Final Stand

His jeans were unbuttoned and negligently zipped. While he was hardly her first exhibitionist, she was willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. After all, this was the boonies and it was an ungodly hour even for a social call—and he didn’t look like someone who was given to many of those. He could have forgotten to zip up in his haste to get to the door. On the other hand, he hadn’t hurried, and his bloodshot eyes looked too intelligent to make a case for early senility.

When he caught her looking, she expected him to excuse himself and step behind the door, or at least turn away to correct the situation. Instead, he brushed past her.

“While you’re sight-seeing, I’ll find out for myself.”

Thank goodness for the unmistakable scent of scotch. It deep-sixed her self-consciousness and snapped her back into full wariness. Drunks were always a problem, big ones could be dangerous, angry ones could be lethal. The poor pooch, she thought with sympathy. Rescued from one predator only to be placed at the mercy of another.

“Front,” she said at the same moment that he glanced through the passenger window.

Bringing up the rear, she wasn’t surprised that the pup cowered at the sight of him. “Easy does it, sweetie,” she crooned. “Believe it or not, this is the cavalry.”

Stonehenge shot her a sidelong look as he opened the door. “What’s its name?”

“Feel free to pick something. But…I believe it’s a she.”

As he began examining the animal, she found herself hoping he wasn’t one of those incompetents who got into a profession because a parent or spouse had decided it was lucrative. Of course, the thought of his parentage then triggered the wry speculation as to which landmass he’d been excavated from. Moments later she had to acknowledge guilty admiration when she noticed his deft and surprisingly gentle inspection.

“She’s filthy. I can’t believe you put her in your van.”

Charming he wasn’t, however. “Me neither. But considering her condition, I doubted she could handle running tied to the sideview mirror.”

He cast her a brief, but unamused glance. “How old is she?”

“Are we having a hearing problem here or a language one? She ran in front of my car not ten minutes ago on the edge of town.”

“People always say that when they bring in a hurt animal they want to get rid of. Thing is, most don’t have the nerve to try that when it’s in as bad a shape as this one.”

If his intent was to intimidate, the man should have stuck with a stern bedside manner. All he’d succeeded in doing was to push her buttons. “Doctor, one more time…this is not my pet.”

The vet tilted his head toward the wary dog. “And I’m taking her word for it. She keeps looking at you for reassurance as to whether or not she should trust me.”

“Can you blame her?” The blunt response was out before she could edit it, the result of a fatigue brought on by too many hours behind the wheel and stress from too much concern over survival. “What I mean is—”

“Never mind. I’m prone to bluntness myself these days. And you’re right, I do look like hell, and my manners are worse.”

He seemed ready to say something else, but the dog, possibly reacting to a gentling of his gruff tone, edged over onto her back, exposing her belly as she had earlier. Frowning, he took new interest in the creature.

“That’s a nasty gash. Doesn’t quite look like an HBC, though. Hit by car,” he added at her blank look.

“If I hadn’t braked in time, you could have been looking at that, too. Whatever happened, it couldn’t have been long ago, could it?”

“No, my guess is a confrontation with a raccoon, or else she didn’t quite make a clean pass through barbed wire.”

“Can you help her?”

“I’ll need better light to examine her more thoroughly. Come on. You’ll have to help.”

“Excuse me?” She stared in disbelief as he scooped the animal into his arms and started toward the clinic. Help how? Slamming the van door, she called, “Wait. Hey!”

He kept walking.

“What do you mean help?” she demanded at his retreating back.

“Assist.”

“Not me. I’m no nurse.”

“You’ll do for this job.”

“But I have to go.”

“Don’t even think about it.”

To avoid raising her voice any more than necessary, she ran after him. “Look, undoubtedly you’ve put in a long day and would much prefer being in bed right now. So would I for that matter. Which is why I suspect we’re not communicating well. What I don’t think you’re grasping is that I’m not acquainted with, or in any way, shape or form connected to this dog.”

“I heard you the first time.”

“Then you understand that I’m not taking her with me after you treat her?”

“Did you read that sign out front?”

