Three blocks from his building, he caught a glimpse of movement down a narrow side street. Something was down there, just out of reach of the streetlights, watching him in the darkness. He stopped, his muscles tensing automatically as he scanned the cave-like hole created by the century-old brick warehouses on either side.
He was wearing a kilt and hadn’t tucked anything aside from a single credit card into the leather sporran around his waist. And even had he not been, Halloween night wasn’t the best time to investigate darkened alleys. But Mason had high hopes of what lingered in the darkness, just out of eyesight. He strode into the dark toward it, his night vision kicking in as he left the glow of the streetlights.
The moon wasn’t yet out, and the city lights always dimmed the stars. He stopped a hundred feet in, not wanting to scare off the interloper he felt ahead of him in the darkness.
Odds were, it was a homeless person setting up camp for the night. Or tonight, Halloween night, it could also be a couple pranksters having mostly innocent fun.
But it wasn’t. Mason finally spotted the four long, white legs and the white fur under the dog’s chin. The animal was fifty feet away, facing him. The rest of the dog’s body, the parts covered with black fur, was invisible.
Mason sank onto his heels and whistled low and soft. Maybe tonight’s the night.
The dog made a sound that Mason guessed was half yawn, half whine but didn’t move.
“I didn’t bring you anything, boy, but if you’d just let go of that stubborn streak and follow me home, I’d cook you up something great.”
To Mason’s surprise, the dog burst into a trot straight toward him. Mason waited, holding his breath. The animal stopped as abruptly as he started, leaving a mere fifteen feet between them. This close, Mason could make out the white patches just above the dog’s eyes in the thick, black fur of his face, giving him an intelligent, inquisitive look.
“It’s not the safest of nights to be a stray dog in the city anyway,” he added into the silence. “What do you say you hang up your hat and call it a day?”
The dog’s tail, black with a white tip, stuck out behind his body, neither relaxed nor stiff. He gave it a single flick in answer, then turned abruptly and trotted down the alley.
Mason stayed in place, watching the spectacular animal retreat until the last visible patch of white, the tip of his tail, disappeared into the night.
“I get it, John Ronald. I get it. You don’t answer to anyone. But if you ever change your mind, you’re definitely the dog for me.”
Chapter 2
Before mounting her old Schwinn Varsity road bike the following Thursday afternoon, Tess glanced at her watch. She was forty-five minutes behind schedule. She’d been with Kurt and Kelsey at her volunteer job working with the rescued fighting dogs all morning and had lost track of time. The hours she spent at the private estate working with the dynamic group of rehab dogs were often the best hours of Tess’s week.
Since she was also determined to get her healthy-pet consulting business off the ground, she’d made a personal commitment to spend the second half of every day focused on it. And while she wouldn’t trade the forty-five extra minutes she’d spent with the dogs for being on schedule, Tess needed to getting moving.
She had a meeting with the owner of Pouches and Pooches, a popular and expanding local chain of high-end stores that catered to savvy pet owners with upscale pet products, scarves, and purses. Not only had the owner been open to meeting with Tess, when she’d spoken on the phone with him earlier in the week, but he’d also sounded excited about the services she hoped to offer.
A win today would give Tess a much-needed confidence boost in her business model. From sales calls to drop-in visits at dozens of area stores, she’d not yet had the best of receptions. And Tess’s only paying client to date had resulted in a loss.
In hopes of making up for lost time, Tess pedaled hard in between stoplights. One of these days, she needed to force herself to get to the DMV to renew her expired license. She’d not driven since before she left for Europe. Even though biking and taking public transportation were tedious at times, she experienced tiny waves of panic whenever she gave serious consideration to getting behind the wheel of a car. She’d never been in a car accident, and she wasn’t entirely sure why the thought of driving had become intimidating, even if she’d never been crazy about it.
She suspected her hesitation had something to do with not fully getting over her dad forcing her to learn to drive using a stick, coupled with the fact that he’d coaxed her into turning down a busy street at rush hour her second time behind the wheel. She still remembered the angry looks on some of the other drivers’ faces as she stalled out time and again.
Tess’s dad was a good-hearted man but also a very black-and-white one. He was the kind of father who’d scoffed at training wheels and tossed her into the pool before she was a confident swimmer. Maybe this was why Tess had chosen to stay with her grandmother ever since she’d gotten back from Europe a month ago. Tess’s parents had worked so much when she was growing up, her grandparents had all but raised her. Tess’s other siblings, one brother and one sister, were twelve and thirteen years older and had left home when she was little.
Another reason Tess hadn’t moved in with her parents after returning from Europe was that,
