3. Chapter 3
Chapter 3
BERNIE
T he scent of animal sweat and faint ammonia slapped my nose as heavily as fresh blood from a body. The dark wood walls were lined with pictures and advertisements to the right, while the left side had a large window with cages of cats on the other side of the glass.
Raiden scurried across the cement floor and stopped at the C-shaped reception desk, tapping a small bell. Scattered on the top of the speckled countertop were stacks of papers advertising animal programs and other local news. A few cups full of pens with little flowers tied to the top were littered about the chaos. The humming of the two outdated computer screens facing empty chairs on the other side of the desk was drowned out by the bellowing noises of animals through the hallways on either side of the desk.
“Be there in just a moment!” a powerful but gentle female voice danced out from the back .
Raiden wandered away from the desk as I meandered over to the glass window. Stepping between a couple of metal chairs, I gazed at the variety of cats. They all lounged in their boxes.
Except for one.
One cat who looked different from the rest, maybe a year old or so, continually whacked at a string dangling from the top of her kennel. There was nothing in the world that could’ve forced me to pull my eyes away from this… animal. Ripped pieces of cloth were strewn chaotically about her box, and the kitty litter in one corner was about the only thing that did not look like a hurricane had passed through.
Suddenly, the cat whipped her head toward me, massive green eyes widening upon contact. There was not a single hair on her body. Not a single whisker graced her nose. Gray and pink skin covered the entire cat with eyes too big for her body and ears that stood straight up.
Moss-colored eyes remained locked onto mine.
My lip curled in shock. “The fuck is that thing?”
“That thing is a Sphinx. A breed of cat,” the same woman’s voice hissed at me.
“Ignore my brother, Katalina,” Raiden exclaimed.
“How many times do I have to tell you it’s just Kat?” she replied lightly.
I wanted to spin around and apologize, but the cat continued to stare. And I couldn’t pull myself away from such a strange and unusual sight. Hunching forward as if she was ready to pounce, her shoulders rippled beneath her skin and a shudder danced down my spine at how each muscle rocked so visibly beneath her gray hue.
“Damn,” I muttered again. The only word that managed to slip through my lips.
“Are you sure you’re related to him?” Kat whispered loudly at my brother.
Ripping my eyes away from the hypnotic lock of the cat, I faced the worker who stood behind the reception desk. A grungy T-shirt hung from her shoulders, her brown hair a frizzy mess pulled up into a high ponytail. Such a disheveled look that I couldn’t help the crooked smile from rising on my lips.
Her blue eyes widened with shock before annoyance slipped across soft features that seemed hazily familiar. As if I’d once crossed paths with her. Throwing a hand on her curvy hip, she pursed her lips.
“You,” she hissed.
Raiden shot a glance at me, confusion twitching his eyes.
I pulled my brows together. “I’m sorry, do we know each other?”
There was something tugging at the back of my mind, screaming at me that we did, but I couldn’t place where or when we’d met. And I normally never forgot faces. I definitely wouldn’t have forgotten hers with those bright, round eyes and short, voluptuous figure.
She shook her head, strands of her hair billowing around her face. “Of course you wouldn’t remember. You were such an ass, and your entire group was disrespectfully loud.”
Raiden’s mouth fell open.
“I was an ass? To you specifically?” I asked. A sharp meow chattered from behind me, and I whipped around, adrenaline surging through me on high alert. The cat lunged forward, slapping the glass separating it from me.
Kat chuckled. “Even Muffin agrees with me.”
“Muffin?” I blurted out, turning back around to face Kat.
She cocked a brow and nodded. “She has a name.”
“Well, obviously,” I grumbled. What the fuck had I done to piss this woman off?
“Sooooo,” Raiden interjected and stepped forward. “About the dog?”
“Right,” she said, slicing a glare at me, and then glanced down at the computer. Keys clacking slipped amongst the howling of dogs and chatter of cats.
Wheels spun in the back of my mind, desperately seeking the key to the information locked away. Where had I met her before? Where had our paths crossed? And what group?
“Wait a fucking minute,” I muttered and marched up to Raiden’s side. “The group you’re talking about. There were five guys and—”
“One woman. Yeah. She seemed as crude as the rest of you,” Kat shortly said, not looking up from the computer.
“Let it go,” Raiden whispered through the side of his mouth, admonishing me before I’d had a chance to respond. Once again acting like the mature adult here that I should’ve been.
“Arlington,” I stated, ignoring my little brother with a gentle push against his cheek.
