarded the tea leaves floating at the bottom of the pot in front of them.

  "Do you still want my help?" Granny Grace asked, raising her hard eyes to meet Cat's.

  Cat sighed and took her grandmother's hand. "Of course I do. I need your help more than ever now. But I need to bring some of my old life along on the journey."

  Her grandmother's eyes softened. She squeezed Cat's hand. "You'll have to do all the integration on your own," she said. "The pope and I parted ways a long time ago. I have no intention of going back."