No Kitten Around

by RJ Blain

My doctors would have been proud of me for how readily I acknowledged the truth. Maybe my limited success with therapy had actually been a lot less limited than I believed.

  “I had assumed it would be awkward, not that you’d be terrified of me.”

  “I got over that part pretty quick and graduated to pissed, so don’t worry about it.”

  “I noticed you were cranky for a while there, especially in the hospital.” Kennedy crept closer to the edge of our hiding spot. “Reed?”

  “What?”

  “What’s that noise?”

  Noise? I joined her, careful to keep my head beneath the safety of the protruding rock. I’d ignored the hail pummeling the ground, but when I stopped to listen again, I realized it had tapered off. The thunder rumbled, softened, and even the rain eased.

  The clouds growled, deceptive in its low tone—not thunder. Thunder rolled, rumbled, crashed, and cracked, comforting in its irregularities. The constant tone grew stronger with every passing moment. I sucked in a breath, retreated, and grabbed Kennedy’s arm, pulling her with me. “That’s not a good sound.”

  “Reed? Don’t tell me that’s what I think it is.”

  Oh good. I wouldn’t have to tell her. I could just go straight to a brand new sort of panic attack, the type where I potentially looked right down death’s throat. “What sounds like a train and really sucks?”

  “Your ability to tell bad jokes at the worst time possible.”

  “I was more going for tornado, but I suppose that works, too.”

  “I don’t believe in huge chunks of hail, and I don’t believe in tornadoes, either.” Kennedy crammed herself as far back as she could, rubbing her arms. “You’re really cursed, aren’t you? First you’re in a car wreck, then you’re kidnapped, dragged halfway across the country, and then on the way home, the plane crashes—which you sleep through!—and here we are, about to get mulched by a tornado.”

  Reaching out of the safety of the rock, I snatched a piece of hail, which was closer in size to a baseball than a golf ball. “This is hail. Allow me to present this as evidence. It is hard, it is really cold, and it is made of ice. It also fell from the sky.”

  To make sure she got the point, I touched it to her ankle. She kicked, and her shoe went flying, bouncing off the stone to fall into the water below. “Damn it, Reed!”

  “I’m not fetching your shoe.” Just to make sure she really knew it was ice, I touched her with it again. “Hail is ice. See? Cold.” I tapped the hail to her ankle several more times. “It’s hail, Kennedy. Claiming you don’t believe in it doesn’t change scientific fact. Hail is real. Large hail, like this piece, is also real.” Since I had taken leave of my senses anyway, I slid the piece of ice up her slacks, running it along the curve of her calf.

  Kennedy kicked the shit out of me with her bare foot while I laughed.

  Sometimes I took the whole serenity in the face of things I couldn’t change thing a little too far. I couldn’t change tornados, but I sure as hell could pretend I wasn’t listening to one outside, the wind screaming and drowning out even the thunder. Using Kennedy as an outlet made me the villain of the hour, but she held part of the blame, too.

  Most people took the gloves off to fight, but she kicked her second shoe off, launching it out to join the first, and pummeled me with her feet while I wielded a chunk of wet ice. She squealed loudest whenever I got near her toes.

  I’d forgotten how ticklish her feet were, and ice seemed to make her reaction so much worse.

  “The instant I get my hands on you, you’re a dead man, Reed!”

  Unfortunately for her, I remembered her feet weren’t half as ticklish as her ribs, and it took a single swipe of my fingers along her side to earn a scream. When she did get her hands on me, she probably would try her best to kill me, and I’d deserve it. With grim determination, I freed my hand by doing the worst thing I could think of.

  I dropped the piece of hail down her blouse, aiming for where an opened button exposed hint of her cleavage. While she shrieked, flailed, and went fishing for the piece of ice, I stroked my hands down her sides until she laughed so hard she could only writhe, squirming to evade me.

  It would have been a lot easier to secure my victory if I’d stop laughing. Laughing made it hard to catch my breath, which turned holding her down a challenge—a challenge she wasn’t going to lose without putting up a fight. An uncontrolled kick of her leg and a knee to my gut turned the tables.

