Page 81 of Her Forever SEAL

Mason wasn't entirely sure how it happened. One moment the carrier was in the man's hands and the next the door was hanging open and something fast, orange, and extremely motivated launched itself out, hit the porch railing, and was gone into the neighbor's bougainvillea before anyone could react.

The man stood on the path with an empty carrier and stared after it.

“You have got to be kidding me,” he said, to no one in particular.

He pounded on the door. There was no answer.

The man pounded again.

Mason and Angie looked at one another.

Please God, not another dead end.

“I’ll go around the back,” Angie whispered. Mason nodded.

The man was now on the front stoop, pounding and yelling. This did not look promising.

Mason got slowly out of the car and strolled up to the man, who turned to Mason. “Do you live here?”

“No. You’re being awfully loud.”

“The lady inside owes me money. She gave me a hundred dollars to pick up a cat from some old lady in downtown San Diego, then bring it to her here. The cat scratched the shit out of me. Now she’s not here to pay me the other hundred.”

Mason looked at him. Read him. He'd been doing this long enough to know the look of a significant player, and one who was a patsy. This man was a patsy.

He kept going. “— my arm looks like I lost a fight with a weed whacker, and now the evil little fucker is gone, and I won’t get my other hundred, but that bitch isn't even⁠—”

“Be quiet.”

The man stopped complaining and looked at Mason, as if he could come up with an answer to a mess that wasn’t of his making.

Angie was already coming back from around the side of the house. Her face told him what he needed to know before she opened her mouth.

“Nobody’s home, but it’s not cleared out. Not like the place before.”

“Who are you? What are you talking about?”

Angie looked the man up and down. “You. Get gone.”

“I’m owed money.”

“You planning on leaving a note for the Prius owner?”

He looked nervously over his shoulder at his truck. “I, uhm.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Get gone. Now.” Her hand started reaching for the inside of her jacket and the man dropped the cat carrier and ran toward his truck.

“I left a camera in the back,” she told Mason. “It’ll tell me when she comes back. Need to do one up front, too.”

Mason watched her pull out a piece of small surveillance equipment from her jacket and position it. As she did, he felt the cat brush up against his ankle. He looked down.

The cat looked up at him with his one good eye, then purred.

Mason picked up the cat carrier and positioned it with the door open. The cat walked in and settled. He picked up the carrier, and followed Angie back to the car. As soon as they were inside, he called Sophia.

26

Sophia ignored the cat carrier that Mason dropped inside Clint and Lydia’s doorway. That would be for Lazu to investigate.