“Yeah. I had just united some emotional support dogs with their new veteran owners and walked into that bar with Emma where you jerks were,” she replied, pausing as she raised her eyes .
“I was rather drunk, so I apologize for whatever I did,” I politely said.
She blew air out of her lips, annoyance pulling them into a frown. “Why does that not surprise me? The least you could’ve done is have respect for those who died giving you the freedom to get that black-out drunk, considering you were at a military bar of all places, Bottle Cap. But instead, you were loud-mouthed, and your entire group made all of these disgusting, crude jokes about death.”
Raiden’s eyes widened. “Kat, I know—”
“Bottle Cap? Did you just call me Bottle Cap?” I asked, shooting a silencing glare at Raiden.
She didn’t know. There was no need for me to explain either; this wasn’t the time nor place, seeing as whatever I’d done had clearly offended her.
“Yes, I did. You seriously don’t remember anything from that night, do you?” She inhaled deeply and briefly closed her eyes. Thick, long lashes fluttered over her eyes, a stark contrast to the golden hue of her skin that spent hours outdoors.
“I remember getting to the bar, but as time went on, things became rather… fuzzy.” I picked up my ball cap and ran my fingers through my hair as her gaze returned to mine.
“I don’t know why I expected an apology. I know your type,” she grumbled and returned to the computer. My blood rose, boiling within my veins, and I slammed my hat back down on my head.
“My type? The hell you mean by my ‘type’?” I snapped. Why the fuck was this woman getting under my skin like this?
“Please stop arguing!” Raiden slammed his hands against the counter in front of him. Both Kat and I froze, looking at the teenager. “Please! First off, Kat, Bernie was in Arlington for—”
“Raiden,” I hissed beneath my breath. “She doesn’t need to know. Just buy your damn dog and let’s get out of here.”
“Classic. An asshole to his little brother as much as he is and was to me. You need an attitude adjustment. Maybe I should’ve saved one of those emotional support dogs for you,” Kat snarled in response, glaring at me as her cheeks turned a bright red.
“Maybe you fucking should have! Maybe then I would know what I did to piss you the hell off!”
“Or don’t get so drunk that you can’t remember what happened!”
“Maybe I wanted to forget what happened!”
“Why would you want to forget hanging out with people you clearly find hilarious?”
“Because we’d just fucking buried him, damn it!” I threw my hands in the air, my heart pumping as hard as if I’d just raced out of a building about to explode. “Because we’d just buried him,” I muttered again, slamming my mouth shut and clenching my fists.
Her eyes widened, every feature on her face softening as she leaned away from the desk she’d braced against. “You… You what? You buried who?” she whispered.
Running my hands over my chin, I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. What else does Raiden need to get this dog?” I was over this shit. I wanted out of here and back to a world where I owed no one a damn thing .
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, staring at me. The clock on the wall ticked steadily onward, plunking with each silent moment passing. The rising barking of dogs in the back mixed loudly with the meowing of that strange cat who grew more and more restless in her box.
Kat’s gaze flickered to my little brother standing quietly beside me as he placed a wad of cash on the counter, and then she looked back at me. “Just an adult to sign off on this. So, your ID, and then I can go get Matrix.”
Every muscle in my body turned to stone. My heart wedged itself into my throat.
“Get…” I swallowed stiffly, and tight creases formed between my brows. “Get who?”
“Matrix. That’s what we named the dog,” Kat quietly said, her shoulders raising to her ears as she grabbed the money. Soft cheeks bloomed a gentle pink as her doe eyes blinked and sympathy mixed with confusion washed across her features.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered, choking on the words.
“Bernie, you okay?” Raiden asked quietly as all sounds drowned away, replaced by a heavy ringing in my ears.
Was the world trying to play some cruel, sick joke on me? What about for the rest of the team? My mom was right. I wasn’t one to normally argue like this. I wasn’t normally so closed off, but even my own ghost had given up the spark and fallen into a pit of depravity and misery. The witty banter normally spewing rather crudely from my mouth seemed a far distance from whatever thoughts clouded my mind now. Whatever “Bernie” had existed before that bullet ripped through Duncan’s skull had died with him .
High pitched, the ringing rose louder, spinning colors of red and murky black in front of me as his call sign continued to swirl around in my head. Couldn’t the dog have been named anything else? Any other name except for Matrix would’ve been acceptable.
Thwunk.
That damned sound.
It should’ve been me.
Why wasn’t it me?
