12. Erin
CHAPTER 12
ERIN
S in flew low again, low enough for me to count the cactuses—cacti?—on the desert floor as we skimmed over the mesquite and yuccas that dotted the rocky landscape. From up here, it looked pretty barren, but I knew if I sat on the gritty sand and waited, there would be life. There always was. Back at the Promised Land, I used to escape the house and hide out in a clump of trees at the base of a nearby bluff, and the longer I sat, the more I saw. Sometimes, I’d empty crumbs out of my pockets for the ants to eat.
The landscape grew more interesting as we flew slowly over a series of small canyons interspersed with rock formations that didn’t look entirely natural. I wished we had time to land, to hop out and explore.
“What is this place?” I asked Sin.
“Nobody’s quite sure. Some kind of ancient ceremonial ground, probably.”
“Maybe they tossed human sacrifices into the canyons?” Rusty suggested. “The way Mayans used to in the cenotes? ”
“There are better ways to hide a body in the desert.” Sin laughed softly. “But hey, take a look if you want to.”
She dropped into a low hover, mere feet above one of the canyons, and we gawked out the windows on either side. Okay, it wasn’t that interesting, just gloomy down there in the shadows. Sin moved the helicopter forward, following the crack, and I wondered how hard it was to fly a helicopter. Pretty hard, I figured. And expensive, and I couldn’t even pass my driving test, so I’d have to get used to passengerhood. Did these folks need another house-elf? No, I’d never leave Kai and Ari and— Wait. Something white and fluffy hopped around in the shadows at the bottom of the crack, and I pressed my nose against the glass to get a better look.
“No skeletons down there, just a rabbit,” I said.
“A rabbit? In the canyon?”
“I swear I saw one.”
“They’re usually well camouflaged.”
“It was white.”
“There are no white rabbits in the desert here. They’re all a sandy brown.”
“Well, I’m sure I saw one. What else out here is white and fluffy?”
“Nothing.”
“I saw it too,” Rusty put in. “I don’t know if it was fluffy, but it was definitely white.”
Thank you. At least now, I didn’t sound like a crackpot. My husband used to make me doubt myself all the time.
Are you sure you didn’t open the window? Maybe you just forgot?
I never said I wanted chicken for dinner.
All that nonsense about the Prophet you heard at the feed store, it’s not real.
Until I found the strength to leave, even I thought I was out of my mind .
“I’ll make another pass,” Sin said.
“Go on, then. I’m not a liar.”
And this time, she had to admit I wasn’t a fool either.
“Well, I’ll be damned. What the hell is that?”
“A rabbit, like I already said. My father used to breed them for dinner.”
“Ugh.”
“You don’t like rabbit stew?”
“I’m vegetarian.”
“Wait, what are you doing?” The helicopter was dropping even lower.
“What do you think I’m doing? I’m landing.”
The rotor blades were still turning slowly a few minutes later as the three of us stood at the edge of the canyon, peering into the depths below. Well, not Rusty. He stayed six feet back, and of course Sin noticed.
“You’re not a fan of heights?” she asked.
“Not particularly.”
“Hey, there it is.” I spotted the rabbit again, except now that we were closer, I realised it wasn’t a rabbit, it was a dog. The truth clicked at the same time as Sin said, “Damn, that’s a dog.”
“How did a dog get in there?”
“Some asshole probably dumped it. There’s a road not too far from here.” She knelt, leaning out over the edge. “I think it’s injured.”
“Poor thing. Should we report it to animal control?”
“They won’t come out here.”
“So we just leave it to suffer?”
“Of course we don’t.”
Ah. “You have a gun, right?”
At the Promised Land, veterinary care wasn’t a thing, and a handful of times, I’d closed my eyes and used a rock to ease an animal’s suffering. Better to get it over with than watch a rabbit or a chicken live in constant pain. More than once, I’d wished there was a rock waiting for me.
“Are you fucking kidding? I’m not going to shoot the dog.”
“But I thought your job?—”
Sin glared at me. “The dog did nothing wrong.”
“Well, if we can’t leave it like that, and you’re not going to put it out of its misery, then what do we do?”
“We rescue it.”
“What do you mean, ‘we’?”
Now she switched her position to sitting and dangled her legs over the side of the canyon. When she kicked at the wall with a heel, the rock crumbled away.
“Okay, this is not good,” she said.
“You weren’t seriously thinking of climbing down there?”
“Of course I was thinking of climbing down.”
“The walls of this canyon are made from shale,” Rusty said. “Millions of years ago, this whole area was underwater, which is why we find sedimentary rocks here. Shale’s formed from clay and other?—”
“I don’t need a geology lesson.”
“I’m just trying to say that this rock face isn’t safe.”
“Thanks, I got that. We’ll have to take a different approach.”
