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  “Honey, where are you?” I yelled again, flipping on the lights here, too. I was gratified to hear more woofing from the end of the storeroom farthest from the stairway. “Keep talking,” I shouted. She did.

  There she was, at last, way down at the end of the room. But how had she gotten trapped there, among piles of various sizes of dog and cat food bags? It almost looked as if someone had built her a prison cell. The stacks behind her were as tall as me. Those nearer the aisle, although piled lower, were unscalable by a dog her size.

  “There you are, sweetheart,” I crooned, moving some of the bags away from the front.

  Only then did I notice the leash attached to her collar. The tether disappeared into the food stack against the wall.

  My concern began shifting to ire. Someone had brought her here, trapped her. Maybe endangered her life, if all those bags became unsteady as she pulled on the leash.

  I finally got a row of bags in front out of the way and was about to unhook the leash from her collar. She started to yank her way toward me, though. “Sit!” I commanded, unsure whether she knew even rudimentary commands. Even if she did, she was too excited.

  As she pulled toward me even more, I heard the rustling above me—just as the pile of food toward the back began falling. Followed by another. An avalanche.

  Only then did I notice that one of the largest bags from downstairs was right on top—and it catapulted downward, toward my head.

  That’s when I saw the knife.

  Chapter 19

  Honey leaped at me from the other direction, all excited, as if she thought we were playing a game of doggy tag. I tried to block her with my body. Getting buried by large packages of dry dog food—what were the big ones doing on top of that unstable pile?—would probably hurt like hell as they fell on me, but they could kill her. Not to mention if that damned knife plunged into her. Sticking out ominously, the knife was one of the largest we had. It appeared to be attached to one of the bags in a way that would hurtle it, treacherous point first, toward whoever was in the bag’s path as gravity and momentum catapulted it downward.

  I grabbed Honey and attempted to run, but I tripped on some of the bags that circled us on the floor. I sprawled out, careful to release Honey so I wouldn’t squash her.

  The graceful maneuver didn’t get me out of the knife’s path. As the bag of food whomped me, I felt the blade slice my calf, through my pants, as easily as if I was a cake and this was someone’s birthday.

  “Ow!” I screamed.

  “Ms. Vancouver, where are you?” yelled a voice from downstairs, startling me even more. I bit back further noise, inhaling my pain. Was it someone from EverySecurity, checking in since I’d called? Or was whoever did this still here, ready to finish what he’d started?

  I lay still, my leg shrieking and my mind reeling. How could I protect myself and Honey?

  Honey? Now where was she? I’d released her as I’d fallen, and now I didn’t see her.

  I didn’t dare call her and give my location away until I knew who the person downstairs was. But the person who’d done this obviously didn’t care about hurting a dog. Maybe that was even a major part of his plan—kill a dog and a human, and enjoy every moment of doing both.

  I heard barking from the opposite end of the warehouse—still upstairs, I thought. Which meant Honey was still alive.

  It also meant the excited little pup was divulging to the intruder where we both were.

  I was in no position to sneak toward her and muzzle her. I was in no position to do much of anything . . . except maneuver my aching body in a circle, trying hard not to move my leg too much. Trying even harder to ignore the small, but growing, puddle of blood that looked so much like an expanding red ameba from a horror movie, ready to morph into something even more dangerous.

  I heard footsteps growing closer. My back was now aimed in that direction, and I curled up even tighter, trying to protect myself.

  “Ms. Vancouver, are you all right?” demanded an unfamiliar voice.

  I lunged to my feet, ignoring the pain . . . and holding the knife that had sliced me as my own weapon of self-defense. I’d fortunately been able to wrest it from the food bag.

  Fortunately, despite my haziness and fear, I only wielded the thing as a means of protection without having to use it.

  The person who stood there was Ed Bransom, the guy from EverySecurity company.

  Sure, he could have been the fiend who’d done all this. The security force had better access to HotRescues than anyone else but my staff and me. But I didn’t think so.

