“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath.
I jabbed my thumb between my eyebrows and rubbed.
I’d drawn my weapon too late. I didn’t remember the bite of bullets into flesh. Two quick shots. The fall to the ground. Or Duncan Hugo climbing out of the car and looming over me. I didn’t remember what he said to me as he stepped on the wrist of my gun hand. I didn’t remember him aiming his own weapon one last time at my head. I didn’t remember what he said.
All I knew was that I would have died.
Should have died.
If it hadn’t been for those headlights.
Lucky. Nothing but luck had stood between me and that final bullet.
Hugo had peeled off. Twenty seconds later, a nurse late for her shift in the emergency department spotted me and immediately got to work. No hesitation. No panic. Just pure skill. Six more minutes before help arrived. The first responders, men and women I’d known most of my life, followed procedure, doing their jobs with practiced efficiency. They hadn’t forgotten their training. They hadn’t dropped the ball or reacted too late.
All while I lay almost lifeless by the side of the road.
I had no memory of the nurse using my own radio to call for help while she kept pressure on the wound. I didn’t remember Grave kneeling next to me whispering as the EMTs cut my shirt from my body. There was no recollection of being placed on a gurney and hauled off to the hospital.
Part of me had died here on this very spot.
Maybe the rest of me should have.
I kicked at a rock, missed, and jammed my toe into the ground. “Ow. Fuck,” I muttered.
This whole woe-is-me wallowing was really starting to piss me off, but I didn’t know how to climb out. Didn’t know if I could.
I hadn’t saved myself that night.
I hadn’t taken down the bad guy. Or even gotten a piece of him.
It was sheer luck that I was still here. Luck that the nurse’s nephew with autism had experienced a meltdown before bed while his aunt should have been getting ready for work. Luck that she’d helped her sister calm him before leaving.
I closed my eyes and dragged in another breath, fighting against the band of tension. A shiver rolled up my spine as the morning breeze evaporated the cold sweat drenching my body.
“Get a hold of yourself. Think about something else. Any fucking thing that doesn’t make you hate yourself more.”
Lina.
I was surprised where my mind landed. But there she was. Standing on the steps to my apartment, eyes sparkling. Crouched down next to me in that dirty warehouse, her mouth quirked in amusement. All flirtation and confidence. I closed my eyes and held on to the image. That athletic build showcased by body-hugging clothes. All that tan, smooth skin. The brown eyes that missed nothing.
I could smell the clean scent of her detergent and focused my attention on those full, rosy lips as if they alone could anchor me to this world.
Something stirred in my gut. An echo of yesterday’s embers.
A noise to my right snapped me out of my bizarre roadside fantasy.
My hand flew to the butt of my gun.
A yelp. Or maybe it was a whimper. Nerves and adrenaline made the buzzing in my ears louder. Was it a hallucination? A memory? A fucking rabid squirrel coming to bite my face off?
“Anybody out there?” I called.
Stillness was my only response.
The property that ran parallel to the road sloped down a few feet toward a drainage ditch. Beyond it was a thicket of thorns, weeds, and sumac trees that eventually turned into a patch of woods. On the other side was Hessler’s farm, which did a hell of a business with their annual corn maze and pumpkin patch.
I listened hard, trying to calm my heart, my breathing.
My instincts were fine-tuned. At least, I’d thought they had been. Growing up the son of an addict had taught me to gauge moods, to watch for signs that everything was about to go to hell. My law enforcement training had built on that, teaching me to read situations and people better than most.
But that was before. Now my senses were dulled, my instincts muffled by the low roar of panic that simmered just beneath the surface. By the incessant, meaningless crunch I heard on repeat in my head.
“Any rabid squirrels out there, you best keep movin’，” I announced to the empty countryside.
Then I heard it for real. The faint jangle of metal on metal.
That was no squirrel.
Drawing my service weapon, I made my way down the gentle slope. The frozen grass crunched under my feet. Each heavy pant of breath was made visible in a puff of silver. My heart drummed out a tattoo in my ears.
“Knockemout PD,” I called, sweeping the area with gaze and gun.
A cold breeze stirred the leaves, making the woods whisper and the sweat freeze against my skin. I was alone here. A ghost.
Feeling like an idiot, I holstered my weapon.
I swiped my forearm over my sweat-soaked brow. “This is ridiculous.”
I wanted to go back to my car and drive away. I wanted to pretend this place didn’t exist, to pretend I didn’t exist.
“Okay, squirrel. You win this round,” I grumbled.
But I didn’t leave. There was no sound, no blur of rabid squirrel tail barreling toward me. Just an invisible stop sign ordering me to stand my ground.
On a whim, I brought my fingers to my mouth and gave a short, shrill whistle.
This time, there was no mistaking the plaintive yelp and the scrabble of metal against metal. Well, hell. Maybe my instincts weren’t so shot after all.
I whistled again and followed the noise to the mouth of the drainage pipe. I crouched down and there, five feet in, I found it. A dirty, bedraggled dog sat on a bed of leaves and debris. It was on the small side and might have been white at one time but was now a mottled, muddy brown with curly tufts of matted fur.
Relief coursed through me. I wasn’t fucking insane. And it wasn’t a fucking rabid squirrel.
“Hey, buddy. What are you doin’ in here?”
The dog cocked its head and the tip of its filthy tail tapped tentatively.
“I’m just gonna turn on my flashlight and get a better look at you, okay?” With slow, careful motions, I slipped the flashlight out of my belt and played the beam over the dog.
It shivered pathetically.
“Got yourself good and stuck, don’t you?” I observed. There was a short length of rusty chain that appeared to be tangled around a gnarled branch.
The dog let out another whimper and held up its front paw.
“I’m just gonna reach for you real slow and gentle. Okay? You can crawl on over if you want. I’m a nice guy. Promise.” I got down on my belly in the grass and wedged my shoulders into the mouth of the pipe. It was uncomfortably tight and now pitch-black except for the beam of the flashlight.
The dog whined and inched backward.
“I get it. I don’t much like small spaces and darkness either. But you’ve gotta be brave and come this way.” I patted the muddy corrugated metal. “Come on. Come here, buddy.”
It was up on all fours now, well, three, still holding up that front paw.
“That’s a good smelly dog. Come this way and I’ll get you a hamburger,” I promised.
Its grotesquely long nails tapped out an excited beat as the dog pranced in place but still didn’t come any closer.
“How about some chicken nuggets? I’ll get you a whole box.”