The Cat Sitter's Nine Lives Read Free Page A

next to me. “I’ll get this half and you get his legs.”
    I shuffled over as he reached in and locked his arms around Baldy’s chest, and just then there was a loud pop followed by an angry hiss from somewhere under the hood. I glanced over at the dashboard and gasped—there were black blisters starting to bubble up in the center. The burly man flashed me a look as if to say, “Ready?” and I nodded.
    He said, “One, two, three…” and then in one swift motion we heaved Baldy up out of the car. He let out a low moan, and I felt a shiver go down my spine—I couldn’t even imagine the pain he must have been in.
    As we moved away from the car it jolted backward spastically off the grille of the truck, and then a high-pitched scream started from deep inside the engine. I heard a little voice in my head say, It’s too late, and I had a vision of us all flying through the air in a ball of fire and glass and twisted metal.
    Someone yelled “Run!”—for all I know it could have been me—and then we were racing with Baldy in our arms as fast as we could through the crowd of gawkers who were running, too, pushing their way past us. The screaming sound was getting louder and louder, and by the time we got beyond the row of cars parked along the sidewalk it sounded like a steam whistle going off inside my head. We got Baldy down on the sidewalk as fast as we could, and then without even thinking my old training kicked in. I covered his body with mine, clenched my eyes shut, and waited.
    The explosion shook the entire street.
    The high-pitched screaming was gone now, replaced with an eerie silence, but I wasn’t about to move. I stayed huddled over Baldy’s body and counted to ten. In the movies, when a car blows up, two or three other cars usually blow up too just to make it extra loud and scary, but all I could hear was Baldy’s labored breathing and the dying wail of the siren pulling up to the scene. I opened my eyes to find the burly man standing at Baldy’s feet and looking back at the accident. The firemen were already scrambling to get their hoses off the truck, so I knew they’d put the fire out before it had a chance to spread.
    The burly man squatted down and sighed. “Jesus, who the hell are you? Wonder Woman?”
    For a split second, I thought of how as a little girl I would sneak down to the beach in the middle of the night and let the waves wash up over my bare feet. I pretended the sea foam was magic, and if I stood there long enough, the magic would seep up my legs into my whole body. Then I’d stretch my arms out. Once my body had soaked up enough magic, I could rise off the sand and fly through the air. I’d form a picture in my mind of where I wanted to go, and then my body would take me there. I could see through walls, so I’d hover over my school and look inside all the empty classrooms, or I’d go to the firehouse and sit on the roof to watch my father inside, playing cards and dominoes with his fireman friends.
    I slipped my backpack off. “No, I used to be a sheriff’s deputy.”
    “Ah. That explains it.” There were beads of perspiration on his forehead, and his dress shirt was wet under the arms.
    I said, “You better sit down. You look like you’re about to keel over.”
    “I probably am. You nearly got us killed!”
    I looked down at Baldy’s face. His eyes were closed now, and his shirt was bunched up at his neck and soaked in blood. I loosened the top buttons just in case they were restricting his breathing and then mustered up a smile for my burly accomplice. “Well, thanks for your help. I don’t think I could have gotten him out of that car by myself.”
    He nodded. “You’ve got blood on your lip.”
    “Yeah, I know. I’ll be okay.”
    “I mean, you should probably get that off.”
    I knew what he was getting at. There are all kinds of nasty blood-borne diseases, and whether or not Baldy here had any of them, I certainly didn’t want his blood anywhere near my