by Penny Alley
That he might already belong to someone else did cross Karly’s mind. One didn’t have to be wise in all things ‘dog’ to see he wasn’t starving and his coat was well cared for. But if he did have another owner, then why didn’t he go home when he had the chance? No, he’d come back to her instead. As far as Karly was concerned, unless she saw a crying child hanging ‘Lost Dog’ notices on the bullet-ridden Dog Woods sign, then Puppy’s official home was now with her. She might not know anything about dogs, but she knew she wanted to keep him. He made her feel safe. He made her feel not quite so alone.
As she stood watching the cashier ring up her purchases, Karly considered all the things a newly-appointed pet owner probably ought to do. Like, take him to a vet, get him his shots, pick up some Frontline, and maybe get him neutered if he wasn’t already. But on the tail end of that thought came the worry: Could Dan find her through vet records? Would she have to give her real name? Would she have to tell them where she lived? Her chest tightened, making it hard to breathe. Puppy wasn’t scratching. Maybe this wasn’t a high flea and tick area. And obviously he was healthy, despite his run-in with her front bumper. She paid for her groceries, already knowing there would be no vet. Not even for Puppy’s well-being.
She was an awful person and a horrible pet owner, but she just couldn’t risk it.
“Do you want some help out?” the cashier asked.
“No, thanks.” Karly shouldered the bag of dog food and took what few sacks her meager groceries occupied. Two steps outside the store, however, she spotted a man standing at her car and froze.
Fish and Game; she recognized his uniform. Swallowing panic, Karly nearly ducked back into the store. Though his back was to her, she recognized Gabe almost instantly, but where was the sharp-eyed and deceptively easy-going Colton?
Hugging her groceries, Karly watched him warily. He was standing at her open passenger window, talking out loud to himself. No, he had to be on his radio, calling her car in. Karly’s heart slammed inside her chest until she realized again, no, his radio was still clipped to his shirt and his hands were on his hips. If anything, he was talking to Puppy. Which was ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as her trying to hide between the cart return and the gumball and sticker machines.
If he saw her like this, he would definitely get suspicious.
Karly made herself take several deep breaths. There was no place on this planet that she could hide where she would not encounter law enforcement of some kind. Just because Colton and this man, Gabe, were figures of constabulary authority, that did not automatically mean they talked to Dan. So long as she didn’t do something to arouse their suspicions—actively behaving as if she wanted to avoid them, for instance—they would have no reason to go digging into who she really was.
Swallowing her tightly-rattled nerves and hugging her groceries, she headed for her car. As she drew steadily closer, Gabe suddenly threw back his head and barked with laughter. “Lap dog is a really good look for you.”
“Shut up. Go away.”
That was Colton. She’d recognize that deceptively honeyed tone anywhere, but where was he? Karly froze all over again. She ducked down, trying to see if there was another pair of boots on the far side of her car. But if Colton was on the driver’s side, she couldn’t see any sign of him. She crept closer, eyeing Gabe suspiciously.
Shaking his head, amusement heavy in his tone, Gabe asked, “What are you trying to do?”
“I’m sitting and I’m staying,” the voice she could have sworn was Colton’s dryly replied.
Gabe leaned over the window, resting his arm across the top of her car. “Buddy, she’s got one hell of a surprise coming when she asks you to speak.”
She was almost on them when she must have made a sound. Snapping upright, Gabe turned around and in the front seat of the car, a very human-looking shadow of a head ducked down out of sight. The car bounced. Karly almost dropped her groceries.
“Where’s my dog?” she demanded, running the rest of the way while Gabe snatched his arm off the roof and quickly backed away. “What did you do with—” Ducking around the trunk, trying to keep the car between herself and Gabe, Karly froze when Puppy’s massive furry head popped back up above the headrests. He looked at her, ears perked forward, tongue lolling.
Just Puppy. Not a man, like she had first believed. She blinked, confused. She could have sworn she’d seen…Heaven help her, but even knowing she’d find it empty, she still checked the backseat.
