and me both, kiddo. Are you going to let me pick you up? Come on, sweetie. Up. Ti mne i ya tebe. Understand? ‘You for me and me for you.’ Show me that you can stand, or let me lift you. Up, up, up.”
The dog did attempt to stand, but at the cost of most of her remaining energy. In fact, she would have fallen again if the woman hadn’t quickly scooped her into her arms. That’s when her rescuer realized how seriously undernourished the pup was.
“If it wasn’t for the dirt and bugs, you’d weigh less than my sneakers. When was the last time you had a good meal, hmm?”
The dog simply rested her head on the woman’s shirtsleeve and stared off into space.
As skinny as the animal was, the climb up the slope to the van was a challenge and the woman was glad to settle her burden on the passenger seat. “Just don’t get any ideas,” she said. “You may have convinced me to do this, but this arrangement is temporary.”
Carefully shutting the door, she hurried around and climbed in on the driver’s side. She took a moment to check the signal on her cellular phone, only to grimace when she saw it still didn’t register one. Her anxiety deepened when, just as she shifted into Drive, the engine stalled.
Swearing under her breath, she keyed it once, then again. After a slight pause, she tried a third time.
Not now.
On the fourth attempt, the engine started. Exhaling shakily, the woman completed as neat a U-turn as the narrow road allowed.
About to reach over to give the dog a reassuring pat, a light in the rearview mirror drew her gaze. The eastern sky was getting brighter…but it wasn’t even midnight yet.
As she continued to keep one eye on the strange orange-amber glow, headlights appeared, momentarily obliterating everything but glare. She immediately flipped the mirror tab down to cut the sharp light, her heart pounding with new dread.
It was just a vehicle, she told herself, and coming from the wrong direction. Nothing to be worried about. But to give herself peace of mind, she eased off the accelerator to force the driver to overtake her.
Not only didn’t the tailgater do that, the vehicle backed off. All right, she reasoned, fair enough. She wouldn’t jump to conclusions. People often disliked passing slower traffic at night. But could it be determined that she was a woman traveling alone? The back-window curtains didn’t allow for much of a view, and the lack of streetlights had to help. That was why she’d been traveling by night as much as possible. At the same time, the farther east she came, the more she prepared herself for the “redneck syndrome” to kick in. She’d hoped this nondescript commercial-type van would draw less attention to her. It was painted a green the military would reject, and no woman with an ounce of taste would be caught dead driving. Had she subjected herself to this for nothing?
She glanced in the rearview mirror again. Keeping a respectable distance, the vehicle followed her the rest of the way into town. As a precaution, in case it was a cop looking for an excuse to pull her over, the woman turned on her blinker in plenty of time to warn she was turning into the animal clinic’s lot. Only when the other vehicle continued by did she finally relax.
It was a pickup. If the invisible hand around her throat didn’t have such a tight squeeze around her voice box, she would have laughed out loud. A junker! No wonder it hadn’t passed her.
The scare did, however, reinforce her doubts about what she was doing. “That settles it,” she told her wide-eyed passenger. “No offense, but I’m dropping you off and getting out of Dodge, pardner.”
She drove around the unlit clinic to the light brick ranch-style house tucked between a barn and stock pen on the left, and a separate garage on the right. Parking by the house’s front door, she experienced another moment of doubt because there were now fewer lights on than she remembered from before.
“Looks as though they’ve gone to bed. Prepare yourself for a less than cheerful reception,” she told the dog.
After her initial knock on the front door, she spotted the bell behind an overgrown branch of red crepe myrtle, and pressed the glowing button. Beyond the sheer drapes, she could see a picture light on in the living room, but that was all.
She waited a good half minute, and when no one responded, she pressed the bell again. “Hello! Can somebody help me, please?”
A moment after that something changed. She didn’t hear or see anything per se, but suddenly she felt a presence. Instinctively, she shifted her hand to her right hip and glanced around, only to remember what she was reaching for wasn’t there. Nevertheless, she knew the feeling—she was being watched—and followed the gut instincts that had kept her alive so far. She stepped off the stoop and toward the van, ready to dive for cover or drive if necessary. Then her gaze settled on the security hole.
That had to be it, she thought. But whoever was inside watching through the viewer sizing her up, he or she had to be one intense person, because the hairs on her arms had yet to quit tickling.
Finally, she heard a dead bolt turning. As the door opened, she drew a stabilizing breath…only to have it lock in her throat.
2
She stared…and he stared back.
This was the vet? she wondered. Couldn’t be.
“Yes?” the man asked.
Baritone-voiced and bare-chested, he filled the entryway almost as completely as the weathered wooden door had. It was, however, his face that triggered stronger doubts. She’d seen less disturbing mug shots. His eyes were at once eerily light and yet sunken in a way that made her think of utter exhaustion if not long-term illness. Neither of which, she reminded herself, was her problem. What’s more, she’d just added to her already loaded plate.
She cleared her throat. “I found an injured dog.”
The unsmiling giant stepped out onto the stoop into the glow of a yellow insect light that probably had done little for her appearance and certainly didn’t make him any easier on the nerves. Although barefoot, he was the size of a piece of Stonehenge. Unfortunately, the stoop wasn’t more than an inch above the packed clay, sand and gravel she stood on. Even face-to-face she wouldn’t reach his scarred chin. The thought of having to grapple with him for control over a weapon convinced her to take another cautionary step backward.
“Back or front?” he asked.
His jeans were unbuttoned and negligently zipped. While he was hardly her first exhibitionist, she was willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. After all, this was the boonies and it was an ungodly hour even for a social call—and he didn’t look like someone who was given to many of those. He could have forgotten to zip up in his haste to get to the door. On the other hand, he hadn’t hurried, and his bloodshot eyes looked too intelligent to make a case for early senility.
When he caught her looking, she expected him to excuse himself and step behind the door, or at least turn away to correct the situation. Instead, he brushed past her.
“While you’re sight-seeing, I’ll find out for myself.”
Thank goodness for the unmistakable scent of scotch. It deep-sixed her self-consciousness and snapped her back into full wariness. Drunks were always a problem,
