by Dale Mayer
“Do we need to come back?”
She shook her head. “No, the animals are doing fine. We can go home and go to bed now.” As soon as those words were out, a flush walked up her neck and cheeks.
He grinned, but he didn’t say anything. She was embarrassed enough. He followed her back out to the front door and saw headlights sweep down from the highway. He watched as they went past the parking lot. When they did, he could hear her slowly let out her breath. He glanced at her and smiled. “Not everybody is coming here to do you harm.”
“No, but just having that one was one too many.” She stepped into the parking lot and walked over to his truck. He followed after reconnecting the temporary system he’d put together. Outside again, he pulled out his phone. He texted Flynn. Heading home.
Okay, check in when you’re there came the answer.
They made it onto the road, headlights shining bright in front of them. When she yelled, “Stop,” he hit the brakes. They were just at the edge of the clinic property. She pointed ahead to something lying on the side of the road. Cautiously he drove closer. It would be the perfect opportunity for a trap. He pulled up beside it. Before he had a chance to stop her, she jumped from the truck and raced forward. It was an animal of some kind. She checked it over and then came running back. “It’s an injured dog. He’s been hit but is still alive. I need to get him back to the clinic.”
Rory hopped out, took a look and saw the dog was too big for her to lift. Using his spare work shirt stowed in his truck, he gently wrapped up the poor thing, who even now struggled to get away. Covering him, Rory lifted him to put him into the bed of the truck, but Louise already sat in the driver’s seat and said, “Come on. I’ll drive.”
Considering that was the easiest way to go, he took the passenger seat, holding the dog gently. It whimpered in his arms, damn near breaking his heart. He studied the area, wondering what happened, and how long the animal had lain there. He could swear the dog hadn’t been there when they arrived. He wondered how long it would take her to realize that fact. Awkwardly she turned the truck around and then drove back to the clinic.
“I don’t know if you can disarm the security system while you have him in your arms, but I need him in the back room.”
He couldn’t do anything while carrying the dog. Once they arrived, she dropped the tailgate, and he gently laid the dog down. Then he uncoupled the wires so they could get back inside. He scooped up the dog and carried him through to the large surgery area.
She tapped a large stretcher. “Put him on here please.”
He gently laid the dog down. Within seconds, she had his old shirt pulled away and the dog stretched out. She tugged on gloves and said, “I need to check him over.”
“I’ll lock up the truck. Be right back.” He ran out to the truck, closed his passenger door and the tailgate, and headed back inside, resetting the security on the way. Just as he finished, his phone rang. It was Flynn.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“We found an injured dog on the side of the road. Just where you saw us stop.”
“The vehicle here earlier stopped there briefly and then carried on.”
“Of course it did,” he said. “Either they hit the dog by accident or dropped off the dog as a way to lure her back here.”
Flynn said, “I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Keep a watch on her in there.”
“You keep a watch out there,” Rory said. “Text every ten minutes if all is well so I get the buzz and know everything’s cool.”
“Will do.”
Rory put his phone on vibrate so he could feel it in his pocket. Then he headed back to where Louise worked. He washed his hands and approached. “What can I do to help?” he asked.
She looked up at him gratefully. “I don’t know how long he’s been lying there, but he has several cracked ribs, and his front leg is broken.”
“Do you have an X-ray machine?”
She was already wheeling the dog into a small room. “Can you help me realign him?”
Under her instructions, the dog was laid out the way she wanted him. Rory didn’t like the look of the dog’s front leg, but she had an IV in him, and the dog appeared to be calm. Whether she’d given him antibiotics or an anesthetic, he didn’t know, but the dog wasn’t fighting his rescuers. Maybe he just understood he was in good hands.
With the X-rays developed, Louise pushed them into place in the reader and pointed to the front leg. “It looks like he’s been hit by a car. The front leg’s got a clean break, and he took a heavy blow to the front shoulder and chest. The shoulder has soft tissue damage, but that will heal on its own. Looks like the vehicle clipped a couple ribs too.”
She checked the alignment against the X-ray and then quickly casted it. “The ribs,” she said, “are cracked but will heal without any intervention from me as long as he stays calm. He’s a young dog and will bounce back fairly quickly. He’s in decent shape otherwise. Still it’s lucky we found him.”
“Would he have lasted the night?”
She nodded. “But in a great deal of pain. He was likely unconscious, only coming around before we arrived.”
By the time she and her patient settled for the night, another hour had gone by. In fact, it was almost one o’clock in the morning. “Are you ready to go home?”
She frowned and stared at the patient. “Was it deliberate, do you think?”
He winced. “I was hoping you wouldn’t consider that.”
She shot him a hot look. “That vehicle that went ahead of us?”
He nodded. “It’s possible. You tell me though. I didn’t see the dog when we came down here, and we weren’t here very long. Could the injuries have been that fresh?”
She nodded. “They were very fresh.”
“There’s your answer then.”
Chapter 7
“Do you think it was meant to lure me here? Or was done out of revenge?”
