Alex leaned back against the brick wall of the alley, her head against a chunk of protruding concrete, and took a deep breath. Sweat dripped down her spine and into her waistband in the ninety-degree heat, a scirroco-hot breeze coming down the alley and out into the street. It brushed against her right cheek and gave a paradoxical chill to her scalp beneath her long brown hair. An overflowing dumpster ten paces up the alley gave a fetid reek to the air wafting by.

She counted ten then poked her head around the corner. The man was still there, halfway down the block in front of Makher. He was leaning into the open passenger-side window of a black late-model sedan with his hands resting on the sill, talking to somebody and occasionally glancing up the block in the other direction. People passed on the far side of the street, but none of them looked her way. She was just another teenage street kid. A bit younger than most. Nothing out of the ordinary in this town.

Pulling her head back, she walked up the alley, scanning, then hoisted a ten-foot length of inch-thick, rusty re-bar from under a scrap of rotten carpeting. Positioning it on top of a cracked cinder block, she nestled one end down into a corner where a chimney protruded, the other end floating out into the alley a foot above the ground, pointing toward the street. She shifted the dumpster on the other side of the alley, pulling it out to narrow the gap. Then she grabbed some old newspapers, moved back to the corner, and put her back to the wall.

Closing her eyes, Alex let her mind settle and her muscles relax, sweat exuding and evaporating. Then she half crumpled a few sheets of newspaper and let them fall at her feet. The hot wind caught them and wafted them out into the street, rustling and floating above the sidewalk. She followed them, casually glancing around as she emerged from the alley.

The man by the car turned at the glimpse and shuffle of papers, then bolted upright when he saw Alex; their eyes met for an instant. He scrabbled to open the door and climbed in, then the door slammed and the tires screeched. Alex turned to run back into the alley but stumbled awkwardly, almost theatrically, on the sidewalk. The car approached fast, the driver sensing the opportunity. Alex picked herself up and ran, then dodged into a recessed doorway just inside the mouth of the alley.

That’s when she saw the cat.

A tabby — and a tom, no doubt about it, burly but seriously rough around the edges from what looked like years of tough urban living. Its accusatory yellow eyes stared at her, intruder into his domain. One ear was torn from some ancient battle. Bald patches and sores were scattered over his skin.

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He stood in the middle of the alley, then swiveled his head as the car screeched into the narrow passage. He dodged away toward the far wall, saw no exit that way, turned and came back toward her just as fast. Then he froze. The car was only yards away.

Alex didn’t have time to think, much less consider her general dislike for cats. It was about to die. She leaped out from the doorway and grabbed the cat by its scruff and pulled it back, its claws instantly embracing and impaling her forearm in a dozen places as it yowled with fury. Only her firm grip on its neck kept it from sinking its teeth into the flesh of her hand. She felt the car’s fender brush her pants pocket as the driver saw the dumpster and tried to both brake and dodge her obstruction. Then she heard the satisfying thwook as the re-bar impaled its radiator and slammed through to crack the engine block, lifting the front weels and stopping the car dead. A fountain of antifreeze and a cloud of thick steam instantly enveloped the alleyway.

With the cat still adhered to her arm, Alex leaped up past the car’s right rear-view mirror onto the hood, then long-jumped down the alley and set off running. A hurled curse from behind and a creak of a car door told her the pursuit wasn’t stopping. Hopefully the steam would mask her escape. She dodged right, up a building’s exterior stairway, trying to keep her sneakers quiet while moving fast.

She climbed to the third floor and found a door swinging ajar, no doubt giving tenants some relief from the day’s oppressive heat. A long hallway with doors on either side took her to an interior stairway. Down two flights to the building’s vestibule, she was approaching the glass front door and escape when she saw the man racing by out front, swiveling his head and homing in rapidly on the building entrance.

A dusty and faded “Open” sign hung in the glass store door to her right. She took the invitation, crashing her way in and slamming the door behind her. She turned the lock, reversed the Open sign to Closed, and pulled down the roller shade. The cat took the opportunity to leap free, scrabbling into a protected corner of boxes and bric-a-brac, hissing and spitting as it turned at bay, its back to the wall.

Alex leaned back against the door and braced her feet, closed her eyes, and tried to control her breathing. She heard the building door slam open. Uneven footsteps crossed the vestibule, paused, then moved up the stairs, fading as they went. The only sound was the street traffic outside, her pounding heart, and the steady pat of blood from her macerated arm, dripping off her fingertips onto the bare wood floor. As her breathing calmed she relaxed her shoulders, let her arms hang loose, stood upright, and slowly opened her eyes.

And found herself staring into the eyes of perhaps the most curious-looking human she had ever seen.