“Tighter!” he commanded, jerking the gun at me, and I tightened the binding until Sandy gasped in pain.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
If he had tossed me one of the expensive nylon or leather leashes that had been on display, I would have had a legitimate excuse to tie a poor knot—the half-inch webbed nylon was too thick and the leather too slippery to make a tight loop. But whether by accident or design he had selected one of the cheap slip leads that was little more than coated rope. It made an excellent binding.
When her hands were tied, he grabbed me away from her and proceeded to bind my hands behind my back with the same force. I said, trying to distract him while I pushed my wrists as far apart as I could, “The police have the coins. They found them in the trunk of Leo White’s car. This is not going to get you any closer to the money.”
My uncle always said criminals were fundamentally stupid; otherwise, they wouldn’t be criminals. My attempt to reason with him was a wasted effort. He pulled the knot so tight that I felt bones grind together, and I cried out.
“I’m sick of it,” he said, breathing hard. “Sick of being lied to by you goddamn bitches. It’s my goddamn money, and I’m getting it back, you hear?”
“You can’t,” I insisted. “You’re already wanted for Mickey White’s murder. The police are scouring the countryside—”
“I didn’t kill her.” He tied the knot hard and jerked me to my feet. “The stupid bitch offed herself, right there in front of me. The whole thing was her plan, her setup, her way of making sure her old man got what he deserved for stepping out on her. I brought her the gun. I was supposed to get the money. Half a million in gold coins for one little gun? Hell, yeah. I figured she was going to do her old man, yeah, but what did I care what she did with it? By that time I was going to be long gone.
“But that wasn’t her plan at all, the lying bitch. She wanted to make it look like he murdered her, least that’s what she told me when I got there. Called me stupid, said I’d been set up, and good luck collecting my fee, and then she blew her brains out, right there in front of me.
“But I ain’t stupid. I knew my fingerprints were all over that gun. So I wiped it down and put her fingerprints back on the gun, but that’s
all
I did. Nobody can say I murdered her. There’s not a shred of evidence against me.”
Except that you put the gun in the wrong hand
, I thought, but didn’t say. “Her husband must have come back while you were still there,” I said. “He’d gone out for dog food but couldn’t find the right brand. He saw his wife dead, saw you and ran. You chased him, but lost him in the dark, and he drove his car down a ravine.”
“Shut up,” he said. He opened the door that led to the kennels, and the muffled barking of the four dogs who were boarding there—including Ringo—was suddenly sharp and clear. He closed the door again.
“What about the dog?” I said quickly, trying now to do nothing more than buy time. “I don’t understand how her service dog got locked outside the bedroom.”
“I shut it out. I hate dogs, always have. White never would have known I was there if it hadn’t been for that fool thing barking its head off. I could’ve got the money and got clean away.”
He jerked Sandy to her feet and shoved her toward me. He nodded toward the storeroom door. “What’s in there?” he demanded.
“Nothing. Dog food. Cleaning supplies.”
He opened the door and shoved us inside. Hero started barking and lunging at the bars of his crate and Cisco started to push himself to his feet. I cried, “Cisco, no! Down!”
Looking a little ashamed of himself for forgetting his down-stay, Cisco sank back down to his bed.
The man leveled his gun at Hero’s crate. “Make him shut up.”
“I can’t! I can’t make a dog stop barking when he’s scared!”
“I can.”
“No!”
I flung all my weight upward and outward, into the man’s shoulder. His gun arm jerked up and the shot, exploding in the small room, sounded like a cannon. Almost at the same moment I felt a stinging blow across the side of my head, and everything went dark.
A rough wet tongue across my eyes nudged me to consciousness. Feathery whiskers tickled my face. I tried to lift my hands to pet my dog but they were paralyzed. When I turned my head away, the pain of a thousand lightning bolts shot through it. I groaned and forced my eyes open. It was dark, but I came to understand that I was lying on my side on the cold concrete floor, and a heavy weight was preventing me from moving.
“Are you okay?”
The voice belonged to Sandy. Gradually my senses returned, as well as scraps of memory. Cisco’s hot breath on my face was like a lifeline.
“Was I shot?” I whispered.
