Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
NORA
He’s not going to answer, the little voice in my head jabs. Who keeps their phone on at night?
I lean against the door jamb, still breathing hard, and tap the floor furiously with my foot.
“Nora?” Cormac asks, his voice fuzzy with sleep, and my whole body feels electrified by relief combined with terror.
“I’m so sorry, Cormac,” I babble, tears pressing at my eyes. “I thought the gate was locked, but the mailman’s an asshole, and he left it open, and she slipped out. Cookie’s gone, and I don’t know where to look.”
Hot tears track down my cheeks, and I’m so mad at myself that I don’t even wipe them away. He’s going to flip out, and I won’t blame him. I’d definitely flip out if our situations were reversed.
“It’s okay, Nora,” he says slowly, which shocks me, because it is obviously not okay.
“It’s not,” I practically shout. “I need to find her. Can you tell me what to do?”
Not words I say often or lightly, but I feel helpless.
“It is okay. This has happened to me too. Look, I have a tracker on her collar. She was wearing her collar, right?”
“Yes!”
“Okay, Nora, just a second. I’m drawing up the map on my phone.”
“What the fuck is going on?” I hear in the background. “It’s…sweet Jesus, Corm, it’s three in the morning. Go the fuck to sleep.”
“It’s Nora,” Cormac says, muffling the speaker.
There’s more grumbling, then he adds, “I’ll be back later. I’m not asking her about basil, for God’s sake. My dog is lost.”
Basil? What the hell?
But before I can even try to process the statement into something sensible, he’s back, the phone no longer muffled. “Sorry. I’m sharing a room with Mick. Look. I’m going to tell you where to go. But bring some treats so she’ll come to you. She can be a bit skittish.”
A bit skittish?
A wild laugh gusts out of me as I grab my hoodie hanging by the door. There are probably dozens of treats already tucked into the pocket. Her leash goes into the other. “Oh, I know how Cookie rolls. Where should I go?”
Adrenaline is practically singing in my veins now. We’re going to find her. She’s going to be okay. There IS a solution.
Of course, Cormac found it. Cormac is capable. He thinks ahead.
“Go to the right of the gate,” he says, and I realize I was running in the wrong direction earlier. Thank God I ignored my wounded pride and called him.
I start jogging along the road.
“Okay, this is good,” he says. “You’re probably moving faster than she is right now. You’re going to turn right at that hideous all-black house. The one that’s so new the paint looks shiny.”
I stifle a laugh as I see it looming ahead, like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story. Two stories with huge windows, the siding painted pitch-black. Honestly, the new builds in this neighborhood have jumped the shark.
I keep running, putting on more speed. My high school gym teacher would be struck down from shock if he could see me now.
“That house is awful,” I pant out. “Do they at least give out full-size candy bars at Halloween?”
“Pretzel packs. He’s a dentist.”
“You’d think he’d want to drum up business.”
Cormac gives me a pity laugh, probably well aware that I’m trying to distract myself.
“He probably does. Pretzels get stuck in your teeth. By the way, you’re doing great.
” His voice is low and steady in my ear.
It’s like the way he hugged me yesterday.
I don’t want it to make me feel better—I shouldn’t need reassurance, especially when I’m the one in the wrong, but I do. More perplexingly, I need it from him.
“That’s it,” he tells me, as if he can see me turning and vaulting past the weird house full of Halloween-hating dentists.
I give it the finger. No one should give children pretzels on Halloween.
“You’re going to take a left on Oak,” he says.
I glance at the sign up ahead as I near an intersection. “I see it.”
“You’re getting so close, Nora. It’s going to be okay. You’re doing everything you can.”
I run harder.
He sucks in a breath at the other end of the line. “We may need to wait until daylight for you to find her. I think she slipped into a patch of woods near the greenway.”
“If it’s not safe for me, it’s not safe for her.” My heart lodges in my throat. She may be a tough little bitch, but she’s small for a corgi. An ill-tempered groundhog could probably do her in. I won’t let that happen on my watch. “I’m going in.”
“I’m not comfortable with that. I—”
“Tell me where to go,” I insist. “I have pepper spray.”
It’s not an exaggeration. It’s in my hoodie pocket, tucked in with the leash. I make it myself, with a recipe I found online, and I’ve given a bottle to each of my female friends to carry.
