My head hurt today.
Which sucked because I had a shit ton of work to do on the computer, and that was bound to make it worse.
“All right, let me know if you need anything else.” She left without any more small talk, thank God.
I was drinking what was left of my coffee in Hopps when I happened to look up at a sudden movement.
My coffee cup was halfway to my face when a dog ran full tilt across the pavement in front of Hopps at something just out of sight of the windows I was sitting in front of.
Setting my coffee down, I got up and walked toward the door and opened it just in time to hear someone screaming.
“Get off!” a woman screeched. “No! Baby, run!”
Baby, run.
When I stepped foot outside of Hopps, I saw a flash of pink, and then a little girl was running right at me.
I spotted the red hair and knew instantly who it was.
I swept her up into my arms, yanked the door open to Hopps, and boomed, “Need some help!”
A woman at the table right inside the door took Wendy from my arms, and I was back outside and running toward the chaos.
The first things I saw were the pink sprinkled donuts that were on the ground scattered like confetti. The snarling was the next thing to catch my attention. It sounded vicious and unhinged.
There were several people surrounding the dog now, as well as someone on the ground in black jeans and a black long-sleeved tee.
I scanned everyone, looking for Constance, knowing that she was right in the thick of this.
What I didn’t expect was to not find her in the throng of people trying to help.
Where was she?
I logically should’ve known that the woman getting attacked was Constance, yet it was still a shock when the woman’s red hair spilled free of the beanie that she had it under. It was her thrashing about as she tried and failed to get the dog off of her boot that caused her hair to spill free.
The crowd was trying to get the dog off Constance, but the dog was relentless, not responding to pain or stimuli at all.
Without thinking much of it, I knocked several people out of the way and did the only thing I could think of doing to stop the attack. I wrapped my arms around the dog’s throat and got him into a chokehold.
I squeezed hard as my eyes met the terrified ones of my so-called “enemy.”
An enemy that was looking like more of a friend as each day passed.
My so-called enemy’s attitude toward me had thawed over the last couple of days.
She’d been nicer…sort of.
But the look of terror in her eyes as the dog bit down on her boot and viciously yanked it side to side had me seeing a side of her I’d never seen before.
The dog’s movements slowed as I held the chokehold, using all of my strength to stay on the dog that was thrashing about.
Finally, the dog let go, and Constance scrambled backward.
Someone yanked her up and dragged her away, leaving me to hold on to the dog even longer.
“I got it,” I heard Boone call out.
It was then that I realized that the dog had stopped struggling.
