Nine Lives Quotes

“Back in Tahoe, when he had broken the news to her that they had to go home, he had been put on the defensive by the fact that he was the one who’d had personal contact with a murdered woman.

He had the feeling now that she was never going to forgive him for what she viewed as rape, and this latest incident had only fueled her fire. For the first time in their married lives, she’d stood up to him and rejected his excuses. He was beginning to think she’d known about his dalliances for years but for her own reasons had chosen to play dumb. But when she’d learned that the police wanted to question him regarding Marsha Benton’s murder, her days of playing dumb seemed to have ended.

Penny feigned interest in her magazine, but inside, her thoughts were tumbling wildly.

Last night while Mark was in the shower, she’d called Ken Walters, their lawyer. Ken had started off by claiming he couldn’t divulge his conversations with Mark, at which point she promptly reminded him that the money in their house was hers first, not Mark’s, and if he wanted to stay on retainer for the Presley Corporation, he’d better start talking.

So he did.

Learning that Marsha had been pregnant when she was murdered had nearly sent her to her knees. Knowing that her body had been found on their oil lease outside Tyler only made what she was thinking worse. She’d known Mark was devious, but she’d never believed him capable of murder. Now she wasn’t so sure. What she was certain of was that she wasn’t going to be dragged down with him if he fell. Tonight they were back in Dallas in what had been her father’s home first and was now hers. This was her territory, and she wasn’t leaving anything to chance.

Mark glanced up from the chair where he’d been reading, watching the casual attitude with which Penny was sipping her drink. She was flipping through the pages of the magazine in her lap and humming beneath her breath as if nothing was wrong.

It was unnerving.

As he watched, he began to realize Penny wasn’t her father’s daughter by birth alone. There seemed to be more of the old man in her than he would have believed. Ever since he’d put his hands around her neck back in Tahoe, she had been cold and unyielding, even when he’d apologized profusely.

Then, when he’d had to tell her that the police demanded his presence back in Dallas for questioning regarding Marsha Benton’s death, she’d been livid. He’d tried to explain, but she wasn’t having any of it. He didn’t want to lose her. He couldn’t lose her. Even though the world assumed that Mark Presley was the reigning power behind the Presley Corporation, it was really Penny. Mark had the authority simply because Penny was his wife. If she kicked his ass to the curb, the only thing he would be taking with him were the bruises.”
― Sharon Sala, Nine Lives

“he was so focused on watching where Presley went that she almost didn’t see the man he was with until they stopped beneath a security light, their backs to her. She first noticed the other man then, and was shocked at his size. Then her gaze moved to the thick bush of curly hair pulled into a pony tail at the back of his neck, and she wondered how he ever got something that unruly washed and dried. It wasn’t until he turned sideways that she got a momentary glimpse of his profile.

As she did, a strange, anxious feeling skittered through her belly, then quickly disappeared. The stranger didn’t matter. He couldn’t matter. It was time to make her move. She had to stop Presley now, before he went any farther. She reached toward the glove box for her handgun and taser, slipped the taser in her pocket and was reaching for the door latch when the big man turned and faced her.

For a full fifteen or twenty seconds, Cat had a clear and unfettered view of his face, and in those seconds, the world fell out from under her.

She didn’t know that she started moaning, or that she’d broken out in a cold sweat. All she knew was that she was no longer in her car in a San Antonio parking lot but back in her childhood home, trying to run from the intruder who’d come out of their bathroom.



She was screaming for her father when the intruder’s arm slid around her chest and lifted her off her feet. She saw the strange geometric designs on his arm, then on the side of his face, as the cold slash of steel from his knife suddenly slid against her throat. The coppery scent of her own blood was thick in her nose as he dropped her to the floor, leaving her to watch as he slammed the same knife into her father over and over again. She tried to scream, but the sounds wouldn’t come. The last things she saw before everything went black were the look of sorrow on her father’s face and the demon who’d killed them running out the front door.”
― Sharon Sala, Nine Lives

“All the way home, he cursed Presley and his captain for sending him out on this wild goose chase in the middle of the night. His wife was in the bathroom getting ready for work by the time he strode into the house. He was taking off his clothes as he went through the house. By the time he got to the bathroom, intending to clean up, he found her in the act of getting out of the shower.