She was sure she had, but her usually reliable memory failed her. At the moment she couldn’t remember if his name was Sawyer, Sanders or…What did the smaller print say under Animal Clinic?

“What’s your point?”

“I don’t run an animal shelter, that’s up at Sonora. I’ll do what I can for her, but after that she’s your responsibility…and so is the bill.”

She couldn’t believe it. She was trying to perform a simple act of goodwill and he was going to stick it to her? No doubt charge overtime rates, too.

“No way!”

“You brought her in, she’s your responsibility. It’s either that or I’ll be forced to put her down straight off. Take your pick.”

As he said that, the dog whimpered and twisted in his arms with increased anxiety, not unlike an infant terrified that it was being abandoned to a stranger. The woman tried not to notice while struggling to figure a way out of her own dilemma.

This was what she deserved for not following training, let alone instincts. Granted, leaving the animal where she’d found it would have bothered her, but there wasn’t a day that went by when she didn’t see worse. It was the price you paid in her line of work. Now all she’d done was shift the pup from one kind of trouble into another. And there was no option of taking her with her; the dog would be miserable even if she hadn’t been in such poor condition, and in just as much jeopardy. Possibly more.

“Doctor, really—”

“The name’s Slaughter, first name Gray. Try to resist any impulses at humor if you don’t mind. I probably heard most of the nicknames before you were out of braces.”

It wasn’t the name that had her lifting her eyebrows. One of the first writers her father had introduced her to when the children’s section at the library had become boring, was surgeon-novelist Frank Slaughter. What startled her was the vet’s obvious misconception about the difference in their ages.

“Dr. Slaughter, I’ve been out of braces longer than you think, and I’m not about to—”

“Can you get the key?”

He’d stopped at the door and half turned toward her. She followed his glance downward, but only briefly.

“Now who’s being the comedian?”

“You interrupt a man when he’s trying to have a quiet drink in the privacy of his bedroom, you get what you get. Come on. This critter might be starving, but she’s still heavier than a feather pillow, and however old you are, I’m too much of a hard case for you to bother trying for a virginal blush.”

She gave him an arctic smile. Her looks had been a problem for her as long as she could remember, and although there was nothing she could do if he wanted to see her as some kind of vamp, he would be wise not to test whether she would defend herself.

About to say as much, to tell him what he could do with his key, she heard sirens. A fire truck, she concluded, with at least one patrol car. No, here came a second one. Damn. Exactly the kind of commotion she didn’t need. That kind of racket in a community this small was going to rouse the whole town.

“You okay?”

Ignoring him, she weighed her options against her predicament. She didn’t want to stay here a minute longer than necessary, but being on the road now could be a bigger mistake. Chances were no one here knew anything about her—yet—and she might slip through, but if asked tomorrow or the next day, how many details would people remember? Their answers could endanger more than her.

Resigned, she muttered, “Which pocket?”

“Right.”

She leaned from the waist, saw the half moon of a key ring and plucked out the small handful of keys. They sounded like wind chimes in the renewed silence—or a fleeting, mocking laugh. “Which is it?”

“The medium-size silver one with the flattened edge.”

Aware of his scrutiny, she unlocked the door and flipped on the switch just inside. The long line of fluorescent lights burned her travel-weary eyes and, blinking, she stepped aside to let him pass. He turned left at the first room, switching on those lights with his elbow, illuminating a fully equipped examination-operating room.

In the merciless brilliance, his five o’clock shadow added to his haggard, neglected appearance, and she wondered exactly how many drinks he’d already consumed. Was he even in any condition to do what had to be done for the dog?

“Come hold her,” the vet directed as he set the wounded animal on the examination table. He must have seen her hesitation for he sighed. “Look, I’ve been out on a call that took the better part of the day and I only got home a half hour before you arrived. I’m beat, ticked over losing an animal and I can’t remember my last meal. So I apologize if I’m short on manners. Try not to take it personally.”

If what he said about his day was true, she owed him an apology in return. But she’d also met enough barflies to know they were perfectly capable of achieving a considerable buzz in less time than that. So she simply nodded and did as he asked, focusing on keeping the dog calm. It didn’t take much. The pup was remarkably docile and gave every indication that regardless of her pain, she felt safer with them than where she’d been.

