Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay by Babette Jongh (best summer books .TXT) 📗

had fallen on the hard tile floor. Or in the pool’s deep end. Or in the donkey stall where she’d be trampled to death.

Cats fighting.

He heard the sound and slacked off on his headlong sprint to save Abby. It was just a cat fight.

Catching his breath, he rounded the corner of the house. A dozen cats rolled and fought each other on the patio, then broke apart when his movement triggered the motion-sensor safety light at the corner of the house. Blinded for a split second, he moved so the light’s glare wasn’t coming straight at him and swung the flashlight’s beam toward the melee.

Not cats.

Raccoons.

Raccoons and cats. A screaming, yowling, chattering heap of raccoons and cats fought each other. He’d seen some pretty intense bar brawls in his lifetime, but nothing to rival this. The fighting animals attacked, defended, rolled, and sprang apart, all the while hissing, screaming, yowling and moaning. Georgia barked with high drama, darting in now and then to snap at a raccoon’s backside whenever the opportunity presented itself.

With thoughts of rabies shots spinning through his mind, Quinn charged at the unruly group. “Shoo! Stop it! Break it up!”

The fight calmed, and most of the animals, raccoons and cats alike, fled for the safety of the shadows. But the biggest raccoon turned and hissed at him, teeth bared.

Quinn took two steps back. The thing was huge. The granddaddy of all raccoons stood on his hind legs, just about tall enough to reach Quinn’s crotch.

With those long, sharp teeth.

With those long, sharp, possibly rabies-infected teeth.

Quinn swung the flashlight at the creature, whose mouth, Quinn was sure, dripped with blood. “Shoo! Get out of here!”

The raccoon dropped back down to all fours and glared at Quinn. Its eyes shone gold in the porch light. Georgia lunged at it, snapping and barking.

“No, Georgia,” Quinn commanded. That granddaddy raccoon was bigger and meaner than Georgia ever thought about being. “Let him go on his way.”

But still the raccoon lingered, eyeing the metal pan of dog kibble Abby had left on the back porch for that damn stray dog. Tonight would be the last night she did that, if Quinn had anything to say about it.

And, he decided, he did. He did have something to say, and by God, whether she wanted to or not, she’d listen.

Quinn flung the metal pan toward the raccoon Frisbee-style, sending the few remaining morsels of kibble flying. The pan wobbled in a wide arc, completely missing the raccoon, but he got the message. With one last aggrieved glance, he trundled off.

Quinn knelt down and snapped his fingers at Georgia. “Come here, girl.”

She crept close, her head down, her tail tucked, her demeanor submissive.

“I’m not gonna hurt you.” He set the flashlight down. “I just want to see if you’re okay.”

He skimmed his hands along her face and head, then down her sides and back. “You okay?” He didn’t feel the dampness of blood, and she didn’t flinch at his examination. “You’re lucky they didn’t get you.”

A low, moaning meow came from the shrubs between the house and the aviary.

“Griff?” Quinn stood and shone the flashlight at the base of the shrubbery. A pair of yellow eyes blinked. “Come here, buddy.”

The cat growled, a low, whining sound.

Georgia went to the cat and sniffed cautiously, then sat back, whining.

“Dammit.” Quinn laid his flashlight on the ground so the beam illuminated the cat, then dropped to his knees and crawled under the shrubs. Griffin’s eyes flashed, and he hissed. “I’m sorry, dude.” Though Quinn felt sure that he was about to be flayed alive by the cat’s claws, and that spiders and ticks were at this moment skittering down his shirt like teenage groupies slipping past the bouncer into a New Orleans bar at midnight, he bent lower and reached farther. “I’ve gotta bring you out of there.”

Griff growled and hissed again. Quinn grabbed the cat’s scruff and dragged it out of the bushes. Miraculously, the cat hung limp and didn’t bite or scratch. Quinn cradled the battered feline and got to his feet. “You’re really hurt, aren’t you?” The cat’s fur felt matted and lumpy, and Quinn felt the stickiness of blood seeping through his shirt.

And now, Quinn wondered for the first time, where was Abby? Either drugged enough to have slept through all this or, as he’d worried before, passed out on the tile floor inside the house, trampled to death by donkeys, or dead at the bottom of the pool?

The farm next door wasn’t just loud; it was exhausting. He was too old for this shit.

He glanced into the pool. No floaters at the surface, nor dead bodies being sucked down to the bottom by the drain. Dismissing the donkey scenario as the ramblings of a sleep-deprived brain, he knocked at the sliding glass door. When Abby didn’t answer, he tested the door, and it slid effortlessly open.

Now, he could add a new worst-case scenario for Abby: the victim of a violent criminal who stalked the neighborhood at night, looking for unlocked doors.

Quinn was not a worrier; never had been. He had only recently trained himself to ponder decisions before making them because of the disastrous outcome of some of his more spontaneous choices. He had always flung himself headlong into whatever he wanted to do without fear or doubt.

He had never worried about Melissa or Sean. Melissa, with her high-heeled shoes and manicured nails, was tougher than the most seasoned cage fighter. He pitied anyone, armed or not, who tried to cross her, and if anyone messed with Sean, Melissa’s mama bear came out with a fury. Her vicious and public dressing-down of the vice principal when he had unfairly accused Sean of cheating was the stuff of Audubon Elementary School legend.

Abby’s vulnerability brought out something unexpected and tender inside him, and it scared Quinn to death. He hadn’t been able to give Melissa the support she’d needed, and she was one of the most self-sufficient people he’d ever met. Abby came with an