But his timing was off, Vic stepped aside, hit him a glancing blow across the head. When he tried to break his fall, clutching at loose rocks, Vic kicked him hard. He went flat, didn’t move again, lay bleeding onto the blacktop. Stepping around him, Vic saw Birely looking out at him, helpless and pleading.
He’d thought to leave Birely, the guy was already half dead, but some stupid softness touched him, he couldn’t leave the dumb bastard. “Hoist yourself out of there, Birely.” He didn’t wait to see if Birely could get out, he headed on past the old man, who was bleeding bad now, past the turned-over truck and across the rockfall toward the Lincoln. He heard Birely struggling behind him, groaning as he tried to free himself. Hell, he wasn’t jammed in there that tight, he could get out if he tried.
Approaching the driver’s side of the Lincoln, Vic saw that the bumper was knocked loose on one end. It wasn’t low enough yet to drag and make a racket, he’d find something to tie it in place. He didn’t see much else wrong, he just hoped to hell the other side wasn’t bashed in or that the other wheel wasn’t bent. The passenger door hung open, the interior lights on. The woman sat holding her left arm, the damn cat still in her lap. He could see the keys in the ignition. He stood by the hood, watching her, holding the tire iron low and out of sight.
KIT WATCHED HIM approach, the thud of his steps timed to the rhythm of the breaking waves. He paused by the hood of the car, and frantically she nudged Lucinda, her nose against Lucinda’s ear. “Get out,” she whispered, “get away. Now, Lucinda! Move!”
Slowly Lucinda climbed out, unsteady on her feet, shaking her head as if to clear it, cradling her hurt arm.
“Hurry,” Kit hissed.
“I can’t, I can’t move faster.”
The man stood watching. Can he hear me? Kit thought. So screw him. “You can!” she hissed, her fur bristling. “Run, Lucinda. Run!” her voice more hiss than whisper.
He stepped to the car, blocking Lucinda. Lucinda grabbed Kit with her good hand, catching her breath with the pain. She twisted awkwardly, threw Kit as far as she could, out toward the rock slide. “Run, Kit! Run!” Kit landed on rubble, spun around and leaped atop the car. Lucinda had turned, reaching in. She backed out holding the big flashlight where he might not see it. When he grabbed for her, she swung.
But again he was faster, he snatched her hand, jerked the flashlight from her, shoved her down against the fallen rocks. Kit leaped on him, landed in his face clawing and raking him. Lucinda rose awkwardly, turned, kicked him in the shin then in the front of the knee. He swung the tire iron hard across her shoulder, shoved her down again as Kit rode his back, clawing. He grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, swinging her out away from him. When she bit down hard on his arm, he threw her against the car. She tried to run, but staggered dizzily. Sick and confused, she backed away among the fallen rocks. He was a hard-muscled man, his arms brown and knotted and tasted unwashed. Long hair hanging down his back, dishwater brown, a short scraggly beard oozing blood where her claws had raked. Ice-blue eyes, cold and pale. He had moved around the Lincoln to the driver’s side when, across the slide, she heard a car door open.
The passenger in the pickup staggered out. A small man with short brown hair, his face and plaid shirt slick with blood, his nose running blood. He came slowly across the rock pile, stumbling uncertainly, breathing through his mouth, wiping at the blood that ran from his nose. The man with the tire iron got in the Lincoln. “Get a move on, Birely.” He started the engine, gunned it, paying no attention to Lucinda sprawled so near the front wheels. His friend stumbled on across, falling on loose rocks, clutching at the larger boulders, stepping over Lucinda as if she were another rock. Edging around the Lincoln, he crawled awkwardly into the passenger seat. The driver pushed the engine to a roar. Kit ran to Lucinda, Lucinda grabbed her and rolled away as he backed around narrowly missing them. He took off in a shower of rocks, heading fast down the mountain on the twisting two-lane.
ALONE AMONG THE wreck with only a dead man to keep them company, Kit and Lucinda huddled together trembling with rage. Against the rhythm of the waves came the metallic ticks of the two wrecked trucks, settling more solidly into the highway. From higher up the mountain among the pine forest, a lone coyote began to yip.
“Cops will be here soon,” Kit said, “and an ambulance.”
“I’m fine,” Lucinda told her. “Go to Pedric. Go and see to Pedric.” Her color was gray. She held her left shoulder unnaturally, and her left arm hung limp. Kit pressed a soft paw against Lucinda’s wrinkled cheek, pressed her face to Lucinda’s jugular, listening. Lucinda’s heartbeat was too rapid, faster even than Kit’s own feline rhythm. She pawed into her housemate’s jacket pocket, careful not to touch Lucinda’s arm or shoulder, searching for Lucinda’s phone. It seemed forever ago that Pedric had called 911, but she couldn’t hear even the faintest sound of sirens down on the flatland, could see no flashing emergency lights below approaching up the two-lane, no one to help them. The shushing of the sea, with its eons-old assurance that all was well, that all of importance in the world would last forever, didn’t comfort her much. She thought about a car coming down the mountain from above moving too fast as those trucks had done, the driver ignorant of the wreck ahead, not yet seeing the lone and disembodied headlight shooting up the rock slide. How far could such a light be seen, on that curving road? With no flares to mark the wreck, would an approaching car stop to help or would it crash into them? She found the phone, and before she raced to Pedric, she hit the key for 911.
She had no notion where central dispatch was located for these small coastal towns north of Molena Point, and she didn’t know if they could track a cell phone. Some areas could, and some didn’t have that equipment. When a woman dispatcher came on, Kit gave directions as best she could. She said Pedric had called earlier but that no one had come. She was so afraid of another car plowing into them that she was nearly yowling into the phone, her frightened words not much better than the scream of a common alley cat. “Hurry! Oh, please hurry . . . They’ve stolen our car, a black Lincoln Town Car, could you watch for it? Put out a BOL on it? Two men in it, one hurt bad.” She described the men as best she could, all the while thinking about the treasure hidden in the doors of the Lincoln, wondering how soon the thieves would find that. The wealth was of no consequence, compared to her hurt housemates, but it enraged her to see it stolen. Clicking off, she stood looking down the highway wondering if, alone, she could drag Lucinda off the road and up among the boulders, safe from an oncoming car? Drag Pedric up, too, get them both higher up, away from further danger? When the dispatcher asked for her name, she said, “Lucinda Greenlaw. My husband’s hurt, the man who took our car beat him.” When the dispatcher told her to stay on the line, Kit laid the phone down, set her teeth firmly in Lucinda’s jacket on her unhurt side, and began to pull. She could do this, she had to do this. Maybe the loose rocks beneath Lucinda would serve as a kind of rolling platform. Straining to get Lucinda up onto them, she fought as she had never fought, every muscle of her small cat body taut and stretched, crying out, her paws scrabbling for traction until her pads tore and became slick with blood that made her slip and slide. Lucinda tried to help, tried to roll with her, tried twice to get up but fell back, sweating with pain.