The security system let out a buzz, and the nearby phone flashed with an alert. Moll didn’t take her eyes off her primary screen. “You get it.”
“Bobcat’s back,” Finn said after a pause. “We’ll get one of those fancy drone-delivered pizzas if we have to for lunch.”
“Or we can make something,” Moll said dryly, with an awkward sideways nod toward the kitchen. “We have food.”
Finn let out a snort. “Like that’ll happen.”
They dove back into the code, desperate to work out the last of the bugs before going live. Grandma Eddy may have called it “perilous odd,” in her rocking chair grumblings, but Moll couldn’t imagine going into business with anyone but her twin brother. He was the best coder she knew, with an intuitive sense for getting ahead of trends.
And for those willing to pay for the privilege, their efforts would finally pay off in twenty three hours, fourteen minutes, and thirty-seven seconds.
It was going to be the best dating app ever. Finn had figured out how to use online behavioral tracking to determine what users really wanted, not what they thought they wanted. All the user had to do was install a plugin and answer a few initial questions.
The beta testers had loved it, except for that privacy fanatic. Moll was pretty sure he lived in a cave somewhere, but who was she to talk? Thanks to satellite internet, she lived in the middle of nowhere, too, and Finn just down the road. Enough space for real privacy, with the bluest lake she’d ever seen less than a mile from her back door, and the craggy dark stone of the mountains stretching up to the stars behind it.
And a porch that enjoyed the visits of creatures from porcupines to moose, keeping her trapped inside on occasion and armed when she wandered through the sharp-scented pines.
Another alert popped up. “Aw, you’ve got a whole herd starting.”
Moll froze on her way across the cabin for more caffeine. “What?” She twisted around, looking for her abandoned phone. She swiped for his and missed. “Let me see that.”
“They’re waiting on the porch for you,” Finn teased, holding it out of reach. “Like when were three, and you tried to adopt the entire pack of kittens.”
“How many are there?” Coffee was forgotten at this point. She could use the distraction while her brain percolated the problem into a solution. There’d be little bugs, but with luck, this was the last major one that threatened to break their app’s launch.
Finn glanced down, still hunched to protect his phone. His lower lip twisted to the left. “Uh, about that.”
“Oh, stop being a dork.” She marched over to the enormous picture window that normally let in the glorious mountain view that today was oh-too-distracting. Moll yanked the curtain back, her head twisted over her shoulder. “As if I can’t just look outside.”
“Uh, maybe you should.”
A thump hit then, and Moll stumbled backward. The pawprint left on the glass was enormous, nearly the size of her head. The face staring back at her with gleaming matcha-colored eyes was definitely larger than her head, no matter how much her wayward hair might resemble Medusa in the mornings.
“Or maybe not,” Finn amended, still clutching his phone.
She coughed. “That’s a mountain lion, not a bobcat.”
“Then they’re all mountain lions.” Finn stayed behind her as he peered out the window. “Wild. I counted eight on the security cams. What do you call a pack, anyway?”
“I think it’s a chorus,” she said, and resisted the temptation to rest her hand against the paw still pressed against the window. “Aren’t they usually solitary?”
“It’s like they’re waiting for something,” Finn said. “Ha! Maybe they’re lovelorn, waiting on the app to go live.”
“Right.” She flipped him off without taking her gaze away. “You think they’ll break the glass?”
“Seriously freaky. They’re all watching you now. Is this guy the leader?”
Moll shivered. “I’m starting to get creeped out. Should we barricade and get the shotgun just in case?”
At her words, the mountain lion in the window blurred. Past the checkered curtains, a man appeared…a naked man, with the golden hair and gleaming matcha eyes that had been watching through the window for the past five minutes.
***
This week, Leigh Kimmel challenged me with “A chorus of lovelorn mountain lions.” My prompt went to Cedar Sanderson, “The house contained an unexpected cat.” Find these and more at MOTE!
