"
You
," Brenna said, pinning a swift glare on her, "
let go
of the cat." And she headed for the back with the woman's gasp following her, knowing she'd been cruel and not caring. Not with the mental image of Elizabeth's blood on the walls.
By the time she reached the tub room, she'd decided to take Elizabeth's sedan—her own truck didn't have a back seat or an easy ride—and found the keys to it clipped inside a small front pocket of the cargo bag. DaNise slid away from the table to meet her and say in a low voice, "Did you see? It looks bad, girl," and shudder.
Brenna didn't respond directly, but she kept her voice just as low. "Don't let Gary talk you into making the phone calls unless you really want to. You've put in your hours for the day." She waited for DaNise to nod, and, a little louder, she said, "I'll be back for my truck as soon as I can break away. DaNise, I've got Emily Brecken down on my contact sheet. Would you give her a call and ask her to let Druid out for me? And my mom—tell her I won't make dinner tonight." Then she slung the bag over her shoulder and went to Elizabeth. Elizabeth, taller than Brenna and a sturdily built woman, seemed oddly small inside the curve of Brenna's arm. But she wasn't as shaky as she'd been, and her face was no longer ghastly pale. "Ready to go?"
"
Now
it hurts," Elizabeth said. "I don't even want to look."
"Then don't," Brenna said, matter-of-fact. But for all of that, she needed a moment, herself. Just to close her eyes and sit against the wet towels on the grooming table and take a deep breath. Remind herself which of the city's hospitals was closest, and how to get there. Try to rid her ears of the sound of screaming, and the way her very soul had felt the fear of that bounding dark.
At that moment she felt an arm around her own shoulders, and the squeeze of a man's hand on the side of her neck, a touch against her temple—the side of his face.
And then it was gone, and she opened her eyes and took Elizabeth out to her car.
~~~
Brenna stayed at the hospital long enough to make sure Elizabeth's boyfriend was on the way, and then until they took her into the back room. She'd seen Elizabeth's hands by then, and wished she hadn't. The cat had bitten her again and again, puncturing her nails, leaving her fingers grotesquely swollen and badly mauled. All Brenna could think of was the wrongness of it—that it had happened to Elizabeth, that it had happened at all. She drove the unfamiliar car back along darkening streets, glad for the abundance of lights in the Pets! parking lot, and for the fact that although there were few cars in evidence, the store wasn't yet closed.
She pulled the sedan into the parking space next to her truck and sat there with her head resting on the wheel, debating whether to go inside and see if they'd cleaned up, to get her purse. To face the people there, and answer all their questions about Elizabeth.
But the walk suddenly seemed too long. And if anyone wanted to steal a purse with an old brush and a for-emergency-use tampon, they could have it. She climbed out of the car and hesitated over the unfamiliar electronic locks, finally settling for shoving down the physical locks and leaving it at that. Then she turned to her truck.
That was when she saw the tires were slashed.
She stared for a stupefied moment, taking in all the implications of it. Not just flat, slashed. Not just one tire, which she could change and be on her way, but two.
She'd have to go into the store after all. Call Triple A, hang around the parking lot for an hour or so until they showed up.
Masera's shadow preceded him, driven by the lights inside the store. "Well, hell," he said, when he realized what she was looking at.
"Are you
everywhere
?" she asked wearily. At her house after Sunny disappeared. At the store when the cat attacked. Sitting on her porch in the dark. His arm—it had been
his
arm—around her in the grooming room.
"I try to be," he said, humor in his voice, in the easy stance of his shadow next to hers.
"I can't decide if this makes you good luck or bad," Brenna muttered. And she couldn't. Every time she thought she knew or understood him, he did something that changed her mind. When he acted from his heart, it spoke to her in some way she couldn't understand. And when he shuttered his eyes and put evasions between them, it made her more wary than she'd ever felt about anyone else.
As if everything he said or did mattered more than it ought to, for good or for bad—and that made her wary, too.
"Let me drop you off at home," he said, and nodded at the auto club sticker in her back cab window. "You can call Triple A tomorrow once you get to work."
Brenna didn't respond right away. And when she did, she found herself saying not,
okay, thanks
or
that makes sense,
but, "That wasn't right. Nothing about that was right."
"No," he said.
"A cat wants to get away, it nails you and runs." Brenna hid her hands in her sleeves, and covered her eyes with them. "It might bite, it might claw, but it
runs
. This cat... This cat wanted to maul her."
"I saw," he said, and there was agreement in the way his shadow inclined its head toward her, a gesture she barely caught as she pulled her hands down just enough to look over them. "And," he added, more sharply, looking at her, "I felt it."
