Forty-Five
FORTY-FIVE
Mia
“WHAT?” MY HEART sank. “You had Princess, but she’s gone? Was she adopted?” The idea of some stranger taking Princess was better than thinking that she was just gone forever, but it was still a huge blow. I didn’t think Emiel was even breathing.
“ No .” Mandy-the-shelter-liaison sounded regretful, and I braced for more bad news. “ As I’m sure Louisa told you, we don’t generally accept feral animals here. One of the volunteers at animal services made a special request, because the gray cat was young and looked as though someone had been taking care of her. He said she was having trouble adjusting to conditions at the center, but he thought she might calm down in a different environment .”
“Someone has been taking care of her!” I said, unable to keep my voice from rising. “My friend, while he was taming her!”
“ Yes ,” Mandy said, maintaining her calm. “ I can see this is an unfortunate situation all around, but we had no way of knowing the circumstances. I agreed to have the cat transferred here in hopes that she would be adoptable. However, I’m afraid she became increasingly aggressive toward the staff. There were multiple biting incidents .”
Sudden doubt assailed me. “Princess wouldn’t do that,” I said uncertainly. Maybe this wasn’t the right cat?
“Yes, she would,” Emiel said. He looked queasy... afraid in a way that he hadn’t looked when confronted with an underground fighting ring, or even a group of aggressive alpha gang members.
My shoulders slumped. “Okay, sorry. My friend says she might behave aggressively. Does that mean you sent her back to the pound?”
“ We returned her to St. Clair Animal Services, yes .” Mandy paused before continuing. “ Look... I won’t lie to you. The county shelter is over capacity, and it has been for as long as I’ve held this job. We remanded her on Friday, late enough in the day that it’s likely they kept her over the weekend. However, it’s less likely that she’ll still be there later today, if you take my meaning .”
I looked up at Emiel, desperation tightening my throat. “If you tell us where to go, we can leave right now.”
“ All right ,” Mandy said, as though making a decision. “ The situation isn’t as straightforward as it might sound, simply because the county doesn’t do animal adoptions directly. But once I get off the phone with you, I’m going to call the director and see if I can put a hold on... Princess, you said ?”
“Yes, that’s her name,” I replied, a glimmer of hope warring with the desperation.
“ Get to the shelter as quickly as you can without breaking any traffic laws. It’s not technically open to the public without an appointment—but tell them you’re meeting Dr. Mandy Kadakia about an emergency adoption. I’ll bring all the necessary paperwork to transfer her back to Gateway East, so we can process the adoption on our end .”
Emiel was already on his feet.
“Thank you,” I said, the words heartfelt. “What’s the address? We’ll leave immediately.”
I wrote it down, gave her our full names in return, and disconnected the call.
Zalen looked between us. “Go. Take the day off, Emiel. We’ve got things covered at the Hope Project.”
Emiel nodded. “I’ll drive. C’mon.”
I spared a half-second’s thought for my ratty T-shirt, yoga pants, and sleep-tousled hair before mentally saying fuck it . Emiel, like Zalen, was dressed professionally—Zalen had mentioned on Friday that they had some kind of investor meeting at ten a.m. today. Emiel would have to be respectable enough for both of us.
“Let me grab some shoes and my bag,” I said. “They may want to see I.D.”
As I was jogging back to join him, I briefly considered offering to drive, on the assumption that he was almost certainly more freaked out about the situation than I was. Then I remembered his absolute control behind the wheel of Luca’s Nissan while driving us to safety with a fresh concussion and cracked ribs.
I kept my mouth shut and followed him into the six-car garage, where his battered old-school Bronco sat parked and waiting. He opened the door for me without a word, then got behind the wheel and fired up the engine.
We... might have broken a few traffic laws after all, not that I was complaining.
My phone’s map insisted it would be a thirty-eight-minute drive. We arrived at the address in Belleville twenty-nine minutes after pulling out of the driveway in Ladue. It was a nicer area than I’d been expecting. The sprawling one-story brick building facing the street appeared modern and inviting, but I could just make out an institutional concrete addition hidden in the back.
Emiel pulled sloppily into a parking spot, and we were both out of the gray Ford in a flash. The main entrance had steel double doors, with a small but functional reception room inside. The receptionist was locked behind a thick glass window with a small slot at the bottom for passing paperwork back and forth.
I jogged up, abruptly self-conscious about looking like a sleep-deprived wreck, while my professionally dressed companion barely spoke to strangers in the normal course of things. Possibly, not stopping to change had been a tactical mistake on my part.
“Good morning,” I began gamely, preparing to brazen it out.
Emiel stepped up beside me, surprising me. “We’re here to meet Dr. Kadakia about an emergency adoption. Is she here yet?”
The young man gave us a polite smile. “I don’t believe so. Let me ask the day supervisor if he knows about this meeting. I’ll just be a moment.”
My fingers gripped the edge of the counter, because his response didn’t exactly inspire confidence. Especially when he was still gone five minutes later, leaving us poised at the security window with suppressed nerves.
