Page 28 of August Heat
“If it’s all right, I’ll come by tomorrow and pick up those kittens. I’ve already got a nice place to keep them in garage. My landlord won’t ever know. Dude doesn’t come up much.”
Siobhan sucked in her breath. “Sounds good.” More like it was a convenient excuse for Krys to come around again. “Thanks again for inviting me out tonight.”
Krys finally got out of the car. “I’ll see you around, Siobhan.”
“Chev,” she said.
“Hm?”
Siobhan couldn’t believe she was doing this. Few were privileged enough to know this name she had since childhood. Who was the last person outside of her family to call her by her nickname?Emily…“Chev. That’s what everyone calls me.” Well, Gabriella called her Chevy, but that didn’t need to get around.
“Chev. See you around.” Krys shut the door and headed toward her house without looking back.
Siobhan lingered longer than she anticipated.
Chapter 13
KRYS
“I swear to God, if you get us in trouble for those things, I’m kicking your ass from here to Hillsboro.” Lucas followed Krys from the kitchen to the garage door, which might as well have been the distance from Paradise Valley to Hillsboro. “What’s our lease say? No pets. Come the hell on, those arepets.”
Krys opened the door. She didn’t know what she expected temperature wise, but the blast of warm air told her to get out the air conditioner so the kittens didn’t overheat. “They don’t count as pets if I’m trying to get them adopted.” Phase one of her plan? Wagoning them to the firehouse, where Chief Johnson wouldabsolutelyfall in love with them and insist on bringing them in permanently. Flawless! Krys wished she had thought of it sooner.
Except she had forgotten a small detail – telling Lucas, her roommate of going on the four years she had lived in Paradise Valley. While they weren’t the best of friends, they had a mutual understanding that the house was the landlord’s first, theirs second. Probably because they got such a great deal on rent because they were considered “trustworthy.” Krys the firefighter and Lucas the maintainer of the church across the street came with glowing recommendations. It meant a nice discount on rent, but that wouldn’t last if they mucked it up with a giant mark against their lease.
“They’ll be out of here before you know it.” Krys shut the door in Lucas’s face. Didn’t he have better things to do on his Saturday? Like go spruce up the church before Sunday service? The man was awhizzwith a riding lawnmower and a ladder! There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do when he got out of Krys’s face and did his job across the street!
Krys turned on the light and surveyed the stuffy garage. Right. She needed to grab some kind of portable fan or AC, since it was that wonderful time of year when garages turned into hot boxes if it were only seventy degrees outside.
That day was a little warmer than seventy, though. Augusts were like that, and the kids took every advantage of it as they rushed out on their bikes and scooters. School registration was only a week away. If they didn’t have a childhood now, they might miss their chances!
Which means I’ll be picking kids out of ditches and off riverbanks this time Monday afternoon…Happened every year. As long as they avoided the forest fires, though, Krys would consider this summer a win.
“Where you guys at?” Krys had hidden the kittens’ box in a cooler corner of the garage, but they were more than old enough to jump out and get into a little trouble. The litter box was gently used, though, and the kitten food lapped up like they were growing boys and girls. Before Krys could be too proud, though, she found some kitten puke by a bicycle tire.
She found the culprit sitting on the old, cracked leather seat. He looked at her as if he were the most innocent child in the world.
“Did you eat all the food? Or did you drink too much after you ate?” Krys plucked him up, his little mews of protest and purrs of compliance settling him against her chest. “Who’s a pukey boy? Hm?”
She found his brother and one of his sisters, although she quickly realized that the hairy girl was missing. Nothing to panic about. Little Meg loved to crawl beneath drawers and into any bins left half open. Not everything in the garage belonged to either Krys or Lucas, however. Their landlord kept a fewhandythings around. Krys had a few panicked visions of Meg falling into a drawer of nails or getting crushed by an old, rusty rake.
“Meg?” Krys lowered the kittens in her hands and began the hunt for their fluffy sister. “Where are ya, girl? Here, kitty kitty!”
Krys kept a calm countenance, hoping the energy would draw the baby out as opposed to further sending her into hiding. Meg’s littermates ran around Krys’s feet, as if looking for their fluffy buddy.I’ve always had the worst luck with fluffy cats. Never had one that lived more than a year.Now Krys began to panic.
“Meg?” She got down on her knees and looked beneath the bottom of a raised file cabinet. “Where are you, baby? Meg?”
She stopped talking and listened closely. Soon, she heard the pathetic mewling of a kitten crying in the far corner of the room. That… did not sound good.
By the time Krys finally found Meg huddled behind an old bag of fertilizer, she knew something was wrong. The kitten couldn’t open one of its eyes, nor could Meg make much effort to come to Krys without breathing so hard that she fell over. This wasn’t a cat who had taken a quiet nap away from her rowdy littermates. She was in trouble. If Krys didn’t do something, she might lose yet another fluffy cat before it had the chance to turn a few months old.
“You stay there, little girl.” Krys grabbed her phone from her back pocket. Luckily, Siobhan had finally given her a personal number to call when Krys picked the kittens up a couple of days ago. “I’m gonna get you help.”
The other kittens padded toward their sister, who opened her mouth but didn’t make a sound. Soon, she had a pile of gray and black fur surrounding her, her brothers grooming her head while her sister stared at Krys, as if hoping she’d do something.
Anything.
Krys had service in the garage, but for some reason, she couldn’t get through to Siobhan. Not without being sent straight to voicemail.Damnit. Is she out on a call in the middle of nowhere?Probably. Then again, Siobhan lived on the type of property where a person only had to walk three feet to the left to be in yet another dead zone.
