Blending In

by RJ Blain

  “See, Chase? Officer Calrig knows his stuff. Listen to him. So, where do you keep your ammunition?”

  Chase sighed. “Shoe box in the back of my bedroom closet. It’s the one with the red sticker.”

  “I’m buying you a gun safe tomorrow. Merry early Christmas.”

  It took an hour for the cops to leave, and I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t lose my temper over the delays. The instant they drove away, I turned to Chase and said, “We’re going.”

  “You’re really going to need bail, aren’t you?”

  “When I get my hands on the fucker who stole my kitty and my puppy, you better fucking believe I’m going to need bail. But they’re definitely getting a fucking smackdown for daring to touch my kitty.”

  “All right, all right. All I’m promising is we’ll check the place out. If it looks dangerous, we’re calling the police and letting them handle it. Deal?”

  “That’s not even fair.”

  “It is completely fair, and it’s safest for us, for Goliath and Pupperina, and for the police, too. I’m taking you to check the place out only because if I don’t, you might beat me with my own gun. I’ll probably deserve it for provoking you, but I’d rather let you blow off steam on someone other than me.”

  “Load your father into the car. Your mother stays home and guards the fridge.”

  “Mom? Can you go get a fresh bucket of chicken and some tiramisu while I take Dad on a drive?”

  “Bring him back intact, please. Anything else?”

  Chase grinned at me. “Don’t be shy, Miriah. The future grandmother spoiling package includes spoiling the mother of the child.”

  “A vacation.”

  Chase tossed his head back and laughed. “And since you can’t book a flight without turning into a chameleon, that’s a pretty smart request. Hey, Mom? I think she wants a vacation for Christmas.”

  “I’ll come up with something. In the meantime, anything I can get you?”

  “I could go for a cupcake.”

  “Now that I can handle. I know just the place. Go bring my grandkitty and grandpuppy back safe and sound. And Chase?”

  “Yes, Mom?”

  “I recommend if anyone gives her a reason to shoot your gun, you get out of the way.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Let’s get the SUV unloaded first. The last thing we need is the presents being ruined because we’re in a rush. I don’t savor the thought of trying to repeat Christmas shopping so close to the wire,” Chase admitted.

  “What he said.”

  I could only hope Goliath and Pupperina would be all right.

  The instant I got within sniffing distance of 67 West Street, my temper crested, and I gnashed my teeth. “Do you smell that?”

  Chase parked his father’s SUV in the first free spot he found, lowered his window, and sniffed. “Yes, I do. Dad?”

  “That smells like rotting dog shit but worse,” his father complained.

  I’d smelled something equally worse once, and the rank fumes would haunt me for eternity: before her bath, Pupperina had smelled similar. “Why the fuck hasn’t someone reported that fucking stench?”

  “Because we’re in a shit part of town no one cares about. The warehouses here are rotting, and people expect it to be a dumping ground,” Chase replied, killing the engine and tossing the keys to his father. “Dad, if anyone even looks at Miriah wrong, freeze them.”

  “Is that all I am to you? A living time stopper?”

  “Yes,” I said, as did Chase.

  “While I understand her being mean due to her interest in earning a coal mine for Christmas, is that any way to treat your father?”

  “Yes,” we chorused again.

  “I demand you marry her immediately.”

  “While she technically has ordered me to marry her, we’re not actually engaged, Dad.”

  “Fix that immediately.”

  Chase rolled his eyes. “Now is not the time. That smell is very similar to what the puppies fresh from the puppy mill smelled like at the shelter. So, let me repeat myself. Now is not the time.”

  “Like hell it’s not. She searched your house, found your gun, cleaned it defiantly, scolded you for not taking care of it properly, and essentially coerced us into raiding a warehouse to rescue her pets. You just don’t let a woman like that get away. I’m doing this as a loving father.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Take this seriously, please.”

  “I am. I’m also taking my son’s happily married life seriously, too.”

  “Goliath and Pupperina first, delusions later. Move it!”

  “You lied to me, son. You told me you’d found a nice, sweet, and gentle woman through work. Does she look like a nice, sweet, and gentle woman to you?”

  “She looks like a pissed off mother who has had her territory violated. Also, be quiet, Dad. If that’s a puppy mill like it smells like, we’re going to have to keep her from killing somebody. If we get between her and rescuing any puppies in distress, the somebody might be us.”

  “While I’ve encouraged you to take a few more risks in your life, I never once meant for you to literally risk your life. I just thought it was important to mention that. I meant financial risks with a few forays into having a love life.”

  “You’re going to get me killed, Dad.”

  “No, you’re going to get yourself killed, especially if your nice, sweet, and gentle woman doesn’t have patience with an inexperienced virgin.” Chase’s father sighed and got out of the SUV. “Move it, kids. We don’t have all night, and if that is a puppy mill like you two think, we’re going to be here all night because she’s going to want to rescue those dogs.”

  I grimaced, but as he was right, I shrugged. “I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m really not.”

  “I recognize when there’s a fight I can’t win.” Chase stared at the decaying warehouse and shook his head. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky and there’ll be no one inside.”

