Must Love Hellhounds

Home. She glanced over at him, and he wondered if she saw his face. If she knew what she was looking at when she did.

“But now,” she continued, “I feel I’ve done what I could for him. And the rest isn’t my choice, or my responsibility.”

Geoff didn’t point out that it never had been. Saying it wouldn’t mean she hadn’t felt it hanging over her head.

“Anyway.” She took another of those long breaths, but this was deep, steady. “I don’t feel so tired now. Thank you.”

Surprise shot through him again. “What for?”

“For caring.” She searched his features, and this time he was certain she saw. “Don’t get careless, though. Or do anything stupid. And I won’t, either.”

She was in an emotionally weak moment. It was probably unfair to press her now. “After we retrieve Katherine, I want a week with you. Or two. Time set aside every evening. Even if we’ll do nothing more than sit in your garden.”

“I killed all of my flowers trying to discover if I had a green thumb.”

“I’ll not look at them if you don’t.”

The mirror caught the corner of her smile. “All right.”

He should have asked for a month. Geoff pushed ahead, found a driver, went farther-slipping into more than thirty people before the world exploded around him in sharp, brilliant detail. Each flap of a bumblebee’s iridescent wings as it flew past Sir Pup. Minute particles swirling from mufflers, the pits in the pavement rushing beneath his feet.

His head began to throb, but he didn’t want to lose the connection. Narrowing his own focus on the Land Rover helped.

“I have him,” he told Maggie, and that was all that was said between them until, ten minutes later, Sir Pup began to slow.

“James is turning right. It looks to be a shared drive, marked with a stack of yellow stone blocks. I-” He clutched his head, fighting nausea as everything blurred.

A house rushed by, a second. Then a glimpse of the boathouse Katherine had seen from her window before Sir Pup was standing, peering through green-leafed shrubbery at the driveway.

Low, Geoff thought. Lying or crouching.

“I believe…” He swallowed hard. “I believe he looked over the layout of the area. There are three houses, but they are a good distance apart and separated by trees and plantings of some sort.” His thumb was no greener than Maggie’s. “The driveway is lined with the same. He’s waiting there now, on a bend. He’s past the lanes for the other two houses.”

“We’ll be at the turnoff in about a minute.”

Geoff nodded. Good timing. “And there’s James,” he told her.

The vehicle moved along the driveway at a good clip. Sir Pup seemed to rise from the ground-then darted forward.

Tendrils of smoke rose from the tires as they skidded over the pavement. Geoff didn’t hear the crunch of the metal hitting flesh, but he saw the bumper dent from the impact, the drops of blood that splattered the black paint.

The world spun once, twice. Sir Pup rolled to a stop twelve feet from the vehicle, his unfocused gaze directed under the Land Rover.

Playing dead, Geoff thought.

His own body had clenched, he realized, as if braced for impact. He drew in a deep breath, then another. “Does he heal quickly?”

“Sir Pup?” Her voice had a sharp edge. “Why?”

“He jumped in front of the SUV.”

“Oh.” Her short laugh was high, relieved. “Yes.”

James’s booted feet appeared beside the Land Rover and jogged over to Sir Pup. The hellhound lay still until James knelt beside him.

To Geoff, it only appeared as if Sir Pup batted James with a forepaw. Then Geoff lost sight of him until the hellhound rose to his feet and looked over at the Land Rover. The windshield had shattered. James slid down the hood and crumpled to a heap on the driveway.

Geoff’s heart pounded and echoed in the suddenly hollow space between his ears. “And you say that while my uncle sleeps you’re alone with that dog?”

“I’ve never said that. Is James still alive?”

Sir Pup was sniffing at the man’s legs, his arms. At James’s throat, his pulse beat faintly beneath his skin.

“Yes,” Geoff said, then slipped back into Maggie’s eyes when she next spoke.

“There they are.”

Maggie rolled James over and stripped him of his weapons. Nylon cable-tie handcuffs bound his wrists behind his back, his legs at the ankles. With Geoff’s help, she loaded him into the back of the Land Rover.

She pulled off her jacket and tossed it on the front seat. “Can you shoot a gun?” When Geoff’s brows lifted, she said, “If the demon looks at you, you’ll be able to aim and shoot him. The bullets won’t kill him, but they’ll hurt him a little.”

And with luck, provide enough distraction that Sir Pup would be able to do his thing.

At Geoff’s nod, she fitted him with a 9-mm from Sir Pup’s hammerspace and screwed on a sound suppressor. Sleek and effective.

“We’ll drive up in the Land Rover,” she told him. “Sir Pup-you go on around.”