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electrical signal leaping…
    She remembered cop talk about triggering devices. She stared across the street into the church where someone had left a gift for the bride and groom, a silver-wrapped package tucked down into the lectern where Charlie and Max Harper would stand to be married. She had seen it earlier as she watched the workers, had thought it was a special present hidden just where the preacher would stand, where the bride and groom would stand, a gift all silver-wrapped with little silver bells on the ribbon….
    A special present….
    A gift that was not a gift, she realized with a quaking heart, and the kit exploded to life, racing at the boy, leaping on his back, raking and biting and forcing him away from that electric signal-maker, that plastic box that could send its message across the street into the church, could send its triggering message…
    She might be wrong. The boy’s actions might be innocent. But… Your dad’s in jail because of them cops…. Punch it and get out …. Terrified and enraged, she clawed and raked and bit, driving the boy away across the roof, forcing him toward the trellis. Nearly falling, he swung away down the trellis, the kit clinging to his back.
    Before he hit the ground she dropped clear and ran flashing across the street between cars….
    There…there was Clyde hurrying out of the church toward his car as if he had forgotten something. As he leaned into the open convertible, reaching, she leaped to his back nearly shouting in his ear, only remembering at the last instant to whisper….
    â€œBomb, Clyde. There’s a bomb in the church in that oak stand, in the lectern. A boy on the roof…garage door opener to set it off…tell them to run, all to run…I chased him, but…” And she bailed to the ground again and was gone, racing back across the street causing Clyde to shout after her. The street was thick with cars letting people off.
    But then seeing her appear at the far side and swarm up a tree to the rooftops, he spun away, never questioning the kit’s warning. Not daring to question, not this small cat. Never daring to question her any more than he would question Joe Grey….
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    Moments earlier, Dulcie had been licking blood from her paw where she’d cut herself on a thorn of the lemon tree. She sat among the branches licking at her pad and looking across the garden into the church, admiring the big meeting room with its high, dark-raftered ceiling and white plastered walls and its two long rows of glass doors looking out on the front and back gardens. Vases of white flowers were massed at both ends of the room, and someone had tucked a gift down inside the lectern. She could see a corner of the silver paper, maybe something special to be presented at the ceremony, though that did seem odd.
    Imagining the ritual of the wedding, she was filled with purring happiness. No matter what ugliness might happen elsewhere in the world, no matter what hideous events occurred outside their own small village, here, today, human love ruled.
    Behind her Joe Grey hissed, “What’s she doing?”
    She turned on the branch, never doubting from Joe’s distraught tone that he was talking about the kit, this kit to whom disaster clung like needles to a magnet.
    He was staring across the street at a dark-shingled roof. Dulcie could just see the kit crouched on the edge of the roof beneath overhanging branches.
    There was a boy on the roof. The kit watched him intently, rigid with anger—and the next instant she leaped, clawing the boy and raking him. He swatted at her and ran. The kit rode his back, scratching and biting, forcing the boy off the roof, riding him down then leaping away to race across the street.
    The kit hit Clyde, flying up clinging to his shoulder. They could see her poke her nose at his ear, whispering…lashing her tail and whispering…
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    In the church office provided