Heat of the Moment (5 page)

“If necessary I expect you to vault through that window.” Owen pointed; Reggie followed the line of his finger. “And kick the ass of whatever is anywhere near her.”

Reggie gave a low
woof.
Owen took that to mean “Happy to.”

Ass kicking was Reggie's specialty. Once, it had been Owen's. He very much feared it might never be again, and he wasn't certain what else he could do.

In the Marines he had excelled.

Running fast? Check.

Hitting hard? Check.

No home, no family, no life? Check and double-check.

He'd been a shoo-in for K-9 Corps. Add to that his love of animals, which he'd had even before he'd met Becca, and he had been accepted into the canine program without a hitch.

There was something about dogs that healed or at least helped. Your mother was a druggie, a nut, often a thief? You were an average student on a good day? No place to go? No future to dream of? A dog didn't care. They didn't even know.

Becca had known, and she hadn't cared either. Owen had loved her so much he couldn't think straight. Luckily her father had loved her enough to think straight for both of them.

What would the man say if he knew Owen was back? Did it matter? He wasn't going to stay.

Owen rubbed his hand over his mouth, which still tingled from hers. Would he be able to look Dale Carstairs in the face any more now than he'd been able to look at him then? Certainly this time he'd only kissed her, then he'd—

Owen stood and paced, ignoring the pain. He was no longer a kid with nothing; he was a man with …

“Not much more.”

He threw a glance toward the ridge. No sign of Becca. He whirled, planning to pace some more, and nearly tripped over Reggie. He'd decided to pace too. Owen gave the dog a pat. “I have you, don't I, buddy?”

Reggie panted and drooled.

However, if Reggie went back to active duty and Owen did not, he wouldn't have the dog either. The idea of turning the animal over to another handler after all they'd been through together made Owen sick.

The more he thought about things, the worse things got, and that was without even considering …

He lifted his gaze to the table full of
ick
. There was something about it from this angle that made him get the lantern and move closer, lifting the light, then setting it on the mantel and stepping back where he'd been.

“Damn,” he muttered, just as Becca pounded down the hall and out the front door.

*   *   *

I wanted to meet Chief Deb in the yard, give her a heads-up before taking her inside, and from the volume of the siren and the peek-a-boo flash of headlights through the trees, she was breaking land speed records to get here.

The click of toenails on wood announced Reggie an instant before he descended the porch steps and stood at my side. He shook like he'd just jumped into a very cold lake, tilted his head, whined a little.

Hate that noise.

A lot of dogs howled along with a siren, protest rather than performance. However, Reggie did nothing but take a seat and stare in the direction of the sound. I suspected the places where he'd sniffed bombs had a lot of sirens blaring.

I rubbed his ears. “Sorry, buddy. It'll stop soon.”

“What did he say?”

Owen leaned against the porch railing. I hadn't heard him come out. Nothing new. For such a big guy, he'd always moved very quietly.

“Dogs can't say anything.” Didn't stop me from hearing them.

At first my parents had thought my recitations of “what the doggy said” adorable. As time went on and those recitations had expanded to include every animal I met, with a bizarre measure of accuracy, they got a little spooked.

As it wouldn't do for the local GP to know their little girl was a fruitcake, they took me to a pediatrician in Minneapolis. The fancy city doctor told them to ignore my stories. Without attention for the behavior the behavior would eventually go away.

It hadn't, but I had stopped sharing. Even at the age of six, no one wants to be weird.

Chief Deb's cruiser shot out of the trees like the DeLorean in
Back to the Future
shot out of … the future. Considering what I'd found here, I couldn't blame Deb's need for speed.

She threw the car into park when it was still moving, the gears grinding so loudly that Reggie growled.

Owen jumped; I thought he might fall off the porch, then he had to steady himself with a hand on the broken railing, which shimmied, and then so did he. Something tickled my brain, and I stared at him so long he noticed.

