The Perfect Match (Blue Heron #2)(87)

Spike chased after them.

Oh, God. “No! No, Spike, no!”

Her dog was on the pond.

And the weather had been cold, but it hadn’t been that cold. The pond was stream-fed, and Mr. Ellis had never let them skate there unless it had been below freezing for at least ten days straight. It was maybe twenty feet across, forty feet wide, and if Spike fell through—

“Spike! Spike!” she called, and she heard Tom yelling behind her, but the wind was in her ears.

Then Spike disappeared, blip, just like that, through about two-thirds of the way across. There, and then gone, swallowed into the black water where the current was too strong for ice to form unless it was freezing for ten days in a row, and Honor barely recognized her voice as she screamed her dog’s name.

“Honor, no!” Tom yelled from behind her, but she was already on the ice. She could do it, she thought, her brain flashing with images of just how this would work. She was a skater. She knew this pond. She’d stay on the edge where the ice was thicker, and she’d head to the end of the pond, and the current would bring Spike there, and she could grab—

The ice broke, and the cold bit into her like knives, making the breath whoosh from her lungs. But it wasn’t deep, Honor knew, maybe four feet, and if she could just get closer to where Spike had gone, she could find her dog. “I’m coming!” she yelled. “I’m coming, Spike!” Two steps. Four, the bottom slippery with icy mud that pulled at her boots.

Her foot slipped, coming completely free from the boot, and water closed over her head. Oh, God, it was so cold, the cold slicing right to her bones. She found footing again, barely able to feel the mud now because of the numbness. She slipped again, came up for air. This wasn’t working. This was a bad idea, but Spike, her loyal, cuddly little friend, her only—

Honor tried to pull herself onto the ice again, but it broke under her numb hands, and her arms were too heavy, her legs weren’t obeying. The body’s job is to preserve the heart and brain, she could almost hear the narrator saying, because yes, chances were increasing that she’d become one of those stories on the Back from the Dead medical stories.

Hopefully.

Oh, Spike. A sob shuddered out of her. Her little dog had gone through so much. She didn’t deserve a pointless death like this, alone in the dark water.

She slipped again, and this time, the water didn’t hurt so much. And this time, her legs were even slower to kick.

Then she was being dragged upward, and held against Tom, and he was moving, he could walk, and the ice was breaking as he muscled his way through to the shore. She couldn’t hear him, the blood was pounding in her ears so much, and it hurt. All of her hurt. Her sodden coat dragged at her, and water streamed from her hair.

The shore was steep here, and Tom heaved her out of the water. She landed with a tooth-jarring thud on the hard earth.

His mouth was moving, and my God, he looked so angry she was almost scared. “Spike,” she said, shuddering with the cold, barely able to get the word out. “Please.”

Fuck, he said. Well, his mouth made that shape, anyway. Honor was shaking so hard it was like one of her sister’s epileptic seizures, and she tried to stand, to help Tom, because yes, he was going back into the water.

* * *

IF TOM HAD thought he was cold before he went in the pond, that had been a f**king walk on a tropical beach, hadn’t it? Stupid, stupid Honor, going out on ice after the idiot dog. If it hadn’t held a five-pound dog, how the hell was it going to hold a full-grown woman?

He could feel a slight current in the water, pulling at his clothes, and did a quick calculation in the water—weight, velocity, depth, momentum, resistance—and sloshed over to where he thought the idiot animal might be.

Chances were small to nil, let’s be honest. His chest was tight, his skin screaming against the cold. If he had a heart attack right now, it would serve Honor right, because she’d scared the f**king blood out of his f**king veins.

He reached down, groping. Nothing.

This was not going to end well. He glanced back at Honor, huddled on the shore. Forget the dog. She needed to get warm.

Then his hand brushed something. He grabbed it. Ratty, all right, ice cold and limp, eyes open just a slit.

The dog was dead.

His eyes met Honor’s and she let out a sound he never wanted to hear again.

“Fuck me,” he said. Turned the horrible dog upside down and pressed on its little belly. Water came out of its mouth. It still didn’t move.

Honor was sobbing, crawling over to where he stood. Her hands were bloody.

Tom took the dog’s tiny muzzle in his hand and blew into the dog’s nose. This really took the cake. Mouth-to-mouth for a dog who hated him, bit him, destroyed his shoes, peed on his bath towel and was trying to eat his computer.

He puffed again. The dog’s cheeks flapped, so Tom gripped her muzzle a little harder. Another puff. Two. Three.

Then there was a sharp pain in his lip. Tom jerked back, and Spike started gacking up water. It gave a watery bark, then shook itself, coughed again and barked once more. Alive, the little bugger. Good. Tom could kill it later.

He sloshed to Honor and handed her the evil creature.

“Spike! Spike, honey!” Honor gathered the dog against her chest, her hands shaking uncontrollably.

Without any finesse, as the cold was affecting him as well, he yanked Honor to her feet, grabbed the neckline of her coat and shoved the dog in against her skin. “Hold on to that little rat, because I’m not risking my life for her again,” he said, then swung Honor up into his arms. One of her feet was bare.