“Problem?” Gabe asked, pasting on a greeting smile.
“N-no.” She didn’t understand it, but Colton was nowhere in sight. Gabe had to have been on his radio after all. There was simply no other explanation.
She looked at him even more warily than before.
“Here,” Gabe said, skirting around the back of the car to come and help her with the dog food. “Let me get that for you.”
“I’ve got it.” She ducked his outstretched hands and quickly wrenched open the back door to put her groceries on the seat.
Gabe slipped his hands into his back pockets and tried to affect a more harmless demeanor. “Nice looking dog you’ve got.”
The knots in her stomach tightened. “Thanks.” Realizing he might know Puppy wasn’t hers and not wanting anyone to think she’d stolen him, she added, “Is he yours?”
“No, ma’am. These old woods are full of strays. What surprises me is how a wild boy like this would let you handle him.”
“Puppy’s very sweet,” she said defensively.
From the passenger seat, Puppy groaned. Arching both eyebrows, Gabe suddenly tossed back his head with another barking laugh. “Puppy? You named him Puppy?”
Wondering why she was being singled out, even more defensively, Karly asked, “What’s so funny?”
A low, ominous growl rumbled from the car, and Gabe responded instantly, raising his hands in placating surrender. He also dropped his laughing brown gaze and backed from the car.
“Not a thing, ma’am,” he said, trying to get his mirth under control. “I just would have thought a big boy like this would be more of a Capone or a Cujo, or something. But big boys can be puppies too, can’t they? Especially where pretty women are involved.”
Uncomfortable, Karly shut the back of the car and approached the driver’s door instead. Not wanting to look like she was running, she didn’t get in right away. “Am I in violation of something?”
A flicker of surprise moved over Gabe’s face. He looked at the car, his smile softening slightly before he added, “Not that I’m aware of. I’m just being friendly, that’s all.”
Karly wasn’t ready for friendly. Not from strange men, and definitely not from strange policemen. “Then I can go?”
“Sure.” Gabe took another backwards step, easing away from her car as if giving her plenty of room to flee.
Not that she was fleeing, Karly told herself. She was just going home.
“You take care,” Gabe said as she got in behind the wheel. She clutched it with both hands so he would not see how badly she was shaking when he bent down, giving her another of his unassuming smiles through the driver’s window. “Mama Margo said to tell you hello.”
She didn’t look at him. She was being rude and she knew it, but Karly was nervous and she couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t even make herself tell him to bid Margo thank you for the basket and that would have been completely normal. But no, she shoved the key in the ignition instead and quickly rolled up all the windows. She drove away slowly, but she probably looked like she was running anyway. Gabe watched her until she lost track of him in the rearview mirror. She was back on Old Bueller and halfway home before she remembered the newspaper she forgot to pick up.
“Damn it!”
She thought about going back to town, but she didn’t think she could handle another run in with either Colton or Gabe. It was likely neither meant her any harm. Margo knew them and she didn’t think Margo would send people who would hurt her to bring her sandw
iches or to keep checking on her, but her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Her stomach felt so tangled and tight, she thought she might actually throw up, and when her cellphone rang, the sharp tones startled her so badly that she jumped half out of her skin.
“I forgot the newspaper,” she said, without bothering to check the number. “What should I do? Should I go back and get one? I’m so scared, Beth. The local cops keep talking to me and—”
“You’re fucked,” Dan growled into her ear, his voice as cold and as sharp as knives.
Karly’s throat seized so hard she choked. The next thing she knew, the car was fishtailing to a stop in the middle of the narrow dirt road. Without realizing it, she had slammed the brake pedal all the way down to the floor mat.
She sat behind the steering wheel, shaking hard, staring straight ahead without seeing anything.
“You want to run from me, baby? Fine, but there’s no place in the world you can hide that I won’t find you. You think you’re scared now? Wait until we’re face-to-face. Serve me fucking divorce papers? No, ma’am. ‘Til death do us part. That’s what you promised, and that’s what I’ll have. In every nuance and meaning of the word now, you…are…fucked.”
