Last Licks

many thanks to Larry Segriff of Tekno Books and Shannon Jamieson Vazquez of Berkley Prime Crime, who have so ably shepherded this project along.

1

The midsummer sun was finally going down—not that the brilliant afternoon sunshine had given him much in the way of trouble. He’d found a good patch of shade to lounge in when the sun was still high overhead. It not only kept him comfortable, but allowed him to stay inconspicuous as he checked out the area around him.

Now it looked as if that had paid off. He kept still, only his eyes moving to follow her. She took silly, flouncy steps, her head bobbing in time with her skinny legs as she wandered along in her haphazard way.

She came right past him, not even looking in his direction. He wondered how far she could run on those ridiculous legs—and how fast.

Doesn’t she know it’s dangerous to come down around here, especially when it starts to get dark? His eyes narrowed and he dropped his head a little, taking a couple of slow steps after her. Well, I guess she’s going to find out she’d have been better off staying with her little ones.

She paused to examine something on the ground, completely unaware that she was being stalked. He looked right and left. No one around to stop him, no place for her to run . . .

He made his move, uncoiling powerful muscles, leaping for her, reaching out for her back . . .

She unfurled her wings and took off, leaving his claws a bare inch short of her tail feathers.

He recovered before he sprawled on the ground and rose up to sit on his haunches, his tail flicking around in annoyance as he glared upward. The prey that had gotten away fluttered to a branch high, high out of reach, dropping for a landing onto those absurd-looking legs.

Stupid bird, he thought, sulkily licking the back of his paw and then running it along his whiskers. Maybe she learned her lesson and won’t come around here again.

An unexpectedly cool breeze ruffled his gray fur, and he glanced at the house behind him. Where were his people? Hanging around in the yard was fun, but he’d just missed out on a picnic supper. There was a stout door between him and his bowl and dish in the kitchen. He needed a two-legged type to open that for him.

Where were they?

*

Sunny Coolidge puffed a little as she trailed her father around the cinder track. They’d made six circuits of the quarter-mile track and had as many more to go before Dad finished his daily three-mile walking quota. That was a pretty good showing for a guy who a year and a half ago had been flat on his back after a heart attack.

Mike Coolidge moved easily, his unruly white curls bobbing with each step, his face only a little pinker than usual from his exertions.

Sunny, however, found herself falling farther behind.

Too much time in front of a computer and too little time on your feet, that annoying voice in the back of her head scolded. Well, it was an unfortunate fact. Her job kept her at the keyboard most of the day. Despite an active-sounding name, the Maine Adventure X-perience, MAX for short, did most of its travel-booking business online. If Sunny wasn’t receiving e-mails and organizing responses, she often wound up tinkering with the MAX website to fix problems or update software that seemed to change every time she turned around.

Even when she managed to escape from the world of virtual business, she found herself answering the phone or organizing packages of tourist information to go off via snail mail. All in all, not the most physical line of work.

Still, that wasn’t any reason for letting her dad walk her into the ground.

Mike looked around, stopped, and pulled loose an earbud. Sunny got a brief snatch of a song from about forty years ago, sounding as if it were played by an insect rock band.

“What’s the matter?” Mike asked. “Got a pebble in your shoe?” He frowned, looking at her more closely. “You’re sweating off your bug repellent, Sunny. Keep that up, and the mosquitoes will fly off with you.”

That wasn’t quite an overstatement. Maine had a lot going for it in summer: quaint villages, camping, boating, pretty scenery. But the infamous Maine mosquitoes were definitely not a drawing card for tourists—or natives, for that matter. Sunny should’ve pointed out that exercising at dusk put them outdoors at a peak time for the bloodthirsty critters, but Mike had had a busy morning dealing with all sorts of errands, and then had wanted to wait until the afternoon heat had died down a little.