Gray worked from nose to wound. “Eyes don’t indicate shock,” he noted. “Gums are a decent pink, so there hasn’t been considerable blood loss. Makes sense. The wound isn’t as deep as I first thought. Let me take a blood sample, and if things look okay, we’ll start an IV and get to work.”

He retreated to the sink and began washing up. With each movement the muscles along his back flexed. Although he was no bodybuilder, his waist tapered and his hips were trim. For a guy who acted as if he went through life on cruise control, he sure didn’t give any indication that he was heading for Flab City.

“You’re not from around here,” he said, slipping on gloves.

She put aside her own speculation. “No.” What she wasn’t going to tell him was that she didn’t exactly feel the place she’d come from was “home” either.

“Didn’t think I detected a Texas accent.”

“Which reinforces my claim that this can’t be my dog.” She willed the animal not to start licking her hand as she’d done earlier.

“You’re consistent, I’ll give you that.”

For the next minute or two he worked in silence. He took the blood sample and withdrew to the adjacent room. There she heard a steady series of movements, things being switched on and off and slid around. Finally he returned and she couldn’t help but notice that, while his feet remained bare, he had slipped on a blue lab coat. He had also fastened the jeans.

“So?” she asked.

“She’s surprisingly strong. Probably hasn’t been on her own for over a week or so. No sign of heart-worm. Except for needing a heap of good food, she’s a healthy enough dog. Do we continue?”

The question startled her. “Of course. That’s why I backtracked, why I came to you.”

He turned away and began collecting all kinds of paraphernalia. “Let’s get her on lactated Ringers before we get her cleaned up a bit.”

“Sorry?”

“An IV.” As he moved around the room, he asked, “So what do I call you?”

“Whatever you’d like. I think we can both agree this isn’t going to be a long relationship.”

He grunted, and the sound could have passed as a brief chuckle. “Fine, I’ll entertain myself by guessing until I see your check or credit card.”

“I’ll be paying cash.”

His slight hesitation, a tightening around his mouth, told her that she’d made a mistake. She didn’t yet know how much his fee would be.

“The name’s Ann,” she said, mentally kicking herself.

“As in Ann Doe? No, that would have to be Jane.”

It took an effort not to grit her teeth. “Anna Diaz.”

“Oh, Anna, not Ann.”

“My friends tend to shorten it.”

“Not very good ones. Anna is a beautiful name. Diminish the name, next they’re diminishing the person.”

“Moonlight as a shrink, Doc?”

“Just another student of life. I guessed you were of Spanish or Welsh descent. Your complexion’s too fair for Mexican, lacks the olive tones for Italian. Could be—”

“In a hurry.” She nodded at the dog. “Couldn’t you put her under for whatever it is you’re going to do? I’ll get your money and—”

“You step out of this room and I’ll call the cops.”

Anna stiffened. It wasn’t often that she heard such a threat delivered in a voice so calm and assured. The man knew how to catch a person off guard.

“The cops. Isn’t that a bit drastic?”

“You strike me as too eager to leave, which tells me that either you have no intention of paying me, or else you’re hiding something.”

He couldn’t be more right—and wrong. The urge to laugh, or run, grew. “That’s ridiculous. If I wanted to avoid responsibility or hide anything, I would be thirty miles down the road by now.”

“Then wash up while I put in this IV, and slip on those gloves I set out for you. I’m also going to remove some of these ticks and clean her as much as I can. We don’t need anything crawling inside her while I’m sewing her shut.”

Grateful that at least he showed some concern for the animal, she did as he directed. After soaping her hands, she ran cold water on her wrists to calm down her racing pulse.

“How long is this going to take?” She wrestled with the gloves as she returned to the table. Spotting the jar of blood-swollen insects floating in what she guessed was alcohol, she grimaced.

“Not very, but you can forget about her traveling tonight. We’ll see how she is in the morning.”

Not “we,” she amended silently. By morning, she planned to be hundreds of miles from here. And the first thing she would be doing was looking for a change of vehicles.

