LITMIR.BIZ

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something fuzzy and shaped like a herding dog. Underneath the layer of blood he was brindled, brown speckled with black.

      “Hang in there, boy. Help is on the way. Finn Colton’s the one person in the whole wide world I’d want to have beside me in an emergency. He’ll fix you right up. You just wait and see.”

      

      Finn tore into his bedroom, yanked on a T-shirt, grabbed his medical bag and sprinted for the kitchen. He snatched keys to one of the farm trucks off the wall and raced out of the house, ignoring a sleepy Damien asking what the hell was going on.

      He peeled out of the driveway, his heart racing faster than the truck. And that was saying something, because he floored the truck down the driveway and hit nearly a hundred once he careened onto the main road.

      “Hang on, Rachel,” he chanted to himself over and over. “Don’t die on me. Don’t you dare die on me. We’ve got unfinished business, and you don’t get to bail out on me by croaking,” he lectured the tarmac winding away in front of his headlights.

      He’d followed her home from the hardware store this morning—at a distance of course, where she wouldn’t spot him. He’d been worried at how she looked in her car in the parking lot. It was nothing personal, of course, just doctorly concern for her well-being. Good thing he had followed her, because he knew where she lived now. Turned out she was living in her folks’ old place. On the phone, she’d sounded on the verge of passing out from blood loss. And a gunshot? Had there been an intruder in her house? An accident cleaning a weapon? What in the hell had happened to her? First Mark Walsh, and now this. Was there a serial killer in Honey Creek?

      He’d call Wes, but he’d left his cell phone back on his dresser at home, he’d been in such a rush to get out of there. He’d have to call his brother after he got to Rachel’s place. And after he made sure she wasn’t going to die on him.

      “Hang on, baby. Don’t die. Hang on, baby. Don’t die—” he repeated over and over.

      

      In less time than Rachel could believe, headlights turned into her driveway and a pickup truck screeched to a halt behind her car. Finn was out of the truck, medical bag in hand before the engine had barely stopped turning.

      “Rachel!” he yelled.

      “I’m right here,” she called back more quietly. “No need to wake the entire neighborhood.”

      He raced up to her, took one look at the blood soaking her clothes and flipped into full-blown emergency-room-doctor mode. “Where’s the blood coming from? How did you get hurt? I need you to lie down and get these towels off of you—”

      “Finn.”

      “Be quiet. I need to get a blood pressure cuff on you. And let me call an ambulance. You’re going to need a pint or two of blood—”

       “Finn.”

      “What?”

      “I’m not hurt.”

      “Are you kidding? With all this blood? Shock can mask pain. It’s not uncommon for gunshot victims not to be aware that they’ve been shot for a while. Where did the bullet hit you?”

      “I wasn’t shot. He was.”

      She pulled back the largest towel to reveal the dog lying semiconscious in her lap.

      “What the—”

      “I’m not hurt. The dog was. Please, you’ve got to help him. He’s dying.”

      Finn pulled back sharply. “I don’t do animals.”

      “But you do bullet wounds, right?”

      “On humans.”

      “Well, he’s a mammal. Blood, bone. Hole in leg. Pretty much the same thing, if you ask me.”

      Finn rose to his feet, his face thunderous. “You scared ten years off my life and had me driving a hundred miles an hour down mountain roads in the middle of the night, sure you were dying, to come here and treat some mutt?“ His voice rose until he was shouting.

      Oh, dear. It hadn’t occurred to her that he’d think she was shot. And he’d driven a hundred miles an hour to get to her? Something warm tickled the back side of her stomach.

      “Finn, I’m sorry if I scared you. I was pretty freaked out when I saw all the blood. I called a vet in Bozeman. But he’s out on a call that’s supposed to take all night and his wife said no small-animal vet would make a house call to Honey Creek anyway. And it’s not like I could take the dog to the Honey Creek hospital. You’re the only person I know of in town who can take care of a serious gunshot wound and make a house call.”

      “I’m going home.” He picked up his bag and turned to go.

      “Wait! Finn, please. I—” she took the plunge and bared her soul “—I’ve got no one else.”

      He turned around. Stared down at her, his jaw rigid. Heck, his entire body was rigid with fury.

      “I’m sorry for whatever I’ve done in the past to treat you badly. I’m sorry I did whatever I did that broke us up. If it makes you feel better, I’ll take full responsibility for all of it. But please, please, don’t take out your anger at me on a poor, defenseless animal who’s never done anything to you.”

      Finn stopped. He didn’t turn around, though.

      “Please, Finn, I’m begging you. If you ever had any feelings for me, do this one thing.”

      He pivoted on his heel and glared down at her. “If I do this you have to promise me one thing.”

      “Anything.”

      “That you’ll never call me again. Ever. I don’t want to see you or speak to you for the rest of my life.”

      She reeled back from the venom in his voice. Did he truly hate her so much? “But you’ll take care of Brown Dog?”

      His gaze softened as he looked down at the injured animal. “I’ll do what I can.”

      She nodded. “Done.”

      “We’ve got to get him inside. Although the cold has probably slowed his metabolism enough to keep him alive for now, he’ll need to warm up soon.”

      Working together, they hoisted the big dog and carried him inside, laying him on her kitchen table. It made her heart ache to feel how little the animal weighed given his size and to feel the ribs slabbing his sides. He was skin and bones.

      Finn gave the dog a critical once-over. “This dog’s so emaciated that treating his gunshot wound is only going to delay the inevitable. I’ve got a powerful tranquilizer in my bag. It should be enough to put him down.”

      “Put him down as in kill him?” she squawked.

      “Yes. Euthanasia. It’s the humane thing to do for him.”

      “Since when did you turn into such a quitter?” she snapped. “Our deal was that you’d do your best to save him, not kill him.”

      Finn glared at her across the table. “Fine. But for the record, you’re making this dog suffer needlessly. I can’t condone it.”

      “Just shut up and fix his leg.”

      “Make sure he doesn’t move while I wash up,” Finn ordered. He moved to the sink and proceeded to meticulously scrub his hands. He hissed as the soap hit his palms and Rachel craned to see a series of raw blisters on his palms. Where had he gotten those?

      Finally, he came back and laid out a bunch of stainless steel tools on the table beside Brown Dog. “You’ll assist,” he ordered.

      Great. She never had been all that good with blood. A person might even say she was downright squeamish. And surely he remembered that. A suspicion that he was doing this to torture her took root in her mind.

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