“You shouldn’t wander around the woods in the middle of the night.”
“I’ll do it whether you tell me where she is or not. I have a flashlight on my phone.”
He lets out a long-suffering sigh. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“And I don’t want anything to happen to your dog. She’s a pain in the ass, and I think I love her.”
“I know the feeling,” he says with a strained laugh. “But please don’t trip over a root and die. I’d have to tell everyone I led you to your death, and it would result in some uncomfortable conversations.”
He’s trying to lighten the mood, but my throat is still choked with emotion. I’m not all right. I won’t be until I have that little dog in my arms.
Okay, she’d never consent to snuggling with me. But I need to be the person who ushers her to safety. If I’m not, I’ll never respect myself again.
“She’ll be okay,” Cormac says, perhaps for himself as much as me. “So will you. You’re going to turn onto the greenway up ahead.”
I do, panting because I’ve missed leg day for about five years. I pause only to turn on my flashlight and switch to speaker phone. “I’m here, Cormac. What now?”
“Don’t do anything dangerous. I’d never forgive myself if you got hurt.”
“And I’ll never forgive myself if she gets hurt. Where is she?”
“She’s to your left. If I remember correctly, there’s a steep hill. You shouldn’t…what shoes are you wearing?”
“You seriously think this is a good time to ask if I’ve got sexy heels on?” I know that’s not what he means, but I also know he won’t give me directions if I tell him I’m in bargain-bin flip-flops.
“I know you don’t. You wear flat shoes because you’re on your feet all day. Even at the wedding, you were wearing those fancy sandals.”
His insight surprises me. It’s the kind of thing a man would only notice if he pays close attention, and I’ve never been under the impression he’s cared enough to pay attention to me.
“Uh, yeah. But don’t worry about my shoes. My shoes are great for climbing steep embankments in the dark. I’m going. Is she on the move?”
I start climbing, the glow from the phone’s flashlight illuminating the sticks and clumps of unidentified organic matter covering the hillscape.
My heart thumps hard as I trip and catch a skinny tree to regain my balance, the rough bark stinging my fingers.
My breath must catch, because Cormac calls my name.
“Nora? Are you okay?”
The worry in his voice surprises me. I’m not used to anyone worrying about me. I’m Nora the Strong. Nora the Brave. Nora the Doesn’t Give a Shit. I’m not a person people worry about.
“I’m fine. Is she still moving?”
“Slowly. When you get to the top, you might be able to see her.” He hesitates, and I try to picture him. He’s probably pacing the hotel corridor, dressed in one of his T-shirts and maybe some boxers. He’ll have his glasses on, of course. I’ll bet he sets them on his bedside table every night.
Thinking about him calms me, the way imagining the band’s audience full of NPCs calmed him.
I’m brimming with purpose as I reach the top of the ridge, which is thick with brush and dotted with skinny trees like the one that saved me.
And there, several feet away, is a stout, fuzzy creature moving through the brush.
“I think I see her,” I say excitedly. “Call out her name. She’s not going to come if she thinks it’s me.”
“It is you.” But he’s not a bad sport, so he calls out her name a few times.
The furry thing starts moving toward me. Which is when I realize I’m looking at a wild animal. It’s cute, with a fuzzy body and a banded tail, but I would prefer not to be this close to it.
“It’s not her,” I hiss into the phone. “It’s…I think it’s a raccoon. It’s got the mask and the tail. It looks like a feral Cookie.”
“Don’t walk toward it,” he practically shouts. “Raccoons are one of the most common carriers of rabies.”
“Of course I’m not going to walk toward it, genius.” I edge back, giving Mr. Raccoon plenty of space. Nothing to see here.
It turns away from me, thank the sweet baby Jesus, but as soon as it does, I spot something else moving through the brush behind it.
Oh fuck, it’s Cookie.
“I see Cookie, but the raccoon’s between us.”
“Do not approach the raccoon,” Cormac repeats urgently. “Nora, be sensible. You might be good at talking people around, but raccoons can’t be reasoned with.”
But I’m not sensible, because the raccoon is looking at Cookie the way I’d look at chocolate-covered pretzels.
Cookie, who is perhaps not as intelligent as I’ve given her credit for, has spotted me and is moving toward me.
Her little nub tail is actually wagging, so maybe getting lost in the dark was enough to endear me to her.