Gray closed the lid on the container and deposited it and the tweezers he’d been using in the sink. When he returned he had another injection prepared.

“What’s that?” Anna asked, eyeing the yellowish liquid.

“Sodium Pentothal. Lidocaine would probably do, but she’s been through a lot. Better to go with the general anesthetic.”

Once he appeared satisfied that the drug had taken effect, he went to work. He’d completed several neat sutures before asking, “So what do you do?”

He didn’t look up, and since they had only the examination table between them, Anna was glad. “I’m…between jobs.”

“Good.”

“Why do you say that?”

“This way you won’t have to feel guilty in the morning for being groggy on the job. Healing, whether it’s man or beast, requires time.”

No doubt, but she took from his sudden chattiness that he was softening her up, fishing for more information. She had no intention of taking the bait. She did, however, approve of how he worked, with speed and efficiency.

“Holding up okay?” he asked midway through.

“Well enough.” And for good reason—she was trying not to look. The last time Anna had been in an emergency room, it was to hold the hand of a kid getting her forehead sewn together. Blood had never bothered her before, but, maybe because the patient was a kid, the room had spun like a carousel gone out of control, almost costing her what remained of a six-hour-old lunch. Somehow this poor pooch brought that all back.

“I’m impressed. Would have bet twenty you’d be hanging over the edge of the sink by now.”

As she tried to ignore what her peripheral vision was picking up, she countered, “Does that mean I get a discount?”

“It means I’m grateful that the sight of a half-gutted creature doesn’t make you faint…or worse.”

“Then maybe skipping that grilled chicken salad was my one smart move today.”

The gaze he shot her from under stark eyebrows, though brief, was sweeping and all-encompassing. His eyes, she realized, were neither aquamarine blue nor silver, but the color of the coldest January skies.

“Don’t tell me you diet.” When she failed to respond, he murmured, “Ah, the profundity of the uncommunicative woman. But you’re right, I’ve ventured out of line again.”

He didn’t speak after that, working with such focus Anna almost believed he forgot about her. After knotting the last stitch, he snipped the end, then swabbed the area with what she suspected was another antiseptic. Then he prepared another injection.

“Penicillin,” he explained. “You’ll want to pay special attention to keeping the sutures dry and the area clean. She also needs as quiet an environment as possible. Don’t let her chase any squirrels or rabbits.” He administered the injection. “Otherwise, the stitches can be removed in about a week.”

Anna shook her head, not at all happy with what she was hearing again. “You don’t really expect me to take her in a moving van?”

“Not tonight, no…at least not for a long trip. The motion is liable to upset her stomach more than the wound. How much farther do you have to go?”

She countered with, “What would it cost for you to nurse her back to health and see that she finds a good home?”

He made a face. “Honey, you could tie a hundred-dollar bill to this mutt’s tail and there wouldn’t be any takers.”

Talk about blunt! She took a moment to consider the listless dog and tried to see her from the perspective of a child. “She’d be a cute pet once she was cleaned up.”

“Then you’d better head in a direction where they’ve had rain in the last four months because no one around here has the patience or funds to find out.”

It wasn’t his sarcasm that got to her—she’d heard far worse—but the thought of being responsible for another life right now, even if it was a stray dog that no one else on the planet gave a spit about. “Why did you bother sewing her up then? I thought vets were supposed to help animals.”

“I did,” Gray intoned, pointing toward the door. “Do you know how often people dump their problems on me? Almost every week I find something or other in one of the outside kennels, or litters left by the front door. Occasionally some get out of their boxes and end up on the street. Are you catching my drift? And not just dogs, it’s cats, rabbits—”

“What if I pay for her to be spayed?” she asked, not wanting to hear any more.

“She’s too weak for that. Have your family vet do it in the next month or two.”

“I don’t have a—Why are you being difficult about this?” Anna used her forearm to wipe the moisture from her brow. It wasn’t just her agitated state that was getting to her, the man must shut down the air-conditioning when he locked up every night; it was as hot and steamy as a sauna in here. “I’ve never been on that highway before today, and you said yourself that you didn’t recognize me.”

