by Paula Munier
“You are full of surprises today.” Mercy squatted down by the dog. “What have you found now?”
She peered under the vehicle. A thin, straggly tiger-striped cat with a white chin and white paws was curled under the wheel.
“It’s just a cat,” she told him. “This place is crawling with them.” She turned back to the sleeping tabby. “Come on, kitty. Time to go.”
The cat slept on. At least she thought it was sleeping.
“I can hear it breathing.”
Elvis pushed at the cat’s belly with his nose.
“She’ll move,” she told him. “Don’t worry about it.” She opened the door and slammed it, thinking that was sure to startle the cat into action.
But the little feline only meowed faintly, winding herself more tightly into a furry ball.
“She must be sick.” She gathered the poor thing into her arms, intending to take it back to the house.
Elvis whined his disapproval.
“They’re probably all sick. I’m going to call animal rescue as soon as we get home,” she told him. “They’ll come get this one and all the others, too.”
The Belgian shepherd whimpered again. The cat lifted her tiny head and licked Mercy’s hand with a scratchy pink tongue.
“Oh, all right.” She didn’t need a cat. She had her hands full with Elvis.
With a sigh, she deposited the too-quiet kitty on the floor in the back. “Now let’s go, boy, it’s way past lunchtime.”
His dark eyes brightened at the word lunch, and he jumped in, settling on the backseat to keep watch over his new charge. He stayed in that same position, still as stone, while Mercy drove them all home.
When she pulled into the long drive that led up to the cabin, Elvis alerted. She let him out of the Jeep, and he barged up the path to the cabin, barking so wildly that there was only one explanation Mercy could think of: someone was in the house.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MERCY CALLED ELVIS BACK TO HER. “Quiet,” she said, and together they approached the front door, she sidling carefully along the side of the building and over the porch railing, and Elvis leaping alongside of her. She waved Elvis down into a sit and flattened herself against the outside wall. Peeking inside the window, she caught sight of a tall figure in dark clothes wearing gloves and a ski mask. He—she felt sure it was a man—was running through the great room.
She hesitated, not wanting to go in there. Especially unarmed and maybe outgunned. Elvis nudged her hand with his nose. He wanted to go after the guy. She held back, but the dog was braver than she was. He broke away and raced for the front door. She scrambled after him and threw open the door. Elvis tore after the intruder in a blur of fur and fury.
Mercy dashed after the shepherd into the cabin and tripped, plunging to the floor, her fall softened by a pile of coats and boots and backpacks cluttering the entryway. They’d been pulled right off the hall tree. Elvis circled back to make sure she was all right. She hauled herself to her feet and stepped over the objects strewn across the floor. Somebody—presumably this guy—had tossed the place, her closets emptied, her drawers dumped, her bookshelves cleared.
She heard the back door slam and hurried its way, Elvis bounding ahead of her. He scratched at the wood furiously, barking wildly, until she let him out. He sped across the lawn just as the man in the ski mask slipped into the woods. The shepherd was within yards of overtaking the prowler when a shot rang out. Elvis yelped.
“Down!” shouted Mercy, her command voice echoing across the lawn. She dropped to the ground herself and crawled to cover behind one of the large rhododendrons that ran along the side of the backyard. She saw the dog fall to his haunches, halfway hidden by a small fat spruce. She prayed he’d stay there. “Down!”
Another shot, this one wild and wide of both Elvis and Mercy. But it spooked the shepherd nonetheless, and he hauled himself to his feet and hightailed it for the barn. He disappeared around the far end of the tall structure.
Out of her sight—and the shooter’s. She listened and waited and listened and waited some more. This was the hardest part, waiting and listening for the bullet or the explosive or the missile that was going to kill you—and deciding whether to advance or retreat. Elvis had chosen retreat. Even though he was trained to wait for that order, Mercy was glad that he was out of harm’s way. She couldn’t let anything happen to him.