She sighed, and eventually said, "So did I. But I don't know what it means or what to do about it."
"For starters," Masera said, and his voice had turned grim, "I don't think it's a coincidence that the cat's owner is Rob Parker's girlfriend."
"Oh," Brenna said, and groaned. "Oh, shit."
"Looks like you got his attention."
One more thing connecting Parker to the darkness. Not that Brenna had been left with much doubt. Although ordinary human hands wielding an ordinary knife had done the tire-slashing.
Mickey
, she thought suddenly, and then winced at the assumption. Just because he'd been standing by the woman, by Parker's girlfriend, like he knew her and felt some need to protect her.
No, not
just because
. Mickey, who'd argued with Masera and who'd sold him two pit bulls. And now he was connected somehow to Parker, who had a barn with dogs in it, plenty of supplements and medical supplies, a weird contraption out in the back—
The question popped out of her mouth before she even realized she'd formulated it. "Are you going to fight those pit bulls you bought?"
A blunt question in a quiet moment. He might refuse to answer it, but he couldn't misdirect or evade her.
He didn't do any of those. Without hesitation, he said, "No, I'm not."
She quit watching his parking light shadow and looked directly at him, searching his face to confirm the directness of his response. The realness of it. If he'd tried to convince her, if he'd piled words on top of that simple statement, she'd have lost the wire-thin connection he'd made with his answer.
But he didn't do that, either. He gave her the slightest of shrugs and the suggestion of a smile. An understanding smile, one that said
I know you're having a hard time believing in me
but leaving her to make up her own mind.
"Parker is, I think," she said. "I ought to call animal control, tip them off—"
"Animal control knows about the situation," he said, cutting her off short and hard, and his easiness from the moment before vanished. Brenna felt that wire of trust break and backlash as he turned to face her with a real anger. "You went there," he said. "After we got chased off by one of Parker's boys, you went back there."
"Didn't
you
?" she said, lashing back at him and taking a stab at more truth while she was at it.
"That's not the—" and he stopped short, and Brenna realized with astonishment that they were words he hadn't meant to happen, that he'd slipped and given her a real answer when he'd meant to be evasive.
It was a lot more revealing than he'd ever meant it to be, and he knew it, standing there with his eyebrows crowding the bridge of his nose.
That's not the point
. He
had
gone back, that's what it meant. And she'd gotten through to him at last, that's also what it meant. But he had himself back, now, and he said, "Let me drive you home; I'll bring you back in the morning. You don't really want to hang around here waiting for Triple A, not alone. Parker isn't one to take lightly."
Why?
she wanted to ask him.
What do you know?
But she didn't push him any more. Enough for one night, and she was suddenly so tired she could hardly see straight. So she said, "Do you have any idea what time I have to be at work?"
He gave her a cocky grin. "I had to
sneak
to find the file, and I managed that. Your schedule's right there on the wall." Fishing his keys from his pocket, he jiggled them in his hand and nodded toward the SUV. "It doesn't matter. I've cancelled a lot of work in the past few days, and starting the day early will give me a chance to catch up. Eztebe is taking the flack, answering the phone at home—I think he's about to walk out on me. Which reminds me—do you still have my business card?"
Brenna hunted her wallet out of her pocket and pulled out the card, not caring what he might think about the fact that she not only had the card, she had it
on
her; her mind lingered on the way he said his brother's name, the way his tongue handled the unusual phonetics and then jumped right back to plain old boring English with only that hint of foreignness about it. Two different worlds, one man. Somehow it summed him up quite neatly.
"Here," he was saying, as he scribbled on the back of the card. "This is the home phone. Call it if you need anything and you can't get me on the cell."
Brenna gave it a glance as he returned the card. "Does it come with a secret code word, too?"
He snorted. "I'll make one up for you if you want it. Just don't hesitate to call. You ready?"
Home. Brenna did a quick mental inventory of her freezer, pessimistic about her chances of finding a frozen dinner there. If she'd eaten with her mother at the retirement community as was her habit a couple of times a month, it would have been Chicken Kiev and cheesecake for dessert.
Ah, well.
She followed Masera to his vehicle and climbed in, managing to avoid any expression of outright envy at the nifty interior features—lights here, cup holders there, and a CD player that he thumbed off as she entered so she didn't have a chance to catch anything but a few notes of something that sounded classical. He waited for her to buckle up and pulled smoothly out of the parking lot—and straight into the Burger King across the four-lane road.