A sharp yowl of a cat sliced through the frozen, deprecating trance holding me thickly bound.
Glancing to my left, there she sat. Right up against the glass of her box, bright green eyes like those of emeralds locked onto mine. Muffin’s tongue flicked out, sliding across her little nose without breaking contact with my gaze.
The destruction of her kennel faded behind the simple stare of an animal that was caged into something she didn’t understand. She was trapped in a world of confusion, desperate to escape. Swatting at the glass once more, the pad of her paw made a similar thump to the bullet through Duncan’s skull.
I couldn’t leave her there. As trapped as I felt within my own life, she cried out once more as if she too was in her own prison of hell.
“I’ll take her, too,” I stated.
A gasp pulled my attention back to Kat. “You’ll…what?”
“Muffin. I’ll take the damn cat.” I tossed a thumb at the strangest creature I’d ever seen .
Her hands froze as she dropped the last bill of Raiden’s into the cash register. “You want to take the cat that you called a ‘thing’?”
“Yeah,” I blandly replied.
“Oh.” She raised her brows as a smile rose on her lips. “Okay! I’ll just need you to fill out the adoption form Raiden did a few weeks ago when he came in first to look at Matrix. And then the adoption fee and—”
“Here.” Digging into my back pocket, I slipped out the worn leather wallet and dug through the jumbled cards. In a frenzy, as the ringing dug deeper into my ears, I slapped my ID and credit card down on the counter along with my wallet.
The piercing shriek in my head heightened. With my palms braced against the edge of the counter, the cool speckled plastic seared into my skin as I rammed my eyes closed.
I knew what image was threatening to slip into play in my head. I knew what memory was riding the wave of the building migraine. After years in the military, after making the decision to join after graduating college, the consequences I’d accepted upon signing my name were finally meeting me.
The back of Ford’s head flashed through my mind.
Squeezing my eyes even tighter, I physically shook the thought out of my head. Nothing felt right. Nothing was right anymore.
Cold rain slipped down the back of my neck.
Everything rocked and swayed.
So unsteady from its usual course forward.
Clenching my jaw, I slid my teeth back and forth over each other.
Then, like an RPG, a meow shot through the haze .
Ripping my eyes open, Kat came walking out of the cat room holding Muffin. The animal screamed again, swatting at her bare arm. I stood upright, releasing the countertop as Muffin leapt from Kat’s arms and raced across the plastic. She stopped directly in front of me and plopped her ass down, her tail swishing steadily behind her.
I was once again locked in eyes so wide they nearly swallowed Muffin’s entire face. I stared. Not much else registered around me as the ringing faded beneath a fuzzy drum of muffled sounds. Barking from a far distance, the ticking of a clock miles away, melded with the quiet chatter of Muffin.
Footsteps faded from me as I inhaled and exhaled deeply, glued onto the damn cat’s eyes. “You are an ugly thing,” I muttered.
She yowled at me, yawned, and continued to stare.
“I have no fucking clue what to do with a cat,” I mumbled.
Muffin blinked but remained still.
“All right, Raiden,” Kat’s voice slipped through the sludge from down a hallway to my right.
Slowly, I turned my head, letting my gaze linger another half-second on the cat, and then pried it away as my hand found the back of Muffin. She didn’t move as I stroked her softly, the strange sensation of her spine resting directly beneath her skin bumped against my palm.
A border collie tore through into the front room, practically dragging Kat after him. She dug her heels into the floor as the dog leaped up and planted his two front paws on my not-so-little brother’s chest.
It wasn’t until that moment that it registered that he was only a few inches shorter than I was now. Raiden’s grin widened on his face, his eyes sparkling as Kat released the leash and walked back behind the counter. Lifting a couple of papers from beside her computer, she placed them next to Muffin, quickly withdrawing her hand as my cat swatted a paw at them.
“If you’ll quickly read through these and sign them, I’ll run your card,” Kat explained, plopping a pen down on the stack.
The words were a blur as I skimmed briefly and signed on a few lines. My mind didn’t register what I read, which I didn’t care about. All I wanted was to get out of here and home, even if I had no fucking clue how to take care of a cat.
Pushing the papers toward her, she avoided locking eyes with me as she slipped them down from the counter. Computer keys clacked, piercing the tension slithering around us like a steel cord. Raiden happily ran around the room, his dog chasing him with excited yips.
“You’re all set. Congratulations on your new pets,” Kat said.
What the fuck had I just gotten myself into?