“No. Just knocked out. He hit you with the gun. Your head was bleeding. That’s all I could see before he shut the door.”
That explained why it was so dark. The room was concrete block, and windowless. I had left the overhead light off so that Cisco could rest.
I managed, through a sudden wave of nausea, “The dogs? Are they okay?”
“Yes. The bullet went into the ceiling, I think. Nero was just kind of huddled up in the crate. The gunshot really scared him.”
I took a deep breath, careful not to move my head. “How long was I out?”
“A minute or two. He tied us together and locked the door. I haven’t heard anything else.”
I could feel her shoulder blades against mine, and when I tried to move my arms they were bound to my sides by what I gradually came to recognize as more leashes. It was hard to think. Cisco kept trying to lick my face. I just wanted to close my eyes and make the pain go away.
“Can you untie my hands?” I couldn’t even feel my fingers.
“I’ve been trying. I can’t reach them.”
“Cisco,” I said weakly, “lie down.”
“He was very good,” Sandy said. “He stayed on his bed the whole time. I think Alan forgot he was there.”
Cisco gave a grunt as he lowered himself to the floor beside me. I felt his warm, heavy weight against my leg. I took a deep, slow breath, then another, trying to clear my head.
Sandy said brokenly, “I am so sorry. So sorry for dragging you into this.”
I tried to think. Maude would not be back tonight. The kennel was within a half hour of closing and I didn’t have any appointments. No one was expecting me anywhere, nor would anyone think anything other than I had gone to bed early if I didn’t answer the phone. I could hear the muffled barking of the kennel dogs, but that wouldn’t last long.
As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I could make out the shape of shelves filled with dog food bags, covered bins of toys and clickers, bottles of spray disinfectant. No scissors, knives, box cutters or keys. No phone. All of those useful items were in the outer office.
I said, “Someone will be here in the morning. It might not be very comfortable tonight, but we’ll be okay.”
“I wish Ringo was here. Is he really okay?”
I said, “He’s fine.”
“Mesner was waiting for me when I left the Pet Fair Saturday afternoon. I had just put Ringo in the back of the car when he came out of nowhere and pushed me into the passenger seat. He drove my car up to that cabin—I guess it’s the one Mickey and Leo had rented. There was police tape all around it. He made me get out, and steered my car into the lake. It was all I could do to get Ringo out before he did it. He was sure I knew where the money was. At first I denied it”—I remembered the bruises on her face—“and he tore the place apart looking for it. Then he thought it might be hidden out in the woods somewhere. He would leave me tied up while he looked for it. I guess . . . that’s what happened the day you and Cisco came along.”
I said, sounding stronger than I felt, “It wasn’t your fault.”
“After that, I knew he would kill me if I didn’t give him some reason not to. So I told him he was right, I had the money and I would split it with him, but I wouldn’t leave without Ringo. When I heard the announcement on the radio, it was like a godsend. I told him that I had the money in a safe deposit box back in Charleston and that I’d turn it over to him. But I wasn’t leaving without my dog.”
I said, “Is he really your boyfriend?”
“No.” A broken sound of disgust. “God, no. He’s some kind of hired gun of Mickey White’s father. He tracked me down because of Leo. I was . . .” an unsteady breath. “Leo and I had an affair this summer. I broke it off after a few months, but he didn’t want to let go. He kept e-mailing me, talking about us running away together. I kept trying to tell him it was over, but”—a shaky breath—“apparently he never got those e-mails. I think . . . from what I can tell, Mickey intercepted my e-mails to him, and changed them . . . made it look like I was setting up a rendezvous with him to leave the country. She knew I was coming up here; I had talked to her about it. She had it all worked out so that it would look like her husband killed her and ran away with me. She was a sad and twisted woman.”
“Do you think she really killed herself, just like he said?”
She was silent for a moment. “She was in liver failure.
The doctors didn’t expect her to live until Christmas. I don’t think she told anyone. I only knew because I was on her treatment team at the hospital.”
“I always wondered how the killer got past Hero,” I said, “and how Hero got locked outside the bedroom. It was the one thing that didn’t make sense. But if Mickey put him outside the room herself, in a down-stay, for example—”
“He would have stayed there,” Sandy finished for me, “no matter what happened, until she released him.”
