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Max opened his eyes and he could have sworn the big red cat not only understood the question he’d posed him but was actually answering in lazy tones! Huh. Weird.

He got out of bed and sauntered to the staircase.“Odelia?” he yelled from the top of the stairs. “Are you down there?”

When Max suddenly appeared next to him and meowed some more, he started.

“What are you trying to tell me, buddy?” he said, then laughed at his own silliness. Cats were dumb creatures. Mousers, by and large, with some minor capacity for entertainment. He picked Max up and carried him down the stairs. “Are you hungry?” he asked, setting him down in the kitchen. A row of bowls sat on the floor, five in a row, and all of them featured names and were filled to capacity. So Max was definitely not hungry.

The little guy kept meowing up a storm, though, and since Chase had no way of determining what the heck he was trying to tell him, he merely grinned and decided to take a shower and start his day. Arriving upstairs, he saw that Chief Alec had left him a voice message. As he listened, his eyebrows rose.“What the…” he muttered.

There had been a breakthrough in the case, and he’d slept right through it!

“Christ,” he said.

This seemed to attract Dooley’s attention, who looked at him almost reverently.

“Hey, buddy,” he said. “Max is downstairs, Odelia is nowhere to be found, and I gotta run. Think you’ll be able to take care of yourself?” Then he laughed. “You big dummy! Now you’re talking to cats!”

He walked into the bathroom. Time for a quick shower and then he was off. He actually felt pretty excited about moving in. Time to put this relationship with Odelia on a more permanent footing. Soon he was enjoying the cascade of water and loudly singing the only song he’d ever memorized in his life. Ed Sheeran’sPerfect.

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I was truly worried about Odelia. She’d given us the slip and now she was out there somewhere, chasing the bad guys with no backup from her legion of felines. I just hoped she would be careful. Odelia has a tendency to go all gung-ho without considering the consequences. When she’s on the hunt she sometimes forgets that the peopleshe’s hunting are dangerous killers and creeps and would just as happily turn on her if it suited them.

And I’d just settled down in front of my bowl and gulped down a few tasty morsels when a loud panting sound reached my ears. Fully expecting Brutus, I didn’t even look up. But when the panting sound was replaced with stertorous breathing, I said, “Try to breathe through the nose, Brutus, not the mouth.” I hate mouth-breathing cats, don’t you?

“Huh?” said Brutus, only when I didn’t recognize his gruff voice I finally looked up and discovered it wasn’t Brutus but Big Mac breathing down my neck!

“Big Mac! What are you doing here?”

Probably all the pizza we’d fed him had led to him coming back for more.

“It’s your human!” said Big Mac. “I think she might be in big trouble.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I was downtown just now, staking out the Hampton Cove Star hotel, when suddenly I saw your human head inside. So I went in after her, and followed her all the way upstairs. She went into a room and never came out. Also, when I put my ear against the door, I heard people arguing and I heard your human yelling. And then she went quiet. Too quiet!”

A cold grip squeezed my heart.“What do you mean she went quiet?”

“Just that. First she was yelling and then she stopped. I think she might be dead.”

“Better lead the way, Big Mac,” I said, then hurried to the foot of the stairs and bellowed, “Dooley, Brutus, Harriet! Come quick! Odelia is in trouble!”

Cats have this amazing capacity to be awake and alert in an instant. No snooze button for us. When the game is afoot, our ears prick up and we’re ready to go at the drop of a hat. And so it was now. Seconds after I’d issued my cry for help, three cats came racing down the stairs. And even as Chase was murdering poor Ed Sheeran in the shower, we were shooting through that cat flap, Big Mac in the lead, the four of us right on his tail.

“How did you get to be at the Hampton Cove Star?” I asked as we hurried along through the backyard.

“Pigs,” he said, panting.

“Pigs?”

“Okay, I admit it! I love the McRib even more than the Big Mac! And since the McRib contains pork, I wanted to see those piglets you mentioned to see what my food looks like before I eat it!”

Yuck. Who wants to eat a piglet?“They’re teacup piglets, Big Mac,” I said. “They’re not fit for feline consumption.”

“You eat piglets?” asked Harriet censoriously. “You’re an animal, Big Mac.”

“I am!” he cried. “I admit it. Iam an animal.”

We’d arrived at the house next door and I scooted in through the cat flap, then up the stairs and into Gran’s room.

“Gran!” I tooted into her ear. “Wake up!”

“Don’t hurt me, Captain Hook, I’m just an innocent virgin!” she yelled as she shot up and speared open her eyes. When she saw it was me and not Captain Hook, she grunted, “Max—what’s the big idea scaring me half to death?!”