Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
Boyardeez titties sweaty.
—Holly to Nettie
HOLLY
There were so many dogs in the building that one would think that it would be loud.
It wasn’t loud, though.
And this was only a third of the dogs that had been at the dog fight.
The other two-thirds had been split between two other clinics.
We’d split up the critical, and now it was five o’clock in the morning and we hadn’t stopped to rest once.
“He’s aggressive,” I said softly.
Maybe too aggressive.
“This makes my blood boil,” Nettie growled.
“If I could light every one of those motherfuckers on fire that had been there last night, I would happily do it. I’d enjoy watching them scream,” I hissed.
Boone didn’t agree, but we all knew that he was just as angry as the rest of us.
“Charlene,” Boone said softly. “Cover his cage up with a blanket. He looks mostly stable from what I can tell. Maybe if we give him some time to calm down…”
Charlene went toward the cage with a blanket and the dog instantly calmed.
“Oh,” Charlene said in surprise.
“Oh’s right,” Boone hummed. “Let me step out. See how he acts when I’m gone.”
Boone stepped out to the hallway, out of sight but not gone completely, and almost all of the dogs in the room calmed.
“Whoa,” I said. “It’s men.”
“Men suck!” Nettie called out.
“That’s not what you were saying last night,” Boone called out.
The dog started to growl again upon hearing his voice.
“Charlene,” I said. “Can you reach him enough from where he’s pressed against the cage right there to inject him with some meds? If we can get him calmed down, we can check him out.”
“I can take him…” I trailed off when Boone shook his head.
“We don’t know how aggressive he is, Holly.
He seems okay with you and the rest of the women.
But what if you wake up in the middle of the night and he’s attacking you?
You’d have no way to defend yourself, and you live all alone.
Until we know his temperament, we’re going to have to play this safe. ”
“There are too many men here to try anything out,” I pointed out. “We need another shelter for them where there are only women.”
“I think I might be able to help with that,” Denver drawled.
We both looked toward the entrance of the emergency bay and saw Denver standing there with his arms crossed over his chest staring at the crowd in front of him.
“How?” Boone asked.
“Place next door is for sale,” he answered.
“It was a daycare. Rooms are also all concrete floors and have drains in them because it was a rent-a-kitchen type thing long before it was a daycare. Plus, you and Ma were talking about starting a non-profit shelter already. We could turn it around pretty quick if we had Koen’s help. ”
“Koen’s busy as fuck,” Boone pointed out. “He hasn’t even done your apartment shower yet.”
“Koen’ll become unbusy for this. His clients will understand.”
When he put it like that, it made sense.
The entire community would rally around these dogs.
A sudden knocking at the door had us all turning to the glass at the front entrance.
A frantic-looking woman was there, tears streaming down her face.
She looked familiar somehow, but I couldn’t figure out why.
Then it hit me. “Hey, that’s the nurse, right? She just moved here.”
“Yeah.” Boone went to the door and opened it, allowing her to all but fall inside.
“Oh, my god. I heard that he might be here. I need to find out,” the woman blurted.
“We have a lot of dogs here, ma’am. Who are you…”
“He’s a Malinois/Shepherd mix,” she whispered. “His name is Neo. He has a black face and tan body. He has a microchip.”
Boone grimaced because the description fit the one dog that none of us had been able to get near. Every time we did, he fought the cage so damn hard that he was hurting himself.
We hadn’t been able to get him out of the cage he’d been placed in yet because he was so aggressive.
At the taut silence, the woman glanced around. “Have you seen him?”
“Ma’am,” Boone started, but Denver, bless his sweet little heart, said, “This one fits.”
The woman gasped and went running.
She let out a guttural cry and fell down to the cage in front of the dog.
Boone caught her just in time before she pressed her hands to the cage.
He attacked the moment she was close.
The little nip the dog was able to get caused the woman to cry out, but it was like a switch was flipped with the dog.
The moment he smelled the blood, he froze.
“Oh,” I breathed.
“Shit, are you okay?” Denver asked, reaching down for her hand.
The woman only bawled harder.
The dog, however, mellowed out even more.
Then started to whimper.
He suddenly pressed closer to the cage door so that his entire body was smushed against it, trying to get closer to the woman.
“Oh, Neo,” the woman cried.
“Ma’am,” Denver started, but the woman looked up at him with teary eyes. “I’m Sage.”
Sage.
“Sage,” Denver started. “Come away from the cage so we can get that finger looked at.”
“No,” she disagreed almost immediately. “I’m not leaving this spot.”
Denver sighed.
“I have a camper,” she said softly. “The door didn’t close all the way, I guess.
Or whoever stole him broke in. I don’t know.
I got home from a shift, and he was gone.
Like, gone, nowhere to be found gone. I searched everywhere.
And here’s the thing. Neo is damn smart.
