Cat scowled out the window at the miserable weather. She hadn’t thought to bring a coat. She continued to eye the weather with a suspicious glare while she ate breakfast and waited for Kass to have yet another shower. Kass was pretty quick about it but still Cat didn’t think a shower in both the evening and morning was necessary. She didn’t even think one everyday was necessary. The body had it’s own way of keeping clean, it didn’t need that much help. One every few days was plenty often enough.
“You ready?” Cat asked, once Kass was out of the shower a moment later.
Kass nodded.
“You eaten?”
“I’ll eat on the way,” Kass replied as she packed up the last of her things.
Cat shrugged then eyed the weather again. “You want me to go get the car and bring it back to pick you up?” Kass was a quick runner but still not as fast as Cat. A part of Cat wondered if she could convince Kass to go and get the car and then drive it back. She really didn’t want to go out there right now, not in that weather. It wasn’t raining that hard but still. She hated the feel of it. The rain on her skin was like being assaulted by the sky.
“No, a walk will be nice. Shall we go?” Kass paused with her hand on the door and gave Cat an expectant look.
Another glare out the window.
Kass didn’t miss it. “Maybe the front desk has some umbrellas?”
Cat sighed. Kass’s tone had been light, a little too light, as if she were holding back a comment. Preferring not to give Kass time to say whatever it was she was thinking, Cat got to her feet and joined her friend by the door. “Let’s go.”
At least the corridor in front of the rooms was covered. One peek at the sky suggested it wasn’t going to let up for awhile. If anything, they should probably go now before it got any heavier.
They dropped off the keys. There was no sign of the receptionist.
Cat paused once more at the entrance to the motel. None of the street was covered and there hadn’t been any umbrellas in the reception.
Kass stepped outside and then looked back to see Cat still standing in the threshold of the doorway. “It’s not raining that hard.”
“Most of the way to the garage was in the open air. I ran most of the way here.”
“Do you want me to go pick up the car and bring it back?” Kass asked.
Cat hesitated and then registered something like surprise in Kass’s response. The reaction caused her to scowl.
“If you don’t want to get wet, you could take the underground rail. There’s a station not far from here.” A voice interrupted Cat’s pondering. It seemed the receptionist was awake after all.
“Where is it?” Cat asked, glad of some solution. She could run a short distance in the rain.
Kass rejoined her inside and the receptionist showed them a map of the stations on a pamphlet.
“It’s just down here. It’ll take you all over town, wherever you need, and even up the hill. There’s a lovely restaurant on top if you’re looking for somewhere with a nice view for lunch and a few vineyards just down the other side.”
Neither Cat nor Kass answered. They simply nodded vaguely as they studied the stations.
“Did you sleep alright?” asked the receptionist.
“Yes, thank you,” replied Cat without much enthusiasm.
“You know, I’ve heard peppermint can help with snoring if you’re looking for a natural remedy.”
Cat gave her a confused frown.
Kass suddenly folded up the train map. “Uh, we really should get going. Thank you for your help and hospitality.” She tugged Cat toward the door before anyone could say another word.
They ran all the way to the station, carrying their bags with them. They went through a little green doorway nestled in the wall which led downward into darkness. It didn’t look much like a station at all and it wasn’t until they were properly underground and into a well lit cavern that they were sure they were where they were meant to be.
It wasn’t so much a station as it was an entire underground street and even at this early hour of the morning there were people bustling about, far more down here than there had been on the surface.
The pathways were cobblestoned and well sign-posted. Quaint little shops were built into the walls and many of them were already open.
They walked along in silence for awhile, neither of them having expected the scenes that surrounded them.
“There’s a teleportation stop,” Kass remarked as they passed one shop.
Cat glanced in the window at the list of places and prices on a large board. “Oh yeah, look, for only 4 Jade you can jump to the Emerald city.”
“Do they jump cars?” Kass asked, more out of interest than anything else, for only the rich spoke in denominations of Jade.
“Individuals and luggage only it seems,” replied Cat with a smirk.
“Pity,” replied Kass in a neutral tone but with a comradely smile.
Cat gave an amused snort and they continued on their way in silence.
They found the station and paid a small fare to travel. Some of the carriages had no rooves and were more reminiscent of mine carts than proper trains. There wasn’t much of a guard between them and the wall that went sailing past at a moderate pace.