No more bullets whistling toward their targets now. Just the sound of the man crashing through the brush and withdrawing into the shelter of the forest. Mercy desperately wanted to follow him, but she would have to wait to kick his ass. The dog comes first. Martinez was whispering into her ear now. The dog comes first. Revenge will wait.
As soon as she dared, Mercy ran for the barn. She circled the building quickly. But the shepherd was nowhere to be seen. Both doors were closed, so he must have found another way in. Old barns like this one—dating back at least a hundred years—had plenty of loose or missing boards that might provide him easy access. Failing that, he could always simply tunnel through to the other side if he were motivated enough to do so. His paws were shovels of the best kind; he could dig his way through anything.
The shots must have triggered his canine PTSD. Otherwise the überdisciplined dog would never have abandoned the field during a mission. Even if they were in Vermont, not Afghanistan. She circled the barn a second time, more slowly, looking for tracks. On the north side of the structure, she found his large paw prints and trampled grass by a gap in the wood just large enough for a Belgian Malinois to wriggle through.
She jogged around to the side door and let herself in, shutting the door behind her and calling for Elvis. He didn’t answer, and she couldn’t see him. She listened hard and finally heard his panting. His heavy breathing led her to the first empty horse stall on the left. The dog lay there, a tense ball of trembling tawny fur. He lifted his head and strained to lick his left hindquarter.
Mercy knelt down beside the distressed shepherd. “What’s the matter, boy?”
He whimpered in response.
“Let me see.” She gently separated the fine soft hair that ran along his backside, longer and paler than that which covered the rest of his strong, lean frame. Elvis whined, and now Mercy could see why. A bullet had grazed his haunch, at least she hoped that it was just a grazing. Elvis had licked away most of the blood, and the bleeding seemed to have stopped. She could see no evidence of a bullet. A flesh wound, but a wound all the same.
“Poor baby,” she cooed, stroking the shepherd’s fine head. “We’ve got to get you checked out.” Elvis closed his eyes under her tender fingers. “Can you get up? Up?”
He lifted his heavy head, ears soft, and opened his dark eyes slowly. They were clouded with a pain Mercy hadn’t seen in them since Afghanistan.
“Sorry, boy, but we’ve got to get you to Patience.”
His tail thumped listlessly at her grandmother’s name. He loved Patience.
Elvis weighed sixty-five pounds—all deadweight muscle. She could carry him, but doing so without bumping his wound might be tough. So she untangled herself carefully from the dog and retrieved a horse blanket from the tack room. Folding it lengthwise, she stretched it under Elvis’s belly, pulling it together at both ends to make a kind of sling for his hips.
“Up,” she said, helping the princely beast to his feet by lifting his hips off the ground with the makeshift sling. “Walk.”
He moved forward easily on his front legs, obviously trusting her to serve as his hind legs, as she held his hurting backside aloft. She steered the shepherd slowly through the barn, out the side door, and across the front yard to the Jeep, where she helped him into the backseat.
The little kitten she’d rescued from the Walkers’ place was still there on the floor, curled up tight as a fiddle fern. Just as well, she thought, the little tiger tabby had been safer out of sight. But Patience should probably look her over, too. She texted her grandmother to let her know they were on the way.
She slipped into the front seat, buckled up, and turned on some sacred music. She found it calming and she hoped Elvis did, too. His whimpering had given way to panting, but now his breathing slowed as the Jeep swelled with the sound of a didgeridoo and Tibetan singing bowls.
She kept one hand on the wheel and the other on his head as she drove down the road a couple of miles, where her grandmother lived and worked on the outskirts of Northshire, along the Battenkill River. Patience Fleury O’Sullivan was a big-animal vet, specializing in the farm animals so ubiquitous in Vermont. In a fully equipped bright yellow mobile unit that she drove all over the state, she treated horses, goats, sheep, and, of course, cows. Notably dairy cows. And the occasional moose or bear, among other wildlife, when asked.
