Chapter 7
MASON
“Are you the vet?” the skinny guy asked me. “We’re here to get our dog back.”
Shit.
I didn’t look at Kayla. I absolutely didn’t look down the hallway at Cash.
“The dog?” I asked, even though it was a stupid question.
It wasn’t as though I had an entire stash of them out back.
Just the one who, when I poked him at night to stop him snoring, only snored louder to make a point.
The one Cash was supposed to be finding a home for—a fact we’d both been carefully ignoring.
The one I’d started thinking of as mine.
The guy pulled his phone out of his pocket and squinted at the cracked screen. He scrolled down with a dirty thumb and showed me the practice’s Facebook post. “This is our dog. Name’s Stupid. Some asshole stole him from our place last week.”
“He was brought in as a stray,” I said.
“He ain’t a stray,” Skinny Guy said. “He was stolen. He was chained up good and proper, and someone took his collar off him.”
“Yeah?” I said. This guy was painting a pretty good picture of what had happened to bring the dog to my doorstep, and it all made sense given the state the dog had been in when he arrived. I fought not to let the disgust show on my face. “Chained up, hmm?”
“Yup,” said Skinny Guy, who clearly wasn’t smart enough to read my tone or my expression.
I glanced at Kayla, and from the look on her face she was thinking exactly the same as I was. Over in the corner, Bobby Merritt was watching our exchange curiously. Lucille was eating a pamphlet. And, somewhere in the corridor behind me, I was aware that Cash was listening.
“Judging by his condition when he came in,” I said, “I would have sworn nobody was looking after him. I had to do surgery on his ear.”
Skinny Guy scuffed his feet uncomfortably. “We were gonna bring him if it didn’t get better. But it’s just a dog.”
And there it was. The typical response of every neglectful and abusive asshole I’d ever had the misfortune to meet.
“So can we have him back or not?” his friend asked.
I wanted to tell them that no, they didn’t deserve the dog, but unfortunately I couldn’t make that call.
Being accused of trying to steal someone’s pet was every vet’s nightmare.
I’d had it happen once and it wasn’t an experience I wanted to repeat.
If I wanted to keep the dog from being returned—and meeting these guys had solidified the fact that I really did—I was going to have to be smart about it.
“Sure,” I said and heard Cash’s sharp, horrified intake of breath.
I glanced behind me and saw that he’d crept out into the doorway to reception.
He looked paler than usual, and his eyes were shining with unshed tears.
I turned back to the guys, scratching at my beard.
“Well, he doesn’t have a microchip, so I’m just going to need to see some proof of ownership.
Registration, vaccination certificates, that sort of thing. ”
There weren’t too many things you could bet on in life, but I’d seen enough shitty animal owners to know that these guys wouldn’t have either of those things.
The guys looked appropriately confused, and then the skinny one said, “I got photos of him, probably.” He started to scroll through his phone again.
And the thing with that was that photos could be used to establish ownership, especially as nobody was disputing it. So when the guy finally scrolled back far enough to produce a photograph of the dog, it was clear I didn’t have much of a choice.
Skinny Guy did, though. He just didn’t know it yet.
“Great,” I said with a smile I didn’t feel. I heard movement behind me and glanced around to see Cash hurrying his way down the hallway toward the kennel room. I prayed he wasn’t going to do anything dumb. “Okay, if you’d just like to settle up the bill, I’ll go grab him for you.”
“The what now?” Skinny Guy’s friend asked.
“The bill,” I said. “For the surgery.”
“And the boarding,” Kayla added from the reception desk. “And the shots. We’ll have to give him those before we can release him.”
“Those too,” I said. “What does that come out to, Kayla?”
And maybe these guys weren’t as broke as they looked. People could surprise you like that. But they sure as shit hadn’t given a damn about the dog’s welfare to begin with, and I really hoped that a hefty bill would remind them of that now.
Kayla tapped at her keyboard for a moment, then sucked air between her teeth like a mechanic about to deliver bad news. “Nine hundred and twelve dollars,” she said.
Apparently boarding costs had really gone up in the last five minutes, and Kayla had applied that change retroactively. I nodded gravely, unable to meet her gaze, and said, “So, whenever you’re ready. We take cash and cards.”
“Fucking,” Skinny Guy said, but whether he meant fucking dogs, fucking vets, or fucking anything in between, I had no idea because his brain bluescreened right at that point and he just stared at me.
“That’s a lot,” his friend said.