“Did you know Nin was like this?” Cat asked. She’d travelled through the town before yet somehow it seemed she’d never seen the real Nin until now.
Kass shook her head. “No.”
A nearby eavesdropping older woman leaned over then and said, “Oh, you think this is something, you should see it at night.”
Cat found herself wishing they could almost stay and explore a lot more but she knew they needed to keep moving. Who knew when their pursuers might catch up to them. They’d be much safer once they were on the other side of the Dragon Mountains.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Fairy lights lined the streets of the station they got off at. There were a few shops here as well but much less and they could see streets branching off which angled down past more homely looking dwellings whose true sizes were impossible to tell from the front.
They emerged out into the comparatively bright light of an overcast day. The rain was still falling and they picked up pace again, running another 500 metres down the road, Cat hating every minute of the weather. The rain grew in intensity as they neared the garage and Cat kicked up speed into a flat out sprint. She made it into the garage just as the sky opened up and began to really pour buckets.
Kass joined her a minute later, soaked to the skin.
“Bet you regret that shower now,” Cat remarked.
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While Cat dealt with payment, Kass waited by the car. As she did so, she watched another car pull up. It was a sleek black four-wheel drive with tinted windows and something about it set Kass’s hair on edge.
Two men got out of it a moment later. They were nicely dressed and both were packing heat. Kass could see the slight outline of a gun beneath their coat jackets. They each popped an umbrella and sauntered up to the open door of the garage. One of them paused just inside to answer his ringing phone. The other, the more fair-haired one of the pair walked up to Kass and flashed a badge that indicated he was police.
“Is this your car?” he asked.
“My friend’s,” Kass replied.
Cat was still in the office paying for the repairs.
“Uh huh, where is your friend right now?”
Kass glanced toward the office. She didn’t see much point in hiding where Cat was. She also wasn’t sure what they were doing here but she got the feeling it wasn’t a routine check.
He followed her eye line then he turned back to ask her another question. “You been in town long?”
“Just the night.” Kass didn’t see any harm in answering that question either and it was always better to stick as close to the truth as possible.
“I see. Where are you headed?”
Before Kass could answer that question the other cop joined them. To his partner he said, “There’s nothing here, we should go.”
But the first cop disagreed. “Oh, I think there is.”
“Brey wants us back across town on another call,” insisted the darker-haired man.
“We came all the way out here. This is them, I’m sure of it.”
“I don’t think it is.”
Kass watched in confusion as the pair debated back and forth.
“The car matches the description.”
“Lots of cars match that description.”
The fair-haired man gave his partner a confused look. “No they don’t...”
“Are you feeling okay?”
“What?”
“You look a little tired.”
Right in front of her the fair-haired man suddenly fainted. His partner caught him, then he looked right at Kass and said. “You ladies should get going. I recommend taking the back road out of town.”
Kass watched as the cop dragged his now unconscious partner back to their car and propped him up in the passenger seat.
“What was that about?” Cat asked, having arrived just in time to hear the cops warning and see him drag his partner away.
“I don’t know but I think we should leave.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice.” Cat was in the car before Kass even had her own door open.
Kass joined her a moment later, but she couldn’t take her eyes of that cop. He watched them right back and he almost looked as confused as she felt. She could see he was talking on the phone again and she wondered who to. She didn’t get to look at him for much longer though because a moment later, Cat had hit the accelerator and they’d pulled out of the lot and back onto the road with a soft purr.
Cat did as the cop had suggested and took the back country road out, more because it was the fastest route than any other reason. In fact she’d scoffed when Kass had told her about the cop’s suggestion.
“You can’t trust a cop,” Cat had said.
“He did let us go,” Kass reminded her.
“Maybe they were just posturing and it was an intimidation routine to see how we would react.”
Kass didn’t think so but she didn’t bother arguing.
They drove in silence for awhile.
“Did you tell that motel receptionist that I snore?” Cat asked eventually.
Kass had thought Cat had forgotten about that. “Uh-”
She was saved from having to answer by a loud popping sound. This was followed by the car suddenly swerving to the side.
