House of Mercy (38 page)

“I will never leave you or forsake you,” she said to her friend. “I will not leave you to die alone. I will go with you.”

Garner let loose a shriek that sent a spike of nausea into Cat’s belly. She let her tote and purse slide down her arms to rest on the floor. Then she stooped and began to rifle the bags for her supply of death camas.

There was plenty for them both.

Cat locked the doors.

34

B
eth was pacing in front of Garner’s cash register.

“You’re making me nervous,” Trey said.

Beth didn’t feel the least bit apologetic about that.

Trey put aside his computer. “Okay. Sun’s up. Let’s go knock on some doors. Lately Garner’s got himself a girlfriend, Dotti, so I think we should check at her place first.”

“You might have mentioned that last night.”

“Why? He’s not with the Cat doctor, you know that much. And if he’s with Dotti, he’s in good hands. I’m sure that knocking on her door in the middle of the night wouldn’t have created the best first impression for either of you.” Trey reached for the sturdy hiking boots that he’d kicked off at the foot of the sofa before falling asleep the previous night.

The wolf and Herriot continued to sleep next to each other, and Trey’s movements didn’t rouse them.

“I can’t go with you,” Beth said.

“Why not?”

She pointed at the wolf. “He’s not budging, so I shouldn’t either. I’ll have to wait. It’s okay if you don’t get it.”

Trey yanked his shoelaces tight and looked up at Beth while he looped the strings.

“I get it,” he said. “I think. How do you tell the difference between when he wants you to follow him and when he just needs to . . . go outside?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will your friend object if I go to Dotti’s myself ? You’re not the only one who’d like to know where Garner’s gone.”

Mercy woofed like a dreaming dog.

“What does that mean?” Trey asked.

Beth shrugged. “I don’t speak wolf.”

“Is he going to attack me if I walk out the front door? Tie me down with his teeth? Please don’t tell me you don’t know.”

“Why don’t we find out?”

Trey hesitated long enough to make Beth break into an amused grin. Then he turned his back to Mercy and strode to the front door, his stride long and theatrical.

“He’s ignoring you,” Beth said.

“Never let them see you sweat. Works every time.” Trey threw open the door.

He startled a woman on the porch who was rifling through a purse fashioned from a reusable grocery sack. She gasped, and Trey jumped back as if Mercy had magically transported himself outside. Even Beth flinched, and all of them uttered wordless sounds of surprise. Herriot pushed herself up on her front paws for a look at the door.

“Dotti!” Trey said. “Speak of the angels.”

With one hand still moving in the bottom of her bag, Dotti was looking disapprovingly at Beth. If she’d noticed the dogs lying at Beth’s feet, she either hadn’t noticed one of them was wild, or she believed that Beth was the greater violation.

“Young man, what are you doing in Garner’s house with . . . with . . . ?”

“His granddaughter. Dotti, meet Beth.”

Dotti’s stern expression melted into something downright grandmotherly. Her eyes widened, transforming Beth with a blink of an eye from a streetwalker into royalty. Her mouth formed a surprised O before she said, “The old mystery man never told me he had a granddaughter.”

“That’s because he doesn’t know,” Beth said, and Dotti brightened further as she bustled into the house with her hand outstretched in a greeting.

“Well this is fun. I love being the first in on a good secret, don’t you? And who’s this big fellow?” Mercy had finally decided to stretch and stand, and he sniffed at the air coming through the door that Trey continued to hold open. Beth wasn’t sure how to answer. Dotti reached down to run her hand along his spine as he passed her, heading for the door. “Look at that. His paws are as big as my feet. He looks like he’s got a bit of wolf in him.”

“A bit,” Beth murmured. Mercy went out the door and down the porch steps two at a time. Herriot barked once but stayed put. Beth followed Mercy and stepped out onto the splintering wood-plank porch. Here she faced a rising anxiety that they had wasted precious hours in the house simply because none of the doors was open. And this thought branched quickly into a dozen others that all contained essentially the same core idea: this wolf was not at all what Beth had made it out to be. Instead, he was as unintentional as the wind, as powerless as any wild beast who couldn’t open a manmade door.

How had he entered Cat’s apartment, exactly?

In one effortless leap Mercy cleared the fence and began an easy trot down the dirt lane in the direction Beth and he had come the night before. In spite of her conflicting doubts, Beth hurried to catch up. What if, what if ?

“We were hoping Garner might be with you,” she heard Trey say to Dotti.

“I’m sorry to say he’s been so sick that Cat took him in. I’m just here to water the plants, though if I’d known you’d be here I’d have asked you . . .”

Beth broke into a run at
Cat took him in
and was soon out of earshot. If Cat had Garner—where? Of course, Cat must have a clinic for her patients. Instead of exam rooms, an image of a grisly torture chamber came to mind. Where were her offices? Beth pulled up to shout the question at Trey and found herself caught on the hillside between the people she could no longer see and the bounding wolf, who would soon be out of sight if she didn’t keep up.

She stayed on Mercy’s trail. If he didn’t take her to the doctor’s office, she could ask the humans later.

By the light of day, the road seemed much shorter than it had in the dark. They passed another residential cross street, and a building covered in white pressboard siding appeared at the next corner. She could see the paved road just on the other side of it. When she saw that he had led her to the rear entrance of Nova’s and Cat’s apartments, she regretted her decision.

“No, Mercy. Not here. I’ve been here.”

Cat’s small SUV was still in the dirt lot, where she’d parked when they’d brought Nova back the night before. She saw Hastings’ shoe-prints in the dusty earth and wondered if she should follow those.

The wolf sat on his haunches and looked up at the closed door, eyeing the knob he could turn himself if only he had thumbs. Or if he were alone, perhaps.

