It took hours to reach the clinic. At least Tory felt like she’d been driving that long when she finally pulled in. Night had fallen, and she realized that in her hurry to get to the injured dog she’d forgotten to turn on the porch lights. Her house and the clinic looked blank and unwelcoming, dark and deserted and surrounded by the forest.
It only took a minute for Holt’s truck to pull into the driveway behind hers. Her hand tightened around the door handle as she watched his headlights pierce the blackness of the storm as he approached. She felt absurdly reassured by his presence. By the time he’d stopped the engine and gotten out of the Blazer, she had scrambled out of her truck and was standing inside the clinic, holding the door open.
Holt ran in, clutching the gray bundle to his chest. “Where do you want him?” he asked, shaking a strand of wet hair out of his face.
“Bring him into the operating room.” Tory hurried ahead of Holt and turned on the lights, reaching for the long metal pole that held two bags of intravenous fluids. She turned in time to see Holt ease the dog out of his arms and onto the stainless steel table. Holt’s hand smoothed the dog’s head once, then he stepped back and looked at her, his face grim.
“It’s a damn good thing that I came along when I did. Look.” Tory took a step closer. Her stomach jumped with pain as she looked at the animal.
His front and rear legs were tied together with thin pieces of twine pulled cruelly tight. All four of the animal’s feet were swollen and red. A similar piece of twine was wrapped around the dog’s neck. It, too, was too tight, and the string had dug deeply into the skin of his neck. Dried blood had crusted over the string, burying it deep in his flesh.
Tory laid a reassuring hand on the dog’s head as she turned horrified eyes to Holt. “Where did you find him?”
Holt’s mouth tightened as he looked at the dog. “About twenty yards into the woods. Far enough that he couldn’t be seen from the road, but close enough that you probably would have found him. And found whoever put him there.”
Tory stared at Holt, fear stirring in her belly. “What do you mean?” she whispered.
“Do you think it was a coincidence that this dog was in the woods tonight, after you got that phone call?” he said roughly. “Think about it for a minute. What do you think would have happened if I hadn’t shown up and you had gone into those woods alone?”
“I don’t know. What do you think would have happened?” She stared at the man next to her, seeing the black anger in his eyes.
“I think someone would have found you with your throat cut.” His voice was brutal. “This dog was left in the woods to lure you to someone. There’s no other explanation.”
“Maybe someone saw him and didn’t want to get involved,” she protested. Her mind refused to accept the other possibility. “Maybe the person who called knows who did it and just wanted the animal taken care of.”
“And maybe there haven’t been two murders in Eagle Ridge in the last month and a half.” His voice rose and he took a step closer to her. “Come on, Tory, the person who called you wasn’t concerned about this dog. He was just using it to get to you. What more has to happen before you realize that you’re in danger? Someone tried to break into your clinic, you saw someone watching you, and now someone called you to come out to the woods. Face the facts. You’re in danger here.”
Tory didn’t took at him. Instead she watched the dog as her hand stroked his side, feeling his bony ribs and painfully thin body. One part of her acknowledged that Holt was probably right. This dog didn’t belong to anyone. He had the gaunt, ragged appearance of a stray. She’d seen too many of them in her practice in Chicago not to know.
Then the dog turned his head to look at her, his brown eyes glassy with shock, and she forgot about what or who waited for her in the woods. Her stomach twisted with pain as she looked at the suffering animal. Her own fears receded. “I need to take care of this dog,” she murmured, reaching for a pair of scissors.
The dog laid quietly as she cut through the twine that bound his feet together. His legs twitched a couple of times, and he tried to raise his head from the table. Then he settled onto the cold steel.
“What can I do?” Holt’s quiet voice cut through her concentration, and she looked at him, startled.
“You don’t have to stay, you know. I’m used to working alone.”
“I know I don’t have to stay. I want to.”