Cat swore. She twisted the wheel. The car fishtailed a little and Cat struggled to hold it steady. With angry and focused look on her face she eventually managed to straighten out before letting the car naturally slow down. She pulled it off the road. And then she sat for a moment looking dead ahead out the rain splattered window. “Tyre blew out,” she explained. Then mumbled “Fuckers,” under her breath. “Bet they messed up the mounting.”
She didn’t make a move to get out of the car though. Instead, after a few seconds silence, she glanced hesitantly at Kass. “There’s a spare in the boot. A proper good one. Think you could change it?”
“Is this cause you don’t want to get out in the rain?” Kass asked bluntly. Lack of sleep had dulled her sense of tact and self-preservation.
But her senses weren’t so dulled as to miss Cat’s posture stiffen.
“You know how to change a tyre right?” Cat asked, ignoring the question, although her tone carried a warning.
“Sure, but you’d be faster at it,” Kass replied, actually daring to meet Cat’s eyes for a second.
Cat looked angry.
For a moment Kass lost her nerve and glanced away, but then she looked back and this time she noticed something different, fear.
Her curiosity got the better of her. “Why do you hate the water so much?” Kass asked.
“Please,” Cat said through gritted teeth. And there was a wild pleading, maybe even vulnerable look in her eyes, one that reminded Kass of her younger self.
For a moment Kass felt lost. She’d done all sorts of things, killed, lied, manipulated, but always for good reason. She’d never been unjustly cruel. No matter how mean Cat could be sometimes, no one deserved that. Kass ducked her eyes and with little more than a nod she pushed her way out into the rain.
Cat called her instructions for where things were from inside the car and once the tyre was done and Kass was safely and warmly back inside, they continued on their way as if none of it had ever happened. It later turned out, the mounting had been fine, they’d simply been unlucky enough to run over an extra sharp branch that had pulled down by the rain.
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As they ascended deeper into the mountains, Kass found the constant pull of the car almost relaxing. She closed her eyes and just focused on the movement. She must have fallen asleep for the next thing she knew she was waking up surrounded by familiar territory, the inner farmland of the Greenstone Valley. It seemed she had slept through their entire journey through the Dragon Mountains, dragons and all, if there had been any. The sky was clear now, if a little overcast, but she could see the rays of sun poking through the cloud almost as if to welcome them back.
“We’re home?” Kass asked, surprised. It felt like they’d only just left Nin.
“Almost.” Cat smirked.
“Did you make me fall asleep?” Kass asked.
But Cat simply snorted softly and she shook her head. “Not this time.”
“This time?”
Cat didn’t get to answer. As they flew past a bar known as The Broken Whistle, sirens pierced the air behind them and a hidden cop car pulled into sight in the rearview mirror.
“Oh, come on,” Cat grumbled, “I’m not even speeding this time. I swear they have it out for me.”
A glance at the speedo indicated she was telling the truth for once.
“Well, you might as well pull over then,” Kass replied.
Cat did so with a reluctant sigh.
Kass was surprised when a second cop car pulled up soon after, this time from the other direction.
As the first cop got out of her car and started to walk towards them Cat groaned, “Of course, it’s Bliss. Now there’s a woman with a personal vendetta.” Cat wound her window down.
As two more male cops approached from the front of the car, Kass was starting to think that maybe she shouldn’t have told Cat to pull over. There was something off about this situation.
“Cat...” she started.
But Cat was already giving Bliss an arrogantly perky greeting. “What do you want, Officer?”
“Cathryn James, please step out of the vehicle,” Bliss commanded in a serious tone.
“Or what? You’ve got nothing on me. I wasn’t even speeding,” Cat replied gloatingly.
“Step out of the vehicle now or I will be forced to drag you out,” repeated Bliss.
The other two cops moved little closer.
Cat gave a little laugh but it died in her throat as she noticed the looks the other cops were giving her.
“Maybe you should do what they say,” whispered Kass, who saw no other option at this point. The second cop car was parked such that escape was impossible, at least not without tossing a cop car in the air, and an action like that would not be without some serious consequences.
“Fine.” Cat scowled but did as asked.
The second that Cat was out of the vehicle, Bliss grabbed her and spun her around so she was pressed prone against the back window. Cat was momentarily too surprised by it to fight back. Besides, she knew better that to give Bliss any excuse.
As Bliss drew some handcuffs from her belt she spoke.
“Cathryn James you are under arrest for the murder of Nolan Perninski.”