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She retraced her steps, four cats on her heels, but when she arrived at her car she saw that Rubb was already straddling his trusty red Ducati—probably fresh from the police impound—and Veronica was wrapping herself around him on the pillion. They were going to make a run for it. Of course.

She raced to her pickup, but by the time she was behind the wheel, the Ducati was already speeding away. She held the door for the four cats, who piled in behind her, and then she slammed the door, shoved the car in gear and was off behind the fleeing Bonnie and Clyde.

As she raced after the Ducati, her mind flashed back to the previous day, when she’d gone through this exact same experience, only with Chase by her side. And suddenly she felt a little melancholic. Whatever his faults, Chase was a great cop, and he would be missed in this town. No, she had to admit, actually she’d miss him. How crazy was that?

Just like the day before, Rubb took the road through town, and once again, she lagged behind, dodging pedestrians and making sure she didn’t clip anybody while he simply zigzagged through traffic and was soon a blip on the horizon. Once she’d cleared the city limits, she picked up speed, pushing the aged truck to its limits, and had soon caught up with the Ducati.

“Pull over!” she shouted when she came up next to the couple.

“Never!” Rubb shouted back.

“Back off, bitch!” Veronica screamed.

She gritted her teeth, resisting a strong urge to send the bike into the ditch again, but then soon found she didn’t have to, as Brutus suddenly launched himself out of the passenger window and latched onto Rubb’s face, his claws finding purchase on the hipster dealer’s beard!

Rubb screamed a very unmanly scream when suddenly he found his vision impaired by ten inches of black cat and his face used as a pincushion. The Ducati sailed straight into the ditch, sending Rubb and Veronica flying.

Odelia brought her pickup to a stop and quickly jumped out to assess the damage. To her surprise, she saw that Brutus was still stuck to Rubb’s face, like the Facehugger from Alien, refusing to let go. Both Rubb and Veronica were howling, though Rubb’s howls sounded a little muffled.

“I think you can let go now, Brutus,” said Odelia, and the cat did, immediately starting to lick his paws to remove the stench of human.

“Yippee-ki-yay, asshole,” he said with a Cheshire grin.

Chapter 24

It was a pity Chase wasn’t there to outfit Veronica and her drug dealer boyfriend with a nice set of handcuffs, but since they both looked pretty banged up, and Rubb’s Ducati looked like a total loss, Odelia didn’t think they’d skedaddle this time. She sat cross-legged across from the couple.

“So what about that restraining order, huh?” she asked Veronica. “Looks like it didn’t restrain you from going near this freak.”

“Hey, that’s Mr. Freak to you,” grunted Rubb.

She’d retrieved her phone from the dealer, who now sat spitting out cat hair and checking his face for puncture holes. She leafed through the snapshots she’d taken of the couple.

“Pretty hot,” she said as she held out her phone so they could have a peek. “I wonder what my uncle will say when he sees these. Oh, I know. He’ll say that the two of you planned the murder of John Paul George together. Who was the brains behind the operation? I’ll go out on a limb here and say that it was you, Veronica. The doting daughter?”

“You think I killed my father? You’re even crazier than I thought.”

“Well, I also thought you and lover boy over here were still seeing each other, so not so crazy after all.” She pointed an accusing finger at Veronica, whose tank top was on backward. In her haste to get dressed, she’d missed that minor detail. Like her boyfriend, she looked a little frazzled, and was now checking a broken fingernail. No other bones were broken, though.

“I have nothing to say to you,” she said.

“That’s all right. I have plenty to say to you. You weren’t happy about Johnny divorcing your mother and marrying Jasper, which would make you lose out on several hundred million dollars, so you figured you’d better kill him now before it was too late. So you asked your boyfriend to supply the venom—where did you get that, Donny? I guess a man with your contacts would have no trouble acquiring that kind of stuff, huh? And then somehow you managed to get Jasper’s fingerprints on the vial to make him take the fall and voila. Easy peasy. Now all you needed to do was make sure that there was no connection between you and Donny, so you faked a breakup, which I’m sure made your mother happy, and even went so far as to get a restraining order.”

“All lies,” said Veronica, but she looked like the fight had left her. She knew that Odelia was holding all the cards now, with those pictures of her.

“Tell her about Chase,” Brutus supplied helpfully. “How she set him up.”

“And then there’s that little matter of Chase Kingsley,” said Odelia.

“What about him?”