But first, food. He straightened, intending to head to the kitchen, but did a double take at the state of the living room. Gone was the mangy shag carpeting, revealing nicely swept hardwoods in need of refinishing. All the tack strips around the perimeter of the room had been removed as well. In the center of the room, the large, faded and stained blue couch from the senior chief had been covered with a black slipcover and looked almost respectable opposite the newly assembled IKEA entertainment center with Pike’s TV and all his gaming equipment. Pike had put a small throw rug between the couch and the TV, a brightly colored nubbly number that Zack would have expected in a bathroom, but which added a certain whimsy to the otherwise bare room.
It reminded Zack of the mail-order purchases his grandmother had been fond of, cluttering her house with colorful doodads and stacks of mail—
Mail. Hell, he’d forgotten to grab that on his way in. No way was he putting his boots back on just to step out onto the little porch. He opened the front door, musing about how he bet Pike would have liked Grandma and—
Swish. Fuck it all to hell, the bigger of the two cats snuck between his legs, barreling toward freedom.
“Gizmo!” Zack yelled, like the cat was going to slow down at the sound of his name. Sure enough, he just kept right on going, off the porch and into the front yard. Hell. No time to grab his boots now. He couldn’t let the cat out into a strange neighborhood. Pike would kill him if anything happened to the cat. He darted after him, prickly dried grass and plants stabbing at the soles of his bare feet. Gizmo paused to dig in front of a cactus and Zack almost had him—
“Motherfucker.” A particularly sharp rock dug into his foot right at the same time the cat bolted. Zack had no choice but to follow suit, chasing him into the neighbor’s yard. He hadn’t met the neighbors yet but didn’t have time to worry about that as the cat was sprinting through their yard, past some plastic kid toys and a basketball hoop, around the back and through an unlocked gate, totally trespassing.
Gizmo skirted the edge of a small pool. Fuck. The last thing Zack needed was Pike’s cat to drown on his watch.
“What the hell?” An angry man with a potbelly stormed onto the patio.
“I’m your neighbor. Trying to get my cat back.” Zack spoke quickly, grateful that his physical conditioning meant he wasn’t out of breath after the chase. Hoping the guy wasn’t about to get violent or call the cops, he gestured at the cat, who was hunkering under a bush.
“Well, hurry up and get it then.” The guy glared at him. Not the best possible first meeting. Zack rushed over to the cat—for Pete’s sake, he’d done a two-mile swim and six-mile run earlier, he should be able to capture one pesky feline. But no, the cat slid right through his grasp. He was a big cat too—some kind of Maine Coon Pike had said and had to weigh close to twenty-five pounds, but hell if he wasn’t a slippery bastard.
“No more sleeping in my bed,” Zack yelled, before he remembered that he had an audience.
The guy rolled his eyes. “Shut the damn gate after you,” he said as Gizmo scampered over the fence, back into Zack’s backyard.
Zack hurriedly shut the gate and headed after Gizmo only to find him up a fucking tree, meowing plaintively.
“Well, dummy, you got yourself up there. You can get yourself down.”
“Meow,” the cat yodeled in response.
Fuck. The tree was tall but spindly. Zack tested the trunk. Yeah, no way was it holding his weight.
“Stay right there,” he lectured the cat as he ran at top speed back into the house, grabbed a pop-top can of tuna from the cupboard and hightailed it back to the tree, where the cat still cowered and whined.
“Here, Gizmo. Kitty want a treat?” Zack tried to keep his voice nice and sweet. This shouldn’t be this hard. He’d rescued plenty of animals before. Hell, most of the time they were desperate to come with him. Easy peasy. And the food should do it.
He wafted the can around before setting it at the base of the tree and waiting. Slowly, the cat picked its way down the tree until Zack could almost grab—
“Ow!” The cat, who up until that point had been nothing but nice to Zack, warming his bed and coming in for pets, swatted a huge scratch down Zack’s arm right before darting under the back deck.
“All right, you overgrown ball of fur, now we get real.” Zack crouched next to the deck. It was dank and dark under there, but he’d crawled into way worse. He got down on his belly and slithered under the wooden deck, getting his front all muddy but not giving a shit. Getting this cat back inside before Pike got home was his goddamn mission right then and he was not going to fail. He reached the cat, who had slithered all the way up against the foundation, and snatched him up, not giving a shit about the hissing and scratching. He pulled him back out, keeping him clutched to his chest as he stood up even as the cat dug his claws in.