She nodded. “Go into the kennel. Get some towels, and in the cabinet over the sink you’ll find a bunch of big plastic bottles. Fill them with hot water and bring them here. We need to get him warmed up.”
Without another word he disappeared, and Tory turned her attention to the dog. By the time Holt returned, his arms full of bottles and towels, she’d started intravenous fluids in the dog’s leg and given him a couple of shots for the shock. She barely looked up when Holt walked into the surgery room.
“I’m going to lift him up,” she said, speaking in a low voice. “Slide one of those towels underneath him, then wrap the others around the hot water bottles.” Silently he did as she told him, then handed her the wrapped bottles one by one. They warmed her chilled hands, and she placed them gently around the dog’s body, finally covering him with the last towel.
“What do we do now?” Holt asked.
She looked at him. “First we take that string off his neck and treat the wound, then we wait.”
“For what?”
“To see if he’s going to recover from the shock.”
She saw his mouth tighten as he looked at the helpless animal. “How long before you can tell?”
“If he’s going to make it he should show some signs of improvement in an hour or so. If he survives the night he’ll probably be all right.”
“Tell me what you need me to do.”
She watched him as he looked at the dog, and something shifted inside her. He didn’t have to stay here and help her. He could have left her alone with the dog and gone to the comfort of his own house. Nine out of ten people who found an injured dog would have done just that.
A cynical, disbelieving voice pointed out that he was only trying to score points with her. But another part of her didn’t think so. His jaw clenched tight, he stared at the animal with dark anger in his eyes. Anger, and a deep, deep pain that for once he didn’t try to disguise.
She looked away, uncomfortable with his raw emotion. “Getting this string off his neck is probably going to hurt him. Why don’t you steady his head and try to keep him still?”
He nodded once and bent over, resting his elbows on the table. Taking the dog’s head in his big hands, he stroked the dirty, wet hair and murmured something low and soothing. The dog’s tail lifted feebly and thumped twice against the table.
Her chest tightened and a hot ball of tears swelled in her throat. The trusting brown eyes of the dog were fixed on Holt’s suddenly soft gray ones. The fear and mistrust of Holt that had lodged inside her like a jagged lump of ice for the past few days blurred and began to melt. She turned away, fumbling with the instruments she’d need to remove the string.
When the suture scissors clattered to the floor she left the room, gathering her composure as she found a clean pair. When she returned, Holt looked at her, his eyes dark with worry.
“He’s shaking.”
Laying her hand on the dog, she felt his tremors and nodded, relief flooding through her. “That’s good,” she said, giving Holt a tiny smile. “It means he’s warming up. He’ll keep shivering until his body temperature is close to normal.”
Holt relaxed and placed one hand gently on the dog’s rib cage. “I was afraid it meant he was getting worse.”
She shook her head and reached for the pan of warm antiseptic solution she’d made up. “Worse would be if he didn’t start shivering. It would mean the shock was deepening.”
She pulled on a pair of latex gloves, rested her hand lightly on the dog’s neck and looked at him. “I’m afraid this is going to hurt, fel
la,” she murmured. Lifting her gaze to Holt, she added, “If you’d rather wait in the other room until I’m done, I’ll understand.”
Holt looked at her, his eyes dark and his gaze unfathomable. “I’ll stay.”
Nodding, she reached for the stack of gauze pads she’d placed on the tray with her instruments and the antiseptic solution. “Talk to him, then, while I work.”
As she cleaned the wound on the animal’s neck, Holt stroked the dog’s head and murmured to him. When she finally cut the string and eased it off, both the dog and Holt flinched, but Holt held the animal’s head steady and his voice never faltered.
It only took a few more minutes for Tory to tend the wound and cover it with an antibiotic ointment, then bandage it. Straightening, she looked at Holt. One hand was clenched tight around the edge of the table, his knuckles showing white against the tan of his skin. The other smoothed gently over the dog’s head and ears, his touch light as thistledown.
“I’m finished,” she said softly.
His hand stilled on the dog. “Now what?”
