The Silenced Tale, стр. 53

Juan comes back a few minutes later, face white.

“Juan?”

“Cancel the reservation,” Juan says to the concierge. “And arrange for a car to the airport. Boss, we’re going upstairs to pack.”

“Why?” Elgar asks, dread filling his gut and curdling whatever is already in there.

“We gotta go home,” Juan says softly. “Someone . . . they think your stalker . . . it’s . . .” He takes a deep breath and rubs his eyes, frowning hard, hands shaking. “That asshole . . . he killed your cat.”

The police sent crime scene photos to Juan, who hesitates to show him, but . . . Elgar wants to see it. He wants to know. If—how—his beloved little buddy suffered. Knowing is better than imagining. Especially since his imagination has already proven to be the source of all his misery.

The photos are shockingly red and white, especially on the small screen of Juan’s phone. He’s barely able to parse the splash of gore on the otherwise sterile, white tile wall of the kitty hotel. Four little paws are lined up neatly under the bursting splash like shoes in a hallway. But severed. No legs. The little head displaying Linux’s last expression of utter terror—pulled back lips and exposed fangs—sits beside them, a white ribbon of spine curled around it all like revolting gift wrap. Tufts of ginger fur stick to the drying blood between the tiles.

Elgar makes a strangled sound and runs for the lobby washroom. Somehow, he makes it in time to hurl up what feels like every meal he’s had since he accepted the fragile little marmalade kitten from a neighbor’s litter.

The final choking groan gives way to sobs pulled from the depths of his gut. He spits, flushes, wipes his face and beard with toilet paper, and then curls up on the tile between the toilet and the wall. He cries. Cries in a way he hasn’t since his Aunty Lilah died. Presses his forehead to his knees and curses himself for ever sitting down to that race-car red typewriter in the first place.

Elgar has been accused of lazy writing before. Usually, he lets the criticism roll right off his back, especially when it comes to the way he chose to portray his archvillain. He’s tortured innocent boys, raped maidens, and flayed horses just to prove how dastardly his bad guys are, to cause the sort of emotional pain required to push the hero into action. And he got letter after letter from people complaining about those scenes, about how unfair to women he was being, about the animal cruelty, about how sensational gore for the sake of sensational gore isn’t a substitute for plot. And he’s ignored all of it.

Which makes this, in a less roundabout way than he really wants to admit, completely his fault. If he hadn’t created a villain who did . . . those sorts of things, then Linux might still be alive.

“Boss?” Juan asks, and he’s standing in the open door of the washroom because Elgar hadn’t even had the time to lock it. There are tears on his cheeks, too, because he’d loved that wretched little menace just as much as Elgar. “Boss, shhh. C’mon. We should go.”

“I—uh—I can’t . . .” Elgar says, and is sick again. He can’t stop sniveling.

And then somehow Gil is there, and Elgar can’t really remember how long he’s been clinging to the toilet, shaking. But Gil is standing in the hall of the cubicle, handing them both paper towels to clean up with, gum, and a small bottle of mouthwash. He’s talking on his own phone, voice soft in the ringing echoes of the washroom, barely audible under Elgar’s gross, heaving wretches and sobs.

“—change Mr. Reed’s flight, please,” Gil is saying. “And can you go to their suite and get them all packed? Yes, as soon as possible. They’ll be leaving immediately.”

“Boss, get up. We’ll go. Gil’s brought his car; it’ll be faster. We’re going straight to the airport.”

And then somehow they’re in a town car, and then the airport, and then the plane, and Elgar is feeling weak, and shaky, and his stomach is roiling. He doesn’t want the water Juan keeps pushing at him, and if one more person asks him if he’s okay, he’s going to scream.

“Boss,” Juan says, as the captain announces their descent into SeaTac. “Are you—?”

“I am terrified!” Elgar hisses. “I am furious. I feel so guilty. And I despise that I am terrified, because I don’t even know what I’m terrified of! It feels like my heart is going to burst right out of my chest! I can’t swallow.”

“Breathe, boss,” Juan says, rubbing his back.

The plane tilts toward the earth and Elgar swallows, and swallows, and swallows, and feels like he’ll never get the lump out of his throat. He barely remembers disembarking. He follows after Juan like a supertanker being towed in the bobbing wake of a determined, self-bronzed, grim-faced tugboat.

A local vet clinic is holding what little remains there are, and Juan explains that he’s going to drive Elgar straight there, so they can decide what to do. The owner of the kitty hotel, devastated and so apologetic, has offered to pay for any burial or cremation costs. In the meantime, Juan says, the police think they have a lead on their suspect. Someone has called in a tip.

Elgar’s supposed to meet the cops at the precinct first thing tomorrow morning, after he’s had a chance to go home and rest, and . . . and . . .

Oh, god, Linux isn’t going to be there.

Elgar is going home, and his cat isn’t going to be there to chirp indignantly, to try to trip him as soon as he comes in the door. No fuzzy orange menace to scratch the back of his hand, or meow indignantly at the cupboard door, or to sit on his face first thing in the morning and demand breakfast when his bowl is already