Double Play

Published by Camel Press

PO Box 70515

Seattle, WA 98127

For more information go to:
www.camelpress.com

www.jenestes.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Cover design by Sabrina Sun

DOUBLE PLAY

Copyright © 2013 by Jen Estes

ISBN: 978-1-60381-941-1 (Trade
Paper)

ISBN: 978-1-60381-942-8 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number:
2012955397

Produced in the United States of
America

* * * *

To Tony

My appreciation
to all the wonderful people at Camel Press, especially Catherine
and Jennifer. Further thanks to my agent, Dawn, for her support and
hard work.

Much gratitude to
my Harley expert, Jeff, and as always, thank you to all my family
and friends who have supported me in my writing
endeavors.

* * *

Cat’s eyes
snapped open.

What was
that?

At first, she was
grateful for the abrupt end to the wedding nightmare. It was the
third night in a row she’d dreamt about
her
upcoming nuptials and tonight she’d
been marching down the aisle wearing only a wedding veil. This was
worse than the earlier dream where she’d lost her engagement ring
in the Niagara River, but not as bad as last night’s, when she’d
been drowning in frosting atop a giant wedding cake.

D
id all brides-to-be dread their own weddings?
She
adored Benji.
How could she
not? He was a sweetie pie—or at least, he
seemed
like a sweetie pie. Maybe he only wanted her to
think he was a sweetie pie and the second they said “I do” her
sweetie pie would sour.
She looked at the man sleeping next
to her. His head was buried face down in the fluffy pillow, and all
that was visible was a pile of wavy black hair. She reached out to
touch him, as if to reassure herself that the rest of him was
really there.

Her hand froze in mid-air.

Uh-oh.
There it was
again. A scratching sound.
Like a tree branch grazing a
window or a feline sharpening its claws.
She searched her
groggy mind for a rational explanation. Their loft was on the
second floor of a three-story renovated warehouse in what used to
be the industrial section of Buffalo, New York, but the balcony
overlooked
a
treeless
parking lot and therefore no branch could be responsible. Try as
she might, she hadn’t been able to talk Benji into a pet
;
therefore no kitten was
engraving
the coffee
table. She lay very still, listening intently to the scratching
coming from the living room.

She wished she
could turn off the ceiling fan above the queen-sized bed; its
rhythmical whomps were making it difficult to
concentrate.

Scratch
.

She blinked and
peered toward the doorway, waiting for her eyes to adjust so that
she could make out more than the green glow of the alarm
clock.

1:52
a.m.

Maybe it was coming from downstairs; Old
Man Finley doing another one of his craft projects, perhaps
whittling bird figurines on his own balcony.
Unlikely. The
crotchety
neighbor turned in at dusk and didn't
hesitate to ring
them with an angry phone call if the
television was too loud during the Top Ten list.
He was a miserable grouch, but at least he was
quiet.

Concentrate
!
she told
herself
, giving her head a
quick shake.
What was
that noise?

She squinted into
the doorway but could only see two feet into the
hallway.

Scratch
.

There it
was
again.
She heard it perfectly this time and it
was definitely not coming from the neighbor's. Worse, it sounded
closer than it had before. It was a
methodical
scraping
, with the chilling
follow-up of a rattle. She sat up in the bed and shook Benji’s bare
shoulder.

“
Benji,” she whispered.

He groaned and
rolled his head to the side, opening one eye. “Again? You’re
insatiable.”

She frowned at
the dopey smile
sneaking across
his square-jawed, lightly stubbled face.
Apparently, Benji’s
sense of humor didn’t require eight hours of sleep. “Wake up.
There’s a noise.”

“
I’ll
call the super in the morning.”

The rattling
repeated, as if calling attention to itself.

Benji shot up and
cocked his head. “What was that?”

“
The
aforementioned noise. Thanks for joining us,” she
hissed.

He threw the
covers off and got out of bed. Cat followed on her tippy
toes
, reassured by his strong,
five-foot-ten inch frame
. Her heart pounded. She hadn’t been
this wide awake at two in the morning since the Soldiers’
record-setting twenty-four inning game earlier in the
season.

Benji grabbed the
Louisville slugger off the top of the dresser.

“
Just in case,” he told her.

Cat wrapped her
fingers around the barrel. “Hey, hey. I just got that at
Cooperstown and it’s autographed by Andre Dawson. I waited in line
for an hour and a half for it. If you want to arm yourself, use
your red laser sword thingy.”

He turned around,
squinting at her in disbelief. “Oh, okay, I’ll just let us get
murdered in our sleep. Wouldn’t want your fan memorabilia to
depreciate.” He paused for a beat. “Besides, the lightsaber was
damaged in the fatal battle against Obi-Wan. That’s what makes it
so valuable.”