The dog’s shivering had slowed down until only an occasional shudder wracked his body. His eyes were beginning to look more alert. Hope blossomed in her chest. “Now we wait and see how he is in the morning.”
“How do you think he’ll be in the morning?”
“The standard line is that he isn’t out of danger yet.” Her gaze slid from the dog to Holt, and her mouth relaxed in a slight smile. “But if I was a betting woman I’d say he’s probably going to be fine.”
Holt stood. “Thank you, Tory,” he said quietly.
“For what? His treatment was routine. I didn’t do anything special.”
“Yes, you did. You cared about what happened to him. I saw how gentle your hands were as you worked on him, how you tried not to hurt him.”
Shrugging, she turned away to clean up the mess she’d made. “Of course I tried not to hurt him. I wanted to help him.”
His hand closed around her arm, preventing her from moving away from him. Heat pulsed into her from his fingers, starting a throbbing deep inside her. Slowly, reluctant to let him see her reaction to his touch, she looked at him.
“Not everyone would have.” Holt’s voice was a low murmur, intimate even in the brightly lit, stark room. “Not even every vet would have done what you did tonight. A lot of people wouldn’t have given a damn about a dirty stray dog.”
“You did.” The words seemed to come out of her on their own.
He looked away from her and let her go, shoving his hands into his pockets. Clearing his throat, he glanced at the dog on the table. “Yeah, well, he’s evidence.” When he looked at her, the shutters were in his eyes, blocking her view of his soul. But she’d seen it earlier, and it was a sight she knew she would never forget.
In silence he helped her clean up. The residue from the brief moment when he’d touched her lingered in the air, making it thick and heavy with expectation. It was almost impossible to move in the small surgery room without accidentally brushing against him, and each time she did she jumped away from the spark that seemed to arc between them.
When all the instruments had been washed and she had no other excuses for ignoring him, she forced herself to face him. It unnerved her to find him watching her. Trying to ignore the sensation fluttering in her chest, she said, “I’m not going to leave him here in the clinic tonight. Would you help me carry him over to the house?”
“Of course,” he said as he pushed himself away from the table. Watching her steadily, he added, “Do you take all of your patients to your house at night?”
Ignoring the question, she said, “It’ll be easier than running back over here every couple of hours.” She looked at the dog rather than at Holt. “If he’s in a cage in my kitchen I won’t have to go as far.”
“Uh-huh.” He paused, then murmured quietly, “Just routine, I know,” and she realized she hadn’t fooled him at all.
She didn’t want Holt to be able to read her so easily. It implied a dangerous level of intimacy, and that was the last thing she wanted. There was no room for intimacy in her life right now, especially with a cop.
But what had happened tonight had shattered forever the myth that all cops were alike. Shifting uneasily, she looked away from Holt’s hand, still resting on the dog’s head. Holt had allowed her to see a tender side of him that she suspected few other people knew about.
“If you’ll carry the IV stand, I’ll carry the dog. Don’t worry about the lights. I’ll have to make another trip over here.”
As she slid her hands underneath the dog, Holt obligingly picked up the long metal rod that held the intravenous solution. The dog yelped once, then relaxed as she shifted him in her arms. He was a pitifully light burden.
As soon as she walked out the door of the clinic, the sense of menace slammed into her. The rain had stopped, but the wind had gotten stronger and now it howled through the trees, screeching her name as it demanded her presence among them.
Holt stopped. “What is it? And don’t tell me nothing. You flinched as if someone had just hit you.”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “The trees. There’s something there. I can feel it.”
Shifting the intravenous pole to his left hand, he let his right hand hover over the butt of his gun. Staring into the woods for a long time, he finally turned to her. “I don’t see anything.”
“I don’t, either. But it’s there.”
“Let’s get to your house. I’ll call Jack Williams and have him come out and look while I stay with you.”
