and there were no hiding places.
‘Be a lot cheaper if you just let me put the track for these lights on one of those crossbeams, miss. Hanging them up in the peak is going to be a bitch.’
Stupid man. He’d never thought that if you hung the lights below the crossbeams, the space above would be dark, and that someone could hide up there, crouched on a two-by-six, ready to pounce.
She’d been very restrained, and hadn’t told him what an idiot he was; she’d just smiled and asked him very politely to hurry with the garage; she had a lot of other electrical work for him to do before she could move in.
Once the Range Rover was safely in the garage with the door closed behind her, she pushed another button on the visor and turned off the floodlights. There was only one window in the small building – a narrow one by the side door that admitted a slice of the fading light from outside. Other than that, the darkness was almost absolute.
Drawing her weapon before she got out of the car was so much a part of her routine that Grace never thought about it. In the five years she had lived in this house, she had never once stepped out of the garage without the 9mm in her right hand, held close to her side in a rare gesture of consideration for neighbors who might not understand.
She made her way to the side door, looked out the narrow window at the patch of yard between the garage and her house, then pressed six numbers on a keypad next to the door and heard the heavy clunk of a releasing latch. She stepped outside and stopped for a moment, holding her breath, listening, watching, every sense alert for something out of place. She heard the swoosh of a passing car stirring up dry leaves on the street; the bass throb of a sound system somewhere down the block; the muted chitter of sparrows settling for the night. Nothing unusual. Nothing wrong.
Finally satisfied, she pulled the small door closed behind her and heard the soft beep of the alarm system signaling activation. Nineteen quick steps on a strip of concrete that led from the garage to the front door, eyes busy, palm sweating on the textured grip of the 9mm, and then she was there, slipping the red card into the slot, opening the heavy front door, stepping inside and closing it quickly behind her. She released the breath she’d been holding as Charlie came to her on his belly, head down in submission, the stub that remembered a tail trying to sweep the floor.
‘My man.’ She smiled, holstering the gun before she went down on her knees to hug the wire-coated wonder. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
The dog punished her with a spate of furious face-licking, then bounded away down the short central hall back to the kitchen. There were a few seconds of toenails scrabbling for purchase on linoleum, then Charlie returned at a dangerous gallop, leash in his mouth.
‘Sorry, fella. There isn’t enough time.’
Charlie looked at her for a moment, then slowly opened his mouth and let the leash fall to the floor.
‘It’ll be dark soon,’ she explained.
The dog gave her his best crestfallen expression.
Grace sucked in air through her teeth. ‘No walks after dark. We made a deal, remember?’
The scruffy, gnawed-off tail wiggled.
‘Nope. Can’t do it. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’
He never begged. Never whined. Never questioned, because whatever life Charlie had had before her had beaten those things out of him. He simply collapsed on the Oriental runner and put his head on his paws, nose nudging the discarded leash. Grace couldn’t stand it.
‘You are a disgraceful manipulator.’
The stub moved, just a little.
‘We’d have to run all the way down there.’
The dog sat up quickly.
‘And we couldn’t stay long.’
Charlie opened his mouth in a wonderful smile and his tongue fell out.
Grace bent to hook the leash to his heavy collar, feeling the excited quiver beneath her fingers and, stranger still, the seldom-used muscles at the corners of her mouth turning up. ‘We make each other smile, don’t we, boy?’
And what a wondrous thing that was for them both.
They literally ran the short block to the little park, Grace’s duster flapping in time with Charlie’s ears, her boots clicking hard on the concrete sidewalk.
The last feeble light of a cold sun flickered between the closely set houses as they ran, flashing in Grace’s peripheral vision with the distracting jerkiness of an old silent movie.
The neighborhood was quieting with the onset of cold and the dinner hour. Only two cars passed them on the way: a ’93 teal Ford Tempo with a young girl at the wheel, license number 907 Michael-David-Charlie; and a ’99 red Chevy Blazer, two occupants, license number 415 Tango-Foxtrot-Zulu.
They’re just people, Grace told herself. Just normal, average people heading home after a workday, and if they slowed a little when they saw her, if they looked a little too long out their windows, it was only because they weren’t used to seeing someone walk their dog at a dead run.
Still, she watched the cars until their taillights disappeared down the street, and she would hold the plate numbers in her phenomenal memory for days, perhaps longer. She couldn’t help it.
It wasn’t much of a park. A small square of closely cropped grass, a few red oaks with crispy leaves clinging to naked branches, a rusty swing set, a pair of weathered teeter-totters, and a sandbox used more by neighborhood cats than children. Charlie loved it. Grace tolerated it because it was a relatively open space with a clear view in any direction, and because it was almost always deserted.
Off the leash Charlie ran hard for the first tree, lifted his leg and left his mark, then ran for the next. He hit each tree at least twice before trotting back, tongue lolling, to where Grace waited for him by the teeter-totters, her back pressed against the firm trunk of the largest oak, her eyes as busy as the dog’s legs had been.
‘Finished?’ she asked him.
Charlie looked startled by such a ridiculous suggestion and bounded away immediately to begin the tree circuit all over again. His paws shuffling fallen leaves into a new order was the only immediate sound that broke the breathless stillness of dusk in this quiet neighborhood. Life probably existed within the small houses that lined the streets around the park, but you’d never know it from the outside. Yards were empty, windows were closed, the city bears were snug in their dens.
She tensed at the sudden slam of a door a few houses down, relaxed when she saw a definite kid shape run across the street and into the other side of the park. He ducked around a broad tree trunk and disappeared, and Grace imagined a nine- or ten-year-old reprobate coming out to sneak a smoke.
Charlie suspected something more sinister and was at her side in an instant, pressing hard against her legs, his wet nose burying itself in her cold palm. He didn’t like sudden noises or sudden movement, unless he was making them.
‘My hero,’ she whispered down at him, stroking his bony head. ‘Relax. It’s just a kid.’ She started to hook the leash to Charlie’s collar for the run home, but then the door slammed again and her head jerked up to see three more shapes racing across the street after the first. These were bulkier, obviously older kids, and there was something wrong about the way they moved; something stealthy and predatory that made Grace go still and watchful.
‘Goddamn it, you little prick, you’re going to get it this time!’
The enraged shout from across the park sent the poor dog down to his belly, nails furrowing the dirt as he clawed his way between Grace’s legs and the trunk of the oak.
Little bastards, Grace thought, down on her knees instantly, stroking the trembling dog, murmuring reassurance. ‘It’s okay, boy. It’s okay. They’re just kids. Loud kids. But they won’t hurt you. I wouldn’t let them. No one will ever hurt you again. You hear me, Charlie?’
His tongue swiped her cheek in a hot wash that chilled immediately in the cold air, but he still trembled. Grace kept stroking him, fastening the leash by touch as she watched the three older kids cruise the far side of the park. It took them only moments to find the first one and drag him from behind the tree.
‘No-o . . .’
It was a single word of desperation; a kid’s voice carrying an adult fear, cut off by the muffled thud of a fist
