“Kurt, wait a-” There was a click and after a moment a dial tone.

Kate pulled the phone from her ear and looked down at the keypad. She sighed again and went back to the white-haired matron, who showed her how to turn it off.

12

Arriving in Jewel Lake fifteen minutes later, Kate drove through a subdivision of prepackaged cracker-board houses that all looked exactly alike and were all painted the very same shade of ash gray with the exact same white trim. The pavement ended in a forest of scrub spruce and spindly birch. A gravel road with more bumps and grinds than a stripper dodged tree-trunks as it passed by what looked like the original homesteads, which were closeted in stands of lilac and honeysuckle that had been there long enough to grow into trees thick enough to reduce the evening sunshine to an occasional dapple. Wouldn’t be long before the taxes got too high and some developer showed up with a fistful of cash and the plans to another cookie-cutter subdivision, where all of the houses had exactly the same floor plan and where the neighbors could lean out of their windows to exchange a cup of sugar instead of having to walk all the way down the sidewalk and knock on the door.

She maneuvered the Subaru around an old Pontiac someone had left parked not very close to the side of the one-lane road, and found the address on a mailbox. She turned into the driveway next to it, found a winding and rudimentary path between a thicket of birch trees, and pulled up in front of a log cabin, right behind the white Ford Escort Kate had rented for Kurt yesterday morning. She got out. “Kurt?” she called.

Mutt took three paces forward and froze in place, one paw elevated. She raised her nose a fraction of an inch, testing the air.

Kate, about to head for the cabin, stopped. She shut the door of the Subaru and took a long stride away from the vehicle, arms held slightly out from her sides, doing a sweep of the clearing. There was nothing in it except a few dried-up flower beds and a gravel parking area where the dandelions were fighting a last-ditch battle for primacy with the horsetail. The house was a small cabin made of logs gone the dull dark gold of age. The windows had no drapes, probably because the house looked out on no neighbors.

Mutt’s head drooped down beneath her shoulders, and she began a low, menacing whine. She stalked forward, nostrils twitching.

“Hold up, girl,” Kate said, and Mutt’s growl changed from a whine to a snarl. “Hold on just one damn minute, Mutt,” Kate said. She’d seen Mutt like this before, and what happened next was never pretty. She looked around for something to use as a weapon. There was nothing, not a shovel or a broom; this had to be the neatest yard she’d ever seen around a log cabin. She went back to the Subaru and found a box in the back holding a bottle of Windex, a roll of paper towels, a first-aid kit, flares, and a pair of jumper cables. She took out one of the cables and doubled it into kind of a short whip, with the clamps hanging free. She held it hip-high in her right hand, ready to swing, and kept her center of gravity over her feet in a kind of knees-bent glide, which contrasted with the sidling, stiff-legged movement of the dog shadowing her every step.

The steps up to the porch creaked. She saw no movement through the windows, but it was pretty dark inside. “Hello,” she said, raising her voice. “Anybody home?”

There was no answer. When she rapped on the door, it opened. Mutt’s growl intensified, but Kate didn’t need Mutt’s nose to smell the rich coppery scent of blood. She crouched down and hit the door a sharp rap with her left palm.

She caught a confused glimpse of a lumpen mass on the floor inside. There was a muffled curse and the door came back at her hard. Her head slammed against the jamb, and in the split second granted her for reflection she saw little bluebirds flying around in a circle. She even heard them tweeting. In the next second, instinct and training kicked in and she tucked and rolled into a forward somersault. It was a move designed to have her back up on her feet, and it would have worked if she hadn’t somersaulted right into the body of Kurt Pletnikoff. She scrabbled to get up and slipped in his blood.

Mutt’s growl cut off and someone screamed. Someone else cursed. Kate, slipping around like Abbott and Costello as she tried to regain her footing, heard Mutt’s teeth snapping together like a cleaver chopping up a chicken. There was another scream, louder this time. A gun fired and a bullet slammed into the stovepipe of the stove against the back wall of the living room.

Kate ducked and rolled behind a seedy old couch-dubious protection, but better than none-at the same moment the stovepipe came crashing down, raising a cloud of soot. There was another menacing growl and three more shots snapped off quickly. One shot thudded into the couch she was crouching behind and the other two into the wall over her head.

Mutt erupted into a fury of savage barks and snarls and there was the distinct sound of teeth tearing into flesh, and then another scream.

“Get it off me! Get it off me!” a panicked voice yelled, and then he screamed.

“MUTT!” Kate yelled.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here!” someone else shouted, and there was a trample of feet through the door, down the porch steps, and across the gravel. Kate rolled to her feet and peered over the back of the couch. To her immense relief, Mutt stood in the doorway, taut, tense, lips drawn back in a fierce snarl, ears flat, up on her toes, mane stiff“, tail straight out. She started to move forward, quivering in every limb.

“Mutt!” Kate said. “Stay!”

Mutt looked at her and snarled. She had blood on her muzzle.

“Oh, good girl,” Kate said, “good, good girl, but stay, damn it.” She went forward to check on Kurt. He’d been shot once through the chest, but high and to the right. As she stooped, his eyes fluttered open. His pulse was fast and thready and his skin was cool to the touch. A quick glance around revealed no telephone. “Kurt,” she said urgently. “Hang on. I’m calling for help.”

She began to rise, but his fingers plucked at her sleeve. “If’s okay, I’m just going for the phone.” She heard doors slam and an engine start in the distance. She half-rose to her feet. “Goddamn it!”

He grasped at her with a feeble hand.

Kate swore again but let him pull her back down. “All right, what?”

His lips moved, but she heard no sound. She bent down to put her ear next to them. “What?”

She felt his lips move but could make no sense of the words. She straightened so she could look into his face. “Okay, I got it, Kurt,” she said. “I got it, I got what you said. I’m going to call for help now. Hang on, do you hear me? You hang on!”

She ran out to the Subaru and got the cell phone from her day pack. She hit every button until she got a dial tone and then punched in 911 and gave her name and location. “Someone’s been shot,” she told the dispatcher. “Send an ambulance, and tell the cops to be on the lookout for a dark-colored Pontiac Firebird two-door hatchback coming out the same road, moving fast with two men inside, they’re the shooters.” She tossed the cell phone back in the Subaru, the woman still squawking at her to stay on the line, and ran back into the cabin. Kurt had lapsed into unconsciousness and his skin was now clammy, but he was still breathing and the blood from his wound had clotted. She didn’t dare move him, but she yanked the worn, nobbly afghan from the back of the couch and covered him with it. “Hang on, Kurt,” she said. “The ambulance is on its way. Please, please just hang on. I’m right here; I won’t leave. Hang on. Mutt!”

Mutt, looking mightily pissed off but mercifully less feral, came to lie against Kurt’s side.