  In case I was wrong, I kept the knife aimed at him until I heard a lot of noise from downstairs. “Up here!” I shouted, and it was only another minute before some other guys in security uniforms appeared.

  And Matt.

  “Are you all right, Lauren?” he demanded. One of the security men had him by the arm, but he wrested it free.

  “I will be.” I turned and placed the knife on a remaining stack of dog food bags. “I wish I hadn’t had to touch this, though. It might have been a helpful way of determining who set this up, although I’d be surprised if he left fingerprints on it. That would violate TV Cop Show 101.”

  “You’re bleeding,” Matt said unnecessarily, but he was looking at my stabbed leg.

  So was I. “No kidding.” Leaning down, I unpeeled the dissected fabric from my skin. Bright red wasn’t my favorite color, and I scowled at its abundance right around the wound. Fortunately, the cut didn’t look very long or deep. I’d live. I turned back to Matt. “What are you doing here?”

  “Exactly what we asked,” said the security guy who’d previously had Matt’s arm. His nametag said he was Clifton.

  “I got a call.” Matt’s tone was oddly expressionless for a guy who’d seemed so interesting and interested only an hour or so previously. “Did you try to reach me? It came from the HotRescues number, but when I answered no one was there.”

  “It wasn’t me,” I said.

  “Sure you got a call from here,” Clifton said at the same time. Was that sarcasm? What did he mean?

  Matt glared at him, then turned back to me. “Why don’t you sit down?” This time, he sounded as alive as when I’d eaten dinner with him.

  He rearranged some of the pet food bags into a seat, then helped me onto it. Not exactly a soft, upholstered chair, but at least it kept me from keeling over where I’d stood. I suddenly felt woozy. From loss of blood or stress? Most likely, a combo.

  I remained aware enough, though, to discern the unspoken battle raging between Matt and the people supposedly here to protect HotRescues.

  Where had they been before? If the only problem had been Honey getting loose on the grounds, I couldn’t hold them entirely responsible—although I still wanted to know why they hadn’t seen anything on any security camera, assuming that was true.

  Someone had been around and set this thing up. EverySecurity had been hired to protect HotRescues’ grounds, as well as our residents. They’d failed. Again.

  I’d fire their butts right out of here, but not immediately. I needed their cooperation in looking into who’d done this.

  Besides, I’d need Dante’s okay. He was the one who’d hired them.

  “Did the HotRescues silent alarm go off before?”

  “You’re sure it was set?” Clifton countered, which gave me the answer. It hadn’t. So who had turned it off?

  Or had I forgotten to set it? Surely I hadn’t.

  Of course, Efram could have shown his killer how to turn it off.

  “Did you or any of your guys see someone sneak onto the HotRescues grounds while I was out?” I asked him next. Maybe someone on patrol would have picked up what the cameras apparently didn’t.

  “No way,” he said.

  “We’d have grabbed ’em,” seconded Ed. “This guy, though.” He nodded toward Matt. “He was lurking around outside. I saw him as I drove by on patrol. That’s why I stopped and radioed for backup, then I got a call t
hat you’d phoned the office. I didn’t like this guy’s story, so I left him with my men, came through the fence, then heard you.”

  “I see.” I looked at Matt. I didn’t ask why he’d been there. He’d already claimed he’d gotten a call from the HotRescues number.

  Claimed? The security guys didn’t believe him, and I realized I considered what he said rather far-fetched, too. I’d been the only human here. I hadn’t called him.

  The only explanation I could think of that might corroborate his story was that the perpetrator had hung around after setting his trap and called Matt.

  Possible? Sure. Probable? Not really. Why would the sadist imperil himself by hanging around that long?

  While I was musing about this odd scenario, and hurting all over, the cops and EMTs arrived.