Garner was ill and with Cat. What had she done to him? How much time did they have? Beth stalked up to Mercy and placed her body between the wolf and the door.

“Please,” she whispered. It was a prayer really, not to the wolf, but to the God of the wolf, the One who understood everything that she couldn’t.

Mercy’s upper lip flickered, and he lowered his head. A low rumble of a growl rose from his throat.

It seemed a near reenactment of her encounter with the slashed pronghorn antelope, which she’d failed to save. This time, though, there was no bush to shelter her from the wolf.

His muzzle snapped out at her, all fluttering gums and bared teeth clacking as they came together inches from her belly one, two, three times. She gasped and twisted away. Her hip hit the doorknob, and she grabbed at it. The wolf’s air biting was followed by a snarl, and the shadow of his form rising on hind legs came over her. One claw hit the wood siding near her head and dug into it. The other came down on the same skin he’d sliced across her neck and shoulder the night he’d knocked her off of Joe—the first night she’d ignored his prompts.

She felt the old injury reopen and pulled away from it, wrenched the doorknob in her sweaty hand, and slipped between the door and the sidelight, then slammed it shut behind her. Through the slender window she saw Mercy drop to the pads of his paws and blink his eyes once, slowly, like a happy dog. He panted gently. Beyond him, Trey descended the hill from Garner’s street, coming at the urgent pace of a man who’d had to spend precious time fabricating reasons why Dotti shouldn’t accompany him.

Beth breathed hard, her lungs loud in the silent hall shared by the bookseller and the doctor and whoever held the first-floor apartments. The scratch at her neck oozed under the collar of her cotton shirt.

Nova would know where Cat’s offices were. Beth turned toward her staircase and caught sight of the door just beyond the foot of Nova’s stairs. It bore a faded handwritten sign that she hadn’t bothered to read before. “Welcome to the Book Nook. Please use the front entrance.”

The meaning of this simple note came to Beth in an instant. The bookseller lived over her shop. Trey wasn’t coming here because he’d followed Beth, but because the doctor also lived over her offices.

Beth spun in the hall and raced to the twin door underneath the twin staircase that mirrored Nova’s. At the top of the stairs, the door to Dr. Ransom’s apartment gaped open. Beneath it, the unmarked door looked like a stone-faced sentry. Beth gripped the knob and shook it.

“Garner!” Her pounding on the door sounded hollow. “Dr. Ransom! Are you in there?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. What she expected to find behind this blockade deserved no courtesy. She kicked at the knob and placed the heel of her boot directly through the light panel of the hollow-core door. But the hole was too small even for Beth’s slender fingers to maneuver, and there was a deadbolt standing in her way.

Trey came in behind her as she continued to kick.

“Locked,” she grunted.

“I’ll check her apartment for a key,” he said, and he leaped up the stairs.

“Or a screwdriver,” she yelled. With a flathead and a hammer they might be able to dismantle the hinges, which opened onto the hall.

Beth kicked until she broke out into a sweat, but she made no headway. It was one thing for no one to open the door and welcome her in. But it was worse that no one inside objected to her forced entry. The silence began to smother her hopes.

After what seemed like hours, Trey appeared at her side with a tiny hammer that had a peen rather than a claw opposite its head. There was nothing to wedge into the hinge pin.

“She didn’t even have a screwdriver?”

“Women’s tool kits just aren’t all that,” he said. “But the front door’s made of glass.”

If Mercy objected to Beth exiting, she’d have to come up with something else. But the wolf that was more than a wolf had already left his post at the door.

She chased Trey around to the front of the building. These riding boots she wore weren’t made for running, and they hit the ground with noise that was all wrong for this quiet town on this sleepy street that wouldn’t awake until the tour busses unloaded their visitors. Back home, the hands would be digging or hammering and the horses would be nickering and the cows would be lowing and the cowboys would be clucking their tongues. Wally the forgetful digger would be humming. Bacon would be frying in the kitchen and Danny would be whooping on the buck barrel, dreaming up the ruckus of the pending stock show. It wasn’t right that all those sounds of life would end if her thundering boots didn’t get her to Garner Remke’s side fast enough.

She skidded on the corner and grabbed a post for balance, which put a splinter in her palm. Trey was already whaling on the door with the little hammer head, which bounced off of it like a rubber ball.

“Why won’t it break?” She pulled the splinter out.

“Storm glass,” Trey said, and he threw his arm again. “Thick stuff. It’ll give eventually.”

Beth looked around for a rock, a chain, a two-by-four, a crowbar. Anything that might have more punch than that excuse for a hammer. Through the glass, Beth saw a waiting room, a reception counter, and beside this, a corridor that led to a set of swinging shutters. There were two doorways off the hall. The one on the right was dark. Light spilled from the other.

On the floor, the spindly legs of a tall man protruded into the hall. His pant legs were hiked up on his calves, and a white sheet draped his form. Red clogs covered his feet. His ankles were twitching.

Beth’s heart jumped.

“Trey—”

“I know.”

The hammer bounced off the glass. It was ridiculous, that glass should be so hard to break.

Beth started pounding on the window and shouting.

“Garner! Can you hear me? Garner, listen! We’re coming! I’m coming. Get up! Can you get up?”

A tiny chip flew out over Trey’s head and landed on the street. He took a step back and caught his breath. Beth flew to the door and started kicking the wood frame around the glass, the same way she’d thrown her weight against the other entrance. But this door was made to open inward, and she felt it rattle with more promise against the latches and locks.

“Garner!” she screamed. “Listen to me!”

She kicked again. Without making her move out of the way, Trey started back in with his hammer.