“Hard to say. I don’t want to get hung up on that. The bottom line is, it takes some kind of an asshole to do something like this.”
“You’re not kidding,” she said. “He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with that.”
Rory nodded. “Give us a chance to catch him.”
“Is it safe to go home?”
“I suspect they’re watching us,” he commented.
A creepy sensation crawled over her skin. “Meaning?”
He shrugged. “Meaning, if this was a set up, they could be preparing to attack. That or they’ll try to follow you home.”
“Now that they know about your truck?”
“Doesn’t matter if they do or not,” he said. “Now they know you aren’t alone.”
She glanced around and said, “Maybe we shouldn’t leave then.”
“What do you think they will do?”
She turned to look at him, determination in her gaze. “If they’re actually running down animals to bring me here, maybe we should make sure I am here.” She could feel her stomach knot at the thought of somebody deliberately hurting an animal. “I can’t have more animals hurt because of me.”
“It’s not very comfortable here,” he warned. “We could be staying all night for nothing.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I don’t really care about comfort. I care about them not hurting anybody else.” She waved a hand toward the surgery room and the dog she now had safely in a cage. “What if they come back and hurt these guys?” She narrowed her gaze. “Why don’t you drive away? Lead them off. Get some of the guys to help, and maybe you can catch these assholes. I will stay here and guard the animals.”
“Lead them away and leave you here?” He stared at her in shock, then shook his head. “Not happening.”
She frowned at him in frustration. “It’s a perfect opportunity to set a trap for them. Flynn is outside somewhere, right?”
He nodded. “That’s true, but I need more people than just me and Flynn. We need somebody to drive my vehicle away and somebody else to rem
ain here inside with you. And somebody outside.”
She snorted. “That’s three men. Is that practical?”
“Somebody has to stay with you at all times.” He pulled out his phone and called Flynn.
She walked away to look at each of the animals. Inside her stomach still churned. She couldn’t let anything intentionally happen to her animals or her staff either, and neither did she want to die herself. She needed these men to catch this guy. Right now was a perfect opportunity, if they would act on it. She heard a sharp exclamation and turned.
“You stay here,” Rory said, pointing a finger at her. “A vehicle is turning into the parking lot.”
She froze and nodded. Urgently she said, “Go.”
He raced forward, pulling a weapon from under his T-shirt at the back of his jeans. She hadn’t even realized he’d been carrying one. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do. She walked over and shut off all the lights. If somebody was coming in, she wouldn’t make it easy for them. As an afterthought, she reached for a scalpel and popped it into her pocket. She might not have a gun, but she was extremely handy with a knife.
She walked into her office, from where she could see the road, and watched as headlights turned toward the building. The vehicle drove very slowly. The driver had to have seen Rory’s truck, had to know someone was here. Just then, the lights on the vehicle were killed, but she could still hear the engine approaching. She walked out to the reception area to find Rory standing beside the big front window.
He pointed a finger at her and said, “Stop there. I don’t want them to see you.”
She nodded and retreated to the surgery area where she had a view of the action. She also had a hell of a lot of weapons here. Ones she knew how to use. She pulled up a chair close to the cage holding the dog she’d found tonight and sat in the darkness.
And waited.
The trouble with waiting in the dark like that was her mind created a bogeyman at every corner. She found herself shrinking into the chair as if expecting somebody to burst in at any moment. She wanted to send Rory a text. Ask if everything was okay, but she was too afraid she would alert the intruder to where he was with a ping of his phone. She didn’t want whoever was in that vehicle to actually gain access to the clinic.
Surely, with both Rory and Flynn here, she’d be safe. But the longer the silence went on, the more her heart slammed against her chest, and the more she could barely breathe.
When one of the dogs beside her yipped, she almost fell off her chair in fear. She was just like an elastic band, stretched so tight she was ready to spring forward. She took several steps, tapping her chest lightly, trying to calm down. She wished somebody would say something. Just as she was about to sit down again, she heard an odd spitting sound, followed by a crack of a window and the sound of shattered glass.
She froze. What the hell was that? Her nostrils flared. She tilted her head slightly, sniffing the air—and catching a whiff of gas. She raced to the surgery doors and hit the lock. As part of the renovations she’d completed after purchasing the clinic, she’d deliberately put in sliding glass doors with a seal and locks to go along with a decent filtration system. The animals were safe inside with her. She walked over to the control panel.
The air-conditioning system hummed as it brought fresh air inside and circulated around the room. With any luck they’d be safe until the men could take these guys down.
An arm slammed against the glass door. A muffled cry escaped. She slapped her hand over her mouth as she stared at the frosted glass. He didn’t slam again, and her cell phone didn’t go off with a message saying it was safe to come out. She worried about Rory. He’d have told her not to bother, that he could look after himself. But she wasn’t so damn sure. She was afraid that had been some kind of smoke bomb or tear gas and wondered what was going on out there. She didn’t have Logan’s number, but she did have Ice’s and Levi’s.
She quickly sent Ice a text, warning her something had happened and about the potential gas. And that she’d had no contact with either Flynn or Rory. Her response was immediate: Stay where you are. Don’t move.
