24. Markus
CHAPTER 24
MARKUS
This is heaven, indeed. But truly, is there anything more heaven sent than the unconditional love of a dog? Rufus excitedly whines and huffs as he wiggles his whole body.
“Nothing quite like the purity of a dog’s heart. Like chicken soup for the soul, ain’t it?” Adam’s mom, Angie, says as we walk across her backyard to the kennel shelter.
The moment Angie opens the door to Rufus’s corral, he comes at me. All ninety pounds of muscle hit my legs so hard he knocks me back a few steps. Recovering, I come down onto my haunches so I can get close to him and wrap my arms around his neck. He calms with my nearness, letting out a long sigh as I press my nose to his head and breathe in his doggy scent.
To Angie, I agree, “Indeed, it is. Just what the doctor ordered.” To Rufus, I whisper, “I missed you, too, big guy.”
At the sound of my words, he licks me. First, slowly, almost timid, but soon he’s got his tongue working overtime as he licks my ear and neck and chin. When I pull away a little to laugh at him, he aims that thing at my mouth, and I laugh as I hold him back. He turns his attention to my cheeks, fixated on licking them clean. Only then do I realize I’m crying, and he’s licking my tears away.
“Rufus had a good time last night at his slumber party with Rooster and Drusilla, but clearly this boy missed his daddy.” Angie watches our reunion with a sweet smile, kindly not commenting on my tears as I wipe my face dry and push to stand.
Also, what did she just say? Adam spent the night with the dogs? After I’d been such an ass to him, he came back here and took care of my dog. Clearing my throat, I say, “I missed him too,” and that him could apply to man and animal, both.
A woman bouncing a chubby little cherubic baby on her hip joins us. She—and her child—look just like the rest of Adam’s family. It seems that Adam is the only tall one in the bunch, but aside from that disparity, they all sport the same red hair and green eyes, which unmistakably identify them as Newmans.
“Hey, boss!” she says, and at first, I think she’s talking to Adam’s mom, calling Angie “boss” for some reason.
When both women stare at me expectantly, I point at myself, asking, “Are you talking to me?”
She laughs at me and her baby tries to stick his fingers in her mouth. “Yes! Rooster, mentioned you were hiring a front office assistant, and, well… I accept the job!”
Oh. Okay. I chuckle at her, but don’t argue. “You must be Alice. Great to have you on board. When do you start?”
“Tomorrow. Also, I hope you won’t mind if I bring this little milk fiend with me most days. Grandma can only babysit so many times before she starts complaining that she has her own life to live.” Alice says that last part in a voice that I can only guess is a poor impersonation of her mother.
My theory is confirmed when Angie rolls her eyes at her daughter. Kissing her grandchild on the cheek, she starts walking toward the house, hollering back, “I’ll leave you two to talk business. Markus, you’re welcome to stay for dinner.”
I smile wide at the family interaction, in complete awe. And without even thinking about it, the words fall out of my mouth. “Your family is perfect.”
Alice furrows her brow, like she’s not following my train of thought, but she reluctantly agrees. “We have our moments.”
“Trust me—you’re perfect.”
Alice chews on her lip for a moment and holds her baby a little tighter before she speaks again. “Has Rooster ever told you about our dad?”
I shake my head.
“Ask him sometime.”
“What if I ask you?”
She wags her finger at me like I’m a bad boy for asking. “That’s not my story to tell. But I think you need to know. Cuz I think”—she angles her head to give me a thorough once-over—“you’re someone who needs to know everything about Rooster.”
What a cryptic thing to say. I’m intrigued.
“But in the meantime, you should check out his YouTube channel.”
Wait. What? “Adam has a YouTube channel?”
Alice nods so big the gesture makes the baby giggle. “Yes! It’s great! He’s started posting on TikTok, too, if that’s more your thing. But he’s had his Rooster Crows channel on YouTube for ages.”
Rooster Crows? Adam has a TikTok account and a YouTube channel? Now that is very intriguing. Any notion of staying for dinner is out the window. Clearly, I need to get Rufus home so we can relax and watch some YouTube videos.
Rooster Crows appears to be an extreme version of Adam. His friendly, casual nature is there, but it’s turned up to eleven. He has the same cheeky humor but with a brashness added in for the audience. He uses a different voice too. It’s more chipper, like the voice he uses when he speaks to the dogs.
The videos he posts seem extremely personal but guarded at the same time. For instance, while he speaks openly about his life as a gay firefighter in small-town Texas, he’s careful not to share the name of our town.
I started watching a video that is ranked as his most popular, a workout video he posted a little over a year ago. He’s talking us through his warmup for leg-day exercises, and the yoga poses he does to work his glutes are… Christ, it’s no wonder this has millions of views. I want to play it on repeat as I fall asleep each night, a workout lullaby guaranteed to bring pleasant dreams.
Next, I watch a video of Drew and Chloe’s wedding. It’s a sweet tribute to them, with some gorgeous footage of the happy couple interspersed with amusing moments of wedding hijinks, and then right at the end there’s me. I look bewildered as Dee drags me around by the elbow, and I can hear Adam chuckle when she brings me to stand right before him.
