Free Cats on the Prowl (A Cat Detective cozy mystery series Book 1) by Nancy C. Davis Page A

didn’t
want to live in mortal fear of the day some flatfoot showed up on my door. I
did my part to bump off Roy Avino from the safety of a maximum security
apartment. The security cameras can prove I was nowhere near the bakery when it
caught fire. If you girls had any imagination, you would have come up with
alibis of your own.”

    “I couldn’t exactly come up with an
alibi, could I?” Annika replied. “Someone had to do the dirty work of going
into the bakery.”

    Something moved in the room from which
the voices came, and footsteps approached the door. Willow crouched in
readiness to flee, but something she couldn’t understand made her hesitate one
last time. Was it fear, or something familiar?

    Nat didn’t stick around to find out
what would happen next. He tore sideways into another bedroom, skated across
the hardwood floor, and flew into the open window. He landed on the windowsill
and looked back to wait for Willow.

    Even when she heard the footsteps
coming toward her, she couldn’t make herself run until the last possible
moment. There was still one element missing to this mystery, and what struck
her as so familiar?

    Annika shoved the door open and burst
out of the room. She stood all of six foot three inches, and her lithe body
stretched almost up to the ceiling. Her curly blonde hair hung almost to her
waist. She strode down the hall heading for the kitchen or the bathroom.

    Willow froze with every muscle taut to
spring, but when her eye fell on Annika’s face, the puzzle pieces settled into
place. She no longer thought about running away. She no longer thought about
being a police cat. She no longer thought about anything at all. Her mind went
blank.

    Annika’s mouth fell open. “There’s a
cat in here. It looks like my old cat.” She put out her hand. “Here, Snowy.
Come here, pretty girl.”

    Willow stared at her. Then, out of the
depths of her soul, she meowed.

    Nat called to her from the window in
that intense whisper that forced her to look in his direction. “Are you coming,
Willow?”

    As soon as she looked away from
Annika’s face, the spell shattered. She ran for all she was worth, down the
hall, past the pictures and the medals hanging in frames, past the gilded
citations and the smelly bathroom. She didn’t bother to stop on the windowsill.
In one flying leap, she cleared the window ledge and landed on the concrete
outside.

    Every fiber knew what to do when she
hit the ground. She rocketed forward and dove under the hedge. She didn’t stop
running until the prickly darkness closed around her and blocked out the memory
of everything she just saw.

    As soon as the dark hedge enfolded her,
she paused to catch her breath, but she didn’t stay there. She waited until Nat
joined her. Then she tunneled her way back to the sidewalk and set of at a
brisk gallop down the street.

    Nat ran to keep up with her. “Willow,
wait.”

    She didn’t even turn around. “We don’t
have time. We have to get back to the station and find Carl and Naya. I believe
Jason is going to try something next, and we have to alert them.”

    “But Jason didn’t kill Roy,” Nat
pointed out. “You just heard Annika admit to putting the fuel cartridge in the
bakery. Annika, Josephine and Marlena all planned to kill Roy together.”

    Willow shook her head, but her thoughts
were never more crystal clear. “Annika planted the fuel cartridge in the
bakery, but she didn’t start the fire.”

    “What makes you say that?” Nat asked.

    “Don’t you remember what Chester said?”
Willow asked. “He said a regular flame wouldn’t cause that cartridge to explode
and set the bakery on fire. Whoever set that fire used military grade blasting
caps to ignite the fuel.”

    “But we still don’t know who that was,”
Nat pointed out. “Any one of those three women could have a military
background.”

    Willow stopped and faced Nat. “Don’t
tell me the world-famous police cat didn’t notice what was