Cash Hooper Saves a Life (Goose Run #4)

Chapter 1

MASON

When the banging on my door woke me, it took me a moment to remember where I was and what was going on.

And my brain only kicked into gear after I’d tripped over the chair beside my bed that shouldn’t have been there, because I still thought I was sleeping in my apartment in Cincinnati and not in a house in Goose Run, Virginia, that smelled of mothballs and Old Spice.

I swore at the chair as I pulled on my hoodie, shoved my phone in the kangaroo pocket out of habit, and then headed down the stairs. I hit the wall in the hallway where I thought the light switch was and missed.

“Just a second!” I yelled down the hallway.

Through the frosted glass panels of the front door, I could make out the faint shape of a person standing on the porch.

I tried once more for the switch, and this time I found it.

Light flooded the hallway as I unlocked the door and opened it, leaving it on the chain while I assessed whether or not my late-night visitor was legit.

He was a young guy, cute, with dark, mussed-up hair. I didn’t take in much more than that because my attention was immediately drawn to the bundled-up sweatshirt in his arms, and the blood that had soaked through to the scrubs he was wearing.

I shut the door, unhooked the chain, and opened the door again. “Come on through.”

The guy didn’t move.

“I’m the relief veterinarian for Dr. Ross,” I said.

I was also his great-nephew, which explained how I’d been talked into taking the position for three months at way below my usual rate of pay—I never could say no to Uncle Jim.

Of course, the biggest selling point had been getting away from my parents’ relationship drama in Cincinnati.

I was twenty-eight years old and they still treated me like I was an ungrateful teenager if I didn’t drop everything to listen to them bitch and moan about the divorce.

“He’s on vacation. Come on through to the clinic. ”

The bottom floor of Uncle Jim’s house was the clinic. It was a little tired around the edges, but it was serviceable, and everything was permeated with the competing scents of antiseptic and dog.

I turned on the lights as I moved, leading the way through the reception area and into the examination room. The guy followed.

“Okay,” I said. “What have we got?”

The guy gently set the bundled hoodie down on the examination table, keeping his arms around it. I reached in and peeled back the bloody fabric, and an amber eye regarded me from behind a curtain of trembling, tangled hair.

The dog was smallish, hairy, and shaking like a faulty spin cycle. One ear looked pretty torn up, the source of all the blood.

I peeled back the dog’s lip to check the color of its gums, and it gave a warning growl.

“You’re okay,” I told it, which was a blatant lie, but there was really no way to effectively communicate to an animal that the big scary stranger poking you in the face when you were already hurting wasn’t actually a bad thing.

I had the scars to prove it. “Good girl—or, no. Good boy. You’re a good boy, aren’t you? ”

I had no idea why I chose to meet the guy’s gaze when I said that, but his startled expression and his wider-than-an-owl’s brown eyes told me my timing was shit.

I let the dog’s lip go and slid my hands under his trembling body, feeling my way carefully to his back legs. I pressed my fingers against the femoral artery where his thigh met his groin and counted his pulse.

“His gums are pale and his heart rate is slightly elevated,” I said. “I can’t see any obvious injuries apart from his ear, though. So what I want to do is take a look at that next. Have you got a good hold on him?”

The guy nodded grimly, his face pale.

First order of business was a muzzle. Second was some opioid pain relief mixed with a mild sedative. Then I grabbed the clippers and began to cut away the matted hair on the dog’s ear. Clumps of blood-caked hair fell onto the table as I carefully worked to expose the injury.

“Hold onto him,” I said.

The dog yelped and squirmed, tearing the injury, and fresh blood welled. The dog shook his head, and blood splattered all over me, the table, and the guy.

“Hey,” I said as the dog struggled to free himself from the guy’s grip. “I said hold onto—”

And I looked up just in time to see the guy’s eyes roll back in his head as he slumped silently to the floor in a dead faint.

“Fuck.”

Even the dog stopped to stare.

Great.

Now I had two patients.

I set the dog on the floor while I dealt with the guy.

The dog shook his head again, more blood splattering, and that was just what I needed to deal with on top of being woken up in the middle of the night—wiping down the floor and the walls in addition to the table when all this was done.