“Which is?” I asked.
“We have harnesses in the helicopter. One of them will fit you. We’ll tie the rope to the nearside skid, and I’ll lower you over the edge. You can catch the dog, and we’ll all live happily ever after.”
“Are you kidding me? I’m not dangling around on the end of a rope. What if it breaks? What if I swing into the wall and give myself a concussion? What if the dog bites me? What if it’s rabid? ”
And the part I couldn’t say: what if the walls closed in on me and I freaked out? Whenever I did something bad, Father used to lock me in the smallest closet, no light, no food, no water. I used to sit there and rock, my heart racing, the sound of my breathing getting louder and faster and louder and faster because what if he didn’t come back? What if?—
Rusty touched my shoulder. “You okay?”
Breathe.
Just breathe.
“I’m not going into the canyon. I can’t. I can’t .”
“Okay, fine,” Sin huffed. “You fly the helicopter, and I’ll dangle at the end of the rope.”
She put her hands on her hips and tried to stare me down, but I stared right back. She thought I couldn’t win a staring contest? I’d had plenty of practice at this—sister wife number one was a real bitch.
Far below, the dog let out a whimper.
My eyes prickled. I’d have to do this, wouldn’t I? If I could survive half a lifetime at the Promised Land, then surely I could get through a half hour in a canyon. I’d be able to see daylight. Sin and Rusty would be right there. My chest tightened just from thinking about it, but?—
“Do you have a harness that will fit me?” Rusty asked.
“You’re the client,” I reminded him, right as Sin said, “You don’t like heights.”
“I don’t like doing surveillance in Las Vegas either, but I’m still here. We have dogs on the farm at home. Just give me the fucking harness.”
Sin surprised me by acquiescing without complaint. “Okay.”
“And I’ll need a bag to put the dog in. Food to bribe it with too.”
“I have a croissant in my purse,” I offered, desperately trying not to sob with relief. Sin didn’t even attempt to hide her eye roll. “What do you have with you?” I snapped. “A Powerbar?”
“Electrolyte gel,” she admitted. “And I don’t carry a purse either.”
“Really? Then where do you keep your knife?”
She fixed me with a steely gaze. “In. My. Bra.”
“Ladies…” Rusty tried, and he sounded a little nervous. “The dog?”
Rusty was crazy. Sin was crazy. We were all freaking crazy. Fifteen minutes later, Rusty was lifted off the ground, dangling thirty feet below the helicopter, swinging gently in the downdraft from the rotor blades. Sin couldn’t see him too well from the pilot’s seat, so I stood to the side and directed her with hand signals until he disappeared into the crack. Once his feet touched the dusty floor of the canyon, I waved her down and she joined me at the edge once she’d landed.
“The dog’s terrified,” Rusty called up. “It ran into a crevice, and it won’t come out.”
“Can you reach it?” Sin asked.
“It’s too far back.”
Fantastic. Now we had to play the waiting game. Rusty tore off pieces of the croissant and made a trail to where he sat cross-legged.
We waited.
And waited.
My phone had no signal, but Sin obviously used a different network because she was scrolling through her messages and tapping away at the screen.
“Is now really the time to be checking your emails?” I asked.
“I’m lining up an emergency veterinarian for the dog.”
Oh. “Do you think Rusty will catch it?”
“Well, we’re not leaving until he does.”
“I need to pee. ”
“There’s a rock right to your left. Promise I won’t look.”
Thankfully, Rusty turned out to be a bit of a dog whisperer. After an hour and a half of silence, broken only by the distant noise of airplanes and an occasional skittering I didn’t want to think about, the dog slowly crept out of its hiding place, grabbed the first piece of croissant, and retreated again. Another ten minutes, and it came back for the second piece. Finally, an hour and fifty-seven minutes, one pee break—mine, not his—and a bout of pins and needles later, he managed to stuff the mutt into a duffel bag. The end result wasn’t pretty, and the critter snapped at him a couple of times, but he got the zipper closed and finally, finally, we could go home.
“Poor little guy,” Rusty said once we were back on board the helicopter, having repeated the rope dangling in reverse. “Under the fur, you can feel all his bones. I bet he’s dehydrated too.”
Sin had softened slightly after we got the dog out of the canyon. “There’s an IV on board, but I’m not sure I can safely get a cannula into him.”
Instead, she opened the zipper enough for the dog to poke its head out, then poured a trickle of water into her palm and offered it, smiling as a pink tongue lapped it up.
“I can do that if you fly,” Rusty told her. “Let’s go.”
The trip back to Las Vegas seemed to take longer than the trip out, and on the way, Rusty used a piece of paracord and Sin’s bra-knife to fashion a makeshift collar for the dog. He’d finished the croissant, so I fed him a handful of banana chips from my emergency bag of trail mix.