Karly didn’t have to hang up. The connection went dead in her trembling hand.
Seconds bled into minutes.
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t even breathe.
She vaguely heard Puppy growl a half second before two hard knuckles tapped the glass right by her head.
Karly knew she was freaking out even while she did it, screaming and grabbing at the steering wheel. She even dropped her phone. If it weren’t for the seatbelt, she’d have thrown herself into the passenger seat on top of Puppy, grabbing at him for security. Her eyes as huge as dinner plates, she stared at the very powerfully built man bending down to peer in through the window at her. His dark hair was shoulder length; his mustache, neatly trimmed. Tattoos wound up his arm all the way into his short sleeves. His hands were dirty, stained with engine oil. So was his bright orange t-shirt, which sported twin rifles crisscrossing one another and black, jagged letters that read, ‘If you can read this, you’re in range.’
He was a McQueen. He had to be. Her heart beat so hard, it hurt her ribs and still, when he tapped the window again and pointed ground-ward, she obeyed him, rolling the glass down just a crack.
Leaning his forearm along the roof of her car, McQueen looked at her. He looked at Puppy, dipped his head slightly to spit on the ground, and then looked back at her again when Puppy rumbled out another rolling growl.
“You lost?” he asked.
Karly shivered. Her wild glance darted from him to the dilapidated shacks sitting back from the road, nestled in amongst the shade trees. Two other men were sitting together on the front porch; another leaned against a support post with the long barrel of a rifle slung across his shoulders. Oh God, of all places to stop, she had stopped in front of their house.
Karly quickly shook her head. “No.”
“You’re the one moved into Margo’s up the road, that right?”
Puppy bristled, loosing another low growl.
McQueen looked at him, unfazed. “I heard you, and I’m not talking to you.” He stared at Karly again, then patted the top of her car twice. “Get on then.” He gave a jerk of his head. “My driveway’s not your parking lot.”
Karly didn’t need to be told twice. He was letting her go and she went, fairly flying the rest of the way home, driving much faster than she should have, much faster than was safe. She managed to stave off tears right up until her small cabin came into view, and then she lost it.
She couldn’t remember turning the car off and she didn’t get out. She just sat there, bawling and clinging first to the steering wheel and then to Puppy, who nosed his way into her arms and then sat stiff and still in the passenger seat while she leaned into him and gripped him like he was her lifeline. Her tears soaked his fur. Her panicked fingers pulled at his hair. But through it all, he made no move to break away and stayed with her until the storm of panic had subsided and the well of her tears ran dry. Her ragged breaths evened. She came back to herself enough to feel stupid and foolish.
“Sorry,” she whispered, feeling even more foolish for apologizing to a dog, who couldn’t understand her anyway.
As she pushed away from him, Puppy leaned over and nuzzled her cheek. The warm rasp of his tongue washed away a lingering tear. He offered no censure. He simply got out of the car when she did and followed her back into the house.
CHAPTER FIVE
Karly had lost her cellphone. How she could live in a cabin this small with so few belongings, and still lose something as vital as her phone?
She remembered snapping two quick pictures of her black eye and sending them to her lawyer. She thought she remembered plugging it into its charger on the kitchen counter afterward, but a few hours later as she came to the fridge to grab a quick bite for lunch, she noticed it wasn’t there. Turning in a slow circle, she eyed the counter, the bar that separated the tiny kitchen from the equally tiny living room, and the table. She searched the floor the same way. She even got down on her hands and knees and looked under first the stove and then the fridge.
Karly tore the house apart, searching everywhere—under the front porch, under the bed, in the yard. Though she hadn’t gone anywhere since she’d used it, she even searched her car, but the phone was gone.
She began to panic. How could she have lost it like this unless someone had…had what? Snuck into her house and swiped it, with all the doors and windows locked and both her and Puppy never hearing a sound? That was paranoia, pure and simple. The phone was here. Somewhere. It just had to be.