Instead of making a sarcastic comment, or even sticking out his tongue like he would have when we were kids, he glanced away, and that just made the tickle tickle even more.

Chief Deb vaulted from the car, nearly catching her hip as she slammed the door. “Where are they?”

Reggie scrambled in front of her. The
back off
in his head came out of his mouth as
grrr.

Deb frowned at the dog as if she hadn't noticed him until that moment. Though he wasn't that large a dog, Reggie was still kind of hard to miss.

She tried to move around him; he sidestepped; another warning rumbled free. Deb's eyes narrowed. “Am I gonna have to shoot you?”

His lip lifted, and the rumble became a snarl.

“Becca, call off your dog.”

I'd always picked up strays. Folks didn't know from one day to the next how many animals and of what variety might belong to me—until I managed to foist them off on someone else. Right now, though, I didn't have any. I was sure it wouldn't last.

I pointed at Owen. Deb's eyes widened. She hadn't noticed him either. In her defense, he was hovering at the edge of the porch, just out of the moonlight's reach, and she'd no doubt been distracted by the oddest case to land in Three Harbors since the glacier came through.

“Owen?” She looked him up and down.

He
was
a whole lot bigger. It was no wonder I hadn't recognized him earlier when he'd been fooling around in the dark with a shovel.

“What are you doing here?” Deb continued.

“My house.”

“And the dead animals?”

He leaned against the wall, crossed his arms, and his biceps expanded more. I thought Deb was going to drool.

“Not mine.”

Deb stared for so long, I finally poked her in the back. She jumped. The movement made Reggie growl again. “Get him outta my way.”

“Reggie,
hier
.”

After another glance at the chief, the dog took the steps with a hitch in his stride I hadn't noticed before and didn't much like.

“Is he named after Reggie White?” Deb's voice lifted on the sainted name.

Like every other person in town, she counted the days between Sundays. I wouldn't be surprised if she wore a green and gold T-shirt under her uniform. She wouldn't be the only one. In Wisconsin, especially in small towns like these, the Packers were more of a religion than a football team.

“I didn't name him,” Owen said. “But he does have a helluva pass rush.”

Reggie snorted. Had he understood that? Doubtful. Though most dogs knew a lot more words than anyone gave them credit for,
pass rush
probably weren't two of them.

“Shall we?” The chief indicated the house.

I wanted to ask about Reggie's limp, but Owen waved us on. “You two go ahead. I'll make sure he stays here.”

I thought Reggie would stay anywhere Owen put him for as long as he put him there, but I didn't comment. As Deb was shifting back and forth so fast she was either beyond impatient or really needed the bathroom, I made a mental note to discuss the dog's health, or lack of it, later.

I did wonder for an instant why Owen didn't want to join us. Perhaps he'd been in too many caves to stomach being inside anywhere for very long. Or maybe the smell of death didn't agree with him. Did it agree with anyone?

Chief Deb gagged as soon as she went in. Considering most of the windows in the place were broken, you'd think the smoky-meat smell would be gone. You'd be wrong.

Deb paused in the entryway of the living room. “You didn't tell me about that.”

“I said I'd found the animals.” I'd been hovering in the hall, not wild about going back in there either. Now I joined her, and I saw what she meant.

The lantern, which had previously resided just inside the room and thrown a muted glow over the table—the less light on
that
the better—now sat on the mantel, perfectly illuminating a five-pointed star etched on the wall.

*   *   *

Owen waited until the two women disappeared into the living room. Their attention captured there, he ordered Reggie to stay with the German command,
“Bly'b,”
then followed.

He reached the others just as Deb whirled. “Owen!”

If she'd been a normal-sized woman, she'd have yelled right in his face. Instead she yelled right in his solar plexus. He didn't step back, but she did, emitting a little “Eep!” before she shoved him.

“Don't do that!”

“You screamed. It's not my fault I was already here.”

Deb pointed to the chalk outline of a star on the wall above the table. “Is that yours?”

