ABOMINATIONS

CHAPTER THREE

C R A E

Shauna's apartment is comfortable, small. The smell of the smoke from her cigarette is forever in the furniture, her clothes, and Crae's nostrils. Her eyes lazily scanned her cards, and when she sighed a cloud of smoke trailed out of her mouth. Crae thought to himself that she was particularly attractive like this, but he kept thoughts like that to himself, offering instead a chip to the pot.

    "Fold," Shauna said slowly, setting her cards down and sliding them across the table.

    "Fuck," Crae muttered, flicking his full house down.

    Shauna smirked around her cigarette. "Amateur," she said. "You have such obvious tells."

    "What tells?" Crae asked, but Shauna just shrugged, taking her cigarette out of her mouth and ashing it on her ashtray.

    "Never gonna tell you," she said, standing up and heading over to her fridge, swirling the smoke that hung in the air as she moved. "You want something to eat?"

    "I'm good," Crae responded, cleaning up the cards and chips and setting them to the side. He pulled out his phone and scrolled through social media as Shauna cooked something on the stove. He was busy looking through Facebook when his phone started ringing, showing TILER MURPHY (WORK). He answered it with his usual, "Yeah?"

    "Crae, did you get my texts?"

    "No, I've been playing cards with Shauna. What's up?"

    "Oh good, you're with Shauna. I need you guys to do something."

    Crae wasn't sure how Pepper was able to obtain addresses via websites and apps where people listed things to be sold, but he did, and Tiler had her eye on a necklace like this not too long ago, and she wasn't going to pass up this chance, even though it was still broad daylight. Her excuse was that if she didn't get it now, the listing would go down. So, the idea was that Shauna would distract the woman who lived there. Thanks to Pepper's other talent that was a mystery to Crae was using various sketchy websites to obtain information about who lived in the houses they were hitting. From him, they knew that the woman who lived here was in her forties, single, and probably had a lot more jewelry.

    Crae waited, crouching out of sight on the side of the house. He waited until he heard the doorbell ring, and the woman opened it, and he swung himself up over the fence and started going to work on one of the back windows. With the few tools in his pocket he was able to get it open relatively quickly and slip inside the house, silently closing it back behind him.

    When he looked around, he knew that he had gotten into more than he bargained for. Not one, two, or three, but four cats sat perched in various places around the living room, all still aside from their tails flicking, staring at him, waiting for him to move.

    "Shit," he murmured, staring at the multiple wildcards before him. If he moved slowly, he hoped, they would leave him alone. He tiptoed to the side, cutting through the dining room. In the background he could hear the woman chattering with Shauna. Picking up the pace, he located the bedroom and started looking through the vanity drawers, looking for the necklace that Tiler had sent them for. While doing so he pocketed any jewelry that looked like it might be worth something.

    Finally, there it was. He grabbed it and spun around, ready to get out of the house, but he was suddenly face to face with a black cat standing in the doorway, its green eyes boring into Crae's. It was the only way back out to the hallway, and the window that was still unlocked. He swallowed the lump in his throat.

    The door shutting shook Crae out of his stupor. The woman was back in her house.

    "Damn," he said under his breath, and took a step towards the door as he shoved the necklace in his pocket. The cat didn't like this movement, and let out a hiss, the hair on its back standing up. Crae shrunk back and tried once more to step forward, getting a more forceful hiss this time, and Crae realized that it wasn't going to work.