She got out of the car, slamming the door behind her, and ran back into the cabin. She tore through it all over again—ripping the sheets off the bed and shaking them out, sticking her hand down the into the toilet pipe, dragging everything out from under both the kitchen and the bathroom sinks—only to find her phone midway into a full-blown panic attack, stuck between the sofa cushions, exactly where she knew she’d already searched at least twice before. How could she have missed it? Dropping to the floor with relief, she hugged it to her chest as if she were drowning and it were her only lifeline.
The heat of a warm body sat down beside her. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his fur. She felt so foolish. “I’m such an idiot.”
He took her hug stoically, but she felt it when his head turned, ears swiveling toward the door. Then she heard it too, footsteps crunching up the gravel walk toward her front porch.
Everything inside of her froze. That same icy panic that had seized her back when she thought her phone had been taken swelled inside her a hundred times stronger than it had before and every bit as irrational. She should have left Dan years ago. She never should have married him at all. She hated this frightened rabbit of a person that she had become because of him.
“Hello, the house!” a woman called, her thumping footsteps already climbing the porch steps. She was halfway to the door before Karly recognized the voice. Not Dan; not Colton; not some stranger. Just Mama Margo, the very nice old woman who had sent her a food basket because the power was out and she was new.
Karly pushed up off the floor and went to meet her. “Afternoon.” She pushed open the door to allow the old woman inside. “Where’s your car? You didn’t walk here all the way from town, did you?”
“Walking’s good for you.” Stopping just over the threshold, Margo locked eyes with Puppy and frowned, her fists knuckling into her hips. Her frown deepened and her eyes narrowed the longer Puppy pretended not to notice her standing there, then she looked at Karly. “What have you done to yourself? You look awful.”
“Thanks,” Karly dead-panned. “You should have seen me this morning. Did you come for your basket?”
The old woman made a rude sound, waving that off with a careless hand. “Keep it. I’ve got hundreds of the damn things�
�every Mother’s Day, just like clockwork, I’m inundated: chocolates, fruit, sausage and cheese, with those fancy-ass little cracker things. What the hell’s wrong with Triscuits, I ask you? Tried and true, my girl, stick with what works and leave the fancy-ass things alone.” Drawing her diminutive frame upright, she knuckled her fists into her plump hips and glared at Karly. “I need a ride.”
Now Puppy looked at her.
So did Karly. She opened her mouth, only just catching herself before her question regarding the benefits of walking could be mistaken for sarcasm. “Uh, okay.” Giving herself a slight shake, she turned to get her purse. “Where do you want to go?”
“North Ridge,” Margo said. “It’s the Hunt Festival this week. Whole town’s attending. And you did not just growl at me, you arrogant, insolent pup!” she snapped, turning to glare directly at Puppy. That Karly became instantly alarmed was no small thing. Neither was Puppy’s abrupt silence. He froze where he was. His big wolfish body didn’t exactly drop into a submitting posture, but it did droop, his head lowering, his tail…not quite tucking, but definitely down. Karly tried to step in between Margo and Puppy, but the old woman leaned around her and continued to berate the now tense and silent dog. “We’ve got folks coming in from as far away as Texas and even Colorado. We have an obligation to put in an appearance, whether we want to or not!”
“Why are you yelling at my dog?” Karly stared at her. If she weren’t seeing this now with her own eyes, she never would have guessed her to be this insane.
“Because we’ve got responsibilities! We’re hosting!” Margo stopped yelling at Puppy and turned back to her. “The guests began arriving and no one was there to greet them. Get your coat. Looks like rain.”
“You want me to greet your guests.” Pulling back, Karly shook her head. “I-I’ve got no problem driving you, Margo, but I’m a guest here myself. I don’t think I should—”
“You live here now, that means you represent us and have every bit as much a right to attend the town festivals as anyone else. Besides, folks won’t cotton to people they don’t see.” The old woman headed back down off the porch. “Put your sunglasses on. No one will notice your eye.”