Chapter Two
Penny smelled death before she saw it.
She froze in the doorway, keys still in her hand.
The dogs were silent. Eight kennels, six of them occupied, and not a single bark. Not a whine. Nothing but the hum of the air conditioning unit and her own heartbeat thundering in her ears.
"Hey, babies," she called, her voice coming out thin. "Breakfast time."
Nothing.
Penny forced her feet to move. One step, then another, past the grooming station with its professional clippers and the wall of ribbons from the county fair, past the shelf of shampoos and conditioners she'd organized just yesterday.
The overhead lights buzzed to life as she hit the switch, flooding the room with harsh fluorescence.
That's when she saw Biscuit.
The golden retriever lay in the center aisle, sprawled on the concrete like he'd been dropped there. His leash—the red nylon one Mrs. Patterson had sent with him—was wrapped twice around his throat, pulled so tight it had disappeared into his fur.
Penny's knees hit the floor before she realized she was falling.
"No. No, no, no—"
She crawled toward him, hands shaking, reaching for the soft fur she'd brushed just yesterday afternoon.
Biscuit was a regular. Three years old, sweetest dog she'd ever boarded, the kind who greeted every human like they were his long-lost best friend.
Mrs. Patterson brought him in whenever she traveled to see her grandkids in Kansas City.
He was still warm.
A sound escaped Penny's throat—something between a sob and a scream—and she pressed her hands to his side like she could push the life back into him. But his eyes were open and glassy, tongue lolling, body limp in a way that told her everything she didn't want to know.
She'd been a groomer for six years. She knew dead.
The note sat beside him, a torn piece of paper weighed down with a rock from the landscaping outside. Block letters in black marker, written by someone who wanted to make sure she understood:
NEXT TIME IT'S NOT A DOG.
Penny read it three times. Four. The words didn't change.
Behind her, the other dogs started whimpering.
Low, scared sounds from animals who'd witnessed something terrible and didn't understand why the human wasn't fixing it.
She could hear Mango, the anxious beagle in kennel three, scratching at his gate.
Could hear the new pit bull rescue—a sweet girl named Duchess who'd only been with her two days—panting in the corner of her enclosure.
They needed her. They always needed her.
Penny sat back on her heels, Biscuit's body cooling in front of her, and tried to remember how to breathe.
The phone call to Mrs. Patterson was the worst three minutes of Penny's life.
She made it from the front office, door closed, Biscuit's body covered with a clean towel because she couldn't stand to leave him exposed on the concrete. Her hands shook so badly she had to dial twice.
"Pampered Paws, what a nice surprise!" Mrs. Patterson answered on the second ring, voice warm and grandmotherly. "Is my Biscuit being a good boy?"
Penny opened her mouth. Nothing came out.
"Hello? Penny, dear, are you there?"
"Mrs. Patterson." Her voice cracked. She gripped the edge of the desk until her knuckles went white. "I... I need to tell you something, and I need you to sit down first."
Silence. Then, quieter: "What happened?"
"Biscuit..." Penny squeezed her eyes shut.
Forced the words out. "Biscuit passed away last night.
I am so, so sorry. I found him this morning when I came in.
Someone—" Her voice broke. "Someone hurt him.
I don't know how they got in, I don't know why, but I'm calling the police and I wanted you to hear it from me first—"
Mrs. Patterson was crying before she finished. Great heaving sobs that came through the phone like physical blows, each one landing in Penny's chest and staying there.
"My baby," the woman kept saying. "My sweet baby boy."
Penny stayed on the line for twelve minutes. She apologized seventeen times. She offered to pay for everything—cremation, urn, whatever Mrs. Patterson wanted. She promised answers she didn't have and justice she couldn't guarantee.
When she finally hung up, she walked back into the kennel area, sat down on the floor next to Biscuit's covered body, and let herself fall apart.
The tears came hard and ugly, the kind she hadn't cried since she was nineteen and her mother's boyfriend of the month had pawned her dead grandmother's ring.
She'd learned to smile through chaos before she was old enough to drive.
Learned that falling apart didn't help anyone, that someone had to stay functional when everything went sideways.
But this—
This was her business. Her life. The first stable, beautiful thing she'd ever built from nothing.
And someone had walked in and killed an innocent animal to send her a message.
Penny cried until her chest ached and her eyes felt like sandpaper. Then she wiped her face, stood up, and fed the other dogs because they were still alive and they still needed breakfast.
Her mother's number showed on the screen at 7:35 AM.