  Despite the late hour, I made the EMTs wait to examine me until I called Nina and told her what happened, asked her to come to HotRescues and keep an eye on things—particularly Honey. The little Westie mix stayed near me now, mostly because I held on to her leash once I got the security folks to bring her to me again. She seemed fine, if a little excited. But I also told Nina to call my friend Carlie if Honey seemed at all hurt. Carlie’s veterinary skills were unrivaled, and she was back in town. Besides, I always used her animal hospital if any of our HotRescues animals needed medical attention, even if she wasn’t there to do the work.

  Then I had to contend with the medics. I told them I was fine. Just needed bandaging, plus some low-dose painkiller. Antibiotics? I’d use an over-the-counter antiseptic salve on the wound. We even had most of that in our first-aid cabinet here at HotRescues, for situations where our personnel scraped their arms or got nipped. That would be good enough.

  But they dug in their white-soled shoes and insisted that I needed to see a real doctor, at a real medical facility, right away. I’d already done all the fighting that night for which I could muster any energy, so my arguments sounded lame even to me.

  I felt tearful as I shambled like a creature in a monster film while returning Honey to her kennel. “Someone will be here to keep you company soon,” I promised, and gave her another hug before securing the gate—and checking it again.

  Then I let the EMTs have their way with me, shuttering me into the back of their emergency vehicle. At least they didn’t blast the siren.

  I’d half hoped that Matt would come along, a shoulder for me to lean on while I kept weight off my leg. But since I first rode in an ambulance, then in a wheelchair, I didn’t genuinely need that kind of support. Just support of the moral kind . . . and I wasn’t sure Matt could provide any just then. He was still being questioned when I left HotRescues.

  Once I arrived at the hospital, the wait in the emergency room seemed interminable. Even worse, I spent most of the rest of that night similarly to one I’d endured nearly a week before—undergoing another heartless interrogation by Detective Stefan Garciana, who found me there.

  He insisted on shooing me into a corner to talk while I waited. My injuries weren’t life threatening. My irritable mood was—to Garciana’s life, not mine.

  “I thought you were a homicide detective,” I hissed at him at one point, keeping my claws sheathed. I sat tensely in an uncomfortable hospital waiting room chair, glaring and trying to ignore the buzz of activity in the vicinity. A lot of people must have gotten sick or injured that day. “No one was killed.”

  “I just figured this situation could be related to the homicide I’m still investigating,” he said mildly. “The one that also occurred at HotRescues.” As if he needed to remind me.

  Despite the late hour, the guy looked wide awake. His dark eyebrows were raised, as if he gave a damn what I said to him. His black, wavy hair looked recently combed, and he again—still?—wore a formal-looking suit. The epitome of a police detective. Not that I wanted to know the best characteristics of a quintessential interrogator.

  “So, tell me what happened.”

  I did so briefly, without mentioning that I’d dined earlier with Matt or that he’d shown up at HotRescues, apparently during the time I’d been frantically searching for Honey.

  He knew about the latter, though. “And you’d called Matt Kingston from Animal Services to help?”

  I could have said yes to protect Matt. But he worked for a government agency involved with law enforcement, too. He should be perfectly able to take care of himself.

  Besides, the seeds of doubt had started inching their roots into my thoughts. I’d no theory why Matt would have set up Honey and me that way. I didn’t genuinely believe he’d done it. But the facts were that he’d been around HotRescues, and he’d claimed it was because of a phone call that only I had been in a position to make—and I hadn’t done it.

  I felt trapped in a living conundrum.

  Presumably Matt had caller ID on his cell and could see that the number had been HotRescues’. His phone records would confirm it—or not.

  If he’d received that call, and not from me, then maybe whoever set the trap had wanted to send a message. Frame Matt. Make things even more confusing.

  My thoughts were definitely engaged in unrelenting somersaults. But I didn’t tell the detective any of that.

  What I did tell him was the bare-bones truth. I’d left HotRescues for a while. When I came back, one of our residents, Honey, was missing, and I’d looked for her. When I’d found her, she had seemed like the bait in a trap set by an unknown perpetrator for an unknown reason.