Feeling the trees pressing closer to her, she began to walk toward the house, wishing passionately that she’d turned on the lights before she’d left to find the dog. She wasn’t sure which was worse, entering a completely dark house or staying out here with the trees. For the first time, she began to wonder if maybe she shouldn’t listen to Holt and move into town, at least until she’d regained some of her equilibrium.
“Where are your keys?” Holt’s voice murmured into her ear, his breath soft and warm against her cheek.
“In my pocket.” As she tried to shift the dog and grab them, he reached out and slid his hand into her pocket. The feel of his fingers pressed against her hip sent a flash of heat through her. When he closed his hand around the keys and pulled them out of her pocket, she moved away from him with an awkward step.
Holt opened her front door and flipped on both the outside and inside lights before he stepped aside to let her enter. As she headed for the kitchen, he touched her arm. “Wait.”
A few seconds later he reappeared. “The kitchen’s fine.” Taking the IV stand in his hand again, he led her toward the kitchen. After she’d laid the dog on the floor he said, “I’m going to check the rest of the house.”
Her fear began to ease as she sat on the floor next to the dog and watched Holt disappear up the stairs. In a few minutes he reappeared. “Nothing’s been disturbed, as far as I can tell.”
“Thank you for checking. You’ve been...it makes me feel better when you check,” she finished with a rush, embarrassed to admit that she was scared in her own house.
He squatted next to her. “I’m worried about you, out here alone. Especially after this.” He looked at the dog, then at her. “Are you sure you can’t find someplace else to live?”
“I’ll think about it.” It was all she could promise. Even though she was scared out here, if she left she would somehow be admitting that she couldn’t handle it. She would be admitting that the policeman in Chicago had taken much more from her than a little blood and flesh.
“Do you want me to call Jack and have him come check the woods?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t find anything the other night, and I suspect he wouldn’t find anything tonight. I’m sure with the storm he has other things to worry about.”
“Do you want me to go look?”
“No!” Clearing her throat, she lowered her voice. “No, you don’t have to go
outside again. You’re just getting dry now.” His shirt stuck to his chest in a few spots, and she told herself to look away. She didn’t want to notice how the damp material clung to his broad shoulders, or how the wet denim of his jeans only molded them more perfectly to his long thighs. Forcing herself to look at the gun strapped to his right hip, she tried to focus on that.
Holt eased himself to the floor and leaned against a cabinet as he watched her. “Tell me about the trees.”
She turned to the dog, checking his IV and rearranging his blanket. “There’s not much to tell. I’m just not used to living in the woods. The only trees in Chicago are either in the parks or carefully spaced on the parkways.”
“I think there is something to tell,” he said quietly. “I don’t think you’re a woman who spooks easily, but you’re spooked by those trees. You told me there was something evil in them, and I want to know what it is.”
“So do I,” she cried. “I don’t want it in my mind. If I knew what it was I could stop it.” She clamped her mouth shut, appalled at what she’d revealed. It was Only because of the strain of the evening, she told herself. She was tired, and she wasn’t guarding her tongue.
Leaning forward, Holt said, “What exactly do you feel out there, Tory?”
She stared at him for a long moment before shrugging. He wouldn’t stop until she’d told him. It was humiliating to have to admit her fears, but humiliation wouldn’t kill her. And maybe, a tiny voice deep inside her murmured, telling someone else would take away the fear and the mystery.
“I feel scared. I feel like there’s something in those trees that’s calling me, something that wants me. Sometimes I even start walking toward them. When the wind blows, I can hear the trees calling my name.” She slanted him a look, then turned away. “Tell me I’m just a neurotic city woman.”
He was silent for a long time. Finally he said, “I don’t think you’re neurotic. I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m not going to tell you to ignore your feelings. Sometimes all you have is your instincts.”
“I’m sure it’s just getting used to living here,” she said, illogically reassured by his refusal to dismiss her feelings as silly. “It’s about as far removed from Chicago as you can get.”
The Dark Side Of The Moon Page 9
