“He knew what the job was,” I said, pointing to St. Michael. “Get in, kill the bastard. Get out alive.”
She nodded. “Door number two.” She lifted her pinky and I linked it with mine.
“Door number two.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dawn was just beginning to break over the Quarter when the six of us went our separate ways. We stood around the kitchen table with our packed bags and reviewed the next stage of the plan.
“Alright,” I began, “today we’re taking the first real step towards making this happen. If anybody wants out, this is the time. After we walk out that door,” I said, gesturing vaguely towards the street, “we’re all in.”
I looked around the table at each of them in turn. Helen’s face was cool, remote. Natalie was fairly vibrating with excitement, and Mary Alice’s jaw was set. Akiko and Minka each nodded, and even Kevin looked committed—although that may have just been the kitty Valium Akiko had forced down his throat.
I gave Minka a sign. “Since we’re traveling separately, Minka has gotten everybody phones. They’re preloaded with contact info for each of us so we can get in touch.”
Mary Alice was the first to power up her phone. She clicked into the contacts list and frowned. “The address book is empty.”
“Not there,” Minka said, scrolling through the apps until she came to a gaudy pink cartoon kitten wearing a big yellow bow and waving a paw.
Helen peered at the screen. “Is that one of those Japanese lucky cats?”
“A maneki-neko!” Natalie said, pulling up the same icon on her phone. She looked at the caption and did a double take. “You have got to be joking.”
Below the waving kitten was the word “Menopaws!” in a font that looked hand-lettered. Natalie touched the cat and it meowed and twitched its ears.
“What in the name of hormonal hell is this?” Mary Alice demanded. She opened the app and scrolled through the features. “Hot flash tracker? Last menstrual period? Vaginal dryness log?”
Helen let out a little moan of protest, and Minka reared back as if she’d been slapped. “I worked many hours on this!”
“I can tell,” Helen said, making an effort to smile.
“There’s a sex chart,” Natalie said. She hit the button to open that page and the kitten threw back its head to yowl, sending Kevin diving under the table. Soon everyone’s phone was meowing, purring, hissing, and generally making more noise than a herd of howler monkeys.
“It’s awful,” Helen said, hands clamped over her ears. I picked up her phone and closed the app, cutting the kitten off mid-screech.
“It’s perfect,” Mary Alice said, demonstrating the direct message feature. “Look here, we can communicate with each other without texting or emailing. Minka has set us each up with a profile and we’re connected already.”
She flashed her screen where the pink kitten was strolling past a blue postbox, its tail swishing as it pointed to the letters stuffed in the box.
“Oh, that is smart,” Natalie said. “Look, I made my kitten striped. It looks like a tiny ocelot now.”
“I added personalization feature,” Minka said sulkily. “Kittens can be made to look different.”
“It’s very clever, Minka,” Akiko said. She’d made her kitten white and gave it a pair of glasses.
“It’s exactly what we needed,” Mary Alice said, closing the screen on her calico and its tiny top hat.
“What about you?” Helen asked me as she added a sparkly necklace to her Siamese.
I sighed and hit a button. My kitten turned coal black with green eyes. “There. It’s a plain black cat. Now, this is how we will communicate and this is the only way we will communicate,” I said, giving Akiko and Mary Alice a long look. “If you need to talk, buy a burner and send the number via direct message on the app—and that is strictly for emergencies. Got it?”
Everybody made noises of agreement with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
“How in the hell did you develop something this complicated in two days?” Mary Alice asked.
“Minka is an app developer,” I told her. “She’s been working this up for months, and I asked her to let us have the prototype with a few tweaks.”
“It does work, though?” Helen asked, an anxious line etched between her brows.
“Oh yes,” Minka assured her. “But the STD warning is buggy and makes everything crash, so do not open.”