"Nice try," she said, her voice still raised with anger, all but yelling into the silent spring woods. No one around; no one driving by on the country back road. She took another step away from him, but she wasn't frightened yet. "They don't know."
"I heard it somewhere," he said, exasperation showing through. He didn't try to close the distance between them.
"You didn't," she said coldly, anger banking down. "Did you think I wouldn't notice you knew my phone number? Or that you bought two pit bulls only hours after you told me you were between dogs for a while?"
"Ah," he murmured. "I thought I saw someone in the parking lot." He ducked his head, pressing a finger between his brows as if it would somehow help him think his way out of this. "Brenna—"
"You know what?" she interrupted. "For a while I thought, you know, it didn't matter if I don't particularly like you. It didn't matter if I didn't even really trust you—what mattered was that you're good with dogs. You might be able to help Druid, that's what counted. But that only goes so far. Only so far." This far.
She drew the Cardigan into a heel position, unthinking protectiveness. "Send me your bill, Masera. And stay out of my way."
"Brenna—" he held out his arms in a helpless, beseeching kind of gesture. No doubt he couldn't find the words—because no doubt there weren't any.
He didn't really get the chance to try. A third voice broke in on their confrontation, distant but getting closer by the word. "Hey! This is private property!"
Druid growled when Brenna started, lowering his head and slanting his ears back suspiciously. When she saw the man who approached them, she felt like doing the same. Tall and skinny with a watch cap covering all traces of his hair and leaving a scabby goatee trying to make up the difference, he came at them with a cocky walk, a stride with excessive arm and hand movement. Excessive confidence, too.
"We," Masera said, his eyes getting that heavy-lidded look, "happen to be on the shoulder. Of the very public road." Which they were. At the moment, anyway, and Brenna was willing to bet the man hadn't seen them anywhere else, but had come in response to Druid's screaming.
If he had, he didn't mention it. He looked disappointed, as though he'd hoped to catch them with their toes over some sort of invisible line. "That don't change the facts. This is private property."
Brenna snorted. "Of course it is. It's all private property around here. Maybe your buddy would do well to keep that in mind."
He frowned at her. "That's supposed to make sense?"
"It'll make sense to Rob, if you tell him. Or don't. I don't care." Brenna gathered up the leash and stalked back down the road, Druid at her heels and grabbing wary looks over his shoulder.
"I wouldn't," Masera said to the man. "Doubt he'd like you making a scene like this." In a few quick strides he'd caught up with her—or nearly caught up with her, because she wasn't having any of it and poor Druid's short little legs flew to keep her pace.
She wanted to ask him what that was supposed to have meant, but she didn't. She didn't say anything at all, not until they'd gone through the fence, across the pasture and back up the hill, and were heading for the barn gate. Even then, she didn't look at him when she said, "Send me a bill."
"Call it a favor," he said.
"No." Favors like that always cost her, somehow. One way or another, she'd pay. She'd owe him.
She still didn't look at him, but she heard the shrug in his voice when he said, "I didn't think so. See you around, Brenna. Stay inside at night."
Brenna shuddered, and slammed the porch door closed behind her.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CHAPTER 10
URUZ
Assertion
Brenna spent the rest of Friday doing what her hand would allow of her, and was glad enough to learn it included target practice. She made mental effigies out of the targets and put Masera in there along with Roger.
She aimed for the spot assigned to tender portions of their anatomies.
She called her mother and told her Sunny was gone, her mother told her brother, her brother called her. Somehow he made it sound like he thought she'd be better off in town so she wouldn't have to deal with such things, instead of that he was sorry for her loss. She cried, and she called Emily, and Emily insisted that she come over for a picnic in the Brecken family room, where they all discovered that Druid, in the presence of little girls exclaiming, "Can I give him a potato chip, pleasepleaseplease" was quite capable of sitting up on his haunches. Unlike a dog with longer limbs, his short front legs didn't fold neatly at his chest, but stuck out to make him look like a child reaching to be picked up.