The place might not be an interior decorator's wet dream, but it also hadn't been like this when he left. “No.”

“Where'd it come from?”

“No idea. I didn't draw it.”

“Did your mother?”

“What? No. Why?”

“This
is
the witch's house.”

He contemplated the drawing. It did appear kind of witchy.

“My mother isn't actually a witch.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

Reggie barked once from outside. Owen must have said that too loud and too angrily. Big shock.

“Becca?” Chief Deb asked.

“His mother isn't a witch,” she agreed. “And this…”—she waved her hand at the graffiti and the table—“is all new. Wasn't here the last time I was.”

The annoyance that had already sparked over Deb's words, flared at her needing someone else's confirmation of his own.

“Could your mom's friends have come here?” Deb continued. “What are they called? A coven?”

“She didn't have friends.” She'd had dealers. And if it weren't for that damn star on the wall, the dead animals on the table, and the lack of a meth lab in the kitchen he would have figured those dealers had gone
Breaking Bad
on the place. It made more sense than a coven.

“She isn't a witch,” he repeated. Did the woman listen?

“Maybe a coven met here because they knew the place was abandoned.”

“It wasn't abandoned.”

Sure, he should have come back before now, but—

His gaze went to Becca, who continued to study the table, probably because she didn't want to look at him. And that meant she
really
didn't want to look at him because who would choose to look at that?

“Couldn't tell it by the appearance of the place,” Chief Deb muttered.

“And whose fault is that?” he snapped. “If the Carstairs' farm was left empty you can bet someone from your office would have driven by often enough.”

“The Carstairs' farm would never be left empty.” Deb's voice was so reasonable, and her words so true, Owen was at first furious, and then so empty he felt drained.

He'd been foolish to think the house would be in decent shape, that he could come here and, with a few minor tweaks, have the place ready to sell in a few weeks. But he'd been foolish about a lot of things.

Believing his mother would get better. That his life was finally on track. That he'd ever get over Becca Carstairs.

“I need to call Otto,” Deb said.

Otto Dubberpuhl, the GP in Three Harbors, was the only doctor they had and had been for as long as Owen could recall. Owen had figured the guy would be in his grave by now. Doctor D had been old when they were kids, or maybe he'd just seemed so. Back then, forty was old, so Doctor D might be all of fifty now, but Owen doubted it.

Because the town was so small, Doctor D performed any autopsies. But those consisted of an explanation for a thirty-five-year-old farmer dying on his tractor and the occasional crib death. Once in a while, a domestic disaster. Still, Owen doubted he was the one to call for this.

“Maybe you should find someone with more experience in…” Owen waved at the mess. He wasn't sure what to call that.

“Doctor D took a course on forensics,” Deb protested.

“I think it was called ‘Accurately Portraying Forensic Science in Your Novel,'” Becca said.

Owen took a deep breath in an attempt not to laugh, choke, or cough. As the air was still heavy with the scent of
ick,
the gulp took care of any urge to laugh, though the choking and the coughing were touch and go for a while.

“This isn't a murder,” Owen pointed out.

Becca cast him a disgusted glance. “Is too.”

“Would forensic techniques work in a case involving animals?”

“Probably not,” Becca said. “But there was a class in veterinary forensics in college.”

“Great!” Deb bounced on her toes as if she might actually start to cheer like the good old days. G-R-E-A-T! GRRREAT! “Go nuts, Becca.”

“I didn't say I took it.”

“You didn't?” Deb's face became crestfallen.

Becca shook her head so hard her hair flew around her like a fiery dervish. “Too ghoulish for me.”

“Ghoulish?” the chief repeated. “I love all that CSI stuff.”

“CSI on people is one thing, animals another.”

She had a point. How many books, movies, and television shows portrayed the graphic deaths of animals? Few to none. While a lot of people seemed to be overly okay with human mutilation, torture, and bloody death, they were equally squeamish about the same in regard to animals.