“He’s getting soft,” Harper said, coming in. “You behave like this around those two old pointers of yours, they’ll pack up and move out.”
On the center cushion of the leather couch, Joe Grey washed his shoulder with deep concentration. He had to admit, he’d done a number on Garza. The guy was becoming almost civilized, turning into a regular cat fancier. For this, the tomcat had to congratulate himself. He had, very smoothly, charmed the department’s upper echelon, while all the time maintaining a persona of simple-minded feline innocence. And as he lay purring and dozing beside Detective Garza, Joe realized he was smack in the middle of a major departmental planning session.
The confidential discussion he was witnessing was a brainstorming, nuts-and-bolts logistical plan of action, as the three officers laid out departmental strategy for handling a really big jewel heist-maybe the biggest jewel burglary this village had ever witnessed.
If their information was good. This wasn’t intelligence that Joe or Dulcie had provided; Joe listened with curiosity and with rising anger. Why was it that the small, lovely village attracted these hoods? Why couldn’t they leave Molena Point alone, go somewhere else to make trouble!
Well, but there was money here. Plenty of money. Movie stars; executive types coming down for conferences and for their brainstorming getaways; upscale tourists. And when the Colombian gangs in L.A. had discovered Molena Point and put the village on their thieving roster, every crook in California tried to copycat them. Didn’t matter that Molena Point had one of the finest small departments in the country-with a little help undercover, Joe thought modestly-every sleazy no-good thought he could beat the odds.
Davis said, “Doesn’t seem possible that L.A. bunch would undertake this kind of operation, after they messed up so badly down there.”
Dallas shrugged.
“Maybe not possible they candoit,” Harper said. “But given their past attempts, I’d say it’s way possible they’ll try, that they think they can pull it off.”
“Big dreams, short on brains,” Davis said.
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Max said. “They’ve pulled a few good ones. And with Dufio out of the way�”
They were quiet a moment. “You think they killed him?” Davis said.
Max refilled his coffee cup from the pot Davis had set on the coffee table. “We should have the ballistics, end of the week. I’d give a month’s salary to get my hands on the gun.”
“One thing sure,” Dallas said. “The oak tree bark, outside his cell window, doesn’t pick up prints worth a damn. But we have a nice collection of fibers.”
In spite of himself, Joe felt his ears go rigid with interest. It took all his effort to keep his head down and appear to doze. With Garza on his right and Harper on his left and Juana looking straight at him from behind her desk, it was almost impossible not to stare from one speaker to the other like a spectator at a tennis match.
He could see Harper’s notes, though. He was only a foot from the clipboard that Max balanced against his crossed leg, from the chief’s bold handwriting. And he had a front-row view of the map that Dallas had laid out on the coffee table. Rising to rub against Harper’s knee, he took a closer look at the map, getting a strong, pleasant whiff of Harper’s horses.
Harper had marked twelve jewelry stores on the map, and five other upscale shops. He had noted, beside each, the store name, the opening and closing times and the names of the owners. Every officer, even the rookies, would have all the information at hand-every officer and one tomcat. Joe concentrated as hard as he could to set the layout clearly in mind. He wished Kit were there; with her photographic memory, she’d have the diagram down cold.
Through narrowly shuttered eyes, he studied Harper’s notes, which included hidden video cameras both inside and outside the targeted stores, several still photographers and a team of officers hidden near each location-in one huge departmental sting. A sting that would employ not only every officer in the department-no one off duty or on leave-but a dozen or more men Harper would borrow from surrounding districts up and down the coast.
“Have them down here in time to get familiar with the layout. Billet them among us.”
Dallas said, “I can take four comfortably, more if needed.”
“Two, maximum,” Davis said. She had, a little over a year ago, sold her house and moved into a small condo. Harper said he and Charlie could take the rest. “Ryan should have the upstairs finished by then-finished enough.”
“Maybe not a shot fired,” Garza said hopefully. “Not a piece of jewelry unaccounted for.”
“If we’re lucky,” Harper said tightly. “Don’t count your chickens.”
“Jewelry stores still happy with their plan?” Juana asked.
Max nodded. “They’ve already collected every piece of faux jewelry they could lay hands on. This whole thing makes me edgy, it’s too pat. The fact that we have a specific date, specific hits� If our intelligence is valid.”
Joe closed his eyes so he wouldn’t stare at the chief. What intelligence? These guys were talking about things that neither he nor Dulcie were aware of. Nor the Kit, surely. Who was passing information to the department? Andwasit good information?
Or was someone playing snitch, meaning to double-cross the cops? His anger at that made his claws want to knead into the leather cushion. Hastily he shifted position, scratching a nonexistent flea. These officers thought their information was coming from their regular snitches, and they could be walking into a trap, being set up big-time. Joe’s heart was pounding so hard he thought Harper and Dallas must hear it or notice its hammering blows right through his fur. He closed his eyes, trying to get a grip.
Juana said, “This snitch has never let us down. Without her, we wouldn’t have a clue. If she’s setting us up�”
She? She, who? Dulcie hadn’t made those calls. Kit had made a couple of calls when she spotted Chichi spying. But did she have all this other information, that Luis planned to hit all the stores at once? As far as Joe knew, Kit hadn’t been privy to any one specified time and date. Unless she hadn’t told them-hadn’t had time to tell them?
Had Kit learned this and called Harper while they were locked up? And in her panic to save them and to help the ferals escape, she hadn’t thought to tell them?
It was earlier that morning, long before dawn, when Kit woke in the dark in the branches of the pine tree and thought about Luis chasing them and about his dead brother Hernando. She looked over at her three sleeping companions and shivered and was hungry again and lonely and didn’t know whether to go home or to keep running with them, didn’t know what she wanted. Didn’t know if they would search for their clowder and their cold-hearted leader and return to that miserable life, or if they would go off on their own, asshewanted, just the four of them, and start their own clowder and be free of Stone Eye? Or defy him, battle him, run from him forever?
Was that what she wanted? This morning she wasn’t sure, she didn’t know. But a voice inside whispered, “Lucinda and Pedric love you. You will hurt them terribly if you don’t go back.”
Crouching in the pine boughs shivering from exhaustion and cold and the effects of fear, Kit wanted to run on across the open hills forever and she wanted to return to Lucinda and Pedric, to her human friends, to human civilization with all its faults and goodness. To her own dear Dulcie and Joe, to Wilma and Clyde and Charlie and all her human family, to a life so layered in richness and the mysteries of humankind that she would never truly learn it all.
She wanted both. Wanted everything. Crouched miserably among the branches, she might never have known what she wanted if she hadn’t grown thirsty and backed down the tall trunk to find a drink of water-and come face to face with Stone Eye.
She dropped the last six feet into the soft cover of pine needles smelling the scent of water on the wind and there he stood on a fallen log. Watching her. Stone Eye. Broad of head and shoulder, heavy of muscle, ragged of ear. His eyes blazed with rage, his fangs were bared. He looked up into the pines where Willow and Coyote and Cotton slept, and he snarled with fury. As if they had purposely escaped him, had defied him and intentionally run away. And as he closed on Kit lifting his knifelike claws to strike, Kit ran.