Upon returning home she went straight to bed, and refused to think about the strange jumble of events that her life had suddenly become.
When she woke up on Saturday, it was with the already formed intent to return to the Parker homestead—and first thing, while she was at her best and everyone else was barely waking up. After all, Rob Parker owed her a look around after making himself so at home on her own property. And if that wasn't enough, Masera's intense curiosity about the place was.
After all, he'd also been curious about her.
Which meant the more she knew about him, the better.
So she ate, still stiff-handed and with only a twinge of guilt over not going in to work. Just because she could dress herself didn't mean she had any business waving sharp-edged instruments around people's pets. Or had the strength to act quickly and decisively if something else decided to bite her.
She stuck her head outside, discovered the day was overcast—standard operating procedure just south of the lake—but had a warmth to it that inspired her to put nothing but the vest over her deep green, long-sleeved waffle shirt as she went out the door.
Druid, she left behind.
The birds weren't as enthusiastic in proclaiming their newly established seasonal territories as they'd been when she woke, but it was early enough that the vireos and robins were still going at it; as she walked the treeline dividing the pastures she heard a scarlet tanager at work. In the woods across the road a thrush serenaded her oh-so-casual stroll along the shoulder, which was about when she thought, out of the blue, Basque. Something so obvious that it made her realize just how upset she'd been the night before, or she wouldn't have missed it then. Basque, and the elusive accent. Masera had been brought up speaking the language, at least at first, she'd bet. And he apparently had friends who still spoke it more naturally than English—the person he'd spoken to the evening before.
Which meant he had family living with him, or that he lived with family. People she might be able to talk to, if they spoke English at all.
It was a line of reasoning that stopped her short, to see how quickly she'd come to such certain conclusions. She laughed out loud, startling the birds to silence. Since when had she developed deductive powers of any note? Since when, Brenna Lynn.
He spoke the Basque language. So did someone else currently in his residence. That's all she knew, all she really knew.
Well, no. She also knew that she'd reached the lane, and that suddenly she wished she'd had some excuse to bring the rifle along. Tucked under her arm, casual...a nice visual statement of confidence.
Stupid. Like she would ever even point a rifle at someone else. Even an empty one. She knew she wouldn't, couldn't; she could well recall the one time she'd done so accidentally, and the horror that had engulfed her as she jerked the empty weapon down to bear at the ground. She wasn't even sure she could bring herself to shoot a marauding feral dog, not even one that was headed her way with toothy intent.
Which left her staring down the driveway, the birds going about their business and an unusually bold red squirrel stopping to take a good look at her. She sighed, jammed her hands into her vest pockets, and hunted for the resolve she'd had not so long ago. And found it without too much difficulty...of all the unknowns whirling around her, this didn't have to stay one of them.
She took a deep breath and s
tarted up the lane.
It must have been a good quarter-mile before the barn came into view; no wonder it had taken Mr. Cocky some time to reach them after Druid first sounded off. The lane curved, first one way, then the other, and dumped her from close woods into the old barnyard without much warning. To her left, the barn stood long and low—an old dairy barn, she thought, its long row of windows long broken-out and a cavernous working barn stuck on one end for hay and machinery. Before her, the old house foundation peeked above the weeds—some crumbling stone here, half a chimney there, and one strange series of steps that led to nowhere—old porch steps, she thought.
Beneath her feet and circling through what had once been small, square barn paddocks—she could still see the remains of the board fencing and curling loops of cattle-wire—the tire tracks were deep and fresh. There wasn't any place to live, and there wasn't any evident activity or construction, but Rob and his friends were finding plenty of reason to spend time here.