  “Don’t ask for miracles, Chase. That way, you’re not disappointed when they don’t happen,” his father muttered.

  I had to give the older man some credit. He gave sound advice.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The reek from the warehouse made my eyes water. The block and a half to the building confirmed my fears. Even with the doors and windows closed, the sounds of whimpering puppies reached the sidewalk. Murder seemed too good of a fate for those behind the puppy mill, and when I got my hands on them, I’d earn every minute of my prison sentence.

  Fuck bail. I’d deserve it, and I’d serve my time with a smile—or in community service, which was more likely due to my status as a single mother.

  “Try to keep your cool, Miriah. You’re steaming again,” Chase whispered in my ear.

  “Just get me into that building,” I hissed.

  While I would’ve broken a window and climbed in that way, Chase checked the knob, and to my utter astonishment, the door opened. The sounds of whining dogs intensified right along with my urge to beat someone senseless for being cruel to innocent animals.

  “Miriah? While I’m not going to stop you if you try to beat anyone we find here for mistreating these dogs, I will stop you if you try to kill them,” Chase whispered. “I can justify some violence on behalf of distressed puppies. It’s a lot harder to convince a judge to give you community service if you actually kill someone.”

  “I can beat, but I can’t murder? How is that even fair?”

  “Please try to be reasonable in here.”

  Chase’s father snorted and slipped into the warehouse. “Why is breathing necessary? I thought it couldn’t get worse. I was wrong.”

  “Yeah. It smelled about this bad at the shelter when Miriah bathed all those poor dogs. You’re going to be bathing dogs again tonight, aren’t you?”

  “Assuming I can get the dogs somewhere safe without being arrested, yes. Honestly, I’m expecting to be arrested tonight. Please do any parenting duties in my stead until I’m released from priso
n.”

  “Just go with it,” Chase’s father muttered.

  “I think I can manage that. Remember what I said. No killing anyone. If you stick to no killing anyone, I’ll pretend you’re not beating them for a few minutes, because honestly, you’re less likely to kill the fuckers than I am. I probably hit harder.”

  He probably did. “Good plan. I’ll take care of the beating, you’ll take care of the bail.”

  Chase sighed. “What could possibly go wrong?”

  I pushed Chase’s father out of the way, retrieved Chase’s handgun from my purse, and checked to make sure the safety was engaged before marching deeper into the warehouse. The entry consisted of several hallways before I spotted a set of open double doors leading directly to a huge collections of cages piled on each other, most of them occupied by one or two beagles.

  I halted, my eyes widening. “Beagles?”

  Chase paused next to me, shaking his head. “My bet is that these are illegal medical testing lab animals. Beagles are the preferred breed for the legal labs, but the legal labs would never treat their test animals like this. While they’re used for medical testing, they’re treated well. No, this is probably an illegal testing lab supplier.”

  “How do you even know that?”

  “I did some research after we helped those animals from the puppy mill. There’s a huge business in illegal drug testing, as the CDC and other various government organizations don’t approve a lot of new drugs and medication. They have some pretty strict controls in place, so some pharmaceuticals take the cheap route, get their animals from puppy mill operators who breed only beagles, and cut their spending down because they don’t have to worry about the cruelty to animals legislations when they’re working secret labs. So they keep the mandatory number of well-treated dogs for their public trials and do the equivalent of running the illegal labs in the basement. It’s a huge business.”

  “How huge of a business?”

  Chase scowled, looking over the warehouse and shaking his head. “Multi-million dollar type of business. The labs will pay hundreds to thousands for dogs of all ages. That’s as far as I got with the research before I hit a roadblock.”

  “What sort of roadblock?”

  “Locations of labs, who the buyers are, how much a single lab can move in a month with a supply of dogs, and how many dogs are sold a month. I did find out that beagles were the breed of choice, though. Beagles have a long history of being used in medical research.”

  “But why?”

  “They’re loving, dependable dogs, and once they give their loyalty, they don’t change their mind. They’re really good dogs.”

  “You can keep Pupperina, but you’re rescuing one of these dogs for Caleb.”

  “We might have to negotiate on one dog per person in the household.”

  “Sold.” I lifted my chin and stepped into the warehouse, searching for someone to take my temper out on. The nearest dogs cringed at our approach, which stoked my anger into a living flame writhing beneath my skin.

  Chase tapped my shoulder and pointed across the dimly illuminated space to a table where someone worked bent over a table.

  Perfect.

  The whining dogs hid the sounds of my footsteps, and I unloaded the gun, made sure the chamber was cleared, and firmed my grip on the weapon.

  Going to hell, and prison, would be worth the few minutes of satisfaction I’d get from beating the shit out of someone willing to hurt puppies to save pharmaceutical labs money and effort.

  I hoped launching a sneak attack would earn me a few extra points towards my coal mine, and I wound up and smacked the asshole as hard as I could upside his head. He cried out, clutching his skull where I’d hit him. It took me three more solid blows to knock him to the floor.

  Since killing him was out but kicking him wasn’t, I cracked my foot into his ribs, planted my foot against his side, and rolled the fucker over so I could get a better look at him.