“It’ll be okay,” I said, not certain if I was trying to reassure Emiel or myself.
“You don’t know that,” Emiel said in a low voice.
He sounded like a man who was bracing himself for the worst. I wanted so badly to reach out to him... to wrap my arms around one of his tree-trunk biceps and lean against him for comfort. I restrained the impulse, knowing that it would be a terrible intrusion for someone like him—but it was hard.
One of the front doors opened, letting in a breath of cool wind from outside. I turned to see a curvy woman in her thirties with olive skin and dark, short-cropped hair, carrying a manilla folder stuffed messily with papers under her arm.
“Dr. Kadakia?” I asked, mentally crossing my fingers.
She smiled with the air of someone who had a gazillion other things on her to-do list, but who’d deemed the current item more important than anything else. “Yes, that’s right. You must be Mr. Hamilton and Ms. Dimitriadis. Let’s see if we can get you reunited with your cat.”
I nodded with enthusiasm, hoping that meant she’d successfully put the brakes on Princess’s appointment with the feline executioner. “Yes, let’s.”
The receptionist chose that moment to come back with a gray-haired, stoop-shouldered man wearing a polo and khakis in tow.
“Here we go,” said the younger man. “I believe Mr. Schneider can get you sorted out.”
Mr. Schneider gave us a tired smile. “Morning, folks. Morning, Mandy. I got the call from the director just in time. It’s CF-83425 you’re after, right?”
“Morning, Bruce.” Mandy opened the manilla folder and checked a paper. “Yes, that’s right. Gray female, estimated nine months of age, no markings.”
The supervisor nodded. “Right, you can come on back. I’ve got one of the volunteers retrieving her from her cage. We’ll bring her to one of the introduction rooms so you can make sure it’s the right cat.”
Mandy led the way through the interior door leading into the depths of the building. Back here, the surroundings were cold and impersonal, like an old high school or a county jail. The smell of animal waste and disinfectant burned my sinuses. We went through a second door, and then a third.
“This way,” Mr. Schneider said, gesturing toward a room with the front wall made of glass. ‘Introduction Room #1’ was painted in black over the doorway.
An instant later, a shrieking yowl followed by a startled human yelp echoed from deeper in the maze of hallways.
Emiel let out a low, nearly inaudible growl. He was off like a shot before the others could so much as react. Instinct propelled me after him, even as the supervisor called, “Sir! Ma’am! Visitors aren’t allowed in the—”
I slipped through the door marked ‘Feline Wing’ that Emiel had thrown open, ducking in before it closed behind us. Somehow, Emiel was already halfway down the hall—not running, but eating up the distance in long strides. Another angry yowl reached me, louder now, and Emiel turned right at a junction, disappearing from view.
I charged after him, rounding the corner to find a startled teenage girl backed against the wall across from a line of dozens of cages. She was wearing heavy canvas gloves, and blood welled sluggishly from four parallel scratch marks on her cheek.
“Where is she?” Emiel demanded, the hint of an alpha bark in his tone making my skin tingle.
The young volunteer gaped at him for a moment. “She got away from me. I’m sorry, but who are you?”
Mandy and the supervisor hurried into view, taking in the scene.
“Mr. Schneider!” the volunteer said sheepishly. “I’m really sorry... I was reaching into her cage. Cats never get away from me, but she just freaked out and went for my face, and then—”
A low hiss came from the far end of the hall, where one of the ever-present doors formed a dead end.
“There she is,” the volunteer said in relief. “Hang on, I can catch her...”
Another low growl rumbled up from Emiel’s chest.
“No, let us do it,” I said quickly. “I know it’s irregular, but would the rest of you please just stay back?”
I glanced at Mandy and Mr. Schneider with a pleading look. Mandy hesitated, then nodded.
“Let them give it a try, Bruce,” she said. “That cat’s scared to death.”
The supervisor let out a sigh. “Yes, go ahead. But no one here breathes a word of this to the higher-ups, got it? It’s more than my job’s worth.”
The volunteer glanced between us and started taking off her heavy gloves. “Here, you’ll need these,” she began.
Emiel brushed past her without a word, heading for the far end of the hallway. “We’re here, Princess,” he said, dropping into a crouch. The gentleness in his voice brought tears to my eyes, and I had to bite my lip hard to hold them back. “Come on, beautiful. We’re going home.”
A slender gray shape detached from the shadowed corner. “ Mreow ?” Princess said—a tiny, tremulous noise that made my soul ache.
“It’s me.” There was an unaccustomed quaver beneath Emiel’s voice. “It’s all right. I’ve got you.”
Princess launched herself forward, scampering across the twenty feet or so separating them as though the hounds of Hell were chasing her. She leapt into Emiel’s arms, her claws digging into the shoulder of his suit jacket as she tried to hide her little body against his.
Emiel flopped backward under the impact, sitting down hard on his ass. His back was to us, but I saw his arms lift to cradle her close. A moment later, his head dropped forward, and his shoulders began to shake with silent tears as he nuzzled against Princess’s sleek gray fur.