Hair of the Dog by Gordon Carroll (reading strategies book TXT) 📗

“Of course it is,” said Red… Morgan… Marsh. I saw him making his way back to his plush chair. He sat gracefully and the smile slid back in place. “Still, Mr. Mason, I have to admit that your concerns for her anonymity and safety have touched a chord. And since Jerome Larkin, her abductor, has yet to be arrested or killed, I think it best to keep her rescue out of the public eye. So, I give you my word that until Mr. Larkin has been eliminated as a threat to her, I will make no statement about Keisha. She will be returned to her family without fanfare or fuss. Fair enough?”

Wow, this guy was good. I was beginning to feel like a real jerk for doubting him in the first place. But then it hit me.

“In other words,” I said, “if a dumb flat foot P.I. like me could figure out your game, how hard would it be for the press to see through the do-gooder act, right?”

“I’m beginning to see you as a cynic, Mr. Mason and that is sad indeed. I think we have both said all we have to say, so I will bid you a good night. I saw his finger rise to click me off, but then he hesitated. “Don’t call me again.” And with that he was gone.

I sat the cell on my nightstand and flopped back down, looking at the dark ceiling, thinking I should be happy. Only I didn’t feel happy. I felt dirty.

I closed my eyes. Keisha’s face no longer floated behind my eyes. Only shifting darkness.

And then the gunshot.

Senator Marsh closed his tablet and sat back in the plush seat of the jet. Without looking at Clyde he addressed him.

“You have everything in place?”

“Of course,” said Clyde.

“This can’t come back to us,” said Marsh.

“It won’t.”

“I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” said Marsh.

“Loose ends,” said Clyde.

Marsh nodded.

“Do it,” he said.

Clyde picked up his phone and made the call.

26

Jerome stood straight, feeling the kink low in his back, and stretched his shoulders up and around to try and relieve the tight knot. He took one step… two… and then something shot into and through him sweeping his right leg and spinning him like a child’s top. He fell, his hands catching him just before his chin made contact with the upward pitch of the asphalt. Something flew at him from the side of the road and he dodged to his back, just in time for the animal to fly over him, teeth snapping like a loud clap in the night air.

Jerome fired at it, wild and without aim, the bullet screaming into the dark.

He reached down with one hand and felt warm blood seeping through his pants where the creature had struck him on its first attack.

Jerome’s tactical thinking took over and he knew this to be anything but a wild animal. No, it was the white man’s dog. The same one that had attacked him before. And he knew something else. The dog wanted to kill him. But that was okay. It was as it should be because Jerome wanted to kill him too. And he would.

The dog had only one way of attacking and that was to get in close… to get in close and bite. Jerome could shoot it, either on its way in or after it bit and was holding on. He just had to make sure it didn’t get hold of his gun hand. It would hurt, but pain meant nothing. He just had to subdue this unusual terror he felt of the dog. To hold it back long enough to snug the barrel of the gun into the dog’s belly, or against its head and pull the trigger. It would be over fast and then he could deal with the man. He could find out how to get Clair back.

So instead of standing, he allowed his weight to sag to the street. He groaned low and weak, keeping his right arm protected as best he could by his body.

Jerome waited for the attack.

Max saw the man lying flat, making the sounds of a dying animal close to its end. The smell of blood was rich and fresh and tempting. But his attack, although perfectly aimed and executed, had failed to sever tendons or rip through the artery. There was too much muscle guarding the vital mechanics he had intended to destroy. His second attack had missed completely, the man being faster and stronger than Max had anticipated.

The bullet had come nowhere near Max, but subconsciously he understood, on a primitive level, the deadliness of the weapon. For all their frailty, man was a tricky, dangerous beast. Max wanted nothing more than to rush in and tear out the man’s throat. And since he lay not twenty feet away, hidden by the angle of the road, the dark and the grass, it would be simple. A lesser hunter would have done it and been killed by the man. Max wisely stayed his position, watching, taking in all his senses could capture. The blood flow was far too low to incapacitate such a foe. And although he groaned and weakly flailed about as if nearing unconsciousness, his heartbeat was strong and steady, the smell of fear, with its adrenal release, was absent. The man was trying to draw him in.

Max lay his muzzle on his front paws and waited.

I heard the gunshot and sat up in my bed. The mountains made it hard to tell exactly how far off it was, but it sounded close, maybe a hundred or so yards down the road.

Pilgrim lay sound asleep in his bed by the kitchen, but Max, of course, was gone.

And that scared me.

What had he gotten into?

In a rack, just inside my hall closet, I keep a decked out AR15, with Picatinny Rails (which is a military standard rail interface