“I also don’t believe a woman traveling alone at this hour would pull over and pick up a strange dog out of a ravine. Animals don’t like to be touched when they’re hurting, especially not by strangers in the middle of the night.”

“There! Testimony to my personality. If the dog trusts me, why can’t you?”

The look he shot her with those frosty eyes had her closing her own.

“Fine. Whatever. The fact remains that I have to leave, so if you’ll help me get her back in the van, I’ll pay you.”

“And I told you that’s risky.”

“Believe me, that’s the least of my problems.”

He started to reply, but another sound, that of the back door opening, stopped him.

“Slaughter! You in there?”

3

The sharp query yielded a strange reaction in the doctor, an odd stillness and deeper resentment. If that was possible, Anna thought, not exactly happy with the idea of company herself.

“Yeah.” After the curt reply, Gray added to her, “You have a complaint to make? Here’s your chance. That’s your so-called ‘cavalry.’”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Law.”

Before she could recover from that jarring announcement, their visitor appeared in the doorway.

“Well, well.” The man in the summer blues of Bitters’s police department leaned back against the doorjamb, one hand on his hip, the other on the gun strapped to his belt. A slow grin spread across his wide mouth. “What do we have here?”

“Take a wild guess,” Gray replied. “Better yet, tell me what you want since I know better than to think it was concern for my safety that brings you over.”

The sarcasm only made the cop grow more cheerful. He was a ripcord-lean man, surprisingly fair-skinned for someone in this part of the country, yet the muscles on his arms suggested rawhide toughness. Contrasting that were sunny blue eyes as curious and mischievous as a boy’s, framed by hair the color of chili powder and just long enough to curl with its own hint of devilry. He was, she decided, Shakespeare’s Puck grown up. Then his gaze moved over her with the laconic speed of cooled molasses and she knew to abandon the amusing analogies. This man hadn’t been a harmless charmer for decades—maybe not ever.

“Did you happen to hear the sirens earlier?” he asked them.

Gray remained focused on the dog, but allowed, “You know Pike’s not one to be a quiet hero. He sounds those alarms on the truck driving through town after a wash.”

“Well, this was no polishing party. Somebody torched Assembly of Souls Church.”

“Arson…you’re sure?”

“What else would you make of a bonfire built on the front steps? Fortunately, Pike was having a smoke outside the station and spotted the glow. They caught it fairly early on. Only lost the porch. Well, maybe the front wall, too.”

Frowning, Gray carried his instruments to the sterilizing container. “Bitters as the center of hate in Sutton County…that’ll be an interesting sell.”

“Racism is nothing to joke about.”

“What racism? There isn’t one black person in twenty miles, and the Mexicans the mayor and half of your business owners have working in their homes and at their ranches are Catholic. They don’t care about not being welcome at Assembly of Souls. They’re also making more money here in a month than all year at home. Racism…give me a break.”

Instead of answering, Elias switched his gaze back to Anna. “I noticed your Texas plates, but I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

Wishing she could be anywhere but here, Anna was grateful that at least she was wearing surgical gloves and didn’t have to shake hands. “Diaz. Anna Diaz.”

“I’m Frank Elias.”

“Congratulations, Frank,” Gray drawled. “You managed to resist adding your title. He’s the chief,” he explained to her. “Meaning that if there’s any racism to be exercised around here, he claims first rights.”

Elias’s glance was cutting, but he let the dig pass.

Anna remained silent, too, preferring to wait for the point to all of this.

“That your dog?” the lawman finally asked.

She shook her head.

“What did I do, Slaughter, interrupt a hot date? Just when I thought you’d never get back into circulation. But it’s a helluva time to try to impress a lady with your professional skills.”

What on earth was going on? Anna thought, her unease growing.

Gray tossed the bloody bandages into the marked receptacle. “Get to the point, or better yet, get out before I’m tempted to assume you’re here to get something tucked and snipped yourself.”

Sensing that whatever was between them went deeper than a simple misunderstanding, Anna decided she wanted no part of it. “Dr. Slaughter kindly helped out after I happened across this injured dog up the road,” she interjected in the hopes of keeping things from getting uglier.