Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Shout out to Netflix for being the only one that checks on me every few hours.
—Holly’s secret thoughts
HOLLY
“We brought him inside,” the young woman said. “Grandpa doesn’t usually let Fox come inside, but this is a special circumstance.”
I watched “grandpa” as he stood on the front porch, looking like he’d rather have me in his house over his dead body.
I hesitated, but he stepped back and went inside.
The girl’s exuberance had me climbing the steps despite my every instinct telling me to get in the truck and leave.
He didn’t like the dog being inside at all, it seemed, as I walked inside and saw him scowling down at the huge dog that was taking over most of his kitchen.
In fact, he looked ready to crawl right out of his skin the moment I stepped inside. His right hand kept twitching, too, like he was ready to pick me up by the scruff of my neck and toss me bodily outside.
“Uh, can you tell me exactly what happened?” I hesitated as I dropped down to my knees beside the wounded dog.
I didn’t want to put myself in such a vulnerable position, but it wasn’t like I had many choices.
The girl told me everything she knew, then ended with, “I’ll be back tomorrow, Grandpa. I’m sorry I have to run like this. But you know how Mama gets if I’m not home in time to cook lunch for the littles.”
The grandpa said something under his breath and watched her go.
I wanted to scream at her to stay. Every instinct in my body told me that her being gone was a very bad thing.
She didn’t stay.
She left so quickly that it was almost like this was planned. But it was the little look over her shoulder at her grandfather, and then the shallow nod that he gave, that had my stomach seizing.
I heard her car zoom away moments later, leaving me with a wounded dog that looked on the verge of dying and the scowling grandpa who gave me the creeps so bad I wanted to run out of here and never look back.
I focused on the dog, but knew within seconds that this dog wouldn’t be making it.
Honestly, I was surprised that he’d lasted as long as he had.
His wounds were not conducive to life.
After taking one look at the poor dog, I knew that this dog hadn’t been hurt just by being attacked by wolves.
No, the kinds of wounds that this dog was exhibiting was so far beyond just a “one-time thing” that it was comical.
He had scar tissue on top of scar tissue. As I palpated his wounds, I could feel the multitude of them underneath his fur.
“Uh, sir,” I said, feeling my heart start to pound and my mouth go dry. “Are you sure this is the first time he’s been attacked?”
I knew the second that I said it that I should’ve kept my mouth shut.
Maybe if I had, the old man wouldn’t have reacted the way he did.
Maybe if I had, he wouldn’t have bent down, held a gun to my head, and said, “Guess if you can’t save him, I’ll just have to use you as bait instead.”
I felt bile rise in my throat.
“I’m sorry, what?” I feigned ignorance.
He leaned forward, all but standing over me.
“Can you save him?” he asked.
I shook my head no.
Because I wasn’t going to lie. Not when it came to animals.
“Do you know how he was hurt?” he asked, his dead gray gaze penetrating deep into my own.
So, so much evil there.
I couldn’t hide what I knew from him, though.
This dog wasn’t hurt by wolves.
This dog was hurt by the man in front of me dog fighting him.
I blinked furiously, trying to hide that I had that knowledge, but the man only smiled.
That’s when the punch connected with my temple, and the lights went out for me.
I woke up in a cage.
A small one, about three by three.
My knees were tucked up to my torso.
My face throbbed, and when I pulled my face away from my knees, I realized that it wasn’t due only to the awkward position that I’d found myself in.
I slowly sat up and tried to make sense of where I was at.
My gaze caught on the area right outside the cage I was in. Dirt.
Wooden walls that were barely adequate to be called a shelter seeing as I could see straight through in some places.
The tin roof was also pretty sad looking. I could see the sky through several holes.
And the sky above was a swirl of black, making me realize that either I’d been out of it for so long that it was now dark, or the Montana sky was about to bless us with the storm that the weathermen had talked about all week.
Fuck.
Neither one was good.
The distant rumble of thunder had my eyes closing, and I prayed that whatever hell I’d just woken up in was just a dream. Maybe the creativeness of my brain, paired with some of my worst nightmares.
The whimpering of dogs momentarily pulled me out of my morose thoughts, and I squinted through the hole in the nearest plank of the shed I was in and froze.
Dogs.
Everywhere.
All of them in cages.
There were several men standing around with their arms crossed over their chests, staring at two dogs in cages facing each other.
One dog was whimpering, cowering so low that his face was pressed down into the metal bars and dirt. The other dog was growling low in his throat, pressing so hard against the cage that he was making himself bleed.
My stomach soured.
I was going to have to witness an atrocity, and there was nothing that I could do about it.