Cut Throat by Sharon Sala Page B

did, a curse came with it.
     
    He knew exactly where that incident had occurred. It was less than thirty miles from the Texas-Mexico border and, while it could be nothing more than a coincidence that she was back on the same trail they’d taken when they’d gone after Mark Presley, his gut told him different.
     
    He hit the mute button, then grabbed the phone book and flipped to the yellow pages, looking for the number to Art Ball Bail Bonds. Whatever Cat was doing, Art would have to know.
     
    By the time he made the call, his thoughts were racing. He was still trying to come up with a way to question Art without making a fool of himself when Art answered the phone.
     
    “Art’s Bail Bonds.”
     
    “Art, it’s Wilson McKay. Where the hell is Cat?”
     
    Taken aback by the intensity in Wilson’s voice, Art spoke before he thought.
     
    “Going to see if the man who killed her daddy is dead.” Shocked by the answer, Wilson was momentarily speechless.
     
    “Did you see her on the TV?” Art asked. “Ain’t she a pistol? Just like her to be in the middle of something like that.”
     
    Wilson shuddered, then swallowed past the knot in his throat. “Why would she want to go back to Mexico?” he asked. “The house he was in exploded. No way did he survive something like that.”
     
    “She seemed to think different.”
     
    Wilson stood up and walked back to the window. She wasn’t even in the city. She was gone, and he hadn’t known it. “Did she say why?” he asked.
     
    Art hesitated. The shock of Wilson’s call was passing, leaving him concerned that he’d probably given away more than Cat would have liked. Still, she hadn’t told him not to tell. Not exactly.
     
    “Well, she didn’t go into details or anything, but I got the impression that it had something to do with a computer and a map.”
     
    Wilson groaned. That damned program she’d had on her laptop that they’d used to track Presley. If there was movement on it, she would naturally assume that Tutuola wasn’t dead. She’d wanted to go back and see, but he had stopped her. Now she was going on her own. It shouldn’t matter. He
     
    shouldn’t give a damn what she was doing. She was never going to think about anyone but herself.
     
    But it did matter.
     
    “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from her?” Wilson asked.
     
    “No, even though I left a couple messages on her cell. She said she’d check in, so when she does, want me to tell her to give you a call?”
     
    “Hell no,” Wilson said. “I’ll give her that message myself.” “Yeah, well…”
     
    “Thanks for the info, Art. Sorry if I seemed a bit abrupt. It was just that it was a shock to—”
     
    “You don’t have to apologize to me for caring about her. I do, too, for all the good it does.”
     
    “Yeah,” Wilson echoed. “For all the good.” Art disconnected.
     
    Wilson did the same, then dropped the phone onto the sofa. For a few moments he couldn’t think. He wanted to scream—to rage at the stupidity she’d exhibited by going off on some wild-goose chase like that without telling a soul where she was going. Then he slammed his fist into the wall, oblivious to the pain in his wrist and the dent he’d put in the drywall. It
     
    wasn’t that she hadn’t told anyone where she was going. It was that she hadn’t bothered to tell him. If he needed any further proof that he’d been living in some fantasy world where she was concerned, this would be it.
     
    He sat down with a thump, then leaned back and covered his face with his hands. The shock and pain of what he’d learned was turning into anger. The longer he sat there, the angrier he got. An ambulance raced past his apartment building with sirens screaming on the way to someone else’s disaster, but it felt like the disaster was his.
     
    He kept remembering the first time he’d seen her, coming out of a burning apartment building with a bail jumper over her shoulder. After that, there