Clearly, I’m mesmerized by the man holding the camera, completely enchanted. Everyone in the comments section sees it, too. They all want to know more about the hot, moon-eyed man, speculating on who I am and what I mean to Adam. He hasn’t replied to any of those comments, keeping my identity secret. His protection is appreciated, but I sort of wish I knew what he thought of the moon-eyed man as well.
There’s a new video. It’s just a day old, and the thumbnail suggests Adam took it while in his truck. I go to click on that one but pause when I hear a noise downstairs. Rufus hears it, too, a sudden rattling, and his whole body goes into high alert, his ears perked up to listen.
My heart races at a gallop as I consider the possibilities. Could it be the wind? Is it windy tonight? Probably just a family of racoons who’ve found their way into the diner’s dumpster in the alley behind my building. Or could it be opossums? The opossum is one of my favorite animals, and the only marsupial native to North America.
A crash comes from downstairs, and I can no longer fool myself into thinking it’s a goddamn marsupial riffling through garbage. Someone is breaking into my clinic.
Rufus stands at attention and lets out a very loud, very aggressive bark. I gesture for him to be quiet. He’s issued his warning to the intruder, and now I can listen, to determine if that bark did the trick.
But what I hear is the crack and crunch of glass underfoot as someone steps into the front office, then hurried footsteps on the clinic linoleum as they move through my space. My fear is immediately replaced by blind, stupid rage.
Seriously, Universe? Why? You cracked my head open as you wrecked my car, then dragged me to hell to watch my father die. Wasn’t that enough for you?
Springing to my feet, I run to the back set of stairs in the kitchen. I should bolt the door, call the police, but anger clouds my judgment. And the surge of adrenaline pumping through my veins inhibits my ability to make rational decisions.
Swinging the door open, I race down the stairs. Rufus is in lockstep beside me. We’re not quiet about it. Anyone downstairs would surely hear us coming. So I’m surprised when I open the door at the bottom of the stairs and spot a man only a few feet away. His back is to us, hunched over as he leans his weight onto a crowbar, trying to break into my narcotics safe.
“Stop what you’re doing, and leave.” I’m proud of the tone of my voice, so much authority and very little tremble in my words.
The man jumps as if he truly hadn’t heard us coming. He spins awkwardly and squints like the light coming from the stairwell behind me is as blinding as the sun.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he says with a voice that cracks like he’s parched, dying of thirst. He looks starved, too, but it’s not food he craves. Pretty sure he’s after the ketamine I keep locked in that cabinet.
I don’t like how twitchy the guy is, his eyes darting around the room and his pupils blown wide like he’s high on meth. And I really don’t like how his fist keeps flexing as he clutches that crowbar in his grip, as if it’s transformed from a tool to a weapon in the last few moments. So I warn again, “Leave. Now. And nothing will happen to you.”
The man doesn’t make a move to go. Instead, he turns his gaze to Rufus, eyeing him like he’s calculating the odds of besting my dog. The odds are zero percent, buddy. When he squeezes his grip on the crowbar again, I consider the movement a threat. Apparently, so does Rufus. He growls deep and low, a terrifying rumble that should scare sense into anyone.
Not this man. Lifting the crowbar like he wants to swing it at my head, he takes a step toward me. That’s as far as he gets before Rufus’s protection training kicks in, and he attacks.
Charging with all his strength and weight, Rufus pushes the man off-balance. It doesn’t take much, and the wiry guy teeters backward, his crowbar clattering to the ground as his hands clutch at thin air. That one step toward us was a step too far, and now he’s supine on the floor.
Down, but not out, the man screeches and cusses as he punches at my dog. Rufus bites, his big jaw clamping down on the man’s right arm to hold him in place and neutralize the threat.
An ungodly howl issues from the intruder’s mouth, and panic fills his eyes as he looks at where Rufus has him. I see what he sees there too: blood.
“Release,” I command, and Rufus follows my order. The moment he unlatches his jaw from the guy’s arm I realize we have a new problem. This isn’t just a little bit of blood. It’s a lot of blood.
Panicking now, the man hugs his arm to his chest, but a pool of red is spreading around him, growing wider with each pump of his heart. I kneel and move his arm so I can get a better look at the injury. It appears that Rufus’s teeth punctured the man’s brachial artery, and if he’s not treated quickly, he’ll bleed to death.
I need to call 911 and get some help here as soon as possible. Jumping to my feet, the knees of my pajama pants are wet with blood and stick to my legs as I search my pockets, hunting for my phone. Shit. No phone. I must have left it upstairs. Okay, I’ll use the front desk phone, but first I need to stanch the bleeding.
Now I’m the one rummaging through the supply cabinets, coming up with a dog hemostasis strap. I fall to my knees beside the man again and try to fish the strap over his hand and up his arm. He struggles like he wants to get away, eyeing me with distrust and flinging blood around with each move he makes.
“Stay still,” I grit through my teeth, “I need to stop the bleeding, or you’ll die.”
His distrust turns to pure panic, but he stops struggling and allows me to get the strap up his arm and tightened, a makeshift tourniquet to slow the bleeding.
“There,” I say and try to smile at my patient, then jump to my feet again. Commanding Rufus to stay put, I run out to the front office. My bare feet slap the linoleum and crunch over broken glass as I make a mad dash for the phone. In my haste, I knock the front desk computer monitor onto the floor with a crash, but finally, I have the phone in my hands.
“911, what’s your emergency?”