  She hadn’t forgotten I had a ticklish spot, too, and she clawed the back of my knee.

  I banged the back of my head into the rock and yelped.

  “Shit. Reed?”

  At least I hadn’t smacked my nose. Broken noses hurt like hell. “I’m fine.”

  Digging the hail out of her shirt, she flung it at me. “You asshole!”

  Even at short range on a soft toss, ice to the face hurt. I yelped again, clapping my hands to my nose. It hurt, but I doubted she’d broken it—broken noses tended to drop me to the floor almost as often as panic attacks did. I needed to do something about that, although I could argue I was by going to my therapy appointments as scheduled. “For something that doesn’t exist because you don’t believe in it, hail to the face hurts.”

  “I meant to hit your shoulder.”

  “Point bank range and you miss? Your aim sucks. Please tell me you don’t carry a gun.”

  “Normally yes, but I don’t have a carry permit for Indiana, so I’m unarmed.”

  The wind’s screaming settled to the roar of a train, continuous and drawing closer, close enough I was about ready to jump out of my skin—or be tempted into taking a look out and up. I’d never been outside during a tornado before. The rare times one came close to Gypsum Creek, I waited in my worn little house and hoped the thing wouldn’t blow down around my ears.

  She was wrong about my sense of humor. I had one, it was just depressingly morbid and liked to show up at the worst times.

  If I kept distracting her, maybe she wouldn’t really appreciate the sound wasn’t thunder despite sharing certain similarities. Thunder couldn’t chew up houses and spit them out as late-night snacks. “They don’t need to give you a gun. All they need to do is hand you some ice. You’ll be the most dangerous woman in the state.”

  “Reed!”

  I made a show of rubbing my nose. “At least you didn’t break it. I hate breaking my nose.”

  “Because you faint worse than a girl.”

  The woman had the mind of a steel trap, and once something went in, it didn’t leave. I grunted, acknowledged defeat with a nod, and retreated to my side of the niche. “It’s a bit of an inconvenience.”

  “A bit? I could flick your nose and…”

  I really didn’t like the way her voice trailed off. It meant she was thinking, and once she started thinking, she started making trouble for someone. I tensed, jerked in her direction, and almost forgot to avoid looking her in the eyes. I lowered my gaze to her chin, which drew my attention to her mouth.

  In the flashes of lightning, I saw her smile.

  “Reed.” She breathed my name, and not even the storm could drown out the sound. “I’m really bad at this.”

  Huh? “Bad at what?”

  Her waved hand took in me, our hiding place, and the storm all in one smooth motion. “This. All of this. I was supposed to start off with apologizing, then I was supposed to do some groveling. On my knees. I almost wore a skirt, too. Then after I was done groveling, I was supposed to do something else, but I got stuck on the first part and forgot. I had a list, but I left it in Indiana.”

  Once again, I recognized the precursor rambling of an anxiety attack taking root, especially considering someone with as good a memory as hers started forgetting things like one of her lists. “Deep breaths through your nose and count them.”

  Even I could be useful for something sometimes—and despite what my doctors thought, I did pay attention during the sessions, even though it was a lot easier to think about taki
ng action than actually doing it.

  I was my own worst enemy.

  Kennedy hiccupped. “There’s a tornado about to suck us up and spit us out and you’re telling me to breathe through my nose.”

  “I’m sure any tornados in the area will—”

  A bang and flash of light caught my eye, and from the other side of the ravine, a blossoming ball of fire illuminated the night and shook the ground. The screaming wind stilled, and in the lull, metal rained down, thumping and splashing into the mud below. My mouth dropped open, and I crawled to the ledge.

  Kennedy joined me, and she covered her mouth with her hands. “Was that the plane?”

  I couldn’t imagine what else could be so large it shook the ground and exploded in a fiery ball of death, doom, and destruction. “Hey, Kennedy?”

  “What?”

  “That whole thing about hiding in a ditch?”

  “What about it?”

  “Good idea.” I followed my own advice and breathed through my nose. “I think that was the plane.”