  I recognized the older man who’d tried to go up against Chase’s mother and failed. My eyes widened. “Uh, Chase? You might want to come look at this.”

  He hurried over, halted beside me, and his mouth dropped open. Chase turned to his father and said, “Dad? You might want to come look at this.”

  “It’s like an echo chamber in here. What’s going on?”

  Chase’s father took one look at the man sprawled at my feet, cursed, and snapped his fingers, pointing at my gun. “Give it to me. I’ll kill the fucker myself.”

  Well aware it was unloaded, I handed it over. Chase’s father disengaged the safety, aimed, and pulled the trigger. When the gun clicked but did nothing else, he scowled. “You unloaded the gun?”

  “It’s a rule of gun safety. When you hit someone with your gun, you unload it first and clear the chamber. If I can’t kill him, neither can you. Same with you, Chase.”

  “That lying son of a bitch,” Chase snarled. “I trusted him!”

  “So did I,” Chase’s father confessed.

  “Your mom sure didn’t. She wanted to flay him with words alone. It seems she had good reason to even though she didn’t know it.” I clenched my hands into fists but forced myself to relax. “You better call the cops, and when they get here, I’ll tell them I hit him with the gun. I didn’t kill him, so it’s not going to land me in prison for long, right?”

  “I’ll be very surprised if you’re not released on bail right away, but all three of us are going to have to deal with breaking and entering charges and trespassing.” Chase shrugged. “What’s one more count of a minor misdemeanor to my list?”

  “They’ll just tack on a day to mine because why bother? I’ll be a hundred years in the grave before I get through all the community service I’ve been assigned. But, to make sure he doesn’t actually die, I’ve put him in timeout. That will probably land me an extra three or four days and another fine. But at least this time I can say I’m doing it for a good cause, right?”

  “Sure, Dad. Whatever you say.”

  “Go find Miriah’s kitty and her puppy before the cops get here. I’ll take care of calling them. I’m sure Officer Calrig will be so happy to see us again tonight. We should’ve just brought him with us.”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I wouldn’t have been able to hit the fucker if the cops were here.”

  “True, true. Go find your kitty. I’ll hold down the fort.”

  I found Goliath and Pupperina sharing a cage tucked away in a corner, and I considered going back and killing Chase’s employee for daring to steal my cat and traumatize my puppy. I handed Pupperina to Chase and buried my face in Goliath’s fur. As always, he purred when I held him.

  The cops arrived shortly later, although Officer Calrig wasn’t among them. The questioning session started before I even had a chance to introduce myself, and when one of the officers tried to take Goliath from me, I clutched my cat and snarled curses.

  “Sorry, sir. He’s our cat, and he was stolen from my house,” Chase explained. “She’s really fond of him. His name’s Goliath. Anyway, we were out shopping when someone came and stole our pets. Officer Calrig and Officer Yamos are in charge of the investigation. We were told someone here might have information on our missing pets, so we came here to find out what we could. We didn’t think we’d find this.”

  Goliath, as though sensing the police wanted to take him away, shoved his head under my chin and intensified his purr, clutching me with his paws.

  “They’re your pets? They were stolen?” the cops exchanged looks, and after a few minutes of debate, one of them got the brilliant idea to confirm our claim with the pair of cops who knew us. Once confirmed, we were ordered to wait nearby without touching anything.

  “Want to make bets on how long this takes?” Chase whispered.

  “No. Why am I saying no? Because there are hundreds of poor dogs in here needing baths. Hundreds of them. This place is awful.”

  “They’ll be okay.
The police will make sure they’re placed with a shelter and are taken care of.”

  “They better.”

  Chase laughed. “You’re just ready to take heads as trophies tonight. Did the shopping get under your skin that much? I’m sorry. If I’d known it would stress you out so much, we could’ve lounged on the couch and ordered stuff online and planned for an unChristmas to take place as soon as the packages arrived.”

  “He broke into your house, stole pets he believed belonged to you, in exchange for me. That’s just awful.”

  “And I had no idea he was even involved. First Denise, then Craig? I’m going to have to take a close look at the employee list and see who else is involved. I don’t like my suspicious. My CFO may be involved, but I’m not certain; he’s never gotten on that well with Craig, but a lot of my marketing department work closely with him. What I want to know is why he’d be working on the side somewhere like here while also siphoning millions of dollars from my company. To make things worse, considering the dynamics at the office, I’ll have to take a closer look at ten other upper management employees. This goes beyond simple embezzlement. Pharmaceutical companies and labs would’ve paid a lot for these dogs.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Chase shot me a look, and I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed with me or not. “Don’t be sorry for something you didn’t do. I asked you to come into my company and help me. You have. I’ll still need those eyes of yours for a while, but I meant everything I said about how I want you involved with my business. Eventually, if you’re game, our business. We can even work on a plan to lure Tiana over to the dark side. Alex might forgive me, especially when he finds out about Craig’s activities. I’m going to need a strong marketer, and he’s always trying to bring up fresh blood. I can probably cut him some form of deal where he’ll let me hire Tiana out from under him without holding it against me for long. I’ll probably have to let him borrow you every now and then.”

  “I don’t mind helping him if I get poached.”