Penny almost didn't answer. She was elbow-deep in cleaning kennel four, trying to keep her hands busy so her mind wouldn't replay Biscuit's glassy eyes on an endless loop.
But her mother rarely called this early—Linda Bradshaw wasn't a morning person, never had been—and something cold twisted in Penny's stomach.
She stripped off her cleaning gloves and answered.
"Mom?"
Crying. Immediately, unmistakably, her mother's voice thick with tears. "Penny, baby, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, I didn't know he would—I didn't think—"
The cold thing in Penny's stomach turned to ice.
"Mom." She gripped the phone tighter. "What are you talking about?"
"Duane." Her mother's voice dropped to a whisper, like she was afraid of being overheard. "He told me this morning. About the dog. Baby, I swear I didn't know he was going to do that, I would never—"
"Duane?" The name came out sharp. "Mom, are you telling me your boyfriend killed a dog in my kennel?"
"He said you weren't cooperating. Said you needed to understand he was serious." Her mother was sobbing now, words tumbling over each other. "Baby, please, just do what he wants. He's not—he gets mean when people don't listen, and I can't—I can't make him stop—"
Penny's vision went white at the edges.
She'd met Duane Kirby exactly twice. Once at a barbecue three months ago, where he'd been charming and attentive and kept refilling her mother's wine glass.
Once at Christmas, where he'd watched Penny with sharp eyes and asked too many questions about her business—how many clients, how often kennels got picked up and dropped off, whether she ever had trouble with suspicious characters.
She'd thought he was nosy. Controlling, maybe. Another in her mother's long line of bad decisions wearing a nice smile.
She hadn't thought he was capable of strangling a dog.
"Mom, what does he want?" Penny's voice came out steadier than she felt. Years of practice. Smile through the chaos. "What exactly am I supposed to be cooperating with?"
"He wants to use your kennels. For his business." Linda's voice went quieter still. "Moving things, baby. Pills. He says the traffic at your place is perfect cover, nobody pays attention to kennels getting picked up and dropped off—"
"He wants me to run drugs through my business."
"He says it's just temporary. A few months, and then—"
"Mom." Penny closed her eyes. "You need to leave him. Tonight. Pack a bag and come stay with me."
"I can't."
"You can. You walk out the door and you drive to my house and I will handle the rest—"
"You don't understand." Her mother's voice cracked into something that sounded like terror. "He knows people, Penny. Bad people. If I leave, he'll—" A sharp breath. "He told me what happens to women who walk away from him. In detail. While he was touching my face."
Penny's hand was shaking. Her whole body was shaking.
"Then we call the police—"
"And tell them what? He hasn't hit me. There's no proof of anything, and even if there was, you think cops are going to protect me from his friends?" Linda laughed, a wet and broken sound. "Baby, please. Just do what he asks. A few months. Then he'll move on and everything goes back to normal."
Nothing was ever going to be normal again.
Penny looked at Biscuit's covered body. At the note she'd photographed before the police arrived. At the kennels full of animals who trusted her to keep them safe.
"Mom," she said carefully. "I love you. You know I love you. But I'm not running drugs through the business I built with my own hands. I'm not going to become a criminal because your boyfriend is a monster."
"Penny—"
"Leave him. Please. Come stay with me, we'll figure it out together, but you have to leave."
A long pause. Penny could hear her mother breathing, shaky and wet. Could hear the hope in her own chest—stupid, fragile hope that this would be the moment her mother finally chose something different.
Then: "I can't, baby. I'm sorry. I just... I can't."
The line went dead.
Penny stood in the kennel aisle, phone pressed to her ear, listening to silence. The dogs watched her through their gates—Mango, Duchess, the four others who'd survived the night because someone had decided Biscuit was enough to make the point.
Next time it's not a dog.
She looked at the note again. Read the words until they burned into her brain.
Then she picked up the phone and called her two employees to tell them Pampered Paws was having a family emergency and she needed to close for a few days. She called the remaining dog owners and arranged early pickups with her best professional smile in her voice.
She sat in the empty kennel building with her three rescue dogs pressed against her legs—Waffle, a one-eyed chihuahua mix; Professor, an ancient basset hound; and Ginger, a neurotic border collie who'd been returned to the shelter four times before Penny took her home.
Someone had killed an innocent animal to threaten her.
Her mother was trapped with a man who ran pills and made detailed threats about what happened to women who left him.
And Penny had no idea what to do about any of it.