  “I’m pretty sure we left the plane at least a quarter mile away, Reed.”

  “That’s one way to put it.”

  “I’m never watching a disaster movie ever again,” she whispered.

  I laughed, shaking my head. Her, stop watching those flicks? Hell truly would freeze over first. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Next time you watch one, you’ll just modify your running commentary on the fallacies of the film to account for new information. It seems tornados can, in fact, pick up 747s and fling them a quarter mile.”

  “And that hiding in a ditch actually works.”

  The stream below reflected the smoldering wreckage and lightning. “I think if we’d been in the ditch without cover, we’d be dead right now, Kennedy.” I pointed at the wreckage littering the ground. “See?”

  “Ditch with cover,” she amended.

  Kennedy’s phone rang, and she spat a curse, digging it out of her pocket. “What the hell? I have reception?” She swiped her hand across the screen. “Young.”

  To give her the illusion of privacy, I slid closer to the ledge, keeping an eye on the sky in case it decided to fling more hail in our direction. Its plane-tossing hissy fit seemed to have calmed the storm, settling it to the occasional thunder, lightning, and light drizzle. I was aware of her talking on the phone, but I ignored the conversation.

  A slender hand snagged my collar and yanked me back. “Here, talk to Mr. Matthews. He can explain.”

  The next instant, her phone was in my hands and she was shoving it in the general direction of my ear. “Uh, hello?”

  “Mr. Matthews,” a man greeted. “I’m Gordon Liehosen. Agent Young tells me you can explain what is going on?”

  Kennedy pointed at the plane in a frantic motion.

  “The plane crashed. When the weather worsened, I suggested we might go to lower ground, as an open field makes a very bad place to stand when there’s a lot of lightning—especially by a downed plane full of jet fuel. We found a nice spot to take shelter in a ravine. Unfortunately, a tornado seems to have picked the plane up and relocated it rather violently.”

  Kennedy made a strangled noise in her throat.

  “Agent Young seems to be having some issues accepting the violent relocation of our plane, Mr. Liehosen. I can recommend a good therapist or two in Indiana.”

  I deserved to be smacked, but I wished she hadn’t hit the back of my head, which had already suffered a close introduction with a rock.

  “Where are you?”

  “Uncomfortably close to where the tornado relocated the plane, which is about a quarter mile or so from where we’d left it.” I tried not to think too hard about the other passengers—and hoped they had either gotten away or never realized what had hit them.

  “Please ask Agent Young to send your coordinates to arrange for search and rescue, Mr. Matthews.”

  “Can I make a request?”

  “What?”

  “No more planes.” I offered the phone back to Kennedy. “He’s asking about coordinates for search and rescue.”

  Kennedy took the phone, put it to her ear, and made an annoyed sound, turning the screen to show the call had ended. “Sorry about that. He wanted to make sure you were actually still alive.”

  “What, were you planning on killing me and leaving my body in a ditch?”

  I really needed to learn not to provoke a woman. It was bad for my health.

  Chapter Nine

  The storm blew itself out long before search and rescue arrived, and I regretted going along with Kennedy’s idea to check out the wreckage for survivors. With the departure of the heavy rain, thunder, and lightning, she transformed into a cold, detached, and practical professional determined to do her job.

  Since I wasn’t really sure what her job actually was, I cooperated without comment. Her fetish with disaster films probably had something to do with her expectation of a lot of bodies. Nature cared nothing for humans. If anything, I suspected the planet we called home would’ve been happy if our entire species kicked the bucket, since we often did far more harm than good. It took over twenty minutes to find a way out of the ravine, a hike Kennedy made in her bare feet since she refused to look for her shoes.

  “Death traps,” she muttered when she thought I couldn’t hear her. “Pointy death traps.”

  Reevaluating my initial verdict of cold, detached, and practical professional to cold, grumpy, and practical, I kept quiet and decided to admire the view, since she insisted on going up the slope first while cursing about men with more stitches than sense. Since I resembled her remark, I went with what she wanted.

