Final Stand. Helen Myers R.

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      “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 СКАЧАТЬ