According to the display, only twelve minutes away.
“The others told me they saw cat stuff in your apartment,” Ander went on. “That you had a cat.”
“Had,” I said, trying my best not to feel sad. “Not anymore.”
“Well you know about cats, right?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“We’ll I’ve got a stuck cat and I need help luring it out. So bring whatever a cat eats. Or maybe a toy, or—”
“A cat’s not going to come to a stranger’s toy,” I chastised him. “Wait, where’s it stuck?”
“Outside. Sort of.”
I felt a stab panic. “In the cold?”
“Did you get the location?”
“Yes, but—”
“I have to get back out there.”
The car door opened. The wind started up again, and my phone’s speaker was mostly static.
“Chastity?”
I barely caught my name over the wind, and I knew he could hardly hear me again. I shouted into the microphone, just in case.
“YES?”
“Hurry.”
Thirty-Nine
CHASTITY
The dot at the end of my digital map was a gym, and the parking lot was a frozen wasteland swirling with snow. I spotted Ander’s car at the far end of a long stretch of asphalt. He was parked up against a wooded area, behind which a stretch of power lines ran through the city.
What the hell?
He was outside, standing in the front of his car with the hood open. Staring down into the engine, like he was trying to figure out why it wouldn’t start. Either that, or—
Oh NO.
I parked quickly alongside him and stepped out into the howling wind. The air was pregnant with frost and frozen moisture. It bit at every patch of exposed skin, and considering how quickly I’d gotten dressed I still had a lot of those.
“Thanks for coming,” he said, reaching out for me. “I didn’t know who else to call.”
I hugged him quickly and looked down into the open hood. “Where?”
“Right there,” he pointed. “Under the engine cowling.”
I peered into the darkness, past the steadily falling snow. Ander pointed with one arm. With the other, he guided a flashlight.
“Oh my God!” I squealed. “Ander that’s not a cat, it’s a kitten!”
The tiniest, most adorable pair of bright green eyes stared back at me from a small opening between two pieces of dark metal. It was an orange tabby. It couldn’t have been more than five weeks old.
“It’s a baby!” I cried over the wind. “It got separated from its mother, and it climbed up against your engine for warmth.”
I looked at it again, and the smallest, faintest meow somehow carried over the wind. My heart melted.
“We have to get it out of there!”
Beside me, Ander nodded. “Believe me, I know. I’ve been working on it for almost an hour.”
I reached in, but the opening was far too narrow. Even for my smaller hands, there was just no way.
“I tried luring it out with everything in my car,” Ander went on, “including a half-eaten Power Bar, plus a few cheese doodles one of my asshole friends left in the back seat.”
“Cats don’t eat those things!” I called loudly.
“I thought they liked cheese?”
“Actual cheese yes,” I told him. “Not the orange chemical dust they sprinkle over a U-shaped piece of puffed rice.”
Ander wrinkled his nose, as if he’d just now made the connection. His physique alone told me he wasn’t the type of guy who would eat cheese doodles to begin with, but still.
“So what now?”
Reaching into my jacket pocket, I pulled out a small, single-serving pouch of tuna fish. I ripped the top away, then positioned it as close as I could to the opening.
“It’s too far away,” Ander called. “Move it closer.”
“No, give it a minute.”
If there was one thing I knew well, it was how skittish cats could be. Athena would never come when called. Hell, she barely came when it was dinner time! Yet there were other times when I’d be lying on the couch and she’d curl up right into my lap. With cats, you usually had to let them come to you.
“Think it smells it with all this wind?” shouted Ander. “Or should we—”
He stopped mid-sentence, as the little tabby poked its head through the opening. We waited together, our bodies shivering from the cold, until a single tiny paw emerged.
“Do you thin—”
I shushed Ander with a swift kick to the ankle, probably a little harder than intended. I heard him grunt, then swear.
Slowly, surely, a second paw popped up. A body followed, so, so thin and tiny. So adorably cute, even covered with dirt and grease.
Oh.
My.
GOD.
The cat sniffed the air, then stepped fully out from his