Mistaking his nudity for something else, his wife took one look at her naked husband as he entered the bathroom and then wrinkled her nose.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Joe. Not now. I’m going to be late for work.”

As she swept past him with her nose in the air, she paused long enough to offer a comment.

“You need to shower. You stink!”

“Do you think?” he asked sarcastically, and turned loose of the last bit of guilt for leaving a trail of tainted clothes all through the house.

By the time she figured out that she’d misread the situation, he was in a fresh set of clothes and on his way out the door.”
― Sharon Sala, Nine Lives

“She sat on the side of the bed with her bare feet firmly on the thick Berber carpeting and tried to maintain a sense of calm. No need to let her emotions get the best of her. It wasn’t as if this was a disappointment, exactly. Still, as she got up to get dressed, she couldn’t help but think how much simpler this all would be if he’d gone ahead and died. Now the police would get involved, and there was nothing she could do to separate herself from the mess that was bound to come.”
― Sharon Sala, Nine Lives

“Hello, Presley residence.”

“Mrs. Presley, this is Dallas Memorial. I have—”

Penny started to weep. “Oh my God, he’s dead, isn’t he?”

“No, no, Mrs. Presley. Quite the contrary. The doctor wanted you to know that we think your husband is waking up.”

Penny’s emotions shuddered to a stop. Not dead? Not dead after all? Waking up? What the hell was all this about?”
― Sharon Sala, Nine Lives

“She frowned, thinking of going down there and explaining herself all over again, reliving the horror of finding Mimi’s body and trying not to think of how she’d looked when they’d dragged her up and out of the ravine. No sooner had she thought it than she heard Mimi’s voice, chastising her over a year ago.

“You hide from life, Catherine. Even when you’re in the middle of it, standing toe to toe with all the bad guys you bring in, you manage to keep an emotional distance. I understand why you do it, but ultimately, you’re the one who will suffer. You’re the one who’s going to grow old alone.”

Cat blinked back tears, remembering what she’d told her.

I won’t be alone, Mimi. I’ll always have you.

Obviously she had been wrong.”
― Sharon Sala, Nine Lives

“It wasn’t that funny,” Cat muttered.

“On the contrary,” Wilson said. “You just weren’t looking at the request from my point of view. I was just lying there thinking that I’d never felt so used up and satisfied in my life, and then you’re asking about a repeat performance.”

Cat lifted her chin in the air, then arched an eyebrow.

“If the request was beyond your abilities, all you had to do was say so.”

Wilson reached up and pulled her back down in his arms, then rolled until she was beneath him. When she looked up, her breath caught in the back of her throat.

A bit of light was reflecting off the gold hoop in his ear, and there was a sheen of moisture on his lips, as if he’d just licked them. Without thinking, she ran the tip of her tongue along her bottom lip, and as she did, Wilson kissed her, hard and fast.

Cat groaned.

Wilson paused, then looked down at her.

“Still interested?” he drawled.

Cat’s nostrils flared as she locked her legs around his waist.

Wilson’s eyes widened, then closed in disbelief.

It was the last thing Cat saw before she pulled him under.”
― Sharon Sala, Nine Lives

“Cat was no novice, but the term “sexual satisfaction” didn’t even come close to what Wilson McKay had done to her.

It was magnificent.

It was mind-bending.

It was addictive.

Wilson was almost blind with exhaustion, but he’d never felt better in his life. Just at the point of falling asleep, he felt Cat’s backside snuggling closer into his lap.

“Uh…Wilson?”

“Hmmm?”

“Could we do that again?”

He laughed out loud.

It started like a rumble down deep in his belly and came up his throat in husky ripples, until the sound, like a blowout, burst behind Cat’s head.

His laughter was infectious.

A little embarrassed, she frowned, but when he buried his face against the back of her neck and kept laughing, she rolled out from beneath his grasp and punched him on the shoulder.

Wilson had never, in his entire life as an adult, experienced this much passion and fun at the same time. He laughed until his belly hurt, and when he tried to pull her back down to him, she wouldn’t relent.

“It wasn’t that funny,” Cat muttered.