  The path of least resistance would keep me out of trouble for a while, or at least buy me enough time to figure out how my life had been turned completely upside down, rather like the jet. It took me several tries to reach the top, and I needed Kennedy’s help to scramble over the ledge without sliding down to the bottom yet again.

  Parts of the plane still burned, but the rain kept the flames from spreading while offering enough light to make out the destruction. The trees skirting the top of the ravine had been reduced to mulch, and the ground hadn’t fared much better.

  “Where’s the rest of the plane?” Kennedy crossed her arms over her chest, shifting her weight from foot to foot.

  “Would you like my shoes?”

  “No. Unlike you, I’m healthy and unhurt. Cold feet won’t kill me. They could kill you.”

  “I would like to point out they’re soaked, mud got into them, and they squish when I walk. It’s a bit late for worrying about cold feet.”

  “Reed, keep your damned shoes on.”

  I held up my hands in surrender. “I just don’t want you to cut your feet.”

  “I’ll get a tetanus shot after search and rescue gets here. No big deal. A few scratches are nothing compared to getting shot, and I’ve done that a few times. My recommendation: don’t.”

  “You’ve been shot?” Maybe I had a bucketful of reasons to be angry at her, maybe I still wasn’t sure what I thought about spending any length of time with her, but I didn’t want her hurt. I’d done enough hurting for both of us, although very little of it physical. Then again, my panic attacks got physical enough.

  “Several times. As a bit of free advice, never get shot in the ass.”

  Hold on. Ass? Someone had shot Kennedy in the ass? Given the choice between dealing with a tornado-tossed plane or coming to terms with someone shooting my ex in the ass, I went with the plane. I could understand planes. When they weren’t tossed out of the sky, they flew rather reliably. Most didn’t end up the chew toy of a twister, but that was hardly the plane’s fault.

  Instead of replying, I walked around the wreckage, coming to the conclusion she’d been right about only part of the plane having made it to us. Where was the rest of the plane? I shoved my hands into my pockets and glared at the ruins, which I determined to be everything behind the wings.

  On my secon
d walk around, I headed in the direction of the field, crested the small hill, and found the rest of the plane. It had dive bombed, sticking straight out of the ground, one wing broken off while the other was mostly intact. The cabin—what was left of it—smoldered like a burned-out torch.

  “I suppose I should be grateful the storm waited until after we had landed before doing that to the plane.” Kennedy stepped to my side, and she ran her hands through her hair. “I haven’t found any bodies. Have you?”

  I shivered. I’d seen exactly one body in my adult life, and I had killed him. My quota for bodies had been filled for the rest of my life. “No.”

  “Shit. I take that back.” Kennedy pointed.

  Stupid fool that I was, I looked.

  Thanks to Kennedy’s love affair with disaster films, I’d done more than my fair share of research verifying if the nonsense she spouted during her commentary of them had any truth to it whatsoever. During a bad blow, twisters flung anything in its path every which way with no care of what—or who—it damaged.

  Under no natural circumstances would a tornado leave the bodies of its victims piled together, easy to find without being tangled in any wreckage. Distracted by the plane, I hadn’t looked to the sides, and when lightning turned night to day, I struggled to believe there could be so many of them.

  I spun, slipped in the mud, and landed on my ass.

  “Reed?”

  “I think you were right about the bodies.” The breathlessness of my voice coupled with the tightness in my chest warned me the worst was still to come. I knew I needed to breathe, but I floundered, stuck on my brief glimpse of the dead. A twisted little part of me suggested they could still be dying.

  Every rare now and then, someone got flung by a twister and ended up in a tree, alive to tell the tale. Miracles happened in a world angels and demons visited, where humans toyed with the laws of physics with magic because they could without any real care if they should.

  Scalding hands cupped my face, and Kennedy crouched in front of me. “Reed.”

  My name, her lips, her presence far too close for my comfort, and too many bodies to count spelled another utter disaster. I promptly forgot everything anyone had ever tried to teach me about conquering panic attacks, all so I wouldn’t do something embarrassing and potentially dangerous, which included faint in my ex’s arms.