Slowly, Brenna walked around the barn, trying to puzzle it out. Of what had Mr. Cocky been so protective? What could they have been doing here, other than some equivalent of smoking cigarettes out behind the barn? She skirted rusty old equipment—not worth anything by the time the elder Parkers had died, no doubt, although if Rob bothered to clean it up, he might well snare some antiquers with it—and an old claw-footed bathtub that she instantly coveted for a watering trough. Stacks of weathered old stove-split wood and greyed slat wood, an old tractor tire...nothing here that she couldn't find at just about any barn of this vintage.
Until she walked out back, and ran into a diminutive horse walker. No, too small to be a horse walker. Part of an old playset? She puzzled at it, nibbling at a rough spot at her cuticle. Winter was tough on a groomer's hands, though the splits at the ends of her fingers would heal faster if she'd leave them alone. Nibble, nibble, but the strange contraption didn't give up any secrets. Except—was that blood on the ground? Dried blood, worn and kicked up but enough of it left to show. And...what was that smell? She caught another whiff of it, but no more; she couldn't track it down. So she left the contraption and walked around to the working end of the barn, where there was a people-sized door with glassed windows.
She peered through a pane—or tried to. Dirt grimed them inside and out. So she knocked lightly—not expecting anyone but taking all the right steps just in case—and tried the doorknob. It didn't turn, but the door swung in anyway—closed, it was, and even locked, but not latched. From the way it moved on the hinges, Brenna doubted it could latch.
Dim and oppressive, the tiny office was crammed with junk old and new. Old desk, old file cabinet, old chair—each bearing the same layers of grime as the windows. Stacks of ancient, yellowed newspapers in the corner, a block of wood holding up one of the desk legs. In the layers of dirt on the board floor, recently applied footsteps carved a trail from the outer door to an inner door, and from each door to the desk.
On the desk, though, there were new layers. Magazines, but hidden under a folded newspaper, so all she could see was their spines and one title. Sporting Dog Journal...the same one Masera had been reading? A glance would tell her so much...but she wasn't about to disturb the contents of the desk. Not yet, anyway.
On a set of low metal shelves beneath the room's one high window, sloppy jumbles of supplies caught her eye. It didn't look so much different from her own dog room shelves, actually—some basic medical supplies, some syringes, a tangle of leashes, harnesses, and thick, wide, double-ply leather collars. Some big plastic jars of bulk supplements, one of which she'd used for Sunny when the starving hound had first staggered into Brenna's life.
Dogs. It added up to dogs, but Brenna hadn't seen a single one. Hadn't even heard one. And as she puzzled over it, as she got up the nerve to nudge the magazines with a finger so she could see the covers, a man came barreling through the door with no more idea of Brenna's presence than she'd had of his approach. She snatched her finger back as he recoiled in surprise, and before he could say the words piling up in his mouth—angry words, even mean ones—she smiled and gave him Brenna the Naif. The one that went with her features.
"Oh, good," she said, gushing with apparent relief at having found someone there. "I'm looking for Rob, have you seen him? He was over at my place the other day, visiting, you know, and I thought it would be neighborly--"
"He's not here," the man said abruptly. This wasn't Mr. Cocky; this man wore anger like a second skin, letting it surface in a handful of tattoos and the heavy studs of a doubly-pierced brow. Mr. Mean. Young, muscles showing under his tight T-shirt and the open black shell jacket over top it. And big. Big enough he didn't have to be cocky to get his point across. "Stupid of you to come nosing around where you don't belong."
Oh, Lordy, that was more than a threat. But Brenna the Naif didn't know enough to respond to threats, and Brenna the Naif she stayed. Masera, she'd meet head-on. This man...this man she played, and for all she was worth. "Oh," she said, faltering, "I'm sorry. It's just that Rob was so friendly when we talked, I thought—"
From within the barn, far within the barn, a dog barked; several others took up the cry. Profound, ringing chop barks, quickly silenced. That answered one question—whatever the breed, it was big.
Mr. Mean frowned at her, a frown that went deep; his quickly sparked anger seemed to be fading to annoyance, but Brenna wasn't sure. He said, "You have any idea what the hell time it is, lady? Not visiting hours, that's for sure."
