Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Two spots down from me, a car door opened and Rogue quickly tumbled out, the figure of the man who had found him following after him but unable to keep up as Rogue ran up to me with his tail wagging like he’d won the lottery—like he wasn’t a naughty dog who had somehow gotten out of our apartment and run off, putting himself in danger and causing chaos in his wake.
“Hey, boy,” I breathed, dropping into a crouch as he nearly bowled me over. “You are in so much trouble.”
He responded by licking my chin and trying to climb into my arms.
Relief hit so hard it left me dizzy.
“Thank you,” I said to the man still standing by his own car, simply watching as I straightened and opened my back door so Rogue could load himself inside.
I turned back to the good Samaritan who had taken the time out of his day to reunite Rogue and I.
“Seriously. I don’t even want to think about what could’ve happened if you hadn’t stopped. ”
“It was no trouble,” the man said easily.
The sunlight caught his hair as he stepped closer.
And my stomach dropped.
It was Mason.
The same man I’d shared banter with over coffee just hours earlier. The same man who was friends with both Coal and Lachlan Shepherd.
And now he was standing in a parking lot with my escaped dog.
For a heartbeat, I just stared, completely caught off guard by the coincidence of it all. Because I didn’t believe in coincidences, and this felt far too convenient not to be some kind of set up.
“Well,” he said lightly, one corner of his mouth lifting wryly, “this feels like a strange way to run into each other again.”
My instincts kicked hard, a familiar cold sliding through my veins as I replayed the last several hours in rapid sequence. Rogue had been locked inside my apartment. I was certain of it. I always checked the door twice. Three times, if I was feeling paranoid, and I had been all week.
Which meant either I’d made a mistake—or someone else had. Because the only way Rogue could wind up here was if someone had opened my apartment door, and I was certain it hadn’t been me.
What were the chances that this man who had a direct connection to both Coal and Lachlan Shepherd had now shown up in my life for a third time? Could this all be some kind of elaborate setup? Getting my dog out of the apartment to…I don’t know, trap me somehow?
There was no way to say for sure—but I decided I wasn’t about to let my guard down around him anytime soon.
“For what it’s worth,” Mason said, leaning in with a conspiratorial tone, “that dog you’ve got there—he seems like a very good boy. Don’t give him too hard a time for wandering off.”
“I won’t,” I replied, feeling the increasing rise of anxiety as he attempted to banter with me like he had this morning. Then I turned and got into my car without another word.
As I drove away, I kept my eye on my rearview mirror just in case, but the man did not follow me and I couldn’t for the life of me think of a reason that he might break into my apartment and steal my dog only to turn around and return him to me without any strings attached.
Soon my gaze shifted to the dog in the back seat instead.
“What am I going to do with you?” I asked Rogue as I drove north toward my apartment, wracking my brain for an explanation for how he had gotten out.
I know I closed and locked the front door.
I was so certain that the only alternative explanation was that I’d left the bedroom window open and Rogue had wiggled his way out like the escape artist he was.
But even then, it didn’t explain how the man who I had spoken to just that morning about frequently running into locals had somehow been the one to run into my dog wandering the streets without a care in the world.
Rogue, being a dog of no words and many tail wags, did not answer.
I glanced at him in the rearview mirror again.
He sat squarely in the middle of the back seat, chest puffed out, tongue lolling, looking pleased with himself.
Like this had been an adventure rather than a near heart attack.
I imagined all the places he must have stopped along the way—the smells he’d cataloged, the things he’d deemed worthy of marking.
The cars racing by as he wandered down the road and?—
My thoughts screeched to a halt as I caught the red and blue lights flashing in the apartment parking lot. My whole body went cold.
For a split second I was somewhere else—sitting in the back of a police car parked outside Monica’s house, lights strobing through the windows, cuffs biting into my wrists as blood cooled on my skin.
No.
I couldn’t go back there. I couldn’t let them pin this on me too.
I slowed just enough to take in the scene as I drove down the side road and past the parking lot entrance. Three patrol cars. Officers clustered near my front door, which stood wide open.
The mother I had helped the other day—Angie, stood there, with Eden in her arms. She gestured animatedly as she spoke to one of the officers. She pointed toward my apartment where another officer was leaning into the doorway before turning back to say something to the others.
My chest tightened until it hurt.
I didn’t turn into the lot. I kept driving, forced my hands steady on the wheel as I passed by. My phone was already in my hand by the time I hit the accelerator. I fumbled a little with it, glancing between the road in front of me and the contact in my phone before I managed to dial.
It didn’t even ring. Straight to voicemail.
“Noah,” I said, my voice thin and shaking despite my effort to control it. “Call me back. My cover is blown.”