But I took a moment to notice that once the dog had Jackson Pollocked the cabinets and actually started to wander around, he was moving okay. Then I turned my attention to the guy.

By the time I knelt down beside him, his eyes were already fluttering open. He made a sound of embarrassed distress and tried to sit up.

“No, stay there for a second,” I said. “You didn’t hit your head, did you?”

His brows tugged together, and he shook his head uncertainly.

He didn’t have any signs of injury.

“Are you okay?” I asked him. “Are you still feeling dizzy? Or do you have any pain?”

He shook his head, and his eyes slipped closed again. His face was pink, so I figured closing his eyes was more due to mortification and trying to escape the moment than actually losing consciousness again.

I reached out and hooked my fingers around a stool and dragged it close. “Put your legs up here, okay? And stay lying down for a bit. Do you have any heart issues? Blood sugar issues? Any medical stuff going on that might have caused this?”

He shook his head again, bringing a hand up to put over his eyes.

“I love a patient who can tell me their medical history,” I said, and his mouth twitched in an almost-smile that seemed like it couldn’t quite battle its way past his embarrassment.

I reached for his other hand to feel the pulse in his wrist. He jerked away when I touched him at first, then relaxed again.

With my other hand, I got my phone out and googled the normal resting pulse rate for humans.

His pulse was fine.

“Okay, I’m gonna finish examining your dog. Just stay lying down for a while and keep your legs up.” I stood up and fetched the dog from under the table where he was sniffing hard at a patch of linoleum that probably held an entire history of interesting smells.

I scooped the dog up and set him back on the table.

He was fine, although his overall condition was rough.

The wound in his ear needed stitching, but I’d wrap his head and monitor him overnight before getting him into surgery tomorrow.

I managed to keep the dog wedged between my elbow and my body while I bandaged him, wishing that I had another set of hands.

I glanced down at the guy a few times as I worked and saw that he’d gotten himself sitting up now, but I didn’t bother asking him to help.

He was sitting on the floor with his knees drawn up by the time I finished bandaging the dog’s head. He had his arms folded on top of his knees and his head resting on them.

“You okay?” I asked him, and he hummed in response. “Okay, I can’t see any other injuries. I’m gonna keep this little guy in overnight and stitch him up in surgery tomorrow. That sound okay to you?”

I got another hum in response.

I took the dog to the back room and put him in one of the cages.

He whined a couple of times, but at least he wasn’t shaking anymore.

He had no other roommates tonight, thankfully.

I took his muzzle off and gave him a pat.

Once I’d gotten him settled with a couple of towels to sleep on and a bowl of water, I detoured to the kitchen and grabbed a soda from the refrigerator.

When I got back to the exam room, the guy hadn’t moved.

“Hey,” I said and crouched down beside him. “You need some sugar?”

He lifted his head, his eyes wide and his face flushed bright pink. He nodded and took the soda. “Thanks.”

The word was so soft I barely heard it over the snap of the can opening.

I stood up again. “Just stay there until you’re ready to get up, okay? I’ll grab an intake form.”

There was a stack behind the desk in the waiting room, but I had a feeling that Uncle Jim kept a few shoved in the drawers in the exam room too, so I turned my back on the guy and started to dig through the nearest drawer. I couldn’t find one.

I’d told Uncle Jim’s vet tech and receptionist, Kayla, that the practice I worked at in Cincinnati did everything electronically, and she’d raised her eyebrows and said, “Your uncle still gives me a physical paycheck that he writes out by hand and then tears out of his checkbook, Dr. Ross. He’s not moving to iPads anytime soon. ”

She was right about that. Uncle Jim liked to do things his way, which meant half the equipment in the place was older than I was. If it hadn’t been for Kayla, I was sure all his records would still be handwritten and stashed in a filing cabinet.

“I’ll just be a second,” I said and headed for the waiting room. I rummaged around behind Kayla’s desk until I found a form and attached it to a clipboard.

And then I heard the familiar rattling click of the old front door as it was pulled shut behind someone.

What the fuck?

With my heart racing and a sinking feeling in my stomach, I hurried back to the exam room and discovered it was empty, except for the can of soda still sitting on the floor.

The guy was gone.