“Only she never did,” I said softly, and could barely think about how long the faithful dog had stayed there, waiting for his release command, until finally hunger, thirst and survival instinct had overidden his training, and he had begun to bark.
Suddenly I was brought back to the present, and I said sharply, “What’s that smell?”
She hesitated. “It smells like some kind of chemical.”
“No.” A sudden dryness seized my throat, and the pounding of my heart sent lightning bolts through my brain. “It’s kerosene.”
Frantically I looked around. “If we try to stand up at the same time, we might be able to make it to the door. It has a turnbolt lock. I think I can move it with my shoulder.”
“Our feet are tied together!”
“We’ve got to try.”
Cisco got up with a worried whimper and limped to the door, sniffing at the bottom threshold.
“Oh, God,” she said with a gasp. “I smell smoke!”
I braced my shoulders against hers and tried to get my feet beneath me but collapsed almost immediately against an onslaught of fiery pain piercing my temples. Sandy struggled frantically to get her balance, crying, “He’s set the place on fire! The dogs—Ringo! We’ve got to get out of here!”
With every movement there was a new explosion of pain in my head. Gray and white spots swam before my vision and I was drenched in a sudden cold sweat. A thick stickiness on the back of my neck suggested the wound had reopened.
“Wait!” I gasped. “Stop! I can’t—”
“Ringo!” she said, half sobbing. “Oh, my God, Ringo!”
But she stopped struggling long enough for me to catch my breath, to slowly will the world back into focus. “The kennel is concrete block,” I managed. “It won’t burn. The dog doors are open to outside runs. They can get away from the smoke. They’ll be okay.”
If he hadn’t closed the dog doors; if the dogs weren’t too panicked or overcome by smoke to use them; if the bedding or the paper products we kept for cleaning didn’t catch fire . . . We had to get out of here. The training rooms that adjoined the office had been fashioned from the original stable that had first inspired the idea for the kennel location, and they would go up like kindling. The concrete walls that separated that part of the building from this might delay the spread of the fire, but already enough oily smoke had seeped through the crack underneath the door to make my eyes water.
Hero stirred in his crate, rattling it. Cisco pawed worriedly at the door. The cool air of the storage room was sucking in the heated smoke from outside, now so thick I could taste it.
Think. Think.
Sandy started to cough. I tried to breathe shallowly.
Cisco pawed the door again. If I could get him to stand up on his back legs, he might accidentally hit the turnbolt with his paw and unlock the door. It was a desperate plan with virtually no chance for success, but I had no choice.
“Cisco,” I called hoarsely. My throat convulsed and I tried not to cough. “Cisco, up!”
In the dimness, I could see him turn his head toward me. He started to come to me. “No!” I shouted. That time I did cough. “Up!”
He looked at the door. I actually thought he might do it. I sent up a silent prayer to the God of Dogs:
Please, please, please . . .
It was the same prayer I had sent at every agility trial and obedience trial since Cisco had been competing, and my success rate was about fifty percent. But when a prayer is all you’ve got, a prayer is what you use.
Cisco sat in front of the door and whined. It took me a moment to realize that he was trying to stand up, but his shoulder wound prevented him. He needed his front legs to launch onto his back ones, and he had no use of the muscles in his right front leg.
He was trying, but he couldn’t do it.
The smoke was thick now, and toxic. There was no way to pretend that it wouldn’t kill us—all of us—long before the fire did.
Sandy gasped, “Can he tug?”
“What?”
“There’s . . .” Coughing. “A rope . . .” More coughing. “Tied to the slide bolt on Nero’s crate. I saw it . . . before he locked us in here. Nero can . . .” Coughing. “Can unlock doors. I’ve seen him.”
“I know,” I gasped. But what I was thinking, and didn’t want to waste the breath to say, was,
Oh my God!
It was Mischief’s crate that I had locked Hero into; Mischief, who had an annoying talent for unlocking the slide bolt on her own crate, so I often had to tie it closed with a piece of rope. If Cisco could release Hero from his crate . . .