She shrugged, but it felt weak even to her. "I'm always up at this hour. I figured, if he's here, he's here—and if not, no harm done. Just a little bit of a longer walk than usual, you know? Besides, I was wondering if Rob might want to sell that bathtub—"
"Shit," he said, with feeling, and she couldn't interpret that at all. "Look, Rob doesn't want any visitors, you got that?" His voice rose with each word, until he was shouting at her, closing the distance between them as she backed up, backed until the edge of the open door jammed into her back and stopped her short. "He doesn't want to talk nice to the neighbors and he sure as hell doesn't want 'em poking around his private things at some fucking hour of the morning when normal people don't even have their pants on!"
Her eyes widened; she couldn't help it. It didn't matter—even Brenna the Naif would know this was trouble. Hell, the Naif was already running screaming down the lane, leaving just plain Brenna to deal with this all on her own. "I really didn't mean—" she started, but stumbled and tried again right on top of it, "I thought he said—I thought he meant—I mean, people around here, if they say they'd like to talk again sometime—"
He looked at her with those annoyed but thoughtful eyes, and shook his head. "Shit," he said again. "I don't want to have to deal with you." He looked her up and down, assessing her anew, scowling hard. "You got the idea now? The part where you were goddam wrong to have come around here?"
Brenna nodded, quick and emphatic. "Going," she said, hearing the babble even in that one word. "I'm just going now. And staying away." She waved her hands out at waist level, just as emphatic as her nodding. "Definitely staying away." She inched around the edge of the door, feeling her braid catch in the latch that prodded her hip, fumbling behind herself to free it.
"And you know what else?" Mr. Mean said, coming up close before she could break away, close enough that she froze with her hands awkwardly behind herself, pulling her head back as far as she could as he bent to stare directly into her eyes, putting his hand on the edge of the door above her head. He'd had a drink already, she could tell, but it wasn't enough to make up for his unbrushed morning mouth.
Brenna shook her head, hardly daring to do so.
"If we hear a lot of stray talk about the Parker place, we're going to know where it started. And that," he said, so close now that his nose almost touched hers, "that wouldn't be good for you at all. You got that?"
Brenna whispered, "Yes."
It was a squeaky, whisper, barely there at all, but it seemed
to satisfy him. He jerked the door open wider and gestured sharply at freedom. "Get lost."
Brenna got.
~~~
Were she wise, she would have simply stayed at home after that. What had she learned, after all? That Parker's buddies were just as rough as Sam had suggested. That they were up to something. That they had big dogs. Probably guarding a huge cache of drugs or enslaved Asian women or...whatever. Nothing she was ready to suggest to anyone else—friend or local cop or even 911. Not until she got the chill of Mr. Mean's warning from her system.
Were she wise, she'd stay right there at home. Nursing her hand and her spirit, considering more fully the repairs necessary to the barn in order to house a horse or two. Taking care of business.
But she looked at her life, and the strange factors suddenly intruding into her days, and made the decision to be not-wise. In fact, sitting at the kitchen table, worrying the edges of Masera's business card, thinking of him eating there, thinking of the muzzy look on his face first thing in the morning, Brenna decided she'd had enough of forces acting on her life. Time for her to be a force herself, to act instead of react. Right now, these things were business.
Masera knew where she lived. Turn-about, she thought, was extremely fair play.
~~~
She figured it wouldn't be far, not with an address in the same small rural area, and it wasn't. A small ranch house on the other side of the compact town of Parma Hill itself, it sat back from the road a generous distance, without much in the way of trees to create privacy. A few bushes around the hanging sign—she would have mistaken it for a realty sign if she weren't looking—identifying the place as belonging to Gil Masera, dog trainer extraordinaire. White siding, deep teal shutters, a few more bushes to pass as landscaping around the house. It didn't look like the sort of place he'd live in, didn't reflect anything of him.
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