Natural Evil (Elder Races #4.5)(2)

The dog didn’t die.

Less than two minutes later a county patrol car swooped up behind her, lights flashing.

She pulled onto the shoulder and parked, rolled down her window, moved her Ray-Bans to the top of her head and watched as a gray-haired man in a short-sleeved, tan uniform walked up to her car. His bladed, smiling face was lined with good humor and friendliness. He braced a hand on her door.

“Lady, that’s some well-maintained engine you’ve got under this hood,” he said. “I tagged you at one twenty-five.”

She handed him her New York driver’s license and registration. The license photo was of a lean, fit forty-year-old woman, with straight ash-blonde, shoulder-length hair, green eyes, spare features and a somewhat crooked nose. She had broken it once in Kandahar. He glanced from the license to her, verifying her identity.

She said, “As you can see, I’m not from around here, and I’ve got a badly injured dog in the back seat. Can you direct me to the nearest animal hospital or vet—or better yet, could you show me and write the ticket afterward?”

The man’s quick, dark gaze shot to the back seat. She watched his expression change. “That your animal?”

She shook her head. “Found him by the road a few miles back.”

He glanced at her dirt- and blood-smeared T-shirt and cargo pants. “You got him in the car all by yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“How did you manage that?”

The skin around her mouth tightened. “Adrenaline, I guess.”

His grave gaze met hers. “Might be kindest if I put him down.”

His hand had moved to rest on his firearm. Something inside her went cold and still as she tracked the movement out of the corner of her eye. Her hands clenched on the steering wheel. In retrospect, storing her gun in the trunk of her car had been a stupid thing to do.

“Might be,” she said. She kept her tone soft and even. Nonaggressive. “I had that thought myself. But it wouldn’t be fair. He’s endured a lot to get this far. And even though he was awake, he didn’t bite me when I got him in the car. I’m going to give him a fighting chance. Don’t tell me there’s no vet for a hundred miles.”

A decision wavered between them, invisible like a heat wave rising off the pavement. She moved her left hand to her thigh and clenched it into a fist as she tracked his resting on his gun.

The trooper tucked her license and registration into his shirt pocket and straightened. “There’s a vet nearby. Follow me.”

That was how Claudia and the dog got a police escort into Nirvana, Nevada, population 1,611.

The town was located in the foothills of a small mountain range, its streets laid out in a simple north/south, east/west grid system. She followed close behind the sheriff’s patrol car. He sped through the quiet neighborhood streets and pulled to a stop in front of a ranch-style house that had a screened-in front porch that faced west. A dusty Dodge Ram pickup was parked in the driveway.

She placed the sheriff in the latter half of his fifties, but he was a fit man who could move fast enough if the situation warranted it. Even as she parked behind him, he was out of his patrol car and striding toward her BMW.

She set her sunglasses on top of her head again and slid out of the car to join him. They considered the grim mess in the back seat.

The sheriff took a breath. Rodriguez, his name tag said. “We really should have the vet put him down. One quick injection and he wouldn’t feel any more pain.”

She kept her expression noncommittal as she nodded. “He’s made it this far,” she said. “So I think not. Can you grab one end of the tarp while I pull him out?”

He sighed and nodded. Together they used the tarp as a stretcher. She glanced up as they carried the dog to the house. A man had come to the front door when they’d parked. He held the screen door open for them. As they approached, she caught a glimpse of a weathered face under an equally weathered cowboy hat. He was older than the sheriff by at least ten years. The sprinkle of hair showing underneath the cowboy hat was white.

The man said to Rodriguez, “Kitchen table.”

The sheriff blew out a breath and nodded. They went into the house, through a living room filled with large, worn furniture and piled with books, down a short hallway into a kitchen that was stocked with a couple of old refrigerators, white-painted cabinets, scarred Formica countertops and a worn linoleum floor. The floor felt uneven under her footsteps. She glanced down. There was a metal drain in the floor near the back door. The kitchen had a pervasive odor of disinfectant. It was probably perfectly clean, as the scent suggested, but she still wouldn’t be comfortable accepting an invitation to eat a meal in it.

The kitchen table was metal and bordered by picnic-style benches with a chair at each end. They eased the dog onto the table. The man in the cowboy hat pushed past them. She watched his battered profile grow intent. He pulled a pair of latex gloves out of a drawer and said, “Move the benches and chairs into the hall, John.”

“You got it.”

She stepped into a corner as the sheriff pulled furniture out of the way.

She kept an eye on the sheriff as she said to Cowboy Hat, “This is my dog. I’m paying his vet bill, and I want you to do everything you can to save him.”

Rodriguez paused. His stillness lasted only a heartbeat. She would have missed it if she hadn’t been watching him.