Louise texted back what she’d done—locking herself into the surgery area with fresh air flowing to keep the animals safe. She warned Ice that gas was in the main part of the clinic. Ice’s response read We’re on the way.
Pocketing her cell phone, Louise slipped back against the cages and stared at the sliding doors. The frosted glass wasn’t intended to keep intruders out. It created a vacuum-sealed door for the HVAC system she had put in specifically for this surgery area. Bone dust and animal odors could be potent over time. Not in the interests of anyone’s best health to inhale either. This surgery area had no windows. The system was intended to send the air and dust up through the HVAC system, filter it twice before expelling it outside—not into the reception area.
By the same token all the supply cabinets and medicines were behind her in case of breakage. Those fumes, individually or collectively, could be toxic in great quantities. As far as she could see in the darkness through frosted glass doors, everything looked the same as it had been. If somebody wanted to get in, they’d have to come through the opaque sliding glass surgery doors.
It wasn’t the best layout. Normally this area was open so nurses had easy access to what they needed to refill the trays for surgery and to bring in patients throughout the day. It was a busy part of the clinic. She did surgeries two days a week, and, during those times, the back of the clinic was a well-oiled system.
Just as she started to relax, the door rattled. Somebody was playing with the lock. She shifted against the rear wall. She didn’t know who the hell was there, but they hadn’t exactly called out to see if she was okay. With a scalpel in her hand, she sidled up beside the door and waited.
*
Rory wasn’t expecting the gas canister when it smashed through the window. For some reason that thought had never crossed his mind. Maybe it was because animals were in here, and he would never have endangered them. Or maybe he hadn’t realized the level of the people involved in this drug business.
Now that he knew, well, that was an entirely different story. The gas canister had already released the bulk of its gas, but not before he managed to pick it up and toss it back out again. All that really did was let the people outside know he was in here, alive and still conscious.
He was good with that, and, with his T-shirt pulled over his face, he was already on the move. Unless they were perfectly aware of the inside layout, he still had the advantage. He crept toward the surgery doors. A couple rooms were between them, but he needed to make sure nobody got to Louise.
He’d already texted Flynn, warning him about the gas. Hopefully somebody from Levi’s compound was coming too. He’d heard two different voices. There was always a chance a third man, a silent one, lurked in the shadows.
When they came through the security system on the front door, the wires he’d put together separated. A bell went off in the background. But it wasn’t horrific. He could hear them talking, but they were too far away to actually understand their words. When he heard them laugh, he realized they understood the security system was a bit of a joke. And they were right. That was because the damn thing wasn’t finished yet. The men spread out, searching the clinic. Rory knew they’d find him pretty soon.
They were also likely to be heading for the drugs. He couldn’t allow that to happen. A man came around the corner and, accidently or by luck, turned his back to Rory. He threw his arm around the man’s neck, choking off his air as Rory kicked his feet out from under him. As he went down, Rory helped him fall and smashed his head into the floor. The gunman was out cold. With a grim smile, Rory bounced to his feet, checked the man for weapons and pulled out two pistols. He tucked them into his waistband, and, after making sure the man was out cold, he crept forward, looking for the second intruder.
“Mark? Where are you?”
Rory could hear the second man call out again.
“Mark? Where are you?”
When there was no answer, Rory slid to the side and dropped to the floor. His eyes still watered from whatever gas they had used. He struggled to breathe. His T-shirt remained over his mouth, but the gas was taking its toll. The other man didn’t wear a gas mask though, so whatever they had used wasn’t that toxic. It was probably knock-out drugs more than anything. That would just help the unconscious man stay that way.
Good.
Rory crept over toward the reception area and watched a shadow pass through the first patient room and head toward the main section in the back, where Louise had a large unused room. On the other side of that section was the surgical theater.
That was where Louise should be, but then he didn’t trust her to stay put just because he had told her to. He crept through another patient room. It was dark, and he didn’t dare turn on a light.
A noise sounded to his right, like the intruder had tripped over a chair and fallen. His arm slammed into the frosted glass doors as he tried to catch himself before going down.
Rory was on him in an instant. Rory grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him against the wall. Then he dropped him, but the intruder flipped, rolled over and kicked up. Rory saw stars as he took the blow on his jaw. He fell to his knees, bringing his legs up ahead of him, but the asshole was already on him. Still seeing stars and stunned from the gas, the guy was now choking Rory. He shoved his thumbs into the man’s eyeballs. Free now, Rory rolled out of the way and bounced to his feet. He was coughing himself now, kicking and punching, twisting, rolling and fighting for dominance. Finally he got a good solid kick into the man’s groin, flipped him and, with his right fist, hit him hard in the jaw.
Silently the man’s head rolled to the side. He was out.
Rory sat there for a second, gasping for air. Finding it hard to see, but knowing that Louise was on the other side of that glass door, probably unconscious, he struggled to his feet. Outside the door, he dropped to his knees, pulled out his tool kit and picked the lock.