“On the contrary,” Wilson said. “You just weren’t looking at the request from my point of view. I was just lying there thinking that I’d never felt so used up and satisfied in my life, and then you’re asking about a repeat performance.”
― Sharon Sala, Nine Lives

“Wilson stared at the phone, wondering if this was how a woman felt who’d just been fucked and dumped without comment. While he hadn’t had sex with her, he was being used. Trouble was, he’d offered, so he could hardly be pissed that she wasn’t being as appreciative as he would have liked.”
― Sharon Sala, Nine Lives

“She fell asleep within minutes, unaware that the rain that had been falling since evening had turned to sleet, or that the roads were becoming impassable.

As she slept, she began to dream, but instead of a continuous scene, it consisted of images flashing through her mind, like looking at old pictures in an album.



Cat was sitting at the kitchen table. Her mother was standing beside her, laughing as she set a birthday cake in front of her. There were four candles on her cake, and her daddy was taking a picture.

“Smile,” he’d said.

She looked up just as the flash went off.



She was still blinking from the flash when the image shifted. It was cold. The blowing wind burned her skin. She was at a cemetery, staring down at a small, flat marker. Cat couldn’t read, but somehow she knew it bore hermother’s name. She could hear her father crying. It scared her worse than the fact that her mother had gone away.

“Daddy…where did she go?”

“Heaven.”

“Is it far?”

“Yes.”

“Can we go, too?”



She never heard his answer, because the image shifted again. This time, she was being led through a long series of hallways. The smell of orange oil from wood polish burned her nose. The sound of her footsteps echoed on the tiled floors. Yesterday she’d been in the hospital. She’d asked to go home. But someone had told her she couldn’t go home because there was no one left to take care of her. The horror of that knowledge had frightened her so much that she’d been afraid to ask what came next.

She walked through an open door as a woman said her name. The woman took her by the hand, and they walked away. She couldn’t see the woman’s face. She never remembered the faces, and it didn’t matter, because they never stayed the same.”
― Sharon Sala, Nine Lives

“She had twisted and turned from the fever, until one side of her nightgown was rolled up above her waist and the covers were off. He couldn’t help but notice the length of her legs and the slender curve of her hip. And, while he wasn’t going to mess with her gown and take the chance of waking her up, he could pull the covers back over her.

It wasn’t until he bent down to grab the blankets that he saw the small tattoo on her hip.

His eyes widened. He looked at her profile. Even asleep, she appeared daunting. But this little tattoo was proof that there might be a softer side to Catherine Dupree.

The tattoo was a butterfly—and it was pink.

Who would ever have believed that Cat Dupree would be the kind of woman to have a girly thing like that?

Barbed wire? Yes.

A skull and crossbones? Sure.

A snake with fangs exposed? Plausible.

But a tattoo of a small pink butterfly on her butt? Priceless.”
― Sharon Sala, Nine Lives

“He had turned forty yesterday, and a bunch of his friends had thrown a big party for him down at the bar across the street from his bail bond office. The beer had been flowing freely. They’d even sprung for a day-old cake from the deli section of one of the big grocery stores across town. Their gift to Wilson had been Wanelle, the prettiest hooker on their side of the city, which was a title Wanelle held proudly, even if her claim to fame came from a real long stretch of the truth.

Still, Wanelle had all her own teeth and clear skin, and she was almost pretty when she laughed. Wilson knew her slightly. He’d seen her around Ft. Worth from time to time, but buying a woman had never been his style. He’d felt trapped when Wanelle had been presented to him, especially since his buddies had tied a big red bow around her neck. Turning her down would have been a serious social faux pas to his friends and to Wanelle. So, rather than hurt everyone’s feelings, Wilson had graciously accepted, and they’d spent the night in her fifth floor apartment, only to be awakened by the scent of smoke.”
― Sharon Sala, Nine Lives

“When she was six, she and her mother had been shopping for groceries when they’d been hit by a drunk driver. It had killed her mother instantly and put Cat in the hospital for days. When she was finally dismissed, her mother’s funeral was over, and she and her father were on their own.

Over the years, she learned to adjust, and she and her father grew closer. Then, just before her thirteenth birthday, and only days before she and her father were planning to leave on vacation, a man with a tattooed face broke into their house, stabbed her father and cut her throat, leaving her unable to scream as she watched him die.

After that, the Texas Social Services system finished the raising of Catherine Dupree, during which time she’d acquired the nickname Cat.”
― Sharon Sala, Nine Lives