I don’t deserve any of his kindness. I’m weak for letting myself have it anyway. “Thanks, but Eleanor will want Yeti when she gets home. She adores that old himb—”
I blink. The cat. Eleanor.
“Tobin,” I say urgently. “Where does Yeti like to hide, outside?”
He blinks back, face pulling into alert lines, waiting for me to finish.
“Yeti got out earlier. What if Eleanor tried to find him?”
Tobin grimaces. “I don’t know. He used to like sleeping outside, but lately, not so much. My guess is he’s at someone’s house, drinking warm milk and living the high life.”
I shake my head. “Remember that cut on his chest? He was gone for two days, and we checked with every neighbor. So there’s at least one place. A small space, that he has to squeeze in or out of.”
Tobin’s eyes meet mine. “We can look.”
Tobin checks in with the search coordinator. Two minutes later, we’re knocking on the first door, asking to search outbuildings, wood piles, porches—anywhere a cat might find a dry place to bed down.
There’s a disturbing amount of scuttling under some of theporches. Kris is having the time of her life, sniffing around a zillion places she’s normally not allowed to explore. I shouldn’t have brought her; she’s got a well-documented history of pushing skunks’ boundaries and finding out whether porcupines taste as spicy as they look.
Tobin searches steadily, but every empty tool bin and abandoned playhouse adds to my conviction that this is pointless. The police already went door to door. Surely neighbors have checked their own properties.
My voice, thin from fear and grief, gets hoarse from shouting questions no one answers.
“We aren’t going to find her, are we? Eleanor!” I scream at a ramshackle chicken coop, pulling fruitlessly on the nailed-shut door. There were chickens here a few years ago. But the house changed hands, and neither the new owner nor their tenants ever bothered to get more birds or knock down the coop.
“Maybe we won’t. But someone will. This is helping, Liz. You know Eleanor better than anyone except Amber. You know what might pull her to go somewhere. It’s a good idea.” He tugs at a window.
Kris bounds back and forth, eyes big, sniffing like crazy. The coop stinks, even years later. She pulls me partway around an airy part of the enclosure, barking at a spot where the flimsy wire is torn, sharp ends pointing inward like a funnel-shaped fish trap.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a few wild things had squeezed in to check out the potential dinner situation. It’s wide enough for a good-sized raccoon or even a determined cougar. The wire would cost a laceration or two on the way out, though. I play my flashlight across the opening. Sure enough, rusty streaks coat one particularly wicked point low down.
Right where a cat’s chest would be, if that cat were old and stiff and not great at jumping.
My lungs fill and fill with surprise and wild hope. I intend to use all that air to call Tobin, but what comes out of my mouth instead is a primal scream. “Eleanor!Eleanor, are you in here?”
Tobin comes skidding around the corner. “Did you find something?”
“The smell! Yeti, when he came home with that cut—he smelled awful! He’s been here. Eleanor!” I tear at the wire.
“Eleanor!” Tobin bellows, easing my fingers away from the stabby metal, then pulling his camping multi-tool from his pocket and flipping open the wire cutters. “Does she sleep any lighter these days?”Snick snickgoes the tool, wire springing apart with each calm, deliberate cut.
“She could nap through an air-raid siren. Amber worries the smoke alarm won’t wake her.”
“Okay, then we have to go in. We’ll also have to come out safely. Let’s take our time and do it right.” His calm is infectious. He’s got the bottom and one side of a smallish doorway opened, and he moves across the top with steady competence while I point the light where he needs it.
In a flash, he’s got three sides open. He bends the wire toward the outside of the cage, twisting the ends into the rest of the mesh so the door stays open.
“Clever,” I say, tying Kris’s leash to a corner post. “Eleanor! Eleanor, honey!”
The coop stinks of rotting wood and the ghosts of poultry past. I charge across the outer enclosure, fetching up against an inner door that won’t budge no matter how hard I push. No way can I fit through the low chicken door. But Eleanor could. “Tobin!”
He’s beside me in a second, shoving the door so hard the building sways, and then, humiliatingly, pulling it open with no effort at all and holding it while I run through.
The small room has roosting shelves at various heights, some still holding boxes with nest-shaped mounds inside. Moldy hay squishes under our feet, releasing a powdery miasma of rot. I whirl around, frantic, beaming my light into all the corners.
“Eleanor!”
Nothing. Nothing but manure-soaked wood and empty feed sacks and a tetanus shot in both our futures, based on the pain in my hands.
