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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, big ones could be dangerous, angry ones could be lethal. The poor pooch, she thought with sympathy. Rescued from one predator only to be placed at the mercy of another.
“Front,” she said at the same moment that he glanced through the passenger window.
Bringing up the rear, she wasn’t surprised that the pup cowered at the sight of him. “Easy does it, sweetie,” she crooned. “Believe it or not, this is the cavalry.”
Stonehenge shot her a sidelong look as he opened the door. “What’s its name?”
“Feel free to pick something. But…I believe it’s a she.”
As he began examining the animal, she found herself hoping he wasn’t one of those incompetents who got into a profession because a parent or spouse had decided it was lucrative. Of course, the thought of his parentage then triggered the wry speculation as to which landmass he’d been excavated from. Moments later she had to acknowledge guilty admiration when she noticed his deft and surprisingly gentle inspection.
“She’s filthy. I can’t believe you put her in your van.”
Charming he wasn’t, however. “Me neither. But considering her condition, I doubted she could handle running tied to the sideview mirror.”
He cast her a brief, but unamused glance. “How old is she?”
“Are we having a hearing problem here or a language one? She ran in front of my car not ten minutes ago on the edge of town.”
“People always say that when they bring in a hurt animal they want to get rid of. Thing is, most don’t have the nerve to try that when it’s in as bad a shape as this one.”
If his intent was to intimidate, the man should have stuck with a stern bedside manner. All he’d succeeded in doing was to push her buttons. “Doctor, one more time…this is not my pet.”
The vet tilted his head toward the wary dog. “And I’m taking her word for it. She keeps looking at you for reassurance as to whether or not she should trust me.”
“Can you blame her?” The blunt response was out before she could edit it, the result of a fatigue brought on by too many hours behind the wheel and stress from too much concern over survival. “What I mean is—”
“Never mind. I’m prone to bluntness myself these days. And you’re right, I do look like hell, and my manners are worse.”
He seemed ready to say something else, but the dog, possibly reacting to a gentling of his gruff tone, edged over onto her back, exposing her belly as she had earlier. Frowning, he took new interest in the creature.
“That’s a nasty gash. Doesn’t quite look like an HBC, though. Hit by car,” he added at her blank look.
“If I hadn’t braked in time, you could have been looking at that, too. Whatever happened, it couldn’t have been long ago, could it?”
“No, my guess is a confrontation with a raccoon, or else she didn’t quite make a clean pass through barbed wire.”
“Can you help her?”
“I’ll need better light to examine her more thoroughly. Come on. You’ll have to help.”
“Excuse me?” She stared in disbelief as he scooped the animal into his arms and started toward the clinic. Help how? Slamming the van door, she called, “Wait. Hey!”