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“It doesn’t exist,” said Brutus, still on his nasty streak.

“It does! It’s pastel red with orange shades of peach and rose gold. Very popular with the influencers.”

“I’ll bet it is,” said Sweetie, and it didn’t sound like a compliment.

“Who cares?!” Harriet cried. “Let’s focus, shall we? We’re being kidnapped, and they’re going to trade you in for a lot of money, and they’re going to get rid of the rest of us.”

“Except for Max,” said Brutus. “They’re going to keep him for luck.” Somehow his words seemed to suggest I was in cahoots with the kidnapper!

“I don’t want to be kept for luck!” I said.

“No, but you will—while he’s going to sell the rest of us on Craigslist.”

“Do they have Craigslist in England?” asked Harriet.

“Whatever! Our cushy lives are over, you guys! We’ll probably end up living with some toothless degenerate inbred pervert in the Cotswolds!”

“Breathe,” I said. “We have to breathe and think this through.” I tried to slow my breathing. In and out. In and out. It wasn’t working!

“And to think I dreamed all my life about meeting the Queen’s corgis,” lamented Harriet.

“You have?” asked Sweetie, sounding surprised.

Harriet nodded sadly.“And look where it got me. In the hands of a maniac!”

Chapter 25

“Oh, goodness me,” said the Queen, clutching a hand to her heart. “Oh, dear goodness me. My corgis! My precious corgis!”

She was on the verge of collapsing to the floor, and the people who formed her entourage quickly stepped to the fore and deposited her on the couch, where she was taking little gulps of breath and was trying to steady herself.

“My cats,” said Odelia, as she thought with a pang of sorrow of her sweet foursome. “They kidnapped my cats.”

The entourage, clearly afraid she might keel over, too, took her by the arm and deposited her right next to the Queen. Gran, viewing this with a touch of rancor, now said,“My cats! Oh, dear goodness me, my cats!” and clasped an arm to her brow, then dropped herself down on Odelia’s lap.

Odelia scooted over to make space, and now Gran was seated right next to the Queen.

“This is terrible,” said the Queen. “Horrible! My precious sweet babies. They won’t know what’s going on. They will be apoplectic with anxiety!”

“They’ll be fine,” said what appeared to be the Queen’s senior aide, a man with gray hair so sculpted it looked as if he’d actually created it out of bitumen and glued it to his head. He was wearing some of those fashionable glasses that would have met the approval of Sir Elton John.

“But how is this possible?” asked the Queen. “How did this happen?”

“Bart stepped out for a smoke,” said the aide, then coughed into his fist. “Before he knew what happened, a man dressed like him jumped into the car and drove off with it. Unfortunately Bart had left the engine running.”

“But surely you are in pursuit. Please tell me you’re in hot pursuit.”

It was funny to hear the Queen use words like‘hot pursuit,’ Odelia thought, even if the situation wasn’t a funny one at all.

“I’m afraid we lost a vital opportunity there, Ma’am,” said the aide, once again coughing into his fist. It seemed to be a favorite mannerism of his.

“Have you notified the police? Arethey in pursuit? Have they taken out the helicopter? The drones? Tell me they’re doingsomething!”

“I’ve notified Scotland Yard. They’re sending a unit as soon as possible.”

“Oh, dear goodness me,” said the Queen, sagging into the couch “This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. Positively the worst.”

“If this is a kidnapping, they’ll call in their demands any moment now,” said Dante, looking grave. First the attempt on Tessa’s life and now this.

Odelia wondered if the two events were connected somehow. She couldn’t see how, though.

“Maybe we need to take matters into our own hands,” said Chase.

“What do you suggest, young man?” said the Queen.

“I suggest we go in pursuit right now. They can’t have gotten far.”

“Oh, yes! Please do something!” said the Queen, quite unqueenly.

Chase and Odelia volunteered to be on the‘Hot Pursuit’ team, and hurried out of the cottage. The Queen’s driver Bart got behind the wheel of a second Range Rover, and soon they were moving along at a fast clip, zooming through the leafy lanes of the Newtmore Estate.

Bart, a stringy man with wispy yellow hair, consulted his GPS.“There’s a fork in the road just up ahead,” he said. “Where do you suggest we go?”

Odelia thought for a moment. She had an almost mystical connection with her cats, that much was true, but all it really amounted to was that she had the gift of the feline gab, nothing more. Could she somehow intuit which way Max and the others were being taken? She doubted it, but she had to try. For her cats’ sake as well as the corgis.

“Left,” she finally said, deciding to trust her gut.

The car swerved to the left, and the leafy lane merged onto a two-lane road. She was surprised when Bart steered the car along the wrong lane.

“What are you doing!” she cried when a car approached from the opposite direction. “Stick to the right!”