about it. You just stay there—I’ll be right back.” She put the dog down and went back the way she’d come. When she returned, the dogs were still staring at him and now she had the two large men with her.
“I’m getting cats out of trees now?” one of the men asked Charlie.
“That’s a cabinet and yes. Could you please get him down from there?”
“How did he get up there in the first place?”
“Why do you ask me questions we both know I don’t have the answers to? Why are you making this difficult? Is it because he’s naked?”
“Well, that’s not helping.”
“So you want me to help him down while he’s naked?”
“No, no,” the man hurriedly replied, stepping closer to the cabinet with what Zé assumed was his twin.
“All right . . . come on,” the man said to Zé. But Zé couldn’t stop staring at the pair. He really hadn’t noticed exactly how tall they were. Now that they were standing so close he realized they were taller than the cabinet he was on. Like two giants.
“Are you going to move or what?” the man barked at Zé, which just annoyed Zé.
It annoyed him a lot, which was why he ordered, “Carry me,” and held his arms out for them to do so. It was something he used to say to his grandfather when he was little. And, on more than one occasion, he still said it to his grandfather because it annoyed the man and Zé was at least six inches taller. Which was why he was saying it now—to annoy.
And annoy it did.
“That’s it,” the man growled. “I’m leaving.”
“Help him down,” Charlie insisted, laughing.
“This is why I hate cats.” He glared at Zé. “All cats.”
“That’s fascinating. Really.” Zé still held out his arms and each giant grabbed him by a forearm and roughly hauled him off the cabinet, dropping him to the ground from a higher distance than seemed necessary. But Zé managed not to fall on his ass and instead simply wrapped the towel he’d had over him around his waist.
Zé was a tall man. Six-two since he’d turned thirteen. But for the first time since he’d done a little protection job for the NBA playoffs, he felt short. Almost tiny. Especially when these two glared down at him in mutual dislike.
“Problem?” Zé asked. He knew he probably shouldn’t start trouble but he was from the South Bronx. On his street, he had never been known to back down from a fight. Especially when people insisted on annoying him. And these two were annoying him.
Having picked up that nasty dog again, Charlie yelled over her shoulder, “Max, you better get in here if you don’t want your cat to get his ass kicked.”
“Calm down. Everyone calm down.” The one they called Max rushed in and quickly stepped between Zé and the twins. “It’s not his fault,” she explained, which Zé didn’t understand. True, he was being kind of an asshole but he hadn’t actually done anything to warrant an “it’s not his fault” statement. “He doesn’t know what he is,” she . . . whispered. Why was she whispering?
“I don’t?” Zé asked.
“I told you that you don’t,” she replied, looking over her shoulder at him.
“And . . . what am I not aware of?”
“That you’re a cat.”
It all came back to him then. Everything that had happened at the hangar. Everything that had happened with her. Everything that she had done.
“Oh, God,” he said, stepping back and colliding with the cabinet, “it’s you. The crazy woman they kidnapped.”
All of Charlie’s good humor left so quickly, it was like it had been yanked out of her. Continuing to hold that dog, she locked her dark eyes on Max and growled, “What kidnapping?”
Max now glared at Zé. “Now ya see? Ya got me in trouble.”
“Sorry. Let me fix that for you.” Zé faced Charlie. “Don’t blame . . . Max, is it? Yes. Don’t blame Max for being kidnapped. Although her abductors did tell me that she threw herself into their kidnap van and let them whisk her away from the streets of Leiden.”
“Leiden?” the blonde called out before she ran into the room. “Leiden? That’s in the Netherlands. Why were you in the Netherlands, Max? What were you doing in the Netherlands?”
Zé looked down into the now-glowering face of Max and he smiled. “See? All fixed.”
* * *
And this was why Max hated cats!
Tricky, evil, fur-licking cats!
Now here she was, in the kitchen, her sisters grilling her