If he’d gotten out, he’d have come to find me.
He’s done it before. My boyfriend, when he bought him for me, taught him to track.
He can find drugs. He can find people. He can find a treed squirrel.
He can find literally anything if he wants to. ”
“He was taken,” she mumbled. “He’s been missing for eighteen days.”
My heart broke for her.
“I knew someone stole him,” she whispered. “I just hoped that he was in a loving home where someone was taking care of him.”
She pressed her hand up to the cage again, and all of us flinched.
The dog did nothing but press harder against the cage and whine louder.
“Let him out,” she begged.
“No,” Denver and Boone said at the same time. “He’s aggressive, ma’am. And until we can figure out that he won’t attack you, that’s not going to happen.”
“It’s my dog.”
“It’s also my liability,” Boone countered. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. Professional opinion.”
I hated to side with a man, but…
“I agree,” I said softly. “Until we can for sure know that he won’t attack, and not just you, we can’t let him out without having him secured.”
She said something under her breath about kidnapping and ‘we’ll see.’
After a couple of awkward minutes trying to decide what it was that we were going to do, we decided to go back to the dog we were able to inject with some calming meds earlier.
Charlene and I cried as we checked the dog’s wounds over.
Boone and Denver talked quietly in the corner while watching Sage all but press herself against the kennel and talk quietly to the pup.
“I hate people,” Charlene said as she slowly wiped at the dog’s matted fur. “Especially ones that mistreat animals.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Fifteen minutes later, the dog was cleaned up, his wounds—which weren’t as bad as we thought—were cleaned and he was back in his kennel.
Charlene cleaned up while I went to the corner to see what the two men were discussing.
Young was feeding all the dogs and making sure they had water when I passed, and he gave me a sad smile.
When I got to the men, it was to find them in a deep discussion.
“That’s Gentry’s woman,” Denver said quietly.
I whipped my head around. “What? She said she was single.”
At least, that was what I thought I overheard when Young and her were talking as he got close to her.
There was more silence as Boone and I stood in the dark room. A thickly charged silence that had me insanely curious, because there was something these men weren’t telling me.
Something that I wasn’t privy to know yet.
When the silence went on a little bit too long, I said, “You don’t have to tell me anything. I can leave…”
“No, it’s okay.” Denver sighed. “We’ll change the subject. I just need to call Gentry really quick. I’ll be right back.”
He left, leaving me alone with Boone.
“That was awkward,” I admitted once he was far enough away.
Boone’s lips twitched. “When you’re his, and he trusts you implicitly, you’ll know. Until then, you’re a liability.”
“What do you mean, when I’m his?” I asked, feeling a strange sort of flutter in my stomach take root.
“You’ll know what I’m talking about soon,” he said. “I’ll be right back. I’m going to go talk to her.”
Boone left, dropping silently down onto the ground beside the now lazing dog.
The medicine had done wonders.
I moved into the room, cleaning up after ourselves while I listened to Boone talk to Sage.
“What’s the next step?” she asked.
“Sedating him enough that he doesn’t want to kill us when we open that cage,” he stated. “He’s our last patient of the night. But he looks pretty good, considering.”
“I’ve been checking him out, too. He looks like he’s perfectly fine,” she admitted. “But just because I don’t see anything doesn’t mean that it’s not still there.”
The front door opened again, and heavy footsteps entered the room.
Sheriff Black and Deputy Gentry.
I looked over to Sage to see her completely ignoring Gentry.
Her gaze stayed on the dog, but there was a charge to the room that had me squirming in place.
Denver came up beside me, and I whispered, “What the hell is going on?”
“A mess,” he muttered. “One that’s going to explode.”
Black joined us while Gentry walked toward the woman on the ground.
The rest of the room all but cleared out when Gentry said, “Sage…”
“Don’t talk to me,” Sage hissed.
We left the room, all of us.
Charlene and Young headed to the break room with wide eyes.
Black, Denver, Boone, and I went to the waiting room and took a seat.
“Got anything good yet?” Denver asked.
“Other than the kidnapping and battery against this one.” He jerked his head toward me. “I still need your statement, by the way.”
I nodded. “Now?”
He shrugged and pulled out a notebook. “As good as any.”
I gave him everything, starting with the moment I got the call, and ending with when they’d all arrived.
“The woman,” he said. “Did you get her name?”
“No,” I admitted. “She’s apparently his granddaughter. Has a mom with a bunch of kids that she’s expected to take care of.” I paused. “But I swear, when she left, she gave me this look like she knew that I was in danger. That this would happen.”
Black took more notes.
Denver wrapped his arm around me and pulled me against his solid chest.
I would not admit how great it felt to be in his arms.
But my eyes drooped as exhaustion started to worm its way through me.
My eyelids grew heavy, and before I knew it, I was asleep.