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I beam. “Perfect.”

The drive into the city is painted gold and copper, fallen leaves skittering across the highway while the heater blows against my boots. I crack my window two inches just to smell it—the cold, smoke, and damp earth.

Muffin and Tartlet ride in carriers in the back seat. Marzipan nearly tripped me twice trying to keep me from leaving without her, so her carrier sits on my lap. I slip a finger through the bars, and she immediately presses her face against it.

Gage glances over. “She usually hates traveling.”

I nod toward the backseat. “And your mystery trip requires three cats?”

He tilts his chin. “Nice try.”

My interrogation goes poorly. No to mother, Nana, ex-girlfriend, business partner, or lawyer. His smile grows with each guess.

“Brother?”

His grip shifts slightly on the wheel. “No.” He avoids my gaze.

“Sister?”

“No.”

“Therapist?”

He glances over. “Do I strike you as a man who’d bring his girlfriend to therapy as a surprise?”

I consider him. “Fair.”

Twenty minutes later, we drive onto a neighborhood street lined with brick storefronts and planters overflowing with burgundy and orange mums. Past the hardware store with its stacked pumpkins, I spot a familiar sign hanging above a forest-green awning, gold letters arched across black.

THE CRAZY CAT LADY.

I sit bolt upright. “Oh! I know this place. You’ve posted from here more than once. Isn’t this where you adopted Marzipan?”

“Several times,” he confirms. “And yes. Cannoli, Eclair, and Muffin, too.”

I crane my neck as we crawl past the front windows, where a massive orange tabby sprawls across the display between two pumpkins and a chalkboard advertising adoptable residents. Catwalks stretch across the walls beyond the glass.

Then I notice the sidewalk. A line has already formed outside the door, at least fifty people deep and growing, half of them holding phones. Two broad men in black jackets stand near the entrance with the posture of people paid to stand near entrances.

“Wow. Busy for a Saturday morning. Is it an adoption event?” I twist in my seat to keep watching. “Somebody’s holding a sign. Is that a croissant?”

“Popular place,” Gage says, eyes on the road.

“Gage…” I say with a sneaky suspicion. “Why does a cat café need bouncers?”

“Thirty cats.” He taps the side of his nose. “Very rowdy.”

I narrow my eyes at him. His expression stays perfectly, infuriatingly pleasant. Instead of parking out front, he turns at the corner and circles the block, parking at the employee entrance.

“Is sneaking through an alley part of my test?”

“No.” He kills the engine. “That part is for your safety. The Crazy Cat Lady is a local haunt.” His smile lights up his features. “And I’m its most popular ghost.”

The employee entrance opens into a narrow hallway smelling of espresso, disinfectant, clean laundry, and the unmistakable evidence that thirty cats live nearby. Gage leads me past shelves stacked with litter, food, blankets, medications, and toys into a larger back room lined with spacious kennels and little connected play areas.

My feet stop.

Cats. So many cats. A black kitten reaches one paw through the bars toward me, and I immediately lose all higher reasoning. “Hello, tiny criminal.”