My heart feels like it’s going to burst in my chest, and the glow from my flashlight wavers.
What am I going to do? I can’t let her run directly into a possibly rabid raccoon, no matter how cute it would be for the two masked-faced animals to meet.
Wait…
“Raccoons are nocturnal, aren’t they?”
“Nora, get help. Don’t try to deal with this yourself, I’m begging you. I can’t get to you quickly. I know you’re wearing inappropriate footwear, and you’re going to twist an ankle or get bitten by a rabid raccoon.”
Not a vote of confidence, but it’s nice to know he’d prefer for those things not to happen.
“I’ll be fine.”
“I’ve gotta go,” Cormac says abruptly, and I’ll be damned, the call cuts off.
I gape at my phone for a long moment. Did he seriously just hang up on me right before my possible death by raccoon?
A wild feeling of abandonment gushes through me, and for a moment I’m paralyzed by it—incapable of anything but squeezing the phone, my heart raw and hurting.
Then anger burns up the feeling, and I almost whip my phone at the closest tree.
It felt like he was here with me, like we were going through this together, and now I’m alone again.
Like I always feel.
There’s still a raccoon between you and Cookie, you idiot, I remind myself.
I take a deep breath and train the phone’s light on the raccoon. It hisses and then scrabbles away from me, shooting toward Cookie, who is still cautiously approaching.
“Cookie!” I scream as I shove my hands into my pockets, grasping for anything that might stop the disaster from happening. My phone clinks against the pepper spray in one pocket, and my other hand comes into contact with the treats.
I have a split second to decide, but it comes down to this—if I try spraying the raccoon, Cookie could get a faceful too. I also don’t want to hurt the raccoon. It’s out here doing its raccoon business, and it didn’t ask for any of this bullshit.
So I grab a handful of treats from my pocket and hurl them at the raccoon, half blind because my phone is still in my windbreaker pocket, the flashlight filtering through the thin fabric.
There’s a full moon tonight, so at least I can see a little, with moonlight filtering through the trees and brush.
A few round pellets ricochet off the animal’s coat like shrapnel. It halts abruptly, and I hurl more of them.
I’m sure it’s going to attack me, or Cookie, but to my amazement, it starts gobbling down the treats.
Then Cookie, who clearly has no self-control, reaches the raccoon, and instead of running the opposite direction, starts devouring the treats beside it. It’s…adorable. Though obviously the raccoon is very dangerous.
Acting on impulse again, I pull out my phone, turn the flash on, and snap two rapid-fire photos.
My tactic does the trick, and the raccoon scurries off, running as if the light has poisoned its soul.
Even though I’m half blinded too, I get down on my knees, pulling the rest of the treats out of my pocket. I hold them out and start calling the little dog’s name, pouring every ounce of syrup I can manage into it. “Please, Cookie, please.”
Tears fill my eyes when she really does run to me, although she immediately goes for the dry, tasteless-looking wafers in my hand, wolfing them down as if they were Girl Scout Cookies.
“Oh, thank God. You gave me a scare.”
Five seconds later, I hear the sound of leaves crackling nearby. Cookie tries to run from the sound, but I have my hand wrapped around her collar and will not let go for anything.
I crank my head around in disbelief, shining the light from my phone around us in a wide arc, and spot a grizzled older bearded man wearing overalls and night-vision goggles. He’s carrying a floodlight and what looks like a baseball bat, or possibly the dismembered foot of a chair.
This is exactly the kind of thing Cormac was trying to warn me about. He probably knows all about this crazy neighbor. Maybe the raccoon is his pet and he’s out for vengeance, or he just doesn’t approve of the racket I made while running through the neighborhood.
“We don’t want any trouble, sir,” I say, clipping Cookie’s leash onto her and wrapping the loop around my wrist. Once she’s secured, I slip my hand into my pocket and seize the pepper spray.
“Mighty late for a young lady to be out here in the woods,” he comments as his gaze pans the area. He’s probably looking for possible witnesses.
I’ve seen enough horror movies to know exactly where this is heading for Cookie and me.
Nope. I refuse. We’re both going to be final girls if I have anything to say about it.
I get to my feet, my pepper spray-holding hand still concealed in my pocket.
He takes a step toward me, and I unleash a concentrated mist of burning pepper spray in the direction of his face just as he says, “Cormac sent—”