Chapter 9
MASON
It was barely dawn when someone started hammering on the door, and I was upright and out of bed before my eyes were fully open. Knocking like that usually meant one thing, and it was never good. I ran down the stairs, hitting the light switch on the way and shouting, “Hold on!”
Dog scrambled down the stairs behind me, his ugly knitted bundle in his mouth, and I took a second to close him in the laundry room before I answered the door.
There was a young guy standing there dressed in construction gear.
He was holding an old blanket bundled against his chest and wearing a panicked expression.
The blanket let out a long, pained yowl.
“She ran in front of my truck and I hit her, and when she ran into the long grass, I followed her, and—”
He peeled the blanket open to reveal a mother cat and three kittens.
The cat was still making an ungodly noise, and her leg was sticking out at an odd angle, with a whole lot of blood matting her fur.
The kittens were covered in it too, squirming and twisting as they let out a series of pitiful mewls.
I couldn’t tell at a glance how old they were, not in the state they were in, but their eyes were open, so at least they weren’t newborns.
“Shit,” I said, and the guy nodded.
“It was right at that bend before the old bridge, and, uh, I think there might be another kitten. I could hear it but I couldn’t find it,” he said.
“Come on through to the clinic,” I said.
“Dude,” he said, “I’m already running late, and I can’t afford to lose this job.”
He held the bundle out to me and I stared at him in disbelief for a second before taking it. The guy skedaddled out of the place quicker than Dog with a phone charger.
And as much as I hated being dumped with a problem like this at ass o’clock in the morning, I had to begrudgingly admit the guy had done the right thing, even if it meant that once again I wasn’t getting paid.
He could have kept driving, but he hadn’t.
He’d cared enough to stop and look for the cat and grab at least most of the kittens.
I knew from bitter experience that it was more than a lot of people would have done.
So, first things first.
I hurried the bundle into the treatment room, ignoring Dog’s whining. He was out of bed, which meant he was expecting to be let outside to pee, but I needed to keep him contained while I dealt with the cats.
“Sorry, Dog,” I murmured as I set the bundle gently down onto the table. Then I thought of Cash and the puddle he’d have to clean up when he arrived this morning. “Sorry, Cash.”
There was a box of paper towels on the nearest shelf with only a few left.
I hooked it over with my spare hand, tipped the paper towels out, and carefully transferred the kittens into the box.
Mama Cat was making unhappy subvocal growls and panting heavily.
Not only was she in a lot of pain, but I was fucking with her babies.
“It’s okay, Mama,” I told her. “We’re just keeping them out of the way while we take a look at you.”
She tried to bite me and, when that failed, snagged a claw into the heel of my hand.
Fucking ouch.
“Now we’re both bleeding,” I told her. “So we’re even, right?”
She hissed at me, ears flat, and swiped at my hand again and missed.
I didn’t even need to examine her properly to know that the cat wasn’t going to make it.
Her gums were almost white, there was a jagged bone sticking out through the skin of her broken leg, and she had blood coming out of one ear.
Her sides heaved as she struggled for breath, still making those low growling noises.
I whispered, “I’m sorry, Mama,” before I administered a dose of sedatives big enough to send her on her way.
She didn’t go peacefully.
I was still stroking Mama Cat’s head, long past the point where she was gone, when I heard the familiar squeak of sneakers on the linoleum floor.
Shit. Cash.
“Hey,” I called out. “Don’t come in—”
Too late. He was already standing frozen in the doorway, coffees in his hand, eyes wide as he took in the scene. The blood-smeared table. The wads of bloody dressings. The syringe and bottle of sedatives. And of course, the dead cat, her eyes half closed and her mouth hanging open.
“She got hit by a car,” I said before he could ask. “I couldn’t save her.” I hated how my voice cracked. “If you want to go wait for me, I’ll clean up here.”
But Cash was already stepping inside.
“Are you okay?” He set the coffees down on the counter and moved to the table, eyes widening even farther as he looked inside the box. He blinked down at the kittens. “She had babies? Are they hurt?”
“I think it’s her blood,” I said. “I haven’t had the chance to check them over yet.”