“Is there anything you don’t carry in your purse?” Rusty asked.
“An anti-tank missile?”
Sin began whistling to herself at the controls.
“Wait… You don’t have…?”
She turned to me, wide-eyed. “That would be insane . ”
Yup, she definitely had a missile squirrelled away somewhere.
When we landed back at the VIP terminal, an SUV was waiting for us. I didn’t ask how it got there, and Sin didn’t volunteer the information.
“You can drop me off at the animal hospital and take the car if you want,” she said. “I’ll catch a ride home with somebody.”
I hadn’t given any thought as to how we’d get back to the Neptune to pick up Rusty’s vehicle, and as usual, she was ten steps ahead.
“I can chip in toward the vet bill,” Rusty offered. “He’s a cute little guy.”
“I’ll cover it. If you want to help out, make a donation to the shelter—they’re overflowing with strays these days.”
In the end, Rusty carried the dog into the veterinarian’s office while a jerk honked at Sin for blocking the street. I noticed her studying the offending vehicle in the rear-view mirror, and then she jotted down the licence plate. Uh-oh. I jumped out to help Rusty while Sin went to find a parking spot.
The receptionist did a double take when she saw him carrying the scrawny dog toward her with its head sticking out of the duffel bag. And I wasn’t sure whether it was because the dog was cute or because Rusty looked like, well, Rusty.
“I understand you’re expecting us,” he said.
“Sure, what’s the name?”
“It’s the dog that was found in the desert.”
“Oh, Ms. Fischer’s dog?” When he didn’t answer right away, she prompted, “Astrid Fischer? ”
Astrid Fischer? Was that Sin’s real name? Rusty didn’t know any better than I did, but he nodded. I mean, how many dogs got rescued from the desert on a regular day?
“If you’d like to take him into consulting room two, Dr. Howlett will be right with you.”
She motioned to our left, and I held the door for Rusty because it was on one of those springs that shut it automatically.
“This wasn’t how I expected today to go,” he whispered as he passed me.
“Me neither.”
Usually, I did everything I could to avoid being stuck in small rooms with a man. Not just because of the closet thing, but due to the time I lived in Texas. A whole seven weeks. That was how long it took for my ex-boss to shove me into a storeroom and stick his fingers into me. I beaned him with a frying pan, and maybe there was a warrant out for my arrest? Who knew? Not me. I hopped on the next bus and wound up in Florida.
But Rusty was holding the dog, and the veterinarian was on his way. A witness. Even though the room was small, it was also bright, and my heart wasn’t thudding against my ribcage the way it usually did.
There was one seat by the door, and Rusty motioned me to take it while he let the dog out of the bag. It stood in the corner shaking, my spirit animal.
The veterinarian entered the room. “Ms. Fi— Ah, you’re not who I was expecting.”
“Astrid is parking the car,” I said. “This is the dog she called about.”
He crouched beside the quaking pooch. “What do we have here? A bichon? A Maltese? Maybe a poodle? You’re a skinny little thing.”
“He was stuck in a canyon,” I volunteered. “We don’t know how long for. ”
“And Astrid couldn’t turn her back, I suppose?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“I’m not surprised. There’s a reason she’s one of my best customers.”
Sin spent her spare time…rescuing dogs? I thought she’d be jumping out of airplanes or something. There was a soft knock at the door, the veterinarian said, “Okay,” and Sin slipped inside.
“How is he?”
“Drastically underweight. I’m surprised he’s still standing. We’ll start by running a blood panel.”
“He needs fluids.”
“He does. And an X-ray on that back leg. Another day in the desert, and I doubt he’d still be with us.”
“Can you do the blood work now? I know it’s late, but…”
“I’ll stay. What kind of budget are we working with?”
She just looked at him.
“Right. I’ll make sure he has one-on-one care through the night. I suspect surgical intervention will be necessary for the leg, but he’s weak at the moment. It’ll be a balance between building up his strength and fixing the bone before it sets badly on its own.”
“Any prognosis?”
“We’ll talk after the initial tests, but I’m hopeful.”
“That’s good to hear. I—” Sin’s phone chirped, and she cursed under her breath as she checked the screen. “I have a work emergency.”
“Ah, I completely understand. We’ll take good care of him. Does he have a name?”
“Not yet.”
“You want us to stay?” Rusty asked. “After two hours in that canyon, I’ve grown attached to the little fella.”
Sin considered the offer for a moment and finally nodded. “If there’s a decision to be made, make a good one. And cost isn’t part of the equation.”
“Understood.”
She hurried out the door, and I pondered the interaction.
“I think she likes you,” I whispered to Rusty.
“I think she scares me,” he whispered back.
We settled into minimally padded chairs to wait.