Connor and I both laughed out loud.
“She’s a riot,” he said. “I’ve been laughing pretty much since we brought her home.”
I sat on the rug near him. He reached over and scooped the cat out from under the table and held her close to his belly, and I petted her. I was surprised when I touched her, because so much of what I’d thought was cat was just fur. She barely seemed to be under there at all.
She was snow white, like Mrs. Barnes had said. Her ears were a delicate pink. I felt as though I could see right through them. Or almost. Her eyes were the most brilliant shade of blue. Like the sky on a summer afternoon. The contrast of those eyes on the otherwise white canvas of fur was really stunning. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
“She’s so pretty,” I said.
“Yeah, she is. She’ll be a gorgeous cat.”
“Why do you think your mom broke down and got her for you?”
“I think she figured it would keep me home more.”
I instinctively lowered my voice. “Oh. Right. Where did you tell her you’ve been going?” I had purposely resisted asking.
“Just that I’ve been taking a long walk in the morning. Which is true. Well. True enough, anyway. In a way she’s been happy about it, because I guess she figures it’s a good sign that I want to get out of the house more. But I also think it makes her a little nervous. Here,” he added, “you want to hold her?”
I took the kitten from him and held her against my own belly, and I swear she felt like she weighed nothing at all. But she was real, all right. I could feel her tiny heart beating. And when I scratched her behind the ears, she purred.
I confess I was a bit smitten. I could only imagine how Connor must’ve felt about her.
Connor accidentally moved the toy. She saw the movement and scrambled to get down, nearly scratching me with those tiny razor claws. I let her go.
She ran for the space under the bed, but Connor expertly used the dangling mouse to change her mind and draw her away.
For a space of time—I could not have told you how long a time it was—we just watched the cat attack that dangling mouse. Every time she did something wild and outrageous, we burst out laughing. Which was nice. I wondered when Connor and I had last laughed together. How long it had been.
Then he got to his feet and handed me the stick.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” he said.
He moved off in that direction. Connor had a bathroom attached to his bedroom. Apparently everybody did. Except yours truly.
The kitten ran under the bed, and I didn’t react fast enough to stop her.
“Don’t let the cat go under the bed,” he said before closing the bathroom door.
I lay down on my belly and looked under at the kitten, and she looked back at me with those astonishing blue eyes.
“Why not?” I called in to Connor. “What happens if she goes under the bed?”
“It’s just really hard to get her out again.”
“Can’t you just pull the bed out from the wall?”
“You can put the bed anywhere you want, but she’ll stay right under the middle of it where you can’t get to her. I think it’s like a game to her.”
“So how do you get her out once she goes under there?”
“You have to crawl under there on your belly.”
I sighed. And began crawling.
The kitten evaded me by running to the top end of the bed. Which was a tactical error, because a wall stopped her. She sat hunkered against a heat vent, looking ready to fly away again. But I caught her before she could.
Feeling more than a little claustrophobic in that tight space, I gently pulled her away from the vent.
That’s when I saw it.
At first I wasn’t even sure what I was seeing. But I knew it was something. Something that was not supposed to be there. It was inside the vent, behind the metal grate. Nothing is supposed to be back there except air. So when you see something, whatever you think it is, it’s going to stand out as a thing out of place.
I held the kitten close to my shoulder and tried to take a minute to let my eyes adjust. There wasn’t a ton of light under Connor’s bed, of course. And there wasn’t any inside the heating duct.
Still, I could see the corner of something. A small box, maybe. And a bit of curved something that looked like polished wood or some other hard substance.
I had a bad feeling about what it might be. I could’ve been wrong, but I had to know.
I wiggled out from under the bed and pulled the head side of it back from the wall. I wasn’t sure what to do with the kitten, so I put her inside my shirt and she held still there. For the moment, anyway.
I dug around in my pocket, where I knew I had a little bit of change. Found a dime. I used it as a screwdriver to take out the two decorative screws that held the duct cover in place. They were loose. Somebody had obviously taken the cover off recently.
I laid the two screws on the carpet and pulled off the grate. Reached my hand in. Pulled the two items out into the light.
A brand-new, unopened box of one dozen bullets. And a handgun.
I got to my feet, holding them. Staring at them in my hands.
I heard Connor’s voice. He was back in the room.
“Oh, you pulled the bed out,” he said. “I told you,