He nodded and said, “What do you need me to do?”
Dog whined loudly from the laundry room. “You wanna let Dog out for me, then come back here?”
Cash nodded and ducked out the door, and while he was gone, I wrapped the cat’s body in the bloodied blanket and put it in a black body disposal bag to deal with later.
I closed my eyes and took a couple of deep breaths, reminding myself that there wasn’t anything I could have done.
Then I turned my attention to the three kittens. Those were lives I could save.
Cash came back into the treatment room just as I was lifting the first kitten out of the box.
The kitten—a tiny black and white female—squeaked far too loudly for such a tiny thing when I lifted her out of the box.
I ran my hands over her body, checking for injuries and assessing her general condition.
“She’s in good health,” I said, more to myself than Cash.
“Maybe three weeks, so old enough to hand rear.”
I wiped her down and went to put her back in the box but Cash said, “I can take her?”
“Sure,” I said, and I gave him the kitten. He immediately scooped her against his chest and started making soothing noises, stroking a fingertip down her spine. He gave a pleased smile when she started purring.
I smiled back and checked out and cleaned up the other two kittens.
They were both boys—one black like his sister and the other one mostly black except for a dramatic orange stripe across half his face that made him look like an eighties rock star—and I handed them over one at a time.
Cash got to cradle all three of them in his arms for a minute before I said, “Okay, put them in the box.”
His head shot up and his brow creased, his grip tightening like he thought I was going to take the kittens away. “Why?”
“The guy who dropped them off said there’s another one that he couldn’t find, so I’m going to look. I could use an extra pair of eyes, if you’re up for it?”
Cash’s eyes widened. He peered in the box and said, “They need a towel or something.”
He wasn’t wrong. I grabbed an old towel and lined the box with it, and Cash inspected my handiwork and bundled the kittens inside.
They squirmed and twisted until they found each other and then it went quiet as they settled, curling up in a pile.
I draped another towel over the top of the box and we left the treatment room.
“Let me get dressed,” I said.
Cash nodded and went to wait on the porch.
By the time I came downstairs, he was pacing, nervous energy radiating off him, and I knew he was worrying about the missing kitten.
He wasn’t the only one, and I prayed the cat was still alive.
I wasn’t sure I could take it if we got there and found a coyote or a hawk had attacked it.
It wasn’t until I was in my car with Cash buckling himself into the passenger seat that I realized I had no idea where I was going. “The guy said it was at the bend right before the old bridge,” I said. “I really hope you know where that is.”
Cash nodded. “I live out that way. I can show you.”
I definitely broke the speed limit getting to the old bridge, with Cash directing every turn.
It wasn’t long before we’d moved away from the clean white picket fences in the middle of town and toward an area I’d never been in before.
There were no freshly painted pickets here—this was all tired chain-link fences, sagging porches, and lawns that were more weeds than grass.
There was the occasional flower bed where someone was making an effort, but mostly it was just dirt.
I wondered if Cash’s house was like that too.
I knew he and his brother lived with a bunch of guys that weren’t their family, so I guessed there was a story there.
And yet he hadn’t hesitated to dig every cent he owned out of his pocket to pay Dog’s bill, and that told me a lot about Cash and what made him tick.
We pulled up on the side of the road near the bridge, and Cash was out of the car before I’d even turned the engine off.
It was past dawn now, but the new day was gloomy, so I grabbed the flashlight I always kept in my car and jogged after Cash toward the side of the road.
It was covered in brush and weeds and a fair amount of sheer garbage.
It had to be an unofficial local dumping spot.
There were tires, crates, trash bags, and beer cans strewn throughout the stringy bushes.
Then, in the quiet morning air, I heard it—a thin, distressed meowing.
Cash heard it too, and he darted forward into the long grass, stopping every few seconds to listen.
I swept back and forth over the area with the flashlight, making the shadows on the bumps and the ruts in the ground move and shift, but I couldn’t see anything.
But we could hear the kitten, so it must be close, and I wasn’t giving up.
Cash dropped to his knees and laid his head against the ground, and after a few seconds he lifted his head and grinned.
“Over here,” he said and crawled forward toward a pile of old wooden crates.