She started to chuckle, but another scratch
stifled her amusement.

“
Shh!”
She touched her finger to her lips. “There it is again.
It's coming from the
balcony.
”

Cat gulped.
She’d figured her imagination was getting the best
of her, but now she wasn’t so sure.

They both poked
their heads out of the bedroom door and into the narrow hallway.
First they looked to the right of the rectangular loft. The front
door was still secured. Cat whirled her head to the back of the
apartment and
crept
down
the hallway to get a better look at the balcony.

When moving in
eight months ago, she had told Benji that the sliding glass door
was a liability. He’d tried to appease her by inserting a wooden
dowel into the track, but she’d pointed out that all a burglar
would have to do was lift the old door up and off its track to
defeat it. He’d laughed at her, saying no one was going to bother
climbing up to their apartment to break into their balcony.
An intruder
would
have to use the fire escape
ladder, which was much too rickety to provide a stealthy
entrance.
“
Except
when
we’re
gone
or asleep
,
”
she’d countered, but Benji had argued
that
there were enough nosy
neighbors around at all hours to keep a decent crime watch.
Nevertheless he had promised to fix it; he simply hadn’t gotten
around to it. After all, Benji knew firsthand what Cat had been
through in the past year—the close brushes with death in Las Vegas,
Santo Domingo and Miami. She had more cause than most for
paranoia.

Especially now. She froze at the sight of
an intruder in the living room. He'd obviously entered through the
lax balcony door, just as she'd feared.
Benji’s
doubt
had struck her as
condescending at the time, and now, seeing the figure
twenty feet away
, she found that
her vindication provided little comfort.

The man was
illuminated by the moonlight streaming in from the balcony. He was
reed slim and as tall as the top of the glass door he was currently
manhandling—definitely over six feet, maybe 6’4”? His elongated
shadow spilled onto the living room floor, reminding her of Randy
Johnson in a late afternoon game. The man looked like a shadow
himself, with his head to toe black leather ensemble. Still unaware
of them, he was attempting to wiggle the door back on its
track.

“
Cat,
call the police,” Benji said, keeping a steady gaze on the back of
the intruder.

The figure spun
around at the sound of Benji’s voice. His face was hidden
underneath the shell of
a
motorcycle
helmet.

Cat took a step
backward, toward the kitchen, her eyes locked on the
scene.

Benji ran toward
the leather-covered figure, jousting with the bat.

The man extended
one long arm toward Benji and snatched the bat out of his
hand.

Cat gasped and
started to turn around
,
desperate to get to the front door.

He pointed the
bat at her. “Stop.”

It was his voice,
not the command, that made her obey. Her shoulders relaxed, only to
tighten again from annoyance.

“
Quinn.” She didn’t say it with a hint of inquisition. She’d
know
t
h
at
velvety, unmistakably arrogant
voice
anywhere.

“
Hi,
Sis
," he
said.

Benji, still
reeling
from the shock
of the bat being ripped from his clutches, jerked his head up.
“Sis?”

Cat reached
around the wall into the kitchen and flipped on the overhead light.
Storming into the living room, she clicked on the lamp,
too.

Quinn finished
securing the patio door and stepped into the living room. He
wiggled his head out of his motorcycle helmet and his straight hair
tumbled around his
pale
face. He pushed the strawberry-blond strands back.

Cat approached him,
tucking her own red strands behind her
ears before she tightly crossed her arms, hoping to make it clear
that her long-lost brother shouldn't expect a hug. Quinn’s posture
was still atrocious. But even hunching, he towered over her and
Benji both. She’d forgotten how tall he was. He’d shot up to
basketball player height the same summer he’d stolen half of Grams’
kitchen and seemed to have gained a couple inches since then. His
once bright-red hair had faded to a soft fire and sunshine, parted
down the middle and so long it hung to his ears. She had no doubt
that his aversion to short hair was more out of laziness than
rebellion, same as the scruffy goatee that hid his cleft chin. The
twosome may have only been half siblings, but the redheads also
shared a set of striking green eyes and alabaster skin, all
courtesy of Michael McDaniel.

“
These
doors are really a security risk
,
”
Quinn finally
said.

Benji wiped his
brow with the back of his hands, still staring at the both of them,
his expression a mixture of confusion and anger. “Yeah, I’m
beginning to see that.”

Quinn let his
duffel bag slide off his shoulder onto the carpet and propped the
bat against the sofa. He twirled his helmet around and plunked it
atop the bat. Then he plopped down on the couch, kicking his black
Red Wings up on the glass coffee table.