But she also treated cats and dogs and other small animals, too, right here in the oversized Victorian farmhouse, with its attached barn that served as the hospital. Patience had converted the barn into treatment rooms and the connecting room into a reception area. The result: a state-of-the-art facility funded by her widow’s pension and the sale of her late husband’s dairy farm up in Lamoille County. She held on to a small parcel of land up there, deep in the timberland of the Cold Hollow Mountains, and sold the rest.
Mercy knew that her grandfather’s family, the O’Sullivans, had not been happy about the sale, but Patience was determined to make a new life for herself. The life she’d planned before she met the handsome sheriff.
And she had. She’d opened her hospital—the Sterling Animal Hospital—nearly twenty years ago, when Mercy was a girl. Naming it in honor of her late husband, Sheriff Sterling O’Sullivan, himself named after the Sterling Mountain of his home county. Mercy spent her childhood summers here, helping Patience run the clinic—and she still helped out from time to time, now that she was back home in Vermont.
Her grandmother was outside waiting for them when they drove up in the Jeep. “My darling girl.”
“Hi, Patience.” She leaned in to give the lively gray-streaked blonde a kiss, struck as always by the energy and optimism that radiated from this woman she was lucky enough to call her grandmother.
Not that Patience would ever allow that. She insisted that everyone call her by her given name, Patience, including her children and grandchildren. A useful name, she said, and one that reminded people of one of the great unsung virtues. Her family had been Quakers, and while she married an Irish Catholic and agreed to raise her children in that faith, she’d remained a Quaker all her life and named her children accordingly. Mercy knew that even her own mother, christened Grace O’Sullivan, did not defy Patience on that score. Which was why her own name was Mercy.
“I’ll help you carry him inside.”
But when she opened the door, Elvis backed away from her, curling up in a tight ball in the corner of the backseat.
“Not good,” said Mercy. Usually the shepherd would leap out in a hurry, and race to greet Patience.
Her grandmother handed her a doggie treat. “Try this.”
“Come here, Elvis,” cooed Mercy. “Here’s a treat.”
The shepherd didn’t even lift his head.
“I thought you said the bullet just grazed him.”
“That’s right. Not much more than a scratch as far as I could tell.”
“Go around to the other side of the Jeep and open that door. I’ll try on this side. Between the two of us, we’ll get him out of there.”
Mercy did as she was told, while her grandmother leaned in toward Elvis. “There’s a sick cat on the floor here.”
“Long story,” said Mercy.
“One animal at a time.” Patience laughed, and the shepherd’s triangular ears perked up. She had a great laugh, one that inevitably lifted the spirits of all two-legged and four-legged creatures within its range. “It’s okay. You don’t have to be a tough guy all the time. Let’s get you checked out.” She held out another treat in her palm.
Elvis crawled across the seat and licked the treat right out of her hand with a gentle slap of his tongue. Her grandmother backed up slowly and he followed her, jumping out of the Jeep, even though he winced as his back legs hit the pavement.
“Your tough guy image remains intact,” Patience told the shepherd.
Together they ushered the whimpering dog inside. They laid him on the examination table in the largest of the treatment rooms. While Patience checked out the shepherd with her quick, clever hands, Mercy talked and Patience listened. She was a good listener. It was one of her great strengths as a healer and as a grandmother.
Mercy told her all about Amy and Helena, Elvis and the game warden, the bones and maybe bombs in the woods, the sick cat, dead Donald Walker, the intruder, everything.
Finally Patience spoke. “You’ve both been through a lot during the past thirty-six hours.”
“I guess.” Nothing compared to Afghanistan, she thought.
“Life offers us many kinds of challenges, on and off the battlefield.”
Mercy nodded. Her grandmother was always full of aphoristic guidance, both oblique and direct. But somehow it didn’t irritate her the way her mother’s pointed advice always did.
She stroked the dog’s dark silky ears while Patience administered local anesthesia and then cleaned the gash. Under the glare of the bright lights the wound appeared uglier than before, at least to Mercy.
