“No,” I said.
Dr. Partridge went behind the desk and grabbed a leash and a collar, gently putting them on Ginger. She waved a hand. “Follow me to Room Three, please.”
I nodded at Gray and she discreetly set a timer on her watch. I figured ten to twenty minutes before we had company, but it would be tight. We all followed Dr. Partridge, except for Gray, who would act as our lookout in the lobby.
Dr. Partridge quietly closed the exam room door behind her and looked between us. “Okay. Let’s start over. What’s going on with this dog? You hand my tech a wad of cash. The dog has no collar, no leash, and is wrapped in foil. Not to mention, all of you have decided to jam into my small examining room to be with her. She’s a stray. Why all the attention?”
I let out a breath. “Okay, I know this looks strange, but we found her running around loose and we want to return her to her proper owners. But we’re worried about her condition, and we’re willing to pay in full, up front, for a health check. Can you check if she’s chipped and who she belongs to?”
Dr. Partridge crossed her arms against her chest and stared at me for a long time. I wasn’t sure she bought our story, but we were only asking for her to confirm Ginger’s owners and do a health check. Nothing too untoward.
“All right. Take the foil off,” she said.
We carefully peeled the foil from Ginger. Once it was off, she shook herself, fur fluffing out like she was preparing for a shampoo commercial. I couldn’t help but smile.
“She’s a pretty dog. Nice coat,” Dr. Partridge said, petting her gently while checking her eyes and mouth. “She’s young. Possibly no more than two years old.” She waved a scanner over Ginger’s neck and the device beeped immediately.
“And you’re right,” she said. “She’s chipped. Let me pull up the registry.”
We gathered around the computer.
The vet’s expression shifted from mild confusion to discomfort to deep, uneasy frowning. “Well,” she said, “According to the registration, Ginger belongs to…Tango Bio Research Solutions of New Jersey. Have you heard of them before?”
“No, but I’m betting they are a research lab,” I murmured.
Basia swore under her breath. “I knew it.”
I rubbed my temples. “Thank you, Dr. Partridge. Can you do a quick examination of her for us?”
“You just paid my tech a thousand dollars in cash and all you want is a cursory examination?” she asked. “No blood workup, no X-rays?”
“No, I’m sorry, but we don’t have time.”
Dr. Partridge stared at us, holding her stethoscope with both hands. “Do you ladies want to tell me what exactly is happening? Clearly, this dog belongs to a research lab, and they will come looking for her. Are you trying to protect her?”
I exchanged glances with the others. Okay, it was truth-ish time.
“We found her in the woods,” I began. “She ran up to us, but she wasn’t acting like a normal stray. She sought us out, and she’s proven to be extremely intelligent.”
“How intelligent?” the vet asked warily.
“Very,” I said, deciding that some discretion was still advised. “We tried to find an open shelter to take her to, but there wasn’t anything available to us until the morning. We decided not to leave her roaming, so we snuck her into our hotel room at the casino until we could take her to the shelter in the morning. Shortly thereafter, some weird guy shows up at our hotel, banging on our door and claiming she belongs to him.”
“She didn’t have a collar?” Dr. Partridge asked.
“No, and that’s the thing,” I said. “She also had no vest and no way to carry a battery pack to establish a GPS satellite link. Most dog microchips that I’ve ever heard of aren’t embedded with a GPS, and certainly not without some kind of power source.”
Dr. Partridge nodded thoughtfully. “They’re not.”
“And yet this guy somehow traced her to our hotel room and was very pushy about getting her back,” I continued. “Ginger—we call her that because of the copper tint to her fur—clearly didn’t like him, even though we never even opened the door. She growled, hissed, teeth bared. She was not going to go with him without a fight.” I left out the whole spelling thing since I figured we didn’t have time and Dr. Partridge already had enough information on her plate to process.
The vet’s face went through several emotions at once—concern, disbelief, and finally professional alarm. “The foil,” she finally said. “You were blocking the GPS signal.”
I nodded. “Yes, and now that’s it off, they may be tracking us here right now. They may try to snatch her back.”
“If they own her, we can’t stop them,” the vet said logically. “She legally belongs to them. And if they’re licensed and permitted to experiment on dogs—which is not illegal in the US if you are properly registered—you will have no recourse.”
“We know,” I said. “But we just want to make sure she’ll be safe before we return her.”