  He didn’t ask if I’d been interrogating people from my own suspect files that day. I didn’t volunteer it, either. But that was the only thing I could think of that would cause anyone—one of those very suspects—to try to hurt me, possibly warn me from conducting another day like this one.

  Maybe they’d succeeded.

  But how had whoever it was avoided the security patrols and camera? If it was Matt, he hadn’t eluded both, since the security patrol had captured him. But apparently neither he, nor anyone else, had shown up on the camera.

  How would I deal with this in my organized computer files? Add a file on Matt? Yes. But would this help me identify the killer?

  At the moment, I’d no idea.

  I, therefore, asked Garciana a question of my own. “Do you really think this was connected with Efram Kiley’s murder, Detective?”

  “We can’t rule it out,” he said grimly.

  Neither could I.

  Then I really pushed the envelope. “If so, that should at least convince you I wasn’t the killer,” I said, looking right into the detective’s cool brown eyes.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Unless you did this all yourself to try to throw suspicion somewhere else.”

  I felt almost as if that damned knife was stabbing me all over again. Maybe, this time, in my gut. “I didn’t!” I exclaimed.

  “That’s what I intend to find out,” he responded.

  So I wasn’t off the hook—or knife blade—yet.

  Chapter 20

  I was fine. I was released from the ER.

  I was ready to get back to HotRescues.

  But I had no transportation, and it was too far to walk, even if my leg hadn’t been aching.

  Detective Garciana was long gone by then, which was a good thing. I was so glad not to be in his presence anymore that I wouldn’t have asked him for a ride even if he offered to chauffeur me in a posh limousine.

  Not that I aspired to posh limousines.

  Nina might still be at HotRescues. Even if it hadn’t been so late—around midnight—I wouldn’t have called to lure her away from there, even for a short while.

  Carlie was a definite maybe. As a veterinarian and TV personality, she kept odd hours anyway. But my curiosity led me to try someone else first: Matt.

  Was he still with the cops?

  And was my mind still twisting like a whirlwind in fog for even considering suggesting that he come and get me, putting me alone in his presence? He was a suspect in the trap set for Honey and me. I couldn’t co
mpletely exonerate him, despite how remote I thought the possibility of his guilt.

  The thing was, I liked him. Wanted to talk to him, hopefully to minimize my own suspicions about him.

  But even if he was guilty, I doubted he’d do anything to follow up right now, while he was in the cops’ radar—at least for that night’s attack on Honey and me.

  Standing outside, on the curved sidewalk beside the ambulance driveway, I called him. He answered on the first ring—a good sign that he wasn’t, at that moment, undergoing a tough interrogation.

  “Where are you, Lauren?” he demanded. “How are you? Is your leg all right? The rest of you?”

  My smile, which I was glad he couldn’t see, was full of irony. He cared . . . or did he? “I’m okay, but I’d be a lot better if I were at HotRescues right now.”

  “Then, where are you? Can I pick you up?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  He got there in about twenty minutes. Meantime, I sat outside the emergency room on a bench in an intense glow that suggested people’s ill health could be cured if they were greeted by brilliant artificial lights. I’d done what I could, before coming out here, to wash some of the blood off my slacks. They were deep blue in color anyway, so the stain wasn’t as obvious as it would be if I’d worn something lighter. But I’d temporarily repaired the slit with the only mending material readily available at the hospital: white surgical tape. It wasn’t exactly invisible.

  Matt pulled his Animal Services vehicle up to the curb. I stood and hobbled toward him. He leaped out and helped me to the car. All gentleman . . . maybe.

  Once I was settled in, he got back into the driver’s seat. “I’ll take you home so you can rest,” he said, his eyes moving from my face downward.

  I figured I looked as bad as I felt. Good thing I wasn’t trying to impress him. “HotRescues, please,” I contradicted.

  “But—”

  My steady, challenging glare must have told him I’d argue with him, no matter how bad I felt. “Okay. HotRescues.”