Читать книгу: «Final Stand»

1

“No!”

The dog came out of nowhere, a streak of black, darker than the night, cutting across the single-lane highway, directly into the path of the van. The driver hit the brakes, but in that surreal instant, the young woman noticed that the animal was hobbling along on only three legs. The poor creature didn’t stand a chance.

Tires protested in a high-pitched squeal as she pulled at the steering wheel in an instinctive attempt to direct the vehicle away from catastrophe, and the van slid across the double yellow line. Luckily there was no other traffic on the dark, unlit road. Fully expecting the sickly thud of impact, out of the corner of her eye she caught the brief, amazing glimpse of the black mass hurling itself into a ditch. For a few seconds, she almost got to savor relief—until logic returned with stomach-roiling bitterness.

She may not be responsible for killing the dog, but that survivalist’s dive had probably finished the poor thing. Even if it hadn’t, maimed as it was, it wouldn’t last much longer out here. Either way, she couldn’t let herself care. It was imperative that she keep going.

But no sooner did the van come to a full stop than she shifted into Reverse and backed up. She angled off to the shoulder, all the way until her headlights found the animal.

A pair of glowing amber eyes watched her from the deepest part of a shallow draw.

“Damn it.”

The dog had to have a cat or two in its family tree. Just her luck, since staying in one spot for any length of time was nothing short of an invitation for trouble. She should have taken the chance and gotten on the interstate.

With a sharp, angry yank, the woman shifted into Park, set the emergency brake and turned on the flashers. This surge of compassion was as unwelcome as it was risky. Here she was prepared to kill, and what was she doing? Playing nursemaid. On the other hand, if it was her lying out there…

“Bet it was born crippled,” she muttered as she fumbled in the dark for a flashlight.

Her fingers brushed against the gun that would be hidden in the litterbag and covered with trash should police lights flash in the rearview mirror. For a moment she debated whether to take the automatic, too, but decided against it. The dog might be someone’s pet and known as the friendliest thing since Lassie; however, she’d had enough experience with canines to know they tended to react negatively to firearms, wild or not. Hopefully, this one wasn’t. But better to end up with a tooth tattoo than to disrupt the calm night with a gunshot this close to town.

The dog didn’t budge as she approached it. As she drew nearer, she understood why, and whatever resentment she’d been feeling vanished.

“Oh, hell. Who else did you have a run-in with tonight?”

The woman winced at the sight of the pup that she now guessed was no more than four or five months old. A retriever mix…female, she determined as the dog rolled submissively onto her back. Starved, and scared out of her wits, she concluded as she came close enough to see how the animal was trembling.

Pointing the light beam off to the side so as not to frighten her any more than necessary, the woman crouched beside her. “Hey, little one,” she crooned. “Good girl. I’m going to see how bad things are. No fast moves or rough handling on my part, so no hostility on yours, deal? I’m giving you fair warning—I have a reputation for biting back, and that’s when I’m in a good mood. This isn’t one of those times.”

With a whimper, the dog offered a paw.

“Nice to meet you, too.”

The woman’s crooked smile vanished as she noticed the deep, bloody scratches around the dog’s face, and worse, the torn flesh on the inside of the left back leg. There was a long gash that stretched halfway along the abdomen, and she couldn’t quite hold back a sympathetic groan at the sight of the ugly wound. A gash like that couldn’t be from a run-in with another vehicle; the unfortunate pooch must have been on the losing end of a fight. The question was, with what?

“Who’s the bully in your neighborhood? Some older sibling, or was it a coyote or bobcat?”

The wounds looked fresh, and that had the woman scanning her unfamiliar surroundings with new unease. She should have brought the gun after all. From what she’d determined, this was a wild section of southwest Texas and sparsely inhabited. The town she’d just passed through had been called Bitters of all things, population a whopping three hundred eleven, a road sign had announced. A block-long testament to ghost towns, the sign would have been memorable regardless because of the notation some wise guy had added in spray paint: And dropping. In fact, she’d been thinking of the fitting editorial, which is the other reason for her near miss with the dog. This was challenging land, the geography no less dramatic than what she’d been driving through most of the day—minimal vegetation, rolling terrain interspersed with craggy draws meandering across the prairie and sudden stark outcroppings of weather-and-man-chiseled rock. More than once she’d wondered what people did to survive. The only industry aside from oil-field services appeared to be ranching. Exotic-game farming seemed a particularly profitable investment, meaning there was no necessity for extraneous guessing about what was lurking out in the denser shadows.

All the more reason to get going. There was nothing she could do here. But as she accepted that sad fact, the dog offered her paw again…and again. It was as though it, she, was trying to delay her…or more. Adding to the awkward and grim situation, this time when the pup whimpered, the entreaty sounded human, too similar to “Please.”

Although she eased her hand forward to be sniffed, the woman sighed with regret. “Yes, you’re a sweetheart, but you chose the wrong person, Miss Mess.”

The dog stuck out the tip of her tongue and cautiously licked her fingers.

“Nice try, but my days as a soft touch are behind me.”

Nevertheless, she gently stroked the dog under the chin and glanced over her shoulder. That vet clinic was a mere minute or two drive back into town. She remembered the old timber-framed sign at the entrance because it happened to be right next to the police station.

The dog shifted onto her side again and nudged the woman’s stilled hand with her scratched nose.

“Nothing subtle or shy about you, is there?” the woman murmured. “That’s okay. I prefer the direct approach myself.”

Maybe she could get help and be on the road without losing too much time. There hadn’t been any nightlife to speak of in town, except for the twenty-four-hour convenience store by the service road. There was no round-the-clock patrolling, and the fire department was a volunteer unit. In fact, it had been the lack of traffic that had allowed her to spot the well-lit house behind the vet’s office. Surely veterinarians were on call at all hours, the same as medical doctors?

“I’m not going to lie to you,” she said to the watchful mongrel. “I’m not wild about this idea, and you may end up hating it, but it’s the best that I can do. You’re the one warning me that you don’t stand a chance otherwise, right?”

The dog shifted to lay her head on the woman’s jogging shoe. Her prolonged sigh sounded as though the weight of the world was on her undernourished back.

“You 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.