“Mmm.” I nodded. “Unfortunately there’s nothing I can do about that, so I’m afraid you’ll have to pay it.” I gave it a beat, to let it really sink in, before I said, “If you’re certain it’s your dog, that is.”
They exchanged a glance, and Skinny Guy said, “Can we see it?”
His friend elbowed him hard and whispered something in an urgent tone. Probably something about nine hundred and twelve dollars.
Skinny Guy had a rethink. “Uh, maybe it ain’t Stupid after all. The photo doesn’t really look the same as the one on your Facebook, I guess.”
“You sure about that?” I wasn’t going to give them the chance to change their story later.
Skinny Guy rubbed his forehead and gave his phone screen a cursory glance. “No, it ain’t ours.”
Bobby Merritt unfolded himself from his seat. “Well, hell, that’s a damn shame, boys. I hope you find your dog. Still, Lucille and I have an appointment, and we’d sure appreciate it if you didn’t keep the good doc too much longer. Clayton, how’s your granddaddy? His sciatica still giving him hell?”
Skinny Guy’s friend wrinkled his nose. “Uh, yes, sir.”
“Well, you tell him I said hi,” Bobby said. “And tell him to take some turmeric. You can buy it in capsules, you know? Might be a lot of nonsense, but can’t make it any worse, I reckon.”
Somehow he ushered them both to the door, still talking, and had them through it before either of them could even complain about it.
He closed the door on them and then turned back, eyes narrowed, and said, “What sort of backwoods shit-for-brains asswipe calls their dog something like that? They don’t deserve to own a dog. Lucille, don’t eat that!”
The pamphlet on dog arthritis was a pulpy mess, and Lucille had spat bits of it all over the floor.
“So,” Bobby said, nodding toward the corridor, “I think you’d better get in there and tell Cash the news before he hightails it over the back fence with that dog, don’t you?”
How the hell was such a ludicrous man so perceptive?
He was, and I couldn’t stress this enough, wearing cowboy boots, short shorts with bright blue suspenders, a stars-and-striped-patterned tee that stretched over his biceps and hugged his ample middle, and a battered Stetson.
A man who made the choice to dress like that had no right to be insightful.
I hustled back toward the kennel room anyway, thinking of how the guys had been adamant the dog had been chained up and how I had no reason to doubt them.
They seemed exactly like the kind of people who would keep a dog chained.
And there was a very good chance that Bobby was right and Cash was about to steal the dog for a second time to stop him from going back to that kind of situation.
But when I got to the kennel room, they were both still there. The dog’s cage was open. Cash was sitting on the floor, hunched over, with the squirming dog in his lap. His shoulders were shaking.
“They’re gone,” I blurted.
Cash lifted his tear-stained face, eyes wide, caught between hope and disbelief.
“They’re gone,” I repeated. “I told them how much the bill was, and they decided that he wasn’t theirs after all. He’s not going back to them.”
Cash’s face twisted in confusion. “They didn’t even want to see him?” he whispered.
“Nope.” I sat down on the floor beside him and leaned back against the wall. Stared at the ceiling for a moment. “Want to tell me about it?”
Cash’s breath hitched. He opened his mouth and then closed it again.
I guessed that was a no.
All right then.
“You know, it’s amazing how often people buy cheap collars and they just… fall apart,” I said. “See it all the time. Dog’s lucky you found him wandering after that and rescued him. That’s what happened, right?”
Cash snorted and ducked his head. “Yeah. And you’re not giving him back to them?”
“Not a chance in hell,” I said. “You did good, Cash. Just, if it ever happens again…”
“Don’t do it?” he whispered.
“No, make sure you tell me so we don’t post the picture on Facebook.”
“Okay.” Cash snorted again and then, after a beat, leaned his head on my shoulder. “Thanks.”
I desperately wanted to bring my hand up to touch his face, or his hair—for comfort, for consolation, or just to feel even closer to him—but I didn’t.
I sat there and concentrated on the weight of his head leaning against my shoulder, and the way the warmth seemed to flow into my body from the point we touched.
It felt good.
I could have sat like that for hours, and I wanted to, except I had to see a man about a goose.
Getting bitten by a goose hadn’t been on my bingo card, but given how the day had gone so far, I couldn’t say I was surprised. It still stung like hell, though, and Kayla’s smirk when she saw my injuries didn’t help.
“I’m sorry about that,” Bobby said for the third time as he settled his bill. He had the goose tucked up firmly under his arm, but I stayed behind the counter just in case she decided to try and take another chunk out of me.
“It’s fine,” I said. “My fault for not moving faster.”