Okay. Think, Moss. Roberts was close by, and Kaye was missing. What should I do now?
I needed to get ahold of that guy who yelled a lot. Kaye’s boss, and I guess technically mine, too.
Diving into the front seat, I moved the map off of the console with my mouth and pressed my paw to Kaye’s cell phone. It would be hard scrolling through her contacts with these big clumsy paws, but I would find a way.
Except the stupid thing required a six-digit passcode.
And I didn’t have the slightest idea what it could be.
True, I’d gotten to know Kaye over the last couple of weeks, but not well enough to know her birthday or any other special dates that might serve as her phone code.
I couldn’t give up now. I had to try something, so I perched above on the console very carefully and used only one of my toe beans to press numbers.
Unfortunately, after several failed attempts, the phone totally locked me out. Wouldn’t even let me try anymore.
“Rats,” I muttered along with a string of more colorful kitty curses I’d overheard during my stay at the cat prison.
That’s when the phone screen changed right before my eyes. Now I had choices. Two to be exact:
Call Emergency Services
Call Emergency Contact
Now that was more like it. Surely her emergency contact would want to help me when I explained everything that had just happened.
Feeling much more optimistic now, I oh-so-carefully touched the Emergency Contact button.
And it began to ring.
Hot diggity dog, I’d done it. Score one for Moss!
“Hello?” someone answered. I was pretty sure it was that same angry guy I’d hoped to reach.
“Yes, hello.” I sucked in a deep breath. “I’ve got some intel on Roberts and his shapeshifter, but now Kaye is missing. I’m still in cat form, so I have no idea what I’m supposed to do.”
He groaned on the other end of the line, then said, “Kaye? Are you there?”
Oh, no. He couldn’t hear me. Or he only heard cat noises. I moved my mouth closer to the phone. “Can you hear me?” I shouted, but received no answer back.
Ugh. The stinking collar didn’t work on anyone but Kaye! I hissed in frustration.
“Moss? Is that you? This is Mr. Mason. I’m Kaye’s boss.”
“Yes!” I yelled needlessly. “It’s me. But you can’t understand me.”
“All I can hear is meowing. If this is Moss, can you try to press a button on the phone, so it makes noise?”
Ugh. That was easier said than done as the keypad wasn’t actually up on the screen. “Hang on,” I called.
Why was I even bothering to talk to this dude? The longer I waited to find Kaye, the more danger she could be in.
Still, I had Mr. Mason’s attention for now. I needed to see if he could help. After several moments of fumbling the phone, I managed to push the tiny circle to bring up the number pad, then pressed my paw on the screen repeatedly.
“Okay, okay!” Mr. Mason yelled. “It’s Moss, I get it. Listen, press a button one time if Kaye is in danger.”
I moved slowly and pressed one number.
A beep sounded over the line.
“Dude, you gotta catch up faster,” I yowled. “Kaye is gone! I came back from my recon mission, and she wasn’t here.”
The boss man raised his voice, but he wasn’t yelling just yet. “Slow down. Stop trying to talk, I can only hear meows. Give me one meow for yes and two meows for no. Is Kaye there?”
How did I know how many meows my words would make? I didn’t really hear the meows. When I spoke, I heard my voice. “Uh. No. No.”
“That was three meows, Moss. Try again. Is Kaye there?”
Okay, I couldn’t say uh. “No. No,” I tried again.
“Okay so you’re with her phone, but she’s not there. You’ve already said she’s in danger. Do you know where she is?”
“No. No.” This was slow and frustrating, but could’ve been easily resolved if they’d just given me the ability to speak freely.
Mr. Mason muttered something away from the receiver but returned to me quickly. “You’re supposed to be doing a recon mission right now. Is that where you are?”
Surely he had some sort of way of knowing where his agents were. Why was he even having to ask me?
I bit back my urge to say more and simply went with, “Yes.”
“I need to confirm before I send agents out. We’re shorthanded. Is Kaye in trouble?”
“Yes.” I shouted the word.
“Okay, I’m dispatching someone now. Are you safe?”
The minute I met this guy, I was spraying his shoes with kitty piddle. He deserved it.
“I have no idea!” I shouted at him. “If they kidnapped her from here, then they could get me, too. And thanks to you and your people, I’m just a cat. I have no way to defend myself. For all I really know, she could’ve gone somewhere under her own steam, but how likely is that? She left the car running, for Pete’s sake.”
Okay, maybe I went off a bit fast.
“Whoa, whoa. Stop. Calm down. Remember, all I hear is a cat losing its mind.”
I sucked in a deep breath and resisted the urge to call him every mean name in the book since he couldn’t understand me, anyway.
But no, I was more mature than that. Barely, but still.
Mason exchanged a few more words with someone on his side of the call, then returned. “Can you get out of sight but stay close enough to the phone?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Stay there. Backup is already on their way. Won’t be more than an hour.”
An hour? Seriously? Didn’t they have the ability to teleport here or open some sort of magical gateway? Or an agent that lived nearby? Anything could happen in sixty minutes. That was a whole episode of a good TV show for crying out loud!
Without any other options at my disposal, I let out one last angry snarl, then jumped out of the car and darted into the forest.
I could do this. I could wait an hour, right here under this nice bush. Even if someone came back, I’d stay here crouched beneath this thick tangle of leaves and branches. All I had to do was wait.
Someone would come save me.
That huge cat wouldn’t get me.
Besides, it wasn’t real. It was a shapeshifter, just like me. It wasn’t a Wampus cat.
It couldn’t be.
Otherwise, I stood zero chance that either Kaye or I were getting out of this alive.