“No stitches needed,” said Patience. “Best possible outcome given the circumstances.”
She looked at Mercy. “But I’d like to give him a sedative and monitor him for a while.”
“Okay.”
“You’re awfully antsy. Are you all right?”
“Fine.” She stroked the shepherd’s back.
“You know it’s not as bad as it looks.”
“I know.” Mercy knew exactly what it was like to get shot in the ass. Painful but not fatal. And more than a little embarrassing. She doubted that Elvis would be as humiliated as she’d been.
“You actually do.” Patience laughed.
She laughed, too. Her grandmother was the rock in her life, and the light, too. Whenever she was with her, she felt both safe and hopeful.
“Let me remind you that you needed a couple dozen stitches, and you’re fine now. He’ll be fine, too.”
“I know. Thanks.”
“Done.” Patience bandaged the injury and slipped the shepherd a mild tranquilizer treat. She then secured a cone around his neck. “Just to keep him from licking for a while.” She stripped off her gloves and flipped the switch to lower the examination table.
As soon as the table began to move, Elvis stumbled off and ran out of the room.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“LET HIM GO,” said her grandmother. “He’ll sleep it off.”
“Are you sure?” Mercy fought the urge to run after him.
“He’s going to be fine.”
“Okay.”
“Promise.” Patience squeezed her shoulder. “Now what about that cat?”
“I’ll go get her.” She went out to the Jeep and gathered the kitten in her arms and carried it into the hospital. She could feel its tiny ribs right under the matted fur.
“Poor little thing.” Patience took the skinny bag of bones from her.
“I know. And there are a lot more where she came from.” She described the abomination of abused cats at the Walker place.
“I’ll let the animal rescue folks know.” Patience sighed. “We’ll organize an evacuation.”
“Good.”
“This one is a cutie. What’s her name?”
Mercy shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“She’ll need a name.”
“Okay.”
“You’re distracted. And it’s not this tiger tabby you’re worried about.” Patience led the way to one of the smaller treatment rooms. “It’s the prowler. You’re itching to go after him.”
“Yeah.” Mercy shifted on her f
eet and looked away from her grandmother’s sharp blue eyes.
“Without backup.” Patience examined the cat, from ears to tail. The kitty just stood there, body trembling, tail twitching, whiskers twiddling.
Mercy’s grandfather never waited for backup either. It had killed him in the end.
“Everyone’s working overtime. The holiday.”
“Call Troy Warner.”
“He’s a game warden,” she said, a little too loudly. “He’s busy writing up drunk boaters.”
The cat quaked at her tone.
“You’re scaring her.”
“Sorry.” She nuzzled the frightened kitty and lowered her voice. “So sorry, kitty.”
“You know better than that.”
Mercy wasn’t sure if her grandmother was talking about the cat or the warden. Either way she was probably right. She usually was.
Patience straightened up. “Probably nothing wrong with this little girl that a little love and food and a couple hundred bucks’ worth of shots and meds can’t fix.”
“Great. Just add it to my bill.”
“I’ll take it out of your inheritance, per usual.” Patience grinned at her, then frowned. “Troy Warner is a good man with a good dog.”
High praise for her grandmother.
“You sound like you know him well.”
“I’m his vet.”
“You’re everyone’s vet.”
“He adopted Susie Bear, you know.”
“Nice dog,” Mercy said evenly.
“Great dog,” said Patience. “She was a rescue from Alabama. Left to die in the woods down there. Half starved, full of parasites, missing teeth, evidence of a cracked skull somewhere along the line … she was a mess when they brought her up here. I’d bet money somebody hit her in the head with a shovel. Or a baseball bat.”
“That’s terrible.” Mercy shook her head. “She seems fine now.”
“Thanks to that handsome young man. Hold the kitten.”
She held the timid creature—still shaking like a leaf—and sweet-talked her while Patience injected the little cat with a slew of vaccines. “I’ll have to keep